>>346
>If anything, bullying makes you stronger; it teaches you how to deal with unreasonable assholes.

I wish that were true for me. I was bullied nearly to the point of an ulcer. In my case it was because the bully also happened to be the local drug dealer who knew how to box, and my parents made sure to condition me never to fight back. Even today I can't think of violence without locking up. I wish I could say that bullying are me a stronger person, but it really just made me withdraw from others even more.

> Even as recently as ten years ago, you'd almost NEVER see a kid come out of the closet. Nowadays, kids are coming out of the closet and no one gives a shit. Hell, they give them support!

You're not kidding. In California some kid just got 17 years for killing a gay kid who was bullying others by harassing them sexually. Naturally the father blames the school for not stopping the gay kid's behavior.

> Now there's kids being charged with bullying.

I don't think surviving bullying is important for character building, but I also think bullying is a fact of life that one needs to learn to deal with. Unless said bullying involves severe psychological or physical abuse (rape or a mental breakdown) I can't see charging someone for it. I heard once about a kid who killed himself because some bullies forced him to lie in a urinal. This was part of a long streak of harassment. Some names in the paper and expulson seems about right to me.

A big part of this is that parents are complicit with the issue. Some think it's an important part of growing up and either don't give necessary support or encourage their child to bully. When something goes wrong, they blame others.

>>347
Sorry to hear about your problems; I know that in my case, getting bullied helped me deal with shit. I guess everyone's different.

I reread my original post, though, and it comes off a little like I'm defending bullying; I'm not, of course. It just bothers me that rather than teach kids how to deal with these kids of things, parents would rather sit back and get the other kids expelled or arrested. That's like putting a band-aid on someone who just got their hand cut off.

Sure, it solves the problem in the short term, but there's an important fact: there are going to be assholes who belittle you throughout your life, no matter who you are. If you don't learn how to deal with them, it will make life that much more difficult.

Shit, at least my generation just shot everyone when they got bullied.

When I look back at school, I never feel like I was bullied by anyone. Sure, there were isolated incidents where I was nearby when some BD kid might have a bad day and act out, but I just got out of the way and let the teachers handle it.

Yeah, I thought the jocks were idiots, I thought the straight-A's were full of themselves. I didn't care if I fit in. None of it means anything in the long run. I still had friends.

The way they make a big deal about bullying nowadays just makes me laugh. It pretty much classifies anything that doesn't constitute "BFF behavior" as bullying. It would make my friends out to be my bullies. Yeah, they picked on me, and it kind of hurt sometimes, but I was the odd one. I never got invited to parties, I never beat any of them at MTG, and I was terrible at co-op video games. But I got through it alive.

And checking on them now, one's an airport baggage handler, one's a chip'n'dales dancer, and one's an angry marine.
I'm living comfortably at home, taking cheap classes at my own pace, and moderating 4 websites, not including my own. Not quite the pillar of success, but I'm cool with it.

What the fuck is "mitting"?

This troper was bullied pretty extensively. Someone once threw roadkill at me in the first grade. From that day onward, I would never again put on another pair of shorts or wear anything other than long-sleeved shirts that covered me entirely and protected me from the things people would throw at me.

For several years I was physically bullied and had a hard time dealing with it. The kids used to gather saplings and vines from the woods around our school, encircle me and then whip me relentlessly with the implements.
After a few weeks of this, I finally exploded and beat them all up. I snatched the glasses from one kid's face and shoved him into oncoming traffic.

I have about a million stories that revolve around bullying and being bullied. It was a two-way street for me. As a result of being picked on and harassed so much when I was younger, once I grew up to be bigger than everyone else in the class I myself became a pretty ruthless bully. My brand of bullying was a bit more subtle and hurtful than just calling people names or taking their lunch money. I started manipulating people and doing whatever I could to ruin their lives.

The kids who bullied me eventually became targets of my routine torments. I'd mock them and threaten them with violence. I was so well-behaved and the best student in school, so the faculty more or less turned a blind eye to what I was doing and seemed almost to support me in my crusade against bullies.

There was one kid that I bullied for no good reason at all. There was no personal animosity between us or anything like that. I just picked on him because he was small and young. Honestly, it felt awesome. It made me feel powerful and in-control for the first time in my life.

Being a bully was an amazing experience. Getting bullied sucked, but I never would have been able to become a bully without it.

>>362
I think we need a thread for TubularMonkey stories. The Autistic Adventure and this are both quite entertaining.

Where I live is a particularly conservative part of California. There was a guy in my class who was gay, but he hid it in fear. One day he was caught making out with his boyfriend. Let me tell you; he received absolutely no support. Nobody respected him from that day forward. Let me repeat; he didn't come out of the closet by choice.



Now let me tell you of another person; he was a bit of a lolcow. He was a highschool commie (of the peace and freedom party kind, so basically a hippy who bathed and was sober), you know the drill. And he was bullied for his beliefs. What separated him from a true lolcow, though, is a deep sense of self awareness. The problem is that he was also deeply convinced of his beliefs. Not to mention being an atheist in a school that still held mandatory prayer. From what I had heard, he had also been depressed since childhood - apparently he had no friends or some shit. So put depression in a blender with a real sense of bullying, and what do you get? Suicide.


It isn't about being butthurt, you idiot. It's about disease. It's immune to logic, so don't pretend you're some superior person because you happen to have the inner strength to convince yourself that you're actually worth the cheetos and mountain dew you drink.


That's the problem. We face a different world than what our grandfathers did. Now that we're in the age of information, a million doors are open; no longer is it just about whether to follow your dreams or be a shit farmer like your dad; there's a lot more that goes into our education and a lot more that puts the decisions on people now than ever before. And of course we place all these decisions on people when they're still trying to figure out just who the fuck they are.


So it thus follows that more people face depression - exacerbated by growing materialism in a culture that prides itself on those things (money doesn't buy happiness, toys are no substitute for playmates, yaddi-yaddi-yadda).


My point is, not everyone can be blamed for not just magically fixing themselves when people apply some pressure. Some people are sick; very very sick. Why exacerbate the problem? That's the purpose of the antibullying campaigns. Keep in mind, please, that these people don't consider themselves worth saving - they are not going to seek help. If we make the world just a bit more tolerable though by disencouraging people from being dickwads, though, maybe we can lessen the rate of death. It's like cough syrup; it won't cure the cold or even stop it, but it will make the experience just that much better.

>>367
First off, I have depression. I take medication for it. I know what depression is, I've lived with it with absolutely no problem, because depression is (surprise surprise) completely manageable if you get the help you need.

Second off, when in my original post did I link depression and bullying? Maybe if you read what I wrote instead of seeing "butthurt" and getting well...butthurt about everything, you would have seen that.

It's my belief that this desire among the current generation of parents for their children to be perfect reflections of themselves has led to the greater number of suicides. "Keeran could never have depression, it must be because of those bullies!"

It's a convenient excuse to ignore a very real problem.

By the way, cheetos and mountain dew taste like shit. It's all about Cool Ranch Doritos and Gatorade.

>if you get the help you need.

That's nice. You got it. Good for you. Others do not though, and often times can not.

>when in my original post did I link depression and bullying?

YOU didn't. I did.



I've never been aware of a parent in denial about their child being depressed. The parents just want some form of whatever they perceive as justice. Ever hear of the straw that broke the camel's back? They want the straw to burn.

If you want to argue against the effectiveness of burning the straw and stopping more deaths from occurring, what you're basically going to be arguing is the effectiveness of the very foundations of legal system. It's basically "does jail really deter crime"?


Not every victim is a Chris Chan wannabe with usi. Not every one of, and I really do believe most of these teen suicide cases is because their parents didn't prepare them. Some people are weak. Some people are too sick to take full care of themselves. On top of that, many people lack perspective; not because there's anything wrong with them, per se, but because they've found themselves backed into a corner, they have no where to turn and see things differently.


The perfection desires of the parents goes back way before that anyways. Keep in mind, this is the generation raised on the Simpsons, Roseanne, etc. It was the generation before that that lived with things like Leave it to Beaver as their ideal. Our beliefs have become more cynical over the last generation, the generation that found the romantic ideals of heroic America defending the world against the terror of communism crumble away to make room for the image of paranoid dipshits fucking around with everything in the name of protecting us against clowns who killed more their own men than our own. This generation of parents has had nearly 15 years of easily accessible internet to turn it cynical.

Our society is cynical, and our blame the victim attitude is just invigorating our problems.



I don't know where you live, but where I live, gays still don't have the ability to come out of the closet and be supported.



Gaga's a fucktard. I'll give you that. But what the hell would YOU say to someone ready to take a knife to throat to give them strength to put it down and seek help? I really like to see you do better,


How the hell do you deal with it?

In fact - and I mean this in all seriousness and with all respect - why are are you alive? What's the argument you give?


I agree. It's no solution to punish the bullies. But creating a culture that puts pressures away from bullying means that there are that many fewer straws to break the camel's back.


It's not a cure. It's far from a cure. But it's a remedy for a symptom. And we don't yet have the resources for a cure.

>>369
Sorry, a bit fucked as far as proofreading goes. >Not every one of, and I really do believe most of these teen suicide cases is because their parents didn't prepare them.
correct to >Not every one of, and I really do believe more than not of...

And there should be something like "also" with that nearly non-sequitur internet statement.

>>369

>So put depression in a blender with a real sense of bullying, and what do you get?

You then went onto a diatribe about depression in our society. I'm sure when my grandfather was a young boy, and the entire world was in the grip of war and the United States gasping its way through the Depression, it was way more easy to deal with life! Yeah, there sure is no kind of support system for dealing with depression in America today! Not like there was sixty years ago! I'd go on, but being so sarcastic caused me to pull something.

>>370
>>372

You know, what the two of you are arguing about really constitutes two sides of the same issue. I can't tell if it's just getting more noticeable, or if there really is more of it, but there does appear to be a noticeable breakdown in child-rearing. The whole 'it takes a village' philosophy is true. Parents, teachers, friends, neighbors, all influencial people, really, need to have a hand in making sure a child grows up well-developed. When it doesn't happen, problems occur.

The anti-bullying craze is not too dissimilar to the anti-vaccination craze in that people are latching on to an idea that doesn't really deal with an issue in the way they want, but makes them feel like their striking a blow for a better world. It's not, and they're being taken advantage of by the likes of GaGa and her recording publishers.

It's sad, but hopefully the fad will become a footnote in history.

Implying the suicide rate is higher than it was during the last depression and that accidental overdose and autoerotic asphyxiation aren't often falsely labelled suicides.
Also, fuck bullies. Go around being a prick in order to be more "popular" you are worse than Irl trolls and Atlus, who is a cyber bully.

>>347
>In California some kid just got 17 years for killing a gay kid
You're talking about the Larry King case, right?

I think there's one other situation where authority stopping bullying is justified: when the kid is in danger of serious injuries by the bully.

My friend in middle school was fucking weak. He got better as time went on to become more assertive, but for the time he was mere shrimp. As I am a witness to this, I can confirm his injuries were pretty bad, to the point where he would have bruises, delivered by the school's head jock. At that point, it isn't a matter of learning how to deal with assholes, it's making sure you get out of middle school alive and healthy.

>>381

Yes, that's the one. Both sides paint it as black and white, but it's a real grey area. Larry was killed for being gay, but he was also harassing everyone with sexually provocative behavior. The defense argued that the reason he was shot was because he was harassing his killer to the point of insanity.

On the one hand, the boy could have been dealt with in a way that didn't involve killing him, but on the other hand, the father has openly blamed the school for not controlling his son's behavior. This means he clearly knew his son was acting out in a dangerous way, but either did not or could not do anything to reign the boy in.

It's just an ugly situation all the way around.

>>654
As a child, he didn't get attention or love from the opposite sex. So now that he gets that attention and love, he wipes his ass with it in payback.

Good man.

Jengatype not everyone has the same experience as you. What many of you don't realize that for many cases, bullying is confused with teasing. Teasing might be a way rite of passage, but if it's escalates to bullying than it's a serious problem.

For every person that gets stronger and puts up with shit, there are more people who have to lose their oppotunitiy to get a education or a decent life because they have to deal with so much negative socialization. You have mental illnesses that result with severe bullying. You have teens that fought back against bullying thugs only to get beaten up by the bullies friends, or get expelled from school, or worse be sent to juvie hall with real criminals.

Oh yes, there has been countless suicides and suicide attempts as a result of severe bullying because people rather prefer a corpse (or at least get rid of the victim) than to actually help bullying victims.

>>712
tl;dr Bawwww. You're on the right board though.

At least in my day, the bullied kids just murdered everyone instead.

>>740
I miss those days

>>745
Me too, bro.

>>765