Ever been made fun of in school? What have you done about it?

[ddavidebor]

I was very fat at child age. They joke me for this.

Now, i look chubby, but i'm 1.75mX115kg so nobody really joke me.
They joke the relationshio between me and my horse because they're jealous.

They're respect me for mine damn good tecnical skill. They also interest in my extra-school project if it's nott too complicated.

Girls go to me because i'm not a dickhead and i've a horse they found cute.

Teacher of tecnical subject pretty much love me.

i'm pretty hapy now in my high school. :-)

[EEVblog]

This is the high school I went to (really):


You didn't learn, it was a case of daily survival.
In this case the nerd was big enough to fight back, and had put up with the bullying long enough.
In my case I was the 50kg soaking wet nerd and the bullies were huge.
But I was simply smarter, quicker, and more aware with eyes in the back of my head, and was eventually able to avoid most encounters. But it meant you were always in constant fear. It took 4 years of convoluted alternate routes home to avoid after school trouble.
You'd often cop a break when the real big bullies ended up in a juvenile detention center for a few months.

[Rasz]

This is the high school I went to (really):

Wow, almost exactly my story. Even same m.o. with bully pretending to be a victim and almost everyone believing him!!! too bad for him there is video evidence.

I have a strong suspicion this is how school shootouts happen in US - kids just break under bully trauma and lose the will to live, but instead of fighting back they decide to take everyone with them, everyone who stood by and did nothing while they were tormented.

[Legit-Design]

You didn't learn, it was a case of daily survival.

I thought you were kidding when you said on your video you got "beat up" for bringing a cool electronics project to school and showing it. But yeah bullies don't like kids who stand out.

[EEVblog]

I thought you were kidding when you said on your video you got "beat up" for bringing a cool electronics project to school and showing it.

It was magazines I bought to school. You try to sit in a quiet corner and read them, but in that school anyone seen reading anything in the playground is a magnet for the bullies.
It wasn't just that, I got picked on for other things as well.

[SeanB]

Makes my school seem like a picnic. At least there being a little bigger than the others and having the ability to ignore them helped. That and the library being open during breaks as well, along with the bullies being mostly illiterate. then again the headmaster was liberal in the use of the cane, but the only one you worried about was the one HOD who had the ability to give you 4 stokes and leave a single cane width line. He was barred from giving more than 4, as it was deemed to be cruel and inhuman punishment, more than 4 would be the headmaster, and he was often a little deep, and would miss, or you could convince him he had already done 6 with only 1. That, and I did not play Rugby......

[Rigby]

Science knows very little about the human brain.

Science knows little about the inner workings of the brain; what individual neurons do, and how they work.  Psychology is something that is VERY well understood, and very well proven.

The weak have always been bullied since the beginning of time in every animal species. The only difference between us and other animals is we don’t kill our weak. In the animal kingdom they call it natural selection and competition.

Well you can quote “empirical data” on some study showing ten individuals under certain circumstances behaved this way. I guarantee you another ten samples behaved quite differently under the same circumstances. So what do these studies prove? That we are all different.

A study was released last year that followed tens of thousands individuals for 60 years.  It agrees with me, not you.

It’s funny that all these opinions about bullying have started to come out of the woodwork like it just started happening today. The difference today is we consider it unacceptable; mainly over protective parents. The ones who think we shouldn’t keep score in our kids sporting events. The ones who also think peanuts should be banned from all schools because one kid is allergic.

No, it's because our understanding of just how destructive bullying can be has become more and more widespread. 

I don’t know I grew up keeping score in my games and if a kid was allergic to certain foods it was up to them to not eat them not me. Their was also bullying. I also had to walk to a central location to be picked up by the school bus. School busses now stop right at the kid’s door ridiculous. Funny thing is all these school shootings seem to have just started in the past 15yrs or so. Go figure. One would get the opinion that the kid just can’t cope, gee I wonder why that is?

Your lack of understanding here is astounding.  When one doesn't think too deeply about cause and effect, I can see why one would feel as you do, but the moment one applies logic or reasoning (or even does some small amount of research) the whole "we baby our children too much" theory flies directly out the window and dies.

There is zero disagreement on this among people who know the topic.  Zero.  This is not pseudoscience, this is not guessing, this is provable, repeatable, and very easily explainable.

[Mechatrommer]

Psychology is something that is VERY well understood, and very well proven.

understanding it is of no good use if problems stilll cannot be solved. there are other things that come into play, on a larger scale, things like sociology (society), ethics and politics

[TheWelly888]

Yes I was bullied at boarding school and what made it worst was that I was stuck with them 24/7 during term time! I knew that if I hit back at them I would have gotten in trouble so I reacted tearfully too often. One useless teacher suggested in one report that I brought my problems on myself!

Fortunately I learned not to get too bothered by the idiots (and some of the worst ones left prematurely despite the school being notoriously reluctant to expel anyone) and anyway nearly 30 years on, I know and care nothing about my old tormentors.

At least my old school really taught me the meaning of the word "cynical" even if they did not get around to teaching me the word "cynical" before I left!

[Hydrawerk]

Well, always fight back your retarded classmates and f*u*c*k teachers. Teachers are usually unable to do anything, they can only threaten for ages. They will hardly do anything. 

[Rory]

The best way to cope with being bullied for me was to put it all behind and move on. It's been almost 40 years since high school, but I still keep in touch with a few friends from back then. About a week ago, in the obituaries in my hometown newspaper website, I saw that one of the worst bullies I had to deal with had died, his obituary was minimal.  I mentioned this to an old friend and she, too thought he was a total buttwipe and the world would be glad to be rid of him.

So, I guess for me, the best way to deal with those jerks is to outlive them!

[Hydrawerk]

Well, I didn'd meet any bully or other dickhead at my university. People over 18 are often quite mature and decent, especially at high school.

[Fsck]

Well, I didn'd meet any bully or other dickhead at my university. People over 18 are often quite mature and decent, especially at high school.

Unless it's supervisor to grad students/phd candidates

[steve30]

Can't say I had much bullying. Probably because I kept myself to myself.

Some people went through a period of making fun of my interest in computers.

A really annoying thing was younger students climbing up the toilet cubical wall to try and 'watch', but I'm sure that wasn't anything to do with me personally.

[Dave]

A really annoying thing was younger students climbing up the toilet cubical wall to try and 'watch', but I'm sure that wasn't anything to do with me personally.

The sole reason I HATED to go to the bathroom in kindergarten. Retarded inbred schoolmates trying to see my weiner.

I can't say I've had too much trouble with bullies. There were some in elementary school, I got roughed up a couple of times, but nothing too drastic. Thankfully I have a older brother who got my back once or twice when I really needed it.
There was one guy at the beginning of high school who would pick on me, but that didn't last long. I was in my second year of high school when I suddenly gained approx. 20cm of height (bringing my total to 191cm), and I've never been bullied since. I also learned not to back away when things got hot.

I've had a moment of triumph last year. I was walking down a poorly lit street in the middle of a night and some guy was walking toward me. When we were about 20m apart, he suddenly crossed the street and continued walking on the opposite sidewalk. I felt like the king of the world when I realized that some dude actually crossed the street just to avoid passing me. It felt like the tables of the universe have turned.

It is also very comforting to know that those few people who bothered me are now jobless, uneducated deadbeats without a future.

[GK]

A really annoying thing was younger students climbing up the toilet cubical wall to try and 'watch', but I'm sure that wasn't anything to do with me personally.

 

That must have been a nice English school. I read about those in Christopher Hitchen's autobiography, Hitch 22. That made me really, really glad that I didn't (a) grow up in England (b) attend a posh boys boarding school there.

Incidentally, that was an abysmal, tediously boring autobiography. I really could not believe the amount of trivial BS and just plain GAK! he for some reason thought must make for interesting reading; wouldn't recommend it to anyone, even to those who genuinely find his other writings interesting or of merit. Oops - OT..... back to your scheduled programming now.............
 

 

[Hydrawerk]

Well, I should say that i was always one of the tallest boys especially at elementary school. I was not too strong, but many bullies decided to beat small boys instead of me.
The last fight (2006?) took place at my catholic grammar school. An acolyte classmate beated me for no reason in the corridor. I could not hit him because he was quite fast, but I managed to tear his necklace. The beads scattered on the floor. Then a teacher appeared and i thought "Oh, shit!" But the teacher told off the dickhead acolyte. She knew, that he was a chameleon-like SOB. Well, she was an atheist...
And yes, the young acolyte had a necklace like this...

[Rigby]

Science knows little about the inner workings of the brain; what individual neurons do, and how they work.  Psychology is something that is VERY well understood, and very well proven.

I think you spend too much time thinking about something that requires little thought. Every human being has baggage yours just happens to be bullying. That’s the flavour of the month because a few kids snapped.

I find your willingness to accept some drivel as science astounding.

I’m sure if I actually were to waste time researching a topic frankly I think isn’t worth the time I would find some shrinks who did a similar survey and refute all the drivel from your survey. That or they interpret the data differently.

To summarise what you are saying is we are all made from a cookie cutter we are all the same bullshit. We all react the same way to a situation bullshit. There are no magic equations to plot out the impacts from the decisions a person will make during their life. What effect they will have. Everyone is different.

If that was the case their would be far more mass shootings because bullying is so widespread.

I think you spend too little time thinking about things.  You attempt to tell me that people who study psychology, practice psychology, and make advances in psychology all know less than you, then say that you don't even think about it much.

My baggage is not bullying, by the way.  I was bullied, yes, but that doesn't make it my baggage.

Here's the thing, though.  I think you're trying to say that adults are unaffected by their childhood, and that those who say they are are simply using it as an excuse.  If that is what you are implying, then you are so beyond wrong that there isn't a word to describe it.  If you beat the shit out of a puppy as it grows up, it's going to be a very mean adult dog.  If you beat the shit out of a child as it grows up, it's going to be a very mean adult person.  It is not coincidence that childhood abuse results in adulthood abusiveness.

And no, psychologically, people are not snowflakes.  We are not unique in this way.  Personality?  Yes, we're all unique.  Reactions and coping mechanisms for abuse?  We are not unique at all.  Again, it's been proven over and over that how we respond to these things is very well defined, very well understood, and very easily treated if you take the time to do what is required.

[Rigby]

I agree with everything you said, pretty much.

I am not stating myself clearly enough, I think.  Psychology is proven.  People are not snowflakes about their reactions to abuse.  Yes, there are always outliers, yes, people ARE different in many ways.  It is not always possible for someone to "get over it" and move on.  Sometimes, it is possible, yes, sometimes it is not.  Saying "get over it" does NOT work for those who can't get over it themselves.  The level of abuse that one must endure to push them over the line where they can't deal with it themselves will differ from person to person.  Everyone who gets pushed over their own line will react in extremely similar ways, though.  You can ignore all the science and evidence if you like, but if you go volunteer or go to work in places where the less fortunate wind up, I think you'll find very, very quickly that the vast majority of them were abused as a child, past their "line" and can't deal with it alone.  Distilled out, this abuse shows up as horrible decision making.

Some people are indeed bullied enough to get pushed over their line.  There is zero debate about this.  The same amount of bullying won't necessarily push another person over their own line.

Some people can "get over it" to a degree, but wind up with traits like a hair-trigger temper, somewhat severe depression of varying degrees, a history of very bad decisions, or they find relationships where they wind up abused again, or they find a relationship where they can become the abuser, and gain the control they never had as a child.

Another part of the discussions is what does or does not constitute "abuse."  The definition of this will vary from person to person, and I think this is where a lot of the argument comes from.

[Alana]

Started carying a crowbar in my backpack, when they noticed they stopped...

[lemmegraphdat]

Name calling but nothing physical. One day I'd had enough and what did I do but punch the biggest guy in the class. No effect at all. What an idiot, I just lost it completely. I thought he would kill me. One punch and I was out. The name calling stopped. I got very lucky. They must have thought I was nuts. I think I probably was. We had this one idiot at a factory where I worked, a machine operator. He had this stupid habit of picking up somebody and airplane spinning them. He decided to do that to me and when he had me I grabbed his crotch and gave it all a good squeeze. Again I thought I was dead for sure. He just let it go. Lucky as hell.

[c4757p]

Shrinks feel the need to label every aspect of human behaviour; kid wont shut-up in class he’s got ADD give him a pill. Take the kid to another shrink he will have a different opinion. I call it being human we are all different that’s the way it’s been and it’s the way it’s always going to be. I guess if we start genetic cloning on a large scale that may change.

What is this big problem people have with labeling? It's called being self-aware. "Human behavior" is a very complicated thing and it helps to have ways to talk about it in an educated way. Labeling behavior is a gateway to learning about it and being taught how to control it.

We can just go about "being human" without ever stopping to think about what exactly that means. When that happens, we may as well sling shit like monkeys. Complicated self-awareness is one of the aspects of being a human.

And this "give him a pill" crap is nonsense and a myth. It does happen sometimes, but it's not like we just drug every noisy kid. Have you actually seen a real elementary school classroom? Lots of noisy kids. Most of them, to be more exact. And perhaps one or two "have ADD".

[envisionelec]

He had this stupid habit of picking up somebody and airplane spinning them.

Strange habit.

[dcel]

Geek, nerd, or whatever, that was my label in school. Our junior and senior high schools were combined which made things worse.
 
     I finally had enough one day when one of the "punk ass slackers" decides he wants to put his feet up on the desk I am sitting at, trying his damnedest to get me to relocate by pulling a large buck knife out and threatening me with it, I moved no problem, right to the teachers desk during her lecture, informed her, and promptly took another seat a couple rows over. The teacher continues on with her grandstanding whilst passing off an unseen note to the teachers pet along with a pass to the office. Two minutes go by and the 450lbs asst. principal (disciplinarian), whom we called "Heavy Evey", the principal, the head coach, and the custodian, barge into the room with the express intent of disarming the offender and removing him from the school. Word got around real quick what had happened and the offenders partners in crimes tell me that I will go down for what I did to their friend. I made it very clear that they were next to be expelled and I was waiting for them to commit an offence that would rid me of um for good. Never had any more problems with that crowd again but it did not solve the rest of the hazing.

     Things changed for the better in 10th grade when I was accepted to the vocational school electronics program a year early. It was only supposed to be a two year program, but I got accepted for a third year helping teach the basics to the first year students, along with my advanced courses. Electronics, computers, and tutoring. Those were the good times!

Whatever you think, who we are, as individuals, IS, the sum of our experiences and there is nothing that will change that.

I'm 45 and I remember ALL the shit I went through during school and it will always be a part of who I am.

Chris