DarthOne
☦️
Fair point and I should have thought of that.
Meme Thread for Both Posting and Discussing Memes
- Thread starter Captain X
- Start date
Bullying isn't 'corrective action'; to phrase it that this presupposes that the bullies are justified, rather than being assholes and narcissists themselves more often than not.
This presumes the kids doing the bullying mean to 'fix' their target, rather than just make them miserable for the hell of it, and again presumes the bullying is automatically justified to begin with.
Bullying is the sign of failed parenting on the part of the parents of the bully, not on the part of the person being bullied or their parents.
Because 9/10, it's not about 'correcting' the target, it's about making their life miserable for the hell of it, or for a 'slight' the target didn't even know the did.
Bullying is a lot less 'humane' than people here like to imagine it is, and the amount of suicides and worsened outcomes from bullying far outstretch any 'corrective intent'.
Frankly, a lot of this comes from people who imagine bullies as 'wanna-be drill sergeants' trying to 'fix' their peers, rather than often bullies being reflections of what the parents of the bullies consider 'acceptable targets' or who is weak enough the bullies feel comfortable targeting them.
Bullying is all fun and games till suicides happen, assholes.
Last edited:
Optimus was my dad.
I'm talking from a social sciences perspective, you're looking at it on a more personal level.
If you couldn't tell from my story, I know how much bullying sucks, and I am aware that it doesn't help anything. I'm one of the ones who sat there contemplating suicide over the campaign of bullying I went through, so I don't appreciate being called an asshole just because the bullying you went through still stings. I've been there too bacle, I know how you feel. Now, look at what I'm saying without the emotions attached to it, because there is some psychology behind this. And yes you're also correct that parents raising bullies could do better too, but bullying is a natural thing, even adults do it. I'm not saying it's right, I'm saying it's human nature. But we work to be better than human nature every day.
It very much is a social correcting behavior. People that do it don't even realize what's going on. That's why weird kids who don't fit in get picked on. It's those behaviors at play under the hood.
Typically, this happens in young children. This is when socially corrective behaviors teach you to function normally. This is why it's so important to socialize them and teach them to play with other kids. Normally what happens when you're young is if you don't practice reciprocal behaviors in play, you get somewhat ostracized, kids don't want to play with you, you learn and adjust, and all the kids go through this.
This is natural social processes taking place.
These same processes are happening under the surface when bullies pick on the weird kid. They don't know that's what's happening, but that's what's happening. This is like base animal level stuff going on here.
When you're older, it's much harder, and jt gets out of hand. It doesn't really help, it doesn't tend to stop when you correct behavior, and of course there are always shitty people who just get joy out of watching others suffer, or knocking others down the social hierarchy. Another natural but shitty behavior.
But if you look at it without emotions attached, yes, it's in large part, human corrective behavior. Humans are social animals, these are our animal instincts playing out.
You also need to understand that "corrective behavior" as a term, doesn't always mean what they're correcting for is RIGHT. PLENTY of adults have taken part in bullying during, say covid. Those who didn't want to vaccinate or wear their masks were often bullied into doing so. This is the corrective behavior in action.
By corrective behavior I mean that the social group is conditioning your behavior to fit in with that social group. You're seeing the phrase corrective behavior and assuming that I think it's always right or beneficial.
It's only beneficial if it's something good, and only then if it stops once behaviors change.
In short: childhood social corrective behaviors turn into bullying when people get older, and you can go a long way to prevent your child from being bullied by properly socializing them young, when they are supposed to learn these things and it comes much easier.
It falls on parents both ways. A lot of time those bullies haven't been properly socialized, either. That's why they're acting on base animal instincts instead of knowing better.
Last edited:
School bullies are very often just nasty people who will pick on those weaker than themselves if they think they can get away with it.
It's natural behavior that needs addressed from both sides.
Kids need to be socialized properly.
That means teaching kids not to bully, and also teaching kids to be less of a target for bullying. As well as how to take it when it does happen.
Yeah, see, I cannot and will not take the emotion out of it, because bullying is an emotional reaction/action most of the time.
Human's are not Vulcan's, emotion is never not a factor.
You say bullying is a normal human reaction to 'weird' people; well it's also normal human reaction to want revenge and retribution against bullies, and those who allow bullying.
And I cannot and will not treat 'bullying' as 'natural'; bullying =/= normal part of socialization, and 'bullying weird kids is good' is some sick shit.
Tell me, @Rocinante, did you ever have people betting whether you'd kill yourself before you were 20, did you have people pay others to beat you up on flimsy pretext's because you embarrassed them at flag football, and did you have people treat the bullies as less of a problem than the bullied because of Columbine based fears?
Because I did, and hearing bullying getting excused like this pisses me the fuck off.
This; bullying is most often done for narcissistic and sociopathic pleasure, not because the kids want to 'help' or 'fix' the target.
See, we can turn this into a contest of who's bullying is worse, or we can discuss the reality of the psychology that goes behind it. I can tell you stories about how a teacher had the entire class line up into two lines and made me talk the gauntlet while they beat me with their books. I can tell you about the teacher who would hit me in the ass and make jokes about the Shockwave my fat made, too. Or about the same teacher who would dangle pizza in front of me and make jokes about how it hypnotized me. I can tell you about the time a girl pretended to like me so that when I asked her to be my girlfriend, she could turn me down and all her friends could laugh at me.
This isn't a contest over who got bullied harder. I'm not downplaying your trauma, saying it was right, saying it was your fault, or that it was a good thing. We're friends, @Bacle. Take a breath and look at what I'm actually saying. There is psychology that goes into this, and it's an offshoot of natural corrective behaviors that are built in to socially condition people.
You are letting your emotions lead you to assumptions about what I said, not addressing what I am really saying.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, and I am not saying people are consciously doing it to help people. I am describing the psychological underpinnings that lead to bullying.
If we want to combat bullying, we have to understand it.
Did I say bullying was good? No. I said it was a natural animalistic behavior. Which it is. Does that mean we should do it? Absolutely not. If the human race acted on every animal instinct, we wouldn't have a society. We would still be small tribes living in caves, that mate by clonking women over the head and dragging back to their dens.
Bullying is a natural behavior. And the mechanism it serves is to create social conformity. People bully others into comforming with the social group. My covid example illustrates how that can be wrong. It is wrong. It's when corrective behaviors spin out of control. The same thing happens when you go onto say, reddit, and post something that isn't left wing. The same thing happens when you say "bomb" on a plane. The same thing happens when you make a crass joke and everyone says "too far, man." It happens when you post on a forum and get dog piled. It happened in an old Seinfeld episode where Kramer wouldn't wear the ribbon. It happened during BLM riots when people demanded others spoke the words, or got beaten. It's a mechanism for social conformity, it gets taken way too far and spun out of control by bad people. And yes there are evil psychos who just derive pleasure from making others suffer.
This is how humans as social animals function. It's not always right. It gets spun out of control, and kids who were ALSO NOT SOCIALIZED PROPERLY, tend to be the ones to do it, and they don't stop once the behavior is corrected for.
The very same thing happens during play time with very young children. In THESE situations, kids aren't really focused on or capable of drawn out campaigns. Its just if you don't play fairly, you get negative reinforcement from the other kids. Kids are highly adaptable and learning, and experimenting with behavior. So you end up changing behavior that produces negative reinforcement, and adopting behaviors that lead to positive reinforcement. This is how we develop, and bullying is what happens when it gets spun out of control.
Weird kids get picked on because this animal instinct never really goes away. If you don't fit in socially, you receive negative reinforcement. That's just how humans function. I'm not putting a value there. It just is.
Now, we combat that from two directions. We teach children that bullying is wrong and that it hurts people. We also socialize our kids Young, because If you dont do it during those young, formative years, they're ALWAYS going to struggle.
The issue here is a failure to properly socialize children, on BOTH sides.
In my situation, I was set up for bullying. I was overly coddled by my very loving parents, and I wasn't socialized around kids enough. So when I went to school, I got bullied to an insane degree. By others who were not socialized properly.
Did that help me? Fuck no. I turned it into a strength later, in my 20s/30s. That was after years of dealing with trauma and the addictions connected to it.
Last edited:
I understand what you are trying to say, and why, and no, I am not trying to turn this into a contest.
I just disagree that classifying bullying as a 'natural offshoot of corrective behaviors' is a useful rhetorical way to frame the issue, or is actually how the modern human psyche works most of the time.
If we are going to go with a 'natural offshoot of corrective behavior' avenue of discussion, then can we say it is terribly unnatural for the targets of bullying to react negatively too it, and possibly in rather violent manners, even if the target doesn't have mental illness or struggles to deal with?
Of course, maybe this is just a good reason to teach kids to deal with bullies by snitches, and teach them to use lawfare at an early age. Maybe parents will stop raising bullies when they start getting lawsuite's left and right for their child's actions.
I'd argue that it's pretty natural to fight back, too, yes.
If correcting your behavior doesn't work, and they keep coming at you, yeah, fighting back is 100% natural. My friend and I made a mutual defense pact, and we ambushed the bullies after school. This is why I said I could see the rabbit hole that leads to shootings. Letting this go on for a few more years could have lead me down that path.
That being said, fighting is natural, too. Humans are a hierarchical species. In addition to corrective behavior, a lot of fighting, bullying, and other forms of altercation stem from this as well. Kids trying to climb the hierarchy by knocking other kids down a few pegs, is a big driver of bullying. Fighting back against that is just as natural.
Don't mistake me trying to understand the psychology that goes into it in an objective, emotion free manner, as me dismissing the harm it causes or not having those emotions myself. I went through years of this shit, and the resultant trauma still effects me today at 36 years old.
It's no joke, its not something to be taken lightly. However, I decided a long time ago that I wanted to understand human psychology and what drive this stuff. And if i want to understand it, I have to approach it objectively.
The emotions are still there. It still stings.
For example, I just saw one of my old bullies on FB the other day. He's a loser working at a gas station and looks like he's addicted to drugs. I'm an IT manager.
You know how much fucking pleasure I got out of that? I was half tempted to drive my ass to that gas station and rub in that fucker's face that he grew up to he a fucking loser and a junkie, while I made something of myself. That was 23 years ago thay he bullied me. I haven't spoken to, or interacted with him in 23 years. It still effected me when i saw him pop up on FB.
Don't get things twisted and think that my objective approach toward understanding it means I don't take it seriously, or that I think it's a good thing.
You know when I was in martial arts, I was part of an anti bullying program that we ran? I've put in work to try to stop bullying, by giving children a comfortable and safe place to express themselves, while building discipline and confidence in a supportive social environment.
I ask you as a friend, please do not put words in my mouth and claim that I think this isna good thing. I find that highly offensive. We are friends, and we ought to treat each other better than that.
I am sorry about putting words in your mouth, or seeming that way. When that meme got shared, I just saw another dude-bro bullshit spreader trying to justify the damage done to so many people, and you got caught in that.
I have seen enough dude-bro types act and say shit like 'you weren't bullied enough', to people having issues later in life, that my reactions to any attempt to 'justify' or 'excuse' bullying tend to be 'attack, attack, attack' in the opposite direction. Particularly when I've had bullies pretend to be friends before, so I'm also rather willing to snap and fight people I like if they push certain buttons; bullying is one of those.
You deserve better than that.
Part of it is, I know the people who bullied me are having much better, happier lives than me overall, and I can think of only 2 of them which ever expressed regret for how they treated me.
My experience has been bullies get away with what they do more often than not, much of the society today is more worried about the reactions of people who are bullied than about the bullies, school officials are often more ok with the bullies than the bullied, and dude-bro types never tend to understand why bullying is wrong.
I know you aren't trying to excuse bullying, but I cannot be rational about this, and I won't pretend I can be.
I think you seem pretty rational in this post.
Trust me dude, I know what that trauma feels like. I didn't mean to make you feel like I'm downplaying it.
Sometimes I do downplay it a bit, because sometimes I get a little distance from the trauma. All I've got to do is think about it for a bit and I remember everything. And I can see how my posts about turning it into a strength make me look as if I'm downplaying it. Rest assured I am not one of those who thinks bullying is good because it made me strong. Rather, I made myself strong, as a response to the trauma caused by bullying. The bullying didn't make me stronger. It made me miserable. I made myself stronger many years later, and I absolutely used my trauma as fuel for that. But I'm not meaning to indicate that I think bullying is a good thing because of this. I could have become a mentally tough individual without having to endure years of torture.
Personally, for me, learning more about human behavior has helped me. Being able to look at it from "above," in an almost clinical sense, and understanding the psychology around it, has helped me to overcome the trauma.
I'm sorry about what you went through. You didn't deserve that, and it's not your fault.
I also think @Bacle is having a negative reaction to calling bullying "natural" because he's still overcoming some of the old Leftist stereotypes that being "natural" means that something is good and/or acceptable, and that labeling a "natural" thing as being evil is wrong.
After all, how much of gay rights and the pushback against moral objections to it were founded on the "well, it's just a natural thing that happens"? How much of the Leftist environmental morality is founded on the idea that "nature" is, in effect, "holy". And look at much of the noble savage mythology that still underlies much Leftist thought on relations with Indigenous people... that they were "closer to nature". Thus to a recovering Lefty like Bacle the term "natural" doesn't just carry the idea of "occurring in nature" but also a moral weight to it that means "this is a good and/or holy thing".
After all, how much of gay rights and the pushback against moral objections to it were founded on the "well, it's just a natural thing that happens"? How much of the Leftist environmental morality is founded on the idea that "nature" is, in effect, "holy". And look at much of the noble savage mythology that still underlies much Leftist thought on relations with Indigenous people... that they were "closer to nature". Thus to a recovering Lefty like Bacle the term "natural" doesn't just carry the idea of "occurring in nature" but also a moral weight to it that means "this is a good and/or holy thing".
You're right about all but the indigenous people thing; never really bought the 'noble savage myth/meme' unlike most who began on the Left.
Well that explains a lot of our misunderstanding.
Natural does not mean good. How I see it, is one of the big things that separates us from other animals is pur strive to overcome and be better than our natural instincts.
So understanding that bullying is natural, where it comes from, and why, doesn't mean I think it's good.
Humans attack things that are different. Outsiders. The weird kid at school, etc. It's a natural human instinct. We try to overcome and stop that by properly socializing them when they're young and conditioning those behaviors out of them.