Bullies (from PP 165: The Copse thread)

[Listener]

Being big didn't do a damn thing when I was being bullied, it just made me a larger target. 

Same here. I even tried joining the wrestling team in 9th grade but instead of being a team and helping me learn the moves so I could be a better teammate and wrestler, I most often got paired with this total asshole who had been bullying me for years. Complaining to the coaches didn't work. I just needed more time to get the moves down -- when I did, I was pretty good, and that season I had a 7-3 record -- and occasionally this guy Don would be my partner and we actually learned and worked together. I credit him and his other dude Josh for me not completely quitting before the first meet.

But it didn't help. I still got bullied even after that, though not by anyone on the wrestling or football teams. Thing is, I never wanted to fight back physically, and they didn't have the mental capacity to understand when I was fighting back with words.

Must be something in certain people's vibes that makes them amenable to being bullied.

[Scattercat]

Must be something in certain people's vibes that makes them amenable to being bullied.

Or they actively bring it on themselves, he said, totally not speaking from personal experience at all.  (Smart + heavy reader + arrogant + really big mouth = beaten up a lot.)

[Millenium_King]

Have any of you ever watched the series "Freaks and Geeks?"  I thought about that a lot when Aladsair was giving his outro.  In the series, there is a character with long stringy hair, pimples and glasses who's name I cannot recall.  He was always dungeon master - anyone remember him?  He was basically the "nerd guru."

Whereas the other characters struggled with their identities, their self-esteem, self-image and fretted over how they looked in the eyes of others: the Nerd Guru simply carried on.  He had a girlfriend.  He never worried about being a "nerd."  He never had to fend off bullies because they never bullied him.  He simply WAS.  Very Zen.

I think that was the point I was tryng to make: Robert E. Howard tried to end his torment at the hands of bullies by bodybuilding.  Others have tried similar things.  I am not arguing specific strategies, I am suggesting that one becomes comfortable with who they are.  Being comfortable in one's own skin, being accepting of one's self, being confident - I think people pick up on those sort of things.

What most PSAs miss is that all situations with bullies are different.  Sometimes it's good to confront them, sometimes not.  I actually have a ton of experience with this, on both sides of the "bully fence" so to speak.  The trick is to be confident in who you are.  You need to learn to read people and each situation differently.  Most bullying situations are simply attempts at establishing "pecking order."  Some people cannot seem to read other people, or don't know how to fit themselves into the heirarchy.  I think THAT is why most bullying occurs, and the way to end it is to learn how to read each situation and how to diffuse, evade or confront it.

Alasdair, I think that might have been the issue.  I would never advise one to "stand up" to a bully - though, sometimes, I would if it was the best course of action.  I instead advise that you be comfortable in your own skin.  If the instructor thinks your big, accept that you are big.  Suddenly, it's no longer a weakness to be honed in on.  It's part of your whole.  You don't need to confront them "Yeah I'm big, so what?!"  In some situations, that works, in others it will not.  The trick is figuring out when it will and when it won't.

[Listener]

Must be something in certain people's vibes that makes them amenable to being bullied.

Or they actively bring it on themselves, he said, totally not speaking from personal experience at all.  (Smart + heavy reader + arrogant + really big mouth = beaten up a lot.)

I think some of it is also that many kids just want to be popular, so they try to find ways to do that, sometimes by trying to attach themselves to groups. But the groups certainly don't want them around. That happened to me a LOT.

Plus there's the whole swapping around of kids when they change schools, where K-5 they were with the same people all the time. And then in middle and high school, they change classes all the time. There's a core group of people likely to be in the same classes with you (honors kids, average kids, ESL kids, etc), but you're basically forced to form WAY more social groups than you'll ever need in real life, at least in my experience. I have five major social groups in my life: my family, my close friends, my coworkers, my wife's friends, and parents of my daughter's friends. Six if you count the EA community. I can't see how anyone would need more than ten (multiple kids, church, HOA, writing group, etc). But given that kids change groups six times a day (average) for six years straight, and after that, college... It's hard to find your place and you screw up a lot.

I think I just got way off topic there. I think perhaps a mod should split this off... 

[Listener]

Have any of you ever watched the series "Freaks and Geeks?"  I thought about that a lot when Aladsair was giving his outro.  In the series, there is a character with long stringy hair, pimples and glasses who's name I cannot recall.  He was always dungeon master - anyone remember him?  He was basically the "nerd guru."

Whereas the other characters struggled with their identities, their self-esteem, self-image and fretted over how they looked in the eyes of others: the Nerd Guru simply carried on.  He had a girlfriend.  He never worried about being a "nerd."  He never had to fend off bullies because they never bullied him.  He simply WAS.  Very Zen.

This is a very hard road to go down. In the business world, if you're the nerd or the dork, people don't treat you badly; they just ignore your nerd-ness and believe that, if you were hired, you're competent (unless you prove otherwise), so if they come up to you and say "Please e-mail the client an update on the Genesis Project" and you say loudly "GENESIS ALLOWED IS NOT! IS PLANET FORBIDDEN!", they'll probably just walk away and wait for the update to be e-mailed.

Yes, this has happened to me.

Unfortunately, I've found that people who have been bullied often have trouble joining existing social groups when they enter a new situation. I have never successfully pulled this off. Where I work now, I'm part of the art department, and they are a stereotypically-weird group of people. But I can't break into that group. I don't feel bullied; I feel ignored.

People who have been bullied would love to take advantage of new situations by not displaying the things that got them bullied in the past. Even if they feel comfortable in their skins. I just wish it worked better.

[Alasdair5000]

"GENESIS ALLOWED IS NOT! IS PLANET FORBIDDEN!"

And today, you win the internets:)  I am very glad I finished my Cheerios before reading that:)

Tim O'Brien writes very grim novels about Vietnam but there's a universal concept in one of them, a series of linked stories called The Things They Carried that applies here.  The stories are about a group of men on patrol and what they bring with them, their experiences in the past, how it affects their present, that kind of thing.  And, without the whole war and killing aspect, I think the same thing applies to a lot of other people.

I carry being bullied and being frightened to retaliate because I'd get in trouble.  I carry watching my father's mental health crumble under a government that seemed hellbent on destroying teaching as a profession.  I carry catching my mother smoking three years after she said she'd quit.  I carry one death.  I carry being laid off.  I carry eight months of hell from last year.

I also carry my wedding day.  I carry making my first sale.  I carry getting the Pseudopod job, getting the Doctor Who RPG job, the moments at University where it became clear that I really, truly was meant to be there, was smart enough.  I carry laughing so hard at So I Married An Axe Murderer that I didn't leave the cinema even when my nose was bleeding and so when the lights went up it looked like I'd been mugged in my seat.

A much smarter, much more fictional Gallifreyan man than me sums it up thusly, in an episode that airs in the States in two weeks.  So if you don't want to be spoiled, step off the ride here:)












'The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. Hey. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And we definitely added to his pile of good things... '

[Listener]

"GENESIS ALLOWED IS NOT! IS PLANET FORBIDDEN!"

And today, you win the internets:)  I am very glad I finished my Cheerios before reading that:)

Awesome. You're welcome. But why are you eating Cheerios at 4-ish GMT?

Tim O'Brien writes very grim novels about Vietnam but there's a universal concept in one of them, a series of linked stories called The Things They Carried that applies here.  The stories are about a group of men on patrol and what they bring with them, their experiences in the past, how it affects their present, that kind of thing.  And, without the whole war and killing aspect, I think the same thing applies to a lot of other people.

I think I've read one of those stories, either on here or in HS. I can't remember which. But it might have been the title story. I only vaguely remember it, though.

[Bdoomed]

I've always considered myself a good target for bullying.  For pretty much all of my school days up until my senior year of high school (growth spurt), I was a very small guy and never popular or anything like that.  However I always had a good group of friends, and for some reason I don't think anyone ever hated me (until recently, I might talk about that later).  So, for some reason, I was never bullied.  I guess that's due to the awesome crowd pleaser powers I have.  Well that's a lie, I've been bullied once, but barely and I'm almost positive the guy was coked up.

I've always been more into reading and writing and video games and sf and all of that, but I've also managed to be personable enough to be able to socialize just fine.  I'm not the best with new crowds and I'm never the life of the party (well, depends on the party... if it was a work party -worked at Coldstone- I was certainly an integral part) but I've always been able to somewhat fit in, which has certainly helped.  Another thing is probably that I went to private schools for middle school and high school.  It's nice to be sheltered

Oh yeah, the one person who hates me happens to be my best friend's girlfriend, and I have no idea why.  She just does, and I can tell.  She's not blatant with it, but I can totally tell that she doesn't enjoy when I come over.  It's the weirdest feeling, because I've never experienced it before.  Even the guy I absolutely hated at Coldstone didn't hate me.  (he's one of two people I am definitely able to say I've hated)

[Talia]

Oh yeah, the one person who hates me happens to be my best friend's girlfriend, and I have no idea why.  She just does, and I can tell. 

Jealousy. You're competing for his time.

[Bdoomed]

Oh yeah, the one person who hates me happens to be my best friend's girlfriend, and I have no idea why.  She just does, and I can tell. 

Jealousy. You're competing for his time.

No, I don't think that's it.  They are in Orlando going to UCF, I'm in Gainesville.  I only rarely come over...
She liked me at first, when I first met her, and we have stuff in common... I think it started when I made a joke about recycling.  Apparently she's really big on recycling, and at the time my roommate kept putting trash in our recycling bin at school so I had stopped trying.  And I mentioned that, and I think that's what started it.  Which is just ridiculously stupid, IMO, and she's much more intelligent then to let that sort of thing completely change her opinion of someone... so I don't know what it is!  It bugs me.

[Listener]

Oh yeah, the one person who hates me happens to be my best friend's girlfriend, and I have no idea why.  She just does, and I can tell. 

Jealousy. You're competing for his time.

No, I don't think that's it.  They are in Orlando going to UCF, I'm in Gainesville.  I only rarely come over...

I have this girl friend. Let's call her Lizzie. Lizzie and I have been friends for... holy crap, more than 15 years now. She's dated two of my friends. She and I love each other (as friends) -- I wish we'd dated, but it never happened. We're both married (to other people). We both have kids and lives.

A couple of years ago, I was talking to her about my relationship with my wife, and some rough patches. She offered to hang out with my wife, let her talk if she wanted to talk (my wife had been friends with Lizzie for about four years at that point -- often Lizzie and I lived in different geographical areas so my wife didn't see her much). I said that might be a good idea, and so a week later, off they went, just to have lunch and chat. Lizzie never brought up that I talked to her about my problems at home; she just listened.

Two days later, my wife called me at work and asked if I'd suggested that Lizzie get together with her to talk, if it was my idea. She was very accusatory. I told her the truth -- that it wasn't my idea, but that I knew about it -- and my wife flipped out.

Then she demanded apology after apology from Lizzie (basically bullying her), who eventually told me she had to give up, that she'd done all she could to help me mend the situation. My wife kept e-mailing her, pushing her to say something she wanted to hear, but she never got what she wanted.

I've seen Lizzie twice since that day -- once on my lunch break, and once more for the baby shower for her twin sons -- and both times were in 2008. Now Lizzie has moved to another state (her husband got a job there) and it's unlikely my wife or I will see Lizzie more than ten more times in my entire life. I barely talk to her; I'm afraid that if we get too close I'll start to get angry again about the whole situation. Every time Lizzie comes up in conversation (my wife brings her up; I never do), I hear about the situation, or about how Lizzie won't friend my wife on Facebook, or how Lizzie never responds to her e-mails.

The point of this whole story is: it doesn't matter what you did. If you ticked off your friend's girlfriend (or wife), she'll never, ever forgive you, and she'll make him miserable until the two of you start to grow apart -- which is her goal. Hell, my wife has already started working on some of my other friends now.

TL;DR: Don't discount too quickly what Talia said. It could be that, or it could be your notes on recycling. Could be anything. Jealousy is ugly, and it can seriously hurt people without them realizing that jealousy is what's doing the hurting.

(Yeah, I know, not every person is this vindictive, but this is my experience. You may have others.)

[gelee]

Dude, Talia is spot on. I've been in your shoes, and am still in your friends shoes. It sucks, but relationships can be that way sometimes.
Bullies: Yeah, they just suck. We moved a lot when I was a kid, weren't well off, and my mom wasn't in the picture, so I had turned into an incredibly awkward and odd little boy. I had the magic combo of small, poor, new, and weird, which caught me all sorts of hell.
I don't know if I'll ever get people like that. I have too much empathy to like hurting people, emotionally or physically. I do think MK is right, in that abusers look for easy targets, and emotional insecurity is like blood in the water for those folks.
I'm glad all that is behind me, but it took a long time to learn to put it there. 

[stePH]

Have any of you ever watched the series "Freaks and Geeks?"  I thought about that a lot when Aladsair was giving his outro.  In the series, there is a character with long stringy hair, pimples and glasses who's name I cannot recall.  He was always dungeon master - anyone remember him?  He was basically the "nerd guru."

Whereas the other characters struggled with their identities, their self-esteem, self-image and fretted over how they looked in the eyes of others: the Nerd Guru simply carried on.  He had a girlfriend.  He never worried about being a "nerd."  He never had to fend off bullies because they never bullied him.  He simply WAS.  Very Zen.

HARRIS!  Harris Trinsky!  He was The Man!  My only complaint about the show is that he wasn't in it enough.  My wife said he reminds her of me.  Or I remind her of him.  Or something.

And Stephen Lea Sheppard, the actor who played him, has been in pretty much nothing else... a minor role in The Royal Tennenbaums and that seems to be it. 

[Planish]

Once in a while I sit back, steeple my fingers (where's my white angora cat?), and speculate on how all of the bullies I knew in school (1960-70s) are very likely to be:
- dead (having driven into a tree while drunk)
- paying lots of alimony and child support
- working at a really crappy job
- incarcerated
and/or
- having difficulty finding the right combination of meds.

George Herbert: "Living well is the best revenge."