Bullied or Over-Sensitive?

The term "anti-Bullying" is big news these days, and we see a lot of people with powerful spokespersons coming forward against bullying, but to me it's a rather odd word to throw around.

The story that's on the first page, for example, went past bullying and right onto assault, something we have laws against. If the situation had involved two older individuals who were adults it just would've been called assault, not bullying. I also think this door swings both ways. When a kid gets shoved in a locker, or beaten up, we should not call that bullying or teasing, because I know a Judge, a lawyer and a police officer would all have different words for those things. Although I realize sometimes younger people assaulting each other is brushed aside as 'rough housing'. Something I find pretty stupid and thoughtless.

Though you hear many claim bullying is always wrong. This, I'm not so sure of. Sure, I agree words do hurt, but from my experience if you want to survive in the world, having a thick skin about what gets said to you is sort of a necessity. Most people perform "sh** tests" on people. A good example is women and men. Women will sh** test a guy sometimes just to see if he can "take it", because the last thing anyone wants is someone who folds like a cheap accordion anytime they get called some mean name.

So what do you think? Do you think all bullying is reprehensible, or perhaps that there are certain forms of bullying that are helpful to normal development.

 

To this, though, I would say, anyone you know who is successful, who is in management, who is actually capable at work and life has sort of a thick skin. Think about all the people that hit you up for money when you get older.

One of my roommates had this problem. People would stiff him at gigs. I told him how he had to get in their face about it (metaphorically), or things he could do to kind of tell them off. Things I've used in business when people didn't want to pay me, which happens like every five minutes. You'd probably think being in manufacturing when someone orders $100,000 worth of parts they pay you...haha, that's funny. He was in a much cheaper outfit, being a DJ, but would get stiffed constantly. I'd tell him to threaten to not play after setting up, sticking around, getting something signed and taking it to a lawyer, etc. But he was so afraid he would "piss them off" by doing this he never applied any pressure. They eventually fired him over some nonsense. That's a great example of someone who LET themselves be bullied, and then played the victim card about it.

 

You threaten to stunt whatever natural emotional progression they may have when you try to shield them too much.

Ever heard of the "Skinner Box"?

 

I'll be honest: that's the biggest piece of "emo" bullsh** I've ever heard.

I used to call Helicopters "Hecto-copters" and got teased about it. Get over it. It's kind of funny. Especially his story. Claimed his Grandmother karate chopped him...sounds like the set up to a great stand up comedy bit. Instead he wants me to feel sorry for him? Pretty silly.

The lesson of his story he doesn't say: maybe he should've tried being honest instead of lying to cover up being embarrassed about falling out of a tree. He tries to avoid the petty fate of being b*tched at by his grandmother and instead makes things much worse. It's all his fault for simply not owning up to what he was doing in the tree.

 

Yeah, that's great, but not all of us wrote over-dramatized poems about it. We learned "hey, maybe lying to every other authority to try to protect myself actually ended up hurting my grandmother and maybe I shouldn't do that again".

There was literally zero self-criticism here, and that's his problem: the whole video is about how the world should simply bow down to his imperfections. "So, I thought pork chops and karate chops were the same thing". Yeah, and they aren't, so that's hilarious. "I didn't want to tell my grandmother about the tree so I invented an elaborate lie that implicated my grandmother with the authorities." After that moment in the poem the rest should've been how sorry he was for inconveniencing his grandmother like that. That's awful. Can you imagine having to argue with protective services, and the police, having to talk to lawyers and not knowing whether they'll return your kid or not? That's dreadful what he put her through.

 

You can post it all you want dude, that's the biggest sob story, pity party crap I've ever heard.

Like this

"every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks"

He perceives a pecking order; there isn't actually one. I hate to say it, but for him, the "get over it" crowd is right. I looked at him, he is pretty fat, he can do something about that, his whole story is petty and all about him. That's why he is so ********, it's pretty clear he doesn't actually get out there and 'do' anything. This is a textbook brat if I ever read one.

 

This is an interesting video addition, perhaps a response to Koyczan from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross

Alec Baldwin's Blake gives a speech to open the film (WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS HARSH AND ABUSIVE LANGUAGE)

The video itself is a bit of a psychological test. Blake is intentionally a jacka**, materialistic, ego-maniacal, and abusive. The genius is half watch the video as if he's a motivational coach, they understand that while he is demonstrative, this is work and they feed off the energy. The other half seethes in anger since they feel Blake has no right to talk to them like that. The great thing about the video though is Blake represents exactly what the world will expect of you.

There are other subtleties as well that you really only pick up on when you watch the movie.

 

No, there isn't. It's something insecure people imagine exists.

How do you know? I didn't think much of myself in High School, and yet looking back I was the Captain of everything. People who think there is a pecking order have divorced themselves from reality so they can enforce this notion that everyone is out to get them.

But he hasn't. Here he is, nearing middle age, complaining about what happened to him while he was in short pants. It's really silly and whiny, and he's coddling people who are just like him. He isn't a soldier who volunteered and lost a limb, or damaged his quality of life for years to come; he's some ******** child wanting me to feel sorry for him. Like I said, in that video/poem he never acknowledges that lying is wrong which is something he did. He only points fingers at people who made fun of him for it. That may be wrong too, but he clearly hasn't moved past it because he didn't even self-reflect on something it took me two seconds to notice: the OTHER people involved in HIS story. It's all about him. That poem: all about him.

You clearly missed the point of what I said. For all the hurt it caused him, his grandmother got the worst of it. She could've been thrown in prison over that incident, could've been barred from ever being around children again for "karate chopping" someone she was responsible for. That's horrifying that throughout that whole poem he never once said "oh yeah, I'm sorry for lying, for stringing along all those people, for getting embarrassed over something stupid like falling out of a tree".

 

Okay, they're welcome to remove it then.

 

So you don't find anything funny or ironic about the story involving his grandmother?