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Comment by daxorid | Hacker News Reader

Unpopular opinion with healthy dose of anecdata incoming.

I was bullied mercilessly from 3rd grade through 7th grade. Wedgies, keepaway, taunts, set-ups, beatings anywhere from hit and runs to ground and pounds.

At some point in the 7th grade during an ordinary, routine beating, something snapped within me and I turned around and landed on the order of 40 blows to the kid's face.

I was never bullied again.

I would advocate immediate, publicly visible, and decisive violence as a solution to bullies.

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What I don't understand is why there's such a double standard between children and adults when it comes to this sort of behavior.

If someone attacks me as an adult, I have every right to defend myself. The police will be called, and if it's possible to identify the perpetrator and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they attacked me, they will go to jail. If the police aren't able to find the attacker or prove that they did it, then I'm allowed to take countermeasures such as avoiding the area, carrying some sort of defensive measures (pepper spray, or even just a gun), or having someone escort me.

Do the same thing to a child, and there's often minimal punishment, the victim and perpetrator are not separated from each other in the long term, and the victim is strongly encouraged not to fight back.

Can you imagine telling a victim of a mugging (or worse) to "just ignore them" the next time it happens?

We create these Lord of the Flies type situations for children, then basically tell them that problems shouldn't be happening, if they are then we won't help, but the children shouldn't do anything about them either. And then we are shocked, shocked, when children suddenly go all psycho on their tormentors.

If a business had a constant known problem with physical violence among its employees and patrons, they'd be forced to reform or shut down, and people would go to prison. Schools should be the same. It's the responsibility of the people in charge to keep the students safe, both from outside threats and from each other. If they can't do that, then they need to be replaced by people who can.

Until and unless that ever happens, then students' best option will be to retaliate.

> Can you imagine telling a victim of a mugging (or worse) to "just ignore them" the next time it happens?

Isn't this standard advice, to just give them your money and avoid escalating the situation?

Yes, but they'll also make efforts to find and imprison the mugger, suggest being prepared for physical violence in case it ends up being necessary next time, and other such things beyond that.

It's a slightly different situation. A mugger probably has the advantage of a weapon. Even if you have one as well, their weapon is already prepped for use, so trying to defend yourself against an already brandished weapon is not advisable.

Children in schools likely do not have weapons. It's hand-to-hand fighting with only weapons of opportunity (e.g. heavy books) available, and the provoking child likely isn't ready to use a weapon of opportunity.

Granted I'm not inherently saying that a victim should always deck a bully in the face. If that were the case, however, I'd say that child v bully has the advantage over the mugger v victim.

That's an excellent point. When people tell you that you should comply with a mugger, that's because there's a serious threat of being killed, and compliance offers the best chance of surviving the encounter.

Yes for mugging, but not if you are dealing with a would be rapist. Don't fight back, have your account of the event questioned and doubted...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/06/2...

Fight back against a rapist, maybe get seriously injured or killed. It's damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't.

Yeah, there was a news article in the last couple of weeks about that very thing. Apparently the Baltimore PD have been marking rape reports as unsubstantiated because, at least in one case, the woman didn't fight back under verbal threat. There is something funky with the law either in MD or in Baltimore (don't remember which) that requires the rapist to actually do violence (apparently the unwanted penis isn't enough) for the rape to be counted as a certain type of sexual assault. So all the would be rapist has to say "if you fight back, I'll kill you", the victim believes the rapist and doesn't fight back, and bingo-bango under the law, the rape is unsubstantiated.

In at least one case, a serial rapist rapist walked free because he had no prior history of sexual crimes. Because prior reports were unsubstantiated since the prior victims didn't fight back.

Tried to find this article without joy. One of the bajillion I come across via RSS.

My understanding is that this sort of thing is pretty common. Traditionally, "rape" required the victim to resist "to the utmost." Our idea of what constitutes rape has broadened considerably, but the law is sometimes slow to catch up. According to this, five US states still have such requirements in their laws:

http://www.womenslawproject.org/resources/Rape%20and%20Sexua...

Many others make no mention either way, and I suspect many of them would then fall back to the traditional requirement.

In some social groups. Rural Texan society would probably advocate shooting a mugger. I suspect the Texan approach is better for society as a whole.

Do you mean that it is better for society that Texans get shot, or that we should all be shooting muggers?

It would be better if all muggers were afraid of the possibility of being shot by their chosen victims.

While some fraction would then escalate to rendering their victims unable to shoot prior to approaching, I think a greater fraction would simply choose a less confrontational way to acquire spending money. Those who did not change tactics would eventually get shot.

If the prey people change tactics, so will the predator people. Shooting the muggers tends to produce a wilier, more dangerous, harder-to-shoot breed of mugger. There will be fewer of them, but instead of waving their knife in your face, they will bash the back of your head with a rock. While you are out, they will photograph everything in your wallet before putting it right back in your pocket, and take just your phone and gun. Then if you don't report all your cards as stolen, someone buys your details from a darkweb site, does a little social engineering, and cleans out your accounts.

Mugging isn't a profitable enough business to inspire the kind of organization you're imagining.

If I ever damaged my prefrontal cortex to the point where I could incorporate muggings into my personal revenue stream, I would definitely... be a fence for the people that I would advise to perform muggings in that way. Maybe I could also write an app for victims to do self-service muggings, or on-demand muggings--partially automate the process, to improve the mugging experience. See, the real problem with robbing people one at a time is the labor factor. One mugger can rob--what?--maybe two or three people a day without getting caught? I don't even know. There just aren't enough career criminals out there to serve the whole market.

If you could somehow automate the process of stealing just a little bit of money from a lot of people, all at once, all the time, that would totally disrupt...

...the banking industry.~ [cue rimshot]

Thank you. I'll be here every open mic night.

> Isn't this standard advice, to just give them your money and avoid escalating the situation?

Yeah, and I think it's the best advice for a one-off incident like a mugger or running into bullies in the park. Just worry about your own safety, get out of there as soon as you possibly can, and don't return. A mugger isn't the best comparison.

But what if the mugger is there every day at 6pm when you're getting out of the office? Do you just keep buying a new wallet and giving it to them every day? What if the mugger works for the same company as you, and sits 50 feet from you, and every time you walk by them to go to the bathroom they make that exaggerated knuckle-cracking gesture while staring your down and mouthing "six o'clock".

Getting bullied in the playground is one thing. It sucks. You can't go back to that park without being beaten up. But if the bully is in your school then your parents, teachers, government all mandate that you see that bully 5 days out of the week.

We have that double standard because physical assaults in schools are normal, and physical assaults in workplaces are unusual. Same kind of reason tobacco is legal and MDMA isn't.

I would argue that it's the other way around: the difference is there because of the double standard.

No, the difference is there because kids are different from adults. Their brains are different, their level of responsibility is different, they are different kinds of people.

Humans are naturally physical animals. Get some toddlers together, and (in addition to lots of other nice behavior like sharing and talking), they will push, grab, hit, etc. each other. We're primates and we do primate-y things.

As we get older, we learn the mores of our culture and learn to not physically interact with people in this way, but that process takes a lot of time. Kids haven't completed it yet (some adults never do). In the meantime, we have to provide an environment that handles the fact that they are behaviorally different from respectable, trustworthy adults.

Above, you say "We create these Lord of the Flies type situations for children", but the whole point of Lord of the Flies is that savagery is how children naturally act when taken outside of the strictures of society.

A Lord of Flies situation doesn't have to be manufactured by adults—it's what you get if you don't work hard to prevent it.

I would argue that the point of Lord of the Flies is that savagery is how people naturally act when taken outside society.

The fact that it's natural means nothing. It's natural for small groups of humans to make war on their neighbors, to kill their men, rape their women, and enslave their children. But we don't put up with that kind of thing now, for the most part.

I agree with your last sentence, but my question is: why aren't they working hard to prevent it? Of course children have to learn this stuff, it's clearly not innate, but if they're going through their school years being bullied then clearly they're not learning the lesson.

We tolerate it because its normal, ie how things work out in nature unless we try to intervene, is simply the naturallistic fallacy. While in fact what happens in nature really doesn't imply anything about anything's desirability, which is what is at issue here.

Now, no doubt their responsibility is different, because their brains are different. It'd be appaling to jail a kid on charges of assault for a fight in school ofc.

However, this def does not mean that getting bullied wouldn't have similarly negative effects on the kid, as it would on the adults (easily worse, given the kid's personality is only forming).

Hence, the op was suggesting, rationally, preventing it should be just as high of a priority to the school, as it would be to the judicial apparatus in the case of adult assault.

Instead, it is just normal. And that is appaling.

Looking at the prevalence zero-tolerance policies in schools, I'd argue that its often children who are being punished too harshly and having their freedoms restricted too direly.

For instance, zero tolerance drugs policies have gotten kids suspended or expelled due to having a single tablet of aspirin in their book bag because the rule is that any medicine must be registered and administered by the school nurse, and even OTC drugs count as part of 'zero tolerance' drug policy.

The same such policy would be hard to implement for adults in a workplace.

The GP is partly commenting on the absurdity of physical assaults being normal in schools. The question is why is that?

There's that saying... Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is.

Fights happen at school all the time...so it seems normal.

It's normal cuz kids are assholes. I taught my child self defense. If you don't teach your children yourself, they're easily bullied.

Kids are dumb.

Normal masculine teasing is a two player game and if the players aren't experienced enough to play, dumb stuff gets out of hand. Happens in adult settings too where practical joke wars get out of hand, for example. So adult-ish male jokes around with adult-ish male, "yer mom" jokes are exchanged, its all cool.

Inexperienced jock kid calls inexperienced nerd kid a nerd, jock kid stands there waiting "he's supposed to "yer mom" me back" meanwhile nerd kid panics and starts looking for a safe space. And sometimes it escalates.

And that's why adult teachers, especially male teachers, used to ignore bullying. So as a grown adult I'm supposed to tell the nerd kid how to "yer mom" the jock kid? Can't you kids figure this stuff out on your own like 99% of the population? Clearly not...

I dunno, when I turned around and shoved my bully (he was a loser-stoner, not a jock) into the wall after he was shoving me while I was taking a piss, he didn't say "Oh hey cool, it's a two player game, I like this guy", he punched me in the head 5 times.

But sure, it's just kids being dumb and silly.

The nerd kid thinks this behavior is what makes someone an unreliable asshole in the first place. He's got a different way of thinking about these kinds of insults and you're saying he should just mimick ass hattery in order to diffuse the situation, which is an explanation that doesn't make sense to him.

Physical assaults in schools are (usually) not intended to cause serious physical harm. They're more of a test to see if you're strong enough to be part of the established social order.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed that many bullies stopped bullying you or even became friendly with you after you made a real effort to fight back.

Usually not a fan of "broken window" theories, but in this case I strongly am.

In American schools violence is often institutionalized. Teacher beat children, children get used to violence. The children are often not too reflected. People advocating violence as a tool for education are usually not big fans explanations and calls to reason. So children have no clue weather they are subject to education or sadism. Probably they are often at least partly subject to sadism.

And if they get used to the feeling that they are subject to the teachers sadism, it's no wonder that they see this as usual. Their educators and there for role models do, so why shouldn't they do?

Children probably do not think about what causes serious harm and what does not. Weather it was justified or not. Expically because it's only natural to assume that teachers punishment against oneself is usually not justified.

Tl;dr: if you beat children, to be surprised that said children beat other children.

/edit: disregard this, it's bullshit:

>Most urban public school systems, even in states where it is permitted, have abolished corporal punishment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_...

But what if it isn't violence in all cases - what if it only superficially looks like violence? Maybe war, murder, and a playground fight aren't really all on the same spectrum.

In American schools violence is often institutionalized. Teacher beat children, children get used to violence.

Has this been permitted within the last 50 years? It definitely happened in the 1960s and earlier, but corporal punishment has not been a thing in American schools for a long time.

Yes. Corporal punishment in public schools is legal in 19 states. It's actually carried out in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

According to http://www.corpun.com/counuss.htm

Corporal punishment is widespread in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi schools.

Corporal punishment is routine in some schools in smaller districts of Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

It's only in 2011 that parents had the right to prevent their children being hit at school.

(This is all public schools. Hitting children in private schools is legal in all but 2 states.)

This isn't just children. Some 18 and 19 year olds attend schools and a subjected to physical violence as punishment.

Wow - I stand corrected.

We don't have statistics for private schools in the US.

Over 100,000 students received corporal punishment in 2011/2012. (And some of them will have been hit on more than one occasion)

http://www.corpun.com/counuss.htm

> Teacher beat children

Not in the US for a long time. My father was probably one of the last teachers to actually use a paddle, and even he hadn't used it within 15 years.

Schools are Prisons. Face it. If you need to request permission from someone higher up in the chain to take a shit in the toilet, it's a Prison. The cliques/gangs, the chain of command, violence, bullying and bravado are all the same. The crew does not care about you, the only thing that they fear are lawsuits and regulation.

You have to remember the goal of the school: To avoid a lawsuit.

If they tell a kid to fight back, they are opening themselves up for trouble. Their best option is to tell everyone to stop fighting, and hope the problem goes away.

Then they should be held liable for allowing violence to occur. That would fix the problem pretty quickly.

often times it can be a he-said she-said situation though

If my child regularly sustained serious injuries at home, Child Protective Services would eventually stop accepting my failure to supervise her as an excuse. Schools should not be allowed to get away with it.

This problem can be solved. The trouble is that it probably requires money, which taxpayers really hate to provide.

Surveillance cameras are pretty cheap these days.

As Mikeash said, it's a he-said she-said situation when there was no supervision. If it is frequently (or even usually) a he-said she-said that means there is not enough supervision.

That's going to change the very second a wearable emergency 360 deg camera starts to be marketed to parents of bullied kids, and is adopted widely.

Yes. The modern school systems are a criminal institution, teaching kids not to fight back against a lifetime of bullying and abuse. I am currently taking a previous landlord to small claims court (The had the temerity to withhold my entire security deposit and ask me for more to pay for expenses that are explicitly the landlord's under California law). When I have talked to my peers, I've gotten two reactions; One is a "hit them for all they've got", and one is "Why would you do that? They have money and power!" The former from my peers who were homeschooled (as was I, in part), the latter from those who'd gone through traditional schooling.

Modern US schooling is more-or-less intentionally training to not fight injustice, to not speak up unless spoken to, to fail to learn. Zero Tolerance policies are just one symptom. Spend some time in a classroom and you'll see the teachers favoritism, trying to be 'cool' and catering to the popular kids (and further alienating the unpopular ones), telling kids that they're wrong when they're ahead of the class and more right than the teacher wants to teach. Modern curriculums have been watered down and focus grouped into meaninglessness.

Scholae delenda est.

I too have had a California landlord have "the temerity to withhold my entire security deposit and ask me for more to pay for expenses that are explicitly the landlord's under California law" and started the process to take him to small claims court.

I started legal proceedings too. I went to a "traditional" school, so I think you are perhaps reading too much into things.

As an aside, I recommend asking for receipts for all of the expenses they are claiming and keeping track of the deadlines for the provision of paperwork. In my case, the landlord had 21 days to provide receipts or they were liable for the FULL deposit. They failed to provide receipts, admitted so in writing and then stopped talking to me entirely for a bit until I pointed out that CA law allows for automatic triple damages for landlords witholding security deposits and that they had already missed their deadline to return the required paperwork to me.

That would be "Scholae delendae sunt". I guess your homeschooling didn't include Latin grammar :-)

I actually learned Latin grammar from public school :)

(But I was aware my latin was incorrect; I was going for the spirit of the common corruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est)

Just to be clear, the parent of my comment is absolutely not true. You are told the adult equivalent of "just ignore them" when faced with a mugging (do what they say, give them what they want, your wallet isn't worth your life).

Furthermore, in most states, you do not have a legal "right" to stand your ground when attacked, you are expected to retreat if possible, and there are very frequently countersuits on the behalf of the assailant that are successful in civil courts, not to mention the criminal charges that may stem from "defending yourself" against an assailant, especially depending on how much damage you do.

It's alarming to me the number of people in this comment section who believe violence will solve a problem for children or adults. It's also alarming this "if adults were in situations like children are" analogy is getting so much attention. Kids are not adults, they lack the cognitive capacity to reason as adults, and need safe places to learn how to be humans. We're casually throwing away hundreds of years of experimental results and academic consensus on childhood because our two-minute reasoning is superior.

Come on, HN, we can do better.

Are you implying that locking hundreds or thousands of children in a building all day with periods of minimal supervision is a system built on hundreds of years of experimental results and academic consensus?

You are not simply told to ignore muggers. You are told to comply with muggers because muggers are life-threatening. You are also told to fight back if they go from threatening your wallet to threatening your physical well-being. Many places will actually send out the authorities to search for and imprison muggers after you report them. You are definitely not supposed to "just ignore them," you're supposed to do what it takes to survive, then report them, and have them brought to justice.

I don't see people saying violence is a solution, only that it can sometimes be the best choice out of a bunch of bad ones if you're in a situation where the authorities have failed you and you have to fend for yourself. Me, I'm advocating the exact opposite of violence being a solution: I'm saying, repeatedly, that schools need to do more to prevent violence, precisely so children don't have to take matters into their own hands.

Come on, you can do better than this weird straw-manning.

You are also told to fight back if they go from threatening your wallet to threatening your physical well-being. Many places will actually send out the authorities to search for and imprison muggers after you report them. You are definitely not supposed to "just ignore them," you're supposed to do what it takes to survive, then report them, and have them brought to justice.

Exactly. If a mugging turns into a kidnapping, the recommended practice is for the victim to not go with the criminal, and to fight back or attempt to escape by whatever means available.

For crime victims who are transported by criminals to a so-called "secondary crime scene", the survival statistics are much worse than in the case of a simple mugging.

It makes sense to me that we are no longer talking about a mugging, because if we were, then what I said would have been true. The fact that this argument had to shift to a kidnapping in order to continue should be testament enough to the validity of my original point.

Be careful of heeding this as fact, depending on the laws of the locale you could end up in prison, subject to civil suits, and/or other consequences for practicing violent behavior even if it is in self-defense. For example, an eyewitness may only see you break the assailant's arm and miss that they initiated aggression. Then you go to court and are held liable for damages to your assailant plus a felony charge, because the assailant's lawyer was able to convince a jury you used greater than necessary force or even that there were no witnesses to support your assertion that the assailant initiated the attack, and then you are labeled as the violent felon.

So what's the solution? Not easy to decide, but if these situations are a concern best to think ahead and get appropriately prepared instead of just reacting with unrestrained violence..

I guess I see your point, but I disagree. Part of sticking up for yourself is willing to risk these things. The bully's advantage is that he is willing to break the rules and you aren't. So you have to break the rules and risk some of these things that may happen. Maybe just draw the line at snapping the kids arm and you'll be safe.

No, a person may not be safe under the law when doing that. There are ways to minimize legal risk and also fighting back, if one is willing to look into them. Risking going to prison and becoming a felon to prove yourself is foolhardy.

Edit: one example of this back-firing:

http://crimefeed.com/2014/10/bullied-teen-charged-with-assau...

Getting back to the original premise: would the same advise be given to adults that is regularly given to children?

If an adult comes to tell you that they are being regularly harassed and beaten up by a coworker, will they be told to be careful about retaliation, and oh shucks since there's no direct proof of anything we can't separate you from your attacker?

No.

And I think there's a good reason (not that I particularly agree with it). People, the justice system in general, trust adults to be reasonable and act within the law so anyone who goes to a police officer and says X man attacked me is believed. With children, there's always the question in the back of the mind "did they lie to get their enemy in trouble? are they pushing boundaries? Are they just seeking attention? Are they exaggerating?"

For an adult, just your word that you were attacked is often good enough to kick start an investigation for physical evidence. For a child attacked by another child, their word is often not seen as good enough.

I do agree with you on what you're saying about the original premise. That norm of ignoring genuine violence kids are facing needs to be changed.

My generation grew up with "It takes two to fight"

For most victims, it was never a fight, it was an outright assault.

But it's how places of involuntary incarceration work.

People don't respect children as actual humans. I think that's pretty much the answer with most children related problems.

As an adult, it is far easier to avoid your tormentors.

Adults tend to be better at measuring risk as well: picking a fight with me, for example, would mean voluntarily engaging in a physical confrontation with a fully grown, professionally trained combatant who happens to be a member of the most violent species ever known to exist in the universe. If you attack me, one of us will become a murderer. There's little reason to go down that road, and I'll make sure you know it.

However, children don't really think, nor are they permitted to follow through on that kind of threat. And they tend to care more about what they are permitted to do.

Yes, exactly. Everybody saying "but you're not supposed to resist muggers" is missing the point. If you get mugged by the same person 47 times in a row, you're not going to keep getting that advice. A one-off incident at school which goes unpunished is troubling but understandable. It's the repeated long-term bullying that gets nothing but shrugs and "ignore it and it'll go away" that is completely nuts.

Violent bullying generally requires a violent response. It's unfortunately true.

My then 8-year-old son was getting punched by another boy in his class on a regular basis and the teachers couldn't do anything about it because they "didn't see it." I told him that if anyone ever hits him, pushes him or punches him again he has my permission to hit back commensurately just as hard and he would suffer no consequences - even if the school wanted to suspend him.

So the next day he got punched and he punched the other kid back in the stomach. It's been 2 years now and that kid never hit him again.

This feels reasonable if it's systematic bullying, and maybe I'd give the same advice in that situation, but in general I don't think it's a great strategy for a kid to always push back "just as hard" because it will escalate each argument they get in.

Not a general strategy - "I told him that if anyone ever hits him, pushes him or punches him again he has my permission to hit back commensurately"

I wish I'd had someome tell me this when I was in grade school. I was ready to go when I was eight, nine years old, but had already learned "That's not acceptable behavior" and didn't fight back. Years and a lot of counseling later, I had some self esteem again.

Yup. Good advice. My dad told me to ignore the two bullies, that is, until they ruined my schoolbooks. He called their parents and asked for replacement. No surprise, they refused. Then gave me permission to react off school grounds...

Alas, for the bullies, he didn't mention the commensurate part... I'll spare you the gory details, but it's been close to 35 years since that fateful day and I still relish it as one of the most glorious ever.

They never bothered me again, nor did anyone else. The special ice cream with my dad that evening was the cherry on the cake...

Almost exact same thing happened to my friend in 7th grade as well. Although he clearly lost the fight, he definitely won in the long term.

This was in the late '80s. One of the bigger bullies came up to him in the locker room out of the blue, said "hey geek" and punched him in the chest. Amazingly calmly he replied "Don't hit me" and punched him back, pretty weakly in comparison. I remember thinking at the time "what are you, fucking insane, hitting him back?" It immediately escalated into a full-on fight with the bully getting a good eight or so hard punches in which my friend futilely tried to avoid or hit back where he could. It was stopped pretty quickly when the gym teacher arrived and put the bully in a headlock.

So even though he basically got his ass kicked, nobody ever picked on him again. At least not physically.

Bullies are like thieves, and go for the easy targets. Putting up a fight, no matter how futile at the time, will likely remove you from the list of easy targets.

Unfortunately if a teacher put a student in a headlock today they would probably be fire, charged, banned from teaching, publicly shamed, called a child abuser, and finally executed.

"Death is too good for them!" -"Caring" Parents

A bit of hyperbole. See the police officer who body slammed the black girl and ultimately faced no sanction at all.

That's likely mostly because they're a police officer.

and because the girl was black

I think about this every time I see those goofy youtube videos where something like a house cat chases a bear away from their yard. The cat doesn't have to be able to defeat the bear, it just has to make it not worth the bear's effort to fight.

Similar happened to me, though I was older at 17, and my assailant was a year or so younger - I always say that he pounded me because he was clearly the better fighter, and a rough and tumble kind of guy but that it was probably pretty clear at that point that I just didn't care and he never came back at me because at the end of it, it would have been clear to everybody that he was tussling on the floor with a loser and his friends & peers were watching.

For much the same reason you don't argue with an idiot.

"Anyone that says violence doesn't solve anything has never had their ass kicked"

- My HS best friend's Dad teaching us about dealing with bullies circa 1991

That's one hell of a dad quote

Lotsa dads make the point for me, that kids who do not tend to turn to violence have not experienced it. But it's lost on them -- they usually think not experiencing violence is a weakness.

Not a weakness per se, but rather a lost opportunity for learning how to assert yourself. Violence is the purest form of assertion, and can be extrapolated into nonviolent aspects of life later on.

Being bullied (and fighting back) made me consider the philosophy of violence as a kid, and made me strong. It also taught me to stand my ground and take no shit from anyone, which was true in school, in the workplace, dealing with customer support, you name it.

I do not agree that violence is the purest form of assertion. On what basis did you judge purity, anyway? That seems like the sort of thing a violent person tells themselves in justification of their world view.

"Anyone that says waterboarding doesn't work has never been interrogated by torturers."

Makes as much sense. This kind of dad wisdom is the brand of false "common sense" currently peddled by the Trumps and Putins of this world.

That's a lovely strawman you built there.

I'm trying to point out the slippery slope of adults offering this kind of arguments to children. I wouldn't tell it to my kid because I feel it would be the wrong thing to say: "Here's a piece of advice that might work in the schoolyard, but it's wrong in life overall."

Except that it is definitely NOT wrong in life overall.

There is a big difference between saying "violence doesn't solve anything" and saying that "violence solves everything".

There are many situations in which a person needs to defend themselves, and reacting to physical violence with a physical response is the right thing to do. Just because this gets out of hand because some people take it too far doesn't mean that all physical responses are wrong.

I feel violence is wrong overall, and would die to defend that conviction if a situation came to that.

So if one of your closest loved ones were threatened by a violent criminal (in a home invasion, for example), you would actually allow yourself and/or your loved one to die rather than commit an act of violence that eliminated the threat?

I'm not sure if I believe that.

Hypothetically speaking, if a grown man was beating up your own child, you wouldn't do anything to stop him, even at the risk of your child dying?

Except that the argument has never been about the effectiveness of waterboarding or torture in general. The argument there it is that torture is a wrong thing to do, no matter the method.

In this case, violence is being perpetrated, and the proper authorities to moderate it are either unable or unwilling. As pointed out in mikeash's excellent comment [0], there is an advocacy of "violence abstinence" being delivered to the victims. This abstinence is what the comment your responding to is addressing.

And yes, violence is a wrong thing to do, just like torture. But if violence is being done and there's no authority to moderate it, then abstinence is not necessarily a good answer to the victim.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12498743

EDIT: I stand corrected on the effectiveness of waterboarding. I just removed the portion, since it was irrelevant to my point anyway.

There absolutely is lots of argument about the effectiveness of torture, and indeed my impression based on what I've read is that it's almost entirely ineffective.

Politifact recently evaluated a former CIA officer's claim that "waterboarding works" and found it false:

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2016/may/24/tod...

"While many top officials defended the CIA’s use of waterboarding in the past, there is no irrefutable evidence the practice provides results. Experts said there are few historical accounts of success, and even those are suspect. Meanwhile, there’s scientific proof that a technique like waterboarding would affect brain function enough to make any prisoner’s statements unreliable. They may say anything to make the waterboarding stop, and could actually be physically unable to provide any cogent intelligence.

"Wilcox didn’t provide concrete proof and experts say virtually none exists. We rate the statement False."

Thanks for the information and the link. I edited my response appropriately.

As an aside, I see a lot of parallels between this particular statement and the recent discussions on plea deals:

"They may say anything to make the waterboarding stop, and could actually be physically unable to provide any cogent intelligence."

Obviously the physical issues (probably) don't apply, but the use of oversized charges could be seen as a mental torture technique when phrased that way...

The thing about torture, and more generally interrogation, is that you're not just asking "what are the secret codes." You should be asking a lot of questions that you know the answers to. You also shouldn't be revealing to the subject that you know these answers. These questions are what help you identify when answers change from false to true.

Contrary to the movies, you don't tell them what you know about them so that they'll know when to lie.

Sounds great -- and the evidence says it doesn't work.

It's a comforting fantasy that we can round up the bad guys, put them in a box and rough them up in clever ways until they reveal their evil plans. In the real world, building more Guantanamo Bays isn't going to solve any of the problems facing us. The net benefit of torture centers is negative.

I definitely wasn't advocating for torture. It should be flatly rejected.

To say it produces nothing just isn't true.

>To say it produces nothing just isn't true.

How do you know? Do you actually have any evidence that torture works?

pavlov provided a source above explaining that there is no evidence that torture is effective. Your response seems to just be "well they must just not be doing it right".

A counter-anecdote: where I grew up, when you start to fight back you end up in the hospital when the kid's friends show up after dark one day. Violence in retribution is not always a great solution.

It takes a certain amount of street smarts...

Throwing some more anecdata on the pile.

Where I (primarily) grew up, gangs weren't really a thing and most kids were middle-class and a bit of goody-two shoes. The bullies mostly bullied because of social cliques and it's what media tells kids that "popular kids" do. Find me a Disney high-school show targeted at tweens and teens where the popular/rich kids aren't bullying the nerdy/poor/"the new kid".

With kids like that - reacting with violence gets the bullying to stop. It wasn't "witty comebacks" or being ignored like the victim would do on TV. There was actual retaliation to their actions and the cause->effect was dead obvious. They don't want to be hit again, they aren't fighters, so they stopped bullying.

As a kid I moved around a lot - so I also grew up in areas where there were actual gangs. They bullied for completely different reasons. If you messed with the wrong clique, you'd have 8-12 people jump you on the way home. If you got bullied, you put up with it. Adults weren't going to help - because even the adults were scared of the gangs. You ignored it and hoped they would find someone else to bully after getting bored of you. If you retaliated with violence it would be almost certain you'd wake up in a hospital, like you said.

I have zero experience with the latter part of this, but I wonder about mitigation methods based on your relayed experience. If the goal is to get them bored, would "playing along" help? What if you laughed with them at their insults? What if you immediately curled up into a ball at imminent violence -- assuming that that's roughly the position you would end up in anyway? I'm assuming that the control and perceived strife is where the fun is here.

Again, only speaking from my personal experiences and what I have witnessed.

There is no winning move. You have to have enough social sense to accurately "judge" your bully. You could judge wrong. You may make things worse for yourself. When a bully has no problem getting physical (and has more friends than you do to back them up) is is harder to deal with than the "Disney-like bullies" that I mentioned.

Best case scenario is a caring adult with enough authority gets involved. Even then, sometimes getting an adult involved makes things worse. Got the other kid(s) in trouble? They might beat your ass to get back at you.

>If the goal is to get them bored, would "playing along" help? What if you laughed with them at their insults?

Could be seen as taunting them, resulting in a beating.

>What if you immediately curled up into a ball at imminent violence

Beat you anyways? Might take some of the fun out of beating you until you curl up in a ball, but beating you to a pulp could be its own fun for them.

>Just do nothing then? (the advice I gave, and it is also common advice)

They may continue to escalate until they get a rise out of you. If it was jeering and teasing before - it might escalate to something physical.

My solution was to drop out of school (remove myself from the equation) and go on Independent Study. It is very similar to being home schooled and I didn't have to deal with anyone. If I'm not around to bully/beat I can't be bullied/beaten. This option isn't always open to people, especially parents who refuse to let their kids be "home schooled" (because the stereotype only "dumb children" get home schooled and their child isn't dumb!)

Yea, it depends on where you live. I always seemed to get into a fight the first day of school. I actually hated the days up to the first day of school, but once that fight was finished--everything went smoothly, but looking back I grew up in Mayberry.

My nephew goes to a public middle school in Los Angeles. He just had to mention gangs, I couldn't give him any advice. I told him, I would just avoid the bullies in school. If it was my kid, I would home school him.

I've never understood bullies. There's a lot of adults who are bullies. Just some mean, unhappy people in the world? It seems like every job I have ever been at has a one male, or female that just needs to cause conflict. They do it subtly, but there's always they one jerk. I hate to admit this, but my father was a bully. He was o.k. to me, but seemed to ride anyone that wasen't just like him.

Bullies were once a necessary part of a clan. They separated the males who could/would fight from those who couldn't/wouldn't. Your fighting force determined your clan's survival rate. That was only 15,000 years ago.

interesting idea. Any refs? Of course this doesn't legitimate this behaviour now

Look into Joyce F. Benenson's work in evolutionary anthropology. She also has a book out "Warriors and worriers".

Simply put, there's a difference between bullies who hope you won't escalate and bullies who know you can't escalate. Both types exist, often in the same places.

I feel like this video is now relevant:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF-52tcO_Hg

It's a documentary[1] about a kid (Johnny) who was harassed and beaten up repeatedly by another kid, Daniel.

[1] Ok, it's really a mockumentary ... but really well done. Seems to be influenced by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Gz_iTuRMM

In general I would agree; a violent punishment (assuming you can manage one) generally does the trick for putting off physical bullies. However, they have workarounds, such as entirely replacing physical assaults with taunting, vandalism or theft (e.g. stealing books or puncturing bicycle tyres).

Teachers never notice vandalism or theft of pupils' property and since there's never any evidence they're not interested. If the victim responds to abuse with their fists then it can be reported to the teacher, who will believe the instigator of the verbal abuse. The abuser will have friends who will report that they heard nothing and the unprovoked attack caught them by surprise.

I wonder whether school children use smartphone apps to gather evidence these days (I left school before even mobile phones were common) and how teachers respond.

Body cams for all school kids... gonna change the world... just need some VC monies to launch it

When I attacked a bully back in a locker room, around 7th grade as well. I was never bullied again. I remember a new bully coming to school, and he started to pick on me. This other bully said to leave him (me) alone. Felt good as a child. I had earned respect.

First of all, bravo for standing up for yourself. I think when you grew up and given you being a guy and physically able to fight, that was probably very effective.

Unfortunately schools have changed policies to so called zero tolerance policies, so that any violence can result in suspension, expulsion or event arrest and juvie. This is applied unfairly, it's worse for people who are racial minorities (studies show they are significantly more likely to be suspended, expelled or arrested, and suspensions last longer, this is why brown kids get arrested when they build clocks, and white kids get scholarships), and poor kids, who's parents are more limited in defending them because they have to work, can't afford legal representation, etc.

And remember bullying doesn't have to be physical. Responding with violence may get you expelled and nothing happen to the bully.

Also for people with disabilities or just physically weaker then the bully, violence may not be feasible as a response. And if girls are doing the bullying, or being bullied, violence may violate gender norms and not be the right choice.

I had the same experience in 10th grade (in France we switch school in the 10th grade). I had been bullied the two previous years and when 10th grade started I punched the first kid who bullied me. No one bullied me after that.

Of course, this only works in an environment without weapons and without excessive escalation. I'm not sure it applies to girls though, being violent for a guy is considered by other kids as manly and earns respect. If a girl snaps and punches another girl, she'll be seen as crazy and most likely bullied even more than before.

I'd agree with this solution, but unfortunately in many (_AMERICAN_) schools, retaliation against bullying shifts punishment from the bully to the victim.

It's always been this way (at least since the 80s). Hit him hard where it hurts, then man up and deal with the fallout.

What I learned in kindergarten is this: Don't back down. Not to bullies, not to teachers, not even to the principal. It's served me well throughout my life.

Hell, even Tom Petty gets it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvlTJrNJ5lA

Part of this is luck too. If you never back down from anything, and you are unlucky enough to find yourself in a bad enough situation, your unwillingness to back down may get you killed.

I was not bullied, but my dad suggested publicly visible violence in this manner if I ever was bullied:

First, if the kid is bigger and you'd lose the fight, wait until in class then sucker punch the kid and beat on him in presence of a teacher. The teacher can prevent you from getting really hurt when the bully responds.

Second, after the fight, explain the bullying. You and the bully will end up in the principal's office. In the principal's office, sucker punch/surprise attack the guy again. This second step is to establish a pattern with the bully that he's in for a long battle if he keeps it up.

Third, after the principals office, it will be escalated to parents. Then dad would give me a high five.

Wow. This is intense. Did this play out in real life or was this just prep.

No, it never happened. I was always taller and fatter than my classmates. Fortunately no one bullied me. I just remember my dad telling me this is what I have to do. My mom confirmed that my dad fought a lot when he was in school and military (mandatory service in his home country).

The parent poster had good results fighting back, but what if it's a bigger or older kid. Tough to fight back. So my dads instructions was to fight inside the school, not at the bike racks.

You'd have to be careful not to encourage excessive retaliation. If someone isn't physically capable of overthrowing a bully (or thinks that they aren't) you don't want them resorting to weapons when they "snap".

You don't need to physically overthrow him. All you have to do is retaliate. Violence brings respect, and since he's only looking for an easy victim anyway, he'll go find someone else to torment.

What I'm saying is that you should be careful when teaching retaliation. A bullied and frightened child might resort to using a weapon.

The lines between which types of violence "bring you respect" and which don't might not be clearly established at a young age.

And you can worry about someone falling down the stairs and breaking their neck, or catching some disease from open wounds, or the bully is unstable and decides to go on a killing spree.

There comes a point where you have to stop picking out unlikely scenarios and using them as a wet blanket.

Hmm. All I'm saying is that when encouraging violent reactions to things you should do so carefully and explain the difference.

But I'd also explain why you shouldn't play on tall staircases or leave serious wounds untreated. Maybe I'd make a terrible parent?

African villages have deep pits for various purposes. Kids wander about the village all day long and don't fall in. They don't even need to be told not to fall in.

A sheltered child never learns how to take care of himself in the real, hostile world.

Are you suggesting that it's better to not educate a child because in Africa kids just know not to fall into holes?

Education isn't "sheltering".

Proper education allows children to avoid or resolve hostility without resorting to violence. Not in all situations, but like you said, the other situations are "unlikely scenarios" and peaceful resolution should be preferred otherwise.

In most societies we only respect violence as a defensive measure and before it gets to that point you should do what you can do resolve the issue by other means.

There are no such pits in any of the (many) African villages I have visited

My personal experience directly contradicts this.

We were in the waiting area before seeing the principal about an earlier push+shove in class. He kept going on and on about how after school was over, he was gonna fuck me up, etc, etc.

I "snapped," I lost my shit and stood up and started wailing on him. Or I would have liked to, but my first few punches were wild and didn't touch him, and he was up before I knew it and suddenly I was on the ground with part of glasses frames stuck in my face. And then he kicked me a couple times before one of the secretary's pulled him away from me.

We were both suspended, and when we got back, he hunted me down and started threatening me with a tree branch. Thankfully I had friends around, and one of them punched him. That stopped him.

So fuck your "all you need to do is retaliate". What I needed was several months of fight training??? A body I knew how to control???

Yes. You missed. That sucks, but that's life. Nobody said it was going to be fair.

Had you stalked him and hit him good, he would have left you alone. But your friend retaliated for you, and he did leave you alone afterwards, so similar result.

> That sucks, but that's life

Okay. OP's advice is no good if it's not applicable to everyone.

You're just trolling, right?

No. This is real life. There are no guarantees, only probabilities. And your probability of actually being killed is low, so you get to choose between self respect and some pain.

Sometimes that IS needed.

I had a problem with a particular bully, that was a huge guy, but sucked in a fight, after being defeated multiple times in "fair" fights, he still kept bulling us.

So one day, I hit him inside the classroom with a chair.

This immediately stopped bullying inside the classroom, but he still kept bullying me elsewhere.

So during a field trip one day, when he started bulling me, I punched him in the ear, he grew furious and started to threathen me, so I pulled a switchblade from my pocket, and showed to him, and I was pissed off enough to do that with "honesty" (ie: it wasn't a bluff, I actually was in the mood to stab him if he continued his behaviour).

He never bullied me again. (teachers wisely put us away from each other though... and other students didn't even noticed what happened, none of the other students saw I was carrying a blade with me).

Eventually he got expelled from the school though, for other stunts he did (like showing for class at 7:00 in the morning already super drunk, and vomiting so much that you could figure what he drunk by looking at it and the smell... it was vodka mixed with Coca-Cola)

Also, once a kid kept stealing my sister stuff, and once threw my sister into some construction materials.

My sister one day took with her the ball of her mouse (remember those?), and when the kid stole her food, she waited the kid to turn around, and then promptly launched the ball against the back of his neck, knocking him immediately to the ground.

Also worked wonders, never the kid bullied my sister again.

EDIT: explaining the "bullying us" in my first phrase: in school there was several kids that went to Kung Fu school, they invited me and I joined too. The bully had the bad decision of choosing us (kung fu students) as his target, maybe unaware of that fact, thus he kept attacking us, and kept getting defeated (for example once he picked on the smallest guy of us, the guy weighed so little that he couldn't participate in kung fu competitions because he was 15kg too light for the lightest category... he defeated the bully with a continuous flurry of kicks that left the bully white t-shirt with several muddy shoeprints... the bully actually kept fighting, and another bully had to physically drag him away from the fight, otherwise he would kept advancing and getting kicked until he was seriously hurt)

I don't know you at all, but from your recount of the situation it sounds like the other guy was not the bully.

"My sister one day took with her the ball of her mouse (remember those?), and when the kid stole her food, she waited the kid to turn around, and then promptly launched the ball against the back of his neck, knocking him immediately to the ground."

That's some mad skills.

What did she launch it out of!?

Oh, you don't need a dedicated launcher for these. Couple grams of solid iron, and totally painful when thrown at close range.

What is the problem with equalizing physical differences using a tool if we assume that fighting back is the right course of action? Personally I think physical attacks using the human body is using a deadly weapon.

In almost every discussion of bullying on the internet we get these two contrasting comments: "I was bullied until I hit back" and "I was bullied until I ignored them".

Maybe, just maybe, the best response depends on the situation and the bullies?

It's great that you found a solution that works, and obviously you want to help other children achieve the same, but I don't think this implied "if everyone just did what I did, bullying would be solved" attitude is very helpful.

I have never seen any evidence, not even a single anecdote, that said "I was bullied until I ignored them".

Then you haven't been paying attention. It's a fairly common story: "I used to get wound up and react to bullies, but as soon as I stopped reacting, they got bored and stopped."

It matches most of my experiences with bullying, although mostly this was in the form of bullies trying to start teasing me, and giving up in disgust when they couldn't get a rise out of me. But I'm also aware that my own experiences were fairly tame, and not at all representative of other people's, which is my point.

I've dealt with bullies in this way too. It does depend on the bully, as well if the victim is capable of completely ignoring someone like that. As a child, I wouldn't have been able to show no emotion on my face and ignore someone teasing me as I wore my heart on my sleeve.

This doesn't work anymore. Even if the bully leaves you alone, you are now faced with expulsion due to zero-tolerance policies.

How have law suits against schools faired when a victim is punished for defending themselves in these situations?

You're assuming that the only thing that will happen is expulsion. Fighting back -- especially if you do what GGP did and land "on the order of 40 blows to the kid's face" -- is very likely to result in the police being called and you being hit with criminal charges, and past the age of 14 or so will get you tried as an adult. On top of that, well, 40 blows to someone's face is going to do some real damage resulting in medical bills, and that kid's parents are going to sue your parents for the damages.

So imagine you're a parent. Your son fights back and beats an alleged bully into the hospital in front of witnesses, including teachers. Your son is expelled, the police took him into custody and charged him with felony assault, and the alleged bully's parents have filed a lawsuit against you and your spouse personally for thousands of dollars in medical expenses plus punitive damages for pain and suffering.

So now you're going to have to shell out money to bail your son out, you're going to have to hire a criminal defense attorney to try and keep your son out of state penitentiary, and you're going to have to hire a civil defense attorney to defend against the alleged bully's lawsuit. Oh, and the economy isn't going so great either. Remember that you can only get a court-appointed criminal attorney if you're absolutely indigent, and there's no such thing as a court-appointed civil attorney because the constitutional right to an attorney only applies to criminal cases.

Unless you are filthy rich, you are not going to be able to afford to sue the school. Even if you were rich enough to sue the school while defending yourself on multiple fronts, you don't have much of a case. There will be multiple witnesses, including teachers, to the fact that your son beat the shit out of another student, but no witnesses to the other kid bullying your son. Bullies are smarter than you think: most of them know to only bully people when nobody's watching. That's how they get away with it.

The best-case scenario is that your son accepts a plea bargain for misdemeanor assault, serving probation and community service, and you settle with the other kid's lawyers for somewhat less than they're asking but still enough to cover the other kid's hospital bills. You sell the house to pay for the lawyers and the settlement, you move into a tiny apartment in a dangerous neighborhood, and maybe if your son is really lucky, you'll have just enough money left over that he can get his GED. College won't happen, and he'll be lucky to get even a low-level retail job until he finishes his probation and the conviction is expunged.

Yeah, it sucks, but that's how the world works.

Did you personally witness or experience this? While at first I thought it sounded quite extreme, the more I thought about it the more plausible it sounded.

If so, what recourse do bullied children have these days that minimizes the risk of bankrupting their families and landing them in juvie, merely for the crime of defending themselves because someone decided to prey on them?

And yet, that never actually happens.

When I was growing up, my mom gave me the advice her dad had given her: you aren't allowed to start a fight, but you sure as hell can finish one.

Similar experience, but without the lengthy bullying. I was big, but quiet and polite, and one day a kid cut in front of me in line, and I asked him to move. This kid, it's worth pointing out, had some real issues and had been bounced around at least half a dozen foster homes (so not a bad kid, but troubled). Anyway he turned around and clobbered me in the face with his trombone case. To that point I've never so much as smacked anyone (3rd grade), but that "snap" occurred and I punched his glasses off, crushed them underfoot, then beat him to the ground with my backpack.

We actually become pretty good friends for a few years after that, and I was one of the only guys he wouldn't try to hassle even when he was having real problems. Like you, heavily anecdotal, but a lot of cultures outside of the (last 50 or so years) in the US recognize the value of non-injurious physical confrontations, especially among young guys.

I also hate to say it, but this is one of the only effective solutions to bullying (especially among males). People become bullies for complex reasons, and people are bullied for similarly complex reasons. But almost no school aged bully is willing to put themselves at the risk of physical harm.

I wasn't bullied, but I definitely had attempts made. Those attempts were usually resolved very quickly and permanently with a bit of school yard fisticuffs. My friends who didn't fight back physically stayed tormented for as long as they cared not to defend themselves. Arguing, going to teachers, parents, school administrators, counselors, none of it made a lick of difference. Physically fighting back did.

There were two things I think that made it possible for this to work however (my parents were informed by a healthy disdain for the public school system):

1. My father established a standing set of rules in my family about bullies. a) Don't be a bully or you'll get severely punished b) if you are getting bullied, you may reasonably defend yourself without worrying about getting in trouble at home c) you may reasonably defend another person who is getting bullied without worrying about getting in trouble at home. d) if you throw the first punch you'll get in trouble, but you don't have to "win", just defend yourself

2. My father taught me and my siblings how to box a little - basic punches, blocks, parries, enough to be more trouble than it was worth for a school yard tussle.

It worked, I was the perfect bully target in school, smart, bookish, glasses, I never was the victim of bullying after the first return punch.

But I saw other children be bullied mercilessly, beat up, made fun of, even getting urinated on in one occasion, and another pushed head first down a flight of stairs. The problem with defending them of course, is that once I'm not there the bullies will pounce. I've even lost friends who had to move away to go to another school district the bullying was so bad.

There are occasions though where this doesn't work, when the bully returns with a group, or if the parents don't teach and support their child's ability to enter, engage and resolve this kind of conflict on their own terms. Many very well meaning parents cannot imagine their child getting into a school yard fight to defend themselves and try to work through other adults at their level. But it very rarely resolves that way.

I tend to agree and teach this to my son with a very specific set of "rules of engagement", as I had a very similar experience - but without the positive ending.

Basically I found trying that when your bullies are hardcore norteño gangbangers and you are 130lbs soaking wet with zero self confidence - and well it doesn't work out and it only infuriated them even more.

The key though is: If you are going to take a beating, then fight back and if you get your ass beat, you get your ass beat - at least 30 years later you will not look back on yourself in those moments with disgust, because only later did you decide to stand up for yourself.

It might work, or it might get you thrown in jail depending on your social status.

> I would advocate immediate, publicly visible, and decisive violence as a solution to bullies.

Speaking from experience: yes. Nothing prevents violence and bullying more than to show the bullies "okay, you don't stop, so I'm gonna fight back". It's like with preventing a computer system from getting hacked by everone and their dog: raise the difficulty bar enough to chase away the masses.

Downside: bullies are going to choose an easier target, most probably the only friends you have (which makes that decision definitely harder).

Solidarity in a group of bullied kids tends to vary, too. Sometimes, they'll stick together and actually beat one bully so hard he's going to the hospital and staying there, and sometimes it's "okay, choose the guy next to me, kthxbai" (aka everyone fights for himself only).

I have a strong intuition that countering bullying with violence only works with disproportionate violence and/or public humiliation. It's almost like there needs to be a situation in which either the victim turns the tables in a spectacular way in public, or responds with violence that is shocking and disturbing.

In other words, I feel like the "snapping" is just as important -- if not more -- than the violence, per se.

I'm reminded of an anecdote which I think is attributed to Robert McNamara. Basically, he claims that a nuclear power shouldn't appear too rational. Adversaries should be left with a sense of "they're just crazy enough to use it". I think the same goes with bullying: "he's just crazy enough to actually kill me over this".

This is a good response for someone who can fight back.

What if you are being bullied by someone who you can't really hurt all that much or prevent them from hurting you, except through higher channels?

Would you recommend that a kid that is being completely ignored also walk up to somebody and hit them in the face?

There's a big difference between responding to physical bullying with force, and responding to people ignoring you and not allowing you to sit with them with violence.

At the end of the day, as unfair as it is, you're going to be the one that looks like the bully.

Edit: I'm being down-voted... but the app is meant to be a reaction to social/psychological bullying and not violence. Violence isn't appropriate here.

Same experience. Those fucking little pricks only understood one thing, giving and receiving violence. But that was also before we understood how to properly communicate to all parties involved. A big part of why I flipped my shit was because the principle made us all come into his office and shake hands. I said no, I'd done nothing wrong. And the fact no one got that, not even the adult, is the reason why I flipped my shit in the first place.

In every instance that I was bullied and the bully stopped messing with me, it was because I stood up for myself, either by telling the kid off or slapping/punching the kid in front of all their friends and embarrassing them.

Anecdotal, as every case of bullying is different, but it seems to be the more efficient solution than telling the teachers/administration, who do little to nothing about it.

Is this hyperbole, or did you actually hit the kid 40 times? Even 20 or 30 sounds excessive.

I'm imagining you as a 7th grader patiently sitting there and counting out 40 punches. That sounds like it would result in a concussion and a bloody mess.

I think proper response to bullies is pretty context-specific, but I'm glad this worked out for you.

Unfortunately it's become a blind mantra for many people that "violence is never the answer." We like to think ourselves as elevated beings, but there are many situations where primal shows of dominance through strength and aggression are viable solutions to a problem.

Your 3rd grade self is vastly smaller than your 7th grade self. Even if you are still significantly smaller than the bullies roughly speaking getting hit by a 5' tall person hurts a lot more than by a 4' tall person.

This works because in general, most bullies are giant pussies. When they find out their target won't just accept their mis-guided aggressions but fight back, they just find a new target that won't.

I had a similar experience resulting in the exact same outcome when I was in school. I just wish I knew it earlier but I make sure my kids know it.

"The brutal may have been moulded by a brutality you cannot exceed. Let guile be your ally." - David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

Did you become popular, or were people just scared of you at that point?

This worked for me also

agree with you, sometimes you have to stand up to yourself, good on you!

Are you Ender?

I know we're not supposed to suggest someone didn't read the article and apparently just read the subject, but this isn't about violent bullying, it's about a specific kind of psychological bullying.

Your solution of landing 40 violent blows on a kid's face is probably not a better alternative to this app.

The title of the article didn't even match the content. It wasn't about bullied kids; it was about ostracized kids. But since the title clearly had "bullied" in it, we have this discussion.

Ostracism is used as a method of bullying, so the title does match the content.

Same happened with me. Sometimes you have to enter berserk mode to advance in life.

I was taken to the principal after breaking one of the bullies' head - her comment - "Surprised you didn't do that earlier" and that was all.

It's nice that you were able to do that, but I'd say the majority of bullied people either aren't strong enough to do that (physically), or the bullying isn't of a physical nature anyway.

Agreed. They should make an app for teaching self-defence for kids instead.

Was bullied exactly once as a kid, at a playground. Mother brought me back there the next day, told me to walk up and punch him in the face. Did it, we became best friends.

This is how humans work. There are a lot of comments here about how schools break down that sorta behaviour, and they might be right. But its also up to schools to teach kids how society works, so all that means is you have to tell your kid to punch the other kid, after school lets out. That's as much a societal lesson as standing up for yourself.

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