When a bullied kid grows up

cnn.com

5 points·edw519··4 comments

That's a possible outcome.

Mine is also a possible outcome. I have social anxiety, and generally prefer small groups of people or being alone. But I'm perfectly happy and don't go through life complaining about my lot.

I don't even blame the kids that bullied me. I blame the system that allowed it. Whenever I complained about it, nothing happened. It just continued on. Whenever I fought back, I got in trouble. Since I respected adults, that meant I stopped fighting back. That was a mistake. I should have ignored the adults and fought back more.

Again, I'm happy with who I am and I'm a lot better adjusted than my sister, who was popular and had many friends. So don't take this as a complaint about life or that bullying ruined my life. It darkened my childhood and had lasting effects, but it didn't come anywhere close to ruining my life.

pretty much mirrors my outcome. some social anxiety, lone wolf tendencies, with situational/social awareness thrown in there. can't complain really, although makes me wonder how i would have turned out had it not been for the rough childhood

Because of bullying, I grew up with highly augmented situational awareness and just enough mistrust in strangers to be useful to daily life. I'd say I turned out better for it.

I wonder what is the proportion? What are the probabilities that, as a reader of Hacker News, you are 1/ a software developer, 2/ been bullied

That might be enough data to qualify the correlation between having been bullied and being a software developer that reads Hacker News

BTW: is there some online tool that could help setup a poll like that (two binary questions, 4 cells distribution)?

I suspect there is a correlation, but I may be wrong, someone with facts on that?

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