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Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Not even slightly controversial here.

I suffered 5 years of bullying at school; and tried everything to get it to stop, without success.

Until one day I just got fed up, walked up to the main tormentor in class and, unprovoked, hit him really hard in the mouth (I think I broke his nose, I'm not sure). Was in weeks of trouble (with the staff) :) but once that was out of the way no one touched me again.

I've never outright recommended this approach to anyone; and indeed it's probably not the right thing to do all the time. But some sort of short-sharp-shock can work just as well (so... barging them to the ground etc.) as long as it is sufficiently hard.

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Same here. I was bullied (verbally and physically) all the way through grade school and high school. My mom was a peaceful hippie from the 70s, taught me that violence wasn't the answer and if there is trouble the best thing to do is tell. 10+ years of telling didn't help. Taking the abuse day after day, missing months worth of school because I was 'sick'. Hell, I even got suspended in 5th grade for getting my ass kicked by a bully.

Nothing changed until I started fighting back in 10th grade. A few fights later, along with a suspension I actually earned this time, and I never had anymore problems.

Same here. My schools days taught me a simple recipe for bully repellent: headlock their neck and pound on their face like a jack hammer. Size doesn't matter. Winning and losing doesn't matter.

But I also learned another interesting bit of bully psychology: they tease EVERYBODY, especially their friends. So tease them back. I discovered sometimes the supposed bully is just goofing around and this is how they relate to people.

Thirdly I discovered a simpler approach thanks to punk rock ethos: Don't even give a fuck about what other people think of you and let them know you don't give a fuck.

This only works once they're old enough to realize that you're ALLOWED to not give a fuck. Otherwise, it just marks you out for more.

So I'd stick with the hitting. I don't think people understand much else until they mature a little past grade 8-ish mentality.

I was also bullied in middle school. One day, walking off the school bus, I slammed his head against the window as I walked off. The bus driver, who had witnessed his bullying me for months prior was awe-struck and kept the bus running for about a minute before driving on past my block (no clue what she was thinking or saying, but it was really awkward as I walked from the bus down my block to my house). I spent the weekend thinking I would be suspended when I got back to school on Monday, but when I got on the bus on Monday, she didn't say anything, and nothing ever happened. Apparently the bus driver appreciated the fact he had it coming. And he never bothered me again...

But the bus driver didn't appreciate that she should intervene in the bullying months earlier.

What should she have done? Say "knock it off bad boy". He would have been ridiculed for needing protection from a bus lady.

Same here, some guy had been bullying me in high school and calling me names for a long period. One time he came to the park where I was in my friends and started calling me names again and generally being belligerent. After the second punch he fell down, he didn't really need much more than that. He didn't even get the chance to lay a finger on me, and never looked me in the eye again.

Come to think of it, shit, he really wasn't tough at all. Going down on the second punch and coming back up dazed? Good thing (for him) I didn't know how to throw a punch...

I was just going to say, hasn't this been the standard parenting philosophy since we started standing upright?

Could well be. But my Dad never gave me the cliched whispered conversation; "what you need to do son..."

From my observation, every adult knows this is the solution. But not all of them has the balls to tell their kid :)

S'what Godparents are for.

Step 1: Go back in time and acquire Godparents.

Better, go forward and become one for a bullied child.

Folks who have no experience with bully are divided on the right response.

Folks who do have experience pretty much all agree.

This. (I intended an upvote and misclicked.) :P

I have never been seriously bullied, but one time some bullying started for a couple of days that could have dragged on for a long time. Multiple people were throwing around stuff from my bag to each other, me trying to get it back. Of course you lose stuff quicker than you get it back. I'm small but I ran into one of them and bashed my head against his (I have a thick skull ;), knocking him to the ground. Never had a problem since.

It's nice being nice, but sometimes it does not work.

The "take your stuff, throw it around" game? I got out of that by grabbing the person who took the item originally and telling him that getting my stuff back was his problem now and if he didn't I would hurt him, no matter what excuse he had.

If you've already laid the I-wont-stand-to-be-bullied ground work with the "fight back once" thing he'll get your stuff back and none of them will have any fun.

Yup, same here. That is the only thing that worked for me after years and years of being bullied. No other way to stop it.

Same here, I was a fat pudgy kid in high school. After being tormented daily from seventh grade onward by a particular group, there was one day the high school quarterback and a few other football players decided to throw water balloons at me in middle of January. Of course, they got me with about six of them, soaked my backpack, and school work.

I. flipped. out.

All I remember was walking very calmly towards the quarterback and punching him in the face repeatedly, he tried to hit me but I grabbed his arm and bent him over backwards and just kept punching until he started bleeding from his eyebrow. His friends pulled me off and then threw me down and started to kick me, but it was broken up. Sure I got suspended, but that group never picked on me again.

As a counter point to the football player thing, I lifted with a lot of the O-line guys in college. Most of them were comic nerds, and a handful played Warhammer 40k.

One of them straight up asked me: "I'm coming at your base with two rockvees and an ambo - you've got a Jarmen, two scorps, and a quad. What do you do?"

I don't understand the point you're trying to make.

Not all football guys are brutal dickish jocks.

In fact, most are just nerds about lifting and football, sometimes more traditional subjects like gaming, comics and math. (Yes, math.)

To be fair to the those unfortunates who were not on the offensive line, I actually got recruited to dungeon master by/for a bunch of the star high school football seniors when I was a sophomore. I want to say there was a quarterback, a running back, and a linebacker involved, but it's been long enough I don't remember all the details.

It's certainly true that our offensive lines were usually at least half national honor society members -- there was always significant overlap with the quiz bowl team -- and we had at least one hard core geek each year. It wasn't at all unusual to find two of us trying out the latest RPG or swapping indie B&W comics.

"stop watching so much Pure Pwnage"

That's because they were o-line.

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