The reason high school bullies get back in touch later in life (2019)
mashable.com
mashable.com
Even though I had no hard feelings and never felt bullied just because a guy hit me one time, why would I deny these people their atonement? Whether it's part of some pseudo 12 step thing or just them feeling crappy about who they used to be and trying to be better, let them. It seems wildly uncharitable to assume someone is still the same person they were 20 years ago and is trying to get in contact to resume the abuse, let alone because they want to hook up with you. Bullies tend to become bullies because their parents beat the crap out of them when they were kids. They didn't exactly have ideal childhoods. Much worse than mine. If this helps them overcome it and break the cycle of abuse, I'm all for it.
Parts of the article made me uncomfortable, like how after the perpetrator had been blocked, they went through friend back channels to continue to try to communicate with their victim.
Maybe that kind of stalking will ultimately work out for the best for everyone, but that’s pretty presumptuous, and seems more about assuaging the perpetrator’s guilt complex than victim recovery.
" slide into my DMs like a thirsty fuckboy trying to curry favour in my Insta inbox."
" Did this person look me up and realise that I'm actually pretty hot? "
Got to love this type of writing. Feels a bit dramatic, but don't know their relationship.
I once said something that was a saying I used all the time, but was highly offensive to a friend (very rightly, as soon as I said it I realized it could be taken the wrong way). We never talked again. I was too embarrassed and immature to know how to apologize.
I ended up crossing paths with her on facebook and sent a friend request. She accepted. I've sometimes felt that an apology can be an intrusion - I've not msg'ed her at all. But to say I felt better is a huge understatement. She is happy and married with two kids so that was even better to see. I'm married with two kids too.
There are perhaps 3-4 people I feel bad about how I treated them. One was in elementary school when I was maybe in 3rd grade. I hope they all went on to do amazing things.
Can someone feel badly about what they did? For sure. I wouldn't mind if one or two folks who bullied me said hey man, I'm sorry about it. I'd say don't worry. But even more I wish I'd never been an occasional total jerk.
I've never been bullied, or bullied others, or witnessed bullying in school. We had fights, but mostly short fist fights between equal opponents that quickly ended up drawing the attention of teachers, and mostly due to arguments, rather than someone being harassed or squeezed for lunch money (that might be because we had no lunch money).
The only case of bullying that I'm familiar with, is how the school treats its students (hitting, forced confession, long detention, school ending at 10pm).
Is bullying among students a common occurrence in your schools? Is it like the TV dramas, where athletic sports students bully the bookish ones?
absolutely, that's a common dynamic in bullying. I'm in the US, though- perhaps you're somewhere else?
It doesn’t tend to be like in the movies where the big kid hits the little kid. It’s often something you wouldn’t notice and friends of the person being bullied wouldn’t notice. Subtle but continuous and because you have to go to school you can do nothing to avoid it. Also keep in mind words can hurt much more easily when you’re a kid.
There was, however, also just the fact that I was extremely awkward, having immigrated multiple times at key times in my social development, and I just didn't really feel connected to anyone or know how to relate to the other kids around me. I acted pretty unlikable in a lot of ways, and other kids could have been more sensitive to that but at a certain point that's just an unreasonable expectation. I interpreted the way they acted to me as bullying, but looking back that was what helped me grow out of it and be able to relate to people better.
I don't want to extrapolate from my experience and say that kids feeling bullied need to just deal with it and grow through it, but I think that's a factor in at least some other cases. What I thought of reading this article was my own experience on the other side: I moved back to near my home town after a decade away, and I messaged some people who I had felt had bullied me at one point in time but with whom I had been Facebook friends for a while. We ended up having a really good chat over lunch or something, and it was healing to feel "Hey - grown-up-you is actually pretty nice and cool, and grown-up-me is capable of talking to you and feeling mutual respect". It stopped feeling like they had bullied me, and felt more like man, growing up can be weird.
In junior high, we had a very definite pecking order. Everyone knew who the bullied kids were, everyone knew who the worst off were. This includes the administration. The worst off was this kid who would get "swirlies" in toilets that had yet to be flushed. He ended up bringing a gun to school, shooting two of his bullies and then himself.
Among other things, I was knocked into a gym mat from behind, rolled up like a pig in a blanket, and jumped on. My body made crunchy noises. The nurse taped up my ribs. Nobody saw anything, kids letting off steam, whatever. Life goes on.
In high school, the very obviously out of the closet kid (this was before it was common) happened to take a lot of mysterious flights down the stairs when the sportos were around. The bullying largely stopped for me by then because I had given up on the proper procedures and, between the martial arts and other things, I made it clear that I was going to hurt anyone who hurt me, and I was going to keep on hurting them as long as possible. Other targets were present.
Punishment really only happened if the perpetrators were dumb enough to do it in front of enough people, and if they were the "J.D." types, whereas the more valuable members of sporting teams, well ... if there were consequences, they didn't seem to be impactful of their behavior or participation.
And so on and so forth. And of course girls have their own methods that are unique.
I was the unfortunate recipient of it for years. It was mostly physical, exclusion and quips/harassment uniquely targeted to you that starts hurting when literally everyone is throwing them at you.
I have always found the bullying portrayed in American media to be weirdly sexual (eg: swirlies) even among men and emotionally traumatizing.
The smart kids are rarely bullied. The bullies are usually under-performers with insecurities who target kids who can be cast into an 'outsider' box.
Realizing that my pain didn't make me special and wasn't, in fact, unique to me was precisely where I divide being a teenager from being an adult.
I was beat up as a teenager (and of course teased etc) and can't for the life of me imagine holding a grudge about this into adulthood.
It's not even clear the bully "sliding into the author's dms" is even aware that they were a bully. I have a distinct feeling that plenty of people I thought were being assholes to me as a teenager never really realized the extent they were giving this impression. Teenagers tend to both take things harder than they should and at the same time express themselves potentially far more aggressively than they realized.
But the article has made me realize that a surprising number of people apparently never make it all the way to this stage of life.
This person receives a follow and a couple DMs from someone that used to undermine their self esteem. Instead of saying anything, instead of just ignoring them, they wonder about a half dozen scenarios of horniness that completely misunderstand men in general, then they go to Twitter and to a PhD Sociologist (a "doctor") to get a variety of explanations.
The culmination being this dissertation style thought piece.
Talk about spiraling. Wow.
Are a lot of people like this such that I should stop laughing and "validate" this behavior? I can do it. But only if consensus says so. My whole modus operandi is blending in for status.
That a grown adult would still be dwelling on shit from high school is something that I cannot fathom. I was a complete backwards nerd in high school, didn't know how to socialize, didn't know how to talk to girls, didn't play sports, loved math, science, and computers, all the stereotypical attributes. In many ways I still am that person. I got the stereotypical treatment back then, but it's ancient history. High school kids are idiots for the most part, why would you be letting their idiocy back then affect you as a grown, independent adult today. Have some self respect for pete's sake.
As a millenial, I agree with this. It took me until I hit 30 before actually reaching something resembling healthy emotional maturity. It took a lot of really painful experiences for me and a lot of self-reflection for that to happen.
A couple decades back when I told my parents I wasn't interested in their religion anymore and couldn't deal with the guilt of dishonestly letting them believe I was, they immediately blamed themselves thinking the root cause was all the crappy stuff they did when I was a kid. I was totally shocked, even as a teen I didn't take most any of it seriously. In my mind, it was never part of my "real life" because I was just so many months away from leaving their home forever. Likewise with the nonsense events in 4 years of highschool.
People really need to be told they have a choice to think about something or not, I guess.
This is probably 99% survivorship bias. You don't end up reading about the feelings emotionally mature people on the Internet because they it's not very interesting to read about their feeling or experiences.
Here's trick I try to use whenever I find myself believing some generalization about people: Ask myself "How many people do I know in person that fit this generalization?"
Now, certainly, my in-person circle is a biased sample in many ways. But the set of poeple you end up reading about on the Internet is also highly biased and in particularly skewed ways. If I find that a generalization doesn't fit most of the people I know, I discard it as mostly a consequence of the natural bias that humans prefer negative news about bad people.
Almost everyone is fine.
> High school kids are idiots for the most part, why would you be letting their idiocy back then affect you as a grown, independent adult today. Have some self respect for pete's sake.
Many people enter high school not just with the random abuse and misbehavior of their fellow kids but also other trauma from earlier in their life. If they were, say, abandoned by their parents, sexually abused by a neighbor, or suffered some other violent act, it may not be so easy to "have some self-respect for pete's sake."
Or, put less charitably, what it is about you that prevents you from feeling compassion towards people that are struggling emotionally and instead instead leads you to react in frustration? Who are you to judge? Maybe you aren't as fully healed as you'd like to believe either.
Which political ideology is that suggesting, by the way?
Yeah, I kind of wonder if the author was trying to validate her ego. Some of her statements just seem like bragging.
For what it's worth; I've personally been in this situation, randomly receiving two apologies from childhood bullies whom I completely forgot about. I just took the apologies at face value, replied that I accepted, and continued to not give them any thought. I didn't think those people were flirting or asking for favors, and even if they were...they still wouldn't be worth dwelling on.
I don't think she was spiraling. I think she's just doing her job.
> instead of just ignoring them, they wonder about a half dozen scenarios of horniness
Good journalists shouldn't ignore uncomfortable situations, otherwise there would be very little to write about.
this will show you flagged and shadowbanned comments. someone is shadowbanned if all their comments are not visible by default. its kind of unique that there is an option for us to see those comments.
you can always check if you are shadowbanned by viewing your profile or a recent thread you commented on in an incognito browser. always useful to check.
I think that's too generous. A dissertation has a thesis. This article just sort of meanders around with no particular point to make. She says how "utterly astonishing" receiving a message from this man was and how she "had questions" but never bothers trying to answer them. She speaks with a philosophy lecturer and gets a bunch of stories from other people about their experience talking to their bullies but doesn't care anything about her own. I was really hoping at the end she'd tie it all together by having a conversation with her former bully and telling us how it made her feel but she just...stops. It's not an article; it's just a list of anecdotes from other people.
I'm always a little frustrated when I see a page that obviously comes from someone whose main concern was having an article to write instead of having a subject they care about so much they wanted to write an article about it, and this was pretty clearly the former.
No, this person ignored a couple DMs and follows, then had to deal with the perpetrator contacting their friends and trying to goad them into meeting. Then after that failed, continued to try to follow the person on LinkedIn and other sites. That's called stalking and it's a real problem.
> from someone that used to undermine their self esteem.
You don't know that. The author didn't say what the problem was other than that the perpetrator was a bully. They could have been a rapist for all you know.
> Instead of saying anything, instead of just ignoring them,
They tried that and it didn't work! They gave a clear signal that this is not OK, and whatever the perpetrator wants to say, the author doesn't want to hear it. And yet, the perpetrator persisted in trying to find other ways to get the author to do something they didn't want to do.
> Talk about spiraling. Wow.
Yeah, this isn't spiraling. This is pointing out a real issue that some people have with boundaries, and the people around them ignoring it or being too afraid to tell them. Repeatedly contacting someone from your past who doesn't want to be contacted is not cool no matter why you want to contact them.
> Are a lot of people like this such that I should stop laughing and "validate" this behavior?
I mean, if you don't want a be a dick, don't laugh at other people's pain, even if you don't understand it. But you do you.
Why can't these people shrug it off? Just by math everyone can be expected to meet abusive people during their lifetime. Would be really useful...
Some people can't just "shrug it off" any more than some people can't just "walk off" a broken ankle.
they are not.
they are in fact worse.
I suffered so many physical injuries when I was a kid that I stopped counting them, none of them traumatized me.
They are now good stories to tell.
On the other hand emotional pain was so unbearable that there are people I still don't talk to 35 years later, because I don't want to remember.
You know why they are so terrible?
Because people wanted to "share the pain" and made a big fuss about it and forced me to "confront my feelings" "live the pain" and all that hippie stuff, that only made it worse and gave me the idea that suffering was something you couldn't escape from.
Now that I am a full grown up adult, I'm still sometimes scared by having the feeling of feeling something.
If people could just normalize the fact that everything pass and everything goes away with time (except of course real traumas, like war or being abused) kids would realize that there'll be a day when they will stand up for themselves and the high school bully did a really bad job at ruining your life, there are so many worse things in life, that you kinda admire how stupid they were.
> than some people can't just "walk off" a broken ankle.
actually, most of the times you can walk off a broken ankle.
Typically, a minor ankle fracture won't prevent you from walking.
As you have correctly pointed out: disappointing but not unexpected.
I'm actually happy, it means that usually for people their worse experiences are high school bullies or broken ankles.
It's a good thing.
I wish it was true for everybody.
we are talking about school bullying
The power imbalance of school bullying usually solves itself with age (like in a year or two).
> and some of it can ruin someone for life
yeah, it happens, rarely but it happens.
that's why I specifically wrote "except of course real traumas, like war or being abused"
> it's good because other things can be worse
it's good if that's the worst people usually suffer.
Never said it's good in absolute.
As it stands, people use it as a way to control others. Your post is a perfect example of this. You claim some people can’t “shrug it off” but you have no objective way of backing that up. Why are you saying it?
Since bullies cause exponential suffering why should the larger group of people, the victims, shrug it off when we can try to eliminate the problem?
Heck, even an adult can't be expected to deal with everything. That's why we have laws against mobbing, harassment and stalking.
Are there any side effects from this training? What if it reduces empathy or causes you become more aggressive. It seems odd if you become immune to constant emotional attacks it would have no other negative effects on your mental well being.
Bullying in adulthood isn't as intense as well in most situations. If someone at work came up to me, pushed me, and told me to kill myself they would be fired.
You might think bullying as an adult involves situations where you get over charged by a plumber or you aren't that aggressive at work so you don't that promotion. I'll admit this does happen but for the most part people who are professional and mature succeed and aggressive behavior is also wrong.
Also, in all those discussions I think it would be safe to assume "statistically speaking" unless being able to show one individual counter-example proves or disproves a point being discussed. Usually statements are not made under the assumption to be valid for every single person unless it is explicit.
(Edited)
I had my own physical bullying experiences in school, fortunately nothing constant. There was no way to get any help either (or maybe my uneducated and inexperienced kid brain just did not know any better), so I know the feeling of helplessness at least.
But you mention PTSD, which is really really severe. As I said, are we talking about some extreme cases here? How frequent are those?
The points made was as I see it for much less severe than "PTSD stage" things. When you get to PTSD it's criminal level and I don't think that this is what those people you claim have "lack of understanding" assumed was what we were talking about. I certainly didn't, and I still don't. I think extreme cases are something else.
I know teachers are sometimes well aware of some regular abuse that is going on. Typical stuff, like verbal assault, theft, battery, threats of violence. All criminal offenses in the real world. But in school it's just a detention or a request to curb the behaviour. I think it's difficult to judge the difference between a situation where the victim needs to learn to toughen up, vs a situation where the offender needs to learn that society doesn't allow these behaviours and there are serious consequences.
They had to move me to a private school because school thought I was the problem. The school had started publicly pulling me out of class in front of everyone for "therapy" from a "licensed child psychologist". (This was the last in a steadily escalating series of public humiliations and punishments by teachers and staff over 4 years.)
It quickly became clear I wasn't the problem because I did very well in a small religious school that was willing to make minor adjustments for a child with ADD.
This whole thing is absolutely bizarre to me because the school was basically your Midwest standard American suburb in the 1990s. There was no religious or political motivation that would explain it.
One thing I learned from this is that parents are often a terrible judge of the situation, often don't believe their own children when they say something is wrong, and often are afraid to do their damn job and protect their child from harm. In my opinion, they should have sued the school or at least made a much bigger stink about it and gotten other parents involved (as I wasn't the only one being bullied by the teacher), but they didn't. C'est la vie.
Evolution being what it is, I wonder, if this were true or true enough, about the tradeoffs are between the two groups.
It wasn't until I was 33 that I realized none of it had gone away. I'd just hidden and internalized the abuse and blamed myself for being the way I was.
And that's the normalized state-of-the-art in the field, so this is one of those "can we normalize building roads?". Yes, yes we have.
As an aside, did you know 30% of soldiers experiencing severe combat trauma will not get PTSD and 70% of soldiers experiencing combat trauma will not get PTSD? I bet for those in that category, they will simply not understand why the rest feel how they do. But it is how it is. For instance, I can't relate to how it feels to be short.
It depends what it is. And it depends on the person's circumstances. A strong support system at home can be a big help. Friends as well. Some people just get a terrible hand in all areas of life and there's a compounding effect. The amount of abuse that is allowed in schools is insane. It's like a separate social system where it's everyone for themselves. Nobody wants to enforce laws, or protect people, and this is where we send our most vulnerable.
Because humans are simply not wired to be able to shrug off unlimited amounts of verbal or physical abuse.
> Just by math everyone can be expected to meet abusive people during their lifetime.
In broader adult life, you have much more control over your interactions. In school, a classmate is your classmate, pretty much whether you like it or not. You might be forced to, e.g., sit next to them, change in the same locker room as them, etc. (There are some ways around this, such as transfers & home-schooling, but they take time, require parents who can be that involved — which is hard if they, e.g., working too many jobs to make ends meet — and from the child's view, risks backfiring.)
The question is why this urge appears and what we can do about it.