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Comment by Puts | Hacker News Reader

Unpopular opinion, but most people who get bullied are a little "off", a little weird in some way that affects their likability. And this also affects the adults where even they judge the kid being bullied harder. For example if you are autistic and lack verbal skills, that's going to be seen as you lacking social skills. And obviously if someone got hit, who's most probable to have started it? Maybe the kid that "lacks social skills".

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Not just Unpopular, but extraordinarily incorrect.

The problem in your formulation is that the bully gets to label what feels 'weird' to him. There is no universal definition of weird; it is entirely the bully's world. A victim can be shy. A victim can have an interest that the bully feels threatened by. A victim could simply not have enough friends yet (being new at school, for example), and the power imbalance is there for the taking.

This is an incredibly popular opinion! Unless the "unpopular" part is that this is somehow fine or justifiable.

Well I think there are a lot of people out there who define bullying as "when a random person in a group is selected to be harassed". And if you ask them what they think about it they would say "It's horrible and totally unacceptable".

But "disciplining" someone that is acting weird on the other hand is the right thing to do, that is not "bullying" to them. But for the person that becomes the subject of this it becomes, "you sit wrong", "you talk wrong", "you eat wrong", "your sense of humor is wrong" until it feels like you can't do anything right. Some people even think they can fix your "wrong" behavior by hitting you, and then it becomes physical bullying.

A lot of people wanna believe that bullying is like the fist scenario because that is easier than actually having to start accepting people the way they are - even if they are a little "weird".

I couldn't possibly disagree more.

Once you're boxed in as a bullied person, you will continue to be bullied.

They're not "educating" you, and it's a little sick to suggest it.

Have you ever met any person who says bullying is a good thing? I have not, yet it appears in any group of people large enough. So obviously people rationalise it somehow. How do you think they rationalise it to themself then?

Bullying is always wrong according to everyone, but that person being bullied is always the exception. “If they could just act in another way we wouldn’t be “forced” to do this to him/her.”

The most-bullied kid I ever witnessed in my life was also the most annoying, he would act out and make annoying noises and say the dumbest, most irritating "jokes". I've never seen a kid get bullied so bad, people stole his backpack and peed in it, hung him on the gym changeroom clothing rack by his underwear (wedgie-style), all kinds of stuff. The kid's obnoxious nature was totally used as an excuse for the bullying he was subjected to, because basically "everyone" was annoyed by him and thus felt little sympathy for the persistent bullying he experienced.

In adult years I came across him on Facebook and he was wearing biker gang clothing/insignia. Of course the persistently exiled/bullied kid turns to organized crime later in life - the perfect system to exploit his endlessly-neglected need for inclusion and protection.

Here in New Zealand there used to be state care for various children. They ended up in ‘care’ for various reasons. However, for way too many it was basically just state sanctioned sadistic torture. Every sort of abuse you can name.

The number of survivors that ended up in gangs is significant. It’s an utterly shameful part of New Zealand history.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/07/25/state-care-has-key-role-i...

https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/about-us/news/gangs-first-eve...

In Switzerland they just turned those children into slaves and sent them to be abused and worked to exhaustion in farms.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/education/recognising-switzerla...

100K children, up to the 1980s, but who knows what's happening nowadays.

And so now those kids as adults do kind-of deserved to be victimized by him and his gang. What goes around comes around.

Very popular! 9/10 bullies agree the victim needed to be bullied!

A more generalized description might be "not part of a dominant social ingroup".

Sometimes, people are just predators, and when prey doesn't exist, they manufacture it.

I'm trying to not be abrasive and incredulous in my response, but it's difficult.

This presupposes that the popular and not "off" kids aren't bullying each other. They are. It, too, can be really cruel.

This also does some heavy victim blaming about who's getting physical first, after you've insulted the target by calling them "off".

Literal victim blaming.

> most people who get bullied are a little "off"

Because being either too tall or too short means a person should get fucked up every day, because they deserve clearly it. (/s)

Is that what you're saying?

I think they were meaning more along the lines of behavioral or mental issues, since they mentioned autism. In my schooling I never saw anyone get put down because of physical disorders or differences, but it was much more common for people to get bullied when they were trying to fit into cliques that their background or behavior didn't blend well with. The kind of bullying I witnessed was like a form of signaling telling the bullied that as much as they tried, they wouldn't fit in with an in-group.

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