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Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected
Thelasko writes "I'm sure many here have been the victim of bullying at some point in their lives. A new study suggests why. '...now researchers have found at least three factors in a child's behavior that can lead to social rejection. The factors involve a child's inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.' The article sketches out some ways teachers and councilors are working with bullied kids to help them develop the missing social skills."
Why are kids bullied and rejected?
Because sometimes, other kids are dicks. Next question?
Aww, hell, join Slashdot and you can have friends just like you!!
doesn't factor in at all!
Are they teaching the poor kids how to be rich?
Interesting, but very the analysis lacks any cultural context. Is this really the fault (or failing) of the victims, or a consequence of the values and morals of our society and culture? The only way to answer that question is through a comparison to other cultures, past and present. The report seems to accept certain social behaviours as given or natural when perhaps they are only specific to our culture. I think more study is needed.
So TFA says teach your kids not to be dicks. Well duh!
I thought I read that the title of the article is about why kids gets bullied but all I can gleam from its content is what bullied kids do wrong to get bullied.
Years of pent-up anger boiled over. My high school tormentor was sitting across a cafeteria table from me. I decided right then and there,that I was going to strike back, as brutally and spectacularly as possible. I used the attached round stool as a launching pad and dove into him, knocking both of us to the ground. I rose immediately, punching him in the hard part of the side of the head - hard enough to indent my middle knuckle to the point that it's now level with the rest of the other knuckles. He was humiliated, I was vindicated (and suffered very mild punishment), and the BULLYING STOPPED FOR GOOD because the 1200+ other students in that school learned through the usual grapevine that I FOUGHT BACK.
It really is an under-addressed public health issue
I really hope they don't _over_ address it (WAIT! this is a serious comment!).
I'm really glad to see them taking a "help the kids function in the real world" vice the traditional "turn schools into a happy fantasy world" approach.
At the same time, learning to deal with these kind of challenges on your own is important. Obviously there are lots of cases where things get out of hand, and as the article describes, kids grow up with all sorts of problems as a result.
I think the assumption here is that you are giving the kid a push in the right direction.. rather than hand holding.. which might work. When you start doing the latter.. I think you just serve to isolate the kid more (classic example.. when a teacher essentially forces a group to include someone).
Most kids are so desperate to have friends, they just jump on board
Personally I think this hints at the root of the problem... self esteem.
It's cliche.. but "just be yourself" works. If you're a geek.. be a geek.. you'll fit in somewhere.
Admit it.
I was a really awkward, geeky kid. If I were anyone else, I would have probably gotten my ass repeatedly kicked. Luckily, up until 11th grade, I was by far the biggest kid in the class. 5'7" by fifth grade (although I didn't get any taller), 170 lbs by 9th grade with a 36 inch waist, and 205 lbs by 12th grade with a 38 inch waist. I certainly had some squish on me, but as you can tell by my waist size, I was certainly not a fatty.
I wasn't the tallest, but I was the most imposing. The best part? Never been in a fight my entire life.
Living With a Nerd
What kind of bologna is this? Talk about blaming the victim.
... who are often intelligent, sensitive individuals not in need of "socialization".
They'd have been better off spending those research dollars trying to figure out how to properly socialize the goddamned bullies, not their victims
Senator Proxmire, where are you when we need you.
The article itself states that social rejection "leads to a vicious cycle". The rejection means that social skills cannot be practised, and lower social skills leads to rejection. Couldn't this imply that bullying _causes_ poor social skills? I agree with Minwee, sometimes other kids are just dicks. Once a child is on the 'outer', it is very difficult for them to get back into the mainstream. I have personally experienced periods of social isolation in my childhood (due to moving around), and can definitly attest that this lead to difficulty in interacting with others. In my case, I 'forgot' the various social cues. Once I had friends again, the skills returned, but it is very difficult to make those friends when all your social skills are retarded.
I can just see it now, from one of the major pharma companies.
Is your kid being bullied? Stopadabully TM is here now! Consult your physician if this medication is correct for your child. Side effects include: turning into the Hulk, mass projectile vomiting and killing parents.
Now I would have linked to a story where a 13 year old kid killed his parents over chores, but I just couldn't do it.
Wow, that article really has a 'blame the victim' mentality, with the coda "and here's why".
The article even ends with the appeasement of "what can you change about the way you act to avoid being bullied"
Just like Battered Wife Syndrome, bullying is something that, ultimately, is the fault of the aggressor. Appeasement is not the solution.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
Let me translate the article for you so you don't have to waste time on its bullshit: bullied kids are responsible for their own torment and it's really their job to stop it from happening. --> F-you Clark McKown. Right in the ear.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Well what do you know? Finally a news article that the readership of this site can identify with!
Look kid, you're different. Want to make friends, and by that I mean save your ass getting kicked? Easy - suck up to, and agree with what at least 51% of the rest of the class does.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Bullied kids are the embryos of IT profession. For the future of the industry, we need kids to retreat to their parent's basements and get good at computering. Who's going to run the Internet in the future? Who's going to endlessly debate Macs verses PCs? Who's going to "meep"? Who's going to "grok"?
Who's going to visit Slashdot?
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
In other news,
Studies Reveal Why People Get Beaten and Mugged
The factors involve a persons inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from muggers.
Studies Reveal Why People Get Prison Raped
The factors involve a persons inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from rapists.
Studies Reveal Why People Get Prison Murdered
The factors involve a persons inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from murderers.
So many people are out there saying "no, it's not the victim's fault, don't blame the victim" but they miss the entire point. People have always tried to end bullying by punishing the bullies, but it has never been an effective way to solve the problem. If anything, it just makes the bully more likely to be abusive. This article is discussing why some are bullied and rejected while others aren't. And it goes to the heart of what can be done, which is teaching social skills. The punishment system doesn't work.
Nothing a little retaliatory violence cant correct.
<sarcasm>Who would have guessed? Those poor bullies are really the victims of the kids they beat up, because the kids being beaten up are practically asking the bullies to commit violence against them. I mean, obviously, if anybody doesn't want to conform to social norms or has interests other than those that the popular kids have, they are abnormal and hence need to be cured!</sarcasm>
And they also post as AC's too.
Read the article with "rape" in place of "bully"...makes it very interesting
There have been a rash of suicides recently attributed to schoolyard bullying. You can bet the parents of these children will be suing the living daylights out of the bully's parents, the school administrators, and anyone else involved. The blame-the-victim asshats behind this article will have no problem finding work as "expert" witnesses for the defense.
It took a study to see that the reason kids get picked on is because they stick out or dont pay attention? Well this should go for adults as well, i'm sure we all work with or are people that fall into these categories..
Bullying is a big deal. Of course it's simplistic to say that it is caused entirely by any one factor, but I think Lavoie's 5 steps to help develop social skill are great for addressing part of the overall equation.
If you want to understanding bullying in more detail, however, you can read this article: Big Bad Bully. I highly recommend it.
Some people can't be bought, bargained or reasoned with
Some people are very good at working out who they can take advantage of. IMHO, teaching people to avoid being victims, and understanding why the victims are being picked is a *positive* step. I know this is slashdot and all, but isn't that what the article is about?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
. The punishment system doesn't work.
When I was in 9th grade I got bullied a lot. I have to admit, a lot of it was because I was a dick. Our high schools overriding principal was that everyone should be socialized and honestly, I was just coming down with a depression that lasts to this day, didn't know how to deal with it, and I just wanted to get in there, do my work, and get out, and be left utterly alone.
Still, there were jokers always trying to get me.
There was this one guy who was always pushing me around and trying to take my lunch money and other stuff. So, I bought a pretzel and stuffed it full of razor blades and gave it to him. He got it, discovered that I tried to kill him, and reported me to the principal, saying that he was only playing around. I said, well, I wasn't. Needless to say, he could have kicked my ass but the whole thing was so weird to him that he never even spoke to me again. Excellent.
Another time, some kid poured a bunch of stuff on my drawing paper in art class. So, I dumped a bunch of soap into his eyes and burned him up. He later jumped me in the bathroom and tried to flush my head, so I strangled him and bashed his head into the wall as hard as I could. He never bothered me again. Excellent.
Finally, a lot of other people picked on me for a whole bunch of random reasons, so I got pissed off and set out to kill everyone in the entire high school. I figured I would glue the doors shut with epoxy and then model rocket the place with a sort of a home brew napalm and burn everybody alive. I got caught, and luckily this was pre-columbine so not much really happened and I was able to worm my way out of the whole thing, but you know what, word got around, I took some crap, but, really, nobody ever bothered me again.
Bottom line is, if someone is picking on you, if you fuck them up, they will probably not fuck with you again.
This is my sig.
Bullies don't have initially preferred targets, I bet they try to bully everybody, but they continue with people who don't fight back or don't know how to protect themselves, what are the chances that those people are the shy ones, the ones that don't get social clues, the ones that are a bit slower? Do we need a study for that?
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
ANOREXIC ANDY
"There's a lot of hate around here."
-Gentry Robler, Santana High sophomore
The Santee rage massacre took place less than two years after Columbine, and this time, thanks in part to the pathetic figure of Andy Williams, people started to seriously consider the role bullying might have played. But there was resistance.
In the immediate aftermath, Santana High School officials and local law enforcement officials either denied growing reports that he was a victim of bullying, or else they argued that even if he had been bullied it had nothing to do with the shooting.
Andy's appointed lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Randy Mize (his father could not afford to hire a private attorney), listed eighteen incidents of bullying just in the weeks leading up to the shooting, including "burned with cigarette lighter on his neck every couple of weeks," "sprayed with hair spray and then lit with a lighter," "beat with a towel that caused welts by bullies at the pool," and "slammed against a tree twice because of rumors." These "rumors" of course were rumors of the sexual orientation sort, the most devastating of all bombs you can drop on a newcomer kid who is incapable of defending himself. Jeff Williams, Andy's father, later said, "Some of the stuff basically borders on torture."
As Andy quickly learned, Santana High's culture combined the lethal cruelty of coastal California suburbia with familiar, rural trailer park hazing. He wanted out. He visited his mother in South Carolina a few months before his attack, and hoped to move back with her. When he visited old school friends in rural Maryland on that same trip, he told them that kids at his high school regularly egged his father's apartment or stole his homework and threw it into garbage bins. They called him "faggot" and "bitch" and "gay" and taunted him for not fighting back when he was bullied. Worst of all, much of the abuse came from the neighborhood "friends" he hung out with, got stoned with (he turned stoner to try to earn acceptance), and from whom he tried and failed to learn to become a skate rat.
Some were students at the high school, some weren't. Andy's decision to hang out with students from another school, which suburban kids don't often do, in spite of the fact that these "friends" abused him at least as much as the Santana High "friends," says a lot about the choices he faced. If Andy could have learned to skate, he might have been accepted by a second-tier clique in the coastal California public school hierarchy. As it was, not only did he never live up to the skate rat standards on the ramp, but to punish him for being a dork, his skateboard was stolen on at least two occasions by his friends, who then taunted him for being too much of a fag to protect his board.
In spite of their relentless taunting, Andy joined them at the local skate park, where they got buzzed on liquor and weed, skated on the ramps (he just watched), and tormented Andy Williams.
"His ears stuck out, he was small, skinny, had a high voice, so people always picked on him 'cause he was the little kid," said Scott Bryan, a friend of Williams.
He earned the nickname "Anorexic Andy."
"He was picked on all the time," student Jessica Moore said. "He was picked on because he was one of the scrawniest guys. People called him freak, dork, nerd, stuff like that."
Laura Kennamer, a friend, said, "They'd walk up to him and sock him in the face for no reason. He wouldn't do anything about it."
Anorexic Andy: before puberty...
Even Andy's fifty-nine-year-old, neighbor Jim Crider, observed, "Williams looked like someone working hard to fit in with his peers-and not quite succeeding. His clothes did not match what the other kids were wearing. When he talked, others didn't always pay attention."
Anthony Schneider, who was fifteen when the Santee shootings happened, both confirmed Crider's observation and gave a small glimpse into the dumb, cool poison of this schoolyard culture there: "He didn't have that
c'mon mods, the parent is a expressing a different view point. This does not make him/her a troll. I happen to at least agree that teaching 'outed' kids social skills is at least one arm of a solution. Seriously, troll is not a replacement for "I don't like your opinion"
It reminds me of after there were several school shootings in a row they decided the best course of action was to go after the kids being bullied. Part of the problem I always found was the "bullies" are often popular kids or jocks and the schools won't touch them. It's just easier politically to go after the victims.
but i take exception with a phrase in your last sentence
"good to know that you are in control"
your actions do not sound like someone in control. in fact, you were out of control. you say so yourself
"It felt empowering afterward but at the time I was too terrified horrified and enraged to notice"
again i'm glad you stood up for yourself, but recognize that this temporary rage of yours was not really a good thing to be driven to. absolutely necessary, yes, but not good. not everything we are driven and compelled to do in this life are good actions we should be happy happened. not that i see you taking joy in the event, but there are others out there who might have enjoyed it
as an allegory, it is entirely appropriate and reasonable to kill someone entering your house in the dead of night: you have no idea what his intentions are, and they're obviously not good. however, a truly moral person takes no sense of joy in the unfortunately necessary action, only sadness
when you take pleasure in the infliction of pain on others, no matter the context or scenario, you begin to become the bully you are fighting
i'm not saying you took such joy, but i'm merely using your scenario as a way to jump off and make a deeper point here
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Uh, it's pretty clear to me that there is an overtone in this article that it's victim's fault that they are not well liked or have social problems.
While I accept that this may be true in some cases, and a contributing factor in many instances, it's shocking and abhorrent to me that someone might suggest that it's the victim's fault that they get physically assaulted, mentally abused, pressured to do drugs, etc.
The common attribute to bullying is bullies. They are the source of the problem (as often a single link in a chain of abuse) and it would be wise to focus on identifying, exposing, and properly reacting to their abusive behavior against others.
I don't want to attack the entire study based on my perception of this article, and I'll support that having poor social skills can contribute to the likelihood of being a bully victim, but WTF?
Gee, another article declaring that the victim has to be the one to get help to change their behavior, while the Bullies just continue on their way untouched. Don't know about you, but I'm getting really tired of the victims being cited as the root of the problems here.
There are a lot of points to be debated regarding TFA and I've seen a lot of them mentioned above.
I'd like to add one, and it's mentioned in the title. The theory that kids who are less capable of reading non-verbal clues from their peers tend to be rejected more seems somewhat obvious. But the title seems to blame these same kids for being bullied! Being rejected and being bullied are very different things. Ignoring kids who act differently is perhaps not the most laudable thing to do, but it certainly isn't malicious. Bullying peers who don't seem to 'get it', however, seems to me to be a social problem of the bullies, not the bullied.
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Being a person who saw many different people bullied over the years by different people, I can say without a doubt, this research is bogus.
It does not equate with facts. Actually its obvious that ones that are socially slow are without exception the people who bully. They will bully anyone with or without social awareness.
Also I have seen no correlation in people who have grown up between being bullied and having it affect your later life.
Oppositely in every case of bullying I have the seen the bullied people becoming much better contributers and actors in society than the bullies!
The research was obviously poorly done, maybe focused on children with autism and other difficulties only and drew its conclusions from the premises.
This study is absolute BS.
Kids can be so cruel. (Just the first minute or so.)
This article doesn't reveal a whole lot of why kids get bullied in general, but it does at least help identify which kids are more likely to get bullied.
Oh, I see now, it was my fault all along. Jackasses....
I can tell you why kids get bullied. Because kids who want to push somebody around think they can get away with it. Bullied kids are almost always the smallest / least athletic ones around. Teaching them all the social skills in the world isn't going to change that. Teaching the bullies a thing or two, now that might change something. But that would take some real conflict resolution skills on the part of psychologists and social workers, and that stuff's kinda hard....
"when you take pleasure in the infliction of pain on others, no matter the context or scenario, you begin to become the bully you are fighting"
Just revenge isn't necessarily "bullying". There is no reason NOT to enjoy punishing someone who has worked hard to deserve it, and if more bullies were rewarded with on-the=spot correction they would be less likely to go on bullying for years.
"a truly moral person takes no sense of joy in the unfortunately necessary action, only sadness"
According to your morals, which like ALL morals, are subjective. Not all of us crave to bathe in guilt for doing what is right, and many can sleep well after fighting a just fight.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
fags get bullied because they're little useless sacks of dog shit.
We should be proud that this discussion involves both sides now.
It figures /. would see this article as blaming the victims, but you are all dead wrong. Children are animals. Animals must be manipulated, not judged.
The article takes the easiest route to dealing with bullying, but training the bullied kids progress socially. How many /. posters have swore their kids would learn karate? Same theory only more effective, and works with women not just men.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
"your actions do not sound like someone in control. in fact, you were out of control. you say so yourself"
:S
True, true. I guess... It showed me what I was capable of. And that I didn't need to be afraid, it also bought me respect which helped me socially. Had I never stood up for myself I'd have never known I could and would have continued to live fearing things I really needn't.
And yes, I didn't enjoy hurting the guy and certainly avoided fights (I got into lots of fights in grade/middle school but only protecting other nerds or myself). I suppose I had a joy in the vindication of it all but it was outweighed by the unpleasantness. I get the danger. But I think it far better to release or come to the understanding I did early on. If I still didn't understand at my age now I imagine the rage and bitterness built up, self pity, self hatred even would be much more damaging. Perhaps after that then I would start to feel joy in my enemies suffering... better to deal with it early.
Also, I totally don't think it is reasonable to shoot someone breaking and entering. Hell it could be an old friend throwing a surprise, or a drunk gone to the wrong house or... lots of things. Point a gun at him and tell him to fuck off if you are that paranoid. Me, I'd stay in my room, shout down at them to fuck off and that I have a gun. If they come in its fair game. Otherwise I'd rather have them leave with my T.V. / w/e than shoot a person.
the hearts of bullies must not be *truly* klingon.
The social skills is why my 9 year old daughter (adopted from China) goes to Waldorf. They stress face-to-face socialization, shunning computers, TV, movies, and radio until the children are 12 years. Of course the media cannot be avoided these days so we make sure to explain that TV,Movies,computer,radio is not real life and we have plenty of play dates with other children. I also like the fact that they let the children try to work out their differences themselves, instead of the teacher immediately intervening. I have noticed that children who come to Waldorf from the public schools sometimes have difficulty with social skills.
"The Brady Bunch is back...working homicide"
social cues.
If I wanted to know what other kids thought of me, I told them and they toed the line if they didn't want the snot beat out of them.
I'm sorry, did your post have a point? Well, tell it to somebody who cares.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I've lived a strange life. I was bullied from a very, very young age at school. I was also bullied by my older brother and his friends. After time, at school I became the bully. After about a year I switched schools. Once again, I was bullied. Within a year, I switched homerooms and the bullying stopped (one class was full of completely malicious little shits and the other was full of people I would be friends with for a decade). A few years later, a kid that had bullied me in the past came back to the school. I bullied him continuously. Then, I moved to another state and school. I was bullied there for about two years. I went to another school and by then I had learned a few lessons. The bully in me was still there. But it had changed. Instead of bullying the weak, I enjoyed bullying the bullies. I treated the world as a hostile place. Everyone that wasn't a friend was an enemy. Every affront was an act of war, and my typical response was escalation. You push me into a locker? I pull a knife on you. You punch me? I slip on brass knuckles and return the favor. I got a reputation as a crazy bastard. Eventually I calmed down to where I am now. Rarely bullying others, and rarely resorting to violence. People say that I have an attitude (they can just sense it without me talking), and I believe this is largely why I am no longer "messed with." I carry a weapon everywhere (even to places with metal detectors; i have a specially designed plastic knife meant to bypass them) and I constantly assess threats.
I advise people to treat being bullied like war.
Escalate- Attack.
De Escalate- Let them do what they want and hope they stop.
Maintain the status quo- Only if you believe something will change on its own
If you're not a tough kid, I'd advise you to talk to some tough kids. At one point I had two kids who would do assaults for hire (they're in prison now). Either way, discreetly pay some rougher kids (arrange a half up front or some sort of protection) to protect you and to attack your enemies. Of course legally you can be accountable- but if you're smart, you can cover your tracks enough to create reasonable doubt ("I only wanted them to protect me") and prevent conviction if it somehow managed to go to trial (never happens). Basically, grow a pair of balls and go to war or hire mercenaries.
I remember in one of my college classes (name drop to let you know how old I am ;) ), I heard an older woman (40s) constantly venting about her son's problem with a bully. Even after multiple "incidents," and several visits to court, this kid at her son's HS still was harassing him. He had shown up at their house and attacked her son. The typically inept police (not a slam at cops in general, but in my current state the cops are a joke. some states have higher standards.) did nothing after she attempted to file a police report. Basically, they system hasn't done shit except make it worse for her son. Could have gone much easier if she had gone down other paths such as:
Escalation: Paying someone to attack "the bully"
Escalation: Attacking the bully
De Escalation: Leaving town
Status Quo: Continue to be bullied
She chose-
Escalation: Putting the bully on trial
Worked out well, eh?
The system is terrible in most cases for justice. Either too harsh of sentences, or too light.
The study was focusing on factors that lead to bullying. It was not a moral study on 'who' is at fault. It is addressing social factors that bullies respond too. In trying to understand all the factors of human psychology on both side of the event are we ever to effectively deal with the problem. ie We must understand what the bullying is responding to so we can deal with the bully more effectively.
"Also, I totally don't think it is reasonable to shoot someone breaking and entering. Hell it could be an old friend throwing a surprise, or a drunk gone to the wrong house or... lots of things."
Depends on location. No one gets to my house then over the fence and past the dogs/ducks/chickens then to break and enter by "accident".
There have been home invasions now and then, and no one who doesn't deserve to get shot would dare actually BREAK into an occupied house. I expect people to behave themselves and stay out of MY space, and if they violate my house it is reasonable to expect they are willing to kill anyone in it in order to do their will.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The punitive foundations of our culture, like most cultural foundations, are expressed in myth. In our case, the foundation myth is what theologian Walter Wink has called the myth of redemptive violence -- believing that a harm can be made right by humiliating or physically harming the offender, that violence is a necessary and appropriate response, even that such violence is healing for the victim. It is normative in our society to seek vengeance for a harm done to us. Anyone brought up in our culture has seen thousands of hours of movies and television in which the schoolyard bully is finally beaten and humiliated by his victim, or the ruthless outlaw is shot dead by the gentle sheriff. The schoolyard victim and gentle sheriff are empowered and healed by this response, and often given a sexual reward for their violence. We are all constantly tempted to reenact this mythology.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
of becoming the monster you fight
and you don't even see it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Bullies are cowards. All of them.
The best thing to do with a grade school bully (assuming I'm talking to someone the same age) is to hit them in mouth. Hard. You well then either get hit back a couple of times -- which will hurt, but not be tragic -- or not. In either case, the bully will find someone else to pick on. Learning that getting beat up on the playground isn't the end of the world can itself be incredibly freeing -- and usually leads to it never happening again.
I have no patience for bullies -- but I have even less patience for helicopter parents who replay their own sad lives as victims through their kids and insist the world be made into a padded safety zone where nobody says mean things or looses at tag any more.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
So... they've identified Asperger's as a factor in being bullied.
As an Aspie, may I say how wonderful it is that someone seems to have noticed.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Did anybody expected something else? In a society where the standard child is desired, pushed trough the system to develop an ultra-selfish, short-minded personality so that for his whole existence will be enslaved for the benefit of the holy *Corporate* trough his insatiable, primitive void - this is the desired future citizen not the type which has the courage to think and stand up. Holy crap brainwashed nation what future I foresee for you ...
Because they're doing studies instead of playing kickball
The reason kids get bullied is that they exude Poindextrose.
Wait. That's kind of what he's saying, isn't it?
you are not describing western culture, or judeochristian culture, or american culture, or southern culture, or whatever you think are describing
you are describing human nature. its fundamental human psychology that is in play here, not the "mythology" of one group
there is not a society that has ever existed on this planet, or will ever exist, that the quote above does not apply to
know human nature for what it is: the good, the bad, and the ugly (yes, i intended that ;-). don't hold one culture or society guilty for what all societies and cultures are guilty of
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When I was a kid, it was all an excercize in chest-thumping and feces-flinging. It wasn't so much that I couldn't to 'read' these signals. It was just that I was preparing myself to live in a world where this sort of demonstration is worthless. Teaching myself to ignore these antics has proven to be a far better approach.
The best code isn't written by the guy who can throw his chair the furthest.
Have gnu, will travel.
With headlines like this one, I give you my prediction for tomorrow:
Headline on 2010-02-03: "Scientists find cure for erectile dysfunction."
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
Blame the victim.
And people wonder why the 'social sciences' are so despised.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
I completely identify with the summary (RTFA? This is /. dontcha know).
I wouldn't say I was ever bullied much but I only ever started making friends once I taught myself how to interpret non-verbal cues and appropriately respond. One example of my failings is, throughout my teenage years, occasionally people would tell me they thought I was arrogant, and I had no idea why. Looking back, I can see it was simply a case of my own ignorance when it came to human interactions.
The sad thing is now, being in my late twenties, I don't feel any different to the me of ten or fifteen years ago; I am just a lot better at pretending to be someone else, better at being in the company of other people without them disliking me.
All this is just anecdotal, of course. But from my own limited perspective, this all makes sense, and I would encourage developing these sorts of skills sooner rather than later. It makes life easier.
I wonder if the study compensated for anti-social tendencies such as psychopathic, and if the hormonal instincts to compete (which are strongest during adolescence) was also adjusted for.
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
"If they violate my house it is reasonable to expect they are willing to kill anyone in it in order to do their will."
Completely completely untrue. I can see breaking into a house for a large number of reasons. I know some people that have broken into houses to steal beer or to hold a party when the owners are on vacation. And I imagine the vast majority of robbers don't want to fucking kill anyone.
As well, my reaction keeps me more safe then yours. So it isn't a fear or safety issue you must admit. Or staying in your room and telling them to fuck off would be a great idea. There must be an ulterior motive.
Perhaps it is a matter of pride, getting robbed while you could possibly stop it seems cowardly. Hell being unwilling to shoot someone seems cowardly generally. Perhaps it is out of entitlement, 'it is my stuff and they can't have it'. Or exercising your constitutional rights like some kind of bible worshiper 'the books says i can so im gunna'. Whatever it is feel free to explain. It seems to be something only commonly believed in the U.S. (amongst 1st world nations) but I've never heard any reasonable explanation for it.
As a child, I was beaten at home. I wasn't allowed any type of social interaction outside of normal school hours -- before I went to college, I never attended a party, stayed over anyone's house, or attended an extracurricular activity. I was also under sever threat if I ever got a detention, so I was an involuntary pacifist.
I can say this; there is a segment of kids who were just as monstrous as my parents. They had no consideration, and essentially tormented others. I interact fine socially (both today, and then), but the bottom line in my mind is that certain kids will be complete asses, and the vast majority of the others will stand by and watch. I can also say quite definitively it wasn't my fault.
Several have apologized in recent years (15 years later). In general, though -- if they are dicks as kids, they are dicks as adults. The worse part is several of them are now teachers and coaches.
Setup a plot to implicate themselves into some kind of illegal activity. At least that what some geeks do.
New Economic Perspectives
to say that the response on a community level has any meaning for the psychology of the individual
are the amish robots? they feel no emotion?
culture modifies basic human psychology. but human psychology never changes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
then they (okay, "we") end up on slashdot and other online forums where there are no visual cues to miss.
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
Hmmm,
Robin Nixon, are you a bully? The article she refers to research that is related to Clique Membership, a very different issue.
I would access that to come to the conclusion that she has, she must be trying to justify her own behaviors.
This is the article she is referencing, make your own conclusion:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a918378051
A bully is looking for someone to react to their bullying, don't give them the satisfactions, and remember that most bullies are scared and have been bullied themselves, usually by their own family.
Simply there are two reasons for bullying: (1) discrimination (2) has nothing better to do.
BTW, you can discriminate any person on anything you like, to feel better even if in a foolish way. Just only that adults get used to it though some may do even more stupid things. So, the main reason is we have nothing better to do.
The willingness of this Jock-lead culture to blame the victim.
Case in point this screwed up study.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
We've been down this road a couple of times with our kids being bullied at school. In nearly all cases, I'd judge that the bully kids were the ones with the social problems. Here are a few case studies from 4th to 6th grade:
Upshot is that the kids being bullied need to build self confidence and know which relationships can be fixed, and which ones can't. Bullies are typically insecure, jealous, or lonely and this is how they feel empowered.
We can see this in adults as well. Typically its the momma bear personality,though sometimes not. Discussion on their secret need to be dominated and disciplined is a topic for another forum.
"Kids who were bullies also had problems in at least one of three different areas of nonverbal communication: reading nonverbal cues; understanding their social meaning; and coming up with options for resolving a social conflict."
Doesn't that still work? If the bullied are projecting in a nonverbal manner, the bullies are missing it or ignoring it. Either way, they have a problem communicating.
People who beat up other people GO TO JAIL. They do not get peer mediation, they dont get 3 day suspensions.
Police do not tell victims "Suck it up, be a man, stop living in a fantasy world", they arrest the thug and put him in jail
for an extended period of time. They do not force victims to stay in proximity with their perpetrators.
We do not tolerate it when husbands batter wives and when parents batter children, we dont allow thugs to extort money from people
on city streets or to beat up people as a means of social dominance. Why do we tolerate physical violence by peers?
How is "Get Beaten and Mugged" an analogy for 'Get Beaten and Mugged'? And how do you expect a 12 year old to avoid the crime-ridden neighborhood when the alternative is going to jail? The state mandates kids go to school. While home schooling is legal, the kid has very little to no part in making that decision. The school is literally the neighborhood that the kids are literally getting beaten and mugged in. Just because "Bullying" sounds nicer doesn't mean that it isn't "Getting Beaten and Mugged".
So, your comparison (not analogy) between adult and childhood beatings and muggings actually highlights the absurdity of blaming the victim. If the police were to force you to walk that dark alley in a crime-ridden neighborhood 5 days a week, back and forth for 6 hours a day, 9 months a year, and then told you it was your own fault for getting mugged, what would you do?
I expect people to behave themselves and stay out of MY space
Fortunately, most of us want nothing more than to stay out of MySpace.
- William Shatner
- Gary Gygax
20th century Marxism is not progress...
A physical bully is a criminal, there is no social ineptness that justifies being physically battered.
The article deals how to help people deal with social bullying. Socially bullying is not a crime even though it could
be considered a form of harassment similar to sexual harassment in which case schools could be found civily liable
if they do not intervene actively to prevent it.
No the schools have never really taken on socially popular bullies. Schools only now are reacting because they are getting sued.
So, No, I haven't read the whole article but regarding the whole "Who to blame"-conversation.
We are animals and there are patterns in how we behave and in how others respond to such behavior. Sure, the ideal is that everyone should be accepted as who we truly are but reality is that some behavior trigger bad responses in others. So even though no one should be bullying anyone for any reason. I stand by the claim that the victim can be at least partially responsible. If you do weird stuff and behave in strange ways, others will notice and it will influence how the interact with you. It's the same when you are an adult it just takes on a different form. Kids who are bullied could probably use some coaching in how to get out of it. ...that or just beat up whoever is giving them shit.
So... they've identified Asperger's as a factor in being bullied.
As an Aspie, may I say how wonderful it is that someone seems to have noticed.
Its wonderful, isn't it?
Yet another thing that you can use Asperger's as an excuse for!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
at best you're just cotton-headed naive, at worst your in danger of ethnocentric and prejudicial thinking
in the revolutionary war, quakers forbid military activities, even though many quakers assisted the revolution through furnishing many needed supplies. they were not able to actually fight and still remain in their religion. the society of friends valued strong education much more than any other people in the colonial days, and still does to this day. if a member of the society of friends took up arms they were immediately cast out of the quaker groups in any colony, state, or country
one such man, who was cast out of the religion he was born into, was nathanael greene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathanael_Greene
why? because he became one of the greatest american generals to ever live, an extremely effective man of war. he studied voraciously tracts of war on his own initiative and self-educated himself on the methods of killing other men en masse to the point that it was his brilliant tactics and strategy that defeated the british in the south, and led directly to the conditions that resulted in cornwallis's stunning surrender, and the end of the revolutionary war
how is this possible given his upbringing? because his cultural upbringing is inconsequential, as is mine, as is yours, as is anyone's, on questions of basic human psychological potential for ANY human endeavour, violent or nonviolent, moral or immoral, just or injust
human psychology is human psychology is human psychology. the only voyage that matters is your voyage as an individual in this world, and it is the only morally and logically cohesive framework in which you can judge a person: as an individual
are you american? well, all americans are warlike monsters. are you muslim? well all muslims are unthinkingly obedient fools. are any of those statements fair? absolutely not, they are prejudicial. but this kind of thinking is a direct result of YOUR way of thinking, in which you hold arbitrary, minor and utterly inconsequential tribal boundaries as the master's of destiny
the truth: human psychology is a constant across time and space, and culture is but a tiny inconsequential tweak of it. there is nothing of the amish, of the canadian, of the brazilian, of the sikh, of the polish, of whatever, that is somehow unique only to that culture, society, or people and somehow determines their fate in such a way that it overrides basic human psychology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
unfortunately, I don't have any solutions with me. But I can tell you some long term consequences based on my experience.
I was brought up in south-asia in a co-ed public school. Public schools are a mix of all the social classes and it is still a habit of 3rd world country men to look down each other on minor nuances.
I was a bully victim throughout my school years (and to a certain extent in my college years.. but more towards 'work-wise bullying'). Definitely I didn't have the physique to fight back. So I had to submit it to survive school years as changing schools is not the solution for everything. As a consequence, I never had a big circle of friends in school. And I try to forget most of my school years and ppl I met there.
Most of my school time, I spent on home work and other stuff (including reading, thinking stuff up) while rest are having merry time in the school yard. But nevertheless, I met handful of good guys (mostly nerds), who ended up being my long term friends/confidantes.
But I really got to know I'm having a serious issue, only after I entered to college. I spent 4 years there without attending a single dorm party, going to college prom or road trips. I just didn't fit into people. I had hard time understanding ppl and only time I understood them was.. when they are ganging up to bully me.
Same thing with romantic stuff. Its a shame, even educated in a co-ed school, I never went on a date in my entire life (and not to mention, no first time yet). Simply because, I don't know how to approach females and talk to them nor have the confidence. Back in school days, when I approached a girl, there are herds of ppl shouting/yelling nasty stuff.... and to avoid that harassment, I opt not to talk with girls.
Moreover, I have issues approaching strangers and talking with them. And I'm worst in terms of bargaining things and manipulating situation for my advantage. No matter how much I try to fit into social groups, I always get kicked out.
Even in my office, I tend to limit my communication to e-mails/IMs. Even thought other staffers having great non-work bonds.. I only have professional relationships.. that's that.
If I didn't get bullied.. I would've interact with more ppl and probably complete 10,000 hours in social relationship training, hence I would've done much better in things I came across after school years. Plainly, I'm having hard time in terms of communicating with people, that pretty much closes most of the life experiences. In long run, all this have costed me quite badly. And yes, I agree with what the article explains.
I let Tommy borrow my Teletubbies disk, and the next day, men in black suits took mommy and daddy away. What does RIAA mean? And who are you?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
All the whining and sniveling in these posts makes me want to go find a dweeby twerp and beat the crap out of him.
On the one hand, bullies rarely if ever make a positive contribution to society. They are irrationally violent towards the kids that are smarter, not as socially developed, less physically imposing, and have odd interests.
On the other hand, the intelligent, awkward runts with unusual obsessions are pretty much responsible for every every bit of human progress since the invention of fire.
Guess which group of people the article says must alter its behavior?
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
Once upon a time there was a bully. He bullied a lot of kids. One day he bullied the outcast. He shoved the outcast from behind as he was walking by. The outcast was slammed into the lockers and split his lip. The bully walked away laughing. That evening the outcast and his one lone friend came back to the school with a hacksaw, a school issue combination lock and two large garbage bags. While the friend stood watch at the end of the hall the outcast sawed the lock off the bully's locker. It took no more than a minute to empty the bullies locker into the garbage bags. The outcast locked the locker back up with the lock he brought. The garbage bags were tossed into a dumpster behind the gas station. The next morning the outcast watched from a distance while the bully tried to open his locker. The school locks all looked the same but his wouldn't open. Eventually the principal and the custodian came with some bolt cutters and the lock was cut. The locker was opened and inside was....nothing. No gym clothes, no textbooks, no almost complete woodwork project, no homework, no notes, no tennis racket, no leather jacket, no anything. The bully may have eventually realized that one of his victims had gotten even, but who it was, he never knew. He bullied a lot of kids.
Knowing the reason for something is not the same as using it as an excuse.
Knowing where one has deficits is not the same as not having a reason to find workarounds, or to work on improvement.
Having Asperger's does not make one a robot, without willpower, discipline or a drive to improve.
TL;DR: Fuck you. And fuck you if you think that spending my childhood being bullied has made me a victim.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
PS: and fuck whoever thought this was 'insightful'.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Dear Slashdot,
I would like to direct you to the article, as you seem to have neglected it in favor of mindless over-reaction.
Item 1: The study doesn't BLAME the victims of bullying and social rejection, it asserts that there is a correlation between underdeveloped social skills and bullying and rejection. People who have paid attention to the universe have probably already noticed this correlation. Under the "ways to help" section, the neglect and bullying are explicitly pointed out as CAUSES of the underdeveloped social skills.
Item 2: It is painfully clear that social skills are important for being well liked. Yes, people are assholes and bullies unfairly prey on unpopular kids, but that doesn't change the essential fact that social skills can help you extract yourself gracefully from these situations (without resorting to the sort of violent fantasies described in earlier (and unfortunately upmodded) posts). Furthermore, those same skills are vitally important for future success in education and the workplace.
In summary:
Being socially effective is important, maybe we should help kids who are having trouble figure out how.
Bullying and social rejection cause and are caused by underdeveloped social skills. That is bad, and we should do stuff (practical, achievable, forward moving stuff) in order to help alleviate it.
Thank you, as always, for the stream of unproductive invective.
Rory
While it may be true that in some ways a person may bring upon themselves these acts of violence and oppression, it seems to me the much more important and useful study (and, then, the more important and useful target of attempts to correct the behavior) would be:
Why do some people react to others behaviors by bullying them or committing acts of violence or oppression, instead of something more constructive (helping them, ignoring it, etc).
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
The original article has a blast of articulate disagreement in the comments.
The article has an out of fashion viewpoint that some social coaching might help some kids avoid being bullied.
The much more current view being implemented in American public schools is: no-bullying in school settings.
I work with limited intellectual functioning kids (as an aide, not an expert). Some of these kids really do benefit from social coaching. To cue him in to how to act, he had "social stories" that he read to remind him how to behave in public. The coaching worked well enough for him to avoid being kicked out of school.
Looking beyond the linked article, I don't think we can tell if the original research study was misquoted or over simplified.
The "bullying problem" is a subset of a really interesting problem: How to help young adults and the group activities they engage in stay as sane and constructive social activities. How do we teach the young people being drafted in to the two Mexican gangs who attend the high school campus where I work to get along without fighting and seriously injuring each other?
This is another instance of meanness to others that appears in bullying. If we could develop communication and teaching to bring out kindness and tolerance in bullies and gangs then we could also have a starting point for redirecting other destructive social groups like Al Quaida.
On the teaching problem, a really interesting development I just heard about (on NPR) is "Terror Theory" which seems to cast some light on why groups of people become receptive to authoritarian control. Elsewhere, I am reading "The Unconquerable World" by Johnathan Schell, looking for another angle on the social peace teaching problem.
All these years I thought "turn the other cheek" meant you just put up with bullying.
Then I read a sentence in this book by some Christian author I can't remember. Anyways, he said
"You can't turn the other cheek if it's been turned for you".
There is a key distinction between meekness and weakness I was not understanding. Now that I have discovered that, it is my choice whether I choose to fight back or not. I don't feel "morally obliged" to be passive. I evaluate whether it is important for me to defend myself at that moment, and I act on that. The real problem all along for me was a control issue. Now that I have that control, I realize the power struggle for what a silly thing it is, and it just doesn't bother me. I also am much older now and these things just don't happen anymore.
I plan to do what another /. poster wrote about a year ago. His daughter [2nd, 3rd grade or something] was being abused by the school bully. He contacted the teachers, several times about it, to no avail; after the girl was physically hurting his daughter. He contacted the school principle, who didn't do anything, shrugged it off, not a big deal, etc. So he told his daughter, the next time this happens, grab her hair next to her scalp tightly, and push her head down as hard as you can while you pick your knee up right into her face.
The girl did it, gave the bully a bloody nose, teachers and principle were ALL OVER her and /. poster; threatened him with a lawsuit over his daughter's conduct. So he explained everything to his lawyer and had him write them a nastygram. They and the bully's parents shut up.
I liked this story because
1). he tried to deal with it through the most acceptable means [of course they weren't going to do anything about it, but he tried at least and so had legal grounds to stand on]
2). The bully never bothered his daughter again. Neither did anyone else in school.
I had three bullies who didn't like me in elementary school. The first one's Mom got into an accident and died, the second one's Dad lost his job and then their family went through a divorce, and the third one was in an accident and got paralyzed from the neck down.
Don't F with me. ;)
-Stewie
A lot of angry replies here about blaming the victim, but this article isn't necessarily about blame!! Yes, blame the aggressor, but the cause lies in both.
The bottom-line: There are those with tendencies to bully, and those with tendencies to get bullied. The key here is if you do not have the power to change the behavior of the bully, you have the option to change yourself and no longer be bullied! Brilliant!!
There are a few other things worth mentioning.
1) Bullying can also be the product of circumstance, and not specifically the result of a said bully. It isn't the case where "if there is a bully ==> they will bully". There needs to be more of a "there is bullying ==> who's doing it" approach.
2) Some children really are sissies, and believe it or not, they can get inherently non-bullies to bully them. Sadly, these children often have sissy parents, sissy friends (if any), and are surrounded by sissy teachers. The original article definitely tries to shed light on this sissy factor.
3) There are SO MANY THINGS people can do to prevent bullying. It is so sad to see these situations escalate to the point where the victim commits suicide or decides to go postal in the school cafeteria. When such catastrophes occur, you will find parents of both the bully and the victim who didn't do enough, the friends and family who didn't do enough, the teachers and faculty that didn't do enough, and everyone who watched who didn't do enough. This kind of thing is 120% preventable, and the illusion that these victims succumb to that there is no way out, really is the worst fiction imaginable.
Not knowing where the exits are is how we can all get burned in life. Someone just show them the exits!! There is always a way out. And someone knows about it.
I can tell you why kids get bullied. Because kids who want to push somebody around think they can get away with it. Bullied kids are almost always the smallest / least athletic ones around.
On screen & stage, bullies are usually portrayed by a beefy guy, when ironically, in the real world, they're the ones most likely to be bullied. Bullies are more often the popular trickster type, who lash with their tongue.
i'm saying simple human psychology trumps culture in determining human behavior
yes, truly bizarre
zzz
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ordered from least to most effective. You don't have to be stronger when you are smarter. Get in a solid hit on any of these three and you've scored. Nail all three for mega bonus points!
Yes, I left off eyes.
For all of you that responded by saying it's the bullies problem...
Of course it is. BUT there are plenty of kids that never get bullied.
It's a complex issue with a bunch of causative factors.
The only reason that all of you normally smart people begin thinking in black and white terms is because you have a boatful of emotions about this. Let me guess, you were bullied.
Take a step back and think for a moment, whose behavior can the victim control, the bullies or his own?
If I can teach a kid to act naturally in a way that others like him, and then the bully wants to be his friend not his enemy, I'll do that. It's not by being a passive person, its by being someone who genuinely sees the intrinsic worth of others and values others. Not some geek with low self esteem who needs to prove to everyone how darn smart he is.
If you have issues with yourself and your self esteem, if the answer to the question of "what makes you important and worthy" is answered by anything other than "nothing, I just am", you have a problem. That problem will spill over into the way you treat others. You will end up using them to feel good about yourself. This will piss them off. They will try to get you.
However if you feel good about yourself, and you feel that you're valuable just because you're a human being, you then will be able to treat others with the greatest true respect. They will pick up on that. They will love how it feels and they will WANT to be your friend.
Don't feel like garbage, don't act like a prick, and you might just find that things are different.
"fags get bullied because they're little useless sacks of dog shit."
The Anonymous Coward closet case basement-dwelling Cheeto-gorging self loathing homosexual troll says what?
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
I was recently diagnosed with atypical autism, meaning that I don't have all the symptoms necessary to fit in a clean category, but have enough symptoms to warrant a diagnosis. The diagnosis explained quite a bit of my issues. One thing I remember in grade school was that I never saw conflict coming. That was my biggest issue. I was extremely aloof, and never had a chance when kids decided to give me a hard time. Given my natural tendency to space out, and enter a world of my own, it made me a tempting target for bullying. Looking back on it, I can see what the bullies found so attractive. I was like a big red button that demanded to be pushed. I would get extremely stressed out by it, which I'm sure to them was funny. Eventually, being taller than the rest of the kids, and naturally, weighing more than the majority of them, I learned to fight. That helped a bit, it stopped the physical confrontations, and got people to give me space, but it never really "fixed" the underlying problem, that I never learned how to read and understand other people properly. I learned to dish out pain. But, I'm starting to realize that what they saw, and what I experienced, were worlds apart. Along with problems in reading people, I also had issues in communicating just how I felt. That doesn't give them a pass, but I don't think that they understood how far they were pushing it. Certainly, the few times I snapped, they didn't see it coming, just like I never saw it coming when they would decide to give me a hard time. I have etched in my mind, like a flashbulb went off, pictures of numerous bullies, and the shock on their face right before my fist landed on it. To those who have never punched a tormenter in the face, it's a beautiful thing, even if you end up getting your ass kicked as a result.
I'm better now at relating with people, but still struggle with it. The aloofness that I used to have tends to be replaced with anxiety, suspicion, and wariness at times. I tend to see things coming better as a result (but obviously there are downsides). I just have to be careful not go too far and read too many things into a situation, as I have a tendency to over analyze a bit too much. The study seems to back up what I have experienced on a personal level for quite a bit of my life.
I went to a Malaysian Public Boarding High School. The environment there was closer to a military boot camp than Hogwarts, complete with barbed wire fences, guards and wardens. The eldest students there, called "seniors" lord over everyone else ("juniors"). You're pretty much at their beck and call and any perceived slights usually results in a beating. You dare not tell the teachers as it would probably get you more beatings from them as you are "tarnishing the school's reputation by making a complaint" and then even more beatings by the seniors when they found out you squawked. You also dare not tell your parents since you will let them down if you leave the boarding school. One of the tasks I had to do as a junior was to wash a whole dorm of senior's uniform, all 18 of them, once a week. There were no washing machines and you have to manually wash, dry and iron them. After a few times of doing this, I decided to strike back. After washing their uniforms, I carefully rubbed them on the communal toilet floor, in such a way as not to stain them. I then dried the uniforms and lightly ironed them. After a few weeks of this, many of the seniors developed very itchy fungal skin infections. To my great satisfaction, they never did found out what I did. From then on, I learned that revenge is truly best served cold. Seeing your tormentors in discomfort and none the wiser is much sweeter than fighting back physically.
lisa solved this a long time ago
The factors involve a child's inability to pick up and act on on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.
Fixed that for you.
Wow, I see a whole lot of angry posts here - usually dropping he F bomb at the author, bullies in general, etc. I realize most of you were probably beat up a lot as a kid (I was occasionally as well, until about age 8 or 10 when I got to be a hell of a lot taller than anyone else), but ease up off the emotional overdose. The whole nerdrage thing isn't exactly contributing to the discussion here (insert comment about insta-flamebait modding from raging nerds here).
While I'm not a big fan of blame-the-victim, there's at least some truth to what he says. The people who I knew getting bullied, myself including, were often missing some essential social skills. Think of them as "street smarts" - you don't necessarily make eye contact with a small group of people in a dark alley in a big city, do you? Why do you keep your head down and walk away instead? Because you know at some level there are nonverbal signals that trigger aggressive responses (in this case, "hey, that $#%#% thinks he's bad! let's go set him straight - we're badder!"). So I can easily see that there are some nonverbal cues given off by nerds that trigger bully responses.
Of course, that lack of social competence could be a result of the fact that the kid was excluded from earlier social circles and never learned what he needed to learn, but it still seems likely to me.
When I was a child, I suffered a great deal from bullying, particularly when I went to an elementary school in a wealthy suburb. On the few occasions when school staff intervened, they would ask what it was I was doing that provoked attacks. As I recall, it was the poorer kids, and the kids who were "ethnic" or non-white, who were the principal targets of bullying.
One day, one of our teachers explained about Mutually Assured Destruction, and I realized that bullies ruled the world.
1 Don't be prey
2 don't start fights
3 always end them
The absolute worst thing for a bully to get caught in is getting blasted by a girl so Those with kids (congrats btw)
figure out how to teach your kid how to move correctly and how to cause PAIN
(hit a guy in the right spot and it won't matter that your gloves/shoes are satin he is going down HARD)
If your kid gets good enough "Be Somewhere Else" will be taken very seriously
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Serious crime is the victims' fault? (Bullying has indeed lead to loss of lives on more than one occasion...)
In schools (for crying out loud!) where the juvenile perpetrators could still be punished before building a criminal record.
Astounding insights from the same system that advises parents to "get counseling" to fight inventiveness in their kids:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/01/16/1550207/Police-Called-Over-11-Year-Olds-Science-Project
In highschool there were those two guys who enjoy being in spotlight so they were messing with me because crowd was enjoying a show. With my nerdy habits, they easly find something to make fun of me then a fight would break up. We couldnt inflict much damage to each other until crowd separetes us but whether i beat or beaten, those two guys were enjoying being the attention center. Who knows, if would acted passive or just ignored them, they may leave me alone. But it's hard to stay cool when they hide your school bag. Good old days...
However if you feel good about yourself, and you feel that you're valuable just because you're a human being, you then will be able to treat others with the greatest true respect. They will pick up on that. They will love how it feels and they will WANT to be your friend.
This is great, but it only works when everybody is built the same way.
Fundamental, biological fact: Psychopaths exist and it is impossible for them to respond to love. In fact, telling people, when abused, to simply amp up the love they broadcast is a wonderful thing for the psychopath. They'll happily gobble up whatever you give them and then kick you some more. It is my personal belief that the whole Christ dying on a cross thing was a deliberate and false bit of social programming designed to make feeding easier. "Turn the other cheek" is a great thing for all the sheep to have hard-wired into their brains - if you are a psychopath. The only way to deal with a psychopath is to recognize the traits and RESIST them. It's not that difficult. It's shark hunting; sharks always respond according to their own behavior and thus they can be predicted and mapped, but first you have to educate yourself and not pretend yourself into danger by saying such comforting things as, "Everybody just needs love!" Not every human is really human.
It is estimated that about 6% of the global population is psychopathic. That's 1 in approximately 16 people. --And it stands to reason that power centers, companies, cities and entire countries which promote and reward self-serving and abusive behavior are going to attract psychopathic individuals. It is safe to assume that the concentrations of psychopaths will be much higher than 6% in some areas. And even if that isn't the case, the spread of cruel-assholes throughout my old school dayss was easily around 1 in 16.
-FL
In my highschool it was the opposite... bullies were the ones who have it easy so they have the luxury to slack off. Not necesarly rich but just with parents who either doesnt care to look after/punish or have power to protect in any case. I mean my number one bully was the son of a high ranking police officer.
Exactly so. In one case I stopped being a target after I started a few fights. If everyone is rubbing blue mud in their naval, you'd be better grab a handful of big blue or you're going to the heretic.
they can get inherently non-bullies to bully them
This is a statement of pure evil.
...and exactly the vicious kind of apologetic reasoning that Thurber derides in his tale of the rabbits being eaten allegedly because of provoking the wolves (and earthquakes) and having tried to escape.
I dunno, kinda seems like you didn't read the article. It leads with "The number one need of any human is to be liked by other humans", and keeps that chord going throughout. A person who is rejected and has no friends is unhappy, whether he's bullied or not, and the focus in the article is rightly on that issue.
If you focus on that part of the message, you see that there is indeed a problem that originates in the suffering child. You can't divide the world into "bullies" and "non-bullies" any more. It's "those who reject him" and "those who don't reject him", and for the kid suffering with no friends, nearly everyone is in the second group. The normative behavior is to reject as alien those who do not respond to social cues. Will you blame the whole world for behaving normally, or try to teach the suffering kid how to break through the perception barrier and get accepted?
Regarding bullies: of course the bully's behavior is non-normative, and needs correction, but that's really the lesser part of the suffering of the lonely child. The greater part is the inability to make friends.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
If you're in the fight, you know exactly how it got started. You know who escalated.
The teacher probably didn't see how things started, and the teacher knows that at least one kid is sure to be lying. The kid running away or getting beaten up could have started things by silently spitting on the other kid.
I expect that Buddy never did understand why when he stole my home work he still got D's, and I still got A's.
Trouble is that with a school that let him pass by stealing others' lunch&homework, he didn't get the F that would have been a better indication of his fair place in life.
With a D, someone might be inclined to assume he deserves a chance at wreaking even more havoc by applying his sociopathic skills in a workplace.
A lot of it is about fitting in. My own son got a rough ride when we moved abroad and he didn't fit in, despite being fluent in the local language. He was different and he really had a rough ride. Some namby pamby child trick cyclist the school insisted he saw tried to tell me that he had low self esteem, which I knew was utter bullshit. I pulled him out of that school there and then despite threats of legal action etc and told them that if I as a parent had allowed my kid to be treated in that way, I'd rightfully be in serious trouble. After a term at home, he started in a new school and was one of the tougher kids, though he never used this to bully other kids. The experience of being bullied like this was a life lesson for him. A couple of years later some of the kids who had been bullying him saw him around and decided to have a go at him in the street, he beat the crap out of all three of them. He's never had a problem since then.
Also, I totally don't think it is reasonable to shoot someone breaking and entering. Hell it could be an old friend throwing a surprise, or a drunk gone to the wrong house or... lots of things. Point a gun at him and tell him to fuck off if you are that paranoid. Me, I'd stay in my room, shout down at them to fuck off and that I have a gun. If they come in its fair game. Otherwise I'd rather have them leave with my T.V. / w/e than shoot a person. :S
Well, I'm glad you think that you can instantly understand the motives behind a person(s) who has the mindset required to willfully and forcibly enter another person's home, with no knowledge of its occupancy... And if your home is occupied, know that this act is statistically likely to happen in the middle of night, or while other members of your family are home, but the working man (you, I guess) is not. That's just the thing, you don't know if they're intent on a simple robbery or rape and/or murder/arson. Unless you're some kind of empathic superman, but that leaves the rest of us out of luck.
The safest course of action is to assume the worst, maybe not that they're PCP riddled zombie al-queda nazi operatives, but that they do mean harm to you and your loved ones. It happens all the time, even in places everyone believes to be "safe". As the man of the house, and the defender of the home, it's not prudent to lock yourself up in a room unless you know that your family is safe. And that makes me believe your response is indicative as that of a single person with no children.
But perhaps I misjudge. Someone once said: where you stand depends on where you sit. If the TV is the worst you have to loose, then maybe it makes sense to hole up in your room. As for me, if I'm fortunate to catch a potential invader before they enter, they'll get all the warnings in the world, and I'll call 911 in the process. But the window/door/whatever is going to be covered, and if they're crazy/stupid enough to come in despite all of that, it's going to look like hamburger grinder exploded when they come to take the body.
If I catch 'em inside, they get one warning and if they do anything but turn tail or lie on the ground, they're likewise toast. I guess it's a good thing I don't associate with people likely to break in to make a surprise, and therefore earn a Darwin award in response.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
- Push tons of pills in order to fix all his/her social problems.
If you read the article (yes I'm new), you'll see they advocate social skills training.
I know it's fun to blame Big Pharma, but I don't think the researchers are part of a conspiracy.
I think they're just psychology geeks who get their geekasm from finding out how people (rather than computers) work.
(And of course, all the fame and glory that goes along with being published in an academic journal. What was their names again? :P)
- Blame the bullied kid.
They found a causal factor. It's not about assigning blame, or prescribing a particular value judgement. It's about finding facts.
I hope they do a follow-up study which looks at the effectiveness of social skill training.
And one looking at the effectiveness of doing something about the bullies.
Quick toppost poll; I see a lot of comments here about people getting beaten up in school. Most posters seem to be talking about America. I'm from New Zealand and while there is of course bullying/harassment I wasn't aware of physical violence against anyone to a level of obvious injury or robbery.
Is physical violence actually common in American schools? How about other countries?
.evom ton seod gis eht
Please excuse my choice of words, but all I'm saying is that some children are inherently weaker than others. I am not saying we should beat them. I am saying they need to be protected, or else they will be beaten because they cannot protect themselves. And they often do get teased even by "normal" people.
My observation is that some children are rabbits, some are wolves, and wolves hunt rabbits, but in some cases you will find rabbits picking on rabbits.
I am not blaming anybody, nor am I reasoning in favor of wolves, or even reasoning at all for that matter. Feel free to contest my observations, but please do not assume I am not arguing for one side or the other.
(sorry for the typo) ... please do not assume I am arguing for one side or the other.
Bullies are cowards. All of them.
Actually studies have shown the complete opposite (I read it on paper). It used to be fashionable to attribute this kind of behavior to low self esteem, until someone actually bothered to investigate this, and found that bullies actually tend to have unrealistically high self esteem and tend to be more bold and impulsive than average.
From this, the logical next step would be to subject a bully to so much abuse that his self esteem is shattered and see if this changes their behavior. This would obviously be immoral.
No I mean to say that Asperger's is an *affectation* not a 'syndrome'.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The TFA I read discussed social rejection, and noted that bullies often focus on the socially rejected. This isn't about using your social skills to charm the bully (lol), it's about using them to get friends and hoist yourself out of the immediate target population, or at least get yourself on a better footing to fight back (most bullies have their own social issues - if you can sort yours out that's an automatic advantage).
I've been bullied. I watched other kids get bullied too. I got rid of my bullies by not behaving like the other victims, not by beating anybody up (as if I could). I realized that the only targets were people who were isolated from the main social group and unwilling to fight back (in most cases by their own low self-esteem) and made an effort to not be one of them. I learned to control my emotions so I could think clearly in social situations that weren't going how I wanted. I learned to actually pay attention and read other people's body language properly. I learned the social rules. I made friends outside my usual circle.
The guys that spent 5 minutes between classes laughing at me in the halls every day (not hardcore bullying but hardly pleasant, I assure you)? Most of them weren't being sarcastic or mean like I thought. They were confused by how incongruously I acted. I was the one that was too stupid to read their expressions correctly. Once I clued in, I stopped escalating simple misunderstandings (I actually thought I was sticking up for myself) and quickly made friends with many of them. I had no trouble ignoring the few asshole opportunists (most of who were doing it due to their own self esteem issues) in the lot who were jumping in with a nasty quip just because they saw they had a chance to get a laugh at my expense. Over the next few weeks I got rid of a good two thirds of the grief I'd get at school (the low grade harassment) in this way. I'd say fixing this one mistake of mine is probably where I started to really build my self-confidence.
The scary looking thug (huge muscles, tattoos, scars, rumors that he's done nasty things - seriously scary fucker) that went around threatening people into giving him free shit? The confidence I'd gained making some friends was enough to keep me calm around him. Calm enough to see his insecurity screaming through every little gesture (fucked up home life, he had a lot to be insecure about). Flat-out told him "no" when he punched me and told me to give him my CD collection. He was stunned, I don't think he'd ever seen someone calmly stand up to him before (I admit, it freaked me out afterwards - he had opened up with a punch). He wandered off as though nothing had happened and didn't bother me again.
The asshole who'd steal my shit, trip me, shove my head into my locker, heckle me in class (WTF teachers, how did that shit ever fly?), throw things at me, etc every single chance he got? I was his favorite victim until a few months after I started turning myself around. He turned out to be desperately afraid he'd lose his friends' respect if he didn't act all tough. Getting the courage to go and talk to them (his friends) and find out that they didn't really like him was the key to getting rid of him. Desperate fuckers turn out to be easy to bait, and I only had to get myself seen with his buddies regularly for a few weeks before he freaked out about them ditching him and did something stupid enough to get them to actually ditch him. He never bothered me again. I'd actually been hoping to get something out of them that I could blackmail him with, but I'm not one to complain if a problem takes care of itself.
So I disagree that TFA's conclusion is some bullshit way to avoid having to actually punish bullies. We're social creatures, and learning how to navigate the social web (rather than hovering helplessly around the edges) is definitely empowering. I certainly wouldn't argue with anyone that would just beat the shit out of a bully, but it's hardly the only way to deal with things (and I've seen a couple of guys that did that get shunned even more for being "dangerous" hotheads).
There are two tracts that work equally well - one takes quite a bit more effort than the other.
Ignore them
or
Work out, get buffed, learn kung-fu, join a gang AND become a pimp. Make others think their health would be adversly effected by even concidering fucking with you.
Making someone hurt for an evil deed he has done - when cause and effect are obvious and immediate - is an important job.
And, as any job well done, it should feel pleasurable and satisfying.
Everyone's beating their chest and saying how "if you just hit them once, they'll never bother you again". Sometimes that's true, but sometimes they go get their gun -- and you can never be sure who will back down, and who will escalate. Fistfights between adults escalate all the time into gun violence. Why is it hard to understand that the same thing can and does happen between kids? This isn't the '50s, and even in the '90s I knew bullies who brought guns to school in their cars.
Humiliate a bully, and you might have a shining moment basking in the sun of your newfound manhood. But no one can promise you that they won't look for revenge -- and if they've got access to a gun, there's a quick and easy way to get that revenge. The consequences may suck, but rage has a way of making even normal people not give a shit, let alone people who are already inclined towards violence.
No, it's not. It's really really not.
Please shut up before your ignorance embarrasses yourself further.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Kids get bullied because they have below-average social skills, which isn't their fault of course, but you can't ignore that. Like it or not, learning to deal with bullies is a useful life experience. If you really want to help these kids, find a way for them to learn social skills without getting beaten up.
Because he can't recognise social clues, HE'S the one that needs more education?
How about you put the bullies into some remedial education? The classes where they teach them that violence is wrong?
Oh, wait, that might adversely affect the number of football players in your school, and army recruits when they're older.
And if there's one thing Imperius Novae Roma is going to need in the future, it's soldiers and gladiators.
What you're describing is pretty much a type-A nerd experience which - I would bet - something like the majority of all slashdotters had in their youth.
The study actually describes the same thing, but from another perspective. If you are so occupied with your own thoughts and interests, it's no wonder that you can't read cues from others. As your interests don't really focus on learning them, but on other stuff. In many ways we where the 'mental' or 'verbal' bullies and I - after having had my first high-school reunion after 15 years - see the bullying reaction as pretty much a statement of helplessness of my peers in dealing with my - in their book - strange and unsocial behaviour.
What young nerds have to learn - and I had to learn the hard way - is that it's not entirely the others fault if you constantly get picked on. I eventually found it quite rewarding to put my nerd/geek/smart-guy skills to use for my peers and I very often experienced that, when I was alone with the toughest kid in the class or any of his buddies, that they actually envied me at some point.
Never the less, learning to fight and stand for yourself and speak the language of the street is a skill-kit that one has to learn aswell. And just because a majority has stacked me out as their main target doesn't mean I'm allways wrong. It could also mean that I'm just smarter than them, or, more likely, have put more thoughts to the issue on which our oppinions differ.
In any case, it's allways good to take a step back and look at a bad situation from all sides in order to get the right picture. A good teacher can teach any type of kid that sort of approach, be it the bully or the nerd.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I was bullied from the second grade upwards. Mainly by one or two year older stupid sons of bitches. I didn't know why they teased me, called me names, tried to beat me up and slapped me around. Maybe because I was a little overweight back then. My solution was to avoid going to school, spend the days in the local forests, wait outside my home until my mother left work work or whatnot. For periods of two weeks or even longer at times.
I can't even remember some of my school years because I was missing so many days. I wish I could have understood that by fighting back I could have stopped it right there. But I didn't. I always felt like it was my own fault somehow. And the teachers couldn't do anything about it. I even moved this negative energy to some other students weaker than me, which I still regret.
The traumas of all the bullying and teasing are still inside me, I can still feel the hate for those bullies. I wish I could just let go, and I know that at some point I will.
Would I be a different person if I fought back then ? Probably. But all the bullying and teasing also has tempered me as a human being, I wont accept any shit anymore, not anymore man! So in kinda of a way I thank them for making my will so strong. Still, not wishing anyone being bullied or teased, ultimately I would probably advice kids to fight back, show them that you can't be bullied, even if it's wrong in a sense. Violence shouldn't be answered with violence, but in some cases it is justified.
GeoKone.NET
I always compared kids to packs of wild animals deciding on the picking order, and those that don't fit the pack get rejected, since they can't actually get rid of the unwanted kids, they pick on them until they go sit in a dark corner somewhere out of sight.
Never under estimate the influences of our animal instincts
...to say the least.
'Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected' - is a bad title for the summary, and the article. It does indeed seem to 'lay blame' on the victims - because it claims to have found the (one?) reason behind bullying; the victim's social abilities.
From reading the article (sorry), it is clear that the study is not saying this is the reason (let alone only reason) behind bullying. It is about "...factors in a child's behavior that can lead to social rejection"; it is saying certain kids are more likely to be bullied, not that they are at fault! If someone told you skinny, physically weak kids were more likely to be bullied, would you get mad at them for suggesting it is the skinny kid's fault?
A better title would be 'Studies Reveal Why Certain Kids Get Bullied and Rejected'. Blame the journalist, not the study.
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
The article is not trying to put 100% of the fault on the victims.
Bully do bully because, to repeat what the FP has said, they are dicks. And as there always will be dicks around, there always will be bullies.
What the article tries to explain is : *why* a specific target is always picked up by the bullies.
For what reason are the typical nerds more often picked up by bullies ?
Because, although you can't change human nature and suddenly stop producing idiots, on the other hand you might try teaching the missing skills to avoid bully victims.
If the usual victims of bullies fall more often victims because they lack some basic social skill, maybe we could teach them the skills and help them avoid falling victim again.
There's a reason so many bullies go by handles like "Chopper," "Dumbo" and "Buddy" (all ones that I knew personally) and it isn't because they're brightest bulbs in the lamp.
Yup. Personal experience, too. I happen to have been a non typical-geek : much taller than my peers, and with slightly more strength the expected. As a geek, the bully always tried to pick me. It took them a *really looooooonnnng* time until they finally understand that, because of the differences in physical build, most of their attempts met a "toss-the-dwarf" ending. With the bullies in the role of the dwarf.
You would have expected that at least some preservation instinct would have kicked in, but it looked like there weren't enough available neurons to process the information in 1 go.
However, my dad always said 'don't get mad, get even.'
Indifference is a good reaction. Looks like most buddy lack social skills, too. They are looking after way to attract attention and make themselves feel "alpha". But instead of trying to be genuinely cool, they don't understand much beyond violence (physical or social). Reacting to them (getting mad or scared) is playing along them at their own game.
They only expect 2 reactions : Either the potential victims fights back, or better attempts to flee.
They are completely put off by target who just ignore them.
And they are even more astonished if their potential victim laughs their attempts off.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's fine, and yeah I don't have kids my fiance stays in my room and I don't have a gun in any case. So I can see how kids would change things.
GP referred to killing a break and enter' as an "unfortunately necessary action". Which is what threw me. I pictured like terminator in camo body paint whipping out the missile launcher to blow away anything that moved. While hilarious it seemed a tad misguided. Your approach is more reasonable.
But I must ask you.... how many break and enters are violent? How many of those do you think the criminals WANTED? I think it is possible that by pulling a gun on a guy with a gun you increase the chances of getting loved ones and yourself hurt. Most (re. vast majority) enters are there for money, but if you pull a gun on them them they will kill you to protect themselves, I mean they are assholes already if they are robbing you. What good does it do them to shoot people? Now a rapist could easily go somewhere else to rape. And once you've shouted your warning clearly it isn't happening. So the only people left really are insane serial murders that have chosen your house to rape and murder. Does this seem more or less likely than getting robbed by an idiot with a gun?
That'll be why it's called "Asperger's Syndrome" then.
Oh, wait...
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
If you read the posts here, everyone has been bullied and hates bullies. We're also looking at a decently academic group here. That's because when a child is bullied, they are more secluded from the 'cool' group, and cast aside from the mainstream to worry about abstract thinking and being 'geeky and smart'. By grade 12, the bullies are all dropouts and these once bullied kids are now the normal kids with ambitions, because they became smart. Seclusion is a great tool to nurture academic success.
IIRC during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, more Russian lives were lost to bullying than to the enemy! Hopefully that is not the case with US soldiers now.
Beaten, kicked on the ground, they trying to make me eat glue by 3 bullies. One week end I will remember, after Saturday school, I did not go back home. I coldly took a decision that this had to end with either of us not standing up. I took some metal pipe there in the garbage, then went on to every of their home. Then I waited nearby for them to go out alone over both Saturday and Sunday. I then cornered the first two on the Saturday, the 3rd one on Sunday. I surprised one by one and beat on them until all my rage was gone. They got broken bone, and a lot of blood. They never rated on me. I probably would have killed them if they had not stopped screaming and debating themselves. When I look back now, I think I went *real* psychotic, and I would put myself under a ward for observation. Every time I was angry ever after , I remembered that day, and stopped myself escalating anything.
Muggers go to jail.
Rapists go to jail.
Murderers go to jail - or, sometimes, get executed.
There are laws that deal with most crimes. Laws to punish who would dare commit those crimes. And sorta protect (avenge) the victims.
For bullying and bullies, no adequate or precise law (code of conduct) exists to deal with 'em.
It seems that you (the victim) have to take the law in your own hands.
-AC
Plus, if a kid spits on you, the right response is to ask him to stop and then move your body away from him, not to punch him. Punching him deserves punishment even if you were being spit on.
I'm bothered by the volume of "beat the shit outta them" responses. When I was 12 I did just that--socked some jerk in the mouth who wouldn't leave me alone. Years later, I learned through another party that this incident led to his respecting me.
Strangely, I don't feel happy about that. It bugs me that the best way to get his respect, and the only way I could think of, was to turn to violence. I don't like the idea of using fighting to fix problems. What looks like a simple childhood schoolyard lesson could plant the seeds in children that will lead to them making decisions to go to war as adults because they can't figure out a better way.
Now, I'm not trying to push some happy-sappy Christian bs on everyone here, but to me, the best lesson is that there is ALWAYS a better way. Always. Full stop. And this is from a guy who as a kid who was shoved into lockers and had his face pressed into the sand more than once. That's just the PHYSICAL abuse I endured.
For the victim of bullying, the real pain from it starts in your own head. Another reason nobody is citing here for bullying is that bullies go after people they can bother. If it doesn't bother you (I don't mean ACTING like it doesn't bother you. I mean it REALLY doesn't bother you), the bullies will smell that too, and often lose interest. It's also healthier to look inside and think about WHY it bothers you so much, and whether or not you've got hidden problems you didn't know about. I'm not "blaming the victim" here, because that would assume the victim is responsible for the bullying. The bully is responsible for what happens. The victim, however, is responsible for what happens next.
But hey, if this is too tough for you guys to comprehend, then by all means, go back to bloodying your knuckles. Fight violence with violence. Well done. Glad to see you're above all that.
You got bullied by the debate team? BWAHAHAHAHAHAA
Completely completely untrue. I can see breaking into a house for a large number of reasons. I know some people that have broken into houses to steal beer or to hold a party when the owners are on vacation. And I imagine the vast majority of robbers don't want to fucking kill anyone.
Are they *willing* to kill someone, not do they *want* to. Whatever they *want* to do that entails breaking into a house, the fact that they are breaking into a private residence where a family is probably sleeping means they are highly, highly more likely to kill or just harm that family than, say, someone who does not break into their house and respects private property, privacy, and dignity. That still doesn't address willingness, but just the fact that they're willing to break the law and increase the risk to the family seems to me to indicate more of a willingness to do other types of harm.
Personally I think the big issue is surprise. People who break into houses generally fit a certain profile -- they're young, they're male, they're physically fit. You don't hear about 300 pound women breaking into houses.
Point being, a house robber is generally capable of overpowering a good portion of the home owning population. A 20 year old with a baseball bat that he used to break the window versus the 50 year old overweight guy who got woken up at 3am and is in his pajamas... not much of a contest.
So if the homeowner confronts the robber, either the robber will say "Oh shit, I just wanted a beer, I'm going to leave" or the robber will escalate the situation and probably be successful. The alternative is to just shoot the robber immediately and not risk the escalation.
I have only had one of my students try to fight. He is small, and his intent was obvious, so it wasn't hard to hold him back. It's Taiwan, and they were yelling Chinese, so I'm not sure. But, I believe the one being attacked was the aggressor. The aggressor was larger, and laughed at the attack.
The attacker is a student who frequently cries in my class. He misbehaves a lot. So I punish him. He cries. He gets angry for some other reason he cries. This student needs to learn some other tactics. Incidentally, the bullied often become bullies themselves. Maybe I can use this as an opportunity to help him learn some better strategies.
Also, I dislike the complete objection to the bullied student being taught to do something different. If a person is frequently treated badly by numerous people, maybe they ARE doing something wrong. The bully should still be punished, but that doesn't mean you can't talk to the bullied.
The tribal mentality of terrorist groups reminds me of highschool bullies in a way in that they prey on the weaknesses of others attempting to instill fear. Why am I mentioning this? Because after reading the many posts in favor of fighting back against bullies I wanted to point out that in many ways there is a parallel happening today on a larger scale. Imho it is vital that victims of terrorism show strength by fighting back. As soon as you show fear you're hunted down by the lion pack. So ya'll seem to understand this concept is what I'm sayin which makes me wonder why it seems we don't understand why the U.S. went to "war." Yeah war is bad, most of us know that, but sometimes it's thrust upon you by bullies who need a good punch in the mouth once in a while.
Look, the bulk of the real world is bullshit, with the stronger/more powerful/wealthy crapping on anyone they can. Learning that (and yes, sometimes that requires failure and sometimes failure is painful) and how to deal with it, is a MAJOR LIFE SKILL.
Protecting our precious little younglings from the scarring behavior of schoolyard chums does what, then? Leave them entirely unprepared for the serious fuck-with-you-ness of the adult world? Terrific!
Perhaps to you, a kid scamming them out of their lunch money in school is tragic, and makes them sad. To me, that gives them the first foretaste of how easily it is to be gulled, and might help them reflexively avoid getting taken for serious cash when a desperate Minister from Nigeria emails them looking for help with his $7 million account.
Your kid getting bullied at school? Don't just march into the school in a huff demanding someone 'do something' about it. TEACH your child how to deal constructively with the situation, or failing that, defend themselves physically. Solving the issue by talking to the principal or getting the other kid expelled teaches your child nothing but to rely on some uber-authority to fix everything, and that is what eventually makes Democrats and people who believe in the UN. (OK that was a joke, folks.)
-Styopa
In the high school halls
/Problem
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
(Subdivisions)
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Conform or get harassed by bullies? How about the next time someone harasses you, you ask them nicely to stop, and if they continue, punch them in the face.
It's the typical self-help bullshit: be self-confident, smile and every problem solves itselves.
1) Ask the child what happened and listen without judgment.
2) Ask the child to identify their mistake. (Often children only know that someone got upset, but don't understand their own role in the outcome.)
Do you see any contradiction between the two?
Thanks for posting this. I'm getting really tired of all of the people getting modded +5 for saying, "I fought back, and the bullying stopped!" Yeah, pure genius. As if bullies had no idea how to adapt to that.
Do the bullies have friends? Then fighting back only goes so far. You'll be held down by the others. Actually, no, you won't. You'll starting fighting one guy, and the others will go tattle on you to a teacher. You'll both be punished, but the bully will be laughing at you for getting you in trouble, and he'll start it again to see if you'll risk getting in trouble again. Maybe punching a guy works when the bully doesn't have friends, when he's an outcast himself that no one likes, but those are somewhat few and far between. Good-looking kids with rich, happy parents are just as likely to become bullies as kids from messed up families.
Not all bullies are physical bullies. Some... sorry, MOST are psychological bullies. They'll never throw a punch at you. Instead, they'll drive you crazy until you throw a punch at them. And then they'll go tell a teacher, and you'll be the bad guy, or at least on equal footing with them, and so they know you'll never try to fight back again because you'll just end up in trouble again. And you'll just be the idiot who tried to punch the popular kid.
If you were naturally strong enough to end a fight in a single punch, sure, maybe you could deal with bullying problems yourself, but bullies don't tend to target those kinds of people in the first place. If you could go back in time and tell my pre-adolescent, low-self-esteem self that I could just break a guy's nose and everything would be okay... Well, no, I did start a few fights when I couldn't take it anymore, and the school's reaction was to punish everyone involved. This collection of +5 insightful anecdotes is not adding up to data.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Duh, basic pack mentality. Go for the ones that are different. Being the smallest kid in school (started kindergarten a year early), doing well on tests, asking lots of questions and actually having conversations with teachers and reading all the time, yeah, I was basic bully material from day one.
It stopped a bit in jr. high when I broke a kid's arm. He was holding on to a banister when he shoved me. Luckily, I was holding either The Silmarillion or Dune. I spun around and brought the spine down on his arm. I didn't get in any trouble (late '70's) as there were no knives involved. Things quieted down after that but were still not relaxed. Instead of calling me 'worm' (short for book worm), they now called me 'spaz.' High school was similar low-key stuff but with bigger crowd (2,500 students) was easy to just disappear. I called it social invisibility.
The article's interesting in there conclusions that bullied kids end up dropping out and doing drugs. For most of my friends, we specialized in computers and are now doing ok, even if we are still socially awkward. Maybe things have changed?
I drank what? -- Socrates
everyone here was bullied,
Sorry, but it’s long well-know what causes people to get rejected, become bullies, become respected, etc.
It all depends on who is drawing others into his sense of reality, and who is drawn in to the sense of reality of others.
Four examples:
- You are insecure, and you follow others: You are going to get bullied, and not even know it. Because you learn it’s right that that bully always gets a part of your share of something good. You even defend him. Worst case: Hitler-follower. Likely case: “Yes, boss. Yes, boss. Yes, boss.” office drone.
- You do not follow others, but are insecure: Others will see that, and because your non-conformance gives them an attack vector, you are definitely going to get bullied. A lot. Your whole life you’ll be the one who always gets the “bad luck”, and you may not even know why.
- You follow others, but are very stable in “your” reality: You’ll become someone who believes things, and stands behind them, no matter if they are right or wrong, because you have no own right and wrong. Because whoever you follow said so. And worse: You will drag others into it too. You may end up as a extremist (religious/racist/etc) rally leader, under your guru/politician/Hitler-equivalent. Or a PR guy with no soul. Etc. Normal case: Religious big-party voter, who thinks TV-news-reality is what is right and wrong, and is willing to fight, to protect that reality.
- You are very stable in your own reality, and do only follow your own values: You will draw others in, from the very beginning. (All those in the categories above.) And become a leader. Or if you are evil, a bully. In later life you may become the hero of many people. Either in the good sense, or in the Hitler one. Depending on if your own values are good for others, or bad. Also, if your own views are delusional, you may become some kind of religious leader, drawing many people into false values. But you will never be bullied or become the village idiot. Realistically, you will just have a good life and reach your goals.
Conclusion: You control how others react to you. By how you act. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you’re good, and know that you are right, people will naturally start to follow you. (Everybody wants to have a part of that good you give and learn from that (seemingly or really wise) leadership. You don’t need to become a leader. But they will always respect you, and not bully you.
There may be upcoming wannabe-leaders who may, because of their own strong reality, want to fight you. But that will not influence your views. Only that of those who follow you and are very weak themselves. (Which are just as easy to turn back again.)
But most other people like you, especially later in life, will recognize you as one of theirs. And mostly you will go out of each other’s way, and/or respect you anyway.
And now the good part: The only reason you are what you are today, is because you say so. If you decide to stop being a follower, but become a leader tomorrow... so be it. It will be work, and not be nothing. But only in a fight with yourself, and with those who are used to being able to push you around and command you.
Remember that there is a point to most people not being leaders. A society where everybody is a leader, would not work very well, would it?
Just don’t be a bully yourself, if you are one. It will only harm your respect and decimate those who stand behind you.
So if you want to protect your kids from getting bullied, let them have their own opinions and know that they are right or wrong. Independent from others, but not delusional.
It’s extremely important as a parent, to acknowledge that your kid was right, and you were wrong, when that is the case. Also when your kid won against you in something (e.g. arguing about something), acknowledge it. There’s an easy way to do that, and keep your respect: Just be proud of them! Just like a kung-
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The "research" that the article is talking about basically says that victims of bullying are socially inept and tend to irritate socially-skilled bullies into action.
The article reflects a strong bias towards extroversion. Extroverts and introverts just don't understand each other: extroverts can't fathom why introverts keep to themselves, and find introverts "weird" and "inept"; introverts can't fathom why extroverts are such social butterflies, and find extroverts "shallow" and "superficial".
I'm an introvert, and I suspect most people on ./ are too. Hence the article rubs a lot of people the wrong way. In essence the article claims that victims of bullying are socially inept. That's a typical extrovert's view of introverts.
I suspect that most bullies are extroverts, and most victims introverts. I wonder if anyone has looked for a correlation?
Probably not. After all, in America, extroversion is considered normal, and introversion is treated as a disorder.
Alejo
You don't get it, do you? Do you need research to find out why bullies exist and why they behave the way they do?
It's actually quite simple: humans are pack animals and in any pack there's an alpha male who leads, and some wannabe who gets beaten into submission or killed. Mankind however has unwisely decided to skip the beating and killing, so the wannabes keep being wannabes.
And what does a wannabe alpha do? Lacking the skills to lead, it clings to the shreds of self-esteem it can keep and in order to maintain them, it has to reaffirm it by picking on defenceless victims and surrounding itself by lackeys who are even inferior to it in abilities and self-esteem. Of course, in order to keep the respect of those lowlives, it has to keep reasserting its make-believe superiority by picking on the aforementioned victims.
So, make no mistake: there's no way to keep a bully from being what it is. You cannot talk to them, you cannot bargain with them, you cannot reason with them. They won't stop being bullies, even when grown up. They will use different means, but that's what they are.
The only way to defeat a bully is by bursting its self-esteem bubble and causing it to lose its respect. That can only be achieved by the calculated and unrestrained use of violence on the part of the target or targets, violence that must be both physical and psychological and is to be exercised in the presence of its lackeys, which have been observed to not intervene when their leader is in obvious difficulty.
The bully must be hit, harshly, and with intent to cause harm. Bullies in the vast majority of the cases do not attack with the intention of causing lasting damage, only minor incapacitation and humiliation, but such limits must not be observed when dealing with them. The first blows must be aimed to stun and/or reduce its mobility and ability to fight back, the rest to subdue it in the fastest way possible. Ganging up is possible, because the objective is not a fair fight, but to cause the bully to lose any respect.
The attack should not take place on school grounds because misguided, feel-good policies have severely curtailed the natural tendence of human nature to self-balance via the old and effective ways of ultraviolence. Public soil is acceptable. Dark alleys or places out of the public's eye should be preferred. Normally it only takes one session to neutralize the bully, if more are needed then the second one should be way harsher and further humiliation should be contemplated. Forcing the target to run home without his pants is an option. Shitting on his face would be a bonus.
In any case, remember that bullies are like nerds: they're inferior specimen, losers. The difference is that the nerd is a loser who wants to be a loser, while the bully is a loser who wants to be a winner. Have no mercy with neither, they're not human and should not be treated as such.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
>How about you try to think of a way of addressing this problem which doesn't
>hold the victim responsible for their own victimisation?
I don't think there is such a way.
I was bullied terribly as a kid. And unlike those in the article, the consequence for me was that I developed FANTASTIC people-reading skills as a result. I was CONSTANTLY on guard for who would be picking on my next, and what little detail of my behavior might be the next excuse for me being different.
I also believe, as other posters have said, that the only real response is to stand up for yourself violently. You are right, there will be some who simply are unable to do so, and for them, that sucks real bad. But for those who can, they should.
Because I don't think there is anything else you can do. You cannot tell an adult. Telling an adult, even if the adult bothers to get involved, will simply get you labeled as a tattle-tale, which will ratchet up the bullying, only now it will be anonymous. For example, you will be walking down the hall when your books suddenly go flying, and when you turn around no one will indicate who did it, but all will be smirking about it. Or your ear will be painfully thumped and when you turn around everyone is all innocent-eyed. Or you will find nasty little anonymous notes about your penis size taped to the back of your clothes.
I told my mother about getting picked on on the school bus. So one afternoon she got on the school bus and told all the kids to stop. What do you suppose the effect of this was? Do you think it made the bullying stop, or rather made the bullying increase because I had to have my mommy come deal with my problems for me?
I told my mother about getting picked on in math class. So one day she came and sat in on my math class. Of course I did not say a WORD that it was MY mother but the bullies suspected. And so the bullying all went underground so it could not be pinned on them.
I should have fought back.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
This just proves we should all be living by the Code of Harry, just like Dexter!
Well the study seems to be saying fault lies with the victims of bullying.
That wasn't the impression I got from the article at all, but my perspective may be a bit different from yours.
Neither my wife, nor me, were one of the "cool" kids in school (to say the least), so it came as no surprise that social interaction did not come naturally to our kids, either. Over the years, we both learned enough of the rules of social interaction, but it came late, and after being (ahem) uncool in school. Not wanting our kids to go through the same problems we did, we decided to teach them what we learned about how to interact with other people.
It became apparent early on in their lives. When my oldest was 3, she had no friends. Zero. And it was pretty obvious why: whenever another kid would say "hi" to her or even come to within a few feet of her, she'd emit a blood-curdling scream and throw a tantrum. Would you want to be friendly with someone who did that?
So my wife and I simply taught her how to be friendly. There was one kid who, for whatever reason, hadn't given up on our daughter. We told our daughter to go up to her, smile, and say, "Hi Julie!" and then give her a hug the next time she sees her. They remain best friends to this day. When we were at the playground, if another kid would come up, before ours had a chance to scream, we'd say, "Here comes someone who wants to play with you. Say, 'hi, want to come play on the [whatever] with me?'."
We repeated the instruction with our subsequent children when they were young, and they seem to do just fine now. The point the article is making is that some kids really just don't get how to interact with others, and it's important for us to teach them. I didn't read anything in the article that excused bullying or blamed the victim.
That'll be why it's called "Asperger's Syndrome" then.
Yeah thats funny isn't it!
Helps people think that the 'poor aspie' can't control themselves. That they just *have* to be a total cunt to those around them.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
You decide how you act, your personality is yours to control.
If you behave like that then its your responsibility.
Deal with it.
Just because your doctors or specialists have told you that you 'have asperger's syndrome' doesn't mean that you are 'out of control'. Ultimately YOU decide how you behave. And if YOU decide to continue behaving in that way, thats your *responsibility*.
You are not your personality, nor your mind nor even your body; YOU are the 'self that dwells within', YOU are the 'first cause'.
You can wrest control of yourself, your mind your body your personality.
Thats your right, your privilege and... your responsibility.
Take charge of yourself, treat your personality as a subordinate. If you find it producing behaviors that you don't like then *change* it.
Personality isn't something you are stuck with. Asperger's is, like so many other things, a choice.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Actually, one reason bullies get away with their violence is that other people ADMIRE them. Think back to a situation where one person was being singled out by a bully. What did other people do? They gathered in a circle to watch. Why? Because they feared and admired the bully. They wished they had the bully's apparent courage.
Not to mention schadenfreude. It's fun to watch someone suffer. Humans often derive pleasure from watching the pain of others. Morality often gets in the way, but when we really want to, we can overcome morality and get into a pleasurable trance and indulge our desires.
This admiration has been shown to extend to figures of authority. Whatever you may have heard to the contrary, everyone, including teachers in school, admires apparent strength. It's a natural reaction.
The only reason teachers might step in and intervene on the victim's behalf is because a pang of conscience, instilled on them at some training session, comes up. Then the teacher screws up the courage to call on their own authority and "do the right thing." But it takes a deliberate effort: just like the other fans of the bully standing in a circle around the victim, the teacher has a natural admiration for the aggressor.
Alejo
It's all about attitude--and that has to be learned.
Watch dogs; it's not the big dogs that win, it's the dogs with a big attitude.
When my kids were still kids, my son came in the house one day complaining that one of the other kids had pushed him off his bike and taken it away. I asked, "is he bigger than you?" When he said, "much bigger", I told him to find a stick and hit the kid with it until he got his bike back. Yah--I'm a really bad parent.
A little while later he came back on his bike and put a baseball bat back where it belonged. I asked him if he'd hit the other kid. He said, "Nah--as soon as he saw me he left my bike and ran away."
That by itself would be a good story, but the icing on the cake is a few minutes later when an irate father and his bawling eight-year-old appear at my door. Apparently my kid beat up his kid and he wants an apology. So I call my kid to the door. The father takes one look at my four-year-old, grabs his kid by the ear, apologises, and leaves.
Attitude
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
I assume, then, that the face blindness is also a choice. Or the Social Anxiety (I know full well that there is nothing to worry about intellectually, but that doesn't stop my body having a panic reaction.) Or the Auditory Processing issues. Or, or, or...
Asperger's is a real condition, with real consequences. Those consequences can sometimes be mitigated, with practice and training, but those are workarounds: we really do not think in the same way that you do, we do not react in the same way that you do, even if we have learned to pass as NT.
It is a constraint on our behaviour, just as being male (I presume) is a constraint on yours. Unless you are a practising Thelemite, in which case you might have the first vaguest foggy glimmer of how hard it is to willingly change an innate trait.
Go ahead, tell a gay man that it's just a matter of willpower, and he can be straight if he really really tries.
And I hope that your obvious ignorance never comes back to bite you. Who am I kidding: you're NT, and have the privilege of being able to demand that I act like you, and feel like you're simply being reasonable. You have the privilege of being normal... so shut the fuck up about what it's like to not be normal, 'k?
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
An explanation is not an excuse. A reason is not a license.
Some people are just arseholes. And, shock, most of those are NTs. You're doing a pretty good impersonation right now, yourself.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Please show me where this works anywhere other than on paper as written by timid intellectuals who are busy trying to re-write their own failed childhoods.
Odin gave me a hard heart.
The only thing I could say to someone like you would be 'Get a grip on yourself, man'.
Your personality is NOT an 'innate trait' that you have no control over. I discovered this when I was eleven years old and wrought deliberate change in myself, my personality. And have done so several times since then. If Aspergers had been trendy back then, I'd probably have been diagnosed with it and encouraged to believe that it was out of my hands and all I could do was seek therapy, maybe some medication or something rather than take myself in hand and *change*.
Your use of the term 'Thelemite' indicates that you have some idea what I am talking about. Sure it is hard; its one of the hardest things that you can possibly do, but also the most rewarding. Indeed I would have to say that it is a *duty*.
Don't think yourself powerless; you are the most powerful entity in existence.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Many people are quick to mislabel bullys as psychopaths and dismiss them as purely evil. Which is of course absurd, as psychopaths simply don't feel empathy in many cases - this doesn't make them malicious or bad people.
What I wonder though is if the victims could also be sociopaths, with a lack of empathy also being responsible for the lack of social skills and getting targeted.
Some psychopaths may be smart and have dominant personalities and so become bullys(as well as all the on bully psychopaths) who may prey on anyone to remain dominant.
Some psychopaths may not be as smart or not not e dominant, and then make an easy targets and get victimized as well.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Every man and every woman is a star... but stars are yet of the universe, and each star is in orbit around other stars.
While I am the master who makes the grass green, my head is not so big as to carry rocks inside it.
I am not my body, or my brain. But I am of them. And this is not a mere function of ‘personality’. My brain works differently from yours. You can perceive things which I cannot. It is that simple. You may as well tell me to see in gamma rays as to be able to notice subtle emotions on another's face.
Change is easy -- when you are physically capable of doing so. I can not think like you, but I can learn to look like I do. Which I have done, but it is not a matter of ‘changing’ my personality, but of hiding those things I cannot do.
So you are an Ásatrúar. In what manifestation then, do you see Óðinn? Is He the Blood God, harsh and demanding of sacrifice, or is He the One-eyed, questing for knowledge and wisdom? Because from your exchange here, Huginn and Muninn would blunt their beaks trying to penetrate your skull.
You do not understand Asperger's, or people with it. You think you do, but you are wrong.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Seriously, when I was in high school, I was THE nerd. If you asked someone who was the nerd in my school, they would tell you it was me. So I really understand what it's like to be on the receiving end of bullying.
But unlike most of you social retards (I'm trying to sound like a jerk to drive home the point emotionally as well as intellectually), I eventually developed social skills. It happened in my 20's, but it eventually happened. I learned to pay attention to people's feelings and not stomp on them. I learned to consider the consequences of my actions and not take action that bothered people.
See, the thing is, I wasn't just picked on by bullies. I was picked on by EVERYONE. Why? Because I was obnoxious. I irritated the hell out of them. I behaved strangely. I only ever talked about computers. I thought that if I didn't intend harm, then there couldn't possibly BE any harm, so anyone objection to anything I did was just being a jerk.
Growing up is hard, and it involves realizing that there are other people in the world besides yourself and that you have to take an active role in making room for those other people. If you don't, they will ostracize you. It's as simple as that. You can be yourself, you can be weird, and you can have your geeky interests. No one's saying that you have to pretend to be not a geek. They're just saying that you have to learn to treat other people with respect.
Of course, the problem with most of you people here on slashdot is that you have had it beaten into you that you're obnoxious, and you just don't CARE. And so you are the TRUE bullies. The bullies in high school are often abused kids who are acting out against a world that is hostile to them, so they pick on the weaker people to make themselves feel better. But they're usually not very self-aware. They don't have the mens rea, so to speak. They're like animals who realize only on a rudimentary level that they're hurting people. This is also true of most nerds. The bullies and the nerds share this lack of awareness of other people's space. The truly evil ones are the nerds who eventually realize why people don't like them and keep doing it anyway because it's fun to be an asshole.
People need to learn to respect others and take responsibility for their actions. Grow up and start acting like a member of the human race and not some kind of pseudo-superior schmuck with a god complex.
Ever watch "Bones"? The TV show with David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel, where they're a bunch of forensic anthropologists. There was this one moment that really pissed me off, because Bones (Dr. Brennan) can be such an ass. (Occasionally, I suspend reality and get caught up in the story. I'm also married, which means I have sex and know something about compromise. It also affects what TV shows I watch.) The characters were commenting about how a bunch of the people working there were geniuses. And then Brennan says "except Angela." Now, the thing is, this was just Brennan being her usual intellectual, socially unaware self. She didn't MEAN anything mean by it. But it was a terribly mean thing to say. And it was also quite wrong. On numerous occasions, Angela had given psychologists like Sweets a run for their money. She's not trained as a psychologist. This stuff just comes naturally. She's a SOCIAL genius.
Why am I taking a tangent into prime-time TV? Because it's a good example of what happens in reality. We technical geeks think we're such hot shit because we can compile Linux kernels. Meanwhile, we alienate anyone who can't. We act like the only kind of genius is the computer nerd. We forget that there are people whose intelligence is as great as ours, just directed at other things. And I don't mean just things like math and physics. Linguists and psychologists count too. And people who know how to make a lot of friends.
Where do you think Steve Jobs' RDF comes from? He's a brilliant social manipulator. He's also very aware of what people want, what t
Change is easy -- when you are physically capable of doing so
I once had a friend describe me as 'an advanced occultist'. I nearly slapped him.
I said "I still get hayfever. When I no longer get hayfever then you can call me 'an advanced occultist'. Until then, I'm just a beginner."
Aspergers is in no way equivalent to being blind. Except in cases of 'hysterical blindness'.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
We can identify ASPD traits in Children with a simple fMRI test.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
The kid getting picked on does not lack social skills. The person doing the bulling does. (Yes antisocial behaviour is a sighn og improper social skills). Why are the same kids always targeted for bulling.... because the bullies need someone who is dis-inclined to fight back.
Fighting does not necesarily result in anit social behaviour though. In young males a fight often does alot to release agresion and fustration, the beefs of a 13 year old are not that deep! and are quikly orgoten after a good bif up.
During highschool I have made good freinds with some of my former bullies. It turns out after standing up to them and beeting them up a bit you also get their respect. Mutual respect then established understanding and friendship may then follow.
"Face blindness".
It is not a blindness of the eyes, it is a blindness of the brain. I cannot visualise faces. None. I cannot describe to you my own wife's face, nor those of my children. I can recognise them, but that is handled in a different part of the brain.
It is just as real, just as organic, as colour blindness.
"Auditory Processing Deficit".
I cannot filter multiple sound sources properly. The Cocktail Party Effect does not exist for me. It is not a deafness of the ears, it is a deafness of the brain.
And it is just as real, just as organic, as tinnitus.
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
Pretty sure confronting the break and enter guy with a gun counts as escalation. And a 20 year old with a bat might take a swing at a guy that comes out towards him with a gun. It is human instinct. If you are in a different part of the house, shout that you have a gun, hell, fire it into a floorboard. They will not have that opportunity, even if they have a gun... What in your house could be so valuable to risk (high risk) getting shot for. I'm not saying criminals are smart, but they aren't retarded, so they sure as fuck aren't going in your room.
.1% that doesn't is clearly mentally deranged and if he's fucked up enough to enter the room then shoot him rambo style. I mean the guy should look like fucking scarface by the time he hits the floor.
BTW, statistically speaking. By buying a gun to protect yourself and family you actually put yourself more at risk because of it. That is right, by owning a gun YOU are more likely to die. Most cases you end up in a struggle and shoot yourself. Do all the, 'that wouldn't happen to me' you want, but that's the stats.
I imagine lots of loud warnings, firing a shot telling them to fuck off and that you've called the cops will make ~99.9% of criminals go the hell away. The last
some children are inherently weaker than others. [...] they often do get teased even by "normal" people.
I contest the notion that any educational institution may accept Darwinian peer pressure as purportedly "normal".
First of all, I believe starting a topic on bullies on slashdot is an obvious flamebait. A damn good flamebait, ofc.
I saw many interesting ideas flying around, but have you ever considered being grateful to the bullies?!
As crazy as it may sound, you started to brush your hair because someone made a cruel joke about your hair, you didn't forgot your keys again after you had to wait 2 hours in front of your house.
We are generically driven by any feedback, but negative feedback is the one driving our learning process. We hate experiencing that shiat so we avoid what it caused it.
What I'm saying is that the fact that you got bullied, and because you were an outcast, it forced you to find alternative ways to dominate them - by developing your intelect.
How much of our capabilities is inherited and how much is learned is unclear, but one thing is sure: none is zero. It's a mix.
"People will love you if you make them think they are thinking, but they will hate you if you really make them think"
True learning is a painful process.
YMMV ofc.
Take bullies of various kinds (muscle, pretty, wealth) and put them in groups with other bullies of the same type. All the meat heads in one place would get to be bullied by someone even bigger and meaner. Then you give them a choice: be bullied, or go back to the other school and behave themselves.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
and all chinese are robots
and all muslims are angry
and all europeans are communists
and all americans are warmongerers
etc...
your "thesis" is nothing but racism and ethnic and religious prejudice
the simple truth is, within any community, there is violence and sexual abuse (the amish have a higher rate of domestic abuse than outside the community), and there is peace and tranquility (the huao live in balance with their natural environment)
every single man woman and child, no matter what cultural background, has the potential for great evil, and great good. and to talk of cultural modifications is to deny personal responsibility, deny personal freedom, and traffic in the lamest racist and prejudicial thinking. you prejudge people: you see that, right?
that amish guy who cradled the murderer might go home and beat his wife. that huao 5 year old child might decide to embrace his father's killer instead. can you know if they choose otherwise? are their destinies written and unchanging and unyielding by your cultural relativistic bullshit?
give it up, at best you're naive and inexperienced of the world, at worst you're a racist, most definitely you're sheltered. go live in seoul, go live in beirut, go live in lagos, go live in buenos aires: in every human community in the world you will find saints and sinners and even tempered people and madmen and criminals and cops and hate-filled hearts and the loving
human personality and character is a statistical continuum across time and space. no culture or society manifests a skewed representation of one aspect of human behavior or another. to believe otherwise is to be a deluded inexperienced fool of human behavior in this world and throughout history
the amish live in peace beacuse they CAN: they are nestled deep in the american heartland. their philosophy is only possible because of their parasitical relationship with a larger entity: the united states. you know, the united states, remember gw bush, the warmongerer? the amish voted for him in vast majority. meanwhile, plop the amish in the middle of someplace like, oh, the caucasus mountains, and you will see one of two things: 1. instant extinction of the amish. 2. the emergence of the amish, known as the fierce war-makers: cultural "attitude" depends upon context. meanwhile, the huao, given protections from their neighbors like he amish enjoy in the usa, would have no desire to imperialistically go out and destroy others. the huao, above all things, just want to be left alone. so your judgments of these "cultures" exists in vacuum of considering the context in which they exist
i give you nathanael greene:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathanael_Greene
raised as a peace loving quaker, kicked out for avidly pursuing the science of war
i give you mustafa ataturk;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk
man of war who bequeathed his society peaceful reform
judge human beings as INDIVIDUALS, not as some racist subtype: all turks are imperialsts, all quakers are peace-loving: fucking racist thinking. your heart is full of prejudice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'd be a bit cautious here since the article we're discussing is from a pop press science website which has picked up a fairly technical psychology journal and summarized the article. There is no info on the guy writing the bit in "ScienceWorld" regarding whether he has the background to offer a summary on high-end psychology research.
The actual article was titled:
"Concurrent Validity and Clinical Usefulness of Several Individually Administered Tests of Children's Social-Emotional Cognition" published in "Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology"
Which is in my mind a fair stretch from what was reported in "ScienceWorld".
I'd simply blame the interpretation of a technical article into something it wasn't and then sticking it on a website where it was picked up by a slew of others so we have a completely misrepresented article spread around the world three times over.
I get bullied on slash dot all the time. Mom says it's because I don't understand emoticons. *&^
And that would be wrong.
Fair enough, I don't really know the stats. Do they address the possibility that people who own guns might be more likely to live in unsafe areas? (I don't know if that's true but it seems to make sense.) I'd like to see a study of the people who got injured after brandishing a gun that asks whether they still think having a gun is a good idea.
I find it ironic that 99.9% of the people here are all victims of bullying all trying to understand and explain what a bully might be feeling or thinking.