Social Bullying

: You're welcome

: Bullying causes school shooting, unless bullying is solved, we need more school shootings. What is the problem with that except school as a lawful instance fails at doing things it was suppose to deal with in the first place?

Bullying might indirectly influence school shootings, but it doesn't cause them. School shootings are caused by headcases who think murdering a bunch of people is the best solution to their problems.

And if you honestly don't see any problem with school shootings then I really don't know what to say.

edited 10th Feb '11 4:23:31 AM by BobbyG

: I see the problem. But on the other hand, if these "nutcases" where not bullied in the first place, would they have been driven over the edge and commited major murder??
The thing is: Either the sueside statistic is high, or your countries social cultur will push it towards a school shooting.
Let me phrase it differently: No matter how wrong it is, why not solve the problem in the first place instead of playing the blame game in retrospective?

edited 10th Feb '11 4:59:03 AM by del_diablo

It is a problem, but I have a hard time sympathising anymore. Why should I, the high school culture is the one that created the shooters, why should I feel sorry for them? "High school is hell", remember?

Ah yes, everyone who gets bullied turns into a shooter. Brilliant deduction.

I feel like bullies are just insecure brats picking on other insecure individuals. That said, blaming bullies for being killed in a school shooting is called victim blame. Adolescence is a confusing time and it seems like bullies don't realize what they're doing because it is just as a confusing time for them. They honestly don't realize the consequences of what they're doing.

For the record, I'm not pro-bully or anything. I've been bullied myself.

^^ I didnt say that, I said dont start fucking whining when someone snaps under the constant abuse heaped upon them by abusive peers and uncaring authority.

^Sure, lets blame society for making people crazy.

^ When it's their fault, yes.

And the big problem with just 'not making yourself a target', even if you actually can do that (I couldn't, because they were picking on me for being autistic) is that you just reinforce the problem. Even if you're no longer being bullied, the bullies will learn 'if we pick on someone for being weird, they'll stop being weird'. And very often the ex-victims end up becoming bullies themselves, thinking 'so-and-so needs to stop making themselves a target, better I teach them than someone meaner than me'.

Whereas if we band together and say this is wrong, and threaten the schools with legal action every time they fail to deal with bullying (and especially when a teacher participates in bullying) then we might actually be able to stop bullying, or at least greatly reduce it.

Meanwhile, for the kid being bullied, their best bet is to survive with as much of themselves intact as they can. Which means not giving in to the bullies, not letting them change you, and finding your own social group somewhere else that accepts you. (I recommend MMORPGs, they're a great way to meet like-minded people.)

edited 10th Feb '11 6:41:16 AM by Ettina

Actually that's my theory on what happened, meaning it's why we don't see more situations escalate to the level of mass violence. The internet actually serves to act as a pressure release valve for these sorts of things, allowing the bullied to find their own communities outside of the physical area.

Kino@ When it IS societys fault, yes I will fucking blame them!

To avoid beating a dead horse, in that case, yes it is society's fault.

Perhaps it's a positive testimony on how comfortable the modern age has made our children, and perhaps negative testimony on how emotionally central self-image has become, that bullying is now seen as some kind of scarring/traumatic experience.

"Ah yes, everyone who gets bullied turns into a shooter. Brilliant deduction." - Kino

As I pointed out before, arguments like "not everyone bullied does X" don't take into account the differences between cases in severity of bullying, kinds of bullying, differing extents to which you'd have the school community or teachers on your side, etc.

This isn't to JUSTIFY the shooting, of course, but to point out why you shouldn't ignore the role bullying has in it.

Well, it's actually the opposite, the increase in our focus on the need for status/success/image has made this problem vastly worse. It's not the same sort of bullying that we're used to thinking of, which to be honest is quite a bit easier to deal with. It's something quite different.

Personally, I think if schools dialed back on promoting status and success, it would help things quite a bit, but good luck seeing that happen.

School shootings are usually caused more by pre-existing mental issues even more severe than bullying can induce (or in the case of my high school, we're positive it was a drug dispute). The Static Shock Very Special Episode of a tortured nerd lashing out is really, really rare.

Perhaps it's a positive testimony on how comfortable the modern age has made our children, and perhaps negative testimony on how emotionally central self-image has become, that bullying is now seen as some kind of scarring/traumatic experience.

Or maybe self-image was always a lynchpin to maintaining health in all other aspects of life, and we're only now looking past the "suck it up princess" attitude to figure out that such is asking them to use critical social tools they're being actively prevented from learning — sometimes ever.

edited 10th Feb '11 10:10:57 AM by Pykrete

Perhaps it's a positive testimony on how comfortable the modern age has made our children, and perhaps negative testimony on how emotionally central self-image has become, that bullying is now seen as some kind of scarring/traumatic experience.

Kids these days, am I right?

But yeah, we need more school shootings. At the least until the moral is to take responsibility, and then attempt to at the least enforce the rules and laws that is suppose to exist.

So killing other people is taking responsibility for your own problems now? Classy.

Honestly I love threads like this treat bullies as some sort of Always Chaotic Evil force that is out to ruin lives. Like Snailbait said, bullies are often just people with problems of their own. They just happen to deal with their problems in a really shitty way.

edited 10th Feb '11 10:46:28 AM by Alkthash

YEAH, GETTING SHOT IN THE FACE WILL TOTALLY TEACH THOSE BIG MEAN BULLIES!

Disproportionate retribution much?

If the choice is between people still being bullied, or a bunch of school shootings, I'll take the bullies. The majority of people just deal with it and move on to the real world, deciding to up and murder people is not an acceptable or mature solution/decision.

The majority of people just deal with it and move on to the real world

They certainly move on by necessity, but I'd take issue with the notion that the majority have appropriately dealt with it or even know how. Keep in mind you usually only see how they function at their job, which is the one part of their life they tend to know how to do well...and due to this uneven weight, it can quite easily end up being performed to an unhealthily compulsive degree. That bully victim you think has "moved on" may well not have anything beyond what you see at the workplace.

That said, shootings are not preferable.

edited 10th Feb '11 11:20:05 AM by Pykrete

Hell you have to deal with bullies at the workplace too. You can see how well they've moved on when you see how well the deal with the angry asshole who won't leave them alone or the abusive manager.

And a lot of people are never able to move on, and are left to lead out the rest of their lives with various trauma in a society that doesnt give a shit about them. But hey, fuck them right? Its their fault for not fitting in.

Well yeah. In society you have the choice of fitting in with other people or being completely true to your unmodified self. It's up to you to decide which option is more important, convenience or personal honesty.

Gotta say though the inability to move on is kinda sad. You're giving power to people who have most likely forgotten about the issue entirely. You'd think more bullying victims would want to move on as a way to spite their tormentors instead of wallowing in self pity.

Society doesn't really care about anyone individually. It would be a bit mental to force it to, perhaps a better option would be to try and work out why people are still so crippled by what happened several years previously by rather stupid teenagers. I mean not to say that the target "deserved" it, but try to work out why sometimes people litterally cannot move on from it.

^^ It's not a matter of not wanting to move on, it's a matter of having no goddamn clue where to start. It's like when you're driving a freeway in Flyover Country, miss your exit, and it's half an hour to take the next exit, turn around, half an hour to drive back, and get the right one again — except now you can't even see the next exit and you're likely to miss it too.

PS: I only came up with that analogy because I actually did that in recent days. It's by no means a good one >.>

edited 10th Feb '11 11:24:52 AM by Pykrete