• dijit 2 hours ago

    I always found it really frustrating that a "zero tolerance" policy to bullying seemed to disproportionately affect people who eventually fight back.

    I would guess it's a combination of "nobody sees the first hit" (since your attention is elsewhere, of course) and that bullies get quite good at testing boundaries and thus know how to avoid detection.

    But, really, it's truly frustrating that as I child I was bullied relentlessly, and when I finally took my parents advice and stood my ground, I was expelled from school (due to zero tolerance). Those bullies continued to torment some other kids, of course.

    This is far from an uncommon situation, over the years I've heard many more scenarios like this.

    • Loughla 2 hours ago

      I was also expelled for fighting back. This was how I learned that documentation is important in life.

      When I got the paperwork saying I was out, my parents sent back all the correspondence with the school, the dates the bully bothered me, and the responses (or lack thereof) from the school. I was reinstated and the bully went to another district.

      Bullying in my day was at least bearable because it was confined to times when I was physically near the bully. Kids today have it so much worse with social media. It's genuinely terrifying. I don't wonder why many teens are anxious. Everything they do is documented.

      • thaumasiotes an hour ago

        > Bullying in my day was at least bearable because it was confined to times when I was physically near the bully. Kids today have it so much worse with social media.

        I don't get it. Anything a bully can do to you over social media, they can also do to you without using the internet at all. Anything they needed to be near you to do, they still need to be near you to do.

        • nicksergeant an hour ago

          There's twice as much surface area. Bullies can now do their thing 24/7 from behind the screen _and_ still physically torment.

          • thaumasiotes an hour ago

            Again, whatever they can do from behind a screen now, they could also do in your absence before.

            • saghm 12 minutes ago

              Being able to do awful things more easily and efficiently is a qualitative difference even if the things themselves aren't objectively worse.

              • ab5tract an hour ago

                No, they couldn’t.

                Just a single obvious example: What tools did they have to broadcast photoshopped images of you to all of your peers?

                • thaumasiotes 30 minutes ago

                  Printers.

                  If you're thinking "what tools did they have to create photoshopped images of you with?", why would you attribute that to social media?

                  • bigfudge 12 minutes ago

                    Is it possible you are being thick here? Mentally rehearse the process of photoshopping your victims image and then printing it out and circulating it to everyone in the class before or at bedtime.

                    • lelandbatey 10 minutes ago

                      While technically true in describing the possibility, there is a big difference in ease between printing a photo and sending a message to a user via a digital platform e.g. WhatsApp.

                      To physically bully you before with a compromising (but fake) photo, the bully would need to physically distribute said images to the presence of your friends and family, which requires time, knowledge of their location, etc. Not so now; if you used a social network and they could see connections to other users (such as family members) then they can just follow those connections by messaging those people directly.

                      That difference in scale and ease for the bully is real vis-a-vis physically vs social media.

                  • ben_w 35 minutes ago

                    Even just as text, they can easily take your name and spread rumours speaking as if they were you.

                    Even just as text, you can get dog-piled: we evolved to be social creatures, and for groups of 150-200; for most of us, if we're called names by that many people in quick succession, it breaks us. That's a small online mob, as these things go.

                    But bullies these days also have effectively zero marginal cost cameras, so they can take as much video as it takes waiting for you to mess up, then do a Cardinal Richelieu — "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

                    In my day, you could take up to about 24 pictures quickly before needing to take the film out and put new film in, and that would take a while to develop and actually cost money, so that just didn't happen (that I've heard of).

                    But it's not just taking photos of things that actually happened and misrepresenting them, even one picture is enough to put your classmates into AI generated porn… which is, as you may expect, a thing that kids these days are getting into trouble for doing. In my day, such image manipulation was manual and expensive* and therefore reserved for celebrities, though I doubt that's any real relief to Sarah Michelle Gellar in one example I remember, nor to GWB and (today the relatives of) bin Laden in the other.

                    * we had a single copy of Photoshop… donated to the art department, which had only one (old) Mac on which to run it. Hard to pirate that kind of software back then even if you knew how to use it, definitely couldn't get unsupervised access to that machine.

                    But it's not just still images these days, a brief audio recording of your voice and that can also be synthesised. Dictaphones were just starting to get affordable in my last year of mandatory education, and we pranked a teacher by mixing their last lesson with new age relaxation music, burning a CD of that, printed a cover saying something about curing insomnia, and giving it to them as a "last day gift". Now everyone has a dictaphone in their pocket, now you can synthesise anyone's voice saying anything, make images of them appearing to do anything. And a world where those things are, for now, still often treated as if they were real.

                    But even just text, the internet made it a different world than when I was at school. The psychological impact of being told you, personally, are Officially Bad, that's something that sticks with us and hurts us even when it comes from a pattern of illuminated pixels on their Mandatory Rectangular Communication Prism caused by someone on the other side of the planet who had no business talking to us in the first place; and that distant person can be incited to form part of a mob by a pattern of illuminated pixels on their Mandatory Rectangular Communication Prism.

                • exe34 an hour ago

                  it sounds like you just don't know what it's like to be bullied. it's not just about the verbal knowledge that tomorrow at school you'll be hit. it's the visceral anxiety that tomorrow at school you will be hit. without social media, you can try to block it out of your mind and pretend it's not happening. with social media, I assume, you are constantly reminded of what's happening, because now the bully can reach out to you and directly remind you.

                  the reason I said assume there is because I went to school before social media - but my biggest bully was my dad, so it was impossible to completely escape the bullying. in fact I loved going to school, because those bullies I could handle. I gave them as much grief as I took. but the one at home I was stuck with, because he controlled all my movements and time with people outside school hours.

                  I expect cyberbullying isn't very different, traumatically speaking.

              • martin-t an hour ago

                > "nobody sees the first hit"

                This perpetuates the myth that "real" bullying is physical and that psychological abuse is not bullying. Most of the bullying i've seen was psychological and partially material (usually taking things from the target or damaging them).

                The only instances where i've seen physical bullying were in low grades where the children had not yet developed the mental capacity for creative verbal abuse or in higher grades where bullying was left unchecked for so long that the aggressors felt confident they could get away with it.

                • anonymousiam an hour ago

                  Defending yourself is always the right move. When one of my sons was being bullied in elementary school, I taught him how to fight and encouraged him to do so. The bullying ended, but he was suspended. I confronted his principal and got her to admit that she would defend herself if someone was pummeling her. She didn't like this, and subsequently expelled my son, who later won honors awards after transferring to a different school.

                  • martin-t 35 minutes ago

                    I absolutely agree with you but I can't avoid noticing an extremely common, yet pervasive irony.

                    The rules of the school no doubt forbid physical violence and expect children to use a process set up by the system to defend themselves against bullying / being wronged. That system failed and because you rightfully saw your son's right to self defense more important than following the rules, you encouraged him to defend himself outsides the confines of the system and its rules.

                    Later both you and your son were bullied / wronged by the principal. The rules of the state you live in ("laws") no doubt forbid physical violence / being wronged. That system failed...

                    • stoperaticless 15 minutes ago

                      In the end his son got awarded. And learnt to stand up for him self. Seems double win on his side.

                      • martin-t a minute ago

                        That was the outcome in this case but in general it can be very damaging for someone to lose most of their social circle. The principal's goal was to save face at the expense of harming the son. The fact that he came out on top is irrelevant to the morality of the principal's behavior.

                        The principal is in a position of power which cannot be held accountable within the confines of the system. Such positions are ripe for abuse and in fact attract people who want to abuse power.

                        As a society, we should design rule systems in such a way that each position can be held accountable.

                  • Puts an hour ago

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

                    • joe5150 an hour ago

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

                      • Puts an hour ago

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

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

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

                        • dijit 30 minutes ago

                          I couldn't possibly disagree more.

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

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

                          • Puts a minute ago

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

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

                    • BurningFrog 2 hours ago

                      I've come to think zero tolerance policies are universally bad.

                      Some tolerance and considering circumstances is actually the sensible way to handle most anything. But that sounds like being "soft on crime", and the PR side is usually more important than the actual problem.

                      • plasticchris an hour ago

                        The real problem is that school personnel don’t want to deal with the parents of the actual problem kids, so they get away with it even under zero tolerance.

                        • martin-t 44 minutes ago

                          That's because the narrative in the last decades has shifted towards tools, not actions and intentions being good or bad.

                          In the past, it was normal and encouraged to use any tools available to you to defend yourself. Psychological abuse is still abuse and you have the right to defend yourself, the most natural, available and effective immediate defensive tool being violence.

                          In recent years, violence has become a massive taboo. It's a tool that is universally labelled as bad no matter the circumstances. Instead, everyone is encouraged to portray a "good victim" by demonstrating helplessness and waiting/hoping for people in positions of power to help.

                        • throw16180339 24 minutes ago

                          I'm grateful that I graduated well before zero tolerance policies. I was frequently bullied in childhood. The only thing that actually helped was hurting the bully enough that they'd pick another target. I rarely got in trouble for this, but I would certainly have been expelled these days.

                          • chollida1 2 hours ago

                            Wow, expelled seems very harsh.

                            I know when i was a kid we would get suspended for a few days if we had a fight. Banning a kid from that school for life seem pretty harsh.

                            • j45 an hour ago

                              Suspension or expulsion of the victim is far too common.

                            • rgrieselhuber an hour ago

                              If you look at institutions that are more concerned with punishing the type of people who will fight back than the bullies themselves, the motivations behind these sorts of policies make a lot more sense.

                              • blackeyeblitzar an hour ago

                                In many schools it’s not even about fighting back. The “zero tolerance” policy indiscriminately punishes both parties involved. It’s painted as some kind of virtuous, positive thing by labeling it “zero tolerance”. But it is just sheer laziness on the part of teachers, administrators, and the district. They basically wash their hands clean of investigating or understanding the situation, and of keeping classes safe for kids who aren’t breaking the rules.

                                • ryandrake 43 minutes ago

                                  Yea, you don't have to fight back in order to be punished under "zero tolerance." You just have to be involved, including as the victim. Kids get punished all the time for rolling up into a ball while the aggressor beats them.

                                  • Terr_ 43 minutes ago

                                    "Justice is expensive and uncomfortable, let's just use collective punishment on everyone in the immediate area."

                                    • stoperaticless 8 minutes ago

                                      That is what happens when teachers and the school can get sued for any mistake.

                                      Avoid all mistakes. (Even if it mean not trying)

                                  • loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago

                                    That sucks, sorry that happened to you.

                                    How did you stand your ground?

                                    • dijit 2 hours ago

                                      One of them ripped a necklace off of me, then spat on me.

                                      I should add that this was after the day before when they had caught me walking home and pushed me into the local pond (during winter) and that the necklace was given to me by my great grandfather that had died very recently (and the bully knew that). In hindsight, I shouldn't have been wearing it.

                                      So I punched him in the face, he reeled a little and his friends went to work on me before a teacher stepped in- as they were the other side of the play-ground and needed to close the distance.

                                      Unfortunately all they'd seen was me hitting the bully.

                                      So, expelled.

                                      • loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago

                                        Got it, thanks for sharing.

                                        Overly harsh consequences are only fair if detection of the responsible/initiating party is foolproof.

                                    • newsclues 29 minutes ago

                                      A grade school tried to punish me for stopping someone from hitting me by grabbing their wrist.

                                      I said, to punish a nonviolent intervention would only incentivize future reactions would be violent, they had to think about their policy, because as I put it, “if grabbing their wrist for self defence was going to be punished the same as me punching them in the face” I’d settle for brutal violence in the hopes to persuade others not to hit me.

                                      Children vs principals with masters degrees in a logic debate and the kids win. Sad

                                      • j45 an hour ago

                                        You’re right - it’s far too common, and serves an objective of ultimately turning young people away from education, while not getting to learn what was possible for them and isn’t heir lives.

                                        Maybe it’s a feature of industrial education - enable creation of compliant adults where bullying is disproportionately allowed by tolerating it, and also build bullies to manage future compliant adults.

                                        Bullying is everywhere including in the ranks of teachers and leadership in a school. Those who play the game of bureaucracy (bureaucracy must survive at any costs) must concede to enabling a system of too often failing upwards while standing on the capable folks.

                                        Too many schools abdicate their responsibility and hide behind doing their job and turn it into a daycare of expecting children to figure it out on their own.

                                        Bullying too often is toxic parenting coming to school.

                                        Standing up for one’s self in the right circumstance, especially when the leaders, institutions and experts in our lives, especially as children intentionally traumatizes children that the world is like this, and because it doesn’t bother teachers or affect them it will only get so much attention.

                                      • pupppet 3 hours ago

                                        Dang who would have thought teachers looking the other way and pretending it wasn’t happening wasn’t an effective deterrent for future bullying.

                                        • declan_roberts 2 hours ago

                                          Don't forget punishing the kids who fight because of zero tolerance rules.

                                          • CalRobert 3 hours ago

                                            It's even better when the teachers are the ones doing the bullying.

                                            • switch007 3 hours ago

                                              I remember being bullied by the science teacher for not wanting to sit next to the cigarette she was burning to demonstrate something I can’t recall lol. In the late 90s. She hated me after that

                                              • drewcoo 29 minutes ago

                                                That's their job, isn't it?

                                                • 77pt77 3 hours ago

                                                  You're in luck!

                                                  That's really common!

                                              • alexpotato 2 hours ago

                                                Many years ago, one of the popular news shows (Dateline or 20/20, I can never remember which) did a special on bullying.

                                                They showed one elementary school where the entire organization (teachers, students, staff etc) implemented some kind of holistic approach to bullying that actually worked. They even interviewed a group of kids where they said "Oh yeah, Tom used to be the bully and we were all afraid of him but now we're all best friends".

                                                I don't remember the exact plan implemented but it struck me as both simple and common sense with excellent outcomes.

                                                Despite much searching on IMDB, Twitter, Google and even using LLMs, I have yet to find the exact episode. Now that I have kids of my own, I'm even more interested in finding it. Any suggestions from the HN crowd?

                                                • SoftTalker 10 minutes ago

                                                  Kids becoming friends with someone who used to bully them isn't all that uncommon. It can happen especially if the bullied kid fights back and earns the respect of the bully.

                                                  • akira2501 an hour ago

                                                    > we were all afraid of him but now we're all best friends

                                                    All without addressing the underlying problem that made people afraid of Tom in the first place?

                                                    > with excellent outcomes.

                                                    Apparently excellent short term outcomes. The real question is does this actually solve the long term problem and is it possible that the strategies used to create this outcome actually aggravate long term outcomes?

                                                    • Freak_NL 2 hours ago

                                                      Were they using KiVa perhaps? It's the Finnish anti-bullying program which seems to be applied worldwide quite successfully.

                                                      https://www.kivaprogram.net/

                                                      • nicoty 2 hours ago

                                                        Fumny you mention that, guess what the article is about.

                                                      • timst4 35 minutes ago

                                                        OLWEUS most likely

                                                      • 082349872349872 3 hours ago

                                                        1984 (1948), a book written by an author who hadn't had the happiest* boarding school experience, can be read as a story in which we skip the fast-forward (part I) to get to the story-within-a-story (part II) which asks a cliffhanger question:

                                                        > deeper than this lies the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought doublethink, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards. This motive really consists...

                                                        which is answered by O'Brien (in part III):

                                                        > ...How does a man assert his power over another, Winston?" Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said.

                                                        * Such, Such Were the Joys (1952)

                                                        • rawgabbit an hour ago

                                                          I believe the keyword here is "assert". As people have free will, you can either motivate/entice/lead them or you can demotivate/punish/control them or a combination of the two.

                                                          "Assert" implies O'Brien has already chosen the punitive route. In other words, O'Brien is not revealing some deep secret of human power dynamics. Instead, O'Brien is giving a self congratulatory self justifying explanation for his wrong doing.

                                                          • Terr_ 38 minutes ago

                                                            > Instead, O'Brien is giving a self congratulatory self justifying explanation for his wrong doing.

                                                            It is at the minimum of very different kind of self-justification than what you'd usually expect from a villain.

                                                            When Winston answers with the the expected "for your own good" narrative, O'Brien rejects it and punishes him for it:

                                                            > The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing.

                                                          • javajosh 3 hours ago

                                                            Love the book but I always thought this needed a little bit more explanation. It seems in our world people seek power for many reasons and only a small minority seek it simply to make people suffer. For example, people seek power to increase their own safety and pleasure. The suffering of others is incidental to their goals. In addition, since suffering is universal and requires no human actor to inflict. It seems rather like a huge waste of effort. I think it's better to read O'Brien's statement as something more specific to the world of 1984 and Big brother rather than something general that applies to all power seeking. We don't really learn that much about the workings of the inner party and the kind of propaganda that they are subjected to or subject each other to, and this might be evidence of what that looks like.

                                                            • tw202411161608 an hour ago

                                                              > It seems in our world people seek power for many reasons and only a small minority seek it simply to make people suffer.

                                                              Are you sure? Your assessment is probably specific to regional experience; I'd probably have agreed with you at another point in my life. It's not something I was familiar with before living here, and it's not the same kind of (hierarchical/organizational/bureaucratic) power alluded to in the quoted passage, but in Austin I'm acutely aware that a not-insignificant subset of "normal" people here seem to be driven to seek enough power in whatever position they occupy that will allow them to make others miserable. I see it in people here who are nasty to me for no reason, and I see it in people here who are nice to me but nasty to others for no reason.

                                                              It's a shame that "the cruelty is the point" is so tightly bound to politics, because it captures in a few words a perfect description of the phenomenon.

                                                            • 77pt77 3 hours ago

                                                              > By making him suffer

                                                              Nietzsche had written extensively about this way before.

                                                              Nowadays we know that humans (and other animals) bully because they derive immense health benefits from being the aggressor.

                                                              Those benefits are trivial to detect many decades after the fact.

                                                              Until those benefits are offset by a hefty price to pay, nothing will change.

                                                              • hiatus 2 hours ago

                                                                > Nowadays we know that humans (and other animals) bully because they derive immense health benefits from being the aggressor

                                                                Which health benefits are those?

                                                                • iwontberude 2 hours ago

                                                                  I assume by poisoning those around you with cortisol, one becomes (comparitively speaking) less of a fuck up. It’s the Tanya Harding (‘s boyfriend) approach to success.

                                                              • djoldman 3 hours ago
                                                              • cluckindan an hour ago

                                                                Physical assault is a serious crime and calling it simply ”bullying” is saying ”boys will be boys”.

                                                                The ”bullies” who beat me up in elementary school all went ahead to have careers in things like dealing kilos of meth and torturing people to death.

                                                                Not hyperbole, btw.

                                                                • doubled112 36 minutes ago

                                                                  That boys will be boys line is crap. I was a boy and somehow managed not to abuse people.

                                                                  One of my favourite stories is that my wife went to watch a court case and it was one of my childhood bullies. He was up for forcible confinement. She thought she recognized the name.

                                                                  I also read in the news (with great satisfaction) that his brother, who was part of the group, had been tasered and beat for resisting arrest.

                                                                  Sometimes you get what is coming to you. They’re all trash and I think I turned out alright. In a weird way, I think it does build character and resilience.

                                                                  • bdangubic 34 minutes ago

                                                                    boys will be boys term was invented by shitty parents who raised shitty boys

                                                                • protocolture 3 hours ago

                                                                  >Children in schools that implemented the program were 13% less likely to report being bullied

                                                                  And of course the goal is to prevent bullying from being reported so this is an absolute win for educators.

                                                                  • barbazoo 2 hours ago

                                                                    Is that what that means? Less reporting, not less bullying?

                                                                  • Kozmik1 an hour ago

                                                                    Can anyone comment on the current prevalence of bullying in schools in the UK vs the USA? We have been considering moving from the Us to the UK but perceived higher likelihood of bullying for our mixed race kids is one concern holding us back. It's hard to know if we are exaggerating that concern or if it is warranted, it would seem hard to know the level of hostility of a school environment prior to moving there.

                                                                    • normanthreep 5 hours ago

                                                                      well this is excellent news for the people of hn, the largest community of childhood bullying survivors on the internet

                                                                      it's never too late

                                                                      • tamimio 2 hours ago

                                                                        I was never bullied and was the popular kid, and honestly, I don’t like the concept that all these ‘nerds’ you see nowadays were bullied back in school and it’s why they became nerds, in fact, I never heard of school bullying outside of the US schools, or generally North Americans ones. Maybe movies contributed to that, or reinforced such a phenomenon?

                                                                        • viraptor an hour ago

                                                                          Nah, it's common everywhere. Kids can be cruel and some will be given the opportunity of access to someone not fitting in.

                                                                          • barbazoo 2 hours ago

                                                                            Grew up in Germany in the 80/90s, we had plenty of bullying.

                                                                          • Der_Einzige 29 minutes ago

                                                                            1. 4chan is much larger than HN ;)

                                                                            2. People here like to act like it didn’t happen to them. If you didn’t see it, it still happened. Nerds are hated in America because life imitates the shitty art of John Hughes et al.

                                                                            • matt3210 2 hours ago

                                                                              would we be on HN if we were the popular kids in school?

                                                                              • dijit 2 hours ago

                                                                                There are a lot of tech-bros, who were definitely not the nerds in school and are in tech mostly because of money and prestige.

                                                                            • rr808 40 minutes ago

                                                                              Kinda feel the new generation needs a bit more bullying. I'm kinda shocked my kids have such a low bar, they have become super fragile. Some bullying I think made me a better person. Of course not too much

                                                                              • drewcoo 9 minutes ago

                                                                                Dealing with physical danger and triumphing can happen without punching a bully.

                                                                              • declan_roberts 2 hours ago

                                                                                School really is the problem. In its current form, it can not be sustained without radical reform.

                                                                                If you look at the suicide rate of children under 14 month-to-month, they only stop killing themselves when they're not forced to go to school (Summer and Winter vacation).

                                                                                Probably the only place in your entire life that you'll be subject to physical and emotional violence.

                                                                                Calls to "abolish the department of education" are going to get louder and louder.

                                                                                • BriggyDwiggs42 3 hours ago

                                                                                  I’ve been thinking a little about this subject lately. It seems like bullying is a thing that serves the function of exacting the repressed violent desires of the social body. Who is selected for bullying is determined not primarily by the bully, but by the social group as a whole. To me this helps explain why it’s such a ubiquitous behavior; it’s a mechanism for a social group to act outside of its norms in the enforcement of its norms. To be clear, I think it’s terrible, just interesting to think about this way.

                                                                                  • martin-t 22 minutes ago

                                                                                    > a mechanism for a social group to act outside of its norms in the enforcement of its norms

                                                                                    There are internal and external norms and even norms within each category have different levels of importance.

                                                                                    External norms are typically of the nature of "no fighting" and are enforced without looking at the circumstances. Their goal is for somebody perceived as an authority to keep the group pacified and minimize visible conflict. They are typically not interested in invisible conflict because by its nature, the external power can't see it.

                                                                                    The goal is not justice, it's peace.

                                                                                    Internal norms are fuzzy because they're usually not codified and might not even be agreed upon by the members of the group because their goal is maintaining a social hierarchy within the group.

                                                                                    The hierarchy's goal is neither peace nor justice, it doesn't even have a goal, it's just a compromise between people with differing goals - some entirely uninterested in the hierarchy, some obsessed with climbing the social ladder.

                                                                                    • next_xibalba 2 hours ago

                                                                                      Interesting. You've almost framed it in Gerardian terms:

                                                                                      Students all want the same thing: status, popularity, etc. Not everyone can these things though. Their scarcity is their value. The competition over this finite resource creates conflict and hostility. This pent up hostility has to be channeled to avoid chaos. A scapegoat is informally agreed upon: the oddball, the misfit, the outcast. These people are all the more obvious due to the extreme herding that happens in schools. The bully acts as the "executioner" of this "sacrifice". The boundaries of group unity are enforced, the shared complicity enforcing cohesion, and group identity and control are upheld.

                                                                                      I remember from my school days how much hostility was directed toward people who wouldn't or couldn't "fit in". I even internalized those feelings. "Why won't he/she just act normal?"

                                                                                      I'm not fully sold on Gerard, but his theories are kind of mesmerizing in their pat explanation of group dynamics.

                                                                                      • akira2501 an hour ago

                                                                                        Game theory of bullying. Which works right up until you realize a lot of bullies have mental health issues and are probably not going to produce identical "rationalized" results to someone who isn't.

                                                                                        • BriggyDwiggs42 an hour ago

                                                                                          What I said doesn’t assume the bully is some kind of rational actor playing a game. They’re more like an organ in the social body.

                                                                                          • akira2501 an hour ago

                                                                                            A social body relies on signals. If the signals are not predictable then you're facing the exact same problem. You've also opened the door on a single bad signal infecting the social body and pushing towards outcomes that would not occur if that single influence was not otherwise present.

                                                                                            If you're going to rely on this dynamic, then you're going to have this consideration.

                                                                                        • bokoharambe 3 hours ago

                                                                                          I love that you point out that bullying is social and its relation to the ordinary enforcement of social norms. And I think this points more broadly to the function of social violence as a whole: much of it is regulatory and follows from repressive logics that exist in less overt forms. In other words can't have a notion like that of sex without also having sexism and gendered violence.

                                                                                          • pessimizer 2 hours ago

                                                                                            > Who is selected for bullying is determined not primarily by the bully, but by the social group as a whole.

                                                                                            I disagree. I think that the person who is bullied is primarily selected by the bully, and the only influence that others have is that the bullied person doesn't have enough (or large enough) others around them in order to defend them. Others may then pile in once the target has been selected, but it's not in any way a collective decision.

                                                                                            You could just as well say that society chooses the people who get mugged, or the people whose houses are burglarized, or the people who are raped or murdered. I'm sure you could come up with some neo-Freudian way to convince somebody that makes sense, but it doesn't make sense. It's generalization to the point of uselessness if not complete absurdity.

                                                                                            I was bullied as a child. I was picked because I was an easy, bookish target without many friends, and definitely without tough friends. The bullying ended when I hurt a bully in a way that everyone found out about, and that state was maintained when I made a group of friends who would have defended me if a bully had approached me. The cause of all of this was obvious, not subtle or mysterious.

                                                                                            • BriggyDwiggs42 an hour ago

                                                                                              The social group’s norms are those the bully aims to appeal to, either because they directly believe in them or because they want others’ approval. The person who’s easy to target is often easy to target precisely because they’re excluded from friendships that would protect them. The group has no mind; it can’t explicitly decide something. The decision is structurally embedded in the group, and goes beyond any individual, including the bully that takes the action.

                                                                                              • bluefirebrand an hour ago

                                                                                                > influence that others have is that the bullied person doesn't have enough (or large enough) others around them in order to defend them

                                                                                                Yes, this is how the crowd selects the target. It's implicit in the fact that the crowd has indicated they won't defend the target

                                                                                                "Having no friends" is a signal that the herd isn't going to do anything to help you

                                                                                              • echelon 3 hours ago

                                                                                                Bullies lower the fitness of targets to elevate their own standing. It's neanderthal-level social darwinism.

                                                                                            • ninalanyon 2 hours ago

                                                                                              This is how bullying has been dealt with in Norway for decades. Nice to see the UK might be trying to catch up.

                                                                                              • Sakos 6 hours ago

                                                                                                > The results from the UK trial of 13% reduction in bullying are less compelling than those from earlier studies in other European countries. However, the U.K. trial took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which involved major classroom disruption for pupils and considerably higher levels of absenteeism, and researchers believe this may have affected the results.

                                                                                                1) 13% just doesn't seem like a lot to me

                                                                                                2) I wonder what those other studies showed.

                                                                                                • notahacker 4 hours ago

                                                                                                  I think the bigger question, since it apparently involves reported bullying incidents rather than teacher-observed ones, is whether the change in policy results in underreporting or overreporting of bullying. Plausibly it could be a lot more than a 13% fall if kids feel much more incentivised to report it, or a negligible effect if there's a 13% chance of it not being reported because bullied kids don't want to get their bystander classmates into trouble...

                                                                                                • matt3210 2 hours ago

                                                                                                  I hate to be this guy, but being bullied in school is a direct cause of my success in software (and my failure in relationships I guess). I retreated to academics because I was unpopular. I was unpopular in school now I am popular professionally (All the LinkedIn recruiters love me).

                                                                                                  I don't mean to say bullying is good but I personally am thankful to my high school bully for keeping me focused on computers (Thanks Fred, I owe you a beer next time we run into each other).

                                                                                                  • elashri 2 hours ago

                                                                                                    Another possible interpretation is that your personal experience (which is valid and I respect) is considered survival bias [1]. As another commenter said we don't know if this would happen if you did not get bullied. And what happens to others who got bullied? We can't draw anything from that. Does bullied people usually tend to more successful professionally later is a different and big question that needs some data to support.

                                                                                                    Maybe there are many more people who got bullied and got negative effects of their self-worth and confidence which lead to them struggle in one way or another professionally and socially. Maybe there isn't that many too.

                                                                                                    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

                                                                                                    • OliveMate 31 minutes ago

                                                                                                      I hate to be that other guy, and I in no way way want to override your own experiences but... I'm sure my experiences with being bullied have actively hindered me in my life, even 20+ years on. Particularly dealing with confrontation, this constant feeling of 'otherness' around others, and frequent nightmares about people I used to know.

                                                                                                      Again, the other reply about not really knowing how you'd turn out applies to me, but it's hard not to think about it.

                                                                                                      I don't want to come off like I'm shilling my blog, but last year I finally opened up about being bullied. The second post on the matter specifically talks about how I feel about it as an adult: https://callmeo.live/blog/childhood-bullying-ii-aftermath/

                                                                                                      • kypro 11 minutes ago

                                                                                                        I'm also glad I was badly bullied as a kid, but for other reasons. In my case it forced me to stop being a physically and mentally weak person and I don't know how that could have possibly have happened without bullying.

                                                                                                        I'm also glad I had people around me who pushed me to overcome the bullying rather than telling me I was a victim of it. In my experience people who are taught they are a victim of bullying who most struggle with it. These people believe bullying t be abnormal and expect the world to fix it. But unfortunately bullying is normal and unless you learn to overcome it you'll always be at risk of being a victim of it

                                                                                                        • nkrisc 2 hours ago

                                                                                                          Not trying to discount your personal experience, but I do feel I ought to point out that you don’t actually know what would have happened if you hadn’t been bullied.

                                                                                                          It’s good to be satisfied with where your life has taken you, but that’s because you can’t actually change what’s happened and you can’t know how it might have gone otherwise.

                                                                                                          • Der_Einzige 26 minutes ago

                                                                                                            Talk about licking the boot which is stomping on your face!

                                                                                                          • iwontberude 2 hours ago

                                                                                                            Kiva also makes great cannabis edibles, definitely cuts down on adult bullying.

                                                                                                            • swayvil an hour ago

                                                                                                              Put a gopro on every kid and teacher. Document everything. Problem solved.