Bullying was (at my school) an unfortunate reality.
My brother (year younger) was born with a congenital problem (ptosis) in both eyes which required frequent surgery (poor sod had 9 operations with weeks of recovery for each before he was 11).
This obviously made him a target for bullying and since the school was doing nothing about it I ended up stepping in to sort things out.
When I was about 8 I found my brother and a group of boys in one of the classrooms at lunch time, my brother was curled up on the floor sobbing with one boy sat on him and the rest where jeering.
I picked up a chair and waded in and I really wasn't pulling any punches.
When my mother came to pick me up from the school I was sat outside the headmasters office with the bullies.
We went into the office the headmaster started saying how my behaviour was unacceptable and that I couldn't just assault other pupils in that way.
At which point my mum interrupted "Ben isn't in the slightest violent, he's never had any issues with fighting at this school and yet he felt the need to use a chair to protect his brother, who we both know is getting bullied as you've seen fit to punish Ben I fully expect you to punish the bullies as well and if you don't you can be assured will be going to the local newspapers about the endemic bullying problem, I will also be writing to the Governors and the Local Education Authority", this was in the 80's, parents didn't complain then like that.
I was out of school for 3 days, my mum took me to the bookshop and said I could pick any three books I wanted.
My brother didn't get bullied again til secondary school and he dealt with that himself.
I learnt a very valuable lesson that day - stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves and fuck the consequences (I also learnt that my mum was a badass).
Yep, exactly. You go to the adults, and they don't help you at all. So you stand up for yourself, and now you're the one in trouble. I can't possibly think of a more backwards model for encouraging bullying.
Even with the punishments, I've always been prouder and happier when I stood up for myself. So do that anyway. It doesn't stop the bullying, but it does reduce it somewhat and you gain more respect for yourself. You'll probably lose in a fight, but no matter how weak you are, anyone can inflict at least some level of pain on an aggressor.
It's truly sad the way so many kids have to deal with this, yet nothing is ever really done about it.
Unlike you, I would have changed it all. I would have worked out constantly, and made a name for myself as the crazy guy you didn't mess with, because he'd flip out completely.
But as bad as it is, at least take solace that you could go home in peace. Imagine also having a 300lb abusive bully at home that denied you any access to technology, even with your own hard-earned money. My solace was counting down each day to 18, and occasionally sneaking off to public libraries to use their computers for a bit. A lot of my programming I learned from reading books, and the mandatory graphing calculators for math class. At 16-17, I saved up for a laptop, and would use it in the parking lots of retail stores while pretending to be at work.
But as others are saying, it gets a lot better. I make $70k/yr now, total household income is 120k/yr, have a nice house and cars, and all that. The worst I have to deal with anymore are the occasional trolls online.
Unfortunately bullying by its nature is not a very popular political issue.
Conservatives (somewhat correctly) consider bullying to be part of how society maintains is social structure.
Progressives only consider bullying through the lens of oppressed groups, not individuals who are targeted for their perceived/actual difference or weakness. They don't identify with individual rights and self-defense as these are seen as libertarian issues.
Furthermore, to admit to being bullied as often interpreted as admitting to weakness. That is why it is easier to champion people who have some extrinsic reason for being bullied (e.g. being gay, or some other minority).
However, I suspect the severity of bullying is gradually lowering simply as a result of society becoming more prosperous and adopting middle class lifestyles and values.
I grew up in India. My schools had no bullying at all. And we still had a (much weaker) social structure, the popular ones, the slightly-dangerous ones (those I would avoid hanging out with) and the not-so-popular ones (like those who would spend time on a computer instead of meeting up for sports). Bullying is not universal. Neither is it necessary.
According to a Microsoft survey, India is the third worst country in the world for online bullying[1]. The same survey showed that 54% of Indian students report being bullied offline, and 50% report having bullied someone offline. I think you are quite mistaken in your assessment of your schools.
Studies have shown bullying to be universal among not only humans, but all primates and many social mammals[2] (such as rats and dolphins). Among human societies, bullying is present across the board, from hunter gatherer groups through post industrial societies.
That isn't to say that it can't or shouldn't be dealt with, but you are dead wrong when you say it isn't universal.
It may be universal, but as you yourself suggest, it is highly dependent on cultural constraints. To talk of bullying in India without understanding communal tensions is ignorant and takes away from the rest of your valid points.
I am not quite sure of your definition of 'somewhat' however giving a mild amount of justification for treating others wrongly simply bc they don't confirm to your standards of 'correctness' is not justifiable.
I meant they are somewhat correct in their belief that bullying is a part of our social fabric. But I don't endorse bullying, rather I think that there is something wrong with our society.
It is not an uncommon (again, I don't endorse this viewpoint) for people to say that bullying is a normal part of growing up, and that it helps strengthen people's character, etc. I don't think people who say this are being 100% honest. I think if they were honest they would say that bullying is a way to identify the weakest or least socially capable 10% of people, and that if you don't fall into this category, then it's a great part of the growing process to find out you belong to the 90%.
> I meant they are somewhat correct in their belief that bullying is a part of our social fabric. But I don't endorse bullying, rather I think that there is something wrong with our society.
Of course it's part of the social fabric of wherever it happens and goes unpunished. This seems like saying "this is a thing that happens", which feels like a truism.
Like you're saying, it isn't something that should be encouraged or that should go unpunished. If there is something beneficial about it, then that is probably just a symptom of something else that is wrong with society, which forces/enables the bullying.
Well it's not surprising it seems like a truism to you, since a big part of conservatism is maintaining the status quo.
But to be more precise about the benefit that conservatives see in bullying: bullying can be thought of as a social pressure not to be (1) weak and (2) different. I know some people will think that I am blaming the victim with (1), but I'm not. I was bullied in school, and I was physically weak and tended not to stand up for myself. Many of my friends were the same. Anyway, many people see discouraging (1) and (2) to be good things. (1) because society needs people (at least) men to be strong and vigorous in order to prosper and fight external enemies, and (2) because if there is no pressure to conform, people might do anything they liked and completely ignore societal norms.
> Well it's not surprising it seems like a truism to you, since a big part of conservatism is maintaining the status quo.
Even conservatives have to give convincing arguments as to why the status qou is good.
> I know some people will think that I am blaming the victim with (1), but I'm not. I was bullied in school, and I was physically weak and tended not to stand up for myself.
Having been a former victim does not preclude one from blaming current victims. In fact, it can be a badge of honour; that the fact that they are not a victim any more is because of their own volition.
> (1) because society needs people (at least) men to be strong and vigorous in order to prosper and fight external enemies
That's what conscription is for. Or, if society can't be sold on slavery, encouraging activities that foster strength.
The concept of bullying is the direct opposite of something like a military organization. Bullying is, at least in the school yard, more like a disorganized and "wild habitat"; people who are "strong", either by social status or physical strength, pray on the weaker. A military organization is highly hierarchical and rank is based (ideally) on merit within the organization. It is also based on submission to your superiors orders, not seizing every opportunity you can to take them down a peg by putting them in a headlock and assuming their former status (rank).
What kind of person is more likely to be sent to a disciplinary institution; a bullying rebel, or a meek and weak individual? Probably the former.
(And I could tell you some things about bullying in the military. But let's just say that it isn't terribly good for morale, nor for anyone's safety when there is a lot of ill emotions and everyone has weapons at their disposal.)
> , and (2) because if there is no pressure to conform, people might do anything they liked and completely ignore societal norms.
When people that violate social norms in a way that upsets others are taught a lesson or shamed into correcting their behaviour, that is called reprimanding, not bullying. It is, if successful, a one time affair. Bullying is more of a regular thing, sustained over a time period, in the same general location.
If people get reprimanded for silly things that does not hurt anyone, but is just part of who they are... then yes, that's bullying. But then we're back in the silly domain of conformity-for-conformities sake. An argument that you have presented, but supposedly does not agree with, because you're doing that whole devil's advocates thing I guess. Nonetheless, I don't agree with it, nor do I find anything much to be agreeable with it, even if I were to be a so-called conservative.
On my motivations, society does allow bullying to happen, and the discrepancy between what it allows to happen to children in the context of bullying, and what it allows in most other cases, requires an explanation.
This requires putting oneself in the shoes of the people responsible for this situation, including people who minimize the importance or harm of bullying, people who justify it outright, and people who silently ignore the issue.
In doing so I am going to argue that given certain assumptions (both positive and normative), bullying should be permitted or justified. That is the inevitable outcome of being intellectually honest.
You claim there is a difference between upholding social value through reprimand, and bullying. I couldn't tell if being "taught a lesson" referred to violence so I won't assume either way. If it didn't refer to violence, then in an individualistic society like ours, people could just ignore it. Maybe in Scandinavia a verbal reprimand is enough, but not in the rest of Europe or the English speaking world.
And yet a free for all of violence would not work either (which seems to be the straw man of bullying you are using in your argument). Bullying is not only violence and the establishment of a pecking order, and also not only punishing violators of the social code. Rather it is doing these things together in a complementary way. The social code is respected because it comes from the most dominant people, and the violence is justified because it also helps cement the social code.
This explains why schools and prisons punish people who defend themselves against bullies more than the bullies themselves. To defend yourself is anti-social violence. Furthermore, as students get older, this social order morphs into the actual social order of the adult world. It is not only a pecking order that teachers tolerate because it makes the school easier to manage. It also gains the gloss of society's actual moral code.
For example, students might be bullied because they exhibit middle class speech and behavior, and are unwilling or unable to adopt "cool" working class behavior. A teacher might be sympathetic, but also consider that without this kind of bullying, middle class student could be as snooty as they liked, and that forcing middle class students to respect working class students (even out of fear) would help societal cohesion in the bigger picture.
The values that bullies enforce are arbitrary, but not entirely arbitrary. If they only punished the truly snooty, or the truly degenerate, would progressives or conservatives respectively complain? I see many people encouraging bullying tech workers in SF because they claim those workers really don't respect the values of the communities they live in. And (this was a while ago) I read a Time magazine article about the bullying of the Columbine shooters, which claimed precisely that their bullying was justified because they violated social norms (as the article said quoting a footballer "they were a bunch of fxxxxts", and this was in the 1990's so the implication wasn't that the footballer was in the wrong!).
I am not saying that society will fall apart without bullying, but that people who want to maintain social norms that aren't enforced by law, logically have little choice but to accept that experiencing an environment with bullying is an imperfect but necessary precursor to knowing your place in society.
When I say "social structure" I mean the idea that people should feel compelled to follow societal norms. Even though school bullies don't enforce the same norms as society at large, they do enforce the norms of their peer group.
Conservatives (not all, but many) consider the principal that social convention be backed by actual violence, to be sufficiently important that establishing it at young age is worth some suffering or unfairness.
I think the idea here is that the system is self-reinforcing. An initially undifferentiated mix of children self-segregates as the children begin to perceive difference, and privileged/norm-conformant children persecute unprivileged/norm-nonconformant children. The persecution has the function of excluding the unlucky children from the social opportunities that come from access to privileged society (both because they are actively blocked by the other children, and because they block themselves by not realising they can seek opportunities or not considering themselves capable or worthwhile). This exclusion compounds as the cohort ages, rapidly becoming total. The result is that only a small selection of the cohort has access to privileged channels of society, maintaining a relatively low degree of competition at that level.
> I meant they are somewhat correct in their belief that bullying is a part of our social fabric.
I agree with this statement of yours from another comment, but I don't agree with the previous quote that I posted. My reasoning is that an old "friend" of mine, Adam Mohungoo - black, 5'9", born 26/09/1980, attended Sir Thomas Rich's School, Gloucester 1992 - 1999, is a FULLY FLEDGED SOCIOPATH. He would threaten to "kick your fucking head in" for such things as turning up at his house 3 minutes later than expected.
People like him do not facilitate the maintenance of the social structure, but unfortunately they are part of the social fabric.
> ... I'm not endorsing bullying, I'm explaining why many conservatives don't think it's a problem.
The recent tv campaign "This is ABUSE" highlights a shift in attitudes regarding very similar issues.
I see you mentioned that you were bullied, apologies if I sounded harsh.
The problem with this, is that when he enters the workforce a lot of that social awkwardness and bulling problems could come back again. So it's a short lived victory.
In the UK outside of silicon roundabout and a few good companies, programmers are low rung employees and often pushed around and managed by the same sort of people who bullied him school. He won't have any authority to hit back, and if he tried probably would be fired.
The majority of start ups, and tech companies in the UK are run non-technical entrepreneurs, marketeers and so on and not techs. These are normally selected from the type of people who bully at school, not the bullies.
A large part of being programmer in these organisations is learning to identify and tip toe around these people to stop them ruining your career.
School had a lot of bullying for me, university was great, and then at work it was like being thrown back into school.
Having been a programmer in tech companies in the UK for a long time I agree about the low status, but I've only rarely encountered bad behavior by managers (mistakes and bad decisions, yes. Bullying not so much). My experience is that in this sort of job the pay is at least liveable and the working conditions are typically good. This is however entirely anecdotal and it's quite possible that I just got lucky and am an outlier. I think there are many other kinds of jobs where bullying is much more common and may even be a core feature of the profession (I'm thinking of Work Programme providers).
Bullying is rife in the UK tech industry. If you put up a wall people will respect it and keep away but if you don't, it's open season. There's also a nasty class divide between permanent and contract staff. I'm the latter and much resentment is felt even though the former could be the latter with a little effort and reap the benefits.
As a 35-year old Brit who has spent his entire career in the UK tech industry, I do not recognise what you describe.
However, there are many "tech industries" and so I can't tell you if the culture in the Java, C++/C#, Windows or Banking etc. industries is like that, because in the Internet, Startup, Ruby/Python type industries it absolutely 100% is not.
Animosity between permanent and contract staff is something I've never witnessed either. Contractors who aren't worth their money? Sure they're going to get a hard time, but if I'm working with a contractor who has 20 years experience on me, sure, I'm expecting them to earn good money. I always saw them as an inspiration, nothing else. I know my colleagues have too.
So, whatever sector you're in, and whatever employer you're with, get out and look elsewhere: it's not like that in many, many, many other parts of the industry.
I'm in finance sector (mainly insurance) for reference on the J2EE/C# side of things.
I think a number of people have been burned by bad contractors in the city. There are tonnes of them from experience who cruise around with absolutely no reputation.
I'm a contractor in the city but not in finance. If I had to guess I'd say you get bad contractors there because the money on offer is huge, so it will attract people who have no idea what they're doing but are great at blagging.
Having been a contractor for several years now, I have to admit I've never seen any sort of bullying. I've never been treated like anything less than a bona fide member of the team. To be honest, I've never seen any sort of bullying. Maybe I just don't know it when I see it ...
(currently on my fifth placement, in London, at a mix of small and international companies)
People with aspergers tend to have poorly developed normal social skills thus having less friends who can support them , thus making them easier targets.
I've worked in the UK tech industry for 12 years. Never seen what you describe. Never been treated as low-status either, and I've never worked for the old street crowd.
I'm not sayin your experiences are wrong, but they might be less universal than you think.
The person being bullied keeps a log of what happens.
They then go to HR (or whatever the proceedure is -and companies need to have a proceedure) to talk about it. They present a copy of their ongoing log and ask for help. If the person has seen a doctor they can ask that doctor to write a supporting letter.
Being a member of a union is helpful here because they will help.
Most technology companies in the UK are small(1-20). They don't have HR, and don't really have 'grievance procedures' even though they should. So often bullying is straight from the owners/directors.
If you went to a small digital agency, and said you wished file a grievance you would be laughed at.
Most tech companies may be that small, but most tech jobs are not with companies that small.
Either way, if you are bullied out of work we have a robust system of tribunals and workers rights over here. You don't need to be a union member to have rights and you shouldn't be scared of exercising them.
I think that might depend on whether or not you use ACAS to resolve the dispute, I don't believe there is an obligation to go through ACAS unless both parties agree.
ACAS do arbitrate individual unfair dismissal cases. Often employment contracts from large companies will say "You agree to use ACAS for arbitration".
Large companies like this because it streamlines the process rather than dealing with different individual lawsuits, it also gives HR a number of policies to implement which can tick the boxes and give them a strong position in any dispute. If you have 1000+ employees eventually someone is going to claim unfair dismissal.
Smaller companies with 10 employees or less are more to just hope they don't get sued at all.
As far as I know you can't enforce arbitration / mediation in the UK it woudl not be justicable i.e you can't sign your statutory rights away
"Acas don't represent people in employment cases. Their job is to try and help you and your employer settle your case.
This doesn't mean that they will try to get the best deal for you, but one that both you and your employer will accept. So if you can't reach an agreement that both you and your employer are happy with, Acas will stop their involvement, and you can decide whether to go on with your case to the employment tribunal."
I think it would put an employer in a stronger position in court to say "employee refused to use arbitration service as described in contract", IANAL etc.
Not really the same thing as an arbitration clause unless you can persuade a judge that the arbitration decision would have contradicted employment law in some way.
Going to HR requires there to be an HR department. In general the ability to do something about bullying in a company or institution depends on there being the management and adminstrative structure to formalise complaints without them going through the bully. I've seen people leave places, especially in the UK civil service, because the bully controlled the access to reporting them.
Yeah, there are protections, but like all legal protections they are really only technically there. Practically, taking that course requires sinking a huge amount of time, effort and possibly money into it, and the outcome is not certain. Most people will quit and try another job.
I did not have it anywhere near as bad as the poster, but had some incidents which, even to me at 6/7 years old, immediately made me start to question authority and become cynical.
A few random anecdotes:
2nd grade - kids kept talking in class, so the teacher declared "no talking - the next person to talk has to go stand in the corner" (which, even then, had me wonder - does that mean that there's no punishment for everyone after the first person?) Everyone was silently working for ... 10 minutes? The kid behind me starts kicking my chair. Tapping. Then hard kicking, as in, my desk/chair combo was moving (and making a sound, supposedly the thing the teacher was after). After 10+ kicks I turned around and said "stop kicking my chair". BOOM - instant punishment - go stand in the corner at the front of the room, and everyone laughed (again... WTF? wasn't silence the goal? and the other 20+ kids are not punished for making noise?).
"No tolerance" attitudes are just crap.
3rd grade - I typically went home for lunch, but ended up staying for lunch in school, and my routine had been messed up. After lunch, one of the kids was late back to room because he'd been to the bathroom, and the teacher declared "no more using the bathroom for the rest of the day", and she meant for anyone. I asked to go, and was told no. So.. again - someone else makes a mistake - intentional or not - and the rest of us have to pay for it? I kept worrying, and then after a bit I wasn't worried. I then realized I'd wet myself in class. Bad. Ugh... Got to go home early that day I think. But... WTF. I wouldn't go so far as to call these teachers 'bullies', but... stupid? Trying to treat 7 year olds as rational adults? It doesn't work.
I was bullied later on when I moved schools - I was a year younger than everyone else, and physically much smaller than all my classmates, and... there were a number of times in middle school and a couple times in high school I was physically intimidated/threatened. Rarely did anything actually happen, but the fear was enough to really stay with me for years. Reporting to teachers did nothing beyond an initial couple minutes of feeling safe, which quickly evaporated when I left the room.
It just led me to distrust authority and be cynical from an early age.
followup - I took a 'personality test' for a job at 18 years old. Someone came out from the office and looked around, then finally at me, and was a bit shocked to see me instead of someone else. "Did you take this yourself? Did anyone help you earlier? Your scores indicate you have the cynicism of a 35 year old." heh ;)
I am 37,I am fat and I am not programmer and I have been bullied for 20 years.I just became CEO of my own software firm finally and it doesnt do that well but I am fine,I feel life is far more easier and simpler, no more bullying.
I have few recommendations:
1.Never lower your selfesteem, no matter what the idea of bullying is to kill selfesteem and watch you crumble.
2.No matter what anybody says including your own mind never ever feel down,life is beautiful as it is...you are this remarkable human(all humans) who functions with 1 billion neurons ....
3.Its just a thought to give up and its just another thought to see how remarkable life is....these bullies of today or failures of tommorrow.
5.I can show you countless examples how bullying created a false confidence in them and then when life started to really hitback the bullies just didnt know to deal with they became utter failures, we who are bullied are prepared for life either ways,I think I am much more stronger and much better prepared on a positive side.Also I tend to go and support anybody who needs help.
6.If ever you need help in counseling and getting back into confidence, I am always open,I am part time motivational speaker:).
It's easy to say 'dont cruble', but your self esteem will go down if you cant find any help. I had some similar trouble in a primary school, and fortunately it ended after moving to another school, but it took a long time until i realized the problem was not in me.
Haunting. Probably why I'm terrified of weakness: the abuse of the 'lower' class is supported at a collective unconscious level. "At least it's not me..."
I had a horrible experience in school. I was bullied at every school I went to, I had to attend boarding school for 4 years because my life would have been a dead end otherwise. Boarding school was akin to hell but I endured the 24/7 bullying so that I could slug out an education for myself. I was eventually expelled from boarding school for hacking, which in retrospect was one of the best things that happened to me.
The emotional scars of that experience left me vulnerable, I barely made it to university - had to travel 1100km from my home to attend, tried to support myself while doing university full time. I lost my job because I was falling into depression because my girlfriend at the time was drifting away from me. She eventually left me and I was all alone. Broke, homeless and too proud to go home.
I managed to salvage some odd jobs on freelancer/elance started to climb out of the emotional rut. Doing freelance work using university wifi while homeless and using uni showers really is an experience. I got determined to not to live like that so I put aside my pride, moved in with family and got stuck into honing my skills as a programmer, doing freelance work and going back to university.
Programming brought back my pride, it re-established my self esteem, I ended up having the confidence to start my own company, which fast forward 3 years or so is still running and is a multi-million dollar company. I have since moved on, am now internationally traveled and I now make in excess of 150k/yr.
Looking back on my short life a few things ring very true. Often alot of the worst things to happen to me have also been the best things. If I wasn't so downtrodden I wouldn't be so strong now, if my girlfriend didn't leave me the way she did I never would have been so determined to prove her wrong.
So no matter how bad things seem, remember that there is always time to make things better.
Great read and even greater story, thank you for sharing!
When I read stories like this a small part of me wishes that I were there to beat up the bullies, to be his friend and to end the pain.
The another part of me tries to put myself in his shoes and wonder what type of support system I would have needed in order to replicate his success from freeing himself of the bullying.
Then, an even separate part of me thinks about what I can do to prevent this from happening to kids in the future.
I don't know which part of myself to side with, but I do know that I appreciate him telling his story and I am glad that he was able to persevere from. Good on you. Shame on your classmates.
I went through similar stuff in the 70s and 80s, although nowhere near as extreme. Bullying is physical and psychological child abuse. The fact that it is perpetrated by other children instead of an adult makes no difference to the victim.
I will say that schools can do something about this, and some of them do. My son has been the victim of bullies on occasion, and both his primary and secondary school have been very supportive. Nipping this kind of thing in the bud makes it clear that such behaviour is not accepted. It is when it becomes part of the culture that you have a real problem.
One option is to go to the law. Child abuse is against the law, and schools have a duty of care. Hitting someone is assault regardless of where it happens or who does it, so if you are assaulted and the school does nothing then go to the police. Document incidents for a few months, take the document to the school authorities, and if they do nothing then talk to a lawyer.
I was bullied at grade school all the time, I was a poor, fat kid and my parents had just divorced, I was happy and optimistic, but very vulnerable. I won't go too much into the details of this, because this post is already too long. But as a result and the point of this post is that I became a bully myself.
I didn't have friends there and as a result I hanged around with the kids on my neighborhood. They were all younger than me and quite a lot of immigrants and others with not that much of a "social standing" and I could get an easy hold over them just by the power of seniority. Then, when I went to a middle school and the scenery changed, I had become an alpha male in that sense that I knew how to rule over people with fear and verbal abuse. I didn't do it consciously, it just had became a part of how I act.
Bullying is about abusing other people's weakness'. I had became a master of it. I never actually did anything myself, I just talked, other kids did stuff for me. Physical abuse like "Hey I know, let's fill your backpack with all of our books and hit that guy in the face with it!". Stealing shit from school like computer equipment, cigarettes and candy from grocery stores. There were even plans to rape certain girls. Perhaps the only time I thought I maybe had gone too far was when a "friend" of mine bought a gun to school.
The way the school tried to control me was to talk to the people around me. My closest acquaintance was this huge football guy and the principal frequently took him into talks and tried to get him to stand up against me, he always came back to me to tell it and my reaction was pretty much "Haha what would you do you fucking fag?". In reality, if even one person had said anything or done anything to me, I would've completely crumbled down, because inside I was still that bullied little fat kid trying to fit in.
What I'm most ashamed is the bullying I inflicted on one kid that was born with his legs different height and as a result, he didn't walk very good. Easy target.
Also, my own little sister. She was the first one in line always. We fought so much that she eventually had to move away to live with my father.
Later on in life, I found out that the kid who began the cycle of hatred, my original bully, had a very abusive big brother.
I've gone through clinical depression, severe anxiety and drug abuse at my adult life to truly find out who I am and I feel that a lot of it was residual from my childhood, as it usually is.
I'm not trying to justify anything, but if you are in that period in your life where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you and the only experience that you have is dog eat dog, then that's what you become.
Thank you for that post. I think of the saying 'hurt people hurt people'.
I really like your last thought of 'that period in your life where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you'. I think of looking into the abyss.
My parents divorced too, at a shit time in my life - young teens. I have turned that into a positive though, by accepting that parents can still be a gift by showing us what _not_ to do, just as much as what to do.
I have to control my passive-agressive side. It's too easy to think 'f this, I don't need you'.
Edit: I haven't seen anyone mention karate / martial arts yet, but as someone who skipped a grade, I think taking that was a very good decision. Luckily, I've never been in a [physical] fight.
Edit: One of my worst moments, though, was when another kid was being bullied and I didn't do anything, or even report it :-(
Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already quite low.
* Speaking as someone who has experienced quite a fair share of bullying, such that it makes me trepidatious in most social situations, waiting and ever expecting the first arrow.
^ probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, which turns it into "my fault". if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out!
- just donated £10 to the charity at http://www.beatbullying.org .. which is (broken-linked) at the bottom of the op
> Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already quite low.
Hm, I never thought of programmer status as being that low, although as an American living in London I definitely noticed that it is lower here than in the States (especially Silicon Valley obviously). But generally programmers can bring tangible value in a way that few professions outside of sales can do, so I never felt a strong need for alpha behavior and posturing to acquire status. What is needed is to work in a company that understands how to leverage technology, and the rest should take care of itself. Programmers are in such high demand now that companies which don't know how to use them and fundamentally value them will get stuck with the bottom of the barrel, leading to a negative feedback loop.
It's your baggage. Either you own up to it and continually work on it, or you let it fester and run your life. I meet so many people who are terrified of being the type of person that goes to therapy despite significant issues. And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.
Why is therapy necessarily the only, or the best solution?
Maybe therapy has an undeserved reputation. Maybe people who should og to it but don't are just prideful. But maybe conventional therapy just isn't the best way for people to deal with their problems? Maybe therapy, as a field, just hasn't lived up to its aspirations?
I'd agree that the GP has to do something about it. But I'm not sure about what, specifically.
> And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.
And that looks like a lack of empathy and/or projection. You can't reduce people's motivations to a small, neat set of emotions and/or intentions.
I don't know about treatment specifically. But outside of therapy and psychology, there are a lot of schools of thought, methods, authors, etc. that have to do with this kind of thing. You might dismiss this as no good because there is no science behind, perhaps nothing scholarly, or no professional accountability. But even so - is there necessarily anything better? Therapy has failed to convince the public of its utility. Self-help also has a bad reputation, but that might only cost you the price of some books, as opposed to expensive sessions with a licensed professional.
Self help might be a farce. There might be no viable alternative to therapy. But most don't have any grounds to judge these kinds of things. We think that people know too little about physical health, but holy shit we laymen don't know anything about mental health. The only (false) dichotomy we often see is "talk about it" vs "don't and let it fester".
I don't know much myself. But I've preferred - so far - to keep it a private matter, between me and my diary or various other techniques I use for processing things and self-reflection.
> if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out!
I was bullied a lot when I was younger. I was small to begin with, but I skipped a grade and consequently hit puberty about 18 months behind all of the other kids. Growing up in a rural area, I endured a lot of abuse and violence on a daily basis, and like the typical story goes, teachers saw most of it and did nothing.
The physical abuse stopped at the end of eighth grade. We had a year-end party and all of the jocks were bullying me as usual. This other kid, who was the only one about my size, decided that he would join in the hazing this day. I guess he had his own reasons for wanting to fit in. TL;DR I snapped and beat the piss out of him. Surprisingly, I wasn't disciplined or punished for this at all, which would probably never be the case in "zero-tolerance" Canada today. The teacher was very nice to me (I was crying and shaking for what felt like an hour afterwards) and drove me home herself. I think maybe she felt bad that she hadn't intervened earlier.
I moved away after the next year, but the few friends that I had back then (the other outcasts and nerds) told me much later that things got better for them in the following years. I guess most kids get over bullying once they get a little older. These episodes left scars on me that will probably never completely heal, but I feel now that as a 34-year-old man I've long since moved past it. I'm relatively well-adjusted and socially-aware now (this took years of work in my late teens and twenties, you don't get a chance to develop critical interpersonal skills when you're a group hazing target), and I haven't let myself be permanently handicapped by the bullying that happened to me. So: things can get better.
As for how I did it, honestly the biggest thing is "fake it till you make it". Pretend to be the confident person that you would like to be, even if it feels forced or fake, or like a role that you're playing instead of your loathsome putrid self. People do respond to charm and confidence -- if you play the role well then things become less difficult over time, and you realize that the only thing that was holding you back was fear before. Over time you can really change the way that you feel about yourself, and you won't need to pretend anymore. It's possible! Amy Cuddy gave a well-regarded TED talk on this topic (http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...), it's worth viewing.
The other thing I did that I feel really helped me was to increase my level of physical exercise. When you're bullied all you want to do is withdraw into yourself behind a protective shell. Lots of bullied people end up living in the mind for this reason, I know I did (and boy am I glad for it in retrospect --- those Commodore 64 programmers' manuals didn't read themselves!). Not a great strategy going into adulthood however. You inhabit a physical body moving through space and getting better at doing that has knock-on effects that improve lots of other parts of your life, besides just looking better: stamina, mood, posture, body language, etc.
Cool, this helps. I was out on this HORRIBLE date tonight.. we saw a movie. In the theater I was stressed the whole time but afterwards, talking, I felt great! And then she ran away as fast as she politely could.
I saw the TED talk that you suggested and it got me thinking. In the theater I was really sitting in a low-power pose. So maybe what I will try is monitoring myself for those poses and then consciously correcting.
The thing is, when I was younger [in college] I used to posture a lot. And everyone disrespected it. :( A particularly scarring incident was when the beautiful girl I was ostensibly "friends" with told me directly, coldly "if I act confident, it's because I am".
Aggression solves this problem. Pure and simple. You can't reason and talk things over - fight or leave.
Humans are unique in that we place a weaker person into a group of more aggressive people day after day with no escape. In the wild the weaker animal usually retreats.
It's basically an aquarium of aggressive fish and you throw in a guppy. The aggressive fish nip and bite off the guppy's fins. Instead of taking the guppy out and placing it into a tank better suited we keep the guppy in the tank. That's basically what happens in the US school system and then we're shocked when bad things happen.
Yet one more great undervoted post I've seen in HN. No, I didn't identify myself with the bullying story (thankfully), but with the freedom and self-expression he found on programming.
I got into programming in my first year of secondary school (year 7 in modern money), when I wasn't really fitting in well. I was getting bullied a little but had a thick skin so didn't care. Can't deny I relate to the escapist aspects of this though.
That said, this article is... odd. Programmers in the UK have a reputation of being anti-social, awkward and unable to integrate - think The IT Crowd - and this article is hardly going to turn that around, is it?
Yet somehow, when you get into the tech industry, you discover the bullying, derision and such like are all there. In the community you'd like to call home.
If you're not doing it in Ruby/Clojure/Java/Python/Javascript/Erlang on AWS/OpenStack/Dedicated/iPhone/Android etc. you're an idiot and deserve derision at best.
What that says about the human psyche is more than a little depressing. We should be better than this.
There are some interesting comments here. My take on the story, as someone who went to a UK comprehensive school in the late '70s early '80s, is that bright people have always been a target at such schools for bullying and current teachers are less able to control the disruptive elements than in the past.
Indeed, there is apparently a tendency to treat them as having medical issues rather than punishing them.
Been there, had it nowhere near as bad as Dan did.
Institutions don't look out for you. They only look out for themselves. My future children will be taught to stand up for themselves, and enrolled in martial arts if necessary. Additionally, I have no qualms about creatively getting the attention of oblivious institutions that tacitly endorse this abuse.
On second thought, maybe I should just homeschool until high school.
Don't do that, you can't just assume your kids are going to be bullied. I wasn't bullied on primary school, and primary school was one of the safest and happiest periods of my life, I still have some friends from primary school even.
There's a good chance your kid is one of the 80% of children that isn't picked on. Even better: your kid might be one of the bullies, then you get the chance to really set things right.
Also, high school might be much worse, fragile children trying to become something resembling adulthood, preparing for life decisions. What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?
I'm homeschooled and I'm not fragile. I know a lot of men and women who were homeschooled and they aren't fragile either. Being frequently bullied may be one way to learn about life, but it isn't the only way. In fact I don't think it's even the best way.
> What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?
Life. The homeschoolers I know do tons of things that help them explore life. There are too many to list here, but here's a short list of excellent things homeschoolers do that incidentally help them learn about life: dancing (contra, waltz, swing, etc.); running your own lawn care company; babysitting special needs children; babysitting in general; mission trips to foreign countries; film-making (for fun, commercials, competitions, etc.); learning to fly airplanes; regional equivalents of boy scouts (4H, boy scouts, something else that I can't remember the name of); and much more.
I didn't say a homeschooled kid would be fragile. I just think that not being homeschooled might prepare them a bit better for highschool life. But perhaps I'm totally wrong. I'm just reacting to the idea that sending your kids to school is sending them to be bullied.
I definitely do not think being bullied is a good way to learn about life.
The difference between then (believe me I was there) and now is that the teachers get stick for allowing this to happen instantly. I've personally got into several shouting matches with teachers over how they treat my children and deal with these situations. I'm usually in a queue of other parents doing exactly the same.
Now and then? This kid is 17 now. Have things really changed that much? I think it's more likely he went to a different school and his parents had a different temperament than you and your fellow parents.
Definitely have changed. There is less respect for teachers, the school system and people communicate more. This has happened because there were a hell of a lot of victims.
Also communication between parents is now at an all time high. I've seen this change in just the last two years.
I think the 17 in the article is a typo for 27. He picked up programming in his teenage years, and the article mentions a "10 years later". Also, it'd be extremely surprising (possible, but surprising) that a 17 year old would have "won awards and travelled all around the country to meet people and attend or speak at conferences."
Hey!
Writer here, I just thought it might be worth saying that I am indeed 17! :)
I started programming aged around 7 or 8, and have won a couple of awards (Most recently a Google Code Award for ProjectHermes - a natural language analysing bullying detector for twitter), and spoken at a few events as well.
I'm incredibly surprised myself by the things I've done over the years, it's a pretty awesome world!
Bullying was (at my school) an unfortunate reality.
My brother (year younger) was born with a congenital problem (ptosis) in both eyes which required frequent surgery (poor sod had 9 operations with weeks of recovery for each before he was 11).
This obviously made him a target for bullying and since the school was doing nothing about it I ended up stepping in to sort things out.
When I was about 8 I found my brother and a group of boys in one of the classrooms at lunch time, my brother was curled up on the floor sobbing with one boy sat on him and the rest where jeering.
I picked up a chair and waded in and I really wasn't pulling any punches.
When my mother came to pick me up from the school I was sat outside the headmasters office with the bullies.
We went into the office the headmaster started saying how my behaviour was unacceptable and that I couldn't just assault other pupils in that way.
At which point my mum interrupted "Ben isn't in the slightest violent, he's never had any issues with fighting at this school and yet he felt the need to use a chair to protect his brother, who we both know is getting bullied as you've seen fit to punish Ben I fully expect you to punish the bullies as well and if you don't you can be assured will be going to the local newspapers about the endemic bullying problem, I will also be writing to the Governors and the Local Education Authority", this was in the 80's, parents didn't complain then like that.
I was out of school for 3 days, my mum took me to the bookshop and said I could pick any three books I wanted.
My brother didn't get bullied again til secondary school and he dealt with that himself.
I learnt a very valuable lesson that day - stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves and fuck the consequences (I also learnt that my mum was a badass).