JJ.

This is part of today's general mentality: no one wants to be responsible for themselves. Everything is somebody else's fault.

- Fall down, skin your knee? Look around for someone to sue!

- Kid got bad grades? It's the school's fault!

- You made a jerk of yourself, and people called you on it? They are bullies!

I think this generation is simply beyond hope; they've grown up this way, thanks to helicopter parents shielding their precious snowflakes from real life. We can only hope that the next generation will be fed up with it, and will collectively return to self-responsibility.

As mentioned in the Popehat thread, real bullying is something completely different.

> You made a jerk of yourself, and people
> called you on it? They are bullies!

'Zackley. This needs a name, because I think the insight is new: When people come to the internet to enjoy its new conversational forms, many will feign high levels of expertise* & righteousness; They'll speak as if they'd visited dozens of places and read hundreds of books and met thousands of people and maybe started a few major corporations and founded a few universities. When others identify the weakness in the newcomer's reasoning, the internet is described as a 'cesspool' of bitterness and social incompetence.

Quite the reverse: The wonderfully atomized platform is giving a voice to all kinds of decent people who'd never have been heard before, people who'll insist that others back up what they say. Newsweek is dead and Time is gasping and good riddance... Those were the truly insidious media venues, where all the voices were careerist and deaf.

I think Twitter is diminishing the 'ugly internet' prattle, too. First, a Twitter user picks his own poison, and most begin with people they like rather than people they hate. Second, it's difficult to be pompous or fraudulent in just 140 characters... And Lord knows I've tried.




*Anyone remember Cothy, who wouldn't use c

…I mean, who would not use contractions? Presumably his preacher never used them on Sunday, and he wanted to be totally prooooo-fessional when he was sharing the love God had for little children… On the day two dozen of them had been mercilessly gunned down at school.

Sorry - link.

They'll speak as if they'd visited dozens of places and read hundreds of books and met thousands of people and maybe started a few major corporations and founded a few universities.

Or like crid they spin a web of bullshit and claim to be above it all, though the fact that he, and they, try so fucking hard belies that fact

I hadn't thought about this in particular, but good points. I never considered myself bullied, but by modern use of the word, I would have been. Sure, I knew my fair share of pushy mean people, yes I had to do projects with condescending assess, but being mean isn't the same as bullying.

Frankly, it seems as if mean people are trying to outlaw being mean, so long as their meanness is "just telling the truth." (when other folks say an unpleasant truth they are bullies, of course).

Thanks for bringing this line of thinking to my attention, Amy.

I think some people need to listen to last night's Advice Goddess Radio - and learn how to REALLY argue...aka and make sense at the same time! Bully pulpit my eye (or pain in the eye!)

What a coincidence. John Rosemond wrote about this last week:

http://lacrossetribune.com/lifestyles/relationships-and-special-occasions/john-rosemond-parental-overreaction-overshadows-actual-bullying/article_157c5744-7637-11e2-ad5e-001a4bcf887a.html

Three comments so far - probably more on Facebook.

"Parental overreaction overshadows actual bullying."

February 17, 2013 12:30 am By JOHN ROSEMOND

The principal of a middle school recently confided in me that “this bullying thing has gotten completely out of hand.”

He wasn’t referring to bullying itself, although that’s certainly out of hand. Instead, he referred to the fact that many parents have become overly sensitized to the possibility that their kids might, at any moment, become bullied and over-react, therefore, to any indication that they have been.

“You wouldn’t believe what parents think is bullying,” he said, and went on to describe some examples. One involved a mother who complained that a boy had poured a small amount of dry snack mix down the back of her son’s shirt. The mother was incensed and wanted the perpetrator subjected to water-boarding, or something along those lines. Said principal then went on to describe other instances of “bullying” that were not bullying at all but simply pranks.

It might be helpful if everyone were able to agree on a rational definition of exactly what separates actual bullying from just normal childhood mischief. That lack of consensus may be, in fact, a major share of the problem. For example,

the definition at StopBullying.gov proposes that bullying is “unwanted, aggressive behavior among school-age children that involves a power imbalance.”

That’s the very sort of nebulous definition that fuels a mother’s outrage at snack mix being poured down her son’s shirt. I prefer something along the lines of the definition found on Wikipedia: “repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another person physically or mentally.”

That captures it nicely, I think. Note that the aggressive behavior in question is not incidental but repeated. And it is done with the malicious intent to do harm, both physically and mentally, to another person. I would add that an additional purpose is to keep the victim in a state of near-constant fear. And by the way, I was the target of at least three bullies during my school years. I wish all they’d done was pour snack mix down my shirt on a daily basis.

Over the past few years, many school officials have told me that the problem of parental overreaction has become bigger than the problem of actual bullying. Occasional teasing doesn’t fit the definition proposed by Wikipedia and myself. Nor do one-time pranks like snack mix down the shirt, tripping, name-calling or any other form of mischief that might cause embarrassment but is not done with the deliberate intention of keeping another child in a near-constant state of fear.

I was reminded of my conversation with the principal by an email recently received from the mother of a 21-month-old boy who, she claimed, had been bullied by a girl at his nursery school. The girl had pushed her son and grabbed a toy he had been playing with. Mom wanted me to recommend a book on bullies she could read her little one. First, that’s not bullying. That’s what toddlers occasionally do when they’re put in groups. Second, the mother’s overreaction, repeated over time, is likely to cause her son to become overly sensitive to any perceived slight, whether physical or verbal. Under the circumstances, he could quickly develop a victim mentality and do himself more mental harm than a bully would ever be capable of doing.

Sometimes — just sometimes mind you — adults would do well to say something along these lines to a complaining child: “If that’s all you’ve got to complain about, then you live a very good life.” Unfortunately, a principal or teacher can’t say anything along those lines these days without getting into hot water. A child’s parents can say it, though and sometimes — just sometimes, mind you — they should.

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