I thought of my past as encompassing the sundry experiences of youth, until fixating on headlines about bullying, about young people who go to therapy and take antidepressants, those who do self-destructive things and hurt other people because they had been bullied.
Nowadays, they have the bully-patrol in schools, and public service announcements about bullying.
It’s very scary. I’ve also read articles about adult bullies. I need to be on the lookout for bullies too?
“I didn’t know I was bullied. That was bullying that I experienced when I was in junior high school? Wow, I was bullied,” I said to my sister.
The media says that being bullied causes people to have syndromes.
People reading about these syndromes can measure themselves up against them, eventually determining that they have these syndromes and begin manifesting other behaviors outlined therein. I did.
Maybe I was just naive, albeit, one who had been called “Skeleton Head” and “Chester” because I didn’t have any titties – but I just thought getting fucked with was comeuppance for me because I said and did mean things to kids too.
But on days I’m digging through archives, feeling sorry for myself, I can focus on having been called “Chester”. Then I can watch Dr. Phil and learn even more about me.
The media influenced me to feel sorry for myself. It made a lot of money doing it. It defined me when previously I had no idea that I even had any syndrome.
I thought I was evolving into something new and different everyday. But now I’m in a cubby-hole, marked with an indelible stamp: “The One Who Was Bullied”.
At the end of this I realize it’s good to draw attention to bullying so that we think about it and grow eventually, as a culture.
But, could we tone it down a little, so that we can hear ourselves think?
1800ukillme 
Amen! I was probably bullied too, but I don’t remember it. I wasn’t a bully and I don’t think I knew anybody who was, or at least, anybody who got away with it. Lord, I’m glad I didn’t know I was supposed to suffer syndromes. I thought I was just a bit strange and neurotic on my own! 🙂
Hi George! Well, leave it to the media to tell us who we are.
Excellent as always, Sandee! I know all about the subject, and I emerged from it, swaying my Gladius. 🙂
Thanks GP! “Swaying your Gladius” — hahaha! — That’s the ticket!
Bulling should be screamed about. I know people who had to move their children from schools because they were being bullied and the school wasn’t doing anything about it. Children shooting up schools. Things were different when we were growing up. Now there is internet. It’s a big deal… I believe most people had/are being bullied at some point of their lives. Some have long term effects, while some, it doesn’t faze one bit.
The internet does put another spin on things. It’s more than what we experienced growing up for sure. I do think education about it helps us to become evolved, but the media goes overboard, turning it into some kind of a plague, publishing these ‘syndromes’ that vulnerable people attach to themselves, being easily influenced by “authoritative” voices. Just the way I think weak minds get ideas from the media about shooters and serial killers — if we didn’t keep these evil people front and center and didn’t publish their names, other sick people wouldn’t get the twisted idea that this is a good way to get famous — my opinion. But I don’t mean at all to make light of the situation. I just think the media makes a good deal of money creating scourges — in the vein of yellow journalism.
Well said!
Thanks Carla!
THE MEDIA with few exceptions=mostly exploitation. I believe that bullying in schools should be zero tolerance. It’s the one place that we can tell our kids that intolerance will not be suffered. The damage to the bullied can either grow a person stronger, meaner, or cut them off at the knees. I’ve no tolerance for intolerance. Great post Sandee.
Thanks Elena! I agree school is a place where people should feel safe.
Maybe there’s different levels of bullying like comedy often insults and yet audiences laugh… as we can find art and ways of speaking about being human-animals in satire occasionally. And some of the bullying is tolerated or perpetuated as family and community trains us into our roles and adversity which life inevitably involves. But after a while bullying is cumulative and if done early enough it imprints. The bullying that is abuse is loud currently as media depicts bullies with great ease and men are depicted as aggressive in order to be men at all while women are sex objects and only half a person no matter what we wish in terms of progress for females and our equality…
So I apologize for adding on to the cry against bullies (but I had to because I have worked with abused kids living with very bullying families.)
And yeah a lot of syndromes come due to cumulative exposure to the media as well… Hippocrates early in medicine and psychosis would say the best medicine is no medicine and believed in prevention and the hypochondriac comes from his namesake (I think) which is how everyone is so easily persuaded by implanted thoughts as well as placebo effects, so I think you make a good point and yet… I gotta face and or stand up to bullies most weeks just walking in my own neighborhood. It’s supposed to be my “normal” but i find that unacceptable. I don’t want to normalize bullies…ever… or tune out.
Don’t apologize — I really appreciate your comment — it all helps me to see the bigger picture.
I’m with you on the roles the media play in our lives. I was throwing up through my whole adolescence trying to become anorexic, to no avail. I love to eat. I doubt that the whole idea would have ever passed my mind if it hadn’t been the hit illness of that time. Maybe I would have even liked my body if Farah Fawcett (?) and the other angels hadn’t come along.
I think I’m taking this issue from the other side, but you know what I mean! 🙂
Bises,
Dawn
Media should be more responsible at least, I think. The news is a great place to get ideas about being a shooter or a serial killer — how to become anorexic and bulimic. Thanks Dawn!
I hear you about toning it down a little bit. I’m sure there are people out there who will declare “bullying” to every little thing that hurts their precious baby’s feelings. We need to learn the difference between a little name calling and the shifting tides of children’s feelings, and actual, malicious bullying.
I’m telling you, I never really considered that I was bullied until reading all of the reports on it — besides — I can’t say I was so much of an angel myself.
Yes to toning it down! I wouldn’t have figured out that I was bullied without the media. I was called fatty everyday in grade school, it wasn’t as bad as they make it out to be. I understand that some bullying can leave permanent scars, but not every time. We gotta tone it down, it’s getting to be too much!
I never want to come off as insensitive, but sometimes I think the media make things out to be worse than they actually are so that they can make money off of hysteria. Frankly, with all the reports on bullying, I’m forced to look at my past, constantly reminded of shit I would normally have moved on from. I gotta be honest, there were people who said I was mean as a kid for a spell too — so I have to look at that too — I put things in perspective that way.
Yes! That is why I want to go live in a cave. So I can think. But then I won’t have internet. And what will I do without the internet telling me what should I think about?
Hahahahaha!
Thanks Jon Jon!