Comment on Is this possibly a jealousy thing?
Carrolade@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Bullies get positive feelings for themselves by making others suffer. Who they target with this isn’t too different from how a predator selects prey–choose the vulnerable.
Your sister, for one reason or another, is vulnerable, meaning the bully is less likely to suffer any consequences for picking on her than if they picked on someone else. That “someone else” could have more friends willing to stick up for them and fight back, they could have a really sharp wit and be able to verbally humiliate the bully if they wanted, they could be huge and practice MMA, being able to physically knock all her teeth out with one swing, they could be a teacher’s favorite and able to go to an authority figure to get backup and inflict consequences that way. All sorts of possibilities.
But one way or another, your sister has been selected due to having fewer plausible defenses than any of the potential alternatives.
Best way to resolve that is to bolster her defenses in some way or another, so the bully picks a different, more vulnerable target. Making the bully actually stop bullying everyone isn’t very likely, though. As someone else pointed out, the bully is most likely suffering a lot themselves, and participating in bullying is how they themselves are surviving their own difficult circumstances. The easiest fix would probably be the “sharp wit” route, as verbally tearing into someone in a humorous way is a learnable skill. Otherwise a physical intimidation route, where your sister or another makes them afraid for their teeth remaining in their mouth if the bullying continues.
To answer your direct question, yes, jealously could be a part of it. There isn’t much use in wondering about it, though, there’s no real solutions to be found down this line of thinking, that I’m aware of.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’m 41 now, but when I was a kid in school I was the quiet loner kid. And I changed schools every year because of a stupid “diversity” program.
Anyways, this meant that on day 1, every year I’d get picked on. Not verbally. It was a rough school system. So every year at some point on day 1 I’d get a punch to the back of the head. And every time I’d respond by turning around and knocking the kid out. Then I’d grab my bag, and I’d walk away. For the rest of the year, I’d see them pick on other kids. Other kids wouldn’t fight back.
Of coarse these days you got a different situation in schools. All these kids have camera phones, and encourage fights so they can upload the videos to youtube. Then they all run in packs of 20-30 kids. And you never know who has a gun anymore.
When I decked a kid, I never thought it was about to be a 20 on 1 retaliation, or that I’d get shot. Never once ran through my mind. Now you can’t trust that to be true anymore. Those pussys at columbine started a trend. They couldn’t fight their bullys, so they went and got guns. And they didn’t even go to some ghetto school where it’s dangerous. They went to an upscale preppy school filled with the kind of “bullys” who tie their polo sweater around their waist because they might go golfing later. I came from schools where they were struggling at home for money to buy food, or crack, so they’d bully kids at school for it.
So now these columbine kids go in, do some fucked up shit, and now we got 30 years of not knowing if the kid you’re fighting will come back tomorrow with a gun. When I fought kids, if you went to the ground, that was it. You lost. It’s over. It’s kinda like boxing, where the ref stops the fight.
And if you lost, that’s it. You pick yourself up, and you move on. And if you won the fight, you stop. He’s fallen. It’s done. Don’t kick them when their down. This isn’t a beatdown. You won the fight, move on.