Well, I'm a nerd but I do agree with the bully. I don't think that the severity of a crime should be judged by a victim's reaction to it. While I see how a suicide might bring notoriety to a problem, I don't think it changes the nature of what was done. It's similar to the Tyler Clementi case, who killed himself because he was being videotaped in gay acts by his roommate. I never thought it was fair that the bully in this case would be held accountable for essentially the entirety of our society's homophobia just because his actions were the final straw. He should have been punished the same that anybody would be for video taping their roommate in a sexual act and publishing it online (which I do recognize as severe bullying and very wrong). I believe that his official charges were along those lines, but it was clear it was being taken more seriously because of the suicide.<p>The other thing I hate is the concept of "The" Bully. It's easy to imagine a sick, hateful person, most importantly someone else, and individual bullies certainly exist, but I think the far more common situation is where the bully is a group of people. I think one way to 'Stop Bullying' is to help people understand when they are bullying, instead of just imagining it's something someone else does. I doubt there that many people that never had an adolescent moment where they 'ganged up' on someone (verbally) to feel like they belonged more in a group, or just to give an outsider or a 'runt' of the group a hard time, because it's such an instinctive thing to do. So much so that it's a huge theme of Lord of the Flies, a book everybody reads in high school, but rarely views within the context of their own life.<p>The most ironic thing about these stop bullying campaigns is so very, very often they reflect the same group bullying mentality they purport to be fighting. All these people 'ganging up' on the prosecutors in this case are example of that. I'm not saying this wasn't a failure of our justice system that should be fixed, only that it at times this is seeming awfully like a witch hunt.
Thanks. Sad, sad topic, but probably the best take on the topic I have read.<p>And not only on the recent context. This is a story, that sadly fits so many contexts, that it could be shown day after day after day.
There's a kind of emotional economy that nerds don't tune into. To those who aren't strong enough to resist participating in this collective exchange, it seems like the nerd is cheating. And he's perpetually anxious, so he must be in the wrong, right?<p>>everyone - including the teacher - had laughed<p>Yes. 'Socialization' --a purportedly legitimate function of schooling-- exists on the same continuum as teasing and bullying.
I am not a huge fan of the term "bully" in this conversation because it keeps us from having a nuanced conversation.<p>The easiest counterpoint is noting so-called "bully-like" behavior from prosecutors in cases that ended up putting someone genuinely dangerous behind bars or into confessing a crime they committed but wouldn't confess to without the so-called "bullying".<p>So, if we want to talk about this from the perspective of a bully, let's begin by defining what it is and <i>isn't</i>.
I'm not sure the models we use when understanding the behaviour of an individual are useful for understanding the behaviour of a state or another large group with no one individual in control. Groups of people, I think, are fundamentally different entities from individuals.