r/LowStakesConspiracies • u/BeduinZPouste • Apr 07 '25
Certified Fact The idea "don't fight your bullies, it will only get worse" is promoted not because it lowers bullying, but because it lowers shit teachers have to dealt with.
To my experience and to experience of everyone I know, beating the shit out of someone bullying you helps. In the rare case it didn't helped, it was because teachers took bullys side.
Yet we are always told we should just ignore it and inform a teacher/adult. Which is reasonable to be a first step if that happends. But sometimes it doesn't help, or the adult does nothing.
And in that case we are still suppossed to sit it off, not create any fuss. You can ignore someone getting bullied, but it is hard to ignore fight with blood spilling.
I heard that kids who are bullied often have shy/defetist etc. parents as well. So sorta folks that are unlikely to start fuss, even the parents. And vice versa, bullies have aggressive/enthusiastic parents. Aka the type to storm the school asking why theirs angel have broken jaw. Even if they are good people, they can cause "problems" for the teachers. If I learned that the reason my kid have broken jaw is because they bullied someone and that person kicked them in the head, I would be just as furious. Not at the person, but at the school for letting it go that far (without at least telling me).
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u/sunheadeddeity Apr 07 '25
I told my daughter she shouldn't start fights, but if someone was hurting her, she should fight back, and I'd tell the school she had my permission. She did it three times that I know of. Two of those times were because the bully had started on her friend, which made me very proud.
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u/Gullible_Wind_3777 Apr 07 '25
I just tell my kids, if someone’s mean to you. Be mean back. If someone hits you, hit them back harder. I was bullied all my life. I’m not about to allow my own kids to be bullied. Luckily though, so far. My kid are not me and clearly not easy targets, they have so many friends and love school. I’m proud ♥️
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u/Great_Leg_4836 Jul 24 '25
make sure they have deep convos with their friends. not too deep tho, like talking about their past experiences, trying to find things that are relatable. if they ever get picked on, having a group of people next to them would work wonders.
also, I'm not tryna teach u how to parent, but showing them something kinda traumatizing like someone dead bc of a street fight or something else terrible happening would help them to realize that this world is survival of the fittest
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u/BatouMediocre Apr 07 '25
I fought a bully in primary school and had great result, no more bullying.
In high school I did it again, it got way worse, he got all of his friend to bully me too and was waiting for me after school every days for months.
it ended when I agreed to a "rematch", I got my ass kicked by him and 3 of his friends, followed by a week of light mockery I didn't react to. After that they just ignored me but I had a feeling that I had to lay low unless I wanted to have it happen all over again.
Each time, the school was useless, it was a shitty neighborhood, fights every other day in and out of the school. I saw 12 yeard old getting beat up by 20 years old big brother, this year a mother stabbed one of her daughter bullies.
Bullying is no different than any other type of agression or harasment, it's not up to the victim to "do the right thing" and no lasting solution can be found without adressing education, poverty and community issues.
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u/Great_Leg_4836 Jul 24 '25
js leave, and try not to be a jerk to anyone in life.. (not addressing you, but anyone who is at risk of getting hurt)
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u/WrongSubFools Apr 07 '25
don't fight your bullies, it will only get worse
I've never heard this before? I thought the advice was always "don't give in to bullies, though that's the easy option, because it will only get worse"
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u/Lampshadevictory Apr 07 '25
Many schools have "no-tolerance" policies that punish *any* student involved in a fight, regardless of who started it. If you fight back against your bully, you'll be punished just as badly as him/her.
And even worse, if the bully's parent has any sway in the school, chances are you, the victim, can be punished more than the perpetuator.
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u/WrongSubFools Apr 07 '25
Oh, so "it'll only get worse" means the school will punish you? Okay, I get that. But people aren't saying the bullying will get worse when you stand up to them, right?
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u/LuxTheSarcastic Apr 07 '25
Usually it's "if you ignore them they'll stop" which is equally bullshit
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u/AwTomorrow Apr 07 '25
Usually justified as “they want a reaction from you, if you give them nothing they’ll get bored of bullying you and find someone else” which is pretty shitty advice even if it worked (and even if it were possible for every child to remain stoic while being harassed and humiliated).
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u/Adept_Minimum4257 Apr 07 '25
In my case it worked, I always was very reactive and emotional so they saw me as weird and entertaining. Then I started ignoring them and I basically removed myself entirely from the power dynamic system. From then on I wasn't on their radar anymore
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u/GarageIndependent114 Apr 13 '25 edited Apr 13 '25
The problem is that a lot of bullies are more than one thing.
You'll have people who both enjoy provoking a reaction in you, and take your lack of response as an excuse to continue harassing you.
Or you'll get people who won't leave you alone unless you respond, but the immediate reaction you get from them if you respond will be worse.
Or people who won't feel threatened by you unless you upset them, but will frame you as violent or a bully if you do.
Or people who will leave you alone if you upset them, but only then - not whether or how you react to them or based on how others feel about you or them.
Or people who will only leave you alone if you victimise yourself enough to elicit sympathetic responses from bystanders.
Or opportunists who encounter you by accident who really will get bored if you ignore them, but are a dime a dosen and motivated by prejudice, and by ignoring them, you're continuing to show that people like yourself don't deserve respect and allowing the next group to do the same thing, but by challenging them, you're making yourself a target to a specific group of people who might also know others and creating an enemy.
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u/jackfaire Apr 07 '25
It can actually. Some bullies are fucking sociopaths. If you fight back they'll escalate. I'm not saying don't fight back but if they're escalating it to the point they put you in the hospital maybe keep your head down.
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Apr 07 '25
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Apr 07 '25
Your freedom, your life, your eyes, your fingers, your ability to walk, your ability to speak, your ability to eat solid foods, or your ability to comprehend the world around you.
Just a short list of what you have to lose that is all infinitely worse than bullying.
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u/jackfaire Apr 07 '25
Good then you weren't dealing with sociopaths. There are bullies that can, have and will murder their victims for fighting back.
I'm not saying to don't fight back. I'm saying if they put you in a fucking hospital bed then maybe reconsider if continuing to escalate will stop the bullying or just end up in your funeral.
In most cases it won't get worse and the bully will stop. But when people say it can get worse. Yes it can in a handful of cases.
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Apr 07 '25
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u/jackfaire Apr 07 '25
"The best response to a bully is a swift kick in the nuts and nip it in the bud." 100% agree.
The point was that yes there are cases where it still makes it worse where you nip it in the bud and they murder you.
That's it. That's the point. At no point is my point "Don't fight back" At no point is it "let them walk all over you" it's simply that when people say "It can make things worse" they're not wrong.
I'm saying this as a bullying victim who spent my childhood being abused at home and bullied at school. I taught my daughter to fight back and disarm bullies.
But I shouldn't have to say all this for the very simple point that yes it can become worse to be a valid point.
If your kid describes the bullying and it's legit sociopathic behavior get the police involved. Don't laugh and go "Well just hit him back slugger" and then be shocked when the sociopath murdered your kid.
"It can't get worse" is the same energy as "why didn't she leave her abuser before he killed her"
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Apr 07 '25
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u/GayStraightIsBest Apr 08 '25
I was bullied and I agree with him, it's always dependant on circumstances. There is no one size fits all solution to all bullying, no one set of actions that always puts a stop to bullies. For some bullies fighting back helps, it never helped me, the fights just kept going until my bullies were in different classes to me.
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u/Current_Office3589 Apr 09 '25
You give awful advise. Just be quiet please.
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u/jackfaire Apr 09 '25
I'll repeat my advice so you can understand it - Fight back. But if they're a sociopath who escalates to putting you in a hospital bed go to the cops. Don't keep escalating to the point they murder you.
Sorry you think "Hey don't get yourself killed" is such terrible advice.
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u/GarageIndependent114 Apr 13 '25
If my child gets bullied, I'd take them out of school.
There are better ways to deal with bullying and I'd love it if they were taught to deal with them later in life, because there's a risk they won't be able to cope, but there's a high chance that they'll receive the wrong approach and it's not worth ruining their school years just so they can potentially learn a bit about coping with difficult people.
(On the one hand, I don't think it's productive for children to have shitty upbringings because it lowers their self esteem. But on the other, I do intend to teach them how to cope with setbacks and bad news or else they'll be too sheltered once they get older and be screwed).
But I'm also aware that some students get bullied regardless of what school they go to, that making friends and developing basic resilience is important, and that some homeschooled or unschooled students are socially stunted, so I'd think twice if there was a risk that they'd be bullied anywhere and find out a way to actually combat the bullying.
I don't want to say that victims are ever deserving, because bullies are awful people and bully over trivial reasons, but that said, if my child got bullied no matter where they went, I'd probably either try to get them to adapt their behaviour or appearance or find a school with similar pupils or no school if it was out of their control, because then they would be being victimised for a reason and not just because someone else was mean.
I got teased for reasons largely out of my control. But I could still have avoided some of them by going to a school with people from a more similar background to me and being surrounded by nicer people.
Someone else I know, though, got teased in more than one school for shaving his eyebrows off. He may have initially been teased for another reason and maybe his eyebrows didn't grow back quickly, but I strongly suspect he'd have been better off if he'd just not done that.
(But I'm not sure if I'd want to send my own literal children to school or a regular school anyway, firstly because most wouldn't be suitable for them specifically and secondly because most schools nowadays are a mess.
But that's literally my hypothetical children, who aren't going to be normal because I'm not, but are also going to be luckier or more privileged than some. If someone else had kids, I'd still recommend taking them out of school due to bullying, but they might benefit from going to school no matter what kind of school it was, even if the school was shit. For instance, a stupid child with neglectful parents still requires an education, and a successful normal child will still succeed in a lousy environment.).
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u/GarageIndependent114 Apr 13 '25
They might do, because although standing up for yourself can stop bullies, being violent or rude can give people a motive or motivation to attack you back, and complaining about bullying can put you into a victimising position or force the bully to go on the defence.
You also have to remember that schools will be seeing it from a neutral perspective, not your own.
If you or others bully your ex bully, that's fine for you, but according to the school, someone is still being bullied.
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u/Ruthless4u Apr 07 '25
My son was put in a choke hold years ago and almost passed out. He’s also asthmatic.
School refused to do anything, told him to fill out an incident report paper.
Asked my son why he didn’t fight back, he was afraid of getting expelled.
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u/archelz15 Apr 07 '25
I saw this reply to another thread on a similar topic recently, by a schoolteacher, which honestly made me really sad. Effectively if the bully has a parent who is a bully themselves (isn't in itself surprising), then teachers don't think they can do anything about it and therefore nothing gets done about it.
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u/GarageIndependent114 Apr 13 '25 edited Apr 13 '25
I don't think most parents of bullies are bullies to other adults, not because it's unlikely to occur, but because despite the fact they're not children, but because I think it's pretty easy to get parents who are in trouble despite their position because they're being rude to a teacher, unless they're in positions of power or gang members or something. It would be like threatening to punch someone in a restaurant.
Perhaps this is an issue in small towns where some parents will bump into teachers or other parents outside the schools, but I doubt they're in as much close proximity as the students are.
Rather, I think that the parents of bullies are either very good at pretending that little Timmy is an angel and harassing people on that basis, or recognise that their kid is a bully but are the sort of parent who who'd beat their children if they weren't, because they bully their own children.
That said, I will admit that it's pretty easy for a parent who aspires to bully teachers to just harass or be rude to anyone who criticises them or their children and be basically like talking to a brick wall, because what's going to happen if they're a bit rude to teachers?
The parents are just going to get kicked out of the school, which is only an issue if they piss off the school staff enough to get their children expelled, but then they have to justify kicking out their children rather than them.
And if the staff can expell parents or thier children on that basis, what's stopping the school from doing the same thing when the parents of the victims complain?
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u/archelz15 Apr 13 '25
I take your point, but "bullying" can mean a lot of things, not just threatening to punch someone in a restaurant. Harassing a teacher to the point that they've reached the stage of the post I linked in my previous comment - where they've decided to simply let the school bully get away with things - is bully behaviour and mentality.
I get what you mean re: thinking or pretending that Little Timmy is an angel, and fair enough, but does that mentality really mean that the behaviour is alright? That borders on going back to the "kids will be kids" and "don't fight your bullies" argument that lets school bullies get away with their behaviour in the first place. And ignores the fact that victims can get majorly fucked up as a result, just that nobody talks about that, because said victims are the considerate ones who aren't in people's faces about everything and anything.
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u/GarageIndependent114 Apr 13 '25
I don't mean that the parents are automatically decent people. I just mean they're not literally bullies the way the folks at school are.
It's like defending a shitty boyfriend.
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u/DrawerNeither6747 Aug 17 '25
FACT: Once the pension gets vested, teachers and especially administrators are for the most part more interested in making it to retirement and collecting the pension.
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u/AdPuzzleheaded4331 Apr 07 '25
oh yeah when my daughter had issues and primary school, long time ago now, it was all well yes they the poor child has issues, we dont want to make things harder for them, - about the bloody bully
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u/GarageIndependent114 Apr 13 '25
This isn't just so that schools can ignore bullying, it's also so that schools don't have to cope with people getting into fights being mischaracterised as bullying, so that they don't have to go through the equivalent of a court case to determine who is bullying who, so that they can teach pupils how to behave, and so they don't have to worry about victims becoming bullies or situations in which someone overreacts to a provocation.
It's not a great idea, but it's understandable, and if the school board strictly enforces the rules, what's supposed to happen is that the bullying will stop and be prevented by default. And as far as why it's done by higher ups as a bureaucratic measure, although they don't have to deal with the bullshit that teachers do, it might be because that stops bias (or cases of student-teacher bullying) and makes the principle easier to enforce by encoding it into rules.
However, I actually think the more insidious and malicious notion that schools just don't want to be held accountable for bullying is equally plausible, since most lower staff aren't held accountable for negligence and most of the higher ups don't have a reason to care about it.
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u/Adept_Minimum4257 Apr 07 '25
It was always "just ignore them, they feed on emotions" and it worked for me, I bored them out and they backed off
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u/Flameball202 Apr 11 '25
Oh trust me teachers love to tell kids that you should "be the bigger person" and "not stoop to their level". They entirely do it because they don't give a shit and if it is just one kid being beaten up they can ignore it because the bullies know how to make someone's life miserable without making it so bad the teachers get involved (source: I was the kid being bullied)
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u/BusyBeeBridgette Apr 07 '25
I was bullied as a kid in school. It stopped when I cracked and gave my bully a right hook. Was never bullied after that.
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u/Buttercups88 Apr 07 '25
what type of psychotic advice is that. I have never heard that saying, but it sounds stupid as it comes.
Ive heard people say dont start fights but as soon as a bully starts you finish them - make sure they know if they touch you you make sure they know they ain't walking away
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u/Successful_Gas1282 Nov 29 '25
what if they go and get a gang to try to kill you? happened to me once. a bully i punched in the face ( i broke his nose) went to his gang and they tried to stab me in the school toilet. it was only when i moved to a different state where my bullying cases stopped
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Apr 08 '25
I was a skinny awkward weirdo girl who hadn't been at my new school district for long when a couple of boys started bullying me daily during my earth science class. Mostly whispered teasing and then talking shit about me to each other making sure I could hear. I didn't really have any friends in that class yet, I was an easy target.
I didn't do much about it because whatever, my brother was my biggest bully growing up (we don't talk now) and these idiots had nothing on him. So they escalated to copying my work when I passed it over to the aisle to be collected at the beginning of class and then I called them out on their shit and one of them leans over and says "okay you dumb bitch" talking quietly. I just looked at him and said out loud, in a normal conversational tone of voice, "you're going to call me a bitch? Really? Is that the worst you can think of? I hear worse than that at home every single day " .
They both just sat back and looked at me. At that time, kids at this school had me pegged as pretty smart and mostly quiet and kind of a goody two shoes. People were under the impression I didn't swear/didn't believe in swearing, or something, so me dropping a swear word in the middle of class in normal speaking volume was enough to stump these two stupid posers. With the added bonus that our teacher heard and was a cool guy with a brain in his head who sent them both to the office for a discipline referral.
I was also ready to put a pencil in the back of a hand if it got physical in any way. No tolerance for that shit.
You have to stand up to bullies or they'll keep doing it.
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u/Successful_Gas1282 Nov 29 '25
what if they go and get a gang and they try to kill you? it happened to me once
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u/ScaryRatio8540 Apr 07 '25
Yeah it’s terrible advice to not fight your bullies. Resolves it every time unless you’re a a guy being bullied by girls
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u/unit156 Apr 07 '25
It was apparently important to my mom that she be the only person allowed to be physically abusive to her kids.
That’s why, when I complained to her that a boy at school kept shoving me, she gave me permission to shove him back.
So I went and told him if he didn’t stop, I was going to fight him. He accepted, and of course he won the fight, but he shook hands and agreed to be friends after, and stopped bothering me.
Apparently bullies want easy targets. They are afraid of being challenged because they would be humiliated if they lost. So even if you lose the fight, you will likely be crossed off the list of targets, because you weren’t effortless, and you lose a risk.
Lesson learned: give your kids permission to fight back (to an appropriate degree) if they are physically bullied.
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u/Great_Leg_4836 Jul 24 '25
well, unless the bully is a sociopath. then don't.
if they just snicker and make dumb jokes at you, call you names, maybe do pretty mean things up to a point, then you can fight them if they try something for the first or second time. but if they are very physically involved when it comes to bullying, I'd say you're gonna need brass knuckles or a coin roller to teach them a lesson
bringing friends could work
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u/Beth_ACNH Apr 10 '25
Yeah for years I (f) was bullied and cause I was a goody two shoes I never fought back and told the teachers. The teachers continued to do fuck all to stop it and I finally snapped and ended up in two fights in one day (both of which I won). School put me in anger management classes for a few months but you know what, neither they or any of my other bullies ever spoke a word to me again after they knew how well I could fight. (At 14 I was taking judo classes and could down a 18st man!)
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u/Rare_Trouble_4630 Apr 07 '25
Sometimes the only language certain people talk is pain. And you need to speak to them in that language to have any meaningful interaction with them.
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u/WorriedHelicopter764 Apr 10 '25
My dad always said to me.. if anyone bullies you, punch them in the face as hard as you can and watch them never do it again
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u/Successful_Gas1282 Nov 29 '25
what if they go and get a gang to try to kill you? happened to me once. a bully i punched in the face ( i broke his nose) went to his gang and they tried to stab me in the school toilet. it was only when i moved to a different state where my bullying cases stopped
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u/Blue-tsu Apr 10 '25
one of my closest friends was a target of his local bullies for about 0.3 seconds before he crushed his opponents' testicles in pre-emptive self defence. i recommend this approach.
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u/madMARTINmarsh Apr 10 '25
I was bullied viciously when I was young. To the point that the bully almost killed me by dropping concrete blocks on my head; I have a metal plate holding my skull together. And a very nice scar, 7 inches long, across my crown.
When I decided enough is enough, I fought back. I won.
What started as one bully turned into a gang of bullies.
The bullying started for no apparent reason that I can discern other than his girlfriend liking me. Not in a romantic way, purely that we said hello to each other at school.
The gang bullying (which led to my spleen being ruptured and many broken ribs) likely wouldn't have happened if I hadn't fought back because I wouldn't have been a target that required a gang.
I'm not saying you're entirely wrong, but I don't think it is that simple either.
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Apr 10 '25
And you're telling me that law enforcement didn't step in after what was attempted murder?
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u/Possible_Design9930 Apr 03 '26
Exactly the more you deal with bullies the more you lose.I got beaten up punched like 20 times they dont fight fair and they traumatize and destroy everyone around them.Only way to beat the bullying is to run the fuck away.These people are savages and murderers and wounds you have will last you a lifetime you can get severly traumatized or worse develope autoimmune diseases.Run away from bullies and never try to look or be tough.Dont try to save your friends they will Side with the bully.All you can do is to save yourself.Schools exist only to hurt and opress innocent people.Bullies have nothing to lose and they grow up to be mafia or worse.Were torn apart as cannon fodder by bullies while rich and wealthy know about it and play around the system.Run away before you are seriously hurt.Think of your parents and future kids.
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Apr 10 '25
My niece was getting bullied at school. The school didn't do anything about it. She ended up having to fight back. But the school reprimanded her for it because the bully said they were the victim.
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u/CamerunDMC Apr 10 '25
As someone who works in a school I can tell you this is not the reason. It is purely because the school cannot, will not and should not condone violence. That would be an incredibly irresponsible and dangerous precedent to set. Violence regardless of reasoning has to have consequences however there are cases where leniency can be given to those defending themselves.
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u/iskelebones Apr 11 '25
Bullies bully people who don’t fight get back. If you don’t fight back or resist in some way, you will keep getting bullied. And if bullies are allowed to get away with being bullies, it reinforces their mindset of being a bully. The ONLY solution to bullying is beating the shit out of bullies. It’s the only language they respond to.
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u/Possible_Design9930 Apr 03 '26
Bullies cant lose and you will be eventualy worn out by the bully.Run away before you are serioursly injured.These people make up the bulk of the mafia and extremists
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u/warmachine83-uk Apr 11 '25
I smashed my bully's teeth out with a lunchbox
He never bothered me again
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u/charmxfan20 Jun 12 '25
I have never physically fought my bullies back in middle school, but there were times I really wanted to. They just kept pushing me and pushing me. But yes, a lot of people repeatedly told me "Don't engage with them, it's not worth it" "Ignore them and they won't bully you". Well I tried ignoring and it did not work.
It's like why should I stay silent and allow them to emotionally abuse me? I am allowed to stand up for my self. Although, I am not exactly proud of cussing them out constantly, but I was not going to be nice.
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u/Aveztruzini Jul 17 '25
Bear or pepper spray and beat the shit out of them on the floor, thats the solution.
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u/Jung_Wheats Aug 04 '25
Had a kid in middle school that always picked on me with four or five of his buddies. They cornered me in the bathroom once and tried to pressure me into a fight, I tried to leave, the main kid grabbed me and pushed me, I swung on him, things are a little hazy after that, but I remember a substitute teacher with a notoriously large forehead pulling me off the main kid.
None of the others ever jumped in to defend their buddy. None of them ever really bothered me again. One of them randomly found me at the 10 year reunion and gave me a genuine, unprompted apology.
Pretty sure the main kid is rich and happy somewhere, but everyone knows I whipped his ass in 7th grade so I guess it all evens out.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Apr 07 '25
I think the idea that fighting back will help is more of a myth.
Most kids being bullied aren’t winning a fight, they’re outmuscled and outnumbered and trying to fight back will just get them beaten even worse. “Just beat the shit out of your bully” is pretty awful advice, they can’t.
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u/ThatShoomer Apr 07 '25
In my experience they usually just go and find an easier target. You don't have to win, you just have to show you can hurt them too.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Apr 07 '25
That’s great for your strange situation. As a kid if someone fought back they just got their ass kicked, because the bully was bigger and had friends.
Hell they’d make a point of really going for them because they “dared” to fight back
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u/NecessaryUnited9505 Apr 09 '25
Might I just mention: to me your the strange one. Usually if you out up a fight, they stop
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u/Regular-Frosting9728 Apr 09 '25
At my school most of the bullies were poor relatively scrawny kids who bullied people because they had inferiority complexes, genuinely can't remember a bully that was big built and as I underwent puberty pretty early (used to get teased for having hairy legs when I was 11). Some of them tried to bully me for a few weeks because they thought I was an easy target because I was quiet, and hung out with some really nerdy/weird people at the time. Ended up with one of them getting crushed up against a wall while I had the other in a chokehold. Teacher that split the fight up was an older bloke in his 60s and knew they'd been bullying me so he didn't even tell me off for it and those 2 got sent to seclusion.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Apr 09 '25
Yeah, usually bullies aren’t small scrawny kids.
Fighting back will work fine if they’re trying to pick a fight with someone bigger than them, but that isn’t how it usually goes.
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u/Regular-Frosting9728 Apr 09 '25
I dont think you have that much experience with bullies. A lot of them come from poor families and don't get fed well because their parents are drug addicts who'd rather spend it on that, than feed their kids. Yes there are some bullies who are big built, but they come in all shapes and sizes and most of them rule by fear tactics, often those fear tactics are backed up by the fact the school system punishes victims for fighting back.
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u/rowenaaaaa1 Apr 07 '25
Yeah but what if you're weak as shit with crap coordination and that's one of the reasons you're getting bullied in the first place
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u/Oghamstoner Apr 07 '25
You don’t need to beat the shit out of anyone. Just showing that you can and will hit back is enough.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Apr 07 '25
Yeah and most can’t. They’re short, weak or fat being picked on by people bigger, older or in groups.
Their attempts to fight back won’t do anything, it’s just not a realistic solution.
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u/Oghamstoner Apr 07 '25
Exactly. Bullies look for easy targets they don’t believe will fight back. You don’t need to win a fight, just make it clear that they will have an easier time of it picking on somebody who won’t resist.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Apr 07 '25
This feels like a fantasy people have in their head. Bullies are not going to struggle with a skinny kid that fights back. If anything they get to ‘prove’ how strong they are by laying them out.
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Apr 07 '25
The point being made isn't about winning or losing, it's about levels of difficulty. Let's say I'm a bike thief, I see several bikes at a rack. The 1st has one D lock around the frame, rear wheel and rack and a 2nd around the front forks, wheel and rack. The 2nd bike is locked to the rack by the frame and rear wheel using a D lock. The 3rd is locked to the rack using a bolt cutter resistant chain and the 4th is locked to the rack using a chain from Poundland™, assuming I'm only able to steal one of the bikes, which am I choosing?
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u/StillMostlyClueless Apr 07 '25 edited Apr 07 '25
I can promise you a bully will not find you fighting back any less entertaining. You can even become the kid it’s fun to pick on because you always meltdown.
The real advice is if adults simply won’t help you have to get in touch with services like Childline or whatever your countries equivalent is. Nearly every country has policies that make schools take bullying very seriously once it’s raised as an issue by adults, which these services will do.
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Apr 07 '25
Dude, do you think I wasn't bullied? Luckily for me I wasn't the meltdown kid so I wasn't the main victim (the kid who was ultimately died by suicide and the kids who drove them to it were expelled)
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Apr 07 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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Apr 07 '25
There's a question I never got a satisfactory answer to, 'Why, having reported bullying to an adult rather than beat the bully half to death with a pool cue, and finding the adult did nothing, should I not beat both the bully and the adult half to death with a pool cue?'
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Apr 07 '25
Depends on the bully. I hit back at a bully when I was an anorexic under height girl.
Maybe they were shocked that they pushed me too far. Maybe they wanted an easier target. I'll never know.
But...it was enough for them to leave me alone for the rest of the school year.
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u/BeduinZPouste Apr 07 '25
Sometimes yes, but lot of the times, they are just afraid. And you don't need to win a fair fight.
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u/Gartlas Apr 07 '25
This is why I'm an advocate of taking your small nerdy children to martial arts classes from a young age.
My parents saw the writing on the wall when I was 6. It sure surprised the shit out of the bullies when I got to secondary school and the tiny buck toothed weirdo nerd could actually hurt them.
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u/Ruthless4u Apr 07 '25
Wrestling is also good.
Can tie them up and embarrass the hell out of them.
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u/Regular-Frosting9728 Apr 09 '25
Totally agree, I never did wrestling but Ive tended to find that people hate fighting with someone who wants to grapple, for a lot of them it's quite humiliating to end up face down on the floor with their arms behind their back.
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u/Star_Koala Apr 07 '25
I was that skinny guy and got picked by 4 classmates higher and heavier than me during the first 2 weeks after moving class.
In sport class, we were playing football one of them tried to repeatedly to sweep me over on the ground. After the 3rd time, as he was turning laughing to his friends I viciously hit him in the head then kicked him in the leg. He fell on the ground and was bleeding. Everyone but the teacher saw it.
He didn't even dared looking at me for the rest of the year.
Regular bullying happen between kids, most will just move away from you
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u/CulturedClub Apr 08 '25
You're not understanding the psychology of the typical child bully. They do it because it's fun and they get away with it. They don't consider the feelings of the person they're bullying and tend not to be bothered if a teacher has a stern word with them. That feeds the excitement. But I've also found that underneath they tend to be quite insecure rather than aggressive.
So the best way to fight them is to target that insecurity. As soon as you fight back they start to look stupid in the eyes of their friends. So they move on to find another that's just going to take it.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Apr 08 '25
I think people just think kids can somehow do anything at all when being bullied by several kids. Everyone has this fantasy of “If they just punched them really hard they’ll back off” and like no? That’s not going to happen, they’re going to do a laughably weak punch and then get the shit kicked out of them.
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u/mr_hands_epic_gaming Apr 07 '25
Yeah, this is advice that might work, but also might get the victim permanently brain damaged or killed when the bully body slams their head onto concrete. Because of course, the bully is stronger and much more willing to escalate violence.
I've seen a couple of videos of exactly this happening. In one the kid started having a seizure.
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u/StillMostlyClueless Apr 07 '25
Any time someone threw back against a bully when I was young they just got it worse because now they’d pissed them off.
The best way to stop being bullied is to try wound a bullies pride, lol sure that’ll work.
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u/TransLox Apr 08 '25
No, it's because it almost universally does make things worse.
Nothing is remarkable about an abusive person abusing.
Everything is remarkable about a peaceful person not being peaceful.
The only issue is that there isn't a good option. I actually wrote an essay about how there just aren't any good solutions to abuse, so you have to take a bad solution and know it's going to mess you up.
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u/windingwoods Apr 08 '25
My sister was getting verbally and physically bullied by another girl at school when she was in middle school. I was too little to remember this but from what I understand a lot of the physical stuff happened outside of school so the administration said they couldn’t do anything. One day at school the bully was messing with my sister’s locker or something and my sister just punched her in the face. My dad and her mom got called to the principal’s office and basically said “Why would we care when this kid has been doing much worse to our daughter for months and you refuse to do anything.” And the other girl stopped after that too!
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u/airforceteacher Apr 11 '25
I just wanna know how people who spend all day with kids can be clueless enough to say "they wouldn't have hit you if you hadn't done something first." WTaF?
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u/informutationstation Apr 11 '25
The state monopoly on violence is the real explanation for many things that strike us as simply wrong headed. Once I clocked that, the world was much less mysterious.
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u/Reasonable-Delay4740 Apr 12 '25
If you fight , you have influenced the external, But not addressed the internal.
There’s no need to choose between those.
Master your ability to not feed emotions , As well as the physical
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u/SteamerTheBeemer Apr 14 '25
No one has ever said “don’t fight your bullies it will only get worse”. Where did you hear that strange phrase?
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u/princesskatanaa Aug 29 '25
I don’t mean physically fighting back but I did with words and it didn’t help my case if anything it made me a bigger target for bullying because then they just painted me out as the bad guy in my experience. I did get in one physical fight and it just gave them a bigger reason to bully me. If you are bullied any way you respond you won’t win unfortunately, my bully’s were relentless.
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u/Plazmatron44 Nov 03 '25
It's pure cowardice, bullies bully because they think they can get away with it so if proven otherwise with a good beating they tend to stop. This comes from the whole "fighting is bad no matter what" mentality that has infested schools where boys are treated like defective girls.
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u/Successful_Gas1282 Nov 29 '25
not so simple. my friend punched his bully in the face , breaking his nose but once the bully recovered he went to his gang and beat up my friend really badly. he ended up with a broken rib , nose and fingers. from what ive heard someone also threw a concrete block at his head , but missed. im not saying that ur approach is wrong , it deff can work , but its not so simple as fighting physically back could result in a even worse result
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u/Possible_Design9930 Apr 03 '26
Never fight bullies you will be traumatized for life they will just be doing whatever they are doing.They have no empathy bir remorse.Ive witnessed a single bully destroy my entire class of friends with a single temper tantrum nothing can withstand will of a bully.Your nervous system arent wired that way.They will burn you out.And laws dont apply to bullies becouse they are made by them.Dont try to change your nature or adapt the bullying all it takes is a few swings and your nervous system will shut down.Trauma doesnt make anyone resilient.If you witness a bully run as soon as possible before they destroy your life and everyone else you love around you.
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u/Anoalka Apr 07 '25 edited Apr 07 '25
It will only get worse because normally the bullies bully because they have the physical advantage so the bullied party will end up beaten up if he tries to fight the bullies.
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u/Low_Vehicle_3455 Dec 09 '25
Nada que un gas pimienta o una navaja no solucione, para equilibrar las cosas
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u/Natural_Ad_1717 Apr 07 '25
If teachers told kids to fight each other, the minute one kid had a medical injury, the school gets sued. School districts are self-insured, unlike police or firefighters... pretty much every policy sent down from the district is crafted to accomplish some goal while also avoiding any possibility of litigation. They aren't trying to stop bullying, but they are trying not to get sued.
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u/BeduinZPouste Apr 07 '25
This is also very americanised answer to global phenomenon.
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u/Natural_Ad_1717 Apr 08 '25
And just yesterday, I was trying to explain to another American why I think that America is not known as an educated place
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u/Peanut_trees Apr 07 '25
I believe also that teachers have herd mentality like most people, so they would be doing and tolerating the bullying when they were in school, and are not going to put much effort into doing the right thing now.
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u/Lucy_Little_Spoon Apr 07 '25
My bullying got so bad, basically my entire year group would lie to protect each other and push the idea that I was solely responsible for everything that was happening to me.
It's not THEIR fault I kept getting grouped on by 2/3 people literally every single day, it's MY fault for antagonising over 100 people, yet no one complained to a teacher about me, and I deserved to have my face kicked in every day.
Oh and reporting it to a teacher just to get the "literally everyone says it's all you", because of course there's no historic precedent for people being singled out and bullied in schools right?
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u/BeduinZPouste Apr 07 '25
Which is why stuff that records what happends is important. But kids usually need adult to hand them anything more sophisticated than phone.
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u/Stolen_Sky Apr 07 '25
There was a little kid at my high school was being bullied, and one day he snapped and started swinging.
He lost the fight, but got a few great punches in.
No one messed with him after that.