Please keep your personal issues out of public threads. If you have a problem with another member, then please report that member to the moderators. Thank you.

I know what you're up to with this and your arrogant PM to me about the same thing. Here you are playing up to the mods while trying to provoke me. I know your tactics well.

I insist that you take this issue up with the moderators -- that's what the 'Report' button is for -- and not in public threads. Also, please provide them with evidence for your claims. Thank you.

I knew you would say that. I am not manipulating you. No one is. We are just tired of you picking fights with us. I said I was sorry and I actually MEANT it. I suppose if I made a video slashing my arm with a knife you'd believe me? Probably not. Please leave us alone. I am not feeling good. Go away.

This is ongoing, cross-forum bullcrap - I've got a policy that I don't punish people for stuff they say or do on other forums, which means we "have" to put up with this petty little bickering.

Frankly, if it continues, I'm going to start handing out warnings and bans to everyone involved.

Yes, but ... have you responded to the poll?

Of course your participation counts! I'm hoping for 100% participation and a better understanding of what other people think of as 'bullying'.

For example, it surprises me that anyone would thing that being ignored is a form of bullying. Personally, I'd rather be ignored than attacked. But maybe that's just me?

This is what you said, which is what I responded to.

But what if the person being ignored is unpleasant to be around? I think there is no obligation to acknowledge an unpleasant person, much less to acknowledge someone just for being there -- when just saying 'Hello' to a stranger can earn you a face full of pepper spray.

It is a girl thing. Trust me. Miss Popular hates you so she turns you into an outcast to "punish" you. I have had people get their friends to ignore me just to be hateful. I guess it is less hurtful than direct meanness. Like having everyone snicker at you and call you names.

Oh crap, FLASHBACK!

When asked if he had bullied me, one of my grade-school tormentors said, "Naw ... it's just teasing! I wasn't hitting him..." The principal let him go, and then he and his buddies ambushed me on the way home ...

They get clever. The little monsters.

Yeah I faced similar situations back at school because I refuse to look up Jack the Lad. When everybody else ignores me he comes towards me and talks about people hate me because I refuse to be his friend. **** hell I thought I was the pathetic one when being subjected to his reign of terror but doing all that because I don't want to be friends with him. :/

P.S. His name isn't Jack, it's just a slang term best to describe him.

I never understood not wanting to be friends with someone. I am always welcome to the idea unless they are untrustworthy. I hated it when I was somehow deemed "unworthy" to talk to people.

Actually replying in a quick and sensitive manner would make it seem like what the bullies saying are true. Like they know a deep dark secret which you don't want it to go public.

Trying to be friendly to everyone gets me in trouble. Not being friendly to everyone gets me in trouble. Trouble seems to follow me around.

Good thing there is chocolate and World of Warcraft! Without those, I'd be messed up all of the time!

huh? What bullsh!t.

Trust me, they guy was a complete jerk. He was a notorius bully back at my school and even picked on his friends, but it was his enemies who are subjected to the most severe torments. I was subjected to name-calling, subtle physical assaults, and isolation from the class because he didn't like me. He was very manipulative and most people were scared to get on the wrong side of him. Most of the teachers however adore him because he was charismatic and play the sympathy card about his unsavory background, so it was difficult to challenge the discrimination he subjected me too with the teachers on his side, let alone our peers.

A sociopath? He sounds scary.

Mine or Isabel's post?

I am Isabel. Your post.

Ok im lost.

In fact yeah, that’s the best word to describe him. But the worst thing is that he had about everybody at school on his side, through association, fear, and apathy. His influenced, along with his family’s, extends throughout the community. To some he is seen as a working class hero (due to his disregard towards authority), but to others and the more sane people I should mention he is seen as an oppressing bully who used intimidation and brute force to exercise his freedom to express deviant behaviour. Not often his behaviour wasn’t challenged and those who stood against him were looked unfavourably within the small town which I live in.

Watch...

People like that are so scary. He was using the whole town as his pawns.

I really hate when people don't speak up. If I saw someone stealing something I would stop it.

Precisely. In cyberspace it's just a little more figuratively speaking but is all the same.

I hear you, Isabel. And it's no secret Fnord rubs me the wrong way.

Not the whole town, there is a strong resistance formed by folks towards people like him, consisted mainly with people who didn't conform to the chavvy stereotype of the students at my former school. The lad's support came from the sort of folks who lived in the rougher areas within my town; generally the type who lived in council houses and have blue-collar jobs. He was also received support from the sympathy of the middle class teachers and other staff members at my school.

Thanks ZodRau

Oooh what a brat.

Similar 'chav' from my high-school years ... died of a brain tumor, likely brough on by years of steroid abuse and alcoholism. Buncha his friends put up a memorial plaque for him at the local athletic field ... doesn't make him any less dead, though.

Can't you just feel the love in that comment?

LOL!

Compared to what I've posted elsewhere about him, those were words of kindness! I'm trying to restrain myself these days...

You seem so much happier. Before you were always angry.

Confessing my true faith seems to do that. Ignoring those 'vexations of the spirit' also helps.

I have a lot of vexations lately. In cyberspace and irl.

They're not worth losing your cool. Some are just trying to provoke you to anger so that they can whine about being victims. Others don't know any better because that's the only way they know how to behave. The rest simply don't matter in the long term. Telling them apart takes too much effort. Best to ignore them all.

Cheers!

Amen. And I fall prey to this too easily. Yes, I have "issues".

I always feel the urge to fight back, be mean back to show them who's boss. But I also wonder if that is what they exactly want?

If it never stops, then I eventually stop responding to them which is what I did to one of my internet bullies. It took me months to realize he was just provoking me and wanted a reaction. So I stopped responding to him and and he left me alone after while after getting the hint I was not going to give him what he wanted. It was hard not responding to him because I had to fight the urge not to reply.

I hear ignoring a bully is the worst thing you can do to them because they want attention. If they don't get it, they will try harder and harder to get it and the worst thing they can do is touch you and stuff and maybe spread nasty rumors about you. Luckily my internet bully didn't do this. I had paranoia he was maybe sending PMs to members lying about me but I didn't worry about it. But I had to keep that thought at the back of my head.
But after a while they are supposed to leave you alone but that doesn't work with all bullies because they can do the worst things which I have said above. Every bully is different. I once said comebacks to two bullies my mom taught me to say and you know what happened? They backed off and left me alone. Never bothered me again but when I tried it with my internet bully, it didn't work. So the best thing was to ignore him. He couldn't hit me or grab me or make loud noises because he was all the way in Arizona and I was here in Oregon. So the worst things he could ever do was slander me on the forums to get me to respond and he never did that stuff thank goodness. I was lucky he wasn't that type of bully.

Testimonials like your's reinforce the notion that bullying is indeed no trivial matter worthy of dismissal by the powers that be that can address it.

You try dealing with a face full of pepper spray and the subsequent asthma attack, just because you said 'Hello'.

Apparently so. People that don't like me tend to show their dislike by hurting my feelings (at the very least), so it must be okay.

See the 'Pepper Spray' entry above ... now that was real pain!

Now you're talkin'!

And now you're not. I do it all the time to salespeople, politicians and my ex in-laws. They have nothing to say that's worth listening to, anyway.

It happened. She was sitting off to the side at a party. I walked up and said, 'Hello'. She whipped out a can of pepper spray and blasted me in the face. Then she ran out. Just like that. No explanation. No apology. And no one claimed to know who she was. I would have been better of ignoring her like everyone else seemed to be doing.

Some people just are not worth paying attention to.

Some people are so crazy. But maybe she was afraid of men.

For just saying 'Hello'...

Talk about aversive!

Do you even say hello to anyone anymore?

Too risky?

Are you really that ugly?

I still try to greet strangers in public settings, but usually from a longer distance than before, and only if there are others to 'back me up'.

Bloody hell, there is no way a sane person would behave that way. Probably she is paranoid due to the ideas put in her head by her over-protective parents or some nutter preaching such crap.

Maybe she was sexually assaulted. By a man or many men and is terrified of men. When I was first molested I was so paranoid around men. I felt like they all were going to molest me. I wondered why they acted "nice" to me. Like they wanted something.

^this^

is an example of how tragic situations can turn people into bullies. It may be unintentional because they thought they were defending themselves.

When we first moved to Montana, I was shoving kids in the hall and hitting them when they do things to me like bumping me, blocking my eye view, telling me where to sit, and I thought they were being mean to me because I was bullied at my old school. I had to learn to snap out of that phase and learn to not take things so personal and assume I am being bullied. I was doing these things to them because I wanted them to be afraid of me so they leave me alone. Was I a bully? Yes. But to my POV back then, I was the victim and being picked on so I stood up for myself. I even was placed in the resource room and excluded from classes because of this issue. I thought at first they were protecting me from kids picking on me but later on I found out that wasn't it and it was due to my behavior problems and me getting all upset over nothing.

Sometimes people need to go into therapy to snap out of their paranoid thinking so they be better people. I was lucky I snapped out of it on my own without the therapy.

I know ... but there's no "Snarky Sarcasm" smilie, and the one implies that the statement was a joke, which it wasn't.

^Truth.

I heard that after Fiona Apple was raped by a stranger, she became Anorexic as a way to remove the "bait" from her body that she felt had attracted men and the rapist to her. It sounds similar to your feelings about men being nice, and seeming to want something.

My cousin -- originally 5'4" and 115# -- went the opposite after she was assaulted, doubled her weight in about a year, and gained more after that.

Is it appropriate for a dildo to talk about these sorts of things with ladies who have been violated?

what.

I mean, were you calling another member a dildo?

I really don't understand why you are so hostile.

Towards DFG and LG, I can understand, but why Fnord?

From what I understand, there was trouble back on WP. I never saw it. I just know what I've been told.

I just know he got in trouble on WP and was banned. I have never read his posts there.

Were you possibly trying to add her to friends? I have ignored frinds by accident on online games.

Yeah, that is subtle bullying, in a sense it was made to look like unlucky accidents within public and apathetic teachers chose to interpret that way. These are the worst kind of bullying because they would carry on despite the obvious signs of distress shown by yourself. This is when the law should intervene, bringing a court case towards the school for negligence of one of their students who was subjected to that kind of abuse from his/her peers.

Don’t feel stupid about not taking action against your school. A while ago me and my mom thought about suing the school for institutional discrimination towards me by allowing the bullies to continuing tormenting me. However I have non-one as a witness to support my case, so I decided no to bother with it. Also the bullies pretended to be my friends in front of my teachers and said spurt such bullsh!t such as looking out for me and dealing with my behaviour.

I’m surprised the school you used to go to allowed that behaviour amongst students, I’m appalled about the way they treated you.

Really? Most bullies I knew aren't that smart. Can you give us an example to support your statement?

I think that the wording there - knowledge (as opposed to intellect) is the key there...

Things that count for knowledge in the bully world: A bully will use things they have learned about social interactions, things they have learned about (you/me) personally, they have learned to find a (perceived) weakness and to expose it somehow.

(I think that some very smart people would be able to get ahead with brains and they would not have to stoop with putting someone else down, thinking that is the only way they can get ahead...) of course many a bully has self esteem issues, so they want others to feel as useless as they feel...

At nursing school we had a tutor who was a feminist and had studied up on the feminist issues.  She would put men in the class down with her radical feminist beliefs. The guys knew it was unfair (which it was) but they didn't stand a chance when it came to challenging her. She used her higher level of knowledge on feminist issues to put them down. The guys in the class were easy meat to this teacher.
It seemed to me that   she used her advanced knowledge to put people down.

Teachers can be bullies. I remember a teacher a primary school mocking a child in front of the class because the child pronounced a word wrong.
The teacher wasn't smart, but she had knowledge that the child didn't have.