'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/08/programming-saved-me-from-bullying

by a_w • 12 years ago

133 89 12 years ago

TheBiv2• 12 years ago

Great read and even greater story, thank you for sharing!

When I read stories like this a small part of me wishes that I were there to beat up the bullies, to be his friend and to end the pain.

The another part of me tries to put myself in his shoes and wonder what type of support system I would have needed in order to replicate his success from freeing himself of the bullying.

Then, an even separate part of me thinks about what I can do to prevent this from happening to kids in the future.

I don't know which part of myself to side with, but I do know that I appreciate him telling his story and I am glad that he was able to persevere from. Good on you. Shame on your classmates.

emersonrsantos• 12 years ago

Yet one more great undervoted post I've seen in HN. No, I didn't identify myself with the bullying story (thankfully), but with the freedom and self-expression he found on programming.

appreneur• 12 years ago

I am 37,I am fat and I am not programmer and I have been bullied for 20 years.I just became CEO of my own software firm finally and it doesnt do that well but I am fine,I feel life is far more easier and simpler, no more bullying.

I have few recommendations: 1.Never lower your selfesteem, no matter what the idea of bullying is to kill selfesteem and watch you crumble. 2.No matter what anybody says including your own mind never ever feel down,life is beautiful as it is...you are this remarkable human(all humans) who functions with 1 billion neurons .... 3.Its just a thought to give up and its just another thought to see how remarkable life is....these bullies of today or failures of tommorrow. 5.I can show you countless examples how bullying created a false confidence in them and then when life started to really hitback the bullies just didnt know to deal with they became utter failures, we who are bullied are prepared for life either ways,I think I am much more stronger and much better prepared on a positive side.Also I tend to go and support anybody who needs help.

6.If ever you need help in counseling and getting back into confidence, I am always open,I am part time motivational speaker:).

lafar6502• 12 years ago

It's easy to say 'dont cruble', but your self esteem will go down if you cant find any help. I had some similar trouble in a primary school, and fortunately it ended after moving to another school, but it took a long time until i realized the problem was not in me.

yetanotherphd7• 12 years ago

A powerful reminder that our society still doesn't offer adequate protection, even of their basic right to safety, to all its members.

mattgreenrocks4• 12 years ago

Haunting. Probably why I'm terrified of weakness: the abuse of the 'lower' class is supported at a collective unconscious level. "At least it's not me..."

byuu• 12 years ago

Yep, exactly. You go to the adults, and they don't help you at all. So you stand up for yourself, and now you're the one in trouble. I can't possibly think of a more backwards model for encouraging bullying.

Even with the punishments, I've always been prouder and happier when I stood up for myself. So do that anyway. It doesn't stop the bullying, but it does reduce it somewhat and you gain more respect for yourself. You'll probably lose in a fight, but no matter how weak you are, anyone can inflict at least some level of pain on an aggressor.

It's truly sad the way so many kids have to deal with this, yet nothing is ever really done about it.

Unlike you, I would have changed it all. I would have worked out constantly, and made a name for myself as the crazy guy you didn't mess with, because he'd flip out completely.

But as bad as it is, at least take solace that you could go home in peace. Imagine also having a 300lb abusive bully at home that denied you any access to technology, even with your own hard-earned money. My solace was counting down each day to 18, and occasionally sneaking off to public libraries to use their computers for a bit. A lot of my programming I learned from reading books, and the mandatory graphing calculators for math class. At 16-17, I saved up for a laptop, and would use it in the parking lots of retail stores while pretending to be at work.

But as others are saying, it gets a lot better. I make $70k/yr now, total household income is 120k/yr, have a nice house and cars, and all that. The worst I have to deal with anymore are the occasional trolls online.

yetanotherphd7• 12 years ago

Unfortunately bullying by its nature is not a very popular political issue.

Conservatives (somewhat correctly) consider bullying to be part of how society maintains is social structure.

Progressives only consider bullying through the lens of oppressed groups, not individuals who are targeted for their perceived/actual difference or weakness. They don't identify with individual rights and self-defense as these are seen as libertarian issues.

Furthermore, to admit to being bullied as often interpreted as admitting to weakness. That is why it is easier to champion people who have some extrinsic reason for being bullied (e.g. being gay, or some other minority).

However, I suspect the severity of bullying is gradually lowering simply as a result of society becoming more prosperous and adopting middle class lifestyles and values.

TheBiv2• 12 years ago

I am not quite sure of your definition of 'somewhat' however giving a mild amount of justification for treating others wrongly simply bc they don't confirm to your standards of 'correctness' is not justifiable.

trentmb• 12 years ago

How does one enforce a social structure with no agents to enforce said structure?

mayanksinghal• 12 years ago

how society maintains is social structure

I grew up in India. My schools had no bullying at all. And we still had a (much weaker) social structure, the popular ones, the slightly-dangerous ones (those I would avoid hanging out with) and the not-so-popular ones (like those who would spend time on a computer instead of meeting up for sports). Bullying is not universal. Neither is it necessary.

NAFV_P2• 12 years ago

Conservatives (somewhat correctly) consider bullying to be part of how society maintains is social structure.

Have you ever been bullied?

spiritplumber• 12 years ago

My family was awesome in that sense.

Here is a slightly fictionalized version of what happened to me:

http://spiritplumber.deviantart.com/art/Zero-Tolerance-42710...

gargarplex2• 12 years ago

Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already quite low.

* Speaking as someone who has experienced quite a fair share of bullying, such that it makes me trepidatious in most social situations, waiting and ever expecting the first arrow.

^ probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, which turns it into "my fault". if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out!

- just donated £10 to the charity at http://www.beatbullying.org .. which is (broken-linked) at the bottom of the op

mattgreenrocks4• 12 years ago

One word: therapy.

It's your baggage. Either you own up to it and continually work on it, or you let it fester and run your life. I meet so many people who are terrified of being the type of person that goes to therapy despite significant issues. And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.

Dewie4• 12 years ago

Why is therapy necessarily the only, or the best solution?

Maybe therapy has an undeserved reputation. Maybe people who should og to it but don't are just prideful. But maybe conventional therapy just isn't the best way for people to deal with their problems? Maybe therapy, as a field, just hasn't lived up to its aspirations?

I'd agree that the GP has to do something about it. But I'm not sure about what, specifically.

And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.

And that looks like a lack of empathy and/or projection. You can't reduce people's motivations to a small, neat set of emotions and/or intentions.

dasil0032• 12 years ago

Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already quite low.

Hm, I never thought of programmer status as being that low, although as an American living in London I definitely noticed that it is lower here than in the States (especially Silicon Valley obviously). But generally programmers can bring tangible value in a way that few professions outside of sales can do, so I never felt a strong need for alpha behavior and posturing to acquire status. What is needed is to work in a company that understands how to leverage technology, and the rest should take care of itself. Programmers are in such high demand now that companies which don't know how to use them and fundamentally value them will get stuck with the bottom of the barrel, leading to a negative feedback loop.

walshemj7• 12 years ago

And non techies seem surprised when some of us react so aggressively to the trustifariajn bus protestors those are the kids that bullied is at school.

how_gauche• 12 years ago

if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out!

I was bullied a lot when I was younger. I was small to begin with, but I skipped a grade and consequently hit puberty about 18 months behind all of the other kids. Growing up in a rural area, I endured a lot of abuse and violence on a daily basis, and like the typical story goes, teachers saw most of it and did nothing.

The physical abuse stopped at the end of eighth grade. We had a year-end party and all of the jocks were bullying me as usual. This other kid, who was the only one about my size, decided that he would join in the hazing this day. I guess he had his own reasons for wanting to fit in. TL;DR I snapped and beat the piss out of him. Surprisingly, I wasn't disciplined or punished for this at all, which would probably never be the case in "zero-tolerance" Canada today. The teacher was very nice to me (I was crying and shaking for what felt like an hour afterwards) and drove me home herself. I think maybe she felt bad that she hadn't intervened earlier.

I moved away after the next year, but the few friends that I had back then (the other outcasts and nerds) told me much later that things got better for them in the following years. I guess most kids get over bullying once they get a little older. These episodes left scars on me that will probably never completely heal, but I feel now that as a 34-year-old man I've long since moved past it. I'm relatively well-adjusted and socially-aware now (this took years of work in my late teens and twenties, you don't get a chance to develop critical interpersonal skills when you're a group hazing target), and I haven't let myself be permanently handicapped by the bullying that happened to me. So: things can get better.

As for how I did it, honestly the biggest thing is "fake it till you make it". Pretend to be the confident person that you would like to be, even if it feels forced or fake, or like a role that you're playing instead of your loathsome putrid self. People do respond to charm and confidence -- if you play the role well then things become less difficult over time, and you realize that the only thing that was holding you back was fear before. Over time you can really change the way that you feel about yourself, and you won't need to pretend anymore. It's possible! Amy Cuddy gave a well-regarded TED talk on this topic (http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...), it's worth viewing.

The other thing I did that I feel really helped me was to increase my level of physical exercise. When you're bullied all you want to do is withdraw into yourself behind a protective shell. Lots of bullied people end up living in the mind for this reason, I know I did (and boy am I glad for it in retrospect --- those Commodore 64 programmers' manuals didn't read themselves!). Not a great strategy going into adulthood however. You inhabit a physical body moving through space and getting better at doing that has knock-on effects that improve lots of other parts of your life, besides just looking better: stamina, mood, posture, body language, etc.

Sorry for the mega-post.

gargarplex2• 12 years ago

Cool, this helps. I was out on this HORRIBLE date tonight.. we saw a movie. In the theater I was stressed the whole time but afterwards, talking, I felt great! And then she ran away as fast as she politely could.

I saw the TED talk that you suggested and it got me thinking. In the theater I was really sitting in a low-power pose. So maybe what I will try is monitoring myself for those poses and then consciously correcting.

The thing is, when I was younger [in college] I used to posture a lot. And everyone disrespected it. :( A particularly scarring incident was when the beautiful girl I was ostensibly "friends" with told me directly, coldly "if I act confident, it's because I am".

UK-AL5• 12 years ago

The problem with this, is that when he enters the workforce a lot of that social awkwardness and bulling problems could come back again. So it's a short lived victory.

In the UK outside of silicon roundabout and a few good companies, programmers are low rung employees and often pushed around and managed by the same sort of people who bullied him school. He won't have any authority to hit back, and if he tried probably would be fired.

The majority of start ups, and tech companies in the UK are run non-technical entrepreneurs, marketeers and so on and not techs. These are normally selected from the type of people who bully at school, not the bullies.

A large part of being programmer in these organisations is learning to identify and tip toe around these people to stop them ruining your career.

School had a lot of bullying for me, university was great, and then at work it was like being thrown back into school.

dave1010uk• 12 years ago

I'm Dan's manager and tech lead at the company. We're going to look after Dan as best we can.

DanBC3• 12 years ago

English companies have a legal duty to protect staff from harm. This includes bullying in the workplace.

Any company that fires a victim of bullying leaves themselves open to compensation claims.

Any company that does nothing likewise leaves themselves open to legal action.

UK-AL5• 12 years ago

The hard part is proving it(Bullying is subtle). The next hard part is stumping up the courage to take legal action.

motters• 12 years ago

Having been a programmer in tech companies in the UK for a long time I agree about the low status, but I've only rarely encountered bad behavior by managers (mistakes and bad decisions, yes. Bullying not so much). My experience is that in this sort of job the pay is at least liveable and the working conditions are typically good. This is however entirely anecdotal and it's quite possible that I just got lucky and am an outlier. I think there are many other kinds of jobs where bullying is much more common and may even be a core feature of the profession (I'm thinking of Work Programme providers).

UK-AL5• 12 years ago

But it depends on the type person you are. If you have aspergers its very easy to become a victim of bullying.

bananas4• 12 years ago

Bullying is rife in the UK tech industry. If you put up a wall people will respect it and keep away but if you don't, it's open season. There's also a nasty class divide between permanent and contract staff. I'm the latter and much resentment is felt even though the former could be the latter with a little effort and reap the benefits.

Nursie3• 12 years ago

I've worked in the UK tech industry for 12 years. Never seen what you describe. Never been treated as low-status either, and I've never worked for the old street crowd.

I'm not sayin your experiences are wrong, but they might be less universal than you think.

jpgvm• 12 years ago

This rings very true of my life.

I had a horrible experience in school. I was bullied at every school I went to, I had to attend boarding school for 4 years because my life would have been a dead end otherwise. Boarding school was akin to hell but I endured the 24/7 bullying so that I could slug out an education for myself. I was eventually expelled from boarding school for hacking, which in retrospect was one of the best things that happened to me.

The emotional scars of that experience left me vulnerable, I barely made it to university - had to travel 1100km from my home to attend, tried to support myself while doing university full time. I lost my job because I was falling into depression because my girlfriend at the time was drifting away from me. She eventually left me and I was all alone. Broke, homeless and too proud to go home.

I managed to salvage some odd jobs on freelancer/elance started to climb out of the emotional rut. Doing freelance work using university wifi while homeless and using uni showers really is an experience. I got determined to not to live like that so I put aside my pride, moved in with family and got stuck into honing my skills as a programmer, doing freelance work and going back to university.

Programming brought back my pride, it re-established my self esteem, I ended up having the confidence to start my own company, which fast forward 3 years or so is still running and is a multi-million dollar company. I have since moved on, am now internationally traveled and I now make in excess of 150k/yr.

Looking back on my short life a few things ring very true. Often alot of the worst things to happen to me have also been the best things. If I wasn't so downtrodden I wouldn't be so strong now, if my girlfriend didn't leave me the way she did I never would have been so determined to prove her wrong.

So no matter how bad things seem, remember that there is always time to make things better.

bananas4• 12 years ago

The difference between then (believe me I was there) and now is that the teachers get stick for allowing this to happen instantly. I've personally got into several shouting matches with teachers over how they treat my children and deal with these situations. I'm usually in a queue of other parents doing exactly the same.

People don't take any shit these days.

dasil0032• 12 years ago

Now and then? This kid is 17 now. Have things really changed that much? I think it's more likely he went to a different school and his parents had a different temperament than you and your fellow parents.

bananas4• 12 years ago

Definitely have changed. There is less respect for teachers, the school system and people communicate more. This has happened because there were a hell of a lot of victims.

Also communication between parents is now at an all time high. I've seen this change in just the last two years.

GuiA• 12 years ago

I think the 17 in the article is a typo for 27. He picked up programming in his teenage years, and the article mentions a "10 years later". Also, it'd be extremely surprising (possible, but surprising) that a 17 year old would have "won awards and travelled all around the country to meet people and attend or speak at conferences."

DanielTomlinson3• 12 years ago

I sadly did not go to a different school, my parents insisted that that school would give me the best education, so I had no choice but to stay.

My parents did try to sort things out, nothing happened though, so I stopped telling them about it.

mattgreenrocks4• 12 years ago

Been there, had it nowhere near as bad as Dan did.

Institutions don't look out for you. They only look out for themselves. My future children will be taught to stand up for themselves, and enrolled in martial arts if necessary. Additionally, I have no qualms about creatively getting the attention of oblivious institutions that tacitly endorse this abuse.

On second thought, maybe I should just homeschool until high school.

tinco2• 12 years ago

Don't do that, you can't just assume your kids are going to be bullied. I wasn't bullied on primary school, and primary school was one of the safest and happiest periods of my life, I still have some friends from primary school even.

There's a good chance your kid is one of the 80% of children that isn't picked on. Even better: your kid might be one of the bullies, then you get the chance to really set things right.

Also, high school might be much worse, fragile children trying to become something resembling adulthood, preparing for life decisions. What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?

crankpot2• 12 years ago

I'm homeschooled and I'm not fragile. I know a lot of men and women who were homeschooled and they aren't fragile either. Being frequently bullied may be one way to learn about life, but it isn't the only way. In fact I don't think it's even the best way.

What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?

Life. The homeschoolers I know do tons of things that help them explore life. There are too many to list here, but here's a short list of excellent things homeschoolers do that incidentally help them learn about life: dancing (contra, waltz, swing, etc.); running your own lawn care company; babysitting special needs children; babysitting in general; mission trips to foreign countries; film-making (for fun, commercials, competitions, etc.); learning to fly airplanes; regional equivalents of boy scouts (4H, boy scouts, something else that I can't remember the name of); and much more.

Edit: added word "frequently"

human_waste• 12 years ago

I was bullied at grade school all the time, I was a poor, fat kid and my parents had just divorced, I was happy and optimistic, but very vulnerable. I won't go too much into the details of this, because this post is already too long. But as a result and the point of this post is that I became a bully myself.

I didn't have friends there and as a result I hanged around with the kids on my neighborhood. They were all younger than me and quite a lot of immigrants and others with not that much of a "social standing" and I could get an easy hold over them just by the power of seniority. Then, when I went to a middle school and the scenery changed, I had become an alpha male in that sense that I knew how to rule over people with fear and verbal abuse. I didn't do it consciously, it just had became a part of how I act.

Bullying is about abusing other people's weakness'. I had became a master of it. I never actually did anything myself, I just talked, other kids did stuff for me. Physical abuse like "Hey I know, let's fill your backpack with all of our books and hit that guy in the face with it!". Stealing shit from school like computer equipment, cigarettes and candy from grocery stores. There were even plans to rape certain girls. Perhaps the only time I thought I maybe had gone too far was when a "friend" of mine bought a gun to school. The way the school tried to control me was to talk to the people around me. My closest acquaintance was this huge football guy and the principal frequently took him into talks and tried to get him to stand up against me, he always came back to me to tell it and my reaction was pretty much "Haha what would you do you fucking fag?". In reality, if even one person had said anything or done anything to me, I would've completely crumbled down, because inside I was still that bullied little fat kid trying to fit in.

What I'm most ashamed is the bullying I inflicted on one kid that was born with his legs different height and as a result, he didn't walk very good. Easy target. Also, my own little sister. She was the first one in line always. We fought so much that she eventually had to move away to live with my father.

Later on in life, I found out that the kid who began the cycle of hatred, my original bully, had a very abusive big brother.

I've gone through clinical depression, severe anxiety and drug abuse at my adult life to truly find out who I am and I feel that a lot of it was residual from my childhood, as it usually is.

I'm not trying to justify anything, but if you are in that period in your life where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you and the only experience that you have is dog eat dog, then that's what you become.

penguindev• 12 years ago

Thank you for that post. I think of the saying 'hurt people hurt people'.

I really like your last thought of 'that period in your life where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you'. I think of looking into the abyss.

My parents divorced too, at a shit time in my life - young teens. I have turned that into a positive though, by accepting that parents can still be a gift by showing us what _not_ to do, just as much as what to do.

I have to control my passive-agressive side. It's too easy to think 'f this, I don't need you'.

Edit: I haven't seen anyone mention karate / martial arts yet, but as someone who skipped a grade, I think taking that was a very good decision. Luckily, I've never been in a [physical] fight.

Edit: One of my worst moments, though, was when another kid was being bullied and I didn't do anything, or even report it :-(

PaulAJ• 12 years ago

I went through similar stuff in the 70s and 80s, although nowhere near as extreme. Bullying is physical and psychological child abuse. The fact that it is perpetrated by other children instead of an adult makes no difference to the victim.

I will say that schools can do something about this, and some of them do. My son has been the victim of bullies on occasion, and both his primary and secondary school have been very supportive. Nipping this kind of thing in the bud makes it clear that such behaviour is not accepted. It is when it becomes part of the culture that you have a real problem.

One option is to go to the law. Child abuse is against the law, and schools have a duty of care. Hitting someone is assault regardless of where it happens or who does it, so if you are assaulted and the school does nothing then go to the police. Document incidents for a few months, take the document to the school authorities, and if they do nothing then talk to a lawyer.

noir_lord• 12 years ago

I'm 33 so I was at primary school in the 80's.

Bullying was (at my school) an unfortunate reality.

My brother (year younger) was born with a congenital problem (ptosis) in both eyes which required frequent surgery (poor sod had 9 operations with weeks of recovery for each before he was 11).

This obviously made him a target for bullying and since the school was doing nothing about it I ended up stepping in to sort things out.

When I was about 8 I found my brother and a group of boys in one of the classrooms at lunch time, my brother was curled up on the floor sobbing with one boy sat on him and the rest where jeering.

I picked up a chair and waded in and I really wasn't pulling any punches.

When my mother came to pick me up from the school I was sat outside the headmasters office with the bullies.

We went into the office the headmaster started saying how my behaviour was unacceptable and that I couldn't just assault other pupils in that way.

At which point my mum interrupted "Ben isn't in the slightest violent, he's never had any issues with fighting at this school and yet he felt the need to use a chair to protect his brother, who we both know is getting bullied as you've seen fit to punish Ben I fully expect you to punish the bullies as well and if you don't you can be assured will be going to the local newspapers about the endemic bullying problem, I will also be writing to the Governors and the Local Education Authority", this was in the 80's, parents didn't complain then like that.

I was out of school for 3 days, my mum took me to the bookshop and said I could pick any three books I wanted.

My brother didn't get bullied again til secondary school and he dealt with that himself.

I learnt a very valuable lesson that day - stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves and fuck the consequences (I also learnt that my mum was a badass).

DanielTomlinson3• 12 years ago

Humbling to read - you did an awesome thing that day, but it's incredibly sad that it was ever necessary.

PaulRobinson2• 12 years ago

I got into programming in my first year of secondary school (year 7 in modern money), when I wasn't really fitting in well. I was getting bullied a little but had a thick skin so didn't care. Can't deny I relate to the escapist aspects of this though.

That said, this article is... odd. Programmers in the UK have a reputation of being anti-social, awkward and unable to integrate - think The IT Crowd - and this article is hardly going to turn that around, is it?

Twirrim• 12 years ago

Yet somehow, when you get into the tech industry, you discover the bullying, derision and such like are all there. In the community you'd like to call home.

If you're not doing it in Ruby/Clojure/Java/Python/Javascript/Erlang on AWS/OpenStack/Dedicated/iPhone/Android etc. you're an idiot and deserve derision at best.

What that says about the human psyche is more than a little depressing. We should be better than this.

james1071• 12 years ago

There are some interesting comments here. My take on the story, as someone who went to a UK comprehensive school in the late '70s early '80s, is that bright people have always been a target at such schools for bullying and current teachers are less able to control the disruptive elements than in the past.

Indeed, there is apparently a tendency to treat them as having medical issues rather than punishing them.

mgkimsal2• 12 years ago

I did not have it anywhere near as bad as the poster, but had some incidents which, even to me at 6/7 years old, immediately made me start to question authority and become cynical.

A few random anecdotes:

2nd grade - kids kept talking in class, so the teacher declared "no talking - the next person to talk has to go stand in the corner" (which, even then, had me wonder - does that mean that there's no punishment for everyone after the first person?) Everyone was silently working for ... 10 minutes? The kid behind me starts kicking my chair. Tapping. Then hard kicking, as in, my desk/chair combo was moving (and making a sound, supposedly the thing the teacher was after). After 10+ kicks I turned around and said "stop kicking my chair". BOOM - instant punishment - go stand in the corner at the front of the room, and everyone laughed (again... WTF? wasn't silence the goal? and the other 20+ kids are not punished for making noise?).

"No tolerance" attitudes are just crap.

3rd grade - I typically went home for lunch, but ended up staying for lunch in school, and my routine had been messed up. After lunch, one of the kids was late back to room because he'd been to the bathroom, and the teacher declared "no more using the bathroom for the rest of the day", and she meant for anyone. I asked to go, and was told no. So.. again - someone else makes a mistake - intentional or not - and the rest of us have to pay for it? I kept worrying, and then after a bit I wasn't worried. I then realized I'd wet myself in class. Bad. Ugh... Got to go home early that day I think. But... WTF. I wouldn't go so far as to call these teachers 'bullies', but... stupid? Trying to treat 7 year olds as rational adults? It doesn't work.

I was bullied later on when I moved schools - I was a year younger than everyone else, and physically much smaller than all my classmates, and... there were a number of times in middle school and a couple times in high school I was physically intimidated/threatened. Rarely did anything actually happen, but the fear was enough to really stay with me for years. Reporting to teachers did nothing beyond an initial couple minutes of feeling safe, which quickly evaporated when I left the room.

It just led me to distrust authority and be cynical from an early age.

mgkimsal2• 12 years ago

followup - I took a 'personality test' for a job at 18 years old. Someone came out from the office and looked around, then finally at me, and was a bit shocked to see me instead of someone else. "Did you take this yourself? Did anyone help you earlier? Your scores indicate you have the cynicism of a 35 year old." heh ;)

rys• 12 years ago

If anyone from The Guardian web team is reading, the link to beatbullying.org at the bottom doesn't work because of a malformed anchor.

gregors• 12 years ago

Aggression solves this problem. Pure and simple. You can't reason and talk things over - fight or leave.

Humans are unique in that we place a weaker person into a group of more aggressive people day after day with no escape. In the wild the weaker animal usually retreats.

It's basically an aquarium of aggressive fish and you throw in a guppy. The aggressive fish nip and bite off the guppy's fins. Instead of taking the guppy out and placing it into a tank better suited we keep the guppy in the tank. That's basically what happens in the US school system and then we're shocked when bad things happen.

'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

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