🙄 NY Times: A Campaign to 'Bring Back Bullying' 🙄

[AStern]

“If I’d never got bullied, I don’t think I’d be where I am today,” said Mr. Harris, who has since deleted his TikTok video. “I don’t think I would have the motivation to prove people wrong.”

A chorus of people online has been arguing, with varying levels of sincerity, that today’s young people could stand a dose of adolescent viciousness. Plenty of these posts read as outrage bait; still, they have alarmed mental health professionals who say that bullying is far too serious a problem to be laughed off or recast as a character-building exercise. News reports of teenagers’ suicides following intense bullying are published with regularity.

Yet the videos are just one manifestation of a cultural pendulum swing away from gentleness and accommodation and toward provocation and hostility. Online and at the highest levels of politics, sensitivity has given way to name-calling; wokeness is out and strongmen are in.

Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told military officers at Marine Corps Base Quantico that his department would review its definitions of “bullying,” “hazing” and “toxic leadership” to make sure that the terms were not “weaponized” to weaken the military.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/style/bullying-tiktok-social-media.html

https://archive.ph/awKG5

[Justice Brandeis]

1. This is misdirected, but I will say this

School-aged kids need to be allowed to fight back against school bullies if they are assaulted. They should not be suspended, expelled or disciplined for defending themselves when a school bully assaults them.

All too often this ends up happening, as dimwitted school administrators have so-called zero tolerance policies that result in a boy or girl getting suspended because they were "in the fight". That needs to stop right now. It teaches children a terrible lesson in life.

[ScoutHikerDad]

2. The Only Thing a Bully Understands

Is a busted nose, a kick in the balls, whatever it takes, not "conflict resolution," "restorative justice" and the like. As a guy who was bullied some in school, a former schoolteacher and father of two (now grown) sons, I HATE any bully, and love to see them get what's coming to them.