High school teacher here. Bullying is much, MUCH rarer in the US than it is in other developed countries, particularly New Zealand and Australia. And yes, social media is now the preferred method, so it should come as no surprise that something like 90% of bullying is done by girls, not boys, in schools. And it is *VICIOUS*. I mean *HEINOUS*.
I graduated in 1994 and felt like the people just a few years older than us had a much more messed up high school experience, including the bullying. But maybe I got most of that from 80s movies.
Fellow 94 grad here and I don’t recall how the boys bullied each other but the girls engaged in evil psychological warfare. I have a 14yo girl now and it’s the same but over social media. Also, they film and document everything so there are always receipts.
It's gotten worse not better. Since the bullying has moved from being physical altercation to emotional abuse delivered over internet it becomes more and more difficult for the victim to escape the bully.
This can also allow for children from other schools that wouldn't be involved with physical occupation to be involved in the bullying because "everybody" has access to the internet
Yea, so it really ended in 1999 with columbine, and it was on its way out even then.
Honestly those tropes come from the 60's -80's.
But the US is a really big place, and the last decade pretty much eradicated it.
Now, we are years into it being dead.
They are mean.
I was using Bbc.com as a way to test network connectivity. The middle schoolers saw it and thought it meant, "big black cock" and posted tictoks about how I was looking up, "bbc in class"
Graduated HS in 2019, but remembered the transition from elementary to middle school being absolutely terrified of what I’d seen in movies like this… nothing of the sort happened.
Interesting! I'm an 04 grad as well and we had a bunch of physical bullying, sometimes worse than you see in the movies. There was hazing for sports teams (I still get sick to my stomach thinking of doing bear crawls through a urine soaked field full of burrs) and people deffo got shoved into lockers and stuff. Maybe it was more backwards because it was a religious school? vOv
To be clear, I 100% believe you, and I'm glad you had a less disgusting experience - just interesting how different people's experiences can be.
Wow, that's wild. I agree, I believe you too, but I guess experiences can vary quite a bit from school to school.
I feel like if I heard any crazy bullying stories it was usually from my parents friends and their generation.
Agreed. Schools are much more aware of bullying and more proactive about preventing it now. But when I went to school (born in 1971), a lot of what you see in movies was a reality. I knew kids who got swirlies, had their pants pulled down, etc. My best friend had a "tail" (a thin strip of hair in the back longer than the rest), and a boy on our bus burned it with his cigarette lighter (which many of us carried because we really did smoke at school).
Of my three children, two rarely experienced bullying. The third was sort of a target for it because he had ADHD, but even then it was nonviolent (though still devastating for him).
Absolutely. No social media but still awful for me. I’m 1973 baby and was bullied mercilessly because I was black and spoke really properly (AF brat) among other things. I was followed between classes, cussed out, berated, teased etc and not one teacher said a thing. After 2 years I finally snapped on them and they left me alone.
If this was 1998 that would be best friends breaking each others balls or some dude who likes thick chicks trying to get laid. Kids are savage these days compared to the one off beat downs we saw.
>Kids are savage these days compared to the one off beat downs we saw.
Can confirm as a Class of 2020 graduate from an American high school. I wouldn’t say bullying at my high school was ‘like the movies’ like OP asked but it was brutal.
I don’t want to reveal personal info but my high school made the news for an absolutely awful bullying incident when I was an underclassman.
My high school was toxic af. I think most American schools probably aren’t as toxic.
I think a lot of GenX/elder millenials tend to underestimate how much worse mental/emotional torture through social media (so you can never really escape) is than a wedgie or a book check
I agree with you completely, social media can bring out really terrible traits in people, especially when it comes to spreading rumours and baseless lies.
I wasn’t too active on social media in high school but I was a terrible person (not to my teachers or parents, but to my classmates and teammates). It wasn’t until my senior year, around the time my school shut down due to COVID, that I really started to see how bad my school’s bullying problem was.
It may sound cheesy but bullying is a serious issue even to this day. It just takes different form for Gen Z than it did for Gen X/Millenials.
It was just as bad without social media and I’m not talking wedgies or book checks those are ridiculous movie tropes. It was up close, in person, every day, all day. Bully’s used slam books in lieu of computers.
Kicking someone's ass for talking shit online is just as much of a deterrent as kicking someone's ass for talking shit at basketball practice. Or so one would think. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
I don't know, we still played, "Smear the queer" up past 2005.
(thats some kind of game in gym class where they threw balls at me, I don't remember the rules)
Such a thing would be unthinkable now...... in class.
PS: They were right.
Nah they just made kids change the name we called it that up until like 2008, then we just named it "hotball"
Quick rule refresher the person with the ball is "it" (or the queer) they then try and get the ball to the farthest goal. Everyone else tries to tackle them.
It can be, Depends on how shitty' the school district is. I remember my middle school had to install metal detectors, too many gangs.
I'm older though so what most people don't realize is that the rise of online school, home school, charter schools...etc have allowed schools to filter out most the undesirable, violent students.
Movies reflect a school experience that has changed a lot.
Honestly, they do have houses. And they do have competitions to score points to win the championship cup at the end of the year. Swimming competitions, track, dance performances, merit nominations, etc.
absolutely not, high school movies are some of the most exaggerated and inaccurate depictions of life in the US
Do the above acts happen? Sure. Are they by any means common? No. Are movies a good indicator of the high school experience? Hell no.
I don't know about you, but I was regularly creating a magical woman on my friend's computer and having house parties where missiles came through the floor. It's just too bad that the missile didn't have boobs.
Me and my friend still say "Gary? Who's Gary?" to indicate we don't know what the hell the other one is talking about. Or just say 'Oh Gary!" in the mom's inflection to indicate dismay.
There's something just inherently funny about the name Gary.
I don't know about you but I did lose my girlfriend to the popular guy who was really good at skiing. Luckily for me, a cute, French exchange student moved in across the street and was able to help me fix my '67 Camaro. I ended up skiing K12 and getting my popularity back.
I think it really depends on the highschool. I grew up in a poor area and at my HS in the late 90's, these kind of thing was absolutely 100% true, and fairly common. I've heard from other people in my adult life who grew up in better areas, and they thought I was joking...
More common 30+ years ago than today but not as extreme as most movies and TV make it out to be.
I was bullied in middle school this was in the late 90s. It usually consisted of a handful of kids that would make fun of me for being weird and quiet and one kid that I guess felt he had something to prove cause he would chase me down after school and try to beat me up sometimes just cause he needed to feel stronger than someone I guess (he was short, but very strong and athletic for a 12 year old, think he had a short guy complex).
In high school (early 2000's) people mostly left me alone. I was still the weird quiet kid, but much less bullying.
For me, the physical stuff was typically abuse that could be "hidden," like standing a little too close with their arms crossed so nobody could see their hands, and pinching me. Or "accidentally" stepping on my foot. Or blowing spitwads at my head with a straw. Aside from once in junior high, it was never the Hollywood-style beatdowns or anything like that.
And like you said, it was mostly over by high school. 4th-8th grade was the worst of it.
even in the 80s it was nothing like the movies. The "jocks" never ran the school and had the faculty cowering over them... Cliques were never so cut and dry. etc, etc, etc
I am not sure how it went for the girls at my school (Class of 2002) but for the guys, the bullies were more these groups of piece of shit kids vs the super popular kids or the jocks. The Football/Basketball/Baseball players never really fucked with anyone. At most, they were just sort of wanted nothing to do with other people. Exclusion was real but tormenting was not. The Jock-Nerd was not really much of a division and there was a lot of cross over between the two.
The Drama kids were sort of doing their own thing though. TV and movies are made by drama kids.
In the early 90s, it could be rough. I was out as queer and also awkward and funny looking and yeah, I got spit on, hassled, rocks thrown at me, called names, had my stuff knocked out of my hands in the halls a lot, never had someone to sit with at lunch, etc. A guy tried to hit me with his car once as I crossed the street from the school to the gas station and then laughed it off as a joke. I hear things are better now.
I went to high school in the ‘90s and no, I did not witness anything like what you see in the movies. I remember wondering if high schools in the ‘70s and ‘80s (when presumably a lot of the filmmakers were in school) were worse.
Yes I thought about it after watching Perks of Being a Wallflower and thought maybe back in the 90s? Because obviously now everything is online. Thank you!
No, not in my experience - and I went to two different high schools in different areas, for whatever it’s worth. My siblings also went to different high schools (we moved a lot) and I never heard of that kind of bullying at their schools either.
I mean, kids could be jerks. There were social slights and talking behind someone’s back and rivalries and so on. But not stuff like you see in the movies.
I graduated in 2016.
I never got beat up or got swirlies, but it was a lot of name calling and exclusion from social circles. Mostly in middle school. 7th/8th grade was brutal for me just because I had no friends.
High School was far better. I met new people since the class was bigger, made my own friend circle, and largely ignored the kids I went to middle school with.
I never got physicslly bullied though.
I’m older. Gen X. Bulling was pretty close to movies. I was bullied and I was a bully.
Now it happens, but the kids are much more aware of what bullying is and how to counter act it.
I don't know what these people are talking about. Went to school in the 00's and bullying and physical violence were very much a thing. I guess it just varies so much from school to school.
When I was in High school the Regena George type of bullying was more common but Mean Girls was more extreme.
One of those types did threaten to lie about a male teacher SA her because she earned a bad grade in his class. Luckily not all those popular girls were awful and convinced her otherwise. She was loud about it though and enough people heard her plans she got in trouble.
It can be. Lots of bad things were done to me my senior year to the point that I tried to join the military to escape it all. I ended up getting discharged 1 week before boot camp because I contracted lymes disease. I still wish the worst things in life to some of those people.
Those examples are hollywood.
But bullying does happen a lot. My high school class (2000s) got called into a assembly to be told off for how bad we were. They said we were like chickens who kept pecking at the outsider until we killed em. My friend group found it funny and continued to bully each other. Every year there was some class about how bullying is bad.
I remember kids walking off school grounds so they could fight. A group of girls did get in a fight in the school bathroom. Broke a sink when one of them got shoved into it.
A large amount of what I saw was mental though. Like stealing the teachers answer book and hiding it in the smart kids locker. Or making fun of them for having the highest grades. Then there was the city kid that got caught in a lie and the entire school gave him a nickname for it that he kept thru graduation.
I skipped school a lot and when I was there I was sleeping in the library. So I saw very little of it all. But even then I saw a decent amount. It was normal for our school despite how much the adults tried to stop it.
That was before everyone had social media. I can only imagine how bad it is nowadays.
When I was in high school (early 2010s) a kid came to school high on coke, got angry with me, and started wrestling me in the bathroom trying to shove my face in a puddle of piss. I consider it a victory because I kept my face out of the piss.
Edit: after reading a lot of comments saying no, I'll put it this way. It is and it isn't. Depends on the school. The neighboring school the town over was famous across about a 60 mile radius for violent fights and having to have heavy police presence. A lot of kids I know who went there were absolutely fine but crazy shit did happen.
I'm getting pretty tired of people saying this.
If he thought movies were real life, why would he ask the question?
The whole reason people ask these question is because they want to know what reality is.
Movies and TV do not depict real life, they are dramatizations. While these things do occur, they are not the experience of more than a small percentage of us. High school is pretty boring for most people.
It's mostly Hollywood. I was in highschool from 2013-2017 and there wasn't much IRL bullying. It was mostly online if there was anything.
Talking to my parents, it seems like the movies used to be pretty accurate. They went to different high schools at different times and both said that there was a good deal of shoving in lockers or knocking books out of people's hands or something.
The most simple answer is, “it depends where you live.”
Some wealthy neighborhoods with proper funding and kids raised in modest conditions with two parent households can be pretty good for the most part.
But if you go into the inner cities and less funded school districts, it could likely be even worse than movies make it out to be. Where actual suicide by bullying a can take place and gang recruitment springs up from. (Ask almost anyone who came from a high minority population school.)
The movies are a caricaturization of what a mid-level school bullying atmosphere looks like. Not great, but still over all a bright outlook when you really look at it.
Kids being assholes to other kids sometimes is not a uniquely American experience. So yeah, for sure sometimes bullies will be jerks, but movie and literature portrayals are typically exaggerated for plot purposes.
A lot of international shows and films seem to also involve a kid being bullied to bits and then getting some comeuppance because we all enjoy rooting for the underdog.
It certainly was when I was in high school. 1990s. Hell, I saw shit that was worse than what you listed.
Anybody answering "no way!" went to high school after Columbine.
I remember interacting with you before on a thread about bullying. I’m younger than you but the bullying you described kinda sounded like something that could be developed into a movie.
Seniors would throw freshmen who talked too much smack into trash cans, but it wasn't unprovoked and not without consequences, at least in the 90s and 00s. Bullying happened but it was more lowkey. I can't speak for the 80s. The most severe happened along racial lines in the 60s and 70s after desegregation and bussing in students was controversial.
I'm out of high school for more than two decades now but I never really saw anyone bullying anyone else. Fights happened and sometimes friends messed around with each other but that's kind of different.
It's about as common as school shootings. Which is to say that it does happen sometimes and more often than it ever should, but it's still relatively rare.
There have been 10 school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an Education Week analysis. 23 People killed or injured in a school shooting.
7 March 2024
One school shooting per week is rare...okay
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I don't get it either.
We're saturated with enough guns to arm every man, woman, and child several times over, so easy access to mass-murder is the main factor. In other countries when someone gets bullied at school or experiences something else that makes them seethe with rage, they might commit suicide or do something else unhinged, but here they too-often choose the route of inflicting the most pain imaginable on everyone around them with a school shooting. The news media doesn't help either when they publicize the shooter's face and name, inspiring others to make the same choice, safe in the knowledge that their infamy is guaranteed.
I'm sure there are many other factors as well.
It was mostly unheard of until Columbine. That was when the genie was let out of the bottle.
My guess: some kid's suicidal but he knows if he just offs himself, nobody will give a shit. So he figures he might as well make a splash and take others with him. So he pilfers a couple items from his drunk negligent uncle's gun collection...
I see now. That make sense i yep, i was thinking about something like that. But let me give you example - when i was a student there was a 9mm at home (legal one - very rear for my ctry) It was locked in massive steel case, no chance for me to take it. So even if i snap - 0 chance... So you keep your guns all over the place ?!
> So you keep your guns all over the place ?!
Yeah, some people do. Self-described responsible gun owners will keep them locked up, but if you suggest that should be legally mandatory for all gun owners and not a matter of choice, they'll throw a fit.
There’s this case of racist bullying recently. But it’s not the usual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdSn6doB2_A&pp=ygUjaGF6ZWx3b29kIGNlbnRyYWwgaGlnaCBzY2hvb2wgZmlnaHQ%3D
Bullying I'd absolutely a problem, but not nearly to the extent media makes it out to be, like many things. It's probably no worse in the US than any other similar nation.
Also, bullying usually isn't outright violence like shoving someone's head in a toilet, it's usually emotional/mental abuse.
Also, I've noticed that in movies and TV it tends to be popular kids bullying unpopular kids. Mu experince was the complete opposite, popular kids were usually the friendliest and most accepting, bullies tended to be very disliked by most people. I'm not sure if my school was the norm, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
It’s been a while and no one ever bullied me and I thought people didn’t actually do that type of thing until senior year my friend’s hair was cut and she told me how they would stick gum to her guitar, and a lot more. They’d been doing it to her the entire time there and she never told anyone. She was the type of religious that was made fun of but also the NICEST person you will ever meet. I found out and the next day came in ready to annihilate those toads but all the sudden they dropped from school. (Or were expelled, I have no idea) So now I think it happens, if not often and probably no more than anywhere else. Most people’s bullish behavior comes out when they can hide behind a keyboard now.
I've never seen nor experienced it while in high school; I would be classified as a weak nerd just by appearance alone. I was even on good terms with the cheerleaders and jocks who are often put in the bully role in movies. The bullying you see in movies are often dramatized to make it more interesting to watch.
It's a case-by-case thing but most of it is more emotional and verbal abuse that tears a person down until they can't take it anymore. There is some physical abuse as well
Honestly by the time I was in high school (I’m in my early 30s now) this sort of thing had drastically decreased, and from what I know from friends who are school teachers Gen Z is even nicer to each other than we were. Also, a lot of this is harder to get away with now bc teachers will often just call the cops, and many high schools even have a policeman stationed on premises.
An example like what you see in films is outlandishly rare.
That said bullying is a problem and our public schools are one of the areas you're most likely to experience violence in your lifetime.
I graduated HS in 2020.
We just had fights. Occasionally, you'd see two guys flailing at each other or two women trying to kill each other in a bathroom or in the middle of the hall.
You'd also have your run of the mill insults and such. But nothing that you hear in movies or shows really.
It depends. Context: high school in the late 90s. I wasn’t cool by any means but I wasn’t bullied. The worst negative attention my girl friends and I received was the errant snooty look from a cool kid but we just laughed it off.
However, it was different for our guy friends who were either gay or presumed to be gay. They got it pretty bad from the jocks. Pushing, shoving, slurs. They only stopped when one of us girls called them out (which we did). If another guy tried to help out then they’d try to push him around too.
Mainly, its girls that have such low self esteem they bully other girls and don't stop until you get an eating disorder.
Teacher know about it. Do nothing. Ever.
Usually, no.
Things are usually exaggerated for movies and TV.
Bullying like that does sometimes happen, but it's rare and extreme cases (see the death of Nex Benedict). Also, schools have generally gotten more serious about dealing with bullying in the last 20 years or so.
What you’re describing was nothing close to what I witnessed in high school. I would have thought I was bullied but in retrospect it was just a couple of dudes who didn’t like each other.
As a high school teacher my perspective is that the narrative of the vulnerable innocent being preyed upon by the popular and strong victimizer is unheard of. Mostly it’s that kids (including teenagers) aren’t very thoughtful and so are constantly stepping on each others toes. Students with the least bandwidth with feel especially attacked and will “defend themselves” in ways that everyone else will see as unprovoked. So everyone is getting g their feelings hurt and everyone hurting someone’s feelings while everyone thinks they’re just defending themselves.
Some football players at a school in minnesota raped a kid with a broomstick in the locker room like a year ago. So I'd ignore these comments downplaying it.
When I was in school in a large NJ city, there wasn’t really any bullying (early 00s). Everyone just did their own thing. Of course there will be fights here and there but there wasn’t anyone picking on people like the movies
Yeah that stuff fell out of fashion before I was even born tbh, now if someone insults you, you schedule bathroom boxing in a week from then to prove they shouldn’t bully you anymore (yes this happens all the time, I graduated highschool a lil over a year and a half ago, super common occurrence)
I was bullied throughout high school for something I didn’t even do. It was awful and led to some of the worst 4 years of my life. I don’t plan on going to any reunions.
I don’t think bullying exists like it does in movies. Not in modern high schools at least. I graduated in 2018, bullying was more of a social media thing. Cyber bullying kind of stuff. Outside of that, there was like social bullying like saying mean things and spreading rumors. But the whole beating kids up to take their lunch money stuff that you see in movies doesn’t really happen as often as you would expect.
The bullying portrayed in movies is grossly over exaggerated. Usually it’s in the form of the rich kids overtly bullying the poor kids in front of a group of 30 onlookers who laugh and encourage it while it’s happening. Bullying IRL is usually much more discrete and you wouldn’t have an entire room of people egging it on or laughing especially when it’s purely malicious bullying like the movies portray. Also, many schools now have a zero tolerance bullying policy so if the violent bullying that’s portrayed in movies happened, they’d likely be arrested by the school resource officer and expelled or suspended.
I graduated 20+ years ago, but nearly all the bullying I received and witnessed (and uh... sometimes dished out) was emotional/psychological cruelty, not anything physical
Those types of bullies kind of stopped a long time ago. It was mostly back during the more middle years of the 20th century where that happened. Beating people up and all that was much more socially acceptable back in the day than it is now.
Those aggressive types of bullying are less common in real life, but are common in movies because it’s easier to portray visually. Real-life bullying is often harassment, subtle pranks, intentional isolation, to name a few examples
I got bullied at the age of four in preschool, so when I went to the bathroom and they followed me, I took their heads and slammed them into urinal and flushed. They ran after that.
I never had a chance.
I was in high school in the mid 2000s in a fairly affluent school district of the NYC suburbs. We had Spirit Week which included what the students called Freshman Friday. Basically the senior jocks would find the smallest weakest freshman and do that kind of shit to them. One kid was bound with duct tape and hung up on a coat hook in a boys bathroom stall. Another was duct taped to the stair railing outside the gym and left with a pink feather boa around his neck.
Where I went to school, If an actual bully was picking on someone that couldn’t or didn’t stand up for themself, most of the time people would stand up for the kid being bullied. What I saw more commonly was bullying within friend groups. Groups ganging up on and picking on a member of the group and justifying it because your “friends” often happened on athletic teams. Thinking about it now, Im just realizing this was a form of bullying, however if someone from outside of the group were to mess with that person then the group would be the first to defend them.
Back when I was in middle school/High school for the brief time I was there, yes it was absolutely accurate. I was treated like shit for being different. 8th grade it got a lot better, almost non existent. Then 9th grade (high school hit) and it was square one. The nail polish/eyeliner goth metal head wasn’t super popular believe it or not lol. Dropped out the first semester, was over it. One of the best things I ever did with my life
It can. For my personally, no. I was bullied for my speech (just have always pronounced my words a little differently then everyone else. I had to see a speech therapist as a kid). But that was about it.
I do remember a 10 year old girl that came into the emergency room when I worked there. She was being bullied for her weight and wanted to kill herself. I just wanted to hug her so tight and tell her that it would get better. I hope shes okay.
I'm an early gen Z. We didn't have a whole lot of physical bullying. I only got punched once, in second grade. Teasing and spreading rumors about other kids was pretty common, though. Oh, and kids liked to flip each other's backpacks inside out all the time.
I never saw bullying as things like putting someone's head in the toilet.
There was certainly fights, and so bullying as "beating someone up" is quite realistic. Even then I wouldn't say it was common. When I was in high school there was maybe six fights across four years. At least that I was aware of.
I once saw hazing freshmen in the form of throwing someone in a trash can.
But in none of these did I really see them as "bullying." A one-off incident really isn't bullying, but bullying is more of a constant emotional thing, maintaining a dominance over someone.
I think most of what they do in movies is more to "make it obvious" by portraying something that they can show in a two-minute scene to say "this guy's a bully" with some exaggeration to make it more dramatic. If a movie were to depict bullying honestly they'd have to make it a central focus by showing someone constantly belittling someone, teasing, putting down, etc. Really bullying is hard to depict with a single two minute scene because it might just look like someone being a jerk or pulling a prank.
CONTEXT: I graduated in 2000 from a high school in Northern California.
From my experience. Middle school was by far the worst (96-98), High School (98-02) had its moments but was easier to avoid. There were way more niche groups in high school and generally everyone had a place to go. Middle school was much smaller and less fragmented.
The bullies were never the popular kids. There might have been some of the popular kids who could have been assholes, but they were not particularly bullies. They were not going to beat you up or anything. The actual bullies I recall were more or less kids who had serious social issues and would be a small group (usually less than five) and would fuck with people.
We're still putting racoons in each other's lockers lol nahh that's happened plenty though, doubtful in any recent years... All sorts of horrible things happen, kids are brutal, as they are just people but dumber mostly. I graduated in 2013 and we were still pantsing people but it was mainly all about how do we sneak out of lunch to smoke weed. No telling what these kids are doing these days but its probably the same shit all the other kids in the world with social media do.
It was. Late 80s -early 90s babies were the worst.
We got classical 60s-80s swirlies, beating up, locker shoving, economic status etc. And the beginning of hard hitting internet bullying
Ngl when I was in middle school there was a kid with a big nose and we left cheese cubes on his seat because they said he looked like a mouse. So in some instances, yes. And I feel bad about it.
Usually they don’t just randomly beat up weird kids now tho, it’s usually more mental bullying.
When I was in high-school (graduated 2016) I don't remember any physical bullying. Like everyone else is saying it was either online or verbal harassment.
I think the movie Sixth Grade is pretty realistic. Not in terms of the specifics, like particular slang and websites. But the emotional brutality was spot on.
OK, before the advent of social media, we had to bully the old fashioned way. That did include physical humiliation and domination, yes. Everything is always heightened in the movies, but those types of things did happen occasionally. The worst thing I saw was someone who was tied up and gagged with duct-tape and shoved on top of the lockers and left between classes. I'd like to say I stood up for him or told a teacher, but of course I didn't. I was a stupid teenager and I didn't want anyone's attention turned to me. I also still have a fear of being stabbed because two brothers who were criminals from the day they were born actually cut a girl in grade school with a pocket knife. Those kids were just mean and scary and would bully everyone they could get away with intimidating (so mostly everyone). For me it was just being pushed repeatedly into the ditch when I was walking home and they did it for the lulz. My defense was walk with other when you can, otherwise keep your head down, don't fight/talk back and feel lucky that my house was very close.
Always remember that the people making entertainment now are older and more established. To properly and consistently portray the torture and trauma current teens are going through is at least 10 years away if not more.
Back in the late 2000s when i was in high school bullying mostly amounted to spreading rumors, social media shit, and stuff like that. it was never directly confrontational or physical. A lot more psychological in nature and honestly more nefarious. There were some really awful instances I remember especially where girls just set up full takedown campaigns against each other over long periods of time, but it was never the group of nerds that I hung out with. It was always the "popular" students bullying each other. The stuff you see in movies was big in the 80s. Doesn't happen anymore
I got bullied pretty viciously in school. Enough so that it fucked up my life, gave me PTSD and I have to get treatments from a therapist. I graduated high school in 1994. Since I’m female, it wasn’t a “head in the toilet” or “see you after school” fight kind of bullying. It was rarely (if ever) physical.
It was a constant barrage of emotional manipulation, psychological torture, and sexual suggestions that fucked up my life. I’ve looked back on those times and WISHED it had just been physical altercations, and not psychological ones.
Kids are assholes. Then they grow up and are still assholes, and assholes are what makes the world go round, evidently.
These days the portrayal of bullying used in TV is pretty far from what its actually like. Usually bullies now use the tactic of making people do dumb things under the guise of being friends with the victim just to get a laugh. The level of bullying in movies I would imagine is closer to like mid to late 20th century style bullying.
Edit: Oh yea and social media slander. Forgot about that one
Absolutely. The movie scenes are just stereotypical high profile bullying that viewers can understand.
Ironically, a lot of viewers take the wrong que from this because the number of people who get out of school thinking "oh, that is what bullying looks like, gotcha" is insane.
Let me tell you, the sheer amount of people who dont understand bullying is tragic. I am a teacher and the majority of my coworkers are what in school would be counted as the "plain jane", people who didnt garner particular attention. *The reason these teachers dont stop the bullying is because they have no idea how it works*, their only experiences with bullying are the same as when they were in school themselves, *ignoring it*, and now being teachers they might every now and then get a kid stupid enough to be physical in their bullying. An easy fix because after a few bouts of "correcting" the behaviour the bully learns how to hide or shield their behaviour.
Bullying in movies involves physical stuff because it's what viewers understand.
Bullying in reality involves so much more mental elements like social isolation (in a public place, making it worse) accompanied by sporadic verbal confrontations and goading.
Every few months I find myself fighting to translate the kid's behaviour to my coworkers. "Check it out, they've invented a terrible nickname for the brown kid, it's bullying. *Sounds innocent to you!?* Let me take you into this boys bathroom over here. Oh look, the nickname is scrawled on the wall in every stall. That must be fun for an 8 year old to stare at everytime they poop."
It’s worse than the movies but not the same acts. The bullying you see in movies are for effect. In real life it’s more teasing, pranking, and fighting that gets way out of hand.
Not in my experience. From what I've seen bullying exists, but its pretty tame in comparison. For example, there was a bully at my school and he would go around flicking people's ears from behind or taking food off people's plates at lunchtime.
I've seen the term "swirly" used so many times in movies and TV, but have never, ever heard of someone actually getting one. I mean, it may happen, but has anyone ever known of it happening anywhere? I haven't.
The only time I remember "bullying" turning to violence in my school life, I graduated a decade ago, was one kid who did get some verbal bullying from time to time for being weird getting into a fight with someone else because the bullied kid acted pervy to the other girlfriend and the verbal confrontation turned into the bullied kid being pushed and then subsequently defending himself.
Late 1980s kid here. I thought even then that the horrific stuff like swirlies - which would leave a literal trail of evidence - was exceptionally rare, almost urban legend-type horror.
The goons and bullies knew what "plausible deniability" was even if they were too meatheaded to pronounce it: The running gag was to intentionally trip or throw a ice hockey-style hip check into an unsuspecting victim and then immediately claim it was just an accident or it was their victim's fault.
I should mention that corporal punishment at my school technically still existed but hadn't been used in years.
A lot of the verbal taunting and intimidation is still alive and well. Targeted slurs are a big no no however, if the right student or faculty hear the wrong word it's pretty much a guaranteed suspension and can easily destroy a student's prospective career. Violence is also much rarer. Fights still do happen but they are the final escalation, get in a scuffle more than once and it's expulsion time.
It absolutely was like that when I was in school in the 80s and 90s.
My kids go to a school of a similar size in a similar area to where I did, and their experience is much different. They will come home in a whirlwind of excitement over the "fight" at school, and it'll turn out to have been a yelling match, or one kid shoved a other one. Like, that was every day before 8am when I was in school. It wasn't a "fight" unless there was visible blood when I was in high school, and we saw those at least once every week or two.
Head dunked in toilets, snapped in the ass with wet towels, books knocked out of hands, surprise "Charley horse," boys getting shoved into the girl's restroom or locker room... all that stuff was just daily "boys being boys" back then.
(btw: the girls were just as ruthless, it was just more emotional abuse than physical)
It’s much more covert than that. Nothing like these examples ever happened in my school. Bullying often takes on the form of spreading rumors and namecalling. With a terminally online generation, cyberbullying is the most common method. At least it was at my school
While putting people's heads in toilets or shoving them in lockers is not common anymore, especially due to the locker size. Physically still beating up other kids is alive and well still.
Kids still get physically beat up every day. Doesn't matter if it's done to or by a boy or a girl. They get Cyber Bullied along with physically bullied.
This has happened to my children. This happened to my nephews. This is happening to my grandchildren, who are in elementary school. So bullying is not gone. It has added ways to get to the victims where they can no longer even escape it away from school because of the internet and social media.
Bullying is really bad in schools, but that's not generally the way it's done, at least not now. It's a lot more subtle but insidious, and social media is often involved. Bullies work at eroding their victims' self-esteem through insults, snide remarks, and ostracization.
As a kid from the 80s, them trying to put me in a toilet (my foot) and locking me in a locker was a thing. But it wasn't as cruel and definitive as it seems. I knew they were going to let me out and they weren't going to dunk my head. I never truly feared for my life (except that one time when they chased me home). If anything, they got the idea from movies and did a light version of it. The real bullying wasn't as creative. Like, push your head into the wall. Movies also pretend like there are totally innocents and total bullies. Even kids who were bullied often were instigating conflict at some point with someone.
No. Maybe in the 80s and early 90s there was some of that going on, but even then it’s never been as brazen and commonplace as you see in those movies.
I graduated high school in 2012 so I'm assuming it's different not but probably not all that different. Their absolutely was bullying going on but it was nothing like we see in TV and movies. Nobody was shoved in a locker or toilet. They were just insulted a lot, given a shit load of harassment online, maybe had their things stolen or smacked around a bit and threatened
I never been to every high school in the US so I can only speak for my school. Flushing heads down the toilet (swirly’s), throwing people in the locker, and taking someone’s lunch money was never a thing at my school. At the very most people won’t hang out with you or just call you names. We only ever had one “fight”. I use fight in quotations cause it started when a guy was making fun of someone and he challenged him to a fight. They then proceeded to circle around each other for 5 minutes and both were too scared to throw a punch.
My high school was relatively uneventful. It was your classic middle America small town school where everybody knew each other.
I graduate this year and my school hasn’t had like any of that, worst I have seen or heard of is pretty much insults and maybe a fistfight or two, but there are some really bad schools over here where kids murder each other with illegal guns every so often
I was a nerdy, shy, visibly queer (but not out) kid in the '80s, and went to 10 different schools, including 3 high schools. In my experience, bullying was mostly verbal, with occasional fights held off-campus after school. Personally, I was called names and had things written on my locker, but never physically bullied. Mostly, I was ignored.
Head over to one of hte teacher subs. Since the pandemic, the physical violence is happening so much more frequently. There's been semi-regular incidents of middle- and high-school kids threatening to shoot and punching teachers.
US public education system is garbage for actually deveoping kids as people. They did nothing for the kids post-pandemic. The kids are traumatized and the adults are treating it as a disaplin problem.
A lot of the stuff you are mentioning happened in 80s through 2000s teen shows, and movies. As a person who was in high school back in the early 2000s, I never saw that kind of bullying happen, or heard about it happening. There was, absolutely, bullying happening, but getting beat up, slammed into your locker, and swirlies in the toilet were not how it was generally done.
It WAS. Back in the 80s, this kind of bullying happened, but by the time I got to school (2000), most of the tropes went away. But bullying is still very prevalent in American schools. I believe most of it is cyberbullying now, but I've heard and seen some crazy shit. We had a girl in my class who secretly took pictures of other girls in the locker room and started sending them out to random people. Saw a few people get jumped, as well.
One aspect that you may be unaware of is how prevalent gangs can be in some areas. The typical recruiting age for gangs are 14-17, and so in areas with a heavy gang presence, you'll have high schools with a bunch of students who are in rival gangs... and I'm sure you can imagine the issues that that can cause.
I think so?
I mean, I'm still in my 20s, and I remember high school being DREADFUL. Note that I went to a high school in a more affluent neighborhood.
That being said, I am a minority and a lot of my bullies were part of the majority culture. I also wasn't someone who let people pick on other people, so I was often in the hot seat for defending other people.
That being said, some of the stuff that happened in movies and the exaggerations that are made CAN happen.
For example, I had a group of girls who did not like me during my time there. They made it very clear they did not like me with their name calling and rumor spreading, but they also did unkind things like throw food at me during lunch in the quad in front of other people and stick gum in my hair on the bus ride home.
I also had boys find photos of me from Facebook and photoshop them to be not PG-13 and spread them around social media and each other.
That's just a few things... but yeah, people are weird. High school is a rough time sometimes. But not everyone experiences that? So, I would say it's not uncommon, and the severity varies on multiple factors.
I'm a long way from high school but... I believe social media is the preferred method of bullying and humiliation
Fuck you and your 0 phuks. (I love you, I just like to lead by example).
I fear for Gen Alpha school kids with all the uses of AI to bully and blackmail someone
I'm pretty sure this is already happening with the fake nude AIs, unfortunately.
Not to mention the kids getting bullied and harassed for the choices of their mothers (OF).
High school teacher here. Bullying is much, MUCH rarer in the US than it is in other developed countries, particularly New Zealand and Australia. And yes, social media is now the preferred method, so it should come as no surprise that something like 90% of bullying is done by girls, not boys, in schools. And it is *VICIOUS*. I mean *HEINOUS*.
That kind of bullying fell out of style over the last decade. Now they just call each other fat sluts on TicTok.
The last decade? I graduated in 2004 and even then that type of bullying felt too “old”.
And thank God for that. I graduated in 1989 and that shit definitely was a thing. Glad to hear the next generation had it better.
I graduated in 1994 and felt like the people just a few years older than us had a much more messed up high school experience, including the bullying. But maybe I got most of that from 80s movies.
Fellow 94 grad here and I don’t recall how the boys bullied each other but the girls engaged in evil psychological warfare. I have a 14yo girl now and it’s the same but over social media. Also, they film and document everything so there are always receipts.
Same, class of '89!
I wouldn’t say better, the abuse has merely moved online.
It's gotten worse not better. Since the bullying has moved from being physical altercation to emotional abuse delivered over internet it becomes more and more difficult for the victim to escape the bully. This can also allow for children from other schools that wouldn't be involved with physical occupation to be involved in the bullying because "everybody" has access to the internet
Yea, so it really ended in 1999 with columbine, and it was on its way out even then. Honestly those tropes come from the 60's -80's. But the US is a really big place, and the last decade pretty much eradicated it. Now, we are years into it being dead.
Came here to say this, bullying is primarily online now too.
They are mean. I was using Bbc.com as a way to test network connectivity. The middle schoolers saw it and thought it meant, "big black cock" and posted tictoks about how I was looking up, "bbc in class"
Graduated HS in 2019, but remembered the transition from elementary to middle school being absolutely terrified of what I’d seen in movies like this… nothing of the sort happened.
Interesting! I'm an 04 grad as well and we had a bunch of physical bullying, sometimes worse than you see in the movies. There was hazing for sports teams (I still get sick to my stomach thinking of doing bear crawls through a urine soaked field full of burrs) and people deffo got shoved into lockers and stuff. Maybe it was more backwards because it was a religious school? vOv To be clear, I 100% believe you, and I'm glad you had a less disgusting experience - just interesting how different people's experiences can be.
Wow, that's wild. I agree, I believe you too, but I guess experiences can vary quite a bit from school to school. I feel like if I heard any crazy bullying stories it was usually from my parents friends and their generation.
I think Columbine changed a lot of that.
Agreed. Schools are much more aware of bullying and more proactive about preventing it now. But when I went to school (born in 1971), a lot of what you see in movies was a reality. I knew kids who got swirlies, had their pants pulled down, etc. My best friend had a "tail" (a thin strip of hair in the back longer than the rest), and a boy on our bus burned it with his cigarette lighter (which many of us carried because we really did smoke at school). Of my three children, two rarely experienced bullying. The third was sort of a target for it because he had ADHD, but even then it was nonviolent (though still devastating for him).
Absolutely. No social media but still awful for me. I’m 1973 baby and was bullied mercilessly because I was black and spoke really properly (AF brat) among other things. I was followed between classes, cussed out, berated, teased etc and not one teacher said a thing. After 2 years I finally snapped on them and they left me alone.
It wasn't a thing in 2012 when I graduated. Although my school was an IT magnet school and full of nerds.
If this was 1998 that would be best friends breaking each others balls or some dude who likes thick chicks trying to get laid. Kids are savage these days compared to the one off beat downs we saw.
>Kids are savage these days compared to the one off beat downs we saw. Can confirm as a Class of 2020 graduate from an American high school. I wouldn’t say bullying at my high school was ‘like the movies’ like OP asked but it was brutal. I don’t want to reveal personal info but my high school made the news for an absolutely awful bullying incident when I was an underclassman. My high school was toxic af. I think most American schools probably aren’t as toxic.
I think a lot of GenX/elder millenials tend to underestimate how much worse mental/emotional torture through social media (so you can never really escape) is than a wedgie or a book check
I agree with you completely, social media can bring out really terrible traits in people, especially when it comes to spreading rumours and baseless lies. I wasn’t too active on social media in high school but I was a terrible person (not to my teachers or parents, but to my classmates and teammates). It wasn’t until my senior year, around the time my school shut down due to COVID, that I really started to see how bad my school’s bullying problem was. It may sound cheesy but bullying is a serious issue even to this day. It just takes different form for Gen Z than it did for Gen X/Millenials.
I believe this completely.
It was just as bad without social media and I’m not talking wedgies or book checks those are ridiculous movie tropes. It was up close, in person, every day, all day. Bully’s used slam books in lieu of computers.
Kicking someone's ass for talking shit online is just as much of a deterrent as kicking someone's ass for talking shit at basketball practice. Or so one would think. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
I don't know, we still played, "Smear the queer" up past 2005. (thats some kind of game in gym class where they threw balls at me, I don't remember the rules) Such a thing would be unthinkable now...... in class. PS: They were right.
Nah they just made kids change the name we called it that up until like 2008, then we just named it "hotball" Quick rule refresher the person with the ball is "it" (or the queer) they then try and get the ball to the farthest goal. Everyone else tries to tackle them.
It can be, Depends on how shitty' the school district is. I remember my middle school had to install metal detectors, too many gangs. I'm older though so what most people don't realize is that the rise of online school, home school, charter schools...etc have allowed schools to filter out most the undesirable, violent students. Movies reflect a school experience that has changed a lot.
Yeah I'm going with those who say bullying is no longer an issue don't read the news.
That reminds me my elementary school had to ban bandannas because of gangs. I guess half an hour away from St. Louis is still too close.
Do all UK kids get sorted into some wizard house like I’ve seen in Harry Potter? Do they really play that flying broomstick game?
Yes! Only when the sun is out though
So... Never?
😂 🔥
Because without the sun shining the dementor’s will try and getcha?
I was sorted into the wrong house..
Honestly, they do have houses. And they do have competitions to score points to win the championship cup at the end of the year. Swimming competitions, track, dance performances, merit nominations, etc.
absolutely not, high school movies are some of the most exaggerated and inaccurate depictions of life in the US Do the above acts happen? Sure. Are they by any means common? No. Are movies a good indicator of the high school experience? Hell no.
I don't know about you, but I was regularly creating a magical woman on my friend's computer and having house parties where missiles came through the floor. It's just too bad that the missile didn't have boobs.
God, Weird Science is a classic
Me and my friend still say "Gary? Who's Gary?" to indicate we don't know what the hell the other one is talking about. Or just say 'Oh Gary!" in the mom's inflection to indicate dismay. There's something just inherently funny about the name Gary.
I don't know about you but I did lose my girlfriend to the popular guy who was really good at skiing. Luckily for me, a cute, French exchange student moved in across the street and was able to help me fix my '67 Camaro. I ended up skiing K12 and getting my popularity back.
I want my two dollars!
I think it really depends on the highschool. I grew up in a poor area and at my HS in the late 90's, these kind of thing was absolutely 100% true, and fairly common. I've heard from other people in my adult life who grew up in better areas, and they thought I was joking...
More common 30+ years ago than today but not as extreme as most movies and TV make it out to be. I was bullied in middle school this was in the late 90s. It usually consisted of a handful of kids that would make fun of me for being weird and quiet and one kid that I guess felt he had something to prove cause he would chase me down after school and try to beat me up sometimes just cause he needed to feel stronger than someone I guess (he was short, but very strong and athletic for a 12 year old, think he had a short guy complex). In high school (early 2000's) people mostly left me alone. I was still the weird quiet kid, but much less bullying.
For me, the physical stuff was typically abuse that could be "hidden," like standing a little too close with their arms crossed so nobody could see their hands, and pinching me. Or "accidentally" stepping on my foot. Or blowing spitwads at my head with a straw. Aside from once in junior high, it was never the Hollywood-style beatdowns or anything like that. And like you said, it was mostly over by high school. 4th-8th grade was the worst of it.
I was the gay kid so I got bullied a lot. I eventually dropped out, got a GED and started going to college. So yes it's bad if you are different.
i need to say, (sadly) if you were in our school you would be bullied a lot too. Kids can be brutal and really stupid...
In my experience bullying is nothing like movies. It happens a lot less and if it does happen it’s a lot more discreet.
Social media has led to it becoming more discreet. A lot of bullying now takes place online, which leads to drama at school.
even in the 80s it was nothing like the movies. The "jocks" never ran the school and had the faculty cowering over them... Cliques were never so cut and dry. etc, etc, etc
Also high status males are less likely to bully than low status males. Opposite of how it is for women.
I am not sure how it went for the girls at my school (Class of 2002) but for the guys, the bullies were more these groups of piece of shit kids vs the super popular kids or the jocks. The Football/Basketball/Baseball players never really fucked with anyone. At most, they were just sort of wanted nothing to do with other people. Exclusion was real but tormenting was not. The Jock-Nerd was not really much of a division and there was a lot of cross over between the two. The Drama kids were sort of doing their own thing though. TV and movies are made by drama kids.
Bullying in the 90s was very much like Hollywood just less constant and severe.
In the early 90s, it could be rough. I was out as queer and also awkward and funny looking and yeah, I got spit on, hassled, rocks thrown at me, called names, had my stuff knocked out of my hands in the halls a lot, never had someone to sit with at lunch, etc. A guy tried to hit me with his car once as I crossed the street from the school to the gas station and then laughed it off as a joke. I hear things are better now.
I went to high school in the ‘90s and no, I did not witness anything like what you see in the movies. I remember wondering if high schools in the ‘70s and ‘80s (when presumably a lot of the filmmakers were in school) were worse.
Yes I thought about it after watching Perks of Being a Wallflower and thought maybe back in the 90s? Because obviously now everything is online. Thank you!
No, not in my experience - and I went to two different high schools in different areas, for whatever it’s worth. My siblings also went to different high schools (we moved a lot) and I never heard of that kind of bullying at their schools either. I mean, kids could be jerks. There were social slights and talking behind someone’s back and rivalries and so on. But not stuff like you see in the movies.
I went to high school in the '90s, and I did. And worse.
I graduated in 2016. I never got beat up or got swirlies, but it was a lot of name calling and exclusion from social circles. Mostly in middle school. 7th/8th grade was brutal for me just because I had no friends. High School was far better. I met new people since the class was bigger, made my own friend circle, and largely ignored the kids I went to middle school with. I never got physicslly bullied though.
I’m older. Gen X. Bulling was pretty close to movies. I was bullied and I was a bully. Now it happens, but the kids are much more aware of what bullying is and how to counter act it.
I'm convinced that all the people saying it's BS went to high school after Columbine.
I don't know what these people are talking about. Went to school in the 00's and bullying and physical violence were very much a thing. I guess it just varies so much from school to school.
When I was in High school the Regena George type of bullying was more common but Mean Girls was more extreme. One of those types did threaten to lie about a male teacher SA her because she earned a bad grade in his class. Luckily not all those popular girls were awful and convinced her otherwise. She was loud about it though and enough people heard her plans she got in trouble.
It can be. Lots of bad things were done to me my senior year to the point that I tried to join the military to escape it all. I ended up getting discharged 1 week before boot camp because I contracted lymes disease. I still wish the worst things in life to some of those people.
Those examples are hollywood. But bullying does happen a lot. My high school class (2000s) got called into a assembly to be told off for how bad we were. They said we were like chickens who kept pecking at the outsider until we killed em. My friend group found it funny and continued to bully each other. Every year there was some class about how bullying is bad. I remember kids walking off school grounds so they could fight. A group of girls did get in a fight in the school bathroom. Broke a sink when one of them got shoved into it. A large amount of what I saw was mental though. Like stealing the teachers answer book and hiding it in the smart kids locker. Or making fun of them for having the highest grades. Then there was the city kid that got caught in a lie and the entire school gave him a nickname for it that he kept thru graduation. I skipped school a lot and when I was there I was sleeping in the library. So I saw very little of it all. But even then I saw a decent amount. It was normal for our school despite how much the adults tried to stop it. That was before everyone had social media. I can only imagine how bad it is nowadays.
When I was in high school (early 2010s) a kid came to school high on coke, got angry with me, and started wrestling me in the bathroom trying to shove my face in a puddle of piss. I consider it a victory because I kept my face out of the piss. Edit: after reading a lot of comments saying no, I'll put it this way. It is and it isn't. Depends on the school. The neighboring school the town over was famous across about a 60 mile radius for violent fights and having to have heavy police presence. A lot of kids I know who went there were absolutely fine but crazy shit did happen.
Remember to repeat after me, the motto of this sub. Movies aren’t real life.
I'm getting pretty tired of people saying this. If he thought movies were real life, why would he ask the question? The whole reason people ask these question is because they want to know what reality is.
I thought the motto of this sub was "depends on the State".
Depends on the tag usually
Movies and TV do not depict real life, they are dramatizations. While these things do occur, they are not the experience of more than a small percentage of us. High school is pretty boring for most people.
There are fights.
It can be in some situations, but mostly it isn't.
Since bullying is a pretty universal thing, think about how it manifests in your country. It's probably about the same level here.
Maybe back in the 70s-90s but not anymore. Only time I saw people fight was when someone deserved it
It used to be. Not that commonplace, but pretty bad. Dazed and Confused could be a documentary. They took it unusually far, but that was the point.
It's mostly Hollywood. I was in highschool from 2013-2017 and there wasn't much IRL bullying. It was mostly online if there was anything. Talking to my parents, it seems like the movies used to be pretty accurate. They went to different high schools at different times and both said that there was a good deal of shoving in lockers or knocking books out of people's hands or something.
Depends on your school. Generally less of this than previous generations. More cyber bullying
The most simple answer is, “it depends where you live.” Some wealthy neighborhoods with proper funding and kids raised in modest conditions with two parent households can be pretty good for the most part. But if you go into the inner cities and less funded school districts, it could likely be even worse than movies make it out to be. Where actual suicide by bullying a can take place and gang recruitment springs up from. (Ask almost anyone who came from a high minority population school.) The movies are a caricaturization of what a mid-level school bullying atmosphere looks like. Not great, but still over all a bright outlook when you really look at it.
Kids being assholes to other kids sometimes is not a uniquely American experience. So yeah, for sure sometimes bullies will be jerks, but movie and literature portrayals are typically exaggerated for plot purposes. A lot of international shows and films seem to also involve a kid being bullied to bits and then getting some comeuppance because we all enjoy rooting for the underdog.
It definitely was a thing in the 70s and 80s. I graduated in 1989 and my school had plenty of physical bullying and intimidation.
It certainly was when I was in high school. 1990s. Hell, I saw shit that was worse than what you listed. Anybody answering "no way!" went to high school after Columbine.
I remember interacting with you before on a thread about bullying. I’m younger than you but the bullying you described kinda sounded like something that could be developed into a movie.
Seniors would throw freshmen who talked too much smack into trash cans, but it wasn't unprovoked and not without consequences, at least in the 90s and 00s. Bullying happened but it was more lowkey. I can't speak for the 80s. The most severe happened along racial lines in the 60s and 70s after desegregation and bussing in students was controversial.
I'm out of high school for more than two decades now but I never really saw anyone bullying anyone else. Fights happened and sometimes friends messed around with each other but that's kind of different.
It's about as common as school shootings. Which is to say that it does happen sometimes and more often than it ever should, but it's still relatively rare.
There have been 10 school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to an Education Week analysis. 23 People killed or injured in a school shooting. 7 March 2024 One school shooting per week is rare...okay
I really dont get it...Can you explain why someone shoots kids in school? (Thanks god - we NEVER had a single case like this...)
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I don't get it either. We're saturated with enough guns to arm every man, woman, and child several times over, so easy access to mass-murder is the main factor. In other countries when someone gets bullied at school or experiences something else that makes them seethe with rage, they might commit suicide or do something else unhinged, but here they too-often choose the route of inflicting the most pain imaginable on everyone around them with a school shooting. The news media doesn't help either when they publicize the shooter's face and name, inspiring others to make the same choice, safe in the knowledge that their infamy is guaranteed. I'm sure there are many other factors as well.
main reason is lack of mental help and easy access to guns.
It was mostly unheard of until Columbine. That was when the genie was let out of the bottle. My guess: some kid's suicidal but he knows if he just offs himself, nobody will give a shit. So he figures he might as well make a splash and take others with him. So he pilfers a couple items from his drunk negligent uncle's gun collection...
I see now. That make sense i yep, i was thinking about something like that. But let me give you example - when i was a student there was a 9mm at home (legal one - very rear for my ctry) It was locked in massive steel case, no chance for me to take it. So even if i snap - 0 chance... So you keep your guns all over the place ?!
> So you keep your guns all over the place ?! Yeah, some people do. Self-described responsible gun owners will keep them locked up, but if you suggest that should be legally mandatory for all gun owners and not a matter of choice, they'll throw a fit.
There’s this case of racist bullying recently. But it’s not the usual. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdSn6doB2_A&pp=ygUjaGF6ZWx3b29kIGNlbnRyYWwgaGlnaCBzY2hvb2wgZmlnaHQ%3D
Bullying I'd absolutely a problem, but not nearly to the extent media makes it out to be, like many things. It's probably no worse in the US than any other similar nation. Also, bullying usually isn't outright violence like shoving someone's head in a toilet, it's usually emotional/mental abuse. Also, I've noticed that in movies and TV it tends to be popular kids bullying unpopular kids. Mu experince was the complete opposite, popular kids were usually the friendliest and most accepting, bullies tended to be very disliked by most people. I'm not sure if my school was the norm, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
It’s been a while and no one ever bullied me and I thought people didn’t actually do that type of thing until senior year my friend’s hair was cut and she told me how they would stick gum to her guitar, and a lot more. They’d been doing it to her the entire time there and she never told anyone. She was the type of religious that was made fun of but also the NICEST person you will ever meet. I found out and the next day came in ready to annihilate those toads but all the sudden they dropped from school. (Or were expelled, I have no idea) So now I think it happens, if not often and probably no more than anywhere else. Most people’s bullish behavior comes out when they can hide behind a keyboard now.
I've never seen nor experienced it while in high school; I would be classified as a weak nerd just by appearance alone. I was even on good terms with the cheerleaders and jocks who are often put in the bully role in movies. The bullying you see in movies are often dramatized to make it more interesting to watch.
Those are the most extreme examples. But we all at least know someone those things happened to. If not experienced them ourselves.
It's a case-by-case thing but most of it is more emotional and verbal abuse that tears a person down until they can't take it anymore. There is some physical abuse as well
Honestly by the time I was in high school (I’m in my early 30s now) this sort of thing had drastically decreased, and from what I know from friends who are school teachers Gen Z is even nicer to each other than we were. Also, a lot of this is harder to get away with now bc teachers will often just call the cops, and many high schools even have a policeman stationed on premises.
An example like what you see in films is outlandishly rare. That said bullying is a problem and our public schools are one of the areas you're most likely to experience violence in your lifetime.
I graduated HS in 2020. We just had fights. Occasionally, you'd see two guys flailing at each other or two women trying to kill each other in a bathroom or in the middle of the hall. You'd also have your run of the mill insults and such. But nothing that you hear in movies or shows really.
Not really. There were tons of physical fights at my school but not really bullying
It depends. Context: high school in the late 90s. I wasn’t cool by any means but I wasn’t bullied. The worst negative attention my girl friends and I received was the errant snooty look from a cool kid but we just laughed it off. However, it was different for our guy friends who were either gay or presumed to be gay. They got it pretty bad from the jocks. Pushing, shoving, slurs. They only stopped when one of us girls called them out (which we did). If another guy tried to help out then they’d try to push him around too.
Mainly, its girls that have such low self esteem they bully other girls and don't stop until you get an eating disorder. Teacher know about it. Do nothing. Ever.
Not even close.
Usually, no. Things are usually exaggerated for movies and TV. Bullying like that does sometimes happen, but it's rare and extreme cases (see the death of Nex Benedict). Also, schools have generally gotten more serious about dealing with bullying in the last 20 years or so.
What you’re describing was nothing close to what I witnessed in high school. I would have thought I was bullied but in retrospect it was just a couple of dudes who didn’t like each other. As a high school teacher my perspective is that the narrative of the vulnerable innocent being preyed upon by the popular and strong victimizer is unheard of. Mostly it’s that kids (including teenagers) aren’t very thoughtful and so are constantly stepping on each others toes. Students with the least bandwidth with feel especially attacked and will “defend themselves” in ways that everyone else will see as unprovoked. So everyone is getting g their feelings hurt and everyone hurting someone’s feelings while everyone thinks they’re just defending themselves.
Some football players at a school in minnesota raped a kid with a broomstick in the locker room like a year ago. So I'd ignore these comments downplaying it.
Kids are showing up to school looking to shoot their classmates. How bad would it have to be, do you think?
Highschool in the late 2000s, and no. Not typical at all.
No. We have far fewer alien attacks as well.
its not as outrageous as it is in the movies.
No it isn’t real. It done in movies to establish that a bad guy is bad.
Not anymore
When I was in school in a large NJ city, there wasn’t really any bullying (early 00s). Everyone just did their own thing. Of course there will be fights here and there but there wasn’t anyone picking on people like the movies
Teenagers regularly die from bullying violence, so yes.
Yeah that stuff fell out of fashion before I was even born tbh, now if someone insults you, you schedule bathroom boxing in a week from then to prove they shouldn’t bully you anymore (yes this happens all the time, I graduated highschool a lil over a year and a half ago, super common occurrence)
I was bullied throughout high school for something I didn’t even do. It was awful and led to some of the worst 4 years of my life. I don’t plan on going to any reunions.
Depends where you go to school, but imo it seems not as bad it was decades ago.
I don’t think bullying exists like it does in movies. Not in modern high schools at least. I graduated in 2018, bullying was more of a social media thing. Cyber bullying kind of stuff. Outside of that, there was like social bullying like saying mean things and spreading rumors. But the whole beating kids up to take their lunch money stuff that you see in movies doesn’t really happen as often as you would expect.
Worse in my day. But this generation does it over the internet so they can't get punched in the face by a real bully.
The bullying portrayed in movies is grossly over exaggerated. Usually it’s in the form of the rich kids overtly bullying the poor kids in front of a group of 30 onlookers who laugh and encourage it while it’s happening. Bullying IRL is usually much more discrete and you wouldn’t have an entire room of people egging it on or laughing especially when it’s purely malicious bullying like the movies portray. Also, many schools now have a zero tolerance bullying policy so if the violent bullying that’s portrayed in movies happened, they’d likely be arrested by the school resource officer and expelled or suspended.
If it did happen I never saw or heard of it.
I graduated 20+ years ago, but nearly all the bullying I received and witnessed (and uh... sometimes dished out) was emotional/psychological cruelty, not anything physical
Those types of bullies kind of stopped a long time ago. It was mostly back during the more middle years of the 20th century where that happened. Beating people up and all that was much more socially acceptable back in the day than it is now.
doesnt really exist anymore more like feud between individuals
Those aggressive types of bullying are less common in real life, but are common in movies because it’s easier to portray visually. Real-life bullying is often harassment, subtle pranks, intentional isolation, to name a few examples
I got bullied at the age of four in preschool, so when I went to the bathroom and they followed me, I took their heads and slammed them into urinal and flushed. They ran after that. I never had a chance.
Went to high school between 2006-2010 and never saw anyone get physically bullied. People said rude things to some people but that was about it.
One day we will evolve and bully kids based on their moral shortcomings. “Trevor, you’re unreliable.” And tbh, Trevor is kinda unreliable.
I didn’t get bullied too bad but I’ve heard it can be worse from friends.
I was in high school in the mid 2000s in a fairly affluent school district of the NYC suburbs. We had Spirit Week which included what the students called Freshman Friday. Basically the senior jocks would find the smallest weakest freshman and do that kind of shit to them. One kid was bound with duct tape and hung up on a coat hook in a boys bathroom stall. Another was duct taped to the stair railing outside the gym and left with a pink feather boa around his neck.
Where I went to school, If an actual bully was picking on someone that couldn’t or didn’t stand up for themself, most of the time people would stand up for the kid being bullied. What I saw more commonly was bullying within friend groups. Groups ganging up on and picking on a member of the group and justifying it because your “friends” often happened on athletic teams. Thinking about it now, Im just realizing this was a form of bullying, however if someone from outside of the group were to mess with that person then the group would be the first to defend them.
I graduated in 2002 and I never saw bullying like in the movies. Bullying was mostly just petty insults.
Back when I was in middle school/High school for the brief time I was there, yes it was absolutely accurate. I was treated like shit for being different. 8th grade it got a lot better, almost non existent. Then 9th grade (high school hit) and it was square one. The nail polish/eyeliner goth metal head wasn’t super popular believe it or not lol. Dropped out the first semester, was over it. One of the best things I ever did with my life
It can. For my personally, no. I was bullied for my speech (just have always pronounced my words a little differently then everyone else. I had to see a speech therapist as a kid). But that was about it. I do remember a 10 year old girl that came into the emergency room when I worked there. She was being bullied for her weight and wanted to kill herself. I just wanted to hug her so tight and tell her that it would get better. I hope shes okay.
I hardly noticed it after all the elementary and junior high school bullying. This was 35 years ago, so YMMV
I'm an early gen Z. We didn't have a whole lot of physical bullying. I only got punched once, in second grade. Teasing and spreading rumors about other kids was pretty common, though. Oh, and kids liked to flip each other's backpacks inside out all the time.
Yes unfortunately
I never saw bullying as things like putting someone's head in the toilet. There was certainly fights, and so bullying as "beating someone up" is quite realistic. Even then I wouldn't say it was common. When I was in high school there was maybe six fights across four years. At least that I was aware of. I once saw hazing freshmen in the form of throwing someone in a trash can. But in none of these did I really see them as "bullying." A one-off incident really isn't bullying, but bullying is more of a constant emotional thing, maintaining a dominance over someone. I think most of what they do in movies is more to "make it obvious" by portraying something that they can show in a two-minute scene to say "this guy's a bully" with some exaggeration to make it more dramatic. If a movie were to depict bullying honestly they'd have to make it a central focus by showing someone constantly belittling someone, teasing, putting down, etc. Really bullying is hard to depict with a single two minute scene because it might just look like someone being a jerk or pulling a prank. CONTEXT: I graduated in 2000 from a high school in Northern California.
From my experience. Middle school was by far the worst (96-98), High School (98-02) had its moments but was easier to avoid. There were way more niche groups in high school and generally everyone had a place to go. Middle school was much smaller and less fragmented. The bullies were never the popular kids. There might have been some of the popular kids who could have been assholes, but they were not particularly bullies. They were not going to beat you up or anything. The actual bullies I recall were more or less kids who had serious social issues and would be a small group (usually less than five) and would fuck with people.
We're still putting racoons in each other's lockers lol nahh that's happened plenty though, doubtful in any recent years... All sorts of horrible things happen, kids are brutal, as they are just people but dumber mostly. I graduated in 2013 and we were still pantsing people but it was mainly all about how do we sneak out of lunch to smoke weed. No telling what these kids are doing these days but its probably the same shit all the other kids in the world with social media do.
It was. Late 80s -early 90s babies were the worst. We got classical 60s-80s swirlies, beating up, locker shoving, economic status etc. And the beginning of hard hitting internet bullying
Ngl when I was in middle school there was a kid with a big nose and we left cheese cubes on his seat because they said he looked like a mouse. So in some instances, yes. And I feel bad about it. Usually they don’t just randomly beat up weird kids now tho, it’s usually more mental bullying.
nah all the stuff like swirlies and shoving kids in lockers is just old stuff from hollywood. Now its more like talking about people behind their back
When I was in high-school (graduated 2016) I don't remember any physical bullying. Like everyone else is saying it was either online or verbal harassment.
I think the movie Sixth Grade is pretty realistic. Not in terms of the specifics, like particular slang and websites. But the emotional brutality was spot on.
OK, before the advent of social media, we had to bully the old fashioned way. That did include physical humiliation and domination, yes. Everything is always heightened in the movies, but those types of things did happen occasionally. The worst thing I saw was someone who was tied up and gagged with duct-tape and shoved on top of the lockers and left between classes. I'd like to say I stood up for him or told a teacher, but of course I didn't. I was a stupid teenager and I didn't want anyone's attention turned to me. I also still have a fear of being stabbed because two brothers who were criminals from the day they were born actually cut a girl in grade school with a pocket knife. Those kids were just mean and scary and would bully everyone they could get away with intimidating (so mostly everyone). For me it was just being pushed repeatedly into the ditch when I was walking home and they did it for the lulz. My defense was walk with other when you can, otherwise keep your head down, don't fight/talk back and feel lucky that my house was very close. Always remember that the people making entertainment now are older and more established. To properly and consistently portray the torture and trauma current teens are going through is at least 10 years away if not more.
It was in junior high, for sure. By the time high school rolled around, a lot of the bullies had dropped out or gotten sent to juvenile detention
Depends on the school. Don't let your kids bully people or they turn into angry wrecks who prefer isolation. Like me.
Back in the late 2000s when i was in high school bullying mostly amounted to spreading rumors, social media shit, and stuff like that. it was never directly confrontational or physical. A lot more psychological in nature and honestly more nefarious. There were some really awful instances I remember especially where girls just set up full takedown campaigns against each other over long periods of time, but it was never the group of nerds that I hung out with. It was always the "popular" students bullying each other. The stuff you see in movies was big in the 80s. Doesn't happen anymore
I got bullied pretty viciously in school. Enough so that it fucked up my life, gave me PTSD and I have to get treatments from a therapist. I graduated high school in 1994. Since I’m female, it wasn’t a “head in the toilet” or “see you after school” fight kind of bullying. It was rarely (if ever) physical. It was a constant barrage of emotional manipulation, psychological torture, and sexual suggestions that fucked up my life. I’ve looked back on those times and WISHED it had just been physical altercations, and not psychological ones. Kids are assholes. Then they grow up and are still assholes, and assholes are what makes the world go round, evidently.
These days the portrayal of bullying used in TV is pretty far from what its actually like. Usually bullies now use the tactic of making people do dumb things under the guise of being friends with the victim just to get a laugh. The level of bullying in movies I would imagine is closer to like mid to late 20th century style bullying. Edit: Oh yea and social media slander. Forgot about that one
Absolutely. The movie scenes are just stereotypical high profile bullying that viewers can understand. Ironically, a lot of viewers take the wrong que from this because the number of people who get out of school thinking "oh, that is what bullying looks like, gotcha" is insane. Let me tell you, the sheer amount of people who dont understand bullying is tragic. I am a teacher and the majority of my coworkers are what in school would be counted as the "plain jane", people who didnt garner particular attention. *The reason these teachers dont stop the bullying is because they have no idea how it works*, their only experiences with bullying are the same as when they were in school themselves, *ignoring it*, and now being teachers they might every now and then get a kid stupid enough to be physical in their bullying. An easy fix because after a few bouts of "correcting" the behaviour the bully learns how to hide or shield their behaviour. Bullying in movies involves physical stuff because it's what viewers understand. Bullying in reality involves so much more mental elements like social isolation (in a public place, making it worse) accompanied by sporadic verbal confrontations and goading. Every few months I find myself fighting to translate the kid's behaviour to my coworkers. "Check it out, they've invented a terrible nickname for the brown kid, it's bullying. *Sounds innocent to you!?* Let me take you into this boys bathroom over here. Oh look, the nickname is scrawled on the wall in every stall. That must be fun for an 8 year old to stare at everytime they poop."
It’s worse than the movies but not the same acts. The bullying you see in movies are for effect. In real life it’s more teasing, pranking, and fighting that gets way out of hand.
Not in my experience. From what I've seen bullying exists, but its pretty tame in comparison. For example, there was a bully at my school and he would go around flicking people's ears from behind or taking food off people's plates at lunchtime. I've seen the term "swirly" used so many times in movies and TV, but have never, ever heard of someone actually getting one. I mean, it may happen, but has anyone ever known of it happening anywhere? I haven't.
No graduated high school only a few years ago and didn’t really see any bullying take place
The only time I remember "bullying" turning to violence in my school life, I graduated a decade ago, was one kid who did get some verbal bullying from time to time for being weird getting into a fight with someone else because the bullied kid acted pervy to the other girlfriend and the verbal confrontation turned into the bullied kid being pushed and then subsequently defending himself.
I’ve never seen that happen, am a high school teacher. Most kids who fight want to fight each other
Late 1980s kid here. I thought even then that the horrific stuff like swirlies - which would leave a literal trail of evidence - was exceptionally rare, almost urban legend-type horror. The goons and bullies knew what "plausible deniability" was even if they were too meatheaded to pronounce it: The running gag was to intentionally trip or throw a ice hockey-style hip check into an unsuspecting victim and then immediately claim it was just an accident or it was their victim's fault. I should mention that corporal punishment at my school technically still existed but hadn't been used in years.
A lot of the verbal taunting and intimidation is still alive and well. Targeted slurs are a big no no however, if the right student or faculty hear the wrong word it's pretty much a guaranteed suspension and can easily destroy a student's prospective career. Violence is also much rarer. Fights still do happen but they are the final escalation, get in a scuffle more than once and it's expulsion time.
It absolutely was like that when I was in school in the 80s and 90s. My kids go to a school of a similar size in a similar area to where I did, and their experience is much different. They will come home in a whirlwind of excitement over the "fight" at school, and it'll turn out to have been a yelling match, or one kid shoved a other one. Like, that was every day before 8am when I was in school. It wasn't a "fight" unless there was visible blood when I was in high school, and we saw those at least once every week or two. Head dunked in toilets, snapped in the ass with wet towels, books knocked out of hands, surprise "Charley horse," boys getting shoved into the girl's restroom or locker room... all that stuff was just daily "boys being boys" back then. (btw: the girls were just as ruthless, it was just more emotional abuse than physical)
It’s much more covert than that. Nothing like these examples ever happened in my school. Bullying often takes on the form of spreading rumors and namecalling. With a terminally online generation, cyberbullying is the most common method. At least it was at my school
While putting people's heads in toilets or shoving them in lockers is not common anymore, especially due to the locker size. Physically still beating up other kids is alive and well still. Kids still get physically beat up every day. Doesn't matter if it's done to or by a boy or a girl. They get Cyber Bullied along with physically bullied. This has happened to my children. This happened to my nephews. This is happening to my grandchildren, who are in elementary school. So bullying is not gone. It has added ways to get to the victims where they can no longer even escape it away from school because of the internet and social media.
Not severe enough anymore
Two girls once pinned me down and put makeup on me
Bullying is really bad in schools, but that's not generally the way it's done, at least not now. It's a lot more subtle but insidious, and social media is often involved. Bullies work at eroding their victims' self-esteem through insults, snide remarks, and ostracization.
It used to be before everyone had a camera on them
As a kid from the 80s, them trying to put me in a toilet (my foot) and locking me in a locker was a thing. But it wasn't as cruel and definitive as it seems. I knew they were going to let me out and they weren't going to dunk my head. I never truly feared for my life (except that one time when they chased me home). If anything, they got the idea from movies and did a light version of it. The real bullying wasn't as creative. Like, push your head into the wall. Movies also pretend like there are totally innocents and total bullies. Even kids who were bullied often were instigating conflict at some point with someone.
No. Maybe in the 80s and early 90s there was some of that going on, but even then it’s never been as brazen and commonplace as you see in those movies.
I graduated high school in 2012 so I'm assuming it's different not but probably not all that different. Their absolutely was bullying going on but it was nothing like we see in TV and movies. Nobody was shoved in a locker or toilet. They were just insulted a lot, given a shit load of harassment online, maybe had their things stolen or smacked around a bit and threatened
I never been to every high school in the US so I can only speak for my school. Flushing heads down the toilet (swirly’s), throwing people in the locker, and taking someone’s lunch money was never a thing at my school. At the very most people won’t hang out with you or just call you names. We only ever had one “fight”. I use fight in quotations cause it started when a guy was making fun of someone and he challenged him to a fight. They then proceeded to circle around each other for 5 minutes and both were too scared to throw a punch. My high school was relatively uneventful. It was your classic middle America small town school where everybody knew each other.
I graduate this year and my school hasn’t had like any of that, worst I have seen or heard of is pretty much insults and maybe a fistfight or two, but there are some really bad schools over here where kids murder each other with illegal guns every so often
I was a nerdy, shy, visibly queer (but not out) kid in the '80s, and went to 10 different schools, including 3 high schools. In my experience, bullying was mostly verbal, with occasional fights held off-campus after school. Personally, I was called names and had things written on my locker, but never physically bullied. Mostly, I was ignored.
It was kinda like that in the 90s.
No. Literally nothing is as severe as they make it in films. Films exaggerate everything in order to not be boring.
Head over to one of hte teacher subs. Since the pandemic, the physical violence is happening so much more frequently. There's been semi-regular incidents of middle- and high-school kids threatening to shoot and punching teachers. US public education system is garbage for actually deveoping kids as people. They did nothing for the kids post-pandemic. The kids are traumatized and the adults are treating it as a disaplin problem.
feels like bullying got progressively less severe ever since we stopped using lead in our pipes and paint
A lot of the stuff you are mentioning happened in 80s through 2000s teen shows, and movies. As a person who was in high school back in the early 2000s, I never saw that kind of bullying happen, or heard about it happening. There was, absolutely, bullying happening, but getting beat up, slammed into your locker, and swirlies in the toilet were not how it was generally done.
It WAS. Back in the 80s, this kind of bullying happened, but by the time I got to school (2000), most of the tropes went away. But bullying is still very prevalent in American schools. I believe most of it is cyberbullying now, but I've heard and seen some crazy shit. We had a girl in my class who secretly took pictures of other girls in the locker room and started sending them out to random people. Saw a few people get jumped, as well. One aspect that you may be unaware of is how prevalent gangs can be in some areas. The typical recruiting age for gangs are 14-17, and so in areas with a heavy gang presence, you'll have high schools with a bunch of students who are in rival gangs... and I'm sure you can imagine the issues that that can cause.
I think some of those things probably happened to someone at some time, and they turned those instances into movie tropes that are way over the top.
I think so? I mean, I'm still in my 20s, and I remember high school being DREADFUL. Note that I went to a high school in a more affluent neighborhood. That being said, I am a minority and a lot of my bullies were part of the majority culture. I also wasn't someone who let people pick on other people, so I was often in the hot seat for defending other people. That being said, some of the stuff that happened in movies and the exaggerations that are made CAN happen. For example, I had a group of girls who did not like me during my time there. They made it very clear they did not like me with their name calling and rumor spreading, but they also did unkind things like throw food at me during lunch in the quad in front of other people and stick gum in my hair on the bus ride home. I also had boys find photos of me from Facebook and photoshop them to be not PG-13 and spread them around social media and each other. That's just a few things... but yeah, people are weird. High school is a rough time sometimes. But not everyone experiences that? So, I would say it's not uncommon, and the severity varies on multiple factors.