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One of the big videos on the Internet today is a clip from last night’s episode of X-Factor in which a young woman nervously explains how hard it is for her to even believe she is on the reality TV stage because of all of the bullying she suffered in school, bullying that got so bad that she got a tattoo that says “Stay Strong,” and then she proceeds to belt out a song about how everyone is strong and powerful and great, and it is full of genuine pain. (If you want to see this clip, I bet you know where to find this clip. Hint: everywhere.) People in the audience begin to cry, and the judges cry, and everyone’s basic attitude is “Oh my God, what a brave hero you are, and don’t worry about the haters because now you are a TV sensation.” OK, sure. The song is fine! And I don’t think this girl is making up the fact that she is nervous or sad or that people were mean to her. But can we please stop as rational adults condoning the indulgent notion that everyone should be applauded for simply shouldering the bare minimum of human cruelty? I think there is a real problem in this country with the bullying of homosexual youth, and I think that the Internet opens up new avenues for teenage misbehavior, but beyond that, SOMETIMES PEOPLE ARE MEAN TO OTHER PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE YOUNG, AND THAT IS JUST CALLED “THE WAY IT GOES.” Like, this girl in the video above is allowed to go on television and complain that people should be nicer. She earned it. But that fucking X-Factor girl? NO! ENOUGH! “What a nightmare it must have been for you to be a heterosexual, middle class, decent looking young woman with a beautiful singing voice.” (I don’t know her entire story, but I am 100% confident in jumping to the conclusion that there are way worse stories out there.) I’m sure people teased her in school, but who DIDN’T get teased in school? It is time to grow up, America. Yes, let’s definitely all keep our general instinct to sympathize with “victims” and to urge everyone to be nicer to each other and to strive towards a gentler, more accepting world, but let’s also keep it all in perspective and not applaud people simply for presenting themselves as our most wretched cases when they actually have an incredible number of advantages in a world where most people are dying of starvation or untreated illness. You can’t stay strong if you aren’t strong in the first place. Time 2 toughen up, little babies. Now go out there and sing your song.
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Seriously though, complaining about bullies on a show hosted by someone who has made his career being one?
“I can top that.” -Kim Kardashian
“People hate me so much that they write songs about other snack foods’ superiority” —Starbursts, Skittles, Fritos, and Doritos
I don’t think you can judge how much someone else has suffered until you’ve been in their shoes. Way harsh, Tai. I dated a guy in high school whose dad was transgender. His friends all “teased” him about it so much that he dropped out of school and did a shit ton of drugs and basically ruined his life. They’re all still friends and to this day they don’t think they were out of line. He was good looking, white, middle class. Jut because it’s not affecting you personally does not mean it is not affecting someone very, very deeply. I see this attitude a lot from Gabe, and not to get all Mom on you, but I find it very disappointing.
Obviously, bullying is a problem, but I understand the frustration with the bullying narrative and its suspicious overuse by people without other apparent problems, especially in circumstances where it’s tailored to appeal to an easily manipulated public.
Just because they have no apparent problems doesn’t mean they weren’t deeply affected though. And as for celebrities who claim it, even if they weren’t bullied what’s wrong with giving kids who are being bullied some hope that they can be beautiful and successful and great at something someday? I just don’t understand why we’re saying “bullying is a problem” on one hand and “stop complaining about bullying” on the other.
Because just like everything else, there’s a tipping point. And suddenly everything is bullying and then real bullying takes a back seat.
THIS SENTENCE makes absolutely NO FUCKING sense.
I have a big problem with telling bullied kids that “don’t worry, one day you could be beautiful and successful and then you will be happy,” because it is implicitly telling them that they shouldn’t expect to be happy until they are on the cover of People magazine. If they do get there, it won’t solve their problems, and they can become happy and unbullied even if they never become “beautiful” etc.
But I agree with the rest of your point, that was just an aside.
I think that’s a bit hyperbolic. Canada’s Native Community loves Adam Beach, but we don’t all think we’re useless unless we’re on TV. We’re just pleased to see someone make it, and to see someone from the community be valued by the outside world rather than the usual negative stereotypes.
I get that it’s all relative, but at the same time people are just assholes to each other. I know a lot of kids who were never teased but dropped out of hs and did drugs for no good reason other than life is fucking hard and they couldn’t deal with it. It sucks. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be helping people, but there comes a point when there are real people with real problems that get left in the dust because they’re not some cute girl on TV who can sing and we all want to feel good about ourselves so we empathize with her. Instead of empathizing all the time we should be divesting in helping ourselves as well as others, because no matter what life hands you, some of it going to be shit and you’re going to have to fix as much of it as you can yourself.
Before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.–Jack Handy
We’re supposed to make jokes about this, right?
Well, it turns out that sob stories sell really well on these kinds of shows, and when you’re a moderately attractive white girl without any particular hardships built into your family life, a history of bullying is your best bet to come off as an underdog.
Shit, you know what I want to know? How many privileged white kids are writing about bullying in that optional diversity/hardship essay in college applications? Gabe, call the New York Times.
being bullied is the new “1/14th Native American”
It’s more like the new “my grandma died and I was sad.”
(I didn’t downvote you, but I actually think a strand of Native American blood would make one identify strongly with being Native American. AA is subject to many abuses, but I think this actually is not one of them. (I am very pro-AA, so the actual abuses make me really angry (Adverbs and parentheses ahoy).))
are you referring to Alcoholics Anonymous? b/c i was just referring to using the most minor of Native American heritage on a college application/essay in order to up the chances of acceptance.
the people I knew who got papers to establish their tribal affiliation were specifically using it to advance their applications and couldn’t give a shit one way or the other that their great grandfathers half sister’s cousin was Cherokee.
Affirmative Action.
Oh, I meant affirmative action.
I feel like I’m willing to give applicants with Native American heritage the benefit of doubt because, I mean, how many full-blooded Native Americans are there left in this country? It seems pretty awful to discredit someone’s ties to his/her heritage because the bloodlines have been diluted when, uh, genocide, miscegenation, you get the picture. That said, the classmates I’ve had with Native American blood have been very proud and connected to their heritage.
I get you, though. I really despise the kids who put down Latino on their college/grad school apps and then come in and pretend it never happened. I went to a law school that had mailing lists for affinity groups that were built from what people marked in their applications, so it was pretty well known who checked what. There were many nominal members of the Latino Law Students Association who were determined to have nothing to do with that community. Several of them were straight-up white, with white parents who had ties to Cuba or Chile.
Anyway, yeah.
ahhhhh. yep, that’s terrible.
Alcoholics Anonymous?
Alcoholic boner
You can’t bully me into not whining about bullies!
Bit of a derail, but for anyone who actually watches these shows: what is the substantive difference between the X-Factor and American Idol, if any?
spelling
“There is such a thing as an objective scale of pain and if I think your pain isn’t as bad as someone else’s pain, then it doesn’t exist so shut up.” – Gabe Delahaye
That does seem to be the gist of it.
Gabe has talked about bullying a bit, and the above example is a particularly tone-deaf one. I don’t think his actual opinion is as one-note and unsympathetic as this, so my glib response is probably not entirely fair.
I was bullied as a young kid. For a long time, by a large number of people. And it had a huge effect on my quality of life, on my personality, and on my long-term self-esteem. I know some people had it worse, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t have it quite bad. When it comes to something like emotional pain, it is unfair to all sides to try to make comparisons or to “rate” each others’ feelings.
However, I do feel that giving lip service to anti-bullying has become a “trend,” and that’s pretty annoying. I’m guessing this is where Gabe’s attitude comes from. Are some of the people watching that video and crying just doing it to make themselves feel virtuous, even if they haven’t taken action or opened their mind? Probably, and they’re losers for it. But who am I to judge someone else’s pain, or honesty, if I don’t know them?
And if the net result of that trend is that people are kinder and more kids feel able to stand up for themselves or ignore the jerks, and that people in positions of power can recognize and stop dangerous behaviour, then that is great.
“TL;Dcare” – everyone.
BUT ONE MORE THING, and maybe this is Gabe’s point underneath it all.
I think that the current trend in talking about general bullying (by non-experts, probably school counselors aren’t doing this) is to take a coddling attitude – “don’t worry, you’ll be prettier than them one day,” or “don’t worry, you are perfect and they are jerks,” or “don’t worry, every single person is a unique special snowflake and you are the best.” Which is an incomplete message.
Yes, we should tell children that they do not deserve to be bullied. Yes, we should tell children that they are valuable, and valued. But we also need to teach them the coping skills to handle these and future unpleasant situations.
But let’s not tell them to “get over it.”
Yesterday at work, I was bullied by a grown man maybe no more than two or three years older than me. He made fun of me for snorting when he did something lazy and proceeded to berate me for a good 20 minutes. And it is of my personality to not respond to (let alone condone) negativity but my coworkers and colleagues with me kept quiet because this was a big man who obviously could have done some damage to any one of us. In the end I attempted to shake his hand, apologizing for the snort (whatever that is) but he told me to STFU and to not get near him. The next day, he didn’t show up and nor did a lot of my friends because well they were scared of being harassed more. As brief of a bullying it was, it still had me thinking of the consequences. And although I’d like to just “get over it” I can’t. I will eventually see him again and attempt to put this past us. I’m not sure what I’m getting at, just sharing an anecdote.
But forrealz, bullying is not fun for anyone, at any level and in any context. I think Gabe’s notion is that Celebs need to be coddled, when in reality we all just need to be strong and learn techniques to shut down any current or future bullying.
This.
Manerrs, I think you should take this to your boss or HR. Seriously.
I was going to say the same thing; developing some sort of hierarchy of tragedy seems counterproductive.
“YOU MUST be this OPPOSED [makes GESTURE IN air] to complain.” complains SOMEONE.
I don’t agree with the generalized sentiment in this post, but I DO agree with it as it applies to people using their hardships to get famous. Public sympathy is, in a lot of ways, a limited resource, and from my (admittedly deficient) knowledge of competitive reality television, it seems like contestants bring out everything they can to get that important edge. Sometimes this seems legitimate and genuine, and sometimes you have to wonder whether you’re just being exploited.
As a side note, I’m not saying THIS girl is exploiting us, but there is enough incentive to exaggerate your one claim to hardship that I’m sure it happens all the time.
I feel ya. Having bad things happen to you doesn’t mean everyone has to treat you with kid gloves all the time, and it doesn’t mean you deserve anything special from the world in compensation. And reality tv is lame.
I think he’s misplacing the problem a little bit, but I think I understand what he’s getting at.
There’s not really anything wrong with the girl talking about how she was bullied and it sucked (although using it to with sympathy in a singing competition is kind of questionable because, it’s a singing competition, not a “who had the saddest childhood” competition).
But the real thing Gabe is reacting to is the Internet’s ability to fall all over itself with an outpouring of support for these middle class white people with relatively minor problems (compared to genocide or starving to death or whatever) and then vociferously pat itself on the back for being so compassionate and understanding, despite the fact that the Internet’s “family of man” attitude suspiciously only ever extends to middle class white Americans (e.g. that bullied bus monitor lady).
http://gifninja.com/animated-gifs/289061/d/7b56b376
wow, i suck
IT GETS BETTER
Oh man, this is just the best and sincerest reaction today. Spenkino, it takes time to get all the intricacies of commenting down, but when you have people like An American Patriot here to reassure you and encourage you to keep going… I mean. Do I need to go on? This is great. Way 2 Go, AAP.
there is a huge difference from serious bullying and “being bullied”. both have always and will always exist. everyone has been on either or both sides of each. that’s just the way people have been socialized. but sometimes [
a lot of the timemost of the time] kids need to learn how to accept it, deal with it, and learn from it. not everything in life is easy, and its a great way to discover that and learn how to deal with conflict and other negative emotions. kids – especially these days [and likely their parents too]- need to have thicker skin.also it needs to be said is wherein lies the genius of “It Gets Better,” it does not shout for everybody to be nice necessarily, it more so accepts that sometimes people will be shitty. it’s a message of acceptance and empowerment that people should deal with reality, confront it, and that life will be better in the future not necessarily because of it, but maybe in spite of it.
But ignoring the problem doesn’t teach kids to accept, deal with, and learn from life’s challenges. Recognizing when kids are in trouble, talking about bullying – its causes and effects, and teaching actual ways to cope, do.
At this point I’ve completely strayed off the subject of public/media/widespread attitudes towards bullying and am instead venting about the unfathomable lack of support and terrible treatment i received from teachers and authority figures as a child did the opposite of teaching me to deal, and instead made me feel more alone than ever. Apparently I’m just working some stuff out on the internet. Move along, nothing to see here.
i am all for recognizing the problem, i made no suggestion that parents and teachers should ignore it when it happens. and i hope it isn’t taken that way.
I agree with you.
Maybe it’s because I didn’t went to school in the US but my sentiment towards the general High School (or the equivalent) experience is simply that growing up is crazy and hard and lots of people feel some kind of emotional anguish at some point, so people have to stop making it look like it’s the hardest part of life, because it’s not going to be (for most people). Of course for some HS is harder than for others (especially while being bullied), but seems to me that, nowadays, “just” bullying gets the type of automatic sympathy that Dave describes.
I remember thinking my school experience was so hard and that nobody could understand how I felt; I wasn’t bullied but had other problems that, at the time, felt like the worse. Then I started working with organizations that help families with low incomes, where kids High School problems were actually getting to go to one. After that I felt better, not because my problems weren’t real, BUT because they didn’t seem as unbearable anymore.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is: having some more perspective about “the real world” can help kids go through, what they think, it’s the hardest part of life.
I think bullying is much worse now because cyberbullying. Back in the day, a bully could see the reaction of the bully-ee (?); their pain, tears etc, which probably helped develop some sort of empathy, no? Now bullies can cyberbully 10 kids in a minute and have no idea what the consequences of that action are. Even though it’s natural to look back and younger generations and think that they are worse or more mean-spirited, but I think in this case, they might be!
Jeez I deserve to be bullied for that grammar
give me your lunch money…?
I think some folks don’t understand bullying if it hasn’t happened to them. I was not bullied beyond what I consider the normal things that kids go through. I wore glasses as a child and I’m sure I got called four eyes, etc. I grew up, I moved on, and it didn’t really change me.
What I hear from people who got more seriously bullied, for whatever reason, is that is has a very profound effect on that person. People who haven’t been bullied just DON’T understand it. I have spoken to fully adult people, who are “successful” in their lives, who are still very much touched by the bullying they suffered.
The rest of us might think they should be well over it by now; but they aren’t.
It might be easy to say “man up” or “deal with it” but it isn’t always easy for some people.
This is very true.
Ugh. Gross, Gabe. There’s a fucking difference to someone “being mean” to you or “teasing” you, and what we call being bullied. Some kids are fucking tormented on a daily basis for years. You obviously were not. I understand your weariness with the fad-like nature of the bullying awareness trend. It’s the cool thing for celebrities to jump on because it makes them look sympathetic and they really don’t have to do a goddamn thing except say “bullying is bad”.
“What a nightmare it must have been for you to be a heterosexual, middle class, decent looking young woman with a beautiful singing voice.”
Gross. I was a heterosexual, middle class, decent looking young man with an okay singing voice and I was tormented for years. It crippled me in a whole lot of ways. It does for a lot of people. I am fully aware that being bullied as a heterosexual, middle class, decent looking young woman is much better than watching your family die as you flee from the Rwandan genocide. That doesn’t mean it’s not a serious problem.
I get annoyed by the trendy way bullying awareness is being treated now, too. But this is entirely new. It’s attitudes like yours that were the reason for this trend: the attitude that it’s not a big deal, kids will be kids, grow a pair and get over it, pussy. Or whatever.
Ugh.
Thanks for saying everything I meant, but better. It’s so useful to have you around.
I’m trying to give Gabe the benefit of the doubt, but your reaction was my original one.
Could part of the problem/disconnect here be the conflation of the two? I get the sense that sometimes people use the term “bullying,” which has more serious connotations, when they really mean “teasing,” and that other people take issue with someone trumping up the same adolescent bullshit that most of us go through and calling it “bullying” when it’s not. And I guess there’s no way of knowing what people really went through, so maybe it’s better to just be sensitive? But I can see where the temptation to assume that the girl on this stupid show is being hyperbolic comes from.
WHENEVER YOU liberal sons of bitches GO SO far down the SLIPPERY SLOPE of marriage RECONSTRUCTION that someone CAN MARRY the physical INCARNATION of death, call me?
???????????????
I think you hit the nail on the head, That One. When I read this post I pretty much agreed with it until I started reading the comments. I realized that when Gabe talks about Eat, Pray, Love I feel this exact same way. Like shut up Gabe, you are a dude, you’ve never been divorced, what the fuck do you know about how hard it is? What I have learned in life is that you can’t understand a problem completely unless you have been through it yourself. I mean, are a few people crying because someone was bullied the end of the world? If someone wants to go to India to help themselves cope with their divorce how does that hurt anyone? To each their own.
TO BE FAIR, Eat, Pray, LOVE is pretty, pretty, PRETTY shitty.
I don’t know if its recent, but there’s definitely a trend (if you can even call a human condition a “trend”) of not wanting to be “tricked” into feeling something for someone else, like you can accidentally sympathize more than the objective allotment would normally deem necessary for someone’s measure of suffering. It’s entirely possible to feel bad for everyone, everywhere, without having to pull out some imaginary scale and weigh it against slavery and rape. In small doses it comes out like Gabe’s ridiculous rant but I’ve seen it be flat out dangerous where people will refuse to help someone in need because they don’t want to… I don’t know… look foolish to someone else?
The point being: just give people the benefit of the doubt with this stuff and it will usually work out in everyone’s favor.
What Gabe’s description of this girl doesn’t take into account is some kids just end up pulling the shit end of the stick. My middle-to-early-high-school experience was certain intimidating and influential people decided, that because I had a kind of unusual first name at the time, according to them, and not super-cool-jeans, that people who talked to me would get made fun of, publically and swiftly. For years, I really didn’t have friends at school because of it and was actively ostracized. Luckily, I had a way out of that situation, and managed to salvage some of my teens, but the damage lingered and it was pretty awful. By and large, I’ve made a fun, productive and social life for myself, but I can trace a pretty fucking clear line from some of my bad habits back to that experience. Now I don’t think I deserve to go on TV, because I don’t have anything to offer America’s television audience, and I DO understand Gabe’s stance of “Ok well at some point we have to move forward.” but as kind of ham-fisted as this video is, I think it’s safe to say this is an area where it might be good to err on the side of caution, be positive, respectful and down-to-earth.
I’m sure Gabe is so particular about who deserves help and sympathy because he’s a male nurse in Africa, and writing a pop culture blog is just an outlet to channel his disgust with the callous opulence of the western world. I’m sure.
I guess if people were only picked on or bullied because the weren’t white, attractive, middle class, or heterosexual, I might agree with this sentiment. “Oh, you’re white, you are obviously not bullied! Only minorities are!” But as a white, middle class, heterosexual women who was completely surrounded by white, middle class, heterosexual kids in high school (apparently small suburban towns aren’t known for diversity), I can tell you that bullying was still a problem, and usually for completely random things. Typically, the most harsh bullying were girls bullying other girls because THEY LIKED THE SAME GUY. And as the usage of the internet became more common as I got older (AOL y’all), it became worse & worse. Bullying that typically stayed in one school in one town was now spreading to neighboring towns & schools. And it was relentless – one couldn’t just go home to get away with it, it followed them through emails and chats. I can only imagine that it’s even worse now with cell phones.
I think the most progressive bullying message on TV is actually Tina Fey’s 30 Rock bit, when she revealed that although Liz Lemon views herself as a misfit she was actually mean to other kids. The real challenge is to look at what it is about human nature that causes people to act this way, and not just view it as a unidirectional phenomenon with bullies and victims.
Yep – teasing isn’t bullying. Two different things. And in my experience, one of the biggest contributors to the culture of bullying among teenagers is the expectation/cop-out from adults that ‘it’s all a part of growing up, you just have to learn to toughen up and cope’, which places all the responsibility on the person suffering. Yes, you do have to learn to cope with jerks in life and to build your own defences, but it’s also very important – possibly even more important! – that you learn to be a decent person and not torment others because they’re different to you. Some teenagers behave in a way that would get you imprisoned as an adult and they get away with it because of that attitude.
Also – it’s XFactor! People on XFactor do overblown renditions of emotions just as they do overblown renditions of songs.