> The term "bully" is not helpful in the first place. It's too vague. It used to refer to kids who beat up other kids in school. That's a specific behavior. Modern usage had deteriorated into meaninglessness. It's kinds of ridiculous that the terms is used to refer to adults.
A cursory look at the Wikipedia etymology contradicts the notion that it was ever limited to children, or that the current usage is significantly broader than it has been in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying#Etymology
Most if not all responses here appear to target Matthias, however, it seems to me that author is also blaming Racket community for witnessing first hand the bullying and doing nothing. Tolerating Matthias alleged behavior is in a way condoning his abusive streak.
>Anyone here who was bullied in high school, say, and enjoyed it? I sure didn't...
And therein lies the rub.
People like you, who couldn't find a coping mechanism to deal with childhood bullying [all children are vicious wee thugs, until they learn otherwise] think that you can somehow control what people "feel inside" by controlling what words they can use to express themselves. Ditto the people who think you can somehow stop anyone having racist or homopobic attitudes by banning completely innocuous words [see Montenegro comment above] as people might see them as racist or hompophobic.
Kids will always bully other kids, racists will always hate other races and homophobic people will always hate gays. If you ban one word, they'll come up with another. If you ban that, they'll come up with another... rinse and repeat. As I've said before, if you follow that path to its conclusion, you end up with Newspeak [0]
> Also, the problem with bullying isn't bullying itself but that people are receptive to it and don't defend themselves (partly because school rules prohibit defense).
Agree. The worst things people do are to themselves. If you're trapped in an abusive situation, it'll fuck you up. But if you're receptive to that kind of abuse and stop seeing it as an inherent wrong, this is where people go from being abused to abusing themselves.
This is the difference between someone getting bullied vs someone becoming an emotionally scarred shell of a person
Could you please elaborate on that, or give some examples? I never heard of Guile besides it's used in Guix, so I'm an ignorant of the subject.
reply