In general that’s not a great heuristic to go by. In college, when I came across a bully who was much, much smarter than me it was terrifying. The lesson was avoid at all costs.
The only way to dissuade a bully is to hurt him. Bullies look for easy victims, and back off when they themselves are made vulnerable to you in some way.
That’s generally very false. You don’t need to beat the bully. You just need to establish that you will respond violently. A credible threat of violence is a strong deterrent.
It's unfortunate, but to the person being bullied, their immediate concern is not the next weakest person. Their immediate concern is avoiding or fending off the bully.
That's a bit like telling people who live in dangerous areas that the best response to a mugger is not to let them impoverish you. Bullies select people who seem physically or emotionally fragile to start with.
He said he did bad because he was bullied. Smart people aren't the only ones that get bullied. If the problem is bullying you aren't fixing it by pulling someone out, the bullies will just target other people.
Same here. My schools days taught me a simple recipe for bully repellent: headlock their neck and pound on their face like a jack hammer. Size doesn't matter. Winning and losing doesn't matter.
But I also learned another interesting bit of bully psychology: they tease EVERYBODY, especially their friends. So tease them back. I discovered sometimes the supposed bully is just goofing around and this is how they relate to people.
Thirdly I discovered a simpler approach thanks to punk rock ethos: Don't even give a fuck about what other people think of you and let them know you don't give a fuck.
If one of your classmates takes to pushing you around, taking your stuff, embarrassing you, calling you names, etc. This is normal behaviour in apes who are trying to establish a dominance hierarchy. The bully likely sees you as a soft target who is easy to dominate. The best course is to correct that assumption - escalate conflict - fight back, fight dirty. It's the same rationale as in prison - you don't want to end up at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy. The best way to avoid that is to make friends and be more trouble than you are worth.
Don’t look them up. I remember hearing about someone who basically had their life thrown into crisis when they looked up their main bully and found out that he was rich, married to a beautiful woman, had three perfect-seeming children, etc.
In High School, lined up waiting for an elective class, dozens of witnesses... I took this advice... I stood up to a bully, and since they were already "up in my grill" they were able to sucker punch me, right in the diaphragm, without having to raise their arm and make a big show, fist quick raise to ~90 degree bent elbow and jabbed strait forward.. leaving me struggling to stand and winded for several minutes... and because they were so close, no one clearly saw what they did... leading to dozens of people being, no witnesses at all... I changed classes.
For everyone that thinks this advice always works... some bullies aren't cowards they're worse... they are arrogant assholes that think they can get away with what they are doing, or are entitled to do it... they may not back down, and may just get worse when confronted.
> When lions hunt buffalo on the plains, they look for those they get separated from the pack. Simply put, attacking an individual that is part of a smaller, less powerful, group is more likely to succeed without anyone coming to their defense.
This was exactly my experience in school. I wasn't bullied in high school, I was bullied throughout elementary instead. I'm INTP, introverted, extremely geeky, but none of that was why I was bullied. I was bullied because I was fat and I didn't know how to fight back. I was an easy target, basically. I had friends, but none who were capable of physically standing up for me, so we all suffered the consequences.
The bullying stopped in 7th grade (13 years old) when I stabbed one of my bullies with a pen and was suspended. I also started weight lifting and made a name for myself on the JV football team. The bullying stopped, even though I had become no less the geek and didn't stop hanging out with my geek friends.
> The more interesting question is why geeks don't have a mutual defense or strength in numbers
In my experience, fear. In a typical school pecking order, if you're not capable of physically dominating others, then you live in constant fear of being physically dominated yourself. I certainly was.
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