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When a bullied kid grows up
- wccrawford 16y agoThat's a possible outcome. Mine is also a possible outcome. I have social anxiety, and generally prefer small groups of people or being alone. But I'm perfectly happy and don't go through life complaining about my lot. I don't even blame the kids that bullied me. I blame the system that allowed it. Whenever I complained about it, nothing happened. It just continued on. Whenever I fought back, I got in trouble. Since I respected adults, that meant I stopped fighting back. That was a mistake. I should have ignored the adults and fought back more. Again, I'm happy with who I am and I'm a lot better adjusted than my sister, who was popular and had many friends. So don't take this as a complaint about life or that bullying ruined my life. It darkened my childhood and had lasting effects, but it didn't come anywhere close to ruining my life.
- tariq 16y agopretty much mirrors my outcome. some social anxiety, lone wolf tendencies, with situational/social awareness thrown in there. can't complain really, although makes me wonder how i would have turned out had it not been for the rough childhood
- ax0n 16y agoBecause of bullying, I grew up with highly augmented situational awareness and just enough mistrust in strangers to be useful to daily life. I'd say I turned out better for it.
- jhrobert 16y agoI wonder what is the proportion? What are the probabilities that, as a reader of Hacker News, you are 1/ a software developer, 2/ been bullied That might be enough data to qualify the correlation between having been bullied and being a software developer that reads Hacker News BTW: is there some online tool that could help setup a poll like that (two binary questions, 4 cells distribution)? I suspect there is a correlation, but I may be wrong, someone with facts on that?