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What's wrong with the American society? You can be the country of awesomeness and freedom and entrepreneurship, and at times you also have those weird customs l

• protester 12y ago
  In my opinion, this is key to all of this. I don't have those bad experiences and can't understand where all these problems come from. In my experience, from a country which is not usa, kids and teenagers are perfectly capable of making new friends constantly, sometimes they slowly stop hanging around with some of them, occasionally they get into a fight about some specific situation but they forget the day after, maybe they don't get along with somebody or whatever, some friendships last for less than a year and some last forever. But all of this without the drama and the suffering everybody is mentioning here. So I can't understand when some say "that's life", because that's not life and saying so stops everybody from looking for an alternative. When I was a kid and later a teenager everybody used to tell me "enjoy your time in school (and later in college), cause once you are out of college your happiest days are behind". That was, in essence, wrong. But it was true in many senses. And that's how it should be everywhere. We should put every effort needed to make it so.
• roel_v 12y ago
  Well, that was certainly from 'I was never bullied' to 'bullying doesn't exist in Europe' in less than 2.8 seconds. If you'll pardon me for being rather blunt, it's exactly this sort of snooty French uninformed bullshit that gives your country its reputation of arrogant holier than thou know-it-alls. Bullying is a major problem across Europe, as recognized by the European Commission (and most everybody else in 2014), and a lot of effort has been spend the last 20 years to combat it. Estimates range from 10 to 30 percent of children being bullied at some point in their initial education (that's roughly 'anything before university'). But don't take my word for it, obviously - just 2 minutes of googling could have told you so. And while you're at it, just 20 more minutes will give you not only a much deeper consideration for the problem, but also some chilling examples of lives across the world being ruined by a, for all intents and purposes, emerging behaviour. What is true though, is France's reputation for its denial of the existence of it (because well, you guys buried all social inequalities after you chopped off the heads of your last kings, right?) and the resulting cognitive dissonance regarding all things bullying. To be fair though, your governments have started recognizing and acting on it a number of years ago (even if it was years after most other member states, but hey, there are plenty of other things that other members states were later than France to adopt, so I'm not harping on that). But apparently not everybody has gotten 'le memo' yet - because well, you were never bullied, so it doesn't exist in Europe, right? Oh, and because apparently I need to teach you your own language, the word is 'harcelement'. (for context, I'm not an American, and also this comment is probably more vitriolic than it should be, but hey - I've reached the breaking point for nationalistic nonsense and 'my experience is x, therefore x is universal' idiocy on HN, and this post happened to combine them in the most obnoxious way possible).
  • Klapaucius 12y ago
    My personal experience with US high school as an exchange student is that there was a much higher pressure on being "cool" and "popular", than back home, to a great detrimental effect on the social environment. Students were being unfriendly and mean to each other for no other apparent reason than to climb the social ladder. It also seemed like it was a goal to be disgusting - with indoor spitting, food-fights and generally gross behavior. Not only kids, but also weak teachers were bullied. Reciprocally, some teachers bullied weak students to an extent I consider clearly unprofessional. And god forbid if you were gay or something (this was in the mid-nineties, so a while back now). How refreshening it was to return to my native high school after that year! Although it had is problem too, at least the norm among student was to be nice to each other. Being "cool" was certainly a thing, but students generally weren't obsessed about it. I am generally nostalgic about my high school days, except the year in the US. This is just my personal anecdote, and is of course ludicrous to say that "bullying doesn't exist in Europe", but I cannot help but wondering whether my experience fit into a pattern. Watching American teenage dramas, it's just too uncannily like what I observed myself.
  • aragot 12y ago
    Hi roel_v, you're assuming I'm arrogant because I'm French, and it is not nice because I was careful to also praise the upsides of both US and France. You're also too keen on assuming I like social inequalities. In fact, the place I grew up safe from violence was a Catholic high school: They amount to 20% of French schools and cost €800 per year, compared to the $24000 it costs in Australia. Catholic school are even careful to have hallal meals and the vice manager of mine was muslim. I'm telling there is no discrimintation on race, religion or money here. I'd capture more truth with "People from public schools just hate to be krelboynes" in lieu of all discriminations I hear. I like Klapaucius' comment because it emphasizes more on a "user story", and it tells us much more than statistics: Inuit people have 27 different words for snow, and we don't have a translation for "this guy is a bully", "wedgie" or "swirlie". "Harceleur" isn't colloquial for schools. So when one makes a video game about it, he has to take care of culture and markets.
    • roel_v 12y ago