I was on youtube looking around for some good anti-bullying videos, and found this. This video has such a strong message. I think you guys should all watch this and post an opinion and discuss.



This video is beautiful and with such a strong message. So, watch it if you want, then discuss what you think about bullying and if you want, maybe share a past experience with bullying. And please, if someone you know is having issues with bullying, please show them this video.

(Sorry if posted in the wrong section, but I felt like I should've shown this to you guys.)

Very strong message, I can relate myself to that in a way. Thanks for the vid

I've been both a bully, and a victim of a bully. This poem is very well written and strikes a chord that almost all other writing cannot. This poem led me to download the rest of Shane Koyczan's work, and it's all just as excellent.

Bullying is a real problem and those who say otherwise have likely never had any experience with bullying.
On a Discussion note, not much can be argued with bullying. Who would argue on the side of the bullies?
I'll leave this open for people to share their thoughts/experiences on bullying but I doubt much discussion will sprout.

Meh, I went from a victim of bully, to being a bully.... Yet, most people think I am one but all I do is try to guide people in the right path in a "Commanding/Authority" order. Sometimes aggression and talking shit to the person is the only way to get through their skulls. Most people end up maturing to a better person from it all, and end up living a good life, while others just take it the wrong way and do something stupid over a few years of schooling.

I'll take that on. Not even playing devil's advocate or anything, I genuinely think that the concept of bullying is overblown and seeing it as the worst thing in the world causes more damage than being a victim of it. First let me give you a quick rundown of experiences with this 2-sided coin. Actually I think it's more of a D&D-esque die at this point.

Up until I was 8 years old I was going to the best private schools wherever my dad was doing business, and everyone was always nice and got along regardless of their nationality or racial issues or whatever, I had never even insulted someone up until a few years later. I eventually moved to Brazil where my mother lived, and at least by my standards at the time, the kids were fucking insane. Screaming in the middle of class, insulting each other left and right, getting into constant fights for the stupidest things, needless to say I had a pretty big problem adjusting from Gandhi mode to survival of the fittest. During my first years staying in Brazil, things got pretty rough since I didn't know how to fight back, but gradually I just sort of merged into the system. Making friends, getting popular, eventually putting down people I myself didn't like. The rolls got inverted and I was loving it. Neither of my social stances in Brazil were points in my life that I'm exactly proud of, but what came after was more awful than anything I had ever seen in Brazil.

I ended up moving to the US for a few years, and then to the UK for a few more. I think that was around the start of major anti-bully movements, and what astonished me the most in those countries wasn't the lack of peer-to-peer hostility per se, but the lack of any peer-to-peer interaction at all. I went through pretty much my entire middle school/early high school experience being one of the most popular kids and not finding any social gatherings to get into. In middle school, I think I can count with my fingers how many parties I attended, and more than half of those were hosted by me, in Brazil I could hardly find an hour a day for myself. It's like it was an entire school system dedicated to producing boring, emotionless tax accountants. Everyone was always down, the "losers" had bad grades and were miserable and the kids perceived as "winners" with a hopeful future had good grades and were even more miserable. Yes, I'm exaggerating just how bad things were, but it seemed like nobody had any friends outside of their small bubble of contacts and many kids didn't have a bubble at all, and nobody seemed like they were enjoying life. After a while I left to finish my high school years on my own with a foreign exchange student program, and things were quite different there as well.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how all of these worlds contrasted while I finished my studies foreign exchanging in Spain. Spanish people were a mix of my first two childhoods, they are friendly as friendly gets if they consider you a strong character, but they can get hostile really quick. They also partied all day, that was a nice change. I thought "there's a group of people that is unquestionably happy". It was like their entire culture was formed around having a good time before social rivalry or personal protection (their economy does show their care-free nature, mind you). Picture a cliche representation of vikings, all hanging out in a mead hall banging helmets and being bros. All equals, nobody left behind and in a natural way. What the Spanish people taught me, which was later confirmed by my visits to Brazil, was that bullying was more or less a kids thing. It's a byproduct of forming groups and learning to socialize, and flowing out of the process rather than trying to stomp it to the ground seemed to create adults that were social and really confident about themselves, not to mention independent. Where Americans had become lonely Borgs (again, I'm generalizing, the majority of Americans are great but I mean to say that most really lack that social spark), previously ruthlessly bullied Brazilians and Spanish people had become amazing human beings and overall equals at the end of their growing up period.

This is what I mean to say (tl;dr), bullying is not a good thing at all but giving it so much attention causes much more harm than good. I believe that there's a better option (read: my pre-Brazil childhood), but tackling it as a full-out epidemic is just not it. Is killing off emotional pain really worth being lobotomized?

And I'm kind of getting away from what I wrote but I just thought of this, is the feeling of helplessness and sadness that comes with being bullied really attributed to bullying or is it attributed to some degree to the feeling that someone else should be getting you out of that situation? I don't know, the question kind of came out of nowhere but I feel like it makes some sense considering that the parts of the world take the biggest toll in bullying are the ones trying to actively stop it.

I think those who treat bullying as an overblown problem are in the minority. Sure, there are people that dedicate their lives to the bullying problem, but there's people like that for all issues. Many schools have pretty good measures against bullying (my school has a personal councilor assigned to students whom they can go to for any and all personal problems). Then again, many schools overreact.

I believe what I'm trying to say here is that it's up to the schools to take on the issue of bullying and but the diversity of solutions is evident.

Thanks for sharing this video, makes me want to stand up and fight back.
I was a victim of bullying, always been, they keep calling me names since kindergarten until now, it was a horrible experience, makes me want to leave school and never go back ever again. But there are people who are just like us, and they are our friends.

I think this ignores the cultural influences a vast swathe of other variables have.

However, most importantly, what about those predisposed to depression or addiction? There are many people who are genetically more likely to fall into these pitfalls. Would you prefer they "suffer through it" as children apparently do in Brazil?

I find bullying to be wrong, especially with younger people.

I used to get beat up in elementary, I went to a rough school and I never fought back or cried, I thought nothing of it.

Then there are the kids that are are softer, and there is nothing wrong with that at all, I find it wrong that they have to worry about people and their words and thoughts at that age. (below lets say.. 13?)

Completely ruins the point of being that age, you are supposed to enjoy yourself and be care free, yet some kids at that age go to school in fear of being bullied.
Robs your childhood if it gets bad.

I do have the feeling that my post doesn't encompass all variables, but I'd say that the bullying and depression topic is a little too broad to account for everything in a simple forum post. I'll try my best.

About those predisposed to depression and addiction. I went deep but could not find much information on pre-21st century depression, but at least I was able to find some contrast between countries. Keep in mind that the picture shows the current depression rates in all age spectrums, not just in kids (sorry, lousy research). Remember that Spain's current unemployment rate is at 26% and their economy is in utter chaos, not even the Great Depression in America had such high numbers, so they have more than enough reason to score some high misery points.



As you can see almost one in every 10 people in America are depressed, whereas almost 5% of the Spanish feel the same way. That's double the rate of people who are miserable in a country that seems to actually care about protecting its people over a country that is not particularly interested in bullying at all.

Now, though I don't have a very black and white argument to stand behind here, I tried reaching anti-bullying websites in a couple of different European and North/South American countries and I had a hard time finding anti-bullying organizations and programs outside of the US. America has the largest number of people trying to stop bullying yet at least from my experience they do not even have the biggest problem with it, so why do they seem to be reaping from its effects the most?

What I'm trying to get to here is that those "genetic pitfalls of depression" at least don't seem to have always existed, but since I couldn't find any information on old depression, I had to stick to showing off other countries. Could someone pitch in some research on what the common causes of American depression are? I'm trying to figure out here why America seems to have more depression with so many polices trying to keep people protected from it.

EDIT: I just realized my mistake. I'm trying to compare depression with bullying as if they needed each other, when a person can have either or without necessarily suffering from both bullying and depression at the same time.