Of bullying and making the world more awesome

Sometimes people drive me crazy – scratch that, a lot of the times people drive me crazy. There’s one thing though, that just puts me over the edge every single time.

Bullying. Any and all bullying, all the grey areas of bullying, justifying bulling, laughing about bullying and especially shrugging off bullying.

Everyone who knows me or has me on Facebook knows about a specific incident of bullying last week – some of you were expecting a blog post sooner but I really needed to just calm down and get my head on straight before I tacked this in a post. What set this off? A group of kids made a Facebook group to bully my little brother. Of course, I’m emotionally invested in the person being bullied, but this is something I’m confident I would do regardless of the person being bullied. I confronted the group, and threatened to call the police.

What came next is what absolutely drives me up the wall. People came to the rescue of the bully and began to laugh everything off as a joke. The bully at this point owned up, apologized – but on the group was still laughing about it. When met with conversations about depression and bullying-related suicide one commenter felt like replying with, “CUM SHOTS!” was the appropriate reaction. When I brought up suicide, one commenter chimed in with, “Aw – is he going to go kill himself now?”

Now these kids are between 16-18 years old, which I’m pegging as old enough to know a lot better – and yet they laugh at depression, bullying and suicide. It’s a massive joke that warrants, “Stay gold – pony boy!” and Kansas lyrics typed on a public forum. This infuriates me. I’m all for finding the lighter side of things – but DO NOT laugh off bullying. Nothing drives me up a wall further than shrugging off bullying as a joke. It’s not a joke, it’s not funny. Anyone who laughs at bullying, regardless of severity,  is feeding into continuing the cycle of bullying. Why would someone stop bullying at a small scale if they’re being egged on? What would stop someone from escalating at that point because hey, people are finding it funny?

It’s not funny. Being on both ends of bullying I know how it affects people and I know what it can do to someone. I’ve spoken with people who have been diagnosed with clinical depression from being bullied – and worked with them. Yet, we live in a world that still says, “oh come on it’s just a joke – you can’t take a joke?” You’re right, I can’t take a joke – especially when the joke is not funny and hurts someone else.

Bullying is not a black and white issue – there is a lot of grey area , however the way we treat and confront bullying should be one-dimensional: Do not allow it. Bullying kills people. Literally, something that pushes someone to want to end their life isn’t funny, so why are we allowing people to laugh? In this instance, calling the police was met with joking, laughter and giggling – which makes me wonder, what are we not doing in addressing this as a serious issue? When cops bring about chortling and snickering instead of remorse, what is going wrong?

I will never allow for bullying, I will not stand for it and I will speak out against it when confronted by it. I do not allow bullying either in person or over a computer screen because bullying, in any form, is wrong. We live in a world where people are quicker to laugh at someone than stand up for them and that’s sad. We treat depression like it’s that person’s fault that they have it, more so if they’re being bullied because that means they’re weak. We hardly ever point the word “weak” at bullies because apparently their ability to insult and ridicule makes them strong. I call bullshit on that. I will defend someone’s strength of character with depression or while being bullied over someone’s strength of character while being a bully any day.

I honestly, honestly hope that even just one of you – one person in 7+ billion who reads this takes a stand in some way against bullying. Not because I’m asking you, not because it will make you look good but because it matters. People matter, you matter, he matters, she matters – they matter.

I found this video last week and honestly I watched about ten times the day I found that Facebook group. One quote stood out the most:

“We can make every day better for each other, if we’re all on the same team let’s start acting like it. We got work to do. We can cry about it, or we can dance about it. We were made to be awesome.” – Kid President