The Case For Bullying

In my Sophomore year of high school, I joined Track after getting cut from Soccer (due to suspected collusion between the coaches, who were married). The men’s sprint captain, a senior, was the dorkiest person I have ever met.Among the many dorky things he did was wear his shirt tucked in with his shorts drawstrings hanging out. So naturally, what did we do? We all tucked in our shirts and mocked the Freshmen until they did too.

I can’t take credit for the idea, but it’s the proudest I’ve ever been to jump on a bandwagon. What could easily have deteriorated respect for our captain turned into a rallying point. People did listen to him, even if sometimes grudgingly. One of my fondest sporting memories remains the last meet of that season when he broke 60 in the 400m and our team went wild.

In my mind, that’s the touchstone of effective, positive bullying. It’s the specific subset of bullying I’m advocating for. It’s obvious that there are too many bad, hurtful ways to bullying (e.g. physically beating people up) that I don’t think it’s necessary or possible to enumerate them all. In general, the harder it is for someone to change something, or the closer it is to the core of their identity, the worse it is to bully them about it. Wearing your shirt untucked is immediately fixable, and no one is so opposed to tucking that they’re not willing to do it to fit in. Dressing in a certain way or being physically weak is harder to change, and it takes longer. No one can do anything about your own insecurities, so those are off limits reasons to bully.

Although it’s harder to draw a clear line, it’s also unacceptable to overload one person. Being bullied should feel unpleasant or embarrassing but not miserable. If possible, it’s best to spread the bullying around, so it’s clear that it really is connected to a behavior and not a personal grudge. Which brings me to my next point. Good bullying happens in public. That is, there are three parties involved: the bully, the victim, and the witnesses, all part of some social group. The witnesses can be broken into accomplices and counterfactual targets. The counterfactual targets feel relief at not being targeted but still learn the group’s norms. The accomplices can be complicit in silence or they can rebuke the bully if they disagree with the method or the norm.

If you’re being bullied, you have a few options. You can change: tuck in your shirt. You can leave: quit the team (or the friend group). You can endure: don’t change or quit, and hope the bullying stops. If you leave or change, the culture of the group is reinforced and the survivors are bound more closely. If you successfully challenge, then the group is forced to concede the norm isn’t crucial.

My point is not just that bullying is good actually, but that it’s better than other methods of enforcing social norms because it’s direct, democratic, and bottom-up. Bullying is one of the very few times when people tell you straight out what is uncool. I have no idea what my school mission statements were (couldn’t have told you even at the time), but I recognized how people treated each other and what behavior they tolerated. Some people may have more sway, but it’s untenable for one person to act as a monarch, imposing their individual beliefs on everyone else. A coup is inevitable.

Everyone’s congratulating themselves these days for figuring out that social media is a deeply flawed substitute for in-person interactions. Not to miss a chance to congratulate myself, I’ll throw this out: cyberbullying promotes bad bullying etiquette. Aside from forums, it’s hard to cyberbully publicly. As a result, victims feel lonelier and more singled-out. They don’t get as much of a chance to be a bystander because nobody does.