With September approaching, I am seeing videos and discussions all over online about going back to secondary school (I am British to preface) and can't help but wonder why my peers were so cruel. Not to me specifically no - I did get bullied from Y7-9 but only by one specific group of boys due to my race and being autistic, but I'd say it wasn't as vicious or systemic with how other people who were 'weirder' than me were targeted. The others who were targeted in an all consuming way were done so by the entire yeargroup, and I will admit I didn't do much to help.
Do I have my reasons? Yes. With living with a lunatic family I couldn't afford to burden my mother by being more of a target of bullying due to defending someone, it's not like she cared I was really anyways. She always asked me 'What do you want me to do about it?' ever since I was little about most problems I came to her about, so what would even be the point. I thought back then if no one would protect me then it was futile to do so for someone else.
Though my reasons I don't see as valid in the shoes of those who were thoroughly isolated and treated as untouchable by my peers. I can claim I did try to talk to them when I could, try to be friendly and helpful when I could because I know the pain of being shut out of small, micro acts of niceties most people take for granted because I've been excluded from them due to my race by fully grown adults. I can claim I tried my best in small increments, but what truly haunts me is that it likely wasn't enough to overshadow the sheer volume of vitriol they received.
These people had their existence turned into a joke and entertainment in a way that frightened me so, so much - it wasn't like they were a person anymore in the eyes of these people but an object to poke at to dispense as much entertainment from. Whether these abusive bullies were consciously malicious or not, it doesn't matter.
Maybe it is me being separate to my British peers who grew up without war being close to them or their families, but I know what dehumanisation directly leads to. There have been so many killings and cullings and genocides in my country for decades on decades fuelled by the same ideology behind the entitled nature of bullying I saw in my school and it frightened me very much. It may be a ridiculous comparison due to the consequences being wholly different, but what is truly grim is that the mechanisms are similar in some aspects. It's easier to remove oneself from an inhuman 'unperson' to escalate in what you do to them, an insult becomes a chant, a chant becomes stolen objects, stolen objects become destroyed objects, destroyed objects become shoves, shoves become slaps, slaps become punches, punching becomes grabbing, and it goes on and on and on depending on if someone intervines, or if something changes. The person getting this maltreatment cannot even react the 'right way' either, it is a closed loop system of every emotion they show being twisted into something nefarious, weird or manipulative.
Sometimes I think about how certain people who were treated this way on the escalating ladder of mistreatment and how much danger they were in, and how narrowly they avoided being physically harmed or maimed in a serious way. Of course they didn't leave psychologically unscathed but I just have to think because the worst case scenario can happen and already has.
I get more sad when I think about these ostracised people's reactions more. I remember one of them hiding under the table in class after seeing a group of bullies try to enter their class and everyone laughing at them calling them overdramatic. I know everyone was thirteen, but why couldn't they understand like me that people are frightened by different things? Even now many people aren't any better, they fucking see distress in any situation and just point an laugh and denigrate the person instead of asking what happened and helping in whatever way is available. And then they turn around and blubber about how there's a loneliness epidemic...no shit man look at how you act to vulnerability!
