Bullying

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do?

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Why we Do what we do. I am
your o'doyle rules host Abraham.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
And I am your Wedgie Giving host Shane.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about all of
the things that humans and animals do, and sometimes we
talk about the way that humans treat each other poorly
and what that could mean and what we can do
about it.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yes, we are today talking about bullying, a thing that
has been in the common lex gone over the last
few years, especially in schools, and a lot of people
are talking about it. But do people really understand it?
I don't know that they do.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
And so if you're joining us for the first time, welcome.
We are so happy to have you here. We hope
that you enjoy what you hear today. And if you
do enjoy what you hear today, then you can consider
supporting us by picking up some merch, leaving us a
rating and a review, liking, subscribing, joining us on Patreon,
telling a friend, all that sort of stuff. And I'll
talk more about that at the end of this discussion.

(01:12):
If you're a returning listener, thank you for coming back.
I'm glad that we didn't scare you away. Hopefully you
will continue to stick with us and you've heard some
of the spiel. But nevertheless, we must acknowledge that today
is in fact a holiday, an important holiday. It is
the Chinese New Year.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yes, yes, yes, it's also Curmudgeon's Day. I relate to that.
I like that.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yes. It is also Free Thinker's Day, which is probably
one that we'll retire after this year because of how
things are going, at least in the United States.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's also Kansas Day. I don't know
if it's the band or the state, but either way
I support it fair enough.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Or the movie or the play, I'm not sure. Yeah,
all of it related to Chinese New Year. It is
Korean New Year, both because they're in that part of
the world and it's their new Year. Yeah, and I
guess I may as well just throw out that it's
the lunar New Year, so New Year's for everyone, including
the Moon.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Happy New Year Moon. It's also National Carnation.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Day, sure, National corn chip Day. I don't know if
that goes with carnations, but.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
I don't know. We could probably put them together. It's
National Puzzle Day, which is fun.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
That is fun. It is Seeing Eye Guide Dog Birthday?

Speaker 1 (02:28):
What all of them on the same day? Okay, yeah,
they were all born on the same day. It's wild
to think that every Seeing Eye Guide dog was born
on January twenty ninth. It's Thomas Paine Day, so you know,
eat your kids.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
It is a Oh we actually talked about this last week.
I had forgotten about this until now, but we did
a whole dive on this. Is that it is Cordova
Ice Worms Days. So it's like a week of this.
I think at the time we even said maybe we'll
dive into this a little further, maybe in the context
of a mini Yeah, but that's what it is. So

(03:02):
for those of you who are participating in the Cordova
Ice Worms Days, have fun.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
And I imagine there's a group of people that are
listening to the show who have never heard that sentence
in their life, which is great, very likely. Yeah, I
love that for them too. It's also International Hot Air
Balloon Week, which is I think a beautiful sight.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
It is, although at the end of January, I feel
like this has got to be a Southern Hemisphere thing
because otherwise you're experiencing some weather. You try to do
that at the end of January.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
That's true. That's true for.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Reasons that are totally lost on me and I think
most people. It is kiss a Shark Week.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Hmm.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Maybe symbolically kiss a shark, kiss a toy shark. I
don't know. I don't feel like this is good advice.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
I feel like it's a I feel like it'sing a
shark is all teeth, you know what I'm saying. It's
a national clean out your inbox week.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Sweet, I'm gonna delete all my emails without reading them.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
It is National Cowboy Poetry Gathering Week, which I don't
know if this is specific to rural Nevada, but there
is a very large national gathering of cowboy poetry participants
in rural Nevada, specifically Elko, Nevada. For those of you
who are traveling for that sort of thing and also

(04:20):
listening to this podcast, how but have fun listen.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
One thing, one thing I really love about the idea
of cowboy poetry is that cowboys are often touted and
pedestaled as like the epitome of like masculinity. Sure, and
poetry never gets that rap, so putting them together probably
could uses so many people in Texas, Like I would
imagine there's so many people in Texas that are like,

(04:46):
what does this mean? How can this be? And they
they can't wrap their head around this tradition, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Fair enough, and confusion is very frustrating for so many.
So yes, anyway, none of those things have to do
with bullying, which is the thing we're trying to talk
about today and that we are now getting to. So,
as I said, thank you for being here. Don't know
if there's more preamble we need to get to then
we could just sort of dive into our topic. Other

(05:13):
than as I said, those are holiday things that we
talk about sometimes. At the end of this discussion, we
are going to be giving some recommendations. We do that
after every full length episode, and we release these full
length episodes on Wednesdays and on Mondays, where we release
short episodes Y're like ten to fifteen minutes ish and
we call them minis, so you can catch those there.

(05:35):
So I think that's all the preamble. I need. Probably
more preamble than I really need to start talking about this.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Yeah, So I mean I think we could probably dive in.
Let's do it. So today we're going to unpack what
bullying is, the variety of factors that give rise to bullying,
the experience of bullying from the victim's perspective, and what
can be done about it, whether it's in schools, in
your communities, within family homes, whatever it might be. We're
going to talk about some different solutions or possible solutions
to that.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
We could spend some time on bullying, diving into any
one of these topics pretty in depth, Like we could
talk about just the people who are doing the bullying.
We could talk just about the outcomes and the fallout
of bullying for the victims. We could talk just about
a single strategy that has been researched quite extensively and

(06:22):
what the findings have been to support or refine or
otherwise inform the implementation of that strategy. There's a lot
that we can unpack. So today is sort of broad strokes.
We're going to more or less cover what it is,
and then why it happens, what happens to people when
it happens, and what we can potentially do about it.

(06:42):
And understand that we're not getting into superfine details on
any of them, but hopefully we'll sort of paint a
clear enough picture that people know at least something more
than when they came into this episode, as always the goal,
and just for fun, like, we always record these ways
out from when they're actually published. So for those of

(07:03):
you are interested, we're recording this on the last day
that the US was a free country, so you guys
will hear it well after the democracy has fallen, but
at least from us coming to you from the past,
we will say goodbye democracy, goodbye civil liberties. It was
fun while it lasted.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
And let's proceed, all right, So let's get into the
background of bullying, because bullying itself, we wanted to find it.
We want to give some ideas around this, right, So
the word bully has a really interesting journey. Actually, according
to the Dictionary, bully comes from the old Middle Dutch
word boil. That's it's close. I'm gonna be able to

(07:43):
pronounce that.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
I'm wondering if it's actually pronounced bully, So it's spelled
b o E l e. Actually yeah, bully is maybe
something locally yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Bully, which meant lover and could refer to either sex.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah. Eventually, though, of course, bully became more general, although
it did not quite evolve to what or devolve to
what we would think of it meaning today. So it
started out meaning lover, then it became more general and
simply meant a fine fellow. And then at some point
over several years or even generations, in the seventeen hundreds,
it came to mean a swaggering coward. When I saw

(08:20):
that in direct quotes as to what that could mean,
then it seemed to eventually be used, although there doesn't
seem to be a clear line of demarcation as to
when this change occurred, but it essentially came to be
used to refer to someone who is hired to do violence,
which actually starts to feel a lot closer to what
we're used to now, because now it's sort of seemingly

(08:42):
someone who does violence without having been hired. But you
can see that sort of level of preying upon a
victim that's related in there.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Sure. According to APA, bullying is a form of aggression
in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury
or discomfort. So by that definition, boxing an mma could
also be.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Bullying, right, I was like, even maybe like a comedy
roast might almost count as bullying. I feel like this
definition is too inclusive for what they're trying to portray here.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I feel like it lacks the consent part of this.
Like I think that like boxing, there's consent. You agree
to punch me, I agree to punch you. We'll punch
each other for a few minutes, like that is an
agreement that is settled upon. But I think bullying lacks
that informed consent piece.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yes, I think it does. I think that is one piece.
You might make the case that like performing the duties
of a soldier could look like bullying when you're like
on the front lines as well, but that's like specifically
your job in that case. So it's sort of like
un like sanctioned versus unsanctioned bullying if you are a

(09:59):
activity that's aggressive or violent. So I'm going to try
and offer a slightly different approach to this definition. So
we're thinking about the person who's doing the bullying. This
is behavior that is reinforced by an indication of damage
to another, which we sometimes call signs of damage, but

(10:19):
just meaning that like part of what they get out
of it is a demonstration that their attempts to cause
harm have been successful and seemingly without provocation. And often,
but not exclusively, with a power dynamic favoring the bully.
And what I mean by that is that the person
being bullied, like the recipient of the bullying, may not

(10:41):
be able to defend themselves because the bully for whatever reason,
has more people, or they're stronger, or they're more well armed,
or they sort of came out of the you know,
from behind sort of thing. So that's what I mean
by that. And then another important here is that like
bullying can have a social element in which the bullying

(11:03):
behavior is further reinforced by a sort of a close
peer group. So I think objective A is cause visible harm.
And the second part of that is that that there
is sort of a group of people who then recognize, acknowledge,
and maybe praise the successful accomplishment of that harm.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Right. And now, obviously any behavior that causes harm is problematic,
particularly when it is non consensual and self motivated. So
I think, as we kind of talk about this, it's
important to guard yourself against bullying in the form of
ads so that they do not force you into buying
their products that you may not want.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
So I kind of mentioned this idea of like when
you start just trying to think of examples and non
examples of aggression, we just start thinking of professions that
might involve aggression or recreational activities, and I think one
of them here is as a soldiers, as I mentioned before,
because like, soldiers aren't usually considered bullies, although by the

(12:08):
APA definition possibly they would be. Right, but soldiers cause
harm to others, but they're specifically instructed to do so
by their commanding officers, and this receives like tacit approval
from the public, as that is the expectation for the
performance of their jobs to carry out those violent activities.

(12:30):
So there's an important distinction between like this is an obligation,
one that we have all sort of agreed to as
part of a thing that you must do, versus this
is self motivated. I just want to go out and
cause harm.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Right And Likewise, even someone who harms someone else in
self defense is generally unders that's understandable to people around
them that somebody is as striking out to prevent harm
to themselves. However, someone who takes a weapon out in
the public to harm people just because they want to
cause harm to other people is not only disapproved of
legally and socially, but will and should be promptly detained

(13:05):
and prevented from causing more harm. The motives are important here.
This is really kind of like the key feature harming
people by itself is not necessarily or inherently bullying. It's
the intent with which they are trying to harm people
and the context in which they are harming people.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
In yeah, yeah, exactly. The circumstances are very relevant for
whether we approach this as like a bullying activity versus
some other form of violence. And I think a lot
of people want to take things like that and slot
them all into no, just all violence bad. And I
do have some sympathy for that approach, and I think
I would point out that it's useful functionally to distinguish

(13:47):
sort of where the motives are as we try to
understand what we can do about this from like a
psychological perspective, And that's thinking about the function like why
does this occur?

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Right?

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Because we when I have a different, like one solution
that will address one reason why, might actually exacerbate a
different reason why. And hence why we can't necessarily take
a blanket approach to solving this. I think we need
to be nuanced right. I think recently bullying has received
a lot of attention because it tends to be I
mean recently, like the last several years, maybe decades, but

(14:20):
you know, it is I think, prominently available in the
discussion around school and other areas, and it tends to
be persistent. Hence the ing on the end of bullying
as a rowing thing. There's a present progressive tense here
and likely because it is particularly socially unacceptable to be

(14:40):
aggressive and non aggressive contexts, and I think specifically to
like victimize people who are often like we might think
of them as the underdogs or sort of like easy
targets for these people. It feels like that power dynamic
makes it grosser and less appropriate, right.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Absolutely, the problem I'm a bullying is difficult and insidious
because of all the complexities, because of the lack of
the opportunity to actually identify motive without somebody verbally expressing
what their motive is. All of these things create some
unique challenges to understanding and solving the bullying issue. It's
difficult because bullying itself can have a wide variety of
causal variables and be difficult to prevent or intervene effectively

(15:19):
on because of those resulting rewards for the bully themselves
or the lack of punishing constituencies that show up too.
And it can even be difficult to recognize because it
might be subtle and small and occur over very long
periods of times, like for years, or it could be
abrupt and violent and very very clear. So it's really

(15:39):
difficult because it's kind of like and there's probably a
point in time where we probably have to do a
series or a suite around the idea of like suicide,
because it's the same type of issue where it's very complex,
it's very hard to define, and because motive is such
a private thing, it makes it really even more complicated
to find those causal variables than those outcomes.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that there are times too
where it's hard to draw the exact boundary around is
this like normal play, is this consensual sort of teasing, ribbing,
rough housing, versus has this crossed the line into the
territory of like victimizing and bullying and violence, right, And

(16:23):
where you draw that distinction can be difficult in the
moment to sort of make that call because you really
don't want to adversely stigmatize people who are actually engaging
appropriately socially in the sense that there's sort of an
agreed upon level of rough housing where everyone's okay and
like you don't want to stop that. That could be
very appropriate. It could even help them. It could help

(16:45):
teach them, like the boundaries of where you were pushing
people too far and interrupting that could then actually stunt
the development of that skill. And recognizing that in another versus,
like you also don't want to let someone just be
victimized because you think that what's going on is like play,
but it's actually like harmful stuff that's being done, and

(17:06):
they can look very similar. Sometimes it can be really
tricky to tell them apart. Right, So speaking of telling
them apart, it's kind of worth unpacking a little bit
what the different ways that bullyon can play out, because
we've sort of been describing it as explicitly causing being violent,
but we've also intentionally used the word harm because that's

(17:28):
kind of the critical feature here. Because bullink can have
different forms, it can be harm caused in a variety
of different ways.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Right, So of course many people think of physical harm
being pushed into lockers, wedgies, swirlies. I think maybe like
the nineties have created kind of a unique archetype for bullying.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Like special vernacular just for bullion.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Like I feel like it was like
so emergent then, and you know, in every bully I
always kind of joke about like the nineties bully haircut,
which is like the middle part bowl cut shaved underneath,
like that like skater haircut that I also had, but
it's like very much so a nineties bully haircut, and
everybody knows what we're talking about in things like you know,
being punched, being tripped, having your things broken, having your

(18:10):
books knocked out of your hand, like all the things
that happen in like literally now I'm thinking about like
maybe I'm just using nineties examples from movies, but like
that's but if that seems to be kind of the thing.
I mean, like if you read it, the bullies in it,
I mean they take it a little bit too far, sure,
like carving initials and people's bellies and stuff, but they
did a lot of the same things physical harm, torment,

(18:31):
chasing people, a lot of that stuff too.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, And we saw some of that in Back to
the Future, and like depictions of the fifties and other
movies like from the era. So I think there's versions
of this have spanned a lot of time. But bullying
can also include things that are not necessarily physical. It
can be very legitimate to consider bullying when they're verbal,

(18:55):
things like insults, threats, teasing, just generally otherwise putting people down.
And I mean, it's kind of ironic to me that
the people sometimes on the right will complain about how
sensitive everyone is and how easily offended, and I'm like,
you guys, melt down if someone says happy Holidays.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
The war on Christmas persists.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
I'm like, you're so easy to emotionally damage. Like all
I have to do is actually say that I'm offended,
and you are like crying into your pillow. I'm like,
that's you're so fragile.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
My favorite argument recently is nah, and just watch what
happens na.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Uh yeah right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
So there.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
I think there's there's sort of a lot of complaints
about like, oh, that's that's a bullion to just insult someone.
I'm like, oh, yeah, I could probably insult you into
a hole. If you really want to, really want to
try this experiment.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
I can insult you into a hole like that's I love.
You should put that on your resume, Like I am.
I've written this letter, I've written this dissertation, like I've
got these publications, I've done these presentations. By the way,
I can insult you into a hole. That's right, It's
a skill.

Speaker 2 (20:00):
We have it.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Why we do what we do, I.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Guess I'm particularly proud of. I just think that these
are people who are obscenely easy to offend.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, I like, I don't want to bite people, but
I could if I needed to, you know, sure, sure,
So some other things I think about too, though, when
it comes to bullying or things like social types of bullying,
like maybe not even directly contacting the potential victim, but
like doing things that involve the public and kind of
inciting people around them, like spreading rumors, sharing their secrets,

(20:32):
public shaming, excluding people playing cruel jokes on them, stuff
that happens in a public eye that produces kind of
a ripple effect that will produce additional kind of collateral
bullying responses from people that are not the bully themselves.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah, exactly. That obviously does include like verbal behavior, but
arguably all of this does anyway. But anyway, yeah, I
think there's an important social part. And then of course
a lot of people talk about cyber bullying, which is
a lot of the times ads. Just kidding, cyberbullying is

(21:09):
not just ads, it's a lot of times other things.
But I might consider ads a form of this. It
certainly feel pernicious sometimes. Anyway. Cyber bullying is basically a
lot of the verbal and social bullying, but doing it online.
And this is you might be sending messages, pictures, or
videos to the victim intended to frustrate, confuse, or offend

(21:33):
them or otherwise cause them some amount of distress or
the other social bullying stuff that we mentioned, because you
can be spreading rumors, gossip, doing public shaming, excluding them
from things, et cetera. And another aspect of the online
version of this is it often comes with, or it
can come with the veil of anonymity, so that people

(21:56):
can get away with a lot of this without any
reapercuts on themselves because people might not even know the
source in these instances, And to me, that indicates that
at least for those people who are specifically seeking anonymity,
that they're not doing the bullying to earn the social support.
Like those other sort of circumstances we mentioned, that will

(22:18):
be relevant for some people for some bullies in some circumstances,
But there are going to be conditions where people are
trying to bully anonymously, and online forums offer a gateway
to do that sort of thing, and I think are
particularly more likely to thrive in the current climate with
Facebook or Meta or whatever it is and X being
essentially just spawning platforms for that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Right absolutely now. Researchers suggest that until age four, bullying
is mostly physical and indistinguishable between males and females. However,
as children get older, girls bullying tends to be more
social and verbal aggression tailored to exact the most severe
emotional damage possible, where boys tend to be more physical,
physically violent bully. As a matter of fact, I can
speak to being a parent and what I have seen,

(23:05):
most of what I have seen towards my own children
has been verbal and also a lot of cyber bullying online.
As a matter of fact, like we're dealing with like
a court case right now as a result of cyber
bullying with a member of my family being a victim
of that. And like the anonymity around that, and it's
really complex. It's like we've learned that in the justice system,

(23:26):
it's very complex to identify the cause, the concern, the behavior,
the severity. Like it's really difficult and we'll probably talk
about more about that later, but like it's really interesting
to see that kind of play out in a forensic space.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yeah. Interesting. I did not know about that. I have
pretty little experience with bullies myself. I think that when
I was very very young, like elementary school, I was
kind of an aggressive jerk of a kid, so it's
possible I would have been considered a bully, but I
quickly grew into a pacifist by the time I was
in high school and have not. I've really avoided anything

(24:04):
remotely violent, I mean for almost as long as I
can remember at this point. Yeah, I don't think that
I was really the receiving on the receiving end of bullies.
I think they didn't care about me, and I was
not certainly not perpetrating it, at least not intentionally when
I was younger, So I have very little experience with
it myself.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
When you brought up this topic, I was thinking about
my own experience of bullying. And I was bullied a
lot growing up. But it's funny to think about what
because you know, like the whole thing, the whole thing
is like you know, they'll find some feature or something
that you do or something about you, and they'll just
a lot of times what they'll do is the harp
on that thing. Sure my experience is and this is

(24:44):
going to sound so silly thinking back on it, but
like I was bullied for being tall, like but I
was also like a foot and a half taller than everybody. Yeah,
I was bullied for being smart. So like I was
like all the things that are like traits that people
look for as adults, like these are great things to have.
Like they're like, oh you're tall, Oh you're tall and

(25:04):
smart and likable. Oh you're so nice. I'm like, uh yeah,
those are good things to have. I'll never forget though
I got. I went to I went to a predominantly
black middle school, and middle school I think in general,
is challenging, and I just got like, like a lot
of the bullying that I received there was just for
being white. Like I just got called white a lot,

(25:26):
which you know, I was like, that's great. That you
have objective that you objectively you can identify that like
that doesn't like But that was like a thing that was.
It was persistent and I didn't get it a lot,
but a lot of a lot of kids did get that,
and so but it went back and forth, right, So sure, Yeah.
I think the most I dealt with though, was I
got called the Jolly Green Giant a lot I got

(25:46):
called Shane the Brain. Those are good things, I think
so fair.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
I was so average and so middle of the road
that there was just I was. I was camouflaged by mediocrity.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
That's you know, you skate it through. That's great. I
did not. I was too tall to do that.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
I feel like that's either a good band name or
a good album name.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Capu fly by Mediocrity. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
All right, Well, let's talk about the bullies and sort
of what's going on for them right now? Who are
these weirdos? And it's gonna sound for a moment as
though we are defending them. We are not. Bullying is
not okay, but it can be useful to understand what
is happening for bullies because, as I said, to address this,

(26:37):
we want to be thinking about the function, what's going
on here? And so we're gonna start to unpack a
little bit of the variety of circumstances that could produce
bullying behavior.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Right, So, first and foremost, bullying can technically happen at
any age and is increasingly being recognized as it pertains
to adults as bullies. A lot of times we think
of bullies being children or being in and that's usually
the context that's portrayed, but that is it's true for
adults as well, and we're starting to identify that more.
One example is Trump. Trump is a bully. He uses threats,
he uses lies, intimidation, aggression, he uses his resources to

(27:12):
get people to do things that they don't want to
do or to just harm them out of retribution. And
he's geriatric, So yes, age can do this. It doesn't
matter that he's in his eighties. He could still be
a bully.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, yeah, any any age is capable of it. Second,
and although he said first and second, there isn't actually
any particular order to this. Although we mentioned this is
typically ongoing, there can easily be a bullying incident without
repeated further offenses. So it doesn't have to be systematic

(27:45):
to be bullying. You could have like a one off
sort of opportunity or time when it happens without it
necessarily being like occurring many times over many instances.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Right, And although the overall function of behavior is likely
very similar those circumstances basically things like to see the
reaction to the harm done, or to recruit social support
for the harm done, or both. There can be a
lot of different reasons as to how this develops in
the first place, and there can be overlapping reasons as well.
So it's never going to be as cut and dry
as this person likes attention, or this person has a

(28:18):
bad home life, or this person just likes to see harm.
It's never going to be that simple. It's going to
be a complex tapestry of variables that lead to these different,
unique bullying behaviors across unique individuals.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
So one of those variables, one of the initial setting
events here may be someone who has low social status
that means they have few friends, they are not generally
treated with respect, they might be ignored, and so what
could happen is they either accidentally earn some social status
by aggressing towards someone for whatever reason, and then they

(28:51):
basically learn they that that's a way they can continue
to gain social status, and so they continue doing that
aggressive those aggressive behavior to try and maintain their social
status or even further elevate their social status. Or they
might rather than like accidentally stumbling upon this as a
method for elevating themselves in the social strata, they might

(29:14):
just believe that they can earn social status this way,
and so then they start aggressing in a bid to
gain friends' attention and notoriety right now.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Another reason is when people are victimized, they sometimes react
by victimizing others. So a description of this is the
phrase hurt people, hurt people. They sometimes report that they
think they'll feel better by making other people feel as
bad as they do, and further report that doesn't work,
so they'll make people feel bad and they don't feel better,
and it persists. It's a vicious cycle.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, But essentially the outcome being that some people who
are bullied become bullies, and it's just sort of the
revictimization cycle that can occur. As we sort of alluded to,
this can occur and children who are abused at home
or bullied themselves. It could also be people who are
suffering for other reasons, such as even if they're not

(30:06):
necessarily abused, they might have an unstable home life. So
if they have parents or siblings who are fighting with
each other or with them when divorce happens, and if
they're sort of commonly witnessing violence, aggression, or like bullying,
like behaviors toward others, that can further sort of foster

(30:26):
the development of this. It's like kids who essentially have
a non nurturing environment are more likely to end up
as bullies.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Sure, absolutely, Now some people are surrounded by other violent
people who encourage violence, aggression, and fighting. They see violence
frequently and are essentially raised to see violence as a
positive thing and might be pressured into acting aggressively. It's
very normalized in their environment. So this is kind of
the problem with the premise of the show Dexter. Right,
the boy was taught to murder as an outlet, but

(30:54):
that's not how behavior works. Actually, it was more likely
practicing normalizing violence, and no one is beyond saving that
behavior can change. But what has happened is that's become
kind of what they've always known, that violence is a
thing that exists in my world. I engage in this
behavior because that's what everybody around me does. I mean,
you see the same thing with like how people's relationships

(31:14):
kind of grow and emerge, right, Like people think that
like arguing in a relationship means that you're yelling and
screaming at each other because that's what they watch their
caregivers do. And that's not always the case. It just
gets kind of normalized a little bit.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Yeah, exactly, And so it's sort of like, this is
how people treat each other in a relationship, as how
that person who's observing that sort of comes to believe.
And that's a pretty unproductive and toxic way of thinking
about how social relationships should form. I was also thinking
about another sort of pop culture reference this movie is
when did this come out? Like two thousand and eight
or something. Yeah, so it's old at this point, but

(31:51):
if people who who are listening have seen this, you'll
get the reference. I'll describe briefly. So, these kids are
raised in the household of this very successful NASCAR driver,
and they're very spoiled, and they're very like verbally abusive
toward their grandfather. And he's protesting this, and he's like,
you're gonna let him talk to me like that, and

(32:12):
the dad says, I am gonna let him. I love
the way they're talking to you right now because they're winners.
And so that's just an example of them like specifically
fostering that type of attitude and the kids. And then
later in the show when his mom takes over watching
the kids and she teaches them to be like respectful
and kind and they immediately pick up on that lesson
and start behaving more appropriately. I think that's just another

(32:36):
example of how that might play out.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
What a ridiculous movie that movie is.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
It's so great, it's so ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
It's so ridiculous. And being in a town that's a
NASCAR town, it's unbelievably accurate. It's kind of scary. Yeah,
it's kind of scary.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh no.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Now, some may be seeking an outlet for aggression or energy,
or just to enjoy the rush of a fight and
seek opportunit needs to fulfill that desire, some might hunt,
some might join sports, some might join karate, and some
might become bullies. It it's just that's the path that
they found for that particular set of reinforcing contingencies that
they really enjoy. Right, those those are the circumstances like

(33:15):
I could do this, maybe I don't have the means
to do this because sports can be expensive, or they
don't have time, or something's going on, so like while
they could be somewhere productive, they don't get the opportunity
to a chance. So bullying tends to be the next
best thing.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, and we talked about this in some other episode
we did really recently, Like, there are some people who
it seems like they're looking for an outlet where they
can be aggressive toward other people and it's socially acceptable,
and I sometimes just call that ads. All right, Well,

(33:54):
back from the ads I was, I was obviously joking
that I call the ads. But the point being that
that does seem to be that there are people who,
for whatever reason, they just enjoy the conflict, like the combativeness,
the competition of the conflict, and that gives them a
way to engage in it. And so some some of

(34:15):
them find an outlet that would be considered more socially appropriate,
like like fencing and karate and sparring and mma and
stuff like that, and some of them become bullies, not
socially acceptable, but it is a way that they direct
that energy of theirs, right.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
And I also think it's important to note that the
Venn diagram of bullies to like athletes, there is overlap.
Likes bullies get into it because they can bully people
just in a more like we talked about that in
the Competing episode. That's where that came from, right, Like
that ven diagram of like bullies who end up in sports,
Like it's not a perfect circle, but there is overlap,

(34:51):
and you see that happen, Like it's so just to
be just so everybody is on the same side. Like
people don't go, oh, I'm going to go to football
or like you mentioned, which is such a specific sport
to mention here, I love that I could go to
fencing or I could bully, Like I'm gonna go to
bully club. Like that doesn't it's not quite as clear
for those of you who maybe have never experienced bullying.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, they're not making They're not like going through a
menu of options and selecting the one that sounds the
most tasty for them that day.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, bullying is an elective.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
It sort of emerges naturally out of the circumstances that
direct them one way or another to something. That they're
gonna do.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Another circumstance that can happen is that bullying can emerge
in kids who just simply lack stimulation.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
They don't have a place, they.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Are eager to allocate their time and energy, and they
they kind of happen to land on bullying as like
a thing to do, which gives them something to do.
I think very shorthand colloquially, I'm saying like they get
bored and they they're trying to find something. And particularly,
I think people who struggle with boredom without having learned

(36:00):
other ways to manage boredom, a easy solution is like
break things, do violence, attacks, starfires, start fires. I think
that can be a route that that goes. And not
to say that that's the only route that leads to
those kind of behaviors, but I think that that is
a way that that can emerge, and bullying can be

(36:22):
an outcome of that.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Absolutely. Now, there are a whole host of reasons that
someone might start bullying. Really, there are as many different
events to occasion bullying as any other social behavior. But
what does this mean for the recipients? Actually, what researchers
found was that when girls are bullies, they tend to
be in higher social status groups like the Regina George's
of the world, whereas boy bullies can be outside of

(36:44):
any social groups or belong to a strata or of
social organization. Maybe they're part of a football team that's
kind of a bullying group. Maybe they're part of the o'doyles.
There's lots of different places where kids can show up.
But it's interesting that you kind of see that split.
It's kind of like just roll information about bullies.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Right, So, as we said, like there could be a
lot of overlap. You could have people who are are
bored and we're also bullies. You can have people who
want an outlet for their aggression and they've sort of
been taught that like bullying and victimizing others is a
good thing. You can have people who were just raised
around a lot of bullying and they raised around observing

(37:25):
other people victimizing people around them, and they happen to
be the case that like they I don't know, again,
they were bored. You could really just take any of
these and plug and play any combination of some or
all of them to produce bullying. And probably several we
didn't even mention, But I think the point being we

(37:46):
were getting through some of the circumstances that are pretty
likely to result in that.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Right, So we have to ask a question because we
are talking about the bullies themselves. I think it's worth
talking about because without a person to bully, bullies don't
really exist. So we need that context, we need that target.
So who are the people that are being bullied? And like,
what's happening to those folks? Well, the effects of bullying
are wide ranging, but are generally of the same class

(38:12):
and varieties any event in which people suffer. So examples
of that include things like prolonged trauma, social withdrawal, poor sleep,
low self esteem, substance abuse. All of these are different
things that might happen to those folks that are bullied.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
People who are bullied can also become violent themselves. They
might avoid work or school, they might appear to be
struggling with concentrating or they're just having that experience. They
can even have problems digesting, so you get people who
develop IBS or other things of that nature. They might
get poorer grades, They're at a higher risk for experiencing

(38:46):
depression and at a higher risk for suicide.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Right, and any of these problems can actually follow children
into adulthood. You have a lot of people that will
go to therapy for years and years and years to
undo the harms. And because what might happen is it's
not just oh, this was hurtful. What ends up happening
is they might hear it so much they might internalize
those things. They might create scripts and rules for themselves
that are from the bully that are like, maybe I

(39:10):
am too tall, maybe I am this, maybe I am that,
because that person said it so often, and so it
creates a lot of really confusing and complex kinds of
relationships with social structures and people.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah. Absolutely, Now anyone can be a victim of bullying.
Because we're trying to think, like, what is the profile
of someone who's going to be the victim of a bully,
It kind of can be anyone. Bullies might specifically target
easy prey, such as someone perceived to be in a
lower social class, or are younger, or have few friends,

(39:43):
or are shorter, or in your case, are taller, or
in some other way they stand out they are different
from the peer group, and so that can be a
way a thing that paints a target on their back
for people who are.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Already likely to be bullies, and sometimes they have a
specific target. Sometimes it was someone who happens to get
in their way. Sometimes bullies are seeking specific retribution, and
bullies might even bully other bullies. As an example, you
can watch Elon Musk and Steve Bannon go back and forth,
which is, you know, you don't want to watch that
because it's effectively like you'd probably rather not have eyes

(40:20):
than do that. But that is a thing that you
are that you can see is like one bully against
another bully, and they just it's kind of like a
snake eating its own tail.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
And of course this probably goes without saying, but we're
going to say it anyway. The most important thing to
note is that the victim is never to blame the bullied.
The person being bullied does not deserve to be bullied.
Maybe with that exception of Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, again,
don't want to watch it, don't mind if it plays
itself out. It doesn't matter whether the bully perceives the

(40:51):
victim to deserve it or not. The victim of bullying
is not at fault like and I think that a
lot of times, as you mentioned, they can internalize at
bullying as them being at fault. They caused it, or
they didn't avoid it well enough, or or whatever reason.
It would just it's important to communicate that they're not
at fault, that it's never okay to bully people.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
I mean, like legitimately, I heard so often that I
was so tall from so many people that like when
I go to concerts and shows, I make sure to
stand in the back because I don't want to be
an inconvenience to people because I am so much taller
than people. Like, So that is like, I mean, like
I'm also I recognize that, and I've reframed that to
be like I'm being considerate, so I'm not like being
the jerk that's blocking somebody's view, but like it is

(41:35):
like also in the back of my ham eye and
somebody going this tall, this tall freak, you know, there's
just in front of me, blah blah blah blah. I
could hear that like that language, and I've had to
like do some work to reframe that.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Oh, Pushane, yeah, be nice to me.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
I'm not you specifically, Abraham, You're always nice to me,
but everybody else be nice to me, we did get
I do gotta say, uh, we did get a comment
that I thought was pretty wonderful on on one of
our on our episode about ivy leagues, one of our
Australian listeners said that I said Havid like an Australian
would say it, and that felt pretty good.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
Oh that's great. Love that.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah, nice, thank you for that. So yeah, send the
compliments in. That's what we should do. Don't don't send
complaints in, send more compliments in. We love that.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Well, I mean I accept constructive criticism of course, yes,
of course. Well we've been complaining about bullying and let's
talk about how you might deal with that sort of thing.
So there have been many strategies to manage or try
and mitigate or even prevent bullying in schools and workplaces.
But one of the toughest things, as I mentioned before,

(42:40):
is even recognizing that it is happening. Because it can
be sneaky, it can be hidden, it can be insidious oftentimes,
like because it's so clearly inappropriate and a violation of
expectations and taboos. Bullies will often be pretty good at
hiding what they're doing, and so it's very likely to
go unnoticed unless you catch it in the right moment.

(43:03):
So in schools, teachers, as I mentioned, they're trying to
determine whether what they're witnessing is normal childhood teasing and
play or whether it has crossed that line into bullying
and what if anything they can or should be doing
about it. And so for this reason, bullying is very
very underreported.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yeah, and so speaking of dealing with bullying, I don't
know whatever advice you ever got, but growing up, my
dad always told me that if you got bullied and
you were cornered, hit them in the nose. And I
was like, I'm not gonna I mean, I'm not gonna
fight because I'm bigger than everybody. But like he's like,
well you hear knows, no bleeding in their eyes, all
tear up, and you'll be able to get away. I'm like,
that's sure, but I'm not gonna do that. So, like

(43:43):
dealing with so, what we're saying is that's not a
recommendation for everybody. Don't hit people. We don't have to.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Okay, that's not the advice that I got. But interesting, okay, ah, Yeah,
my dad.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Was a scrapper, like he grew up, he grew up
in a tough neighborhood. He was a scrapper. He's from Pittsburgh,
so you know, it's like Steel City folks, are you know.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
One hundred percent? No, I think the culture in this
in the world has shifted from where it was at
when people were all suffering brain damage from lead poisoning
and just general lack of any education whatsoever. Not that
that I'm describing your dad, but I think like there
was a period in time where violence was just more
normal than it is today.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, it was, it was a way, It was the
way of the world.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
So yeah, I mean they're trying to bring it back,
and maybe they'll succeed, but but that maybe maybe this
will feel in five years or four years or one
year like a weird archaic thing to say about how
violence isn't normal when everybody's just beating up everybody.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, some teachers went as far
as lecturing victims of bullying to not tattle on their peers,
effectively reinforcing the bullying and revictimizing the students. So they're
basically making it feel making the victim feel like it's
their fault. You shouldn't tell on them and then siding
with the bully effectively, Oh that's just normal blah blah
blah blah blah, and then leaving that person to suffer

(44:59):
in silence or suffer alone the slings and arrows of
the bully and effectively kind of perpetuating this bully culture.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, one one of the most beautifully
simple litmus tests for the ambiguity that comes with witnessing
these things is like, if the student comes and complains
about being bullied, I'm like, just take it seriously, because, like,
if it is the sort of normal rough housing and
horseplay whatever that is, people messing around, like they're not

(45:29):
going to come and complain about being bullied, So like,
just take that seriously, and like you will be helping
at least somewhat. Now. Very commonly, historically, strategies around bullying
have been really reactive, which is mostly to say, like,
watch for it to happen, when it happens, punish the

(45:49):
bully for it happening. But the effectiveness of that strategy
has been middling at best, which is to say, like
it seems like it was about as effective as doing nothing,
and possibly did worse than nothing. We're not sure, but
it was not a productive way to manage it right now.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
One early strategy that was adopted was to try to
involve more people when bullying took place and to conduct
peer mediated conflict resolution, so that is, to bring friends
into the fray and include a lot of people. But
this not only didn't work, it largely backfired and increased bullying.
One of the given reasons for this was that kids
are susceptible to peer influence and having them participate in

(46:31):
the mediation increase their participation in the bullying millieu.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Yes. Now important to note this can be misinterpreted to
mean that you shouldn't report bullying. That is false. You
should report bullying. But what we should not necessarily do
is let's take these two people who have had this
feud and then bring all their friends into it as well.
That is not the way to do it right. Preventative strategies,

(46:56):
as always, tend to be much more successful among the
various anti bullying campaigns. One ingredient that's really common, and
I mean there are a lot of them, and a
lot of them have this element and the prevention strategies
is focusing on social and emotional learning.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Oh, you don't say that in Florida, that's right.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
No, No, in Florida, it's just kick them in the
shins and everyone's got broken shins.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Bunch of them in the nose, bunch of in the nose.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
Yeah, punch them in the nose. I don't know, I
should have gone right to that.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
So SEL social emotional learning. This includes teaching emotional regulation,
relationship management, empathy, and perspective taking. This might look like
having students talk about their emotions and give details and examples.
It might also include imagining other people's perspectives and emotions.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
Yeah, I mean you can kind of imagine how this
might be effective if students are learning to recognize when
their own emotions are running high and that they can
do something about that, how they can effectively maintain friends
without feeling that they need to bully people to gain
that status and maintain that friend group. And also to
like be reflective on how and understand how their actions

(48:05):
impact others. And so just those ingredients of like, imagine
this happens to you. Would you also want that to
be the case? Probably not? And like always be warned that,
like the tables can turn in these circumstances. When you
introduce violence, you increase the risk of violence happening to you.
If you introduce kindness and peace, you increase the risk

(48:29):
of kindness and peace happening to you. The tables turn
like you bring to that situation what you're going to
get out of it as well?

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Right, I mean, like I'd love to practice this perspective
taking real quick. If you're good with.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
That, let's practice.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah. So like imagine, imagine you are working with a teacher,
You're kind of working through these things. You're working on
perspective taking, and somebody says, Okay, we're gonna talk about
emotions today. We've talked about emotions when you are playing
games and you're doing well. We've talked about emotions when
you get really good grades. How would you react or
how would you feel what emotions bubble up when you
hear ads.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Well, Shane, I feel bad.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
I love I love that. Like our career is like, hey,
we're gonna try to make this podcast work, and then
we just talk trash about the one thing, like one
of the things that helps give us revenue. It's like, yeah,
the entire time, it's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
It's very possible that it adversely affects us, and I
don't know. And I feel like at this point, like
it's become sort of our brand. Like if we were
to start cow telling to add advertisers now, then like
people would be like that's not authentic, and like we
have fun with it. So I feel like it's almost
like weird al making fun of your of your song. Yeah,
is you should look at it as like we're bringing

(49:54):
you into the brand by insulting you to your face
because you're making us do something something terrible. The people
we like, yeah and like thank you for the money,
but also you suck.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. So let's go back and talk
a little bit about the social emotional learning and kind
of this uses as a proactive strategy. So this can
effectively be coupled with strategies that acknowledge and reward students
for peaceful and effective conflict resolution and other appropriate social interactions.
So as an example, a meta analysis in twenty eleven

(50:28):
reviewed data from two hundred and seventy thousand plus students
across two hundred schools and reported that students experiencing the
SEL approach had few conduct problems, more positive social behaviors
and even higher grades.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
That's a lot of bang for your book for some
basic prevention. Right as I'm like, you reduce office referrals
and students perform better, feels like a worthwhile investment, even
it's just time, so can that. I guess it is
important to note that this SEL approach seems to be

(51:06):
most effective for younger students eighth grade, and younger eighth
grade's kind of on the cusp of this not working
any longer. So the basic skill building was more effective
with students, and possibly for the reason that they're kind
of still navigating social dynamics and building those social skills,
Like they're still learning to even respond to the sort

(51:27):
of social cues from people in their environment. So it
kind of makes sense that like this is going to
be the kind of intervention that's most successful with them,
because like that's the point where they're at and they're
learning versus kids who are older than that are kind
of past that point, and so this is like trying
to retread new ground that they've already sort of been over.
Like I'm not repaving that driveway. It's done now, so

(51:50):
let's move.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
On right exactly, And as students get older, they've kind
of already developed a lot of strategies and orientations that
they're going to have and with respect the social skills,
so they've already we've got some established routine stuff that
works for them, stuff doesn't work for them, and they've
kind of already they've been doing that for some time.
They've got longer learning histories effectively, So instead, what they
found is that programs that were more effective for teenagers

(52:12):
focused on things like individual identity development, where they would
do things like reviewing the history of groups who have
been discriminated against and using the team's burgeoning sense of
responsibility to make an impact toward positive social engagement. So basically,
what they're trying to look at is like, you're already
passed the part where we could teach you these skills
in a different way, like or at least like the
simple basic skills, and you've probably already established some skills

(52:35):
that work. What we're going to do is we're going
to shift the focus a little bit. We're going to
turn into making sure that you are self confident in
who you are. We're going to talk about putting you
as a context of self in the context of these
other things and talking about how you relate to these
social situations and not just the behaviors that you engage in,
but who you are in relation to these people exactly.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
I think that it's an opportunity to leverage that at
that age, people are starting to get clearer on and
more oriented to what their values are, right, and you
can kind of lean on that to help show like
this is like place this line of activities in line
with where your values are, and you'll see that, like

(53:14):
there are better ways to go that you are going
to appreciate that you handle it this way in the
future and not look back on it and sort of
be filled with regret that you could have made different choices.
So like, just be thinking about your values and involving
teachers in this campaign kind of across all grades is
really important as well, particularly as teachers may accidentally further

(53:37):
participate and bullying unknowingly. Teachers need to recognize signs of
bullying and know how to respond effectively. And also, like
I think teachers are when we're talking about in schools
in particular, they're on like the front lines of the
first people who will have an opportunity to observe this
a lot of the time, not always, but a lot
of the time. Now there is an important caveat here

(54:00):
where they specifically found some strategies for teachers to use.
It was like, here's like a sort of flow chart
of things that you can or should do when you
see this conflict arise. And when they implemented this, they
implemented it in a few different countries. The two that
I saw some specific data for were Finland and in
the United States. And in Finland it worked really well.

(54:21):
They had like spectacular outcomes reduction and bullying, all the
same benefits as the other the sel stuff with younger kids,
but it had almost no effect in the United States
at all. And the researchers actually hypothesize here that it
was because in the United States the teachers were just
stretched so thin in terms of their time and energy
and resources that they just lacked the bandwidth to take

(54:44):
on the intervention with the kind of integrity it needed
with all of the components being implemented with fidelity for
it to be successful. And so it was like it
was almost like doing nothing. It was like basically that effective.
It's like you had to have the whole package.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Right, That goes kind of like to like. A final
point that I'd like to make is that the most
important thing here is that talking about strategies is not enough.
Talking is not teaching, Talking is not doing. There has
to be active prevention and response strategies in place. There
has to be resources to be able to do that.
There has to be an emphasis on positive social interactions

(55:21):
and a wide net of detection. So there needs to
be some expectation of what these bullying behaviors are versus
what they aren't, how to intervene on them, how to
prevent them, all these things. It has to be kind
of a not kind of It has to be a
very active process to have any sort of true effect.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Yeah, and I think, you know, when we support all students,
I think we reduce those conditions under which bullying is
likely develop in the first place. With one major caveat,
which is I think there are these people who are
the sort of hyper masculine and simultaneously incredibly fragile, people

(55:58):
who specifically each their children to be aggressive, violent, selfish
into like a dominant I guess as sort of how
is the values they try and impart to their kids
those kids, I think we're gonna have to just do
our best to reach by suggesting alternatives, like we don't

(56:19):
need to let the fragile overtures of their past bleed
into yet another generation and can teach them like we
can do better than this, Like some people they had
a bad upbringing, they're raised incorrectly, they're trying to raise
you incorrectly. We can do better, just help move away
from that. So the better we do it insulating everyone,

(56:42):
the more everyone sort of benefits from that. And that
could be a sort of tough, uphill battle with a
culture that right now feels like it's largely supporting aggression,
violence and victimizing people. And so let's keep doing our
best to move away from that and call out the
people who are pushing for that because they are wrong.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Mark Zuckerberg right nailed it. Take that and the.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Variety of other people who kind of just suck who'd
have way too much power right now. But anyway, I
think that is what we mostly have to say on bullying.
As I mentioned, this is a pretty broad overview. We
could take any one of those those prevention or intervention
strategies and just dig in on that. We could really
talk about like the history of how Bullyan emerges. But

(57:30):
I feel like I felt pretty good about covering it
this way because I feel like it does capture most things.
It just lacks specific detail, but it still felt like
it was It was giving me a pretty good overview
to the level which I was was trying to attain today.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Yeah, I thought you nailed it.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
Okay, thanks, Well, if you think I nailed it, then
you can email me and tell me that, or you
can give me other constructive feedback or the whole team.
You can email us directly at info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com.
You can also reach us on the social media platforms,
mostly Blue Sky. I'm not sure how much time we
have left on Meta any longer or Facebook give you.

(58:07):
That also is flushing itself down the toilet rapidly, but
we'll see, We'll see how things shake out. You know,
I even gave Twitter a chance for a moment before
when Musk took over, but the toilet flushing was complete,
and now it is just a septic tank, yes, and
one that badly needs purging. Anyway, you can reach out
to us on those platforms. That was more of a

(58:31):
stand I needed to take when simply advertising that we
are available for communication. But if you made it this
far and you're joining us for the first time, thank
you so much. We're happy to have you here. If
you're a returning customer, then we're glad you stuck around.
You can support us by going over to patreon dot
com and if you do that, let me add the
whole thing patreon dot com slash WWD WWD podcast. If

(58:53):
you do that, you'll get all kinds of goodies, You'll
get bonus content at free content, early content, all kinds
of stuff and really helps us continue doing the show.
And every full length episode, I'm gonna read your name
and it goes a little something like this. Mike m Megan,
Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian, Ashley, and Kiara.

(59:15):
Thank you all so much. We really really appreciate your support.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Yeah, we love you to pieces exactly.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
And if you don't want to support us financially, or
if you do but you don't want to join us
on Patreon, you can pick up some merchant our merch store.
Non financial things include leaving a rating and a review,
which we do read, and you can always just tell
a friend like, that's one of the best ways to
spread information about podcasts. There are just so so, so
so so many podcasts, yes, and all of them are

(59:45):
advertising telling you to check out their podcast. But when
your friend says, hey, you should check out this podcast,
you're like, maybe I will, Like that's pretty much the
only way I even really listen to podcasts anymore is
from recommendations from others. So it could help us, but
doing that a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
In addition, my team of people helps make this happen,
writing and fact checking from Shane and myself. Our social
media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and the person who makes
the sounds good is Justin. Thank you Justin and team.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
You're the best and you're the best. When I say
you're the best, I say we're the best, because it's
fair enough.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Speaking of because Emma Wilson, or social media coordinator, she
was looking she was helping to support with our Ivy
League episodes, and she emailed me. So I'm sort of
counting this sort of as a listener mail, but it
is kind of unique because obviously Emma's part of the team. Sure,
I'll just read her her email here. She said, I
just finished listening to your episode on Ivy League Schools.

(01:00:44):
It was a fantastic listen and a specialist. Since I've
been talking with friends about the unseen rewards of working
on public schools, smaller universities, and community colleges, I appreciate
the brief inclusion of the relationship to diversity and thought
you might find this interesting. When looking for a public
domain image for Harvard, this Harvard KKK image is among
the first that pops up. And so she showed me

(01:01:04):
a image search of like a public domains image searches,
and there are like multiple photos of people at Harvard
in clan robes.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Now, to be fair, she did not fact check the
accuracy of the of the labels for those, so it
looks like Harvard. It might not be Harvard, but that
was a thing that popped up. I mean it was
at the top of the search, so yikes, whoops.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Yeah, So take that as you will.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Anyway, Is there anything I missed or anything that you
would like to add before we transition to our recommendations?

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
No, not today.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
All right, Let's do one more ad break then, all right,
and more sounds because we transition things now.

Speaker 1 (01:01:53):
Yeah, recommendations. So a group of friends and I get together.
We play Morkborg, which is like an easier entry to
a Dungeons and Dragons type of role playing tabletop game,
except that it's all black metal and very evil, very evil, very.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
Scary, lovely, so beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
I have a close group of friends. We all play
like every other Friday night, and and every year for
Christmas we get our we get each other Christmas gifts.
But the guy that runs it, he's our dungeon master.
His name is Ray, and he is just a delight.
He got us these really great gifts. Last year he
got his these metal dice that I was like, Wow,
these are just really impressive and incredible and just such

(01:02:39):
a thoughtful gift because I'd been using resin dice. Yeah,
and just for those of you who don't know, they
use like polygonal I think, is what the phrase is
dice where you know, like some of them are like
twenty sided, some of them are four sided, so you
have to have like a set of dice. And there's
about seven different versions of these as like for your
typical play. Well, Ray got us this thing from a

(01:03:00):
a company called hacks Tech hax Tec Hackstech Dice hackstech
dot com is where you go and he got me.
It's a single die that's about the size of a
golf ball, and every side of it it's six sided.
Every side of it has a dial that spins like
a spinner, and it represents one of the seven die

(01:03:20):
that you would have in your normal hand. So instead
of carrying around seven or eight die or whatever, you
can carry around this one and use it for the game.
And it does the same thing. And you don't have
to roll it either, you can just spin it and
then that way you're not losing your dice across the
table and all that stuff. So and hacks Tech has
a bunch of really cool designs and like some unique
types of dice out there, so it's just worth checking out.

(01:03:42):
It's very cool, very interesting. If you're into that world
or if you just like dice, it's a cool place
to check out. So that's my recommendation for this one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
That's really fun. And as a board gamer, I am
enthusiastically curious about this. Yes, so I will be checking
that out. Yeah, I love it all right. I don't
think i've recommended this yet, have I Does this sound familiar? No,
you haven't Okay, I'm recommending a TV show. It is
I don't know. It came in a little while ago.
It is a recent Marvel entry in Disney, and this

(01:04:13):
is Agatha all along. I think you really have to
have watched at the very least WandaVision probably also Doctor
Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but that's maybe it
isn't aside, but at least WandaVision was critically important for
understanding this. And it basically picks up with the which
Agatha in a journey she's sort of going through, and

(01:04:36):
it follows the events of the WandaVision series. And it's
just a fun show. I mean, it's just it leaves
so heavily into the sort of magic and supernatural realm
of like Marvel stuff, that I think it's just very
different from how most other people sort of approach superheroes like.

(01:04:56):
Rather than it being superpowered individuals, it's more about which
cre and witchcraft lore and the sort of supernatural phenomenon.
So if you're into that sort of thing, I think
that you would enjoy it, although as I said, you
probably will really need the context of Wanta Vision for
it to make much sense.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
I thought it was great. It was a lot of
fun to I really enjoyed the season, so hopefully people
are enjoying it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Yeah, yeah, same. That is what we have to say
about TV shows and dice. But as I said, reach
out to us to tell us what your thoughts on
those things. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you
for recording with me today, Shane, thank you to my team,
to our Patreon supporters. Anything else before we wrap up?

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
Nope, I think that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
All right. This is Abraham and this is a Shane.
We're out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
See. Yeah, you've been listening to Why We Do what
we do. You can learn more about this and other
episodes by going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks
for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.

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