"throw him in a new neighborhood where nobody knows his past at all, and I'll bet you the same problem will occur."

I hope there are still neighborhoods where that kind of thing does not occur at all. When I went to school, there were of course popular and not so popular kids, but I don't recall kids having to visit the hospital on a regular basis because of bullying.

I'm not saying he'd end up in hospital if you threw him in any neighborhood. What I mean is, if you change the neighborhood in which he lives but he himself doesn't change at all, he'll be just in as bad a position relatively to the other kids.

Let's say Billy has a GetsInTrouble factor and the neighborhood has a Violence factor. If Billy still has a GetsInTrouble factor of 8/10 but gets into a neighborhood with 1/10, of course he'll be far better off. But he could take matters in his own hands and try to lower his GetsInTrouble factor; taking an assuming posture towards the situation would already be a great first step.

Changing himself would be far more effective than trying to change his environment or worse, letting his mother or other intervenants try.

edit: By the way, I'm not saying that changing his violent environment is not a worthwhile goal. Just that he shouldn't count on it much. If he doesn't count on it, his situation will be better whether the environment change happens or not. But if he counts on it, he's just denying responsibility again and that won't protect him if he ever relocates or if the environment changes again.

Change what you can change. The parents may find changing the environment easier than changing Billy, and Billy may find changing himself easier than changing things around him.

"Probably, about 50% of the fault lies with Billy."

Do you have any unsubstantiated claims that DON'T come from "The Secret"?

Ok, I went overboard with an arbitrary and mostly irrelevant statistic. 25%, 50%, whatever. Does that really invalidate all my points completely? I'm shocked you're getting all that karma for such an obvious refutation while I get almost nothing for a view that might not be common sense or popular but not that far-fetched and more thought-provoking than "oh, poor guy".

I don't know what "The Secret" is, and that one certainly doesn't come from it because it's my own. In any case I came up with this unsubstantiated claim on my own (is it unsubstantiated if it stems from 12 years of first-hand experience?)

Can you elaborate a bit? What was the 50%, at least for you, that caused the bullying?

k, first I'll admit that 78% of statistics are made on the spot ;P

But really, how can you explain that I had mostly the same attitude for 12 years and had the same problems and then I changed pretty fast and the problems went away just as quickly? Coincidence?

If I only had 10% responsibility, seems to me I would have been mostly powerless to change things. I don't think my neighborhood has gotten any more or any less safer than it was. If it wasn't my environment that changed and it wasn't me that did either, yet all the situation changed, how do you explain that?

When I say it's his fault, it's not to put him down, it's to empower him.

Were you empowered by someone else, or did you seize on this yourself?

In my (purely anecdotal) experience, telling someone they have a "choice", or they can change things, ... it does not work very well. That experience of knowing you can reach out and make a choice was something like becoming enlightened. You get it or you don't.

That's the sad thing about it, there's stuff you can't just get told. I know all the things my parents said to help, but it didn't really help at all when they said it, it's just now that it's over that I get what they meant.

I guess you just have to reach a point where you're fed up enough that you want to change for the best, whether it takes a year or 12 to reach your bottom of the barrel.

edit: There's this guy on the street that told me to raise my head instead of looking on the ground, and that kickstarted my process. I know it wouldn't have worked if I hadn't been fed up with my current situation and didn't have a clue I could do something about it. Like, if he had told me that 2 years earlier it wouldn't have had any effect probably. But it's just to say, if you're in deep trouble like Billy my hints might be worthless but for someone farther along, "on the fence", it might help.

So maybe, someone's life situation also has a "tipping point".

I hear ya though. I didn't get beaten up, but I felt like a loser for a long time. It was made worse because I was naturally able to get a lot of things right, the first time. As things got more and more progressively difficult, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to accomplish what I wanted to do.

I was helped though by a lot of fiction writers -- Heinlein, for one. I read Ender's Game annually for a while. But it wasn't until reading Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age that I got thinking I should start writing stuff, as a way to try to pass on what I know now about taking initiative, personal responsibility, etc. that on the off-chance that some teenager scraping the bottom of the barrel gets a hold of my book, it just might be what catalyzes this realization.

Diamond Age was about a primer given to three different girls; the primer was built with nanotech, has a database full of old myths, folklore, and teachings, has sensors to figure out what is going on around itself and the girl that is bonded with it, and is able to generate stories based on what's happening. It was that which lead me to my current studies into Joseph Campbell's works on mythology and folklore. It's also why articles like this has always interested me.

It's also why I like the whole concept of OLPC. I'd like to be able to write something like that Primer, or at least a pale imitation of it.

It also helped that I trained in the martial arts that I did. Martial arts is pretty much obsolete if you measure if by how well you can inflict violence. A gun is a technology allowing someone to inflict more damage with less training time. But as far as a life practice that keeps your ability to take initiative sharp -- something Stephen Covey describes as "sharpening your saw" -- to push past that, "I dun wanna" feeling, martial arts is better for that than a gun.

Since I think you understand this, I'm bringing this out here which I normally wouldn't for Hacker News. There's a Japanese word meaning budo. Transliterated, it means "way of war". I once heard someone explain it to mean, "the art of living well under all circumstances while protecting your interest." That is the context which I was reading the story with the bullying.

The other is the Chinese word, kungfu. It's used in America to mean "martial arts", but it's been mistranslated. ("Wushu" is what you want). Kungfu means refined skill accumulated over time, the integral of effort over time. One teacher I met at a seminar once said, "I don't know why 'kung fu' is translated as 'martial arts' when it really means patience."

I keep hearing people talk about this Ender's Game book. Should I buy one to read? It's gonna be a hard endeavour since I will have to import it (can take up to 2 months to arrive), so is it worthwhile?

It was worth it to me. It's the kind of book you give to a kid who is too brilliant than his own good: smarter than the teachers and authorities around him yet still treated like a second-class citizen and never an adult. All of my friends loved the book. You might be able to find an ebook of it lying around somewhere -- check it out before you import it. You can also read the first n-pages on Amazon.

>- Probably, about 50% of the fault lies with Billy. He will never get out of this hell if he doesn't accept a big part of responsibility. There's a reason he's the only one that gets beat so much and so hard.

I agree with you on all but one point. The solution is not to "make Billy accept a big part of the responsibility". The solution is to put him in a different environment, one where his confidence is allowed to grow. Then, after he feels better about himself, you could talk about what sort of behaviors are likely to attract bullying. I get the feeling that if you told him that he was to blame for his bullying, he would just feel more oppressed.

So how would you change his attitude, and how soon would he see improvements?

Well, I guess I can tell you how I did it. Took me about 4 years I guess.

First, like I said, take responsibility. I don't see how you can go further before you do that. After, you have to realize that you deserve respect. If you really think you don't, then start acting in a way that will make it easier in the future for you to think you deserve respect.

Recognize that if you change enough then you can psychologically detach yourself from your past mistakes: "I just didn't know any better". It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem: You think you are a loser because you act like one, and you act like one because you think you are, and thinking that actually makes you a loser... The important thing is to reverse that downward spiral into an upward one. I think the most important thing is in what direction and at what speed you're going, not where you are on the scale.

That will have a positive impact on your attitude. You'll look less and less at the ground when you walk and more towards the horizon. You'll see better what's ahead and like a good driver, you'll see things coming and be prepared. But you won't need the preparation as much because you have your better attitude. There's a quote somewhere that goes something like: "Plans are worthless, but planning is gold." You'll see that people notice you less and less and random bullies don't seem to recognize you anymore. Since you'll be a much harder target, the ones that know you well will eventually seek an easier one.

Also, don't fall in the trap of just trying to say clever things when people call names. Those who talk shit all day are pretty damn good at it and it's not so much what you say as how you say it. And even then... don't go the reply route, it's useless and will probably just end you in bigger trouble. Oh and also, don't think you can just try the ignore game. Now, if you can't ignore or reply, what can you do (for the transitory phase where you're still not far enough along that people still try their bait)? In that case, just not saying anything and remaining calm much worked well for me. When they talk shit, they're usually saying quite stupid things, and if you don't react their own stupidity will bounce right at their face. They'll look more agitated than you, which will make them look bad. And don't forget that those that call names are not exactly the most winner of all so you can bet on it that they'll choke if you don't. Not sure how much all of this applies in case of physical assaults, but I'm guessing Billy gets more words than fists in his face.

My guess is Billy could have done something like this earlier on, but by now, it's too late. Also, it sounds like his problem has more to do with ADD, being surrounded by assholes, and being weak then problems with his attitude. Having ADD often gets mistaken for being weak-willed, lazy, absent-minded, naive, having the wrong attitude, and so on. But unlike better-known conditions, like Down Syndrome, for instance, people don't hesitate to accuse the person with ADD of being lazy or naive.

I agree. Personally, I view the story of Billy as a basis for discussion on the dynamics of bullying, the idiosyncracies of his particular case are not very important to me. It's almost certain I'll never meet him or have whatever influence on him, ever.

"I'm sure Billy thinks he can't reverse the tide because everyone knows him and how he gets beat. But throw him in a new neighborhood where nobody knows his past at all, and I'll bet you the same problem will occur. That's because he's projecting a bloody image of himself that the sharks will no doubt sniff real quick. "

I've only been rarely picked on as a kid, maybe all of five times that I remember. No one tried more than twice. I made friend with some of them. I pushed around a couple people (psychologically and socially), at least until one of them told me a few years later exactly what I did. (We were walking somewhere, and he opened up to me for some reason).

I agree that there are aggressors that sniff out fear and weakness. This may even be a literal thing, if someone can smell the stink of fear. However, I have no idea if this is what's happening in this specific instance of Billy. You really have to be face-to-face before you can be sure.

Whether or not Billy is giving off the "I'm a victim" signal, counting on the authorities is like looking for a bigger bully. You're reaching for a bigger stick, whether that is in the form of a lawsuit or jail time.

On the flip side of things, the American public education system is not that great. It's biggest flaw, particularly in middle school, is that it sets up the same kind of conditions as found in the Stanford Prison experiment. But that is more of a comment about the teacher-student dynamic than it is about the student-student dynamic. When you come down to it, forcing kids to go to school turns the whole education process into one big babysitting operation, and I think most kids know this at some level. Does that create more opportunities for these kids to get a sick kick?

I have a couple friends that grew up in the Talladega, AL area. Each of them independently told me that people around there are clinically antisocial and borderline-psychopathic. Hell, some are not even "borderline". They each told me that it wasn't just that people are inheriting genetic factors that predispose them to these kind of behavior, there are also environmental factors reinforcing them. The parents there mess with their kids. A common form of entertainment for groups of men is walking around looking for someone to beat up. In other words, you don't walk around in that area unless you're prepared to be physically assaulted.

A number of these issues is thoroughly addressed in Orson Scott Card's book, Ender's Game. Or even Lord of the Flies. Adolescent humor is exactly that. "Heh-heh". Look at Beavis and Butthead or South Park. It's what happens when there's no longer any real coming-of-age rites in a civilized society.

"I have a couple friends that grew up in the Talladega, AL area. Each of them independently told me that people around there are clinically antisocial and borderline-psychopathic. Hell, some are not even "borderline". They each told me that it wasn't just that people are inheriting genetic factors that predispose them to these kind of behavior, there are also environmental factors reinforcing them."

From the article: "She wonders why Billy is the only one getting beaten up"

Apparently not in his case.

'From the article: "She wonders why Billy is the only one getting beaten up"

Apparently not in his case.'

That's still circumstantial.

I'm not saying the kid could use some more personal responsibility and take initiative. We don't even know if the kid really is the only one getting beaten up. From that same article, "A decade ago a Fayetteville student was mercilessly harassed and beaten for being gay. After a complaint was filed with the Office of Civil Rights, the district adopted procedures to promote tolerance and respect — none of which seems to have been of much comfort to Billy Wolfe." And more telling, the mother is the one who is saying Billy is the only one getting beaten up. I don't find parental perception of what is going on at school generally all that reliable. They are about as reliable as school authorities.

What I'm saying is that until I get down to talk to Billy face-to-face, I'm not going to conclude that Billy is giving off the "beat me up" signals. But if that is what is happening, what you are suggesting works. Most people can use a good dose of personal responsibility.