People keep making and sharing all this "this person makes perfect comeback to their bully" content and it's fucking stupid because if you're able to successfully turn the tables like that you're not being bullied

Bullying isn't just meanness or hostility or aggression it's a social dynamic of domination and victimisation that's enabled by the entire social environment

The witty riposte or whatever works between people of roughly equal social standing even through a dynamic of enmity or persistent hostility or harassment because the person delivering it is recognised by others as someone capable of winning the interaction

The kid (or whoever) who's being bullied can't do this because their social status is 'target'. You can deliver the sickest burn imaginable and everyone will laugh at you and attack you anyway because you don't have the status to land a blow and have it socially register

I remember the dynamic with the people who bullied me and it wasn't some battle of wits where I kept coming off the worst, it was the thickest cunts saying the dumbest shit to me and everyone gathered around laughing because I was shit and they weren't.

There was no way to win and no point trying and the conceit that there was was just another element of the cruelty.

I don't think there's anything wrong with modelling effective comebacks or whatever, but this has nothing to do with bullying and is of no use whatsoever to anyone who is actually being bullied.

The idea that this is a solution to bullying is at best a fatal misrecognition of what is actually going on, and at worst victim blaming, negligence, or participation in the cruelty.

Bullshitting victims that it is within their power to make it stop with some act of courage or wit does nothing but set them up for humiliating failure and sends the message that what is happening is their fault, the result of some deficiency or failing on their part. It isn't.

Seriously stop doing this to your kids.

Victims don't need to be told to toughen up they need interventions to stop the abuse and support to deal with the harm inflicted.

I'm not a bullying expert and was never successful in confronting these dynamics myself so I can't say what that looks like in practice, but a major thing that would help is to //stop forcing children to be in environments with people who hate them and want to harm them//.

You know who doesn't get bullied? People who aren't forced to be around people who treat them like shit. Bullying is a phenomenon of confinement. It happens in schools for the same reason it happens in prisons.

This is a more political point, but if you want to stop bullying rather than just triage it ultimately that means recognising that schools are carceral institutions and abolishing them. Educational environments aren't often included in anti-carceral discussions but they should be