Bullying and Ganging Up

13. Just Kidding and Ganging Up from Odd Girl Out By Rachel Simmons

            I have experiences being part of an alliance, as well as being the victim of an alliance; surprisingly the one that had the worst effect on me was being part of an alliance.  When I was part of an alliance, it took a while to affect me, but a couple months after what happened, I realized that because of my actions that person will think badly of me for a long time, and possibly the rest of their life.  I had a chance to get their respect, and I blew it because we were a little different and I felt like making fun of their differences.  Unlike most people doing this same assignment, I have the shame to say that it was I who started the alliance.  After a while a started to have regrets about what I was doing, I wanted to start to be nicer, but the people who I dragged into the situation made me believe that the cool thing to do was to continue to gang up on the person.

            The reason people bully others is that bullies feel it is the only way for them to fit in.  What many people don’t realize is that you can get even more respect making friends then you can bullying.  The reason bullies choose not to make friends is because when they see someone that is different they don’t try to be friends with them because they don’t know how to make friends, so they bully them because it amuses their peers.  This form f respect that they get from bullying does not last very long, once the bully stops being mean to the person for the shortest amount of time, nobody has any respect for them because they didn’t care about the bully, they only thought what he was doing was funny.

            The reason people want to hurt their peers is that they feel like they are better and want to prove it to everyone.  When someone sees someone doing something that they think is strange they try to make them stop doing it by making them feel insecure about what they are doing.  What many people don’t realize is that the best way to look cool is to get along with others and respect what they do.