When you are the victim of bullying, word spreads. Word spreads that you can be pushed around and mistreated. I didn't realize this growing up. Even as an adult word can spread about your weakness. Which is why victims of bullying tend to experience trauma over and over again. When word gets out that you're an easy target, people sharpen their knives, and tend to point them at you.

(Look a bit irritated) It tends to fend off potential predators

So there was this thing in my middle school called competition and 2 people needed to go and lay down head to head and one needed to go to the opposites to win the tug of war which everybody watched around the mat I was cheered on and my coach told me I could do but yet he beat me easily I was getting slide from the ground and I never lose and and I'm been doing the weight room and going to planet fitness. now I'm afraid I'm getting made fun of next week what should I do

My freshman year of high school, I was severely bullied by a boy in my grade. I was an easy target for him because I was skinny, poor, and had bad teeth. He would tell me that I was ugly and that I should just end my life. Again, because I was poor, the school never cared what was happening to me, as I wasn't important to them. I wound up self-harming because of him and was almost hospitalized because of it. Though he transferred to a different high school, and I never saw him again, he badly affected my self-esteem.

A majority of my high school years was spent with me self-harming. I struggled taking selfies for a long time because I was insecure about how my teeth looked, and I thought my face looked weird in certain angles. Even during and after I got my braces removed, I still struggled with taking selfies. This past year alone I just got comfortable with posting selfies again on social media.

One night in 2023, I was struggling to go to sleep because his voice was haunting me. I remembered how there was a trend of people searching their bullies and finding out they got karma, and what I found out about him sickened me. When I googled his name, different news articles had the same headlines. Days before Christmas of 2022, he and his baby mama got busted in a city a few hours from where I lived, driving high off synthetic weed with their then two-year-old son in the car. I won't go into full detail, but their son was found in horrible conditions. Besides local news articles talking about them, even different states had an article on them. It even reached international waters as even the U.K had an article written about them. I feel horrible saying this, but it wouldn't surprise me if their son spent his Christmas in the foster care system. It also hit close to home as my now youngest nephew was almost two at the time. I don't know why anyone would do it, but they got bailed out.

I probably won't have kids for various reasons, but if that was my kid, and they did that to my grandchild, I would've left them spend Christmas in jail. I also would've disowned them and fight for full custody and would never let them see their kid again. If I was a friend or family member, I wouldn't help them out and put my money towards helping with their kid's lifelong therapy.

As of tonight, after almost two years of looking at their court updates, I found out that they both had their charges dropped and got their son back. During the time they were trying to get him back, they had another son as well who's now almost the same age his brother was during the crime.

I don't know why people like them can get away with doing such horrible crimes and even allowed to have more children.

I think this goes here? Correct me if it should be in a different subreddit!

The more context I get on the incident near 9 years ago, the less I feel guilty. And the more amused I feel because apparently what I thought was a massively childish move turned out to be a solid slap in the face to manipulative bullies~ And I still live in their heads rent free years later.

what I thought I did: I tried to manipulate my old friend group against someone because I didnt know how to express myself properly. I got caught and my former 3 best friends went for my throat I didnt take accountability. I threw blame and gave excuses.

Then I just...ghosted with a super whiny farewell note.

But as it turns out, my behavior… I thought I was gaslighting myself into thinking they were mistreating me. As it turns out, I was enduring reactive abuse. They were poking and prodding and hitting me with subtle micro aggressions until I finally lashed out.

Am I guiltless? No. I shouldn’t have jumped to manipulation. But I feel like being raised by a narcissist without therapy kinda screwed me there. Not an excuse but it sadly makes sense.

The two who went off on me hardest for my “betrayal” turned out to be in a server all about mean girl behavior. They’d been talking badly about me for ages, making fun of everything I did. One of them even goes so far as collecting evidence in folders on everyone she knows to prove them bad people.

And that one claimed I had once been her best friend…

Nine years later, the one who kept folders still somehow finds me whenever I make a new user on a new platform, blocking me before I even know she exists.

Apparently, they still talked about me for YEARS After I ghosted them until someone flat out said “CAN WE DROP HER FOR FRICKS SAKE”

Meanwhile I was getting my first job, my license, getting my life back on track…

Nine years later, in a fit of manic guilt ridden depression, I leave a donation on two ko-fis. One of the ones semi involved but not fully guilty managed to find me via my PayPal and we reconnected… She told me everything. She apologized for being complicit

I have my best friend back. And I know I wasn’t as toxic as I thought….

If they see this, Mina, I hope you get a life babygirl. And therapy. I don’t think I ever was your bestie. Besties don’t collect evidence of “wrongdoings” on each other.

Py, good on you for your streaming success but I don’t think we can ever mesh again. Not after what I was told about your jealousy issues.

/augh ranty ranty sorry

My daughter is a 15 yr old HS student and this is a classmate. They are not friends but they have some mutual friends. She says she knows he hates her but she doesn’t know why. She hears from her friends that he says mean stuff about her frequently. They have a few classes together but she never talks to him. Today he sent her this message out of nowhere. I’m pretty mad, and it hurt her feelings. My instinct is to track this little shit down and humiliate him. I’m not going to do it of course. I want to tell the principal or counselor but she is saying if I do she won’t come to me with problems like this anymore, which I don’t want obviously. I told her to block him on text and she did, do I just drop it for now?

Was bullied a lot in HS because of my body, or my sexuality, or because I was dumb, or because I was the socially anxious kid who had trouble making friends etc. numerous reasons. It went on for two years, constant humiliation and insults, they wouldn’t mind doing it in-front of the whole class and I was too much of a coward to fight for myself, I just let it happen. Now im out of HS but I dont feel the same anymore, huge parts of my day are spent thinking about all that happened, I feel terrible about my body, my social anxiety has worsened to the point I can’t talk to people at all. Anyone going through the after effects of bullying? What to do to lessen the pain

My younger brother (15 years old) is currently at an international scout event, but instead of a great experience, he is facing bullying, physical abuse, and harassment—not just from some fellow scouts but also from the scout leaders who were sent to protect them.

He called me in distress, saying that:

If he or other scouts report the abuse, their passports might be taken away to prevent them from returning home. Some scouts who informed their parents were punished as retaliation. He is being falsely accused of something he didn’t do so they can justify mistreating him. The scoutmasters, who should ensure their safety, are instead part of the abuse. He deeply regrets ever joining scouting because of this experience. I am not just worried about my brother—I am also worried for any child who will have to go through this in the future. No child should have to suffer this kind of treatment in a movement that is supposed to shape them into better individuals.

I don’t trust the local scouting organization, as I have seen corruption, bribery, and negligence before. Reporting this to them may do nothing or make things worse.

What can I do to protect my brother now while ensuring that no other child has to suffer this in the future? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I am a 28F and just moved back in with my Mom and her boyfriend of 7 years after leaving an abusive relationship of 10 years.

I'm totally rebuilding my life. I didn't talk to my mom for years and had a VERY abusive childhood at the hands of her and my Dad. I reconnected with her out of pure necessity of needing somewhere to go to survive my DV relationship. It should only be for a few months.

I was always the family scapegoat as a child and ever since I've moved in every one has had a problem with ever single thing I do. No one respects my boundaries. I had severe OCD as a child and even things unrelated to my OCD were blamed on me, and that is continued now. A light bulb could go off and I would be berates for that and told it's my fault and it's a "respect" thing. Not only that, but my teen brother gets involved as a mediator without my consent and they have audible family meetings about me every time one of these "incidents" happens.

But the main issue is my mom's boyfriend just straight up bullying me. He'll be super confrontational when my mom's not there about the most minute issues that are bothering him about things I did?, make me cry, and then deny it when she gets home and call me manipulative and tell everyone I was lying. I have resorted to essentially checking in and out of their house everyday like it's a hotel, running straight upstairs as soon as I get home from work so avoid contact with anyone, acting like I don't exist. I told them all I refuse to have any conversations with them in person and it must all be via text so it's written down.

A lot.of his bullying focuses on him just being right. Before I left my DV relationship we set some expectations for when I moved in. I had to agree to sharing all food i bought, not having a lock on my door, etc. Now that I'm here and standing up for myself about these things because they're ridiculous, he's bullying me.

I usually use a travel lock on my door when I sleep because my ex sexually assaulted me often when I slept and it made me feel safe to keep the door lock. Stepdad didn't care.

I told him I need specific food because I have gastric sleeve surgery. He didn't care.

they just didnt know why im on reddit it is because i need to talk to my mom if my internet is not working and im getting 90 and higher scores on my teasts now

https://preview.redd.it/ybqaiilzobge1.png?width=557&format=png&auto=webp&s=12d9e39fa3cd06d30adf6981757b47e819f1b5f1

There was a news article in my town years ago (early 2000's) of a boy and girl walking down a street when two robbers came at them with knives. The boy ran and left the girl to fend for herself. The robbers felt bad for the girl and let her go.

A year goes by, and I somehow find out that the boy who ran away was my current bully at that time. He tried to intimidate me by acting like he was going to punch me in the face, stopping mere mm from my face. But when I didn't flinch or even blink and just looked him in the eye, he asked me why I wasn't afraid.

I told him I am not afraid of cowards and walked away with all his friends laughing at him.

So there was this kid, lets call him Baron, and he was such a jerk. In fifth grade, just playful snowball fights, but now he was the reason why I almost commited su!c!d3. He did not seem to give two f@cks about what happened, when my brother pulled me from the road before a car hit me. We all talked it out, but baron had the audacity to justify his bullying. after a few months, he was making fun of me wearing a full turban, instead of a patka. My religion is sikhism, and we use the turban to keep our hair in place, and its a part of our identity. This f*cking kid had the audacity to say "every day, i see you becoming more of a terrorist". I said "this is a part of the maturing stage, which i see you dont have any idea about." The bus started screaming "OH!!!!". At that point I was decided that I would take this matter in my own hands. The school was not doing anything about it, even defending baron. Today, he said "Why are you always sitting in the back on the one seater of the bus? You listen to music, thats all." I said "I can sit wherever I want and that is not your problem is it? How about the test grade you got?" Then Baron said (i dont exactly remember how it went but oh well) "I hate you so much. I wish you would have let go of your brother, you freak of nature SPED boy. Even your dad said you are stupid." That broke me. I had no words. I was on the verge of crying. I stayed silent for the whole bus drive. I was listening to this song (Dr Dre- I need a doctor) and I was thinking about why I dont have the courage while Dre made a whole recovery from his injuries. I went home crying to my parents. They said they will say this to the school. What should I do tomorrow to get revenge on him and make him look stupid infront of the school? Any ideas to get back at him?

( I allow this to be made into a video as well.)

EDIT: A lot of people call me autistic or sped, I talk normally, so I dont really know my body language or what my behavior is considered sped? I dont look that normal, maybe thats why they call me sped? IDK

A group of boys have bullied me for a while and it's mainly name calling.

I've just been focusing on GCSEs and trying to smash through the last bit of school before I no longer have to be around these people. I did pretty good on mocks and was feeling happy for the first time in ages. Getting into a good sixth form was within reach and that made me so positive.

Today when we were doing press ups in PE, one of the boys grabbed my ankles, another sat on my back and grabbed my arms, then the rest of them gave me a wedgie. It all happened so fast and there was nothing I could do, it was so embarrassing and painful. One of them said ok that's harsh and they stopped. One boy who's the worst bully said keep holding him I wanna rip his boxers off. Before I could try get up they were holding me down again and the boy started pulling my boxers again.

This was in the sports hall with half the year group there. There was a circle of people around me and it was getting bigger cos loads of people were running over to watch. So many people were shouting wedgie and more and more people were coming to see. The boy stopped pulling and I thought ok it's over now. But actually he wrapped his hand around the material pulled up and started pulling again. This time it was much harder and I genuinely wanted to cry cos everyone was just laughing. I kept shouting stop but he didn't, he leaned back and put his full weight into pulling. It hurt like hell but my boxers didn't rip.

That's when he started yanking with his full strength, I had tears in my eyes now cos it was just hurting so bad. He kept yanking and bit by bit it started to rip. Then he did one continuous pull until they ripped clean off.

I thought wedgies only happened in cartoons. So many people made fun of me all day and kept calling me wedgie boy. Now one of the boys posted a video of it on Instagram. Loads of people are sharing it on their stories and making fun of me. I can't sleep now, I'm so scared about school tomorrow. I think bullying will get worse if I report this to my teachers.

Today, this might be the worst day of my life, and I need your help... All my school years until now I was the problem, I had most of my classmates turn on me, being the class clown for subconsciously giving myself therapy for being hated for my mistakes and my teacher manipulating my classmates to turn them on me. I had the same classmates from the first grade to the eight, due to living in a small town knowing eachother. I was always a bad example for everyone those years, but in middleschool as my classmates grew up and changed that teacher, It wasn't that bad. During those years I tried subconsciously again, making them to stop disliking and treating me like I am the problem, this led to me doing many bad things for validation. My parents were divorced and that made it even worse, I was the shortest kid from all the boys being bullied by that mostly. I am a freshman now in my highschool, and I made a restart. I did a terrible mistake yesterday that made my whole 28 other classmates hating and turning on me for snitching them to the geography teacher. The geography teacher (male) made sexual jokes, though they were not too far but they were still innapropiate to the girls from our class, ex: all trenches have girl names and telling us about his teenage years with girls, being with 2 at once, and being also with older girls, the other jokes were personal to 2 girls. After that class, our classmates told our teacher and the principal about it, they said that we should not tell anyone about this, and it escalated to a bad situation for that teacher. I liked the teacher, he was charismatic and explained the lessons well, during the break I saw him and I decided to to alert him by being in trouble with what he did. I saw him in the hall stairs next to our class (my dumbass) and got close to him and tried to tell him the situation. As I moved to his direction and made my first words, I saw one of my classmate sitting in front of our class door. I knew I fucked up seeing her look at us, but I kept telling him what he will face. I didn't tell the girls' name, I tried to keep it personal. After that, today after getting home forgetting about it I looked at the group chat seeing someone finding out and eventually that girl telling that it was me, everyone was insulting and making fun of me, they showed pure hate to me for snitching them. When I saw those messages, I knew it was too late to defend myself, but I still tried to do it, by lying to them trying to help those girls, they still said that I am making myself the victim. Tommorow will be even worse seeing all of them being against me especially having to explain it twice, It will be a nightmare. After not seeing bad things from my parents fighting in a while, I'm finally living a better life than before. But it wasn't for long. I don't know what I should do, should I dm the geography teacher try to help me? I need a suggestion or help ASAP to get through this especially having no one else to ask for help and tell this.

So one day my gf(16) was very upset and I (16)tried asking her the reason,she didn't tell me and i insisted and she shouted on me and started crying... Now I didn't wanted to attract attention so i left for timebeing.. Next day i didn't go to school and i got to know that she had an argument with a girl and all the other girls teamed up and said bad things about her and her character and many other shitty things and she actually started to cry... (Context- Most of the girls at school hate my gf maybe because her mother is teacher in our school but her mom shows no biasness and treats everyone literally equally).... So yea most of the time she even tells me to stay away from her because everyonehat the school hates her and they would eventually hate me too... So rn it's night time and all this happened today at the school... Can you guys please suggest me what can i do in order to support her as tomorrow is my school... And guys since I'm a male and all other would be female so ease suggest some appropriate method so that i can beat the shit out of those bitches... And please no suggestions of telling everything to teachers please coz they would still not stop... Please guys I don't wanna see her like this..

im gonna start by saying where I live im at the end of summer holidays and school starts in about a week.

so in one of the last days of school last year, one of my two bullies "apologised" to me. her "apology" went almost exactly like this:

im sorry for being a bit rude to you in some classes

she was not just a bit rude. she was cruel and mean and bullied me. are she was the lesser of two evils, but not by much. im obviously not gonna accept her "apology", because its stupid, but when we go back to school, I want to have a civil conversation with her and make sure she knows she did more than be a bit rude.

but its complicated because she's good friends with some of my friends, and I don't wanna "start drama." how can I talk to her?

r/\advice deleted this :(

Prefacing by saying I may be autistic, and I need advice on this matter because it's been eating away at me because I physically cannot tell. Social cues are very hard for me and the way I interact with people is based almost entirely on my set of internal rules on how "normal" people act. For example, I always try my best to maintain constant eye contact because otherwise I will probably never look a person in the face. Some people may find that unsettling, but I have no idea how people really feel about me unless they tell me straight up. Case in point, some of my high school experiences (I am now in university) that make me wonder if I was the butt of the joke the whole time and was unaware:

• Went on a school trip abroad for two weeks in grade 11. A girl in grade 12 would always be nice to me and hang around me, which may have been odd because she was very popular and I was (and am) not. She liked to tell me all the gossip and I like to nod in all the right places. I enjoyed the trip, come to find out afterwards she had told a bunch of people we had been hooking up on the trip. I do not know why she would do that, she is very attractive and popular and I am neither.
• Similar situation, girl in my French class would always tell me all her gossip and I would nod along. Sometimes she would purposely lie to me which I would only find out later, not that it really mattered because I never had much of a stake in the drama anyways. She told people we hooked up too, again not sure why because we didn't, she had a boyfriend, and she was way out of my league anyways.
• Guy who was originally a friend of a friend always makes me feel like I'm being made fun of. Every interaction I feel as though I am making a grievous mistake. Specifically when talking to me he does not make any facial expressions in particular. Which is something I do but don't mean to. Our conversations are fundamentally off-putting for no discernible reason. A mutual friend saw him talk to me for the first time and told me afterwards he was flirting with me. This does not make sense. As far as I know he is straight, plus he has a girlfriend.
• Senior prom last year one of my female friends brought her boyfriend and his friend from another school comes too. Whole time after he keeps telling me that he thinks I'm very "chill", over and over, to which others keep laughing. I do not understand this?
• All throughout high school, no matter what people in my friend group I was closest with, all those people had a group chat without me specifically. They didn't try to hide it at all, would talk about how they all had some recent party meanwhile I had no idea about it beforehand and they're saying it in front of me. At the end of grade 12/over the summer I found out the whole friend group had a group chat without me specifically. But I never noticed them acting like they didn't like me at all. And they all had inside jokes that they would laugh at me not understanding when they would say them in front of me.

I'm not very sad about any of these, just deeply confused. Please tell me wtf was going on.

That’s right I put that out there. And that’s what some people’s goal is. What is your opinions on that?

I’ve never been this desperate or terrified in my entire life. I work at a company in texas where I was sexually assaulted by my superior and severely bullied by "his people", and the aftermath has been a nightmare. I’m suffering from severe PTSD—constant nightmares, panic attacks, and a complete loss of trust in the people around me. Worse yet, the workplace has become hostile: colleagues either turn a blind eye or actively spread rumors that I’m “causing trouble.”

I tried to seek help by reporting the assault and the ongoing bullying to HR, but they’ve done next to nothing. They seem more focused on protecting the company’s reputation (and my assailant) than offering any real support or accountability. Meanwhile, I’m left in daily contact with the very person who hurt me, forced to pretend everything is normal while my mental health is falling apart.

I’m not the only victim, either. Several women have come forward with similar experiences, only to face blame, gaslighting, or sudden repercussions—like unwarranted demotions or terminations. I’m at a complete loss. I’ve tried to reach out to lawyers, but legal battles feel daunting and expensive. I’m scared my life will be torn apart even more.

I’m begging for any advice, resources, or support. If anyone has dealt with something like this, please let me know how you got through it. I’m holding on by a thread, hoping this plea for help will bring attention to what’s happening here—and maybe spark the change we so desperately need. Thank you for taking the time to read and for any help you can provide.

Hello all, I’m a concerned bystander. I live in the Adirondacks of New York and there is a video going around social media that made my blood boil. A local, very popular athlete named Ryland Mayette (instagram @ryland_1321) forced a special needs student to smoke weed and drink alcohol, then proceeded to beat him up and force him to get this awful tattoo… it’s pathetic. I have already emailed his coach and principal with the photo and video (the video is uploaded on YouTube under “Ryland Mayette Plattsburgh New York) if you want to see what I’m talking about, absolutely sickening. Anyway, I’m just hoping we can get justice for this poor soul, breaks my heart to hear about this…

Tips to stop British girls picking / bullying me me I have autism and adhd I struggle to not give in I need some advice 15 btw

We know that bullies often "test the water" with lesser transgressions to see how you'll respond. If you don't show a willingness to defend yourself, the bully will only get worse and worse towards you.

My main problem is, I have a difficult time confronting people who were only slightly out of pocket. It seems that if you get legitimatley pissed over a minor slight, it's just going to make you seem unhinged. I've often admired people who can put someone in check without turning it into shouting match or without even showing much emotion. Somehow though, I lack to social skills to execute this. My social and speaking skills have never really been superb, but I'm also so disgusted and angered by bullies that I have a hard time keeping my emotions in check when speaking to them.

Furthermore, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I often persuade myself that a minor slight was unintentional. I think that's a pretty big part of the problem as well. I already suffer from negative thinking, so it seems that acting as though I may always be under attack would only make it worse.

It really shows how negative people can be in bullying.

I'm 25 years old it has been over a decade since I was in school, but to this day I still have ptsd from my bad experiences. I never really fit in due to me having autism I always had a hard time socializing and I just always had quirks about me that made me appear "weird" 3rd to 4th grade is when the real bullying started because I became more notably chubby compared to other kids my age due to my thyroid condition (which I didn't know I had yet) and I started to express myself through fashion,my style choices were rather eccentric I wore colorful makeup with mixed up patterns and mini skirts....so I was teased alot for my appearance, the main memory from that time that stands out most to me is a boy in my class during lunch asked all the boys sitting at the table with him to raise their hands if they think I'm ugly he shouted it loudly and had a smirk on his face I freaking cried my eyes out, that incident is one of the main reasons I still often think I'm not beautiful even though I get way more compliments instead of any insults in adulthood. later on as I reached middle school to early highschool age my style took a shift in the opposite direction I started to wear all black with black dyed hair and at first it was no makeup at all to racoon eyeliner later since I was taking an interest in the goth subculture, this made me get bullied as well people would call me "emo" and I would get the usual satanist comments or people just calling me cringe because they thought I looked like I was trying too hard to be edgy, I was mostly bullied at this time though because I would stand and sit away from everyone, not talk at all and often hid my face because I developed really severe anxiety issues, going to school at all was a challenge, crowds would give me anxiety attacks and I just wanted to be invisible and left alone but people took my behavior as me just being weird and crazy, so I was often mocked and talked about mostly behind my back, the worst thing from this time that affected me the most was my first year of highschool a popular 12th grade boy took photos of me without my knowledge or permission and posted them on twitter to mock me, he had a big following on social media so almost everyone saw it and thought it was hilarious, it hurt so much to be turned into a joke just for simply existing, to have him and several others laugh at me and judge me just because I looked and behaved differently, just because they thought I was weird and ugly. I was up all night thinking of this. I don't think of this daily since I have far more people in my life who like me and accept me as I am now but the memories still come back to haunt me sometimes like emotional scars that won't ever leave. All of it makes me wish I was homeschooled.