Many of your articles have a theme: "Being likable is a skill. Some people have it, others can learn it."
I have a 12-year-old daughter. Picture Lisa Simpson. Smart, kind, well-meaning but also anxious and a bit of a know-it-all. To other girls, she can be "a lot."
Anyway, I got her this book that really helped her understand herself and social grace. It's called "How to Win Friends and Influence People for Teen Girls."
The hard part too is that it's really hard to explain to kids that feeling socially awkward/anxious in middle school and high school is a pretty universal experience. A lot of kids around you that you don't even talk to much are feeling the exact same thing. Heck, a lot of the kids in the "cool kids" group are actually feeling the same thing and kind of faking it.
It obviously isn't great advice for the immediate here and now to say "don't worry, in like 6 years time, a lot of this stuff will just go away once your peers are actually physically, emotionally and hormonally closer to being actual adults". But it does have the benefit of probably more often then not being true.
As an adult, I found out that one of the most popular kids in my middle school used to eat lunch alone in a bathroom stall crying. Nobody has a good experience during those years.
When I taught school, there were always kids who ate in my classroom. And brought their friends. And when I sub taught after retiring, I remember kids saying "Me and my friends always eat in Ms. So and So's room, will you be there at lunch time?" And I said yes, no way I was going to tell the kids they had to go to the cafeteria where they didn't have a regular table.
I was gifted the OG How to Win Friends and Influence People when I was 12 and it was hands down the best thing that ever happened to me. I learnt to become relatable and now its like a second nature to me. I am so thankful I read that book.
It struck me that when I listed to the "If Books Could kill" episode about "How to Win Friends and Influence People" the review was this book was not that bad and actually good in a lot of places. I know that's damning with faint praise but the entire podcast is built around tearing apart terrible "Airport" books of which "Self Help" are usually a pretty big target for their ire (often quite deservedly).
Good pull quote from end of the episode "Honestly, I sort of ended this book and I ended the biography mostly liking Dale Carnegie. He seems like a good guy. He seems like he started a lot of the threads of self-help that have toxified over time. But most of this book is not toxic. Most of this book is like be nice to people and try to think about other people's needs and don't be shitty".
In other words the real "bad" part of this book is not really the book itself, but rather the fact it was a huge success which meant it spawned a cavalcade of imitators over the next 90 years offering way worse versions of personal self help; whether it's with personal behavior, how to make money or how live healthy. Including a number of straight up grifters basically try to con people for personal gain (our current POTUS is basically a version of this).
Completely! I don’t get when people hate it. It’s the best manual for acing human interaction and teaches you to be natural at it. Carnegie might have been on the “spectrum” as they say. His advice is fun and kind. People are missing out by not reading him.
As someone who has not read the book and does not actually have a real opinion on it, so this is quite possibly 100% wrong, the impression I had was that it is basically advocating phoniness, for being shiny/happy/smiling all the time even when you don't mean it, for flattering people to get them to do what you want, etc.
Absolutely not. He tells us to have a genuine interest in people, to not talk about oneself all the time, many other things.literally what CHH wrote in her article on how she learnt to be more social
Just as it’s wise to diversify your portfolio of investments rather than “putting all your eggs in one basket” so that if any one of them performs poorly, you don’t lose a lot of money, it’s wise to diversify your kids’ social circles so that if your kids are having a hard time in any one of them, they have others they can rely on to get their social needs met.
That said, if your kids are having a hard time in ALL of their social circles, that’s a sign of more serious problems that you need to deal with.
Both my kids are autistic, and both were bullied when they were younger. Honestly it is much easier with boys, because the bullying is so overt that everyone—including school officials—has to acknowledge that it is going on.
Here’s what we did to help our son: We moved to another country. For real! I agreed to move to Prague when my husband got an offer to set up a data science team there so that we could give our son a fresh start. It worked! He wound up with a terrific group of friends, and the senior class elected him to be a graduation speaker. As one teacher put it, “Kids just get him.” He’s now in his mid-20s and has a group of wonderful friends.
Our daughter had a tougher time, because the bullying—which came from a bunch of mean girls—was so subtle that I didn’t even know about it until much later. She bought How to Win Friends and Influence People before starting college, and it definitely helped. She now works in IT helping customers solve their tech issues, and everyone praises her for how friendly and helpful she is.
You're kids lived reality I suspect is in the main true when it comes to boys and girls lived experiences generally. But just some anecdote from my own life to note its not always clear cut.
My own bullying experiences didn't really involve all that much physical hitting. A lot of name calling sure, but sort of mostly just being cut out of friend groups or ostracized. So not bullying per se but bullying adjacent. But I remember when I told my sister my experiences she was surprised how much it sounded like what she saw with girls.
On the other side of the coin. My mother was a high school teacher. And the worst fight(s) (plural) she saw and had to help break up was two girls fighting each other. And it was always over a boy who was so so not worth it.
I'm a big proponent of basing your view on the world on hard data. Too many times in my life I've seen pundits/politicians/celebs use some anecdote to try to claim some thing is way worse a problem or way more common then it really is for example*. But I also keep in mind the 330 million person problem. Meaning if the norm is girls having experiences one way and boys another (it could be bullying, it can be views about relationships/sex, it can be anything) this hides a lot of nuances. Current pertinent one. The two following statements are both true: "Your typical American women has a very negative opinion of Donald Trump. By a large margin, American women think Trump is pretty bad" and "Millions of American women have a very high opinion of Donald Trump and think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. The number of American women who like Donald Trump exceeds the number of people in many many countries around the world"
*recent example, that horrible murder of that 20 year old girl on a bus in North Carolina. Lots of television pundits, owners of social media platforms and POTUS held up this murder as some indicative of what crime was really like or how crime is out of control (and some not so subtle bigoted conclusions about who commits said crimes). When the reason this murder was so striking was how out of the blue and unusual this murder was.
It’s amazing how a little parental levity can help with this stuff, especially with a dose of transgression. My sister was, for a long time, a very small and physically immature kid and you can imagine this caused a lot of problems for her. She was literally just so tiny that she could not keep up with other kids in PE. One day when she was in third grade or so, she started crying at dinner because all the kids had laughed at her when watching her run across the gym and one of her nemeses had shouted out “haha, My walk is your run!” My dad just said “Oh yeah? Well, next time he says that, you just tell him, “Well, my ass is your face.” At which point she of course switched to shrieking with giggles while my mom pretended to be shocked. My sister and I still laugh at this decades later and are honestly kind of impressed that he just came up with that off the cuff.
Those are the details that stick out to me too! Her parents are playful about something serious, and I can imagine how that would make the problem feel more manageable. I grew up in a household that was supportive but also earnest and deadly serious in a way that made my normal childhood struggles feel big. I’m having to be very intentional as a parent to crack a few jokes and let the atmosphere feel a little loose, even when my children confide things that worry me.
Ugh. Middle school. As you all know, I am a resident oldie here, so my experience was with junior high back in the day. I wasn't overtly bullied too much, but I was so anxious that I brought a case of alopecia on myself. Losing half your hair during that horrible period didn't help me much. It grew back, if anyone is interested ; ).
Anyway, it was hard. My parents, being seventies style parents, weren't quite as on top of it as yours were, but they did haul me to every after school activity they could find. Having to integrate myself with new people and learn new skills was extremely good for me. I become almost a social extrovert, and can now talk to almost anyone. It was a long road, though, and I don't think it completely took hold in my life until I was in my late twenties.
I'm glad CHH found her way out of the cauldron, and I am feeling hopeful, reading these comments, that todays parents are more aware and proactive in helping their kids when bullying or general social distress rears its head.
"I become almost a social extrovert, and can now talk to almost anyone." I basically have had the same experience and if you told 15 year old me that middle aged me can basically start a conversation with anyone, 15 year old of me might have slapped middle age me across the face and said "are you nuts?"
Hi resident oldie! I am of the same vintage as you, or maybe even older. Did you have to wear gym uniforms in junior high? We had to wear a specific kind of blue one-piece thingy that you ordered from the PE department and you had to put your last name on the back. Then we all had to sit in our "squads" and the person in front (it rotated each week) had to rat on anyone in the squad who was unprepared. That was the worst!
Does anyone really want to go back to those good old days?
Yes, I wore the gym uniform! Ours were stripes with some kind of stretchy jersey shorts that were attached. They held odor, too, just what you wanted. We sat in squads! "How to make gym a nightmare" was the rule of the land.
They got rid of the gym suits my last year. You could wear a t shirt and shorts as long as they were dedicated PE clothes. One day I cheated and wore my favorite t shirt with wide white and turquoise stripes—think like rugby shirt stripes—and the gym teacher called me over, grabbed a permanent market, and wrote my last name on my back, on a white stripe, thus turning it into a dedicated PE shirt. How to make gym a nightmare indeed.
This one brought back flashes of uncomfortable middle school memories. Alas, I've said before that I'm quite similar in some ways to CHH, though perhaps with a bit less of the sexy fashion - but only a bit less (adjusts fishnet pantyhose).
Perhaps because I was a boy, people felt more open to give me critiques like "your jokes aren't funny", "you're really annoying, please stop speaking", and "I had a dream last night that you died, it was a good dream."
My parents didn't really believe in getting me involved in lots of artsy extracurricular activites - mostly because they were usually broke, they only thought sports was a worthwhile activity for a non-gay young man, and they had three sons - only one of whom was sporty and their favorite (spoiler, not me).
But one thing they DID believe in was church - and lots of it! Hallelujah! And that meant youth group. And while I did have some negative youth group experiences (mostly at a terrible church we attended for less than a year), the majority of my youth group experiences were wonderful. The kids at the main church we attended for most of my teen years were great and it felt like a home away from home or at least a respite from the terrors of bullying at school.
I was cool at youth group in a way I wasn't at school. I had friends. I actually looked forward to sundays where we as Southerm Baptists spent literally all day at church (though I'm aware that sounds super lame), because that meant an hour of sunday school in the morning with my friends, an hour of disicpleship class and church cafeteria dinner with my friends, an hour of choir with my friends after that, followed by sitting with my friends in the evening church service laughing at the uncomfortable stories in the Bible like Onan or Tamar.
Most of the older kids in the youth group were actually nice to me and were sort of like unofficial mentors. Nearly all the juniors and seniors had coupled up and they modeled these nice dating relationships for us - which I copied when I got to that age. And the girls seemed to be all beautiful - and they sometimes hugged me.
I simply loved being there because it was the only place I wasn't a complete loser. At home I was the weird son my parents had given up on, and at school I was a loser only fit to be ignored or bullied. At church I mattered. Maybe that's why I still go?
I'm glad your youth church group was supportive, and fun, too.
It's interesting how those early experiences shape us. I still think about the nun telling us during our CCD class that "if your parents really loved you, you would be in Catholic school and wouldn't have to give up your Saturday mornings."
I know that other people have had bad experiences with religion. I just happened to have an overall positive experience (though some negative experiences happened too).
Growing up I always thought that Catholicism was so much more highbrow and thoughtful and dignified than the informal Evangelicalism in which I was raised - but I realize now that this was just my impression from movies and TV.
Turns out that there were some really good reasons that Martin Luther nailed those theses!
“All they could do was create a separate environment for me—one with real-life kids my age—where I was cool.”
I wish my parents had done this. They kept me in the same small school - around 20 kids per grade in K-6 - with kids who spread sexual rumors about me when I was TEN, and I literally had no other options of people to be friends with. Not even neighborhood kids, because we lived in the country and our nearest neighbors were cows.
I turn 40 in a couple of months, and I still have to work to not give into “learned helplessness.” The ongoing pattern in my childhood was that my parents wouldn’t let me physically leave any place where I was desperately unhappy, and because I didn’t have the skills to deal with those situations, I’d just isolate myself until the school year (or time at camp) ended and I was allowed to go home.
“It’s hard to keep your kid off social media and I won’t pretend to know how. Anecdotally, I’ve seen parents have success banning phones in the bedroom at night. Even after I was allowed to use the Internet, I could only use the family computer in the kitchen. I’m aware this is just not how the world works anymore, but I have seen parents ban all forms of social media until sixteen and have strict limits on screen time, with quite a bit of whining but not a whole lot of Internet-based trauma.”
My oldest child is eleven, so I can’t speak about high schoolers, but if you don’t give younger kids a phone, it’s not that difficult to keep all computer or tablet use in one public room in the house.
My daughter is currently facing this small school problem. Her 5th grade class has only 13 kids, 11 of whom are girls, most of whom have been in the school together since 1st grade or longer. So the social dynamics can be rough sometimes. Fortunately she’s switching to a larger middle school in the fall and I’m optimistic that a fresh start with new faces will help.
CTY is indeed great! I learned both the primary topic of my career (theoretical computer science and Scheme programming) as well as my primary hobby over the subsequent 30 years (ultimate Frisbee) in the same summer. Although, in what is probably a sign about me, I barely remember any of the other kids I was classmates with.
I had my first kiss at CTY, then had 3 years without any romance success in public school before dropping out and going to college early. Definitely a good place for nerds to socialize. Also took a psychology class, then later went to grad school for that but ended up in a different (semi-related) field
I had my first kiss at CTY, then had 3 years without any romance success in public school before dropping out and going to college early. Definitely a good place for nerds to socialize. Also took a psychology class, then later went to grad school for that but ended up in a different (semi-related) field
The trouble is most parents give advice that's very good and applicable for adults, but not for middle school, which is basically a total wild jungle of insecurity and everyone competing to secure their rank and the worst.
Also the way bullying happens for girls is really extremely different than from boys, so the solution is too. There are seriously hundreds of studies on this. Boys bully who they perceive to be weak, it's pure dominance displays and honestly just pretty evil. Only solution is to change schools or maybe back in the day to punch the bully and stand up for yourself, but that's not allowed nowadays.
Girls bully perceived rivals. This is not at all apparent to girls at the time though and they just think it's bc everyone thinks they're lame and doesn't like them, partly bc the bullies are usually quite effective at misleading people about the issue and will NOT make it apparent they're insecure about a perceived rival, they will make it seem that instead the girl is a loser and attempt everything to reduce how much people like her. Hence the making up rumors etc. You may think it was bc you were annoying but actually it is much more likely that other girls actually were threatened by you being too cute, dressing provocatively like you've described you did, probably getting boys' attention, AND being funny and cool. That's like a triple threat and makes girls nervous you're going to knock them off their perch by being funnier and a cooler friend or getting all the boys' attention. Those girls really do get a ton of bullying...which the other girls will promptly deny bc admitting to envy/insecurity in that manner is the most humiliating possible thing. And it probably isn't even conscious for them, in their mind the feelings of hostility just telegraph "she's a stuck up bitch who needs to be taken down a peg or two and deserves it."
I wish I had known that back then, but I didn't. Thinking back, it's so obvious. I wasn't bullied but when I think through the incidents that occurred and the girls who were targeted it was always bc they were perceived as potential rivals for boys attention or friend's attention. One time this very gorgeous and smart girl, also from a family with more money, ran for class president named Christy. Another girl went around after hours and changed all her posters to say "Vote for Crusty [Last Name]", so that's what they all said in the morning when school started...I remember she stayed home from school for a week, she was so upset and embarrassed. Christy was generally though to be stuck up. Thinking back, she wasn't, there was no evidence of it at all, she just threatened some other girls with her banging body and all her other seeming privileges.
Anyway, the solution for boys is to stand up for yourself or just get away from the bullies if it's severe enough by switching schools. For girls it is unfortunately to endear yourself and/or make yourself obviously not a threat to the girls who are worried you'll steal all their friends and boys' attention. Number of ways to do that but they generally work. I realize that doesn't sit right with some people bc it feels immoral to defer to a bully sort of, but I think actually you can have sympathy for the insecurity they're feeling inside. I had one mean friend who constantly ran all of us down and spread rumors behind our backs, which we've discussed as adults like why were we friends with this girl who was so mean to us? The other girls are still mad at her but I have sympathy bc she clearly was just struggling with massive levels of insecurity, which she later grew out of.
I didn't think Mean Girls was at all realistic bc they portrayed Regina as engaging in sort of male-type bullying of the weak and vulnerable, where the bully actually does just think he's better and enjoys dominating the weak and showing everyone else that dominance. With girls it is far, far more likely to be about perceived rivals, insecurity, fear of losing both male and female attention, and envy. This of course is different from when girls are just excluded and ignored. That's different from bullying, that's just other kids not wanting to allocate their social time/investments with someone so low on the totem pole, or afraid it's contagious. But with actually bullying between girls you can virtually guarantee you are making someone feel insecure.
This does not line up with my experience at all. In some situations I was perceived as the 'weakest' and definitely got picked on as some kind of a bonding activity. I was good at retaliating and giving the mean girls a hard time, so I got sufficiently left alone.
I had a friend in college who thought others were mean to her because everyone was "jealous of her" because she dressed sexy. But that wasn't why people didn't like her. They didn't know what to make of her, to start with, and they didn't want to associate with her because it didn't seem like she shared the same values and it felt like they'd be peer-pressured into doing things they weren't comfortable with. She also didn't get how other people thought, so it wasn't a fun experience hanging with her. You could tell she was giving you a compliment because she was so desperate to have friends, and the best move felt like you politely disengaging because... she wasn't being genuine! She didn't actually think your dress was beautiful! Everything she did was a little off. She expected the world to be a very specific kind of place, and, well, it wasn't, so it seemed like she didn't fit in. There were others who might dress similarly and had the same interests, but they could fit that in with the environment. She somehow couldn't. And she would deny this till she was blue in the face, but she spread gossip and rumors herself and carried tales to try to ingratiate herself with different groups of people. She saw it as making conversation. But when you can't read the room, these things happen.
The fundamental issue is not being able to read the room. Some part of it is feeling like you're too good for the room. Some part is feeling like you're not good enough for the room. Some issues definitely are due to other people being mean straight off the bat. But if you're panned by everyone, that ought to involve introspection.
Idk, I always hear people say it's not for this reason, but looking back at the girls I've known that were targeted, from a very far removed 25 year advance at this point, I think that is why, even though people made up every other possible reason and I think actually believed the other reasons. Otherwise, it seems like an awful coincidence that they all happened to be sexier than usual and stood out for it, and also many of the things they were allegedly gossiped about personality wise were traits they clearly did not have any worse than anyone else. But also I'm convinced on this point bc a lot of studies they've done where theym researchers map literally every social connection in a middle school, show that girls mostly target perceived rivals, even though the rivalry might be totally made up and not anything the girl is doing. The seeming desperate for friends thing is just natural when everyone's mean to you. It's possible you were not seen as weak as you think you were and actually people thought you were just really cute or smart or whatever struck them as threatening. The girls I knew who got bullied definitely did not think they were being picked on bc they had any power whatsoever, but just because everyone picked on them and girls are mean. But actually boys are far worse as far as truly brutal picking on the most vulnerable. Like I can't remember girls ever bullying an outright homely girl, but boys definitely did.
No no, I was always the smallest and most sensitive, so that made me a target when people wanted to have some fun with their friends and wanted to pick on someone. I had it happen at summer camps and stuff, where we were doing things i wasn't great at (hiking), but rarely/never had it happen at school where I was doing well. I had it happen at college of all places, and I've spoken to the people from back then who have apologized, they were pretty explicit they thought i was the easiest one to pile on.
I went to a majority male college, so it was a pretty small set of girls. There were two sets of girls thanks to the admission policies - girls who tried to be nerdy and girls who tried to be hot. The girl i talked about was not the hottest. There were others who were just as, if not more, hot. She was friends with everyone to start with, but by the end of the first semester, people didn't want to hang with her anymore. She glommed on to me as we were neighbors in the dorm. I didn't mind, and I totally bought her jealousy reason.
But within one semester, I was trying very hard to extricate myself from her grasp because i felt like she was using me for grades and she didn't care about my interests, and definitely didn't look out for me.
And when others were gossiping about her, I'd try to defend her, but I had to admit they made pretty good points, and the jealousy reason didn't hold, like at all. Everyone had some kind of rival, especially with boys, even I did, but I never thought of her as a rival. If I was gossiping about her, it was mostly me processing the weird things that happened when one was around her.
Now when I think back, her issue was that she only knew to make friends in high school by partying with them or talking about clothes and such. Well, now in nerd school in the middle of nowhere where most people are from extremely small towns, that's not how people bond. And she was only used to using the nerdy kids to help with academics, not actually having a genuine friendship. Can't do that in nerd school. And she was so used to minimizing her smarts in social settings, so she didn't want to nerd out with us. That had always been boring behavior to her.
So her entire behavior came off as selfish and condescending, with a side of mean girl sabotage for funsies (she once told me some guy said something about my body which had me depressed for two days.... later I found out that guy likely never said it and that was part of some weird control game of hers).
We're still friends and see each other occasionally. She's still quite selfish and refuses to be interested in much beyond partying, and thankfully has a group of friends who love that. But she's learned to be interested in other people's lives, so that makes her more fun to be around.
Hm, that may be a tendency but it's probably mixed, I remember that our female class bully had this evil, dominant drive you describe for male bullies. She would make very condescending comments and jokes, and I am sure it was born out of insecurity and of the desire to be seen as cool and superior, but I don't think it was only directed towards possible rivals. My friend who got bullied by a group of girls (same bully + her friends), maybe one of them saw her as a rival (because they used to be friends), but for the rest of the group, I think it was more a "fun" thing, a bonding activity. However, I don't remember really horrible things such as spreading false rumors.
I recall a new girl joining our seventh grade class. She was heavyset with bad acne.
Other girls were *vicious*. She was labeled a liar because she claimed to enjoy working out, which was declared impossible for a girl her weight. She was declared disgusting at sleepovers, because, "I don't want her greasy face on my pillow."
Another target of bullying joined our class in eighth grade. Her family had spent years in Kuwait for her parents' petrochemical jobs, and she dressed plainly and was acculturated to a small American expat community rather than to ours. She was derided as socially awkward and caught hell.
Makes sense. I suspect that the overall, well, culture of a given school is a significant factor that influences the risk of bullying. More “jocky,” “preppy,” or “trashy” schools would seem to be more likely to have serious problems with bullying than “nerdy,” “artsy,” or “churchy” schools. It behooves parents to consider that when choosing schools or choosing where to live.
While socioeconomic status is a factor, really rich schools often have bullying problems on par with or worse than poor schools.
And I agree that for all genders, often the surest way to stop bullying is to change schools.
I have been told by a psychiatrist that I'm not autistic, which oddly enough is more autistic-coded than never having that happen to you. I didn't have any real problems with bullying as a child, and in general I had a great childhood. I want to comment on a few things that I suspect in hindsight helped me avoid bullying.
1. As a small child, I was firmly disciplined against "correcting people" (basically the small child version of "well, actually") with explanation that it is really tricky to correct people without making them feel bad. This was obviously beneficial for getting along with people as a child because correcting people about pedantic shit tends to make them dislike you.
2. I was a pretty stoic child. I want to be careful about this one, because (1) it can be really hurtful to a child to tell them to be stoic once bullying has already become intolerable to the child and (2) fake stoicism doesn't work at all (imagine a child responding to a a bully by trying not to cry). But I genuinely think that fewer kids will mess with you if you're less entertaining to mess with, and it's worth understanding that reality. However, I think people don't like it very much when women are stoic, so it may not help much for girls; I can't really know personally.
3. I went to a magnet school in middle school and high school and had a group of nerd friends that I hung out with.
4. I did a lot of activities with my church youth group. My close friends were the nerds at school, but youth group was good experience for socializing with kids with different interests than me. Having non-school friends was already mentioned by CHH. I don't advocate joining a religion just to socialize, there are plenty of secular options like CHH mentioned.
Did they never consider changing schools, or talking to your teachers about bad behaviors from the other kids? Whenever you talk about this, it feels like you got off to a rough start at this school and it just kept being that way. Maybe a fresh start would have helped? Or did they feel like it wouldn't help?
I feel like I was only the main character on bluesky once for like an hour and it was enough to scare me off the site. Not sure if I'm Yglesias-tier main character, but either way, I'd rather not know about it bc it gives me tremendous anxiety.
I honestly find Bluesky’s reputation to be way exaggerated. But also, I am a Jewish lefty who opposes everything Israel is doing but also believes that a)that Hamas and October 7 are bad, actually and b) antisemitism is a real thing that exists and not a Jewish conspiracy and it would be bad to ethnically cleanse the entire Jewish population of the region. This means that I have either blocked or been blocked by many of The Worst People and probably improved my user experience.
I've never even looked at Bluesky and never will (I gave up Twitter about ten years ago, so what would be the point?), but this was an insensitive thing to bring to your attention after an article about bullying.... My apologies! I just happened to look at UnHerd and see my browsing worlds briefly collide.
Ooooh I just realized that was written by Kat Dee- she knows me and has more intel into my Bluesky shenanigans than your average person. Now I get why I was mentioned lol.
I gotta say, feel like the story that BlueSky is overrun by extreme Progressives constantly "cancelling" center left or even legit Progressives is way overstated.
Yes, I know the Will Stancil thing happened where a bunch of people tried somehow claiming that he was somehow part of the problem in Minneapolis when he was doing yeoman's work exposing ICE tactics. But honestly, I see way way more commentators actually pushing back on those extreme progressive voices or noting how absurd they're being. Or to bring it back to one of CCH's recent posts, it's really not at all clear who people like Hasan Piker is speaking for and it seems abundantly clear that only a very small fringe number of people agree with his views. Almost all of the people I've seen on BlueSky, including some pretty proudly "lefty" accounts are calling him some version of a clown (and attacking the Times for making him out to be some bigger force on the left then he really is).
I think the point is, it's clear to me how much of attention extremist voices get on social media is downstream from the fact that lots of people are trying to highlight these voices for their own reasons. I think a lot of people need to step back and ask themselves if what they're doing is creating all sorts of mini "Streisand" effects.
I think what you’re describing is a huge part of why I have such fond memories of college. Think I’ve mentioned before but there are definitely pictures of me in the yearbook sitting completely alone at a lunch table my senior year. So yeah, I feel yah. But this is also why I felt this need to go to a completely new place for college. In retrospect, my worry about “running into” kids I knew from high school probably was unfounded. But needing mentally to have a “reset” I think was quite good for me. Somewhere and something completely new. And of course the other factor why I ended up loving college (and making friends I still am friends with today) is it was a whole lot of geeky kids just like me. Maybe we weren’t geeks about literally every single exact thing. But there was just sort of a “respect” for other people’s geeky tendencies.
Two things that I wonder about as far as how “typical” as to social hierarchies and school experiences that definitely applies to me. I grew up in a town that was reasonably well off. Not super rich but lots of lawyers, small business owners and some doctors. And it was pretty obvious which kids came from richer circumstances when I got to middle and high school. And not surprisingly in retrospect these kids were probably more popular*. Especially in high school these were the kids who didn’t just have cars but had new cars to drive. Also, dressed nicer. I know by definition not everyone on here grew up in the same economic circumstances as me but I’m guessing a lot of you experienced some version of this.
The second that maybe is more unique to me. There was no one else who was the same religion as I was in school. I grew up Baha’i. My school I’d say was like 40% Jewish and like 50% either Catholic or Protestant. I actually don’t remember many issues with my religious affiliation interestingly. But something I realize now but didn’t realize then is a lot of kids knew each other outside of school and had parents who knew each other. To the point I knew multiple kids who would go to Cape Cod in the summer and be at beach houses next to each other (again, grew up in a well off town). I genuinely don’t think it was intentional but this dynamic meant I was sort of naturally excluded from different social groups.
Anyway, another banger post that clearly your male readership can also relate to
* Feel like the movie “Mean Girls” is aging like fine wine. Absolutely an aspect of why Regina George is the queen bee.
If you grew up in the type of environment I am envisioning, a lot of those kids were probably in Sunday School/Catechism/Bat Bar Mitzvah classes together; their families may have been associating with each other a lot. I can see how isolating that would feel.
I feel bad for some of our past selves, but also proud.
1,000% true. Actually can remember kids talking/laughing about that funny thing that happened in CCD class or Jewish summer camps*.
I mean I also wasn't popular for a lot of the "traditional" reasons of course; geeky/gawky kid who is really into history is not exactly a winning formula to be popular or get dates in high school.
Other aspect unique to myself is I was one of the youngest kids in my grade. In fact in a few cases I 13 months younger than some kids in my class. A negligible difference in middle age, but the difference between being 13 years old and 14 years + 1 month is enormous. As a guy, being consistently smaller and skinnier than other kids until I graduated was uh..not great Bob! But was trying to keep my post to stuff that is maybe more universal across genders.
Oh yes. I skipped first grade, and always being a year younger than everyone else definitely made a bad situation worse. I could handle it academically but not socially.
This brings back some not-great memories of middle & high school. Unfortunately my parents did not have the good judgement CHH's parents did, so as a homeschooled kid my socialization options were 1) an incredibly cliquey group of homeschooled kids who had grown up together and called all the other moms in the group "Aunt So-and-so", or 2) an incredibly athletic basketball team*, which is a sport I have very little aptitude in, with the understanding that it was up to us, but if we didn't pick option 2 there would be no bandwidth for any other activities. Not surprisingly, I picked option 2. Surprisingly, I didn't really get bullied, but since the other kids on the team only knew me from the basketball context where I struggled to do a three man weave and never actually contributed in a competitive game, they kind of wrote me off socially which was extremely demoralizing, especially since I also had to do various co-ops, etc with the cliquey group from option 1, where clearly I wasn't likely to make much social headway either. Even without being bullied, it was extremely isolating and difficult and the result was I have almost no good memories of my high school years.
*You might be thinking "How athletic could a homeschooled basketball team be?" Many of the private schools we scheduled games with also thought that, so they would schedule us for their senior night on the assumption that they would dominate and the give the seniors a nice send-off. Unfortunately for them, our team was extremely athletic (a lot of the players got scouted by smaller NCAA schools), which meant we played a lot of senior nights where the game would be a total blowout by halftime and poor seniors on the other team got dunked on several times during their big night. I would sit on the bench until my 1:37 of pity playing time at the very end of the game.
Many of your articles have a theme: "Being likable is a skill. Some people have it, others can learn it."
I have a 12-year-old daughter. Picture Lisa Simpson. Smart, kind, well-meaning but also anxious and a bit of a know-it-all. To other girls, she can be "a lot."
Anyway, I got her this book that really helped her understand herself and social grace. It's called "How to Win Friends and Influence People for Teen Girls."
The hard part too is that it's really hard to explain to kids that feeling socially awkward/anxious in middle school and high school is a pretty universal experience. A lot of kids around you that you don't even talk to much are feeling the exact same thing. Heck, a lot of the kids in the "cool kids" group are actually feeling the same thing and kind of faking it.
It obviously isn't great advice for the immediate here and now to say "don't worry, in like 6 years time, a lot of this stuff will just go away once your peers are actually physically, emotionally and hormonally closer to being actual adults". But it does have the benefit of probably more often then not being true.
As an adult, I found out that one of the most popular kids in my middle school used to eat lunch alone in a bathroom stall crying. Nobody has a good experience during those years.
When I taught school, there were always kids who ate in my classroom. And brought their friends. And when I sub taught after retiring, I remember kids saying "Me and my friends always eat in Ms. So and So's room, will you be there at lunch time?" And I said yes, no way I was going to tell the kids they had to go to the cafeteria where they didn't have a regular table.
The original version of this book helped my daughter too!
I was gifted the OG How to Win Friends and Influence People when I was 12 and it was hands down the best thing that ever happened to me. I learnt to become relatable and now its like a second nature to me. I am so thankful I read that book.
It struck me that when I listed to the "If Books Could kill" episode about "How to Win Friends and Influence People" the review was this book was not that bad and actually good in a lot of places. I know that's damning with faint praise but the entire podcast is built around tearing apart terrible "Airport" books of which "Self Help" are usually a pretty big target for their ire (often quite deservedly).
Good pull quote from end of the episode "Honestly, I sort of ended this book and I ended the biography mostly liking Dale Carnegie. He seems like a good guy. He seems like he started a lot of the threads of self-help that have toxified over time. But most of this book is not toxic. Most of this book is like be nice to people and try to think about other people's needs and don't be shitty".
In other words the real "bad" part of this book is not really the book itself, but rather the fact it was a huge success which meant it spawned a cavalcade of imitators over the next 90 years offering way worse versions of personal self help; whether it's with personal behavior, how to make money or how live healthy. Including a number of straight up grifters basically try to con people for personal gain (our current POTUS is basically a version of this).
Completely! I don’t get when people hate it. It’s the best manual for acing human interaction and teaches you to be natural at it. Carnegie might have been on the “spectrum” as they say. His advice is fun and kind. People are missing out by not reading him.
As someone who has not read the book and does not actually have a real opinion on it, so this is quite possibly 100% wrong, the impression I had was that it is basically advocating phoniness, for being shiny/happy/smiling all the time even when you don't mean it, for flattering people to get them to do what you want, etc.
Absolutely not. He tells us to have a genuine interest in people, to not talk about oneself all the time, many other things.literally what CHH wrote in her article on how she learnt to be more social
Just as it’s wise to diversify your portfolio of investments rather than “putting all your eggs in one basket” so that if any one of them performs poorly, you don’t lose a lot of money, it’s wise to diversify your kids’ social circles so that if your kids are having a hard time in any one of them, they have others they can rely on to get their social needs met.
That said, if your kids are having a hard time in ALL of their social circles, that’s a sign of more serious problems that you need to deal with.
Both my kids are autistic, and both were bullied when they were younger. Honestly it is much easier with boys, because the bullying is so overt that everyone—including school officials—has to acknowledge that it is going on.
Here’s what we did to help our son: We moved to another country. For real! I agreed to move to Prague when my husband got an offer to set up a data science team there so that we could give our son a fresh start. It worked! He wound up with a terrific group of friends, and the senior class elected him to be a graduation speaker. As one teacher put it, “Kids just get him.” He’s now in his mid-20s and has a group of wonderful friends.
Our daughter had a tougher time, because the bullying—which came from a bunch of mean girls—was so subtle that I didn’t even know about it until much later. She bought How to Win Friends and Influence People before starting college, and it definitely helped. She now works in IT helping customers solve their tech issues, and everyone praises her for how friendly and helpful she is.
You're kids lived reality I suspect is in the main true when it comes to boys and girls lived experiences generally. But just some anecdote from my own life to note its not always clear cut.
My own bullying experiences didn't really involve all that much physical hitting. A lot of name calling sure, but sort of mostly just being cut out of friend groups or ostracized. So not bullying per se but bullying adjacent. But I remember when I told my sister my experiences she was surprised how much it sounded like what she saw with girls.
On the other side of the coin. My mother was a high school teacher. And the worst fight(s) (plural) she saw and had to help break up was two girls fighting each other. And it was always over a boy who was so so not worth it.
I'm a big proponent of basing your view on the world on hard data. Too many times in my life I've seen pundits/politicians/celebs use some anecdote to try to claim some thing is way worse a problem or way more common then it really is for example*. But I also keep in mind the 330 million person problem. Meaning if the norm is girls having experiences one way and boys another (it could be bullying, it can be views about relationships/sex, it can be anything) this hides a lot of nuances. Current pertinent one. The two following statements are both true: "Your typical American women has a very negative opinion of Donald Trump. By a large margin, American women think Trump is pretty bad" and "Millions of American women have a very high opinion of Donald Trump and think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. The number of American women who like Donald Trump exceeds the number of people in many many countries around the world"
*recent example, that horrible murder of that 20 year old girl on a bus in North Carolina. Lots of television pundits, owners of social media platforms and POTUS held up this murder as some indicative of what crime was really like or how crime is out of control (and some not so subtle bigoted conclusions about who commits said crimes). When the reason this murder was so striking was how out of the blue and unusual this murder was.
It’s amazing how a little parental levity can help with this stuff, especially with a dose of transgression. My sister was, for a long time, a very small and physically immature kid and you can imagine this caused a lot of problems for her. She was literally just so tiny that she could not keep up with other kids in PE. One day when she was in third grade or so, she started crying at dinner because all the kids had laughed at her when watching her run across the gym and one of her nemeses had shouted out “haha, My walk is your run!” My dad just said “Oh yeah? Well, next time he says that, you just tell him, “Well, my ass is your face.” At which point she of course switched to shrieking with giggles while my mom pretended to be shocked. My sister and I still laugh at this decades later and are honestly kind of impressed that he just came up with that off the cuff.
Those are the details that stick out to me too! Her parents are playful about something serious, and I can imagine how that would make the problem feel more manageable. I grew up in a household that was supportive but also earnest and deadly serious in a way that made my normal childhood struggles feel big. I’m having to be very intentional as a parent to crack a few jokes and let the atmosphere feel a little loose, even when my children confide things that worry me.
I love your dad ; )
Haha me too!
Ugh. Middle school. As you all know, I am a resident oldie here, so my experience was with junior high back in the day. I wasn't overtly bullied too much, but I was so anxious that I brought a case of alopecia on myself. Losing half your hair during that horrible period didn't help me much. It grew back, if anyone is interested ; ).
Anyway, it was hard. My parents, being seventies style parents, weren't quite as on top of it as yours were, but they did haul me to every after school activity they could find. Having to integrate myself with new people and learn new skills was extremely good for me. I become almost a social extrovert, and can now talk to almost anyone. It was a long road, though, and I don't think it completely took hold in my life until I was in my late twenties.
I'm glad CHH found her way out of the cauldron, and I am feeling hopeful, reading these comments, that todays parents are more aware and proactive in helping their kids when bullying or general social distress rears its head.
"I become almost a social extrovert, and can now talk to almost anyone." I basically have had the same experience and if you told 15 year old me that middle aged me can basically start a conversation with anyone, 15 year old of me might have slapped middle age me across the face and said "are you nuts?"
why would he slap you omggg
I'm not sure young me would slap current me. Just more, I think 15 year old me would assume older me must be lying.
Oh good 😅
Hi resident oldie! I am of the same vintage as you, or maybe even older. Did you have to wear gym uniforms in junior high? We had to wear a specific kind of blue one-piece thingy that you ordered from the PE department and you had to put your last name on the back. Then we all had to sit in our "squads" and the person in front (it rotated each week) had to rat on anyone in the squad who was unprepared. That was the worst!
Does anyone really want to go back to those good old days?
Yes, I wore the gym uniform! Ours were stripes with some kind of stretchy jersey shorts that were attached. They held odor, too, just what you wanted. We sat in squads! "How to make gym a nightmare" was the rule of the land.
They got rid of the gym suits my last year. You could wear a t shirt and shorts as long as they were dedicated PE clothes. One day I cheated and wore my favorite t shirt with wide white and turquoise stripes—think like rugby shirt stripes—and the gym teacher called me over, grabbed a permanent market, and wrote my last name on my back, on a white stripe, thus turning it into a dedicated PE shirt. How to make gym a nightmare indeed.
This one brought back flashes of uncomfortable middle school memories. Alas, I've said before that I'm quite similar in some ways to CHH, though perhaps with a bit less of the sexy fashion - but only a bit less (adjusts fishnet pantyhose).
Perhaps because I was a boy, people felt more open to give me critiques like "your jokes aren't funny", "you're really annoying, please stop speaking", and "I had a dream last night that you died, it was a good dream."
My parents didn't really believe in getting me involved in lots of artsy extracurricular activites - mostly because they were usually broke, they only thought sports was a worthwhile activity for a non-gay young man, and they had three sons - only one of whom was sporty and their favorite (spoiler, not me).
But one thing they DID believe in was church - and lots of it! Hallelujah! And that meant youth group. And while I did have some negative youth group experiences (mostly at a terrible church we attended for less than a year), the majority of my youth group experiences were wonderful. The kids at the main church we attended for most of my teen years were great and it felt like a home away from home or at least a respite from the terrors of bullying at school.
I was cool at youth group in a way I wasn't at school. I had friends. I actually looked forward to sundays where we as Southerm Baptists spent literally all day at church (though I'm aware that sounds super lame), because that meant an hour of sunday school in the morning with my friends, an hour of disicpleship class and church cafeteria dinner with my friends, an hour of choir with my friends after that, followed by sitting with my friends in the evening church service laughing at the uncomfortable stories in the Bible like Onan or Tamar.
Most of the older kids in the youth group were actually nice to me and were sort of like unofficial mentors. Nearly all the juniors and seniors had coupled up and they modeled these nice dating relationships for us - which I copied when I got to that age. And the girls seemed to be all beautiful - and they sometimes hugged me.
I simply loved being there because it was the only place I wasn't a complete loser. At home I was the weird son my parents had given up on, and at school I was a loser only fit to be ignored or bullied. At church I mattered. Maybe that's why I still go?
I'm glad your youth church group was supportive, and fun, too.
It's interesting how those early experiences shape us. I still think about the nun telling us during our CCD class that "if your parents really loved you, you would be in Catholic school and wouldn't have to give up your Saturday mornings."
I know that other people have had bad experiences with religion. I just happened to have an overall positive experience (though some negative experiences happened too).
Growing up I always thought that Catholicism was so much more highbrow and thoughtful and dignified than the informal Evangelicalism in which I was raised - but I realize now that this was just my impression from movies and TV.
Turns out that there were some really good reasons that Martin Luther nailed those theses!
Oh Martin Luther had a point!
I did go to high school with the Jesuits, and they are more high minded. Catholicism is the very definition of a mixed bag.
“All they could do was create a separate environment for me—one with real-life kids my age—where I was cool.”
I wish my parents had done this. They kept me in the same small school - around 20 kids per grade in K-6 - with kids who spread sexual rumors about me when I was TEN, and I literally had no other options of people to be friends with. Not even neighborhood kids, because we lived in the country and our nearest neighbors were cows.
I turn 40 in a couple of months, and I still have to work to not give into “learned helplessness.” The ongoing pattern in my childhood was that my parents wouldn’t let me physically leave any place where I was desperately unhappy, and because I didn’t have the skills to deal with those situations, I’d just isolate myself until the school year (or time at camp) ended and I was allowed to go home.
“It’s hard to keep your kid off social media and I won’t pretend to know how. Anecdotally, I’ve seen parents have success banning phones in the bedroom at night. Even after I was allowed to use the Internet, I could only use the family computer in the kitchen. I’m aware this is just not how the world works anymore, but I have seen parents ban all forms of social media until sixteen and have strict limits on screen time, with quite a bit of whining but not a whole lot of Internet-based trauma.”
My oldest child is eleven, so I can’t speak about high schoolers, but if you don’t give younger kids a phone, it’s not that difficult to keep all computer or tablet use in one public room in the house.
My daughter is currently facing this small school problem. Her 5th grade class has only 13 kids, 11 of whom are girls, most of whom have been in the school together since 1st grade or longer. So the social dynamics can be rough sometimes. Fortunately she’s switching to a larger middle school in the fall and I’m optimistic that a fresh start with new faces will help.
Yep they don't get phones, and we took away the tablets.
Their is one laptop in the family room and its password locked. All computer usage is monitored no social media is allowed
CTY is indeed great! I learned both the primary topic of my career (theoretical computer science and Scheme programming) as well as my primary hobby over the subsequent 30 years (ultimate Frisbee) in the same summer. Although, in what is probably a sign about me, I barely remember any of the other kids I was classmates with.
I had my first kiss at CTY, then had 3 years without any romance success in public school before dropping out and going to college early. Definitely a good place for nerds to socialize. Also took a psychology class, then later went to grad school for that but ended up in a different (semi-related) field
I had my first kiss at CTY, then had 3 years without any romance success in public school before dropping out and going to college early. Definitely a good place for nerds to socialize. Also took a psychology class, then later went to grad school for that but ended up in a different (semi-related) field
The trouble is most parents give advice that's very good and applicable for adults, but not for middle school, which is basically a total wild jungle of insecurity and everyone competing to secure their rank and the worst.
Also the way bullying happens for girls is really extremely different than from boys, so the solution is too. There are seriously hundreds of studies on this. Boys bully who they perceive to be weak, it's pure dominance displays and honestly just pretty evil. Only solution is to change schools or maybe back in the day to punch the bully and stand up for yourself, but that's not allowed nowadays.
Girls bully perceived rivals. This is not at all apparent to girls at the time though and they just think it's bc everyone thinks they're lame and doesn't like them, partly bc the bullies are usually quite effective at misleading people about the issue and will NOT make it apparent they're insecure about a perceived rival, they will make it seem that instead the girl is a loser and attempt everything to reduce how much people like her. Hence the making up rumors etc. You may think it was bc you were annoying but actually it is much more likely that other girls actually were threatened by you being too cute, dressing provocatively like you've described you did, probably getting boys' attention, AND being funny and cool. That's like a triple threat and makes girls nervous you're going to knock them off their perch by being funnier and a cooler friend or getting all the boys' attention. Those girls really do get a ton of bullying...which the other girls will promptly deny bc admitting to envy/insecurity in that manner is the most humiliating possible thing. And it probably isn't even conscious for them, in their mind the feelings of hostility just telegraph "she's a stuck up bitch who needs to be taken down a peg or two and deserves it."
I wish I had known that back then, but I didn't. Thinking back, it's so obvious. I wasn't bullied but when I think through the incidents that occurred and the girls who were targeted it was always bc they were perceived as potential rivals for boys attention or friend's attention. One time this very gorgeous and smart girl, also from a family with more money, ran for class president named Christy. Another girl went around after hours and changed all her posters to say "Vote for Crusty [Last Name]", so that's what they all said in the morning when school started...I remember she stayed home from school for a week, she was so upset and embarrassed. Christy was generally though to be stuck up. Thinking back, she wasn't, there was no evidence of it at all, she just threatened some other girls with her banging body and all her other seeming privileges.
Anyway, the solution for boys is to stand up for yourself or just get away from the bullies if it's severe enough by switching schools. For girls it is unfortunately to endear yourself and/or make yourself obviously not a threat to the girls who are worried you'll steal all their friends and boys' attention. Number of ways to do that but they generally work. I realize that doesn't sit right with some people bc it feels immoral to defer to a bully sort of, but I think actually you can have sympathy for the insecurity they're feeling inside. I had one mean friend who constantly ran all of us down and spread rumors behind our backs, which we've discussed as adults like why were we friends with this girl who was so mean to us? The other girls are still mad at her but I have sympathy bc she clearly was just struggling with massive levels of insecurity, which she later grew out of.
I didn't think Mean Girls was at all realistic bc they portrayed Regina as engaging in sort of male-type bullying of the weak and vulnerable, where the bully actually does just think he's better and enjoys dominating the weak and showing everyone else that dominance. With girls it is far, far more likely to be about perceived rivals, insecurity, fear of losing both male and female attention, and envy. This of course is different from when girls are just excluded and ignored. That's different from bullying, that's just other kids not wanting to allocate their social time/investments with someone so low on the totem pole, or afraid it's contagious. But with actually bullying between girls you can virtually guarantee you are making someone feel insecure.
This does not line up with my experience at all. In some situations I was perceived as the 'weakest' and definitely got picked on as some kind of a bonding activity. I was good at retaliating and giving the mean girls a hard time, so I got sufficiently left alone.
I had a friend in college who thought others were mean to her because everyone was "jealous of her" because she dressed sexy. But that wasn't why people didn't like her. They didn't know what to make of her, to start with, and they didn't want to associate with her because it didn't seem like she shared the same values and it felt like they'd be peer-pressured into doing things they weren't comfortable with. She also didn't get how other people thought, so it wasn't a fun experience hanging with her. You could tell she was giving you a compliment because she was so desperate to have friends, and the best move felt like you politely disengaging because... she wasn't being genuine! She didn't actually think your dress was beautiful! Everything she did was a little off. She expected the world to be a very specific kind of place, and, well, it wasn't, so it seemed like she didn't fit in. There were others who might dress similarly and had the same interests, but they could fit that in with the environment. She somehow couldn't. And she would deny this till she was blue in the face, but she spread gossip and rumors herself and carried tales to try to ingratiate herself with different groups of people. She saw it as making conversation. But when you can't read the room, these things happen.
The fundamental issue is not being able to read the room. Some part of it is feeling like you're too good for the room. Some part is feeling like you're not good enough for the room. Some issues definitely are due to other people being mean straight off the bat. But if you're panned by everyone, that ought to involve introspection.
Idk, I always hear people say it's not for this reason, but looking back at the girls I've known that were targeted, from a very far removed 25 year advance at this point, I think that is why, even though people made up every other possible reason and I think actually believed the other reasons. Otherwise, it seems like an awful coincidence that they all happened to be sexier than usual and stood out for it, and also many of the things they were allegedly gossiped about personality wise were traits they clearly did not have any worse than anyone else. But also I'm convinced on this point bc a lot of studies they've done where theym researchers map literally every social connection in a middle school, show that girls mostly target perceived rivals, even though the rivalry might be totally made up and not anything the girl is doing. The seeming desperate for friends thing is just natural when everyone's mean to you. It's possible you were not seen as weak as you think you were and actually people thought you were just really cute or smart or whatever struck them as threatening. The girls I knew who got bullied definitely did not think they were being picked on bc they had any power whatsoever, but just because everyone picked on them and girls are mean. But actually boys are far worse as far as truly brutal picking on the most vulnerable. Like I can't remember girls ever bullying an outright homely girl, but boys definitely did.
No no, I was always the smallest and most sensitive, so that made me a target when people wanted to have some fun with their friends and wanted to pick on someone. I had it happen at summer camps and stuff, where we were doing things i wasn't great at (hiking), but rarely/never had it happen at school where I was doing well. I had it happen at college of all places, and I've spoken to the people from back then who have apologized, they were pretty explicit they thought i was the easiest one to pile on.
I went to a majority male college, so it was a pretty small set of girls. There were two sets of girls thanks to the admission policies - girls who tried to be nerdy and girls who tried to be hot. The girl i talked about was not the hottest. There were others who were just as, if not more, hot. She was friends with everyone to start with, but by the end of the first semester, people didn't want to hang with her anymore. She glommed on to me as we were neighbors in the dorm. I didn't mind, and I totally bought her jealousy reason.
But within one semester, I was trying very hard to extricate myself from her grasp because i felt like she was using me for grades and she didn't care about my interests, and definitely didn't look out for me.
And when others were gossiping about her, I'd try to defend her, but I had to admit they made pretty good points, and the jealousy reason didn't hold, like at all. Everyone had some kind of rival, especially with boys, even I did, but I never thought of her as a rival. If I was gossiping about her, it was mostly me processing the weird things that happened when one was around her.
Now when I think back, her issue was that she only knew to make friends in high school by partying with them or talking about clothes and such. Well, now in nerd school in the middle of nowhere where most people are from extremely small towns, that's not how people bond. And she was only used to using the nerdy kids to help with academics, not actually having a genuine friendship. Can't do that in nerd school. And she was so used to minimizing her smarts in social settings, so she didn't want to nerd out with us. That had always been boring behavior to her.
So her entire behavior came off as selfish and condescending, with a side of mean girl sabotage for funsies (she once told me some guy said something about my body which had me depressed for two days.... later I found out that guy likely never said it and that was part of some weird control game of hers).
We're still friends and see each other occasionally. She's still quite selfish and refuses to be interested in much beyond partying, and thankfully has a group of friends who love that. But she's learned to be interested in other people's lives, so that makes her more fun to be around.
Hm, that may be a tendency but it's probably mixed, I remember that our female class bully had this evil, dominant drive you describe for male bullies. She would make very condescending comments and jokes, and I am sure it was born out of insecurity and of the desire to be seen as cool and superior, but I don't think it was only directed towards possible rivals. My friend who got bullied by a group of girls (same bully + her friends), maybe one of them saw her as a rival (because they used to be friends), but for the rest of the group, I think it was more a "fun" thing, a bonding activity. However, I don't remember really horrible things such as spreading false rumors.
This does not resonate with my experience at all.
I recall a new girl joining our seventh grade class. She was heavyset with bad acne.
Other girls were *vicious*. She was labeled a liar because she claimed to enjoy working out, which was declared impossible for a girl her weight. She was declared disgusting at sleepovers, because, "I don't want her greasy face on my pillow."
Another target of bullying joined our class in eighth grade. Her family had spent years in Kuwait for her parents' petrochemical jobs, and she dressed plainly and was acculturated to a small American expat community rather than to ours. She was derided as socially awkward and caught hell.
Nope, not seeing it.
One of my bullying prevention strategies is moving to a nerdier town to begin with.
That said, I share the attitude that it can work to focus on your child's interests and hobbies and pursue those outside of school.
Makes sense. I suspect that the overall, well, culture of a given school is a significant factor that influences the risk of bullying. More “jocky,” “preppy,” or “trashy” schools would seem to be more likely to have serious problems with bullying than “nerdy,” “artsy,” or “churchy” schools. It behooves parents to consider that when choosing schools or choosing where to live.
While socioeconomic status is a factor, really rich schools often have bullying problems on par with or worse than poor schools.
And I agree that for all genders, often the surest way to stop bullying is to change schools.
I have been told by a psychiatrist that I'm not autistic, which oddly enough is more autistic-coded than never having that happen to you. I didn't have any real problems with bullying as a child, and in general I had a great childhood. I want to comment on a few things that I suspect in hindsight helped me avoid bullying.
1. As a small child, I was firmly disciplined against "correcting people" (basically the small child version of "well, actually") with explanation that it is really tricky to correct people without making them feel bad. This was obviously beneficial for getting along with people as a child because correcting people about pedantic shit tends to make them dislike you.
2. I was a pretty stoic child. I want to be careful about this one, because (1) it can be really hurtful to a child to tell them to be stoic once bullying has already become intolerable to the child and (2) fake stoicism doesn't work at all (imagine a child responding to a a bully by trying not to cry). But I genuinely think that fewer kids will mess with you if you're less entertaining to mess with, and it's worth understanding that reality. However, I think people don't like it very much when women are stoic, so it may not help much for girls; I can't really know personally.
3. I went to a magnet school in middle school and high school and had a group of nerd friends that I hung out with.
4. I did a lot of activities with my church youth group. My close friends were the nerds at school, but youth group was good experience for socializing with kids with different interests than me. Having non-school friends was already mentioned by CHH. I don't advocate joining a religion just to socialize, there are plenty of secular options like CHH mentioned.
Great article.
Did they never consider changing schools, or talking to your teachers about bad behaviors from the other kids? Whenever you talk about this, it feels like you got off to a rough start at this school and it just kept being that way. Maybe a fresh start would have helped? Or did they feel like it wouldn't help?
We did change schools eventually, when I was 14
Apparently you're notably unpopular on Bluesky, CHH:
https://unherd.com/newsroom/cole-allen-wasnt-radicalised-by-bluesky/
Er... congrats?
I feel like I was only the main character on bluesky once for like an hour and it was enough to scare me off the site. Not sure if I'm Yglesias-tier main character, but either way, I'd rather not know about it bc it gives me tremendous anxiety.
I honestly find Bluesky’s reputation to be way exaggerated. But also, I am a Jewish lefty who opposes everything Israel is doing but also believes that a)that Hamas and October 7 are bad, actually and b) antisemitism is a real thing that exists and not a Jewish conspiracy and it would be bad to ethnically cleanse the entire Jewish population of the region. This means that I have either blocked or been blocked by many of The Worst People and probably improved my user experience.
I've never even looked at Bluesky and never will (I gave up Twitter about ten years ago, so what would be the point?), but this was an insensitive thing to bring to your attention after an article about bullying.... My apologies! I just happened to look at UnHerd and see my browsing worlds briefly collide.
Lol no worries I wasn’t offended.
Ooooh I just realized that was written by Kat Dee- she knows me and has more intel into my Bluesky shenanigans than your average person. Now I get why I was mentioned lol.
I gotta say, feel like the story that BlueSky is overrun by extreme Progressives constantly "cancelling" center left or even legit Progressives is way overstated.
Yes, I know the Will Stancil thing happened where a bunch of people tried somehow claiming that he was somehow part of the problem in Minneapolis when he was doing yeoman's work exposing ICE tactics. But honestly, I see way way more commentators actually pushing back on those extreme progressive voices or noting how absurd they're being. Or to bring it back to one of CCH's recent posts, it's really not at all clear who people like Hasan Piker is speaking for and it seems abundantly clear that only a very small fringe number of people agree with his views. Almost all of the people I've seen on BlueSky, including some pretty proudly "lefty" accounts are calling him some version of a clown (and attacking the Times for making him out to be some bigger force on the left then he really is).
I think the point is, it's clear to me how much of attention extremist voices get on social media is downstream from the fact that lots of people are trying to highlight these voices for their own reasons. I think a lot of people need to step back and ask themselves if what they're doing is creating all sorts of mini "Streisand" effects.
I think what you’re describing is a huge part of why I have such fond memories of college. Think I’ve mentioned before but there are definitely pictures of me in the yearbook sitting completely alone at a lunch table my senior year. So yeah, I feel yah. But this is also why I felt this need to go to a completely new place for college. In retrospect, my worry about “running into” kids I knew from high school probably was unfounded. But needing mentally to have a “reset” I think was quite good for me. Somewhere and something completely new. And of course the other factor why I ended up loving college (and making friends I still am friends with today) is it was a whole lot of geeky kids just like me. Maybe we weren’t geeks about literally every single exact thing. But there was just sort of a “respect” for other people’s geeky tendencies.
Two things that I wonder about as far as how “typical” as to social hierarchies and school experiences that definitely applies to me. I grew up in a town that was reasonably well off. Not super rich but lots of lawyers, small business owners and some doctors. And it was pretty obvious which kids came from richer circumstances when I got to middle and high school. And not surprisingly in retrospect these kids were probably more popular*. Especially in high school these were the kids who didn’t just have cars but had new cars to drive. Also, dressed nicer. I know by definition not everyone on here grew up in the same economic circumstances as me but I’m guessing a lot of you experienced some version of this.
The second that maybe is more unique to me. There was no one else who was the same religion as I was in school. I grew up Baha’i. My school I’d say was like 40% Jewish and like 50% either Catholic or Protestant. I actually don’t remember many issues with my religious affiliation interestingly. But something I realize now but didn’t realize then is a lot of kids knew each other outside of school and had parents who knew each other. To the point I knew multiple kids who would go to Cape Cod in the summer and be at beach houses next to each other (again, grew up in a well off town). I genuinely don’t think it was intentional but this dynamic meant I was sort of naturally excluded from different social groups.
Anyway, another banger post that clearly your male readership can also relate to
* Feel like the movie “Mean Girls” is aging like fine wine. Absolutely an aspect of why Regina George is the queen bee.
If you grew up in the type of environment I am envisioning, a lot of those kids were probably in Sunday School/Catechism/Bat Bar Mitzvah classes together; their families may have been associating with each other a lot. I can see how isolating that would feel.
I feel bad for some of our past selves, but also proud.
1,000% true. Actually can remember kids talking/laughing about that funny thing that happened in CCD class or Jewish summer camps*.
I mean I also wasn't popular for a lot of the "traditional" reasons of course; geeky/gawky kid who is really into history is not exactly a winning formula to be popular or get dates in high school.
Other aspect unique to myself is I was one of the youngest kids in my grade. In fact in a few cases I 13 months younger than some kids in my class. A negligible difference in middle age, but the difference between being 13 years old and 14 years + 1 month is enormous. As a guy, being consistently smaller and skinnier than other kids until I graduated was uh..not great Bob! But was trying to keep my post to stuff that is maybe more universal across genders.
Oh yes. I skipped first grade, and always being a year younger than everyone else definitely made a bad situation worse. I could handle it academically but not socially.
This brings back some not-great memories of middle & high school. Unfortunately my parents did not have the good judgement CHH's parents did, so as a homeschooled kid my socialization options were 1) an incredibly cliquey group of homeschooled kids who had grown up together and called all the other moms in the group "Aunt So-and-so", or 2) an incredibly athletic basketball team*, which is a sport I have very little aptitude in, with the understanding that it was up to us, but if we didn't pick option 2 there would be no bandwidth for any other activities. Not surprisingly, I picked option 2. Surprisingly, I didn't really get bullied, but since the other kids on the team only knew me from the basketball context where I struggled to do a three man weave and never actually contributed in a competitive game, they kind of wrote me off socially which was extremely demoralizing, especially since I also had to do various co-ops, etc with the cliquey group from option 1, where clearly I wasn't likely to make much social headway either. Even without being bullied, it was extremely isolating and difficult and the result was I have almost no good memories of my high school years.
*You might be thinking "How athletic could a homeschooled basketball team be?" Many of the private schools we scheduled games with also thought that, so they would schedule us for their senior night on the assumption that they would dominate and the give the seniors a nice send-off. Unfortunately for them, our team was extremely athletic (a lot of the players got scouted by smaller NCAA schools), which meant we played a lot of senior nights where the game would be a total blowout by halftime and poor seniors on the other team got dunked on several times during their big night. I would sit on the bench until my 1:37 of pity playing time at the very end of the game.