Shaming people

[Bini]

I think it's great that so much awareness on bullying has hit mainstream. But what bothers me is how this anti-bullying campaign shames people for not stepping in. Like I said in another thread, we can't judge why a person might avoid a potentially dangerous or outright aggressive situation. There are just too many variables. Maybe that person is a victim of physical abuse themselves and were fearful for their life? But we wouldn't know that. We just see him or her avoiding the situation and being labelled disgusting for not being heroic. I bet that really helps a victim of abuse who is already feeling shame and pretty crappy about themselves. Does this kind of approach bother anyone else?

[Guest]

It only bothered me when it wasn't clear that they guy was bullying and they weren't just in a fight.

In a clear bullying situation, I think people should be ashamed of not saying anything or at least asking others for help.

Notice the part where one girl stepped in to tell him to stop, and that made a guy (bigger and more capable) jump in and try to make it stop. Sometimes it just takes one person, and others will step in to help. Like the mob mentality, reversed.

So yes, I think people do need to realize that we can and should be doing something. I don't think these guys did a very good job though.

[Bini]

It only bothered me when it wasn't clear that they guy was bullying and they weren't just in a fight.

In a clear bullying situation, I think people should be ashamed of not saying anything or at least asking others for help.

Notice the part where one girl stepped in to tell him to stop, and that made a guy (bigger and more capable) jump in and try to make it stop. Sometimes it just takes one person, and others will step in to help. Like the mob mentality, reversed.

So yes, I think people do need to realize that we can and should be doing something. I don't think these guys did a very good job though.

Yes, I don't think we'll see these guys win any academy awards. The acting was pretty horrendous, and I agree, it was hard to distinguish whether it was a verbal dispute or an actual assault. At what point do you dial 911? Also, with these undercover approaches, it doesn't show the number of people that might have avoided the situation but dialled 911.

[Mahone]

A few years ago, I was walking through town with my brother in the early hours in a Saturday morning. A male and female were arguing viciously outside of a pub, both clearly drunk. He became violent quite quickly, was twisting her arm, pulling her hair etc. So I stopped and started walking towards him, although I was at least 60 seconds away from him at this point and he couldn't see me. As I approached them, he walked off at a fast pace, leaving her alone. At that point, she could have walked off in the opposite direction, gone back into the pub, called a friend to come and pick her up or choose any number of alternative and safe scenarios. But she didn't, she ran after him yelling and screaming, hitting him with her handbag and started to attack him.

So I walked off. I'm not going to put my life in danger to protect someone who had their chance to get away, but for whatever stupid reason decided not to. As it turns out, it wasn't a bad decision on my part as the police arrived moments later and found a knife tucked into his jacket.

[Quin]

I'm fairly well known for "speaking crazy" and wading into a lot of emotionally-disturbed confrontations.

My co-workers several years back decided to take advantage of that by setting me up with something similar as a controlled thing for some newbies.

Well, the problem is, Im good at it because Im hypervigilant.

Which means I read emotions/ micro-expressions/ body language/ whatever you want to label it.

Which meant that instead of Quinn doing her Quinn-thang, Im just sitting there with a tolerant expression, laugh, and walk away. I assumed it was drama kids, or friends goofing on each other. Whatever. Not my deal. Didn't find out until later I was "supposed" to,intervene & calm folk down.

Dude.

Next time, tell me.

So... When I see these things... I have to wonder how many of the observers are Just. Like. Me.

They can see its fake.

And so go about their business.

Soooooo many people have highly refined BS Detectors (parents, teachers, cops, EMTs, actors, childhood abuse, etc.) that I really doubt the "results" of a lot of these things.

Q

[NightSG]

I think it's great that so much awareness on bullying has hit mainstream. But what bothers me is how this anti-bullying campaign shames people for not stepping in. Like I said in another thread, we can't judge why a person might avoid a potentially dangerous or outright aggressive situation. There are just too many variables. Maybe that person is a victim of physical abuse themselves and were fearful for their life? But we wouldn't know that. We just see him or her avoiding the situation and being labelled disgusting for not being heroic. I bet that really helps a victim of abuse who is already feeling shame and pretty crappy about themselves. Does this kind of approach bother anyone else?

Another distinct possibility is that the person who doesn't step in may be legally and responsibly armed. Stepping into a situation that isn't already a serious threat while carrying a gun risks it becoming a lethal confrontation if the armed citizen is overpowered. It's also far more tactically sound to stay out of the mess in case someone involved does pull a weapon; a gun loses its advantage over a knife or club at close range.

[Dravin]

I love the one where he threatens to start attacking the person, we have no clue if he was leaving to get a safe distance away to call the cops (the smart thing to do). There is the issue, as Quinn says, if people saw the camera they may have figure it was staged and ignored it appropriately. Also I agree that in quite a few of them the line between physical altercation and verbal bullying is crossed, it is one thing to expect people to intervene in verbal bullying, but if it is a physical altercation expecting intervention (as opposed to reporting) can be unreasonable depending on circumstances.

[Guest]

In my son's 7th grade class, 2 big girls went at it gladiator style... The entire class stepped back and let them duke it out without intervening. My son is trained in martial arts. He didn't do anything to stop it either. The teacher ran out of the room to hail the male PE teacher.

So, I asked my son, you could have stopped the fight, why didn't you? He said (paraphrased) - they both deserved to get beat up so it was perfect actually that they beat each other up... I would have intervened if the fight got too wild that it might have hurt somebody else.

My response... Okay. That makes sense.

[NightSG]

So, I asked my son, you could have stopped the fight, why didn't you? He said (paraphrased) - they both deserved to get beat up so it was perfect actually that they beat each other up... I would have intervened if the fight got too wild that it might have hurt somebody else.

As someone said elsewhere, when the Nazis and the communists are fighting each other, you don't pick a side; you pray for a meteor strike.