VGCollect Forum
General and Gaming => Off Topic => Topic started by: oldgamerz on January 27, 2020, 04:01:31 am
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I was bullied extremely bad in 4th grade but after that, it stopped.
but I never could play with the other students through the entire recess in all of my elementary school years
1st-6th because I would get kicked out of the game when someone else wanted to play, I always was picked last in the gym class. so I just gave up and played by myself at recess, early on.
In elementary school from 1st to 3rd grade I was only considered average. I was not cool or popular, when 4th grade came along I was considered retarded and gay and stupid by literary everyone except for 2 girls in my class. by the time 5th grade came I was so messed up from what happen to me in 4th grade I needed special help in order to advance to 6th grade. but I did so and was somehow, never bullied by other children my age again after 4th grade.
Advancing into middle school I walked tall and am amazed looking back. That all through middle school I never came across a single bully. And I remember later on in 8th grade that guy that was one of the leaders of my bullying in 4th grade apologized to me and I forgave him, years ago. I'm just looking back at my life, I guess you could say a lot of my peers thought I was cool in high school, but when I turned 16 till about 28 I was harassed by college student cyber bullies but that is mentioned in another topic I started on here.
Anyway this is some of my past. I never had any friends in elementary school, just neighborhood punks that liked to come over to my house and rob me.
The main reason why I brought this up is because, I wanted to see what culture differences there were for being consider cool, or the complete opposite. and just to ask a stupid question.
Does anyone remember when the kids of the 1990's used to consider anything and everything they disliked the word Gay? regardless of what anyone even knew what that meant? kids used would say stupid things like
this movie is gay
this video game is gay
this song is gay
this book is gay
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I've never been bullied, but I've never been that popular or considered cool either. I had a few friends throughout school, but to everyone else I was fairly invisible. I've always been pretty introverted so socializing is something that just drains me in general. So I never cared that I didn't have a million friends and admirers growing up. I'm not exactly sure why, but the first year I started college I had a lot of friends, and remember it being exhausting trying to hang out with all of them, having someone who always wanted to hang out or talk, and just in general it felt like a lot of work. I'm one of those people that enjoys having a couple of people I'm very close to and that's pretty much the extent of my social needs.
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I grew up in a town of about 3500 people and any of the schools Elementary/Middle/High housed around 400 or so kids each. Apart from the one guy a grade that would bully everyone, we all knew each other and generally kept it to a minimum. I think the bullying normally stopped whenever the rest of us got bigger and had enough of it. The bullies were generally the guys in the class who had failed a year or two.
As far as being cool. I was an athlete who excelled in Football and baseball, so I was considered cool generally to the grades under me. I never thought of myself as cool or generally kept to my own group of friends. I'd say the years of 5th-8th were the worst for me. I think I'm better off for it as it helped shape me into who I am and also helped make me stand up for myself and my friends. I do thank my lucky stars that social media wasn't a think when I was a kid, though. That crap is poison for the most part.
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I was on a military base until I was 12. There were a couple bullies, but nothing major becuase people moved around a lot- pretty much every new school year meant making new friends becuase most/all of them moved away during the year prior. New kids always got mobbed for a couple weeks while everyone figured out if they'd make a good friend.
Moving was jarring- it hadn't occurred to me until I started my new school that these kids had grown up with each other. They didn't need to talk to me. I think I made one friend during the half of 6th grade I had at that school- who quit talking to me by the beginning of 7th grade. Good LORD, was the first day of 7th grade hard- I won't get into everything, but no one in my class even went to the elementary school I'd done the half-year of 6th grade in. So I was starting from new kid square one, only nobody knew it. I made NO friends for months. I sat alone at lunch. I walked to the corner market my mom worked at, bought a magazine about horses with a pen pal section, and started writing a LOT of letters. Oddly enough, this is also when I got into gaming- a magazine my mom had won a subscription for & didn't update before we moved found us & finished the subscription. Mail was kinda my lifeline then, so the magazine worked its way into that. We couldn't afford new games, but I sure read about them every month!
Eventually things worked out- a girl I'd never seen before suddenly sat across from me at lunch. She had a horse backpack. I told her I liked it. We proceeded to eat lunch together everyday, without speaking, for weeks- until one multi-class PE session saw us sorted next to each other right before we were told to pick partners for something-or-other. We ended up proper friends after that. She got me into Star Wars & introduced me to the internet. Come high school we got put in different classes- but now I had the guts to try & talk to some people, and a gaming magazine I hauled around which helped start conversations. There were attempts at bullying, but nothing ever stuck- I don't think they knew what to do with someone who'd developed a completely different value system than they did. Popularity? Sports? Who cares about that- games & anime are better, and the people are nicer. Hard to bully someone who treats you like the 'nerd'.
You've got me thinking about that magazine again- I actually attribute a lot of how my life is today to that subscription. Those issues helped me make friends, which provided me new interests, which eventually put me in the right place to meet my fiancé. I don't know what any of those editors are doing nowadays, but if some retro con ever does a Game Players reunion and brings the 90s group together again, I NEED to be there. I have a lot to thank them for!
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Gods no. I was the opposite of cool back in the day. Thankfully, I had some amazing friends that were equally uncool. Liking the trifecta of anime, video games, and manga brought us together and cemented our uncoolness.
I was never severely bullied, but since I was short growing up kids would say mean things or try to shove me around. Trust me when I say it's not as bad as it sounds; I would shove right back or say something right back.
I'm thankful that I didn't grow up with social media. The toxicity of all that is going to eff up some youngins, which really worries me.
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I grew up in a small town with less than 2000 people. I had a pretty tight knit group of 4-5 friends back then (because there were only about 20 of us in our entire middle school class), but being in a small group like that meant things would get really clique-y. I also remember how popular it was to call everything "gay" and I think this was around the time social media and cell phones became much more common. Like 2008-2010.
I did one year of high school in NH and moved to Michigan when I was 15. When I started high school in Michigan, I immediately found a home among the theatre and band kids. It was an amazing group of people that instantly made me feel welcomed, so I never had any issues with bullying because I had such a strong base of like-minded nerdy people. Suffice to say, I think I was considered pretty cool back then. I was pretty popular, super involved with many extra-curricular activities, president of my theatre group at the school, Winterfest king my senior year, I definitely had the largest social group back then, that's for sure.
Then when I started nursing school that social life fell off a cliff lol. I was super stressed like all the time, and didn't really have a huge group of friends, maybe 4-5 close ones. And I didn't party or drink at all in college so was never really able to expand my social connections. Not that I regret it skipping out on the party crowd haha.
Now that I'm finishing up grad school I feel happy with my social connections. I have a couple friends from both high school and college that I meet with at least once a year. I have a nice group of friends both in real life across the US and internationally thanks to sites like this and Bulbagarden. Getting back into things like choir have really helped with that too. :)
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My friends thought I was cool. I was invisible or avoided by everybody else haha.
I really didn’t pay much attention to the “bullies”. I stuck with my circle most of the time and could probably handle myself otherwise.
I got along with everyone for the most part. Beer made my teens more enjoyable as well
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Neither. I was one of those weird nobody kids who only hung around the same couple of friends all of the time, and never so much as spoke to the majority of my peers in school to the point that sometimes people would tease me in claiming they'd never heard me speak. I only ever had maybe 1 or 2 friends at a time, and I tended to wreck those friendships for reasons I still don't completely understand. I was a loner essentially, and also was and still am, an introvert. That is I enjoy time spent alone with only my own thoughts, to spending time with other people.
For obvious reasons I was totally picked last on any team, for sure. I would have the odd run-in with a kid who wanted to start crap with me, but it was very rare and I felt like I could hold my own back then, so I wasn't intimidated. For the most part, people just left me alone and I did my own thing.
Regarding the trend of calling everything gay, I totally remember when that was a thing and it's so cringe to think back to now. Using an orientation as a dig is so ignorant and foolish, and reflects so poorly on the person doing it. It's quite jarring now how rapidly this has changed, in that one of my favorite sitcoms from back then, The King of Queens would frequently use the term "gay" as a pejorative in some of the episodes, and it's extremely cringe inducing and feels so out of touch. Disappointing as the writing otherwise I thought was pretty good for a sitcom.
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I thought that calling things gay as a pejorative really took off after that one scene from Community
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I thought that calling things gay as a pejorative really took off after that one scene from Community
Not sure. But I distinctly remember it as common slang on the school yard through out the 90s and early 2000s.
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I thought that calling things gay as a pejorative really took off after that one scene from Community
Not sure. But I distinctly remember it as common slang on the school yard through out the 90s and early 2000s.
Maybe it was because of where I grew up but it really started getting bad in the late 2000s for me.
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this movie is gay
this video game is gay
this song is gay
this book is gay
i can assure you that in 2017-2020 for teens saying everything is gay is still highly popular. that's definitely not something from the past only since in the past few years calling everything gay is pretty popular among teens and kids.
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this movie is gay
this video game is gay
this song is gay
this book is gay
i can assure you that in 2017-2020 for teens saying everything is gay is still highly popular currently. that's definitely not something from the past only since in the past few years calling everything gay is pretty popular among teens and kids.
It must have started where I always lived in the state of Michigan or as I figure, history is repeating itself, I'm 31 and This calling every thing Gay thing is ancient history, I was in 4th grade when this all started to get hot and I was at the brunt of this. some time in the mid to late 1990's
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I played football in high school and baseball from the age of 10 to 18 so I guess I was "cool". The one or two times someone tried to bully me I beat them up.
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I do thank my lucky stars that social media wasn't a think when I was a kid, though. That crap is poison for the most part.
Yeah I was in High School when social media was getting big and it defiantly messed up a decent amount of people.
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I thought that calling things gay as a pejorative really took off after that one scene from Community
Not sure. But I distinctly remember it as common slang on the school yard through out the 90s and early 2000s.
That time sounds about right, although it might vary from region to region as Telly pointed out.
I cringe whenever I hear someone say that in passing. If it's with someone I'm in conversation with, I'm quick to correct them. Luckily, I haven't heard or chatted with anyone about that in years.
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this movie is gay
this video game is gay
this song is gay
this book is gay
i can assure you that in 2017-2020 for teens saying everything is gay is still highly popular. that's definitely not something from the past only since in the past few years calling everything gay is pretty popular among teens and kids.
I don't hang out much around teens or kids these days so you could very well be right :P
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Does anyone remember when the kids of the 1990's used to consider anything and everything they disliked the word Gay? regardless of what anyone even knew what that meant? kids used would say stupid things like
this movie is gay
this video game is gay
this song is gay
this book is gay
I grew up in American suburbs, so, yeah I mean I might have gotten picked on or beat up a few times by older kids in elementary school, but I dished it out too. I was way more afraid and oppressed by a shit kicking father (he's quite reformed now and I love the guy but my childhood was not always fun). It's all relative though. It sounds like from your experience (OP) that my experience wasn't so bad, and I'm empathetic to that.
To your other point though, I do feel some shame over the way I talked, but really can only admit that I was mimicking what I heard. I'm sorry that the things I said probably hurt people. I can't do much about that now except recognize the effect my choice of words has on people and to act with kindness and compassion whenever I can.
I remember saying "gay" in particular really becoming popular once South Park came on the scene, as well as many, many other ridiculous things...
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this movie is gay
this video game is gay
this song is gay
this book is gay
i can assure you that in 2017-2020 for teens saying everything is gay is still highly popular. that's definitely not something from the past only since in the past few years calling everything gay is pretty popular among teens and kids.
I don't hang out much around teens or kids these days so you could very well be right :P
LOL
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Ok so yes I was cool at least most people thought so. And yes I've been bullied before there are always pepole who think that thay are better than you or stronger or smarter than you but I never let it get to me. In my teens I hung out with a pretty rough crowd there was alot of drinking and fighting I got tired of the same bullshit every day.So I stoped hanging around with them and found a new smaller group of friends that didn't feel the need to kick the shit out of each other every day.Supposedly They weren't as cool as my other friends but I didn't care. Their the best friends I've ever had and even though we all have families of our own now we still keep in touch.
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I got picked on a bit at a point, but really wasn't bullied. I never really fit into any grouping, like I had older friends in high school who were the geeky goth types, but I had a friend or two who could be considered cool, but I was still hanging in geeky groupings to talk about anime and games, I did football for two years, I hung out with troublemakers, and I played in a band that played some classic rock and older metal. Then at some point in high school, I was basically 6 foot and 200 pounds, so while I was never intimidating, I wasn't exactly a pushover. Plus I had a good grouping of friends who would back me up if anyone tried to serious bully me, at least one or two I know of who would throw themselves into a fight lol
I got fortunate that high school wasn't terrible for me as it was for others.
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Face
I do thank my lucky stars that social media wasn't a think when I was a kid, though. That crap is poison for the most part.
Yeah I was in High School when social media was getting big and it defiantly messed up a decent amount of people.
From what I believe most of the Facebook audience is people in the ages of their 20's and 30's and older today. but I don't hang out with teens and children either. So I am not 100% sure. Yes there seems to be a lot of negative stuff on some of Facebook still but I don't go to those groups or pages. or profiles.
Facebook is for older people. Not sure if Twitter or Instagram is better or worse.
My Space was around when I was in high school but social media was not around when I was bullied either.
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Up until 4th grade, I did all right socially since I started school with many of the kids. There was an older kid who would verbally bully me, but it stopped after I told the teachers.
During 4th grade we moved to Germany and I attended an international school there (meaning English was the primary language and most students were from other countries). I had a few friends but for the most part I was very unpopular. Always last to be picked for sports, usually spent recess alone. My friends tended to be fellow outcasts. I did run into a few kids who were verbally abusive but nothing horrible.
Moved back to the US in 8th grade, and the Connecticut school I attended was known for being very hard to make friends. Most students there were stuck up dicks. I rarely spoke or interacted with any of them. Forget being picked last, once the 2 kids picking teams for a recess stickball game just flat-out ignored that I was there. There was a big jackass student who would put his hands on me and make obscene phone calls to our house. This was 30 years ago, but nowadays he could get in big trouble for sexual harassment. Fortunately we only lived there for a year.
Finished high school in Georgia, which was overall much friendlier, though throughout high school I was basically invisible. There was one guy who kept messing with me, but one day I told him off and he never bugged me again.
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I played basketball all through high school. So, yes and no. It was kind of a right of passage to get picked on by the older kids. I got thumped in the head and hit with class rings on the daily.
Then, when I got bigger, I did the picking. It’s just the natural order of things.
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in 4th grade the teacher didn't do anything about it, one time my 4th grade teacher got up and left the class and I got into a big fight, I got beat and suspended for 1 week and the bully got suspended for 3 days, luckily my parents knew what happened so they got mad at the school, and didn't punish me.
I am lucky to have had school in the 1990's because if this was earlier in time the school principal would have beaten me, because no matter who I told, at school nobody believed me. Or the teachers didn't want to acknowledge it
my parents saw all the bruises, and there was proof of neglect and abuse, but the school didn't do anything, and as for the cyber bullying? yea I tried to take my own life, because of that, I could not even play a video game without it crashing, or the CD being overwritten and corrupted, the people that were doing this stayed hidden and once again nobody believed me until years later when I was able to get proper connections in my community.
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I thought that calling things gay as a pejorative really took off after that one scene from Community
Not sure. But I distinctly remember it as common slang on the school yard through out the 90s and early 2000s.
That time sounds about right, although it might vary from region to region as Telly pointed out.
I cringe whenever I hear someone say that in passing. If it's with someone I'm in conversation with, I'm quick to correct them. Luckily, I haven't heard or chatted with anyone about that in years.
Yea in my high school the teachers started to correct the students who would call everything Gay. one day someone called a class movie gay and the teacher quoted that a movie does not have a sexuality. And it pretty much made everyone be quiet and enjoy the movie
the word gay originally meant "happy" but in some cases teens and children use the term gay as another term for uncool.
Back in the day some adults used to say probably before most of us were even born and especially in different parts of the world.
in quote "Today is a vary Gay day" in which used to mean in quote "Today is a vary happy day"
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I just hope nobody tries to bring back “gaytarded”. It’s probably been over 10 years since I heard that one used. But like others here, I don’t hang out with kids either. Hard to say what’s being said these days.
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Egads. That was a thing?! I'm thankful I hadn't heard that one until now.
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I just hope nobody tries to bring back “gaytarded”. It’s probably been over 10 years since I heard that one used. But like others here, I don’t hang out with kids either. Hard to say what’s being said these days.
Egads. That was a thing?! I'm thankful I hadn't heard that one until now.
yes, but but they didn't use the term "gaytarded" as much in my school, probably because that made the person who said that think of how stupid it was to say that word.
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Hey how about we don’t just list hate speech and insults on the forum?
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I was so lucky at school.
Although I was a nerdy bookworm type, I had two things in my favour.
1) I was tall and pretty strong as a kid and good at football.
2) I had two big brothers at the school who were as hard as nails!
There was a resident bully in my year. He never came near me. And if I told him to leave someone alone, he did for a short while at least.
I found out recently he spent time in prison for armed robbery.
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Hey how about we don’t just list hate speech and insults on the forum?
lol, brilliant idea! :-X
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Hey how about we don’t just list hate speech and insults on the forum?
I removed the list
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Neither really, I had a small group of friends who pretty much liked the same things in school. Video games, Magic the Gathering, Collecting figures, etc.
We kept to ourselves and nobody picked on us because we had some hard asses in our group. We weren't the bookworm nerdy type of kids either, decent at sports, I was good in swimming and was on the swim team. Just in our own world really, couldn't care less what the other kids were into, we'd hang out at arcades and play games and talk about them in school. If there was anything to label us it would definitely be Outsiders because we just stuck to our own group.
Was really fun to be honest, nobody bothered us and we didn't bother people. Only one time I remember some kids from another school tried to bother and pick a fight with us, but they backed away fast because as I mentioned, our group had some hard asses.
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Bullied yeah, and always physically. But I turned it around. I grew up with a mom that tried to do right but was only human. Because of a cascade of mistakes including psyhopath stepdads we ended up moving everytime the eviction notice hit the door. Every new school in every new town was a new beatdown. No one really likes the new kid. I usually would make a few few friends in the same bullied category. Then move on after the next eviction notice. Nothing was worse though than having to go back to the one school i was in at least a few months every school year. When we would inevitably have to move in with my grandmother a while. That place was a nightmare of kids I'd known for years that knew what my home life was like. They fed on it like tiny little vampires. They were the most brutal. Small farming town kinda thing,friends with most of them now. I had to walk to and from school so I knew if the asshats had basketball practice I would only have to take my recess beating. Then my 8th grade year I started fighting back. That attitude got me to highschool no worse for wear until we finally moved to the "city" I think there were something like 72,000 people. I went to a tattoo shop one day and went back everyday hanging out with some of my stepdads old friends. Back then you could get tattooed as long as your parent signed a waiver..I started apprenticing and by the time I was 15 I was able to move in to the apartment above the shop and work off my rent. Cool mom right?? hmmm..Anyway when you work at a tattoo shop of questionable moral value and have your own apartment at 15. Things drastically change. I became popular among many circles for just being heavily tattooed at 16 and having my own party spot. Of course after several years I grew up got a good career and got married and no longer live that way. But man what an experience. What I learned from those days I wouldn't change it if I could.It's hard to live through bullying at the time but if you hang in there things do change. You become tougher,smarter and know how you should treat others. If you are suffering through bullying right now. Please hang in there keep your head up high and it will change. Never be ashamed to ask for help either. We all need it.