There is never an excuse for picking up a gun and shooting people. It is never justifiable and it is never okay, and it’s absolutely horrible that these shootings happen. I think you guys are referencing the one that happened at Chardon, which is literally an hour from my college. And yeah, it’s absolutely horrible and the gunman had no excuse for what he did.
But neither do bullies. As someone who was picked on relentlessly in school for having bad skin and for being intelligent, I can tell you right now that bullying can be damaging. The only difference between now and “your generation” is that now it’s okay for kids to come forward about having been bullied- in “your generation” kids were told to suck it up and get over it. Do you know just how much damage that sort of attitude can cause? There are adults nowadays, such as my father, who still have deep insecurities because they were told to “suck it up and deal with it” as kids. The only reason you didn’t hear about people have depression and other issues because of bullying in “your generation” is because kids felt they couldn’t talk about these issues. This victim-blaming attitude is not one we should be perpetrating- it’s actually quite ignorant and is only going to hurt people. “That’s just what kids do” is never an excuse for making someone else feel like shit.
Instead, the focus should be on stopping the bullying from happening in the first place. Then these kids would not feel as though they had to shoot people. Teen depression and suicide rates would decrease drastically. The only reason “your generation” didn’t hear about this stuff was because it was taboo, and depression wasn’t something that was talked about nor was it considered a legitimate illness. But I had sort of thought that society was beginning to grow past that. It needs to be recognized that bullying is always a big deal, and it is always a problem. And telling kids to just “get over it” makes you a part of the problem, not the solution, because you invalidate their hurt feelings and in turn make them feel like they’re somehow “less than” for feeling that hurt. All of this can lead into the cycle of depressive illnesses, and anything that can contribute to any sort of mental illness is never okay.
I’m honestly incredibly disappointed to see that people still think this way.
MY MOTHER IS A BADASS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
Let me tell you something; you'll never find a more obsessive, crazy, insane minor character fangirl than me. And really, that's all you need to know.
I'm an overall fangirl; I write, I fanart, and I AMV. My username brings up a lot of results. I aspire to become a cartoonist one day, so that I can make others happy with my works as others have done for me.
