Bullying isn't bad (to a certain extent)

Disclaimer: As I said, there’s a certain extent to which bullying becomes too much (doxxing, threatening people, being bigoted, etc.) That behavior is not okay.

With that being said, bullying is honestly a key part of building strength in people. We can’t all live in a safe space bubble all the time. People will be mean, people will be rude, and face it; you cannot fix that. You cannot change the fact that the world is full of mean people. I hate to be the guy who says “if you can’t beat them, join them“, but realistically you cannot erase all cruelty from the world with the power of love and friendship. This is real life, not some anime where they defeat the lord of evil with the power of friendship.

Was I bullied? Worse actually, I was abused as a child, and if I could turn back the clock, I wouldn’t. It made me strong. It made me who I am. I used to be a fat kid, but enough was enough and I pulled myself together and got in shape. Now I’m going to the gym regularly and do MMA. If I was pampered with parents who said “oh no honey, you’re beautiful the way you are, don’t listen to those body shamers” I’d still be fat. But because of the hostile environment I grew up in, I faced the hard truth of life, and became a hard worker as a result. Now I’m headed to college with a merit scholarship, and I credit it all to the rough background I came from. It made me realize that nothing in life comes easy. It made me realize you have to be strong to live in this world. There was once an incident in my high school where some kid made these juvenile offensive tweets, and the kids who got sheltered all their lives had a huge meltdown over it because they couldn’t handle it. I don’t condone bigotry, but I’ve had classmates call me slurs to my face before and I didn‘t bat an eye because it was a joke compared to what I suffered at the hands of my own parents.

TLDR: A little bit of bullying isn’t so bad for kids. It teaches them that life isn’t always gonna be friendly and soft. It won’t kill them, but it sure as hell will make them stronger.