So many people get 'bullied'

[MrMan]

I don't like to hear someone say, "You are being bullied." It kind of has that same feel as 'poor you.' If someone says, "Poor Joe", Joe may not like it that much. If you are bullied, you are a victim.

I think my mom said I was being 'bullied' when I was a little kid, and the words probably did not bother me that much. There was an older, much bigger kid that wanted to pick fights all the time who got off at my bus stop. We had to walk past his house to go home. His little tiny brother would fight my brother. My brother would win. The big kid wanted to fight with me. He punched me in the stomach one Friday. My dad gave me some tips on fighting him. I won the fight the next time, but my mom walked up to where we were and we settled the whole thing with arm wrestling. His arms were a lot bigger than mine. He won that, and based on that agreed to stop fighting. That was my story of being 'bullied.'

I didn't call an occasional insult or exchange of insults at school as a little kid being 'bullied.'

Then came the Obama administration. I am pretty sure Obama faced some difficulties at school. I can imagine being a half-Black kid in a national school in Tebet in Indonesia. Hawaii is multi-racial, but at least when I was there, there weren't many Blacks in the neighborhood around Punahoe school. Obama's education program focused on anti-bullying.

So now we have grown men complaining about being 'bullied' if they face a little flack online. Schools intrude into the private life of students, monitoring their 'bullying' on social media. To me, it seems like people are saying, "Poor me. I'm being bullied." And sometimes what they face isn't even that severe.

When I hear 'bullying', I still think of a big kid beating up a little kids, asking for lunch money, or sticking his head in the toilet or something like that. I never had my lunch money stolen at school, and I never had my head stuck in the toilet. I've faced some contempt online, but that tends to say more about the poster than anyone else.

I realize that the lack of face-to-face interaction online can bring out the worst in some people. But does anyone think some of the complaints about 'bullying' seem a bit whiny?