I saw a thing the other day. A 9 year old kid committed suicide for being bullied at school. :(

I think the root of this issue is more that adults provide — often knowingly — very wrongheaded expectations about reality, in what are actually self-serving efforts to create and and preserve "innocence" in the young (whatever the hell that is even supposed to be; the notion in anything like its present conception does not appear to predate Christianity).

While it is not necessarily a consciously planned one, there is in practice a grand conspiracy in which a good half of all adults, including most involved in formal education, now participate, to deny children and adolescents adequate preparation for the horrors that will be visited upon most people's lives sooner or later. Often enough, young people who go relatively unaffected by this conditioning are even held in cool regard by adults.

Despite this, we all [i]know[/i] that selective inattention is being paid to the image of the world imparted to children, and that they will have to "grow up" someday, which means among other things abandoning half of what was taught to them by their purported mentors. We are basically playing an elaborate joke on them that takes twenty to thirty years to get to the punchline.

[i]But[/i]: more pernicious in this regard than [i]all[/i] of that is perhaps the effect of fictional stories on young minds. Electronic entertainment has done some positive things for the potential in elaborate world-building and innovations in form for storytelling, but fiction has taken a major hit in psychological complexity lately. Stories of taken-for-granted happy endings and obvious "good" and "bad" factions were rare before 1900. People's worldviews are more rooted in analogies to known "mythology" (in the largest sense of that word that is basically synonymous with "stories") than in reasoning by far, and all the more so the less conscious of that fact they are.

To be honest, I think the internet and social media has fucked up people's sense of connection in which it's easier to be bullied and trolled which people can't deal with now. I was severely bullied and it really messes you up....after all I think we're all social beings who want to be loved. But people are so lonely they just want instant gratification because that's all our society is about these days. Not work, but easy attention. :(

I think it’s ok to say positive and negative things, so long as it’s not for sport.

It also important that we talk to each other, not to defend one another, but for each of us to learn coping techniques.

There will always be challenges in life. Learning how to manage them makes life much more enjoyable.

I believe Greg Gutfeld put it best - "The internet is the world's bathroom wall"

Great post. While it is generally not advised to make things to sterile so that people's feelings will never be hurt, on the flip side, the endless snark, irony, shouting, chuckling, and overall noise is also a huge problem.

Yeah, Kids, or anyone for that matter can be really mean to each other.. then put them online and on social media and that magnifies X100... its not like it used to be

That would have a twofold effect. The world would be a much nicer place AND much quieter.

True

you seem kind

Being cynical and jaded is just part of growing up and becoming an adult. It is inevitable if you are l
Paying any attention.