Quote:

"She chugged that bottle of Bleach down like a fucking champ!"

Yeah I read about this ... it was so fucking depressing. Cyberbullying does add another whole dimension to bullying (especially with what happened to her which is even more sickening). Is bullying getting worse beyond the fact that there is a new tool for it? Are we just caring about bullying now whereas before this poor girl's death would've just been ignored? I'm not a parent yet, but God I hope by the time I am, we have at least begun to figure out a better way to deal with this kind of monstrosity in our kids.

I don't know if bullying is in fact worse now than it used to be, but that doesn't truly matter. Any bullying is unacceptable of course, but what happened to her is just so far beyond unacceptable that it really should be treated like adults harassing each other. Bullying may never go away completely, but I think some creative efforts are needed at all levels to reduce it. Legislation in dealing with bullies might help - essentially increasing harassment laws to include teens and kids - it might not. But it is worth a shot. Changes in the culture, in society - where parents have zero tolerance for bullying by their own kids - would be obviously the most effective, but also difficult to achieve. Still worth a shot. If any good can come out of so horrific an event, the publicity from this and other such episodes might shake up parents and teachers enough that they pay more attention to what their kids/kids in class are doing.

There's lots of such comments but they are the minority.

They've started an Internet Police Department thing here. It's supposed to alleviate the cyber bullying/threats. It's depressing, but I don't think bullying can be stopped. I'm glad for every victim who makes it through that horrible larval stage.

I've read some local anti-bullying campaigns'/organizations' fliers and whatnot, and it almost feels like the people who write 'em don't know a thing about bullying ("Bullying will stop if you tell them to stop. They're only bullying because they don't know it makes you feel bad".. seriously?). Maybe they're just random people who got paid to think about and rationalize it.

Introducing that mystery element with negative flavor to your unknown opinion might not be much better :p

She's not a saint. But her story is not as different from as many teens as we would like to think. Hers just went further, faster and ended more tragically than most as one decision piled on. Of course she made bad decisions, people who become depressed and self-hating make really bad decisions. She made decisions based on fear and self-hatred as her mental state deteriorated because she felt alone and hated by her peers. The issue was not that she made mistakes, but how she paid for them and how they compounded because of the bullying. She did not deserve it and one decision flowed from the last. She was no saint; she was a scared, lonely 15 year old girl who made mistakes that no one should have to pay for as she did.

I'm tellin' ya: if such a thing happens to one of my (not yet existent) children it's gonna blow a fuse and make me draw inspirations from Charles Bronson. Actually I think there's a good chance bullying would go down if bullies had to consider looking down the barrel of a gun. :P

I was bullied in high school, too, but thankfully I managed to break free from it. I didn't "stand up for myself" like people think this occurs normally, but in the end, I was the last who stood the field. Bullies are usually more than capable of walking themselves into oblivion, so I just patiently waited for them to do so.

But it affected me in such a way that I will always stand up for someone else, I just can't help it now, I just see red in front of my eyes. I'm not proud too much for this, but when I saw a boy pick on someone his age (they were clearly not friends, you could see that from a mile away) I called out for him. He ran away, but I caught up with him and told him that I now know his face, and if I see or hear about him pick on someone like that again, I will make his life miserable. And if he thinks this is somehow unfair, I'll tell the school board that he stole from the other kid, and that I didn't want to get the police involved, but that I will force the issue if he will. He was shaking and on the verge of tears, but I think I really got through to him. I made him apologise to the other kid and that was it. Like I said, I don't feel proud about it, but at the time I thought an honest threat might do more than anything else I could do at the time.

Wow, that's the worst advice about bullying I've ever heard. People really get paid to write that drivel?

Probably the same folks that do the public awareness campaigns for domestic violence and child molestation in the US. Basically, don't bother to do any research, don't bother to talk with anybody that has lived through it and sure as hell don't bother to hire anybody that knows anything about it.

Repeat the same dribble that everybody else has said, take your money and use it to buy disinfectant to wash the germs off from behaving in such a skeavy manner.

yeah I know, I hear ya. I've read this story several times and the rage just really builds inside me every time. Part of me still can't believe people can be that cruel. I mean I experienced bullying, some bullying, but nothing even remotely close to this - not even the same universe of bullying never mind league.

Also the version of the story I originally read didn't say she died until the end. I kept reading hoping she would be okay at the end of it even though part of me knew that's not where this story was heading. Just a mixture of rage and tears right now.

I love the Death Wish series, well mostly the first 3 before they got excessively goofy.

You never know, you might have done that bully a favor - possibly made him see the light about what he was doing. A lot of kids do grow out of it ... eventually (some don't of course) and who knows? You may have sped that process up ... Even if not, it might be awhile before he bullies again. But I can totally understand not feeling proud about it even if it was probably/possibly the right thing to do.

Agreed. Bullying shouldn't happen. But some people will never learn, sadly.
That's why i hate the term "freedom of speech".

I read the first 4 pages of comments, and they're deffinitely not a minority there.