Bullying - In particular "Internet Trolling"

I can't imagine you ever being a bully, Noura, and I'm relieved you've never been at the receiving end.

Jane: “I wonder if anyone here would be able to admit if they've ever been a bully? Funny how most (all?) of us can recall times we've been bullied. How many can recall times they've bullied?”

from now on let talk only about the subject, not individuals.
I agree with you 100 % that everybody is so prone to promote his/her strength and conceal his/her flaws. But there is a distinctive difference between a bully and your THEY or WE (above quote). We can not go around, mentally polarize every one of our interactions with others, to either bullying and being bullied. If we do, we are setting ourselves for obsessions or even phobias. It is like in mental diseases, for example, schizophrenia: One could divide or polarize all one's actions or others to either un-schizophrenic or schizophrenic tendencies. The very tricky thing is that there are always so many pieces of evidence to support either side of these equations. So this could be a path to OCD disorder or haha the way the disorder manifests itself.
I’ve read about so many people while studying psychology diagnosing themselves with serious mental disorders, and that is a big dead serious no-no in psychology and mental studies. I saw a psychology enthusiast who was convinced he had epilepsy regardless of the absence of the basic and drastic physical symptoms that come with it, only because he THOUGHT he found definite symptoms in his own moods.
Also if every tendency that looks similar to the symptoms were diagnosed as THE disease, then all the people of the earth were, for example, schizophrenic.
In the end, in any scientific approach, there are always DEGREEs, in which the identity demonstrates itself, (in our case the DEGREE
of the symptoms which leads to the doctor's diagnosis).

I know you are sweetening a bitter conversation but there is another danger here. BULLING is a serious offence, we should not make jock out of it, or call every transgression( or not even that) bulling. It makes it a normal thing. and that is very dangerous, but your attempts to bring the thread to normal and breezy mood is a beautiful thing, both of you,

I can see how you think I’m making light of bullying, but having been bullied for most of my childhood (physically but mostly emotionally) and even into my early adulthood, I was merely reflecting on how most of the people who have bullied me have not ever held themselves accountable for it (e.g., a group of boys beat me nearly unconscious in elementary school and they blamed me when they were suspended for 2 days for it - only one of them apologized and it was over a decade later, and he was trying not to laugh. They never took it seriously or genuinely sought to make amends and it didn’t damage their perceptions of self). For every person who is bullied, there must be a person who bullied, right? I just think we need to be willing to see ourselves clearly before throwing the term around and making hasty and very serious accusations. While not everyone gets along perfectly on PnQ, and some members rub each other the wrong way, I would hesitate to call any member on here a bully. Having been on the receiving end of being singled out, name-called, and ostracized too many times to count, I can’t emphasize strongly enough how damaging that sort of thing is... I apologize if you felt I was minimizing bullying, which is indeed serious.

My point, ultimately, is I don’t think anyone on PnQ is an outright bully and when that word gets brought up, I often feel it’s inappropriate and it’s the kettle calling the pot black. Both parties are typically antagonizing the other in some fashion and neither can admit it. Recognizing one’s own triggers and unhealthy or ineffective defense mechanisms/reactions could be a useful step in the right direction.

I am very sorry for your childhood. Maybe that somehow made you a positive person that you are now. And I do not have any problem with anything you said above. I only wanted to clarify and shed a little light if it is possible through these conversations and exchange some knowledge.

Bob, I appreciate your kind words. I didn’t mean to make this so much about me, oops!