Bullying

So, a bill has made it to the desk of Arizona's governor that would make trolling illegal and punishable by fine.

This bill steps on the first amendment. Anyone who says otherwise has either never read the constitution, or is a fucking baby that feels entitled to hide behind the law.

This bill was of course brought up because trolling sometimes spilled over into real life, or vice versa. I was bullied when I was younger. It wasn't cool. There are plenty of kids out there who got it way worse than I did (I've known a few of them), but the answer to this problem is not to shelter children and go so far out of the way to punish bullies that it makes no sense and inhibits our personal freedoms.

Parents have a natural instinct to protect their children. I understand that. But fighting their battles for them, and setting the precedent that when a problem arrives, the solution is to complain about it until someone else solves it for you, is stupid. Parents should spend their time and effort empowering their children to stand up against their bullies. I backed down from the first kid that bullied me; it was one of the worst experiences of my life. When I learned to stand up to bullies, I stopped being picked on; it's as simple as that. And I'm not saying I was able to and other kids aren't because I'm better than them in any way. I did it because that's what my father taught me to do when I told him I was being picked on. He never called my school, spoke with the bullies' parents, nothing like that. He told me to stand up for myself, which doesn't mean to tell a teacher or ASK them to stop; he instructed me to TELL them to stop, and let them know that if they didn't, we were going to fight. It worked every time, and I've only been in one altercation that even came close to being an actual "fight." But I felt this way then, and still feel this way now: I would have fought every kid who ever picked on me, and lost terribly, if it meant keeping my dignity. Not because I was some sort of badass, or was born thinking that, but because that's what I learned from my father.

The United States of America has produced a generation of pussies. Kids are growing up conditioned to believe that the answer to bullies is to complain about it. The ideal of pacifism is getting in the way of people solving their fucking problems. Sorry guys, but sometimes, violence solves things.