The Media is just real stupid and knows what it's doing

[Cade]

This is not really a debate, but is a bit of a serious topic.

Most of us heard about the recent gay teen suicides lately and the are a bunch of celebrities, commercials, and organizations pushing to end bullying. Many schools and other are running events about bullying and that it must come to an end. There's nothing bad with this, but it has to take 4 or 5 gay teen suicides that happened around the same time to get everyone's attention about bullying? If the suicides never happened then everyone wouldn't care about bullying or it wouldn't get this much attention as now. The media saying that bullying is on the rise and that it is at its worst. Not true. Bullying has always been a problem, but this is the first time it got this much attention. So after the suicides the media is alerting everyone about it and stuff and some say they are doing it for the gay teens who committed suicide, but it should be just for them, it should be for everyone who gets bullied and pretty much most or nearly all of us has gotten bullied before. So it shouldn't take some event to get us all aware about something. We should have been aware of it.

[Jutsu Junkie]

For one thing, people don't all get bullied to the same degree. A lot of people think it's just a normal part of growing up, and it helps you learn how to deal with adversarial relationships. But there is actually a qualitative difference between the sort of bullying such people experienced and the kind that ends up with kids six feet under. They don't know this is going on, because they haven't experienced it, and the fact is that the vast majority of people survive even depraved and harsh bullying.

For another, this nations has a short memory. While methods are in place to deal with situations like Columbine, they aren't given due attention, nor are they updated to follow trends in youth culture or technology (i.e. cyberbullying). That's just the way this country is. Just look at 9/11: that morning, I was shocked, not surprised -- because we had the '93 WTC bombing as a warning. But did we do much about it? Not really, and the result has been our past 10 years of history.

[deidara330]

"Bullying" is P.R. (Public Relations). I prefer to think of it as "Emotional Torturing" or just torturing.

[kakashi uzumaki]

I personally think that if you don't know about it, you can't do nothing about it. This country...or should I say world, runs on experience, they see what happens once they try something, don't like it, they change it. They realize let's say, death rates for gun violence are increasing, they act on it. They saw bullying incidents were increasing, they started telling schools and the media to advertise ways to stop it. In your argument, you say they don't care. Well, how can you care about something, that you don't know about?

It might be like for instance, you have a sister, she has a secret boyfriend that has been hurting her, she hides it from you because she knows you will get mad. Does this mean you don't care about her because you do nothing about her?

They also don't act dramatic just because of a few incidents, things are going to happen but when they see its occurring more and more over time, they will try to stop it or at least help prevent it.

by the way, when I say they, it refers to society or the government.

[Cade]

Originally Posted by Jutsu Junkie

For one thing, people don't all get bullied to the same degree. A lot of people think it's just a normal part of growing up, and it helps you learn how to deal with adversarial relationships. But there is actually a qualitative difference between the sort of bullying such people experienced and the kind that ends up with kids six feet under. They don't know this is going on, because they haven't experienced it, and the fact is that the vast majority of people survive even depraved and harsh bullying.

For another, this nations has a short memory. While methods are in place to deal with situations like Columbine, they aren't given due attention, nor are they updated to follow trends in youth culture or technology (i.e. cyberbullying). That's just the way this country is. Just look at 9/11: that morning, I was shocked, not surprised -- because we had the '93 WTC bombing as a warning. But did we do much about it? Not really, and the result has been our past 10 years of history.

Very True

Originally Posted by kakashi uzumaki

I personally think that if you don't know about it, you can't do nothing about it. This country...or should I say world, runs on experience, they see what happens once they try something, don't like it, they change it. They realize let's say, death rates for gun violence are increasing, they act on it. They saw bullying incidents were increasing, they started telling schools and the media to advertise ways to stop it. In your argument, you say they don't care. Well, how can you care about something, that you don't know about?

It might be like for instance, you have a sister, she has a secret boyfriend that has been hurting her, she hides it from you because she knows you will get mad. Does this mean you don't care about her because you do nothing about her?

They also don't act dramatic just because of a few incidents, things are going to happen but when they see its occurring more and more over time, they will try to stop it or at least help prevent it.

by the way, when I say they, it refers to society or the government.

Bullying was already a problem before the media claimed that it was an "epidemic".

[kakashi uzumaki]

yess some debating at 4 Am xD

It probably was high in death rates that people wanted to do something about it, media serves two purposes, to inform and to expose.
the rest are in between.

[ItachiAnbu]

Originally Posted by Cade

This is not really a debate, but is a bit of a serious topic.

Most of us heard about the recent gay teen suicides lately and the are a bunch of celebrities, commercials, and organizations pushing to end bullying. Many schools and other are running events about bullying and that it must come to an end. There's nothing bad with this, but it has to take 4 or 5 gay teen suicides that happened around the same time to get everyone's attention about bullying? If the suicides never happened then everyone wouldn't care about bullying or it wouldn't get this much attention as now. The media saying that bullying is on the rise and that it is at its worst. Not true. Bullying has always been a problem, but this is the first time it got this much attention. So after the suicides the media is alerting everyone about it and stuff and some say they are doing it for the gay teens who committed suicide, but it should be just for them, it should be for everyone who gets bullied and pretty much most or nearly all of us has gotten bullied before. So it shouldn't take some event to get us all aware about something. We should have been aware of it.

I agree with you, but the media is just being the media. Not all news is "breaking news." Still, the media acts like it's new every time it happens. Those of us who were already members of those awareness organizations you mentioned were already aware of it.

I also agree with the sentiment you expressed: that it shouldn't take 5 (or any) teen suicides for people to understand what's going on and why it's wrong. However, that often seems to be the way of the world.