Bullying. It’s not just a scourge, it’s a societal pox.
A quick online search brings up the usual articles exploring the psyche of a bully or tips for recovery from their abuse. Most information available is dissected from scientific papers and served as a pithy amuse buche for the masses. For me, I need to go deeper, necessitating more than just a handful of Pinterest-esque quotes of empowerment; I need to understand from the nucleus. I share my personal journey here both as a cautionary tale and as a source of empowerment and validation for other outliers like me who happen upon my words.
A recent on-line kerfuffle I experienced turned out to be a master class par excellence on what makes a bully tick. My experience with Jolene, not her real name of course, started as a parasocial connection on YouTube which I foolhardily thought was developing into a genuine offline connection only to discover who she really was on the inside - a dollar store, Temu brand content creator; a witch cosplaying as a human; the kind of witch whose house children avoid year round for fear of being eaten.
Psychology Today writes that bullies are not born but made and suffer from low self-esteem and feel powerless so they lash out at others, trying to dominate as a way to self-soothe. These miserable wretches feel powerless to affect change in their lives so bullying affords them a way to create order in their personal sphere. Where it crosses the line from garden variety aggression that all humans engage in from time to time, to insidious bullying is their failure to recognize their patterns of behavior as problematic and their unwavering lack of remorse; feeling under no obligation to remediate. In fact, they feel decidedly justified in their actions. A noticeably common pattern whenever a bully is exposed is for them to snatch the crown of attention off their victim’s head and push them off the pageant stage so they can bask in the limelight of their handiwork, created by their own sullied hands, while strutting down the runway; crocodile tears filling their eyes as they inconsolably sob about the anguish they’ve endured. They are pathetic pick-me’s with a bottomless need for attention and affirmation.
Girl; no amount of mascara running down your cheeks or wearing gloves will ever hide the depravity that is deep within you; it is a stigmata of evil.
Also noted in the journals was bullies have a distinct psychological makeup with overlapping traits frequently seen in personality disorders such as: anti-social tendencies, low inhibition with regard to crossing boundaries, exhibiting low levels of empathy and demonstrating a hyper-reactivity that emulates a type of paranoia where they misread the intentions of others, often inferring hostility in neutral situations. They tend to be boastful holding themselves in high regard and frequently have strained relationships with parents and peers. Psychology Today writes “Girls are just as likely as boys to be bullies, but instead of over aggression, tend to hurt others by damaging or manipulating their relationships. They may spread false rumors about someone, tell others to stop liking someone in order to get even with him or her, engage in social exclusion, threaten to withdraw friendship to get their way, or give someone the silent treatment.”
Empirical data shows bullying peaks around ages 11 to 13 and decreases as children grow older and many who were bullies as children turn into antisocial adults. As adults, bullies learn how to become more stealth about hiding their toxic traits. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have any victims and they need victims in order to validate their meaningless existence. Bullies are predators engaging in a "shopping process" where they determine who would make a suitable victim. Bullies favor victims who are sensitive, becoming visibly upset when attacked and who appear to have no friends or allies.
With the dawn of the internet, cyberbullying has quickly become an issue that demands redress. Hidden behind a keyboard, cyberbullying removes many restraints on meanness and amplifies the ferocity of aggression. It’s easier to inflict pain and suffering on others when you don’t have to look them in the eye because at their most base level, bullies are cowards. Bullies, but especially cyber bullies, tend to have a core personality inventory known as the Dark Tetrad where there’s evidence of traits present from the following personality disorders: Narcissism, Machiavellian, Psychopathy and Sadism. A Dark Tetrad isn’t considered a personality disorder but rather a confluence of traits from other DSM-V listed disorders. One or two traits does not a personality disorder make but truth be told, grounded people don’t consistently display a cluster of negative traits. I know I don’t, nor do the people I allow in my circle. Bullying is being talked about more openly now because social media leaves its ass hanging out for all the world to see and even if you wanted to, you can no longer just look away from this universal problem. Bystanders frequently don’t stop the bullying either because they don’t like the victim themselves or because they fear retaliation. Most are followers by nature, just happy to receive some attention from someone they consider of higher social status. This banality, or tolerance of evil due to the weakening of societal mores is what allows bullying’s evil to further dig its claws deeply into the soul of society. It’s a looming social catastrophe of calamitous proportions for many if we continue to ignore its long term impact on mental health and not shutting it down as soon as it begins (YouTube, not selectively enforcing TOS (cough, cough)).
I started on social media because the loneliness and lack of support during the last 20 years reached a peak. I tried filling that gulch by reaching out on social media to remind myself that even though it was frayed and unraveling, I was still part of the community; the human community. I thought I would create content related to neurodiversity but ended up detouring, landing in the reaction/commentary space - a viper’s pit if there was one; less as a creator, more as a participant. I wasn’t a good content creator because I struggled to find my footing. Writing is more natural for me and is better suited for my content rich style. Having only a nascent understanding of netiquette rules, I was like a yearling trying to stand, ripe for being exploited and overlooking a lot of red flags, just content to be connecting with people since there was no one to fill that void in my daily life at the time.
My parasocial relationship with Jolene first began as these things so often do, through the exchange of DM’s. I reached out to say I enjoyed her content not expecting a reply beyond “Thank you”. She replied quickly in an email that was just the right mix of wit and snark; intelligent but grounded. It was all a decoy.
We had things in common both being AuDHD and able to relate to the struggles of managing our day to day overwhelm while trying to wear the many hats of life - partner, parent, friend. We would leave comments on each other’s videos acknowledging them with a heart. A few more email exchanges back and forth revealing details of our real lives and eventually we exchanged contact information, including pictures of our children and sent small packages to each other with silly gag type trinkets. Hindsight being what it is, this too was part of the ruse and was more subterfuge to gain my trust to use against me later. It was the love bombing phase of the relationship. I was lonely so I didn’t exercise the restraint I should have; a common issue for many who are AuDHD.
Soon after, all hell broke loose in our small community with swords raised and crossing between various creators and subscribers. The anonymity that online affords, creators, especially those with arrested development, can lean into a villainous dark side while presenting a counterfeit public persona of being above reproach. The web is a LARPers paradise; a fantasy world where you can be whatever you want without dispute, even though it’s pure fiction. The problems start when there is spillage from this fictional reality into real life, causing real pain and distress.
During the limited time I interacted with Jolene and her coven of dolts, things were reaching DEFCON 5 with my husband who decided he was exiting the relationship. Jolene as it turns out is a praiseworthy bully - a ruthless, narcissistic succubus who would angrily lash out at others when the expectation gap between what she wanted was at odds with reality, raising maladaptive coping to an art form. Like many on social media, there is a schism between what bullies present to the outside world being at odds with the vacantness and rage born from entitlement they keep well hidden. Jolene’s thirst for retaliation knew no bounds and she acted recklessly and without a shred of human decency towards an outspoken creator named Sandy. As retribution for having the temerity of holding Jolene accountable for her words and actions, Jolene unscrupulously obtained personal information about Sandy and publicly revealed something so personal and traumatizing as to force her off the platform. Like most immature imps, Jolene doesn’t like to hear ‘no’ and accountability is a dirty word.
The core issue that makes a bully tick is a pervasive feeling of a loss of control over their emotional environment, believing a chimera of control equals safety, instead of focusing on how to build resilience to relieve emotional distress.
Jolene is very good at knowing how to ingratiate herself to others in order to gain trust and learn people’s vulnerabilities but that is not the same as being able to read people. Bullies don’t feel anything except license to aggressively prioritize their own needs. They mimic what looks like empathy only to ensnare more victims like spiders collecting prey for future feeds. They are incapable of feeling genuine emotion never having learned empathy by building resilience to life’s stressors. Resilience is a learned pro-social coping skill to life’s stressors, not the absence of them and is a fundamental building block for learning empathy. Lack of personal resilience warps a bully’s perception of what qualifies as adversity, with an inclination to catastrophizing even the most minute stressors, claiming their stress is worse than anyone else has ‘ever’ experienced and demand their discomfort be cosseted. Unable to sit in emotional distress for even a nanosecond stunts personal growth and development, leaving them perpetually stuck in a jejune no-man’s land between forced adulting and the adolescent halcyon days of fewer responsibilities.
Bullies thrive off the distraction chaos provides and always need to be engaged in drama with an enemy combatant, creating a scenario out of thin air if necessary. These ‘fights’ are usually an exaggeration from distorted perceptions used as a crutch by the bully to ignore their dispiriting reality. In their minds, they’re the heroic David fighting against a monolithic Goliath. When viewed under the light of reality, it’s more like jousting at windmills while riding upon their noble steed of conceit. This absurdist performance art is necessary subtext in their world to give them a ‘purpose’. There is never enough drama, control, or dopamine at the expense of others that will ever fill the void. It is an exhausting and draining cycle. Relationships with them aren’t just one sided, they’re parasitic.
Jolene, ever the narcissist, was insulted because I didn’t want or need her approval and knowing she couldn’t control me, just like with Sandy, spitefully spun an expedient, completely fictitious yarn to deflect attention away from her wrongdoings, taking sadistic pleasure in knowingly betraying a confidence and then publicly exploiting this pain with regard to the issues I was having with my husband at the time. But the rubicon was when she went real life by contacting him behind my back as a way to exert control over me to prevent me from exposing her dirty dealings and as punishment for not acknowledging her superiority enough to her liking. I could care less about her drama, let alone waste time ‘exposing’ it. Unlike her, I have neither the time, inclination nor storage space on my computer to take screen shots like a rat tapping on the dispenser to get a reward pellet so I could produce ‘receipts’. The only receipt you need to prove she’s a self-obsessed toady is to watch a couple of her videos or read one of her community posts. The final line in the sand for me though was a community post laced with disdain and veiled threats, taunting me about her text exchange with him. From my husband’s perspective, he was underwhelmed and uninterested in any of her white knighting justifications for contacting him and irritated his time was intruded upon over unimportant blather. He mumbled something about her being a ‘witless dullard’ and blocked her. She had crossed a boundary from which there was no coming back from me.
Tell me what boundaries you’re willing to cross and I will tell you who you really are.
Afterwards, I wrote a short email telling her she was persona non grata and she absolutely lost her shit over it, insisting she was the victim and I was a cackling witch. Admitting she knowingly crossed a boundary and defiantly justifying that she was entitled to, she penned “Maybe I am dead to you, if I was ever alive in the first place." Typical narcissist anti-social behavior, they’re going to ride that lack of accountability until the wheels fall off.
Jolene’s unhinged screed read more like a confessional disclosing every single one of her weak spots and vulnerabilities and ‘tells’ to indicate when she’s lying or manipulating. The entire email was nothing but projection. Like most keyboard trolls, Jolene is addicted to having the last word like a junkie so desperate for a fix they would frenetically lick used drug paraphernalia for any residue that remains.
Jolene completely bumbled and remains clueless as to who I am because she cannot mimic my authenticity because to be authentic, one also has to embrace accountability. Authenticity is the integration of one’s public self with their private one. It derives from a place of believing in oneself and having the strength of character to maintain boundaries and follow your own path without giving into distractions. In other words, I give zero fucks what someone thinks and I’m going to honorably carve out my own path and don’t tolerate spiteful fuckery because someone, who isn’t a good person, can’t get their shit together. I thought I would spell it out in crayon in case Jolene should ever happen to see this someday. Also, when it comes to being insulted and humiliated, I have standards and if I’m going to be mocked and jeered, like the canonical Karen wanting the manager, I demand that it comes from someone of status, not some flying monkey that has yet to earn their wings. Jolene would never make the cut because she would never be on the list in the first place. I am the same in person as I am in this space - forthright, my values the same regardless of whether I’m behind a keyboard or not. Authenticity is threatening to those who ply their trade through manipulation and intimidation as they lack the skills to disable it. It takes more courage and fortitude to live an ordinary life than an ignoble one.
We don’t need the bully’s approval, they desperately need ours.
Recently, I saw a video from one of the warring factions involved in this saga, finally getting a full understanding a year later of what really happened and how Jolene intentionally orchestrated it all as revenge for Sandy standing up to her and as way to create buzz to grow her brand, eventually monetizing her channel. Blood money built on pain; absolutely vile.
I sincerely hope that at some point she will be capable of examining her behaviors, realizing the error of her ways and take constructive steps to remedy the hurt left in her wake, but I am not hopeful, nor is it my responsibility to persuade, I can only control my response to other’s behavior; but I also won’t silently look the other way because the suffering of her victims is real. It lingers long after a bully like Jolene has moved on to another victim. Absolutely disgusted at the extensiveness of her debauchery, I decided to pen this piece as a way to help others recognize patterns of behavior commonly seen in bullies so they are less susceptible to becoming victim to one of these sirens. When a steady supply of victims dwindles enough, predators will have to adapt or metaphorically die fearing social isolation. Publicly explaining ‘why do they do these things’ is helpful for others to recognize red flags early on in order to thwart an abuser’s attempts at creating another victim. It also allows those recovering from narcissistic abuse to finally heal and let go of the burdensome belief they did something to cause what happened to them.
Like a serial killer collecting trophies and returning to the scene of the crime to marvel at their achievement, bullies want to be able to bask in the glory of their repugnance and be able to say, “I did that.” Make no mistake, these miscreants are proud of their work.
The trophy they seek is the destruction of what the Stoics called pneuma, which is one’s vital spirt. Victims are not selected because they are weak but rather, they are selected because they are strong and are considered high level threats to a narcissist’s ability to control others. A bully like Jolene can’t read people because she’s so self-focused but she is good at understanding when she’s facing the high level threat of someone who can see right through her bullshit, won’t be easily dissuaded from calling her out publicly and will stand their ground. If you want to put it in more metaphorical terms, a narcissist’s victim is their antonym and represents everything they aren’t and can never be. Unwilling to confront the demons that make them such steaming piles of garbage, bullies operate at the most base level of animal reactivity; which means neutralizing a threat. In the bully’s mind, since their emotional IQ is stagnated around middle school age, they fancy themselves to be some kind of warrior, living life like a TRON avatar fighting the noble battle of good versus evil and the idea of conquering what they consider a high level threat is a huge dopamine rush for them. A big tell for when one of the dark tetrad attributes moves from mere characteristic to becoming a DSM-V Cluster-B disorder is when the line between reality and fantasy starts to blur.
To heal, victims need to make the paradigm shift from thinking they are a victim to understanding they in fact hold all the power. A bully doesn’t pick their victim out of hate but rather envy; they want to be them, but are morally compromised and can’t, so they lash out in frustration.
Like all narcissistic bullies, Jolene is running with scissors. Even if her boundary crossings are not legal violations, they are violations of the social contract and shouldn’t be tolerated regardless of neurotype. It’s all fun and games until it’s not, and there’s always a point when it’s not and past misdeeds catch up. Truth is linear and a bully’s actions will always betray them.
Like needing to sacrifice a virgin at the alter to keep the volcano from spewing, the highs will never last long enough and the crashes will start to become so low Jolene will have singe marks on her toes forcing her to be more audacious with each cyclone of mayhem she instigates in order to get her ‘fix’.
Since this experience, or maybe because of it, I completely changed how I live my life and vowed to only live authentically loud and proud. No more being bullied into submission. I am snatching from the jaws of victory her thinking she ‘won’ by vanquishing me from the platform. Quite the contrary, I returned to the platform and still make videos, my presence a judgment of her behavior. Nor am I writing this because of sour grapes because I’m jealous I can’t be part of the flying monkey crew she calls friends.
Jolene will never understand that it’s not a competition and never was and the more of her true self that is revealed the less she has anything I want, which is disappointing because I thought I saw a spark of something else. I’m also not putting myself up on some kind of self-righteous pedestal of morality. I fuck up; all the time, but I don’t cross boundaries. There’s a chasm of difference between saying something stupid sometimes and intentionally targeting someone with self-serving motives. I can definitely say with confidence I have never done that; nor do I engage in whataboutisms for my behavior. Taking accountability means growth.
In addition to a paradigm shift on how I choose to live my life, I have also pushed myself outside my comfort zone and have been engaging in volunteering and charitable concerns as well as started my own business. I’ve made real friends who value me and aren’t threatened by me and I don’t have to second guess their intentions or feel like I’m always auditioning to be a part of the group; we’re all leaders and don’t need followers. We hold space for our independent identities and celebrate our wins and console each other’s sorrows, inspiring and uplifting each other while gently encouraging growth; even when it’s uncomfortable. My friends and I are advocates for creating a better world and are actively working on it all while living our ‘boring’ daily lives with honor and integrity. Our validation comes from within; not from the amount of likes on a video talking about how superior, smart or special we are. My real friends don’t have the time or interest to joust at windmills or constantly be in a fight with someone. We don’t do any of those things because we’re grown ups comfortable in our own skin and have the ability to emotionally regulate. We have full lives with meaning and purpose; a meaning and a purpose bigger than ourselves; something that leaves the world better than we found it which I doubt making mean girl videos in a condescending tone to cover up the reeking stench emanating from a dumpster fire of insecurity, will ever do.
Regardless of whether or not anyone reads this, it will always be out here in the ethers of the internet because the internet is forever.
As is my boundary.