What's wrong with being mean? When I met my now best-friend, the first thing he did was roast me. It was brutal, and I was dying laughing. He called me a "latent homosexual who probably googles 'rhino porn.'"

All throughout public school I loved to be made fun of.. it was attention, positive or negative, I was still getting attention.

I don't think we can get rid of people being mean, being bullies, or saying mean things ect., but we can teach kids to fight back verbally, or to understand that people can be evil fucks and how to dismantle them.

Staying a victim, and sitting on the edge of the beach hoping the tide won't rise isn't helping. People will always be assholes.

So don't encourage equality and get-alongness, because both of those don't exist. Promoting 'niceness' to already socially stunted kids won't help them at all, because too many of their peers don't give a shit about the message already.

I say, promote the tactics that disarm "bullies." I had 'flower socks' growing up (socks with cheap elastic that made them droop), so I called myself Tinkerbell of the Flower Fortress. 'Bullies' lost the efficacy of calling me Flower Socks, and thought I was a silly bitch.

Don't teach kids to be victims of shit that's too easily fixed with a bit of creativity.

Of course, if someone is being physically violent towards someone else, that is a completely different issue.