Heartland

Big Si wrote:

What about Friend requests from existing friends? The Narrow Bastard Overlord recommended that I hook up with my AllTimeNemesis Mr Jennifer Eiss

Existing friends are always welcome - though I've been a bit crap about keeping in touch with the majority of late.

Jenn? Now that takes me back a few years.

aye, she found me earlier so i pointed her in your direction

Quiff Boy wrote:aye, she found me earlier so i pointed her in your direction

markfiend wrote:I got a bit "tinfoil hat" about facebook, what with their privacy policy seemingly amounting to "we own all your details and will sell them to the highest bidder."

That exactly. I was about to sign up, but that thing is way to nosey for my taste. I won't touch it with a stick.
Myspace is slightly less nosey, I can live with that one without problems. I don't risc having salesmen on my very doorstep there.
There's an ugly looking clone of Facebook in Krautland where I found a friend from primary school again. I got my first tape from him (In our house you'd only find classical music, not really what children normally want.). Abba, that was. (Danke nochmal, Karsten! Das Tape hat mir eine Menge Freude gemacht, damals. )
Otherwise: Nope. Those communites mainly are sare means of communication. Myspace mainly for enetrtainment and prowling for good music, where it's become an institution by now.

Erudite wrote:There's a fairly high chance that if I haven't spoken to someone since I
was at school I didn't like them very much and twenty odd years later
I'm sure I'd still think they were an arse.

Never was people person.

This blog post is a pretty good reason not to be on facebook too.

markfiend wrote:This blog post is a pretty good reason not to be on facebook too.

Erm, well, I was 'different' in another manner - art geek, theatre fag - and happily never had to deal with that sort of extreme abuse. However, I also have never been to a high school reunion in my life (and I graduated class of 70, so I've had plenty of opportunities ).

How I avoid being haunted by people from my distant past with whom I never had much in common aside from belonging to the same species: I changed my name...so the only people who find me are those who know to look for me by that monicker, 'cause if they know it, I won't mind being found. A number of people I know have blatantly flauted the Facebook 'real name' rule for the same purpose. We ALL use FB only to stay connected with those we are actually fond of but who live hundreds, if not thousands, of miles apart...

markfiend wrote:

Erudite wrote:There's a fairly high chance that if I haven't spoken to someone since I
was at school I didn't like them very much and twenty odd years later
I'm sure I'd still think they were an arse.

Never was people person.

This blog post is a pretty good reason not to be on facebook too.

That blog shows what a really whiney guy the writer of said blog is, IMO.

Snap out of it!

IZ.

I'm only on F/book to keep in touch with old school friends from Manchester... & to maybe occasionally follow the latest shenanigans of various attractive women. Yes, stalking maybe another way of putting it.

Izzy HaveMercy wrote:That blog shows what a really whiney guy the writer of said blog is, IMO.

Snap out of it!

IZ.

Yeah because saying he doesn't really want to see again the people who broke his fingers all those years ago is really whining.

yeah, what's up with you Iz?

Some people should get a life and some hair on their teeth.

I was a geek at school as well, but I outwitted the bullies by talking them under the table, which got me some respect from both them and the other geeks.

Never had broken fingers, teeth or egos, instead of feeling miserable and wallowing in it even worse than those Emoe-kids these days, I took action as it should be... excuse me for not letting people pish on my head in mid school

IZ.

Izzy HaveMercy wrote: I outwitted the bullies by talking them under the table

you may want to reword that, unless you actually 'blew' some geezers off, I still don't admonish bad behaviour by boys who made your life hell at school - it's said that school days were the best of your life BOLLOCKS!
Art School days were the best of my life and work sucks (under the table) but we all ken that

Get a grip man!

You might not believe it, but - you were only lucky ...

Being645 wrote:You might not believe it, but - you were only lucky ...

might be a language thing, but WTF! do you mean?

Just one more thing I'm going to say about this, and that will be all:

To freely quote Gaiman: I went to school not to make friends and certainly not to make enemies.

I went to school to learn stuff and to get taught important things. I was never one to get distracted by the stupid traps other dim-witted people set for the innocent.

Maybe I WAS really weird after all, going to school for the sake of what a school really IS about.

I have a very particular view about this and it mostly resembles the view I have about things like taking drugs and people committing suicide. There's a choice, there might be a trigger or an element of temptation, but it is YOU that lets the bad things happen to you. Take action against it, how difficult it might be. It's a challenge called LIVING.

I am REALLY aware of how important grown-ups think this bullying at school is ('not at all' mostly, but things are getting better the last couple of years I feel), but don't let an important part of your life getting ruined by some individuals that have issues.

IZ off.

James Blast wrote:

Izzy HaveMercy wrote: I outwitted the bullies by talking them under the table

you may want to reword that, unless you actually 'blew' some geezers off, I still don't admonish bad behaviour by boys who made your life hell at school - it's said that school days were the best of your life BOLLOCKS!
Art School days were the best of my life and work sucks (under the table) but we all ken that

Get a grip man!

...and no I don't want to reword that, it's quite normal English, the stuff they speak o'er there...

IZ.

school - where you learn to interact in a society. one of the main and most important things we teach.
making friends. keeping friends.
school is never wholly about academia. never has been. gaiman is partly talking out of his arse.

emilystrange wrote:school - where you learn to interact in a society. one of the main and most important things we teach.
making friends. keeping friends.
school is never wholly about academia. never has been. gaiman is partly talking out of his arse.

Tell me how many highschool friends you are seeing nowadays on a regular basis.

People make new friends and ditch most of the old ones every seven years. I don't find that very surprising, really, when looking at my own entourage.

The only people I talk to frequently from 'those days' are a) 13Vision13, a very good friend, b) my brother-in-law who was in the same year with me and had the same interests re music and roleplaying games and fantasy books and c) a girl from my class I actually could not stand but has married herself into Kaats family tree so I HAVE to talk to her from time to time.

I have rediscovered a lot of my old classmates on FaceBook, and at first I was really happy about that. Why? NOT because they were still that cool and nice and crazy, no because it made me think back about my schoolyears, which were a rather pleasant time for me.

After a few weeks I 'hid' almost half of them from my Facebook page again, because they did not have anything interesting to say anymore.

They all sent me stupid quizzes with poor grammar, sent me pictures of their dawg and were very pleased that 'today I painted a door and now I'm going to get a well-deserved evening off'...

Today, I think only four or five remain on FB, because they do interesting stuff (one does poetry and music, the other one travels far and posts splendid pictures).

TBH, the most interesting people I've met are those I did NOT see at school but at gigs I did, concerts I frequented.... in MUSIC, as it were, a community where people really help each other because they have one common goal.

Am I talking like a weirdo Lazarus now, just a bit?

IZ.

that's not what gaiman was talking about, in that snippet.
i have some friends from school on there, actually. some that i've known since i was 5. not many, but tbh, they got in touch with me, not the other way round. i think that says something about a common bond, not whether we were best buddies or not. and we weren't - we just got on. if someone seeks me out after 25 years on that basis, then i think it's worth staying in touch, even if not superactively. THOSE people are quite interesting. my 'best' friends at the time aren't really worth squit, now.

Izzy HaveMercy wrote:TBH, the most interesting people I've met are those I did NOT see at school but at gigs I did, concerts I frequented.... in MUSIC, as it were, a community where people really help each other because they have one common goal.

Aye - the folks with whom I've reconnected are all those with whom I danced/did theatre/made music. I occasionally, in a fit of boredom, will run a search on some of my closer school friends - but they either never turn up or they're so bloody boring I'm once again glad they have no way to know how to find me.

Izzy HaveMercy wrote:Some people should get a life and some hair on their teeth.

I was a geek at school as well, but I outwitted the bullies by talking them under the table, which got me some respect from both them and the other geeks.

Never had broken fingers, teeth or egos, instead of feeling miserable and wallowing in it even worse than those Emoe-kids these days, I took action as it should be... excuse me for not letting people pish on my head in mid school

IZ.

First read that as " I outwitted the bullies by taking them under the table"

That would have probably worked as well.

oh yes. it would.

Izzy HaveMercy wrote:my schoolyears, which were a rather pleasant time for me.

Which is probably why you appear to have no empathy with the aforementioned blogger.

Indeed. If you weren't bullied you don't know what it's like. I'm sorry Iz but this:

it is YOU that lets the bad things happen to you

is bull. You're blaming the victim.

I'm with James above:

it's said that school days were the best of your life BOLLOCKS!

Comment number 88 on the blog-post I linked:

I wrote:Wow. "But I think that it was slightly worse than average" Broken fingers only slightly worse than average? Dude... I thought I had my time at school bad.

Let me tell you something. One of my first reactions back when I heard about the Columbine shootings was sympathy for the shooters -- I'm sure one of the main reasons for that was that they were bullied; I certainly remember having those kind of violent revenge fantasies while at school.

Indeed I sometimes wonder, if I'd been able to find a gun, whether I'd have done something similar myself. For that reason if no other, I'm glad for our gun-control laws (I'm in the UK). I certainly took knives to school, but fortunately never used one.

The fact that the guys who bullied me probably don't realise now what they did then doesn't really help. The only thing that helps is knowing that that time is in the past, and it's damn-well staying there. I certainly won't be going to any reunions.

if any of the people that bullied me try to get in touch, they'll be TOLD. time is NOT a healer.
oh, i've let go of it. it's not something i dwell on! but forgetting isn't in the deal.

revenge is a dish best eaten FROZEN.