1:46 PM
Even before this I was bullied for a while, I guess academia is a harsh place, but has anyone here ever been in a position where they were bullied? What did they do?
In a previous university, I think I pissed off someone by (seemingly) going against his personal beliefs ( to be honest the guy was forcing them on me which was highly inappropriate ), so he rallied up a mob and sent them all after me. It got so stupid after a point, I saw highly intelligent, sensible and honest people act like complete maniacs. You would expect academics to think twice before believing anything, but I saw people take in complete lies and rumors rush into forcing them on me.
I first thought that they were being being this bull**** that 'bullying' me is for my own good, then it slowly started dawning on me that, they just did this of the visceral fun it entailed. I mean, think about it when you give a bunch of 8 year olds a piniata and baseball bats and then remove their blindfolds, won't they all take great happiness by beating it into a pulpy mess? Morality obviously never exists, laws thrown out the window, so it was like that (kind of).
btw, the reason I pissed off someone higher up was because of a career change I wanted to make, it was a personal choice and they kept threatening me over it. I can appreciate when people give advice, but it was more of a 'dont do this or else'. Later on I found out that you're never supposed to talk about your career choices with a shitty superior, (it can lead to harassment like this).
So that's my story, I saw the most respected brilliant minds of my country act like brainless monkeys simply because it was funny. You would expect this to be unbelievable, that people get sense after a while, but trust me, it does not happen. I don't know how many laws were broken but I can tell you, it was a surreal experience. Intelligent, smart people acting like dumb brainless snerks because someone asked them to do so.
I don't know what good came out of it though. When you do something like that, you are obviously aware that the welfare of the said person is the last thing on your mind (that's a blatant excuse people like this give themselves, but so does every schoolyard bully to be honest). I think they all got so caught up gleefully beating up the piniata that they forgot why they were doing so in the first place, or who gave them their bats, or who strung up the piniata there?
