Sad Boyz - Bullying

Episode Date: January 26, 2018

On today's episode of sad boyz we talk about bullying. We discuss our experiences with it, what our bullies did to us and also why we think it's so prevalent in our formative years Also, there's an update on Jarvis's trash situation, Jordan reveals something very vulnerable to Jarvis and cancels "Jordan's awkward and completely vexing social interaction of the week" to talk about a harrowing "gift" that was left on his door

Welcome to the sad boys a podcast about feelings and other things. Also, i'm jarvis and i'm mc jc Okay, i'm rebranding for 2018. All right, so cool now Okay, but say that i'm cool. Then just move on If you don't say that loud the fans won't acknowledge it because i'm the psychic so today our podcast is about bullying Yeah, no kidding. Today our podcast is about bullying. Certainly seems that way, Jarvis. Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about. We'll talk a little bit about our experiences with bullying and why we think it's so prevalent. Yeah, why we think it's so prevalent in childhood particularly. I think, you know, it seems like an obvious statement like, oh, bullies mainly happen when you're a kid, but there's, you know, certain dynamics at play. Yeah, and I think it's so prevalent in childhood particularly, I think, you know, it seems like an obvious statement.

Like, oh, bullies mainly happen when you're a kid, but there's, you know, certain dynamics at play. Yeah, and I also see a lot of elements of that same, you know, insecurity that bullying comes out of in, you know, adult humans' behavior. It just manifests in a lot of different ways. Yeah, and it's like infuriating, so I can't wait to get to that topic. But before we dive into it, Jarvis. Yes. How in Sam Hill, this is me rebranding, I'm cool now. I don't see God's to that topic But before we dive into it, Jarvis Yes How in Sam Hill This is me rebranding, I'm cool now

I don't see God's name, I say Sam Hill I don't even know who that is How in Sam Hill Maybe it's Sam Hill I don't know Whoops I don't know Sam Too late, don't

Send me the answer on Twitter I will not read it Yeah How in Sam Hill are you doing this goddamn week? It's been an interesting week. It's very busy. I've been feeling a little down, but mostly personal stuff, working through it. On the bright side, though, there are a few updates from topics from previous weeks that I have.

Wait, wait. Should I sing the jingle? It's a trash tale with a trashy trash boy. Yeah, so there's a trash tale update and there's a Justin Timberlake update. Oh my god. Not five minutes ago. Oh no. The third single from Justin Timberlake's new album came out.

And it's trash. And it's trash. Oh my god. It's another trash episode of Sad Boy. No, I think I haven't had time to process it, but it's totally fine. It's just very different also from the other songs, which have been very different from each other. Actually, are we one episode or two episodes from my live listen to the first single? One episode.

Okay. Well, I would like to say, having given it some revisions. Oh, wait. You know what? Two. Well, I'd like to say, having given it some revisions, still don't love it. Yeah. We'll chew on it a little bit more. But also i had somebody point this out and i should say this to

you on mic this might be pretty upsetting okay here we go maybe the most sad boys moment we've ever had oh no i have never actually listened to 2020 oh the 2020 2020 hi i'm dad what the 2020 you listen to the 2020 the year was 2013 i couldn't name more than a couple singles. Oh, man, I could probably name. And I hear it's spectacular. So I don't have really the lexicon to judge his journey. Well, I think that like my take on his journey, I don't know if I've explained this before on the show. Justin Timberlake's first album, Justified, was the first album I ever purchased. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I have a lot of sentimental attachment. And when I was a kid, I used to listen a lot to NSYNC and, like, learn the choreography to the songs. Me and the

kids that I lived with on my street would get together. The other members of NSYNC. The other members of NSYNC. You lived on a street with them. Yeah, it was me, Justin, JC, Joey, Lance. You can't do this. And Chris Kirkpatrick. No! I don't know why Chris Kirkpatrick is the only one who I said their last name. Man, poor guy. Came last, too. Yeah, he always comes last. So, I have a lot of sentimental attachment to Justin Timberlake in his career, and Justin Timberlake's, like, not a perfect

person. He's, like, made a lot of mistakes, but you know how these things go. You, like, get, like, this sentimental attachment to people and their careers and stuff. At the very least, he's an interesting artiste. yeah so like you know you're justified justin terblake was trying to make an r&b album with like the neptunes reviewed very much as a pop album but still like pretty strong like first you know debut um had some iconic singles on there like crime your river senorita like i love you was uh you know the first single performed at the vmas

2002 i know this. You're crying. And then he followed it up with Future Sex Love Sounds, which was highly experimental, very Timbaland influenced. We've talked about doing a first albums episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is perfect. We'll get there. We'll get there.

And then essentially, there was this eight-year break between Future Sex Love Sounds and 2020 Experience. And 2020 Experience came out in two parts because they just recorded a lot of songs, I guess. So there was part one, which was good, and part two, which kind of felt like all the B-sides, but still had some really cool stuff in there. And I kind of want to listen to it after this, to be honest. Sounds like that album had quite the vision.

Sorry. Don't leave. No. Wait, where are you going? We've got to record the show. All right, fine. And so there's a new single. I guess to follow up for me, sorry don't leave no wait where are you going it's we gotta record the show all right come on man and so uh there's a new single uh i guess to follow up for me i like filthy way more than i did the

first time we talked about it and i also like supplies but other people don't like supplies i i quite enjoy the song supplies yeah yeah and then the video i find intellectually offensive and so it's it's really funny because i was watching this like Zane Lowe Beats 1 interview with Justin Timberlake where they're talking about like sort of sonically like what they're trying to do with the album. And everything seems very intentional. So I really just wish the best for everyone involved. Justin, not if you're listening. You are. As you listen, Justin, we wish you the very, very best.

Yeah. So that's trash update number one. And then trash update number two is... The squeak wall. The squeak wall. Too fast, too trash update. Too trash, too furious. So I...

Trash five. For those who don't recall TLDR, I'm in a very weird trash predicament with my apartment where I can't throw away any trash or else my neighbor will blow up at me. You're at a... You have a Cold War. Yeah, I you have a cold war yeah I'm in a cold war I'm in a trash cold war I finally got a hold of my property manager after shaming him in front of his colleagues so I left this guy life hack I I left yeah basically uh use network effects um we I learned that from Facebook and the social media movement. Essentially, I emailed this guy.

I called him and I like left a voicemail. I left a maintenance request and I got nothing for weeks. And I'm like, well, this is a little unacceptable, I think. Right. Because I'm putting my stuff in all the right places. Yeah. And then I was like, I don't know what else to do. And then I had the trash guy or excuse me.

I had my neighbor blow up at me about this. The trash guy. Yeah. He deserves that. And then I was just like, okay, I have the emails of other people on this email thread. I'm just going to CC all of them and be like, hey, have you heard from this guy? Because I cannot get in touch with him. Very nice.

No, like, immediately. Like, I got responses from two of those people and him all, like, together. And I'm like. It's a pro move. I felt bad about it. But at the same time, like, this is his job, I think. Yeah, it seems like the thing he should be doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we talked on the phone. And it seems like we're coming to a solution that I'm not happy with, but I can live with. You have to eat all the trash. I have to eat all the trash. I have to eat all the trash. No. So I have to go back to using the bins, my neighbor's bins, but they're just going to make the trash come twice as often. Oh. Which is fine.

Okay. But I'm like, hey, property manager, I get this in writing. Can you call my neighbor and all of his relatives? Because he does not believe me that we're supposed to be using his trash. So I do not want another conflict like this. I maybe, can I record this phone call? Like, I don't know what, I need like evidence because I know that it's just going to come back again.

And I really am tired of having this conversation with this dude. Yeah, but also not to provide too much negative feedback to your landlord that only replies on long email threads with lots lots of people but i mean jarvis you know this about me i'm not afraid to admit it right i don't know a lot about city planning yeah i've admitted this before candid and open on sad boys i don't know how you're a very uncivil engineer i am an engineer though i'm just very uncivil um but I would have to assume that getting the trash to come more often is not an easy thing to do um so it is a thing that you can do but you have to pay for it that's kind of what everyone's been complaining to me about this I've got to call

these extra things and I'm like dude I feel you um and so it's a thing that can happen and I'm excited it's happening but I wanted a solution where I had my own bin so that I could just continue being in a Cold War. I like that. But it didn't happen. Unfortunately, not unlike the early 90s, you are having to kind of compromise with your rival. It's true. It's true. And I will keep the Sad Boys audience up, the sad fam, the fam of the boys.

I really like fam of the boys i will keep really like family boys um i will keep everyone updated because it blows my mind that strangers now are able to connect with me about my trash situation and people in other countries is it a boon to the show or a kind of subtle critique that people have connected more with your trash story than anything else we've ever talked about it came up at dinner at work yesterday and our good friend nora was able to explain it to other people who weren't in the know shocking detail nuance you didn't even say on the show it's a degree of catharsis that i never thought i wanted i'll close this out it's the trash song for the trash segment. That's true. It is that.

And the song is trash. It's absolute trash. Call me JT. Doesn't it be like, I love you. Please be my friend. He's not going to be on the show anymore. So Jordan, how the heck, how in Sam Harris? How in Sam Hellman?

How in Hellman's Man is am i are you uh this week jarvis uh i'm doing pretty good i'd say i'm at like a seven or eight okay i saw shape of water this week so i'm riding high i'm floating high how is that i haven't seen it is that guillermo del toro one of my all-time maybe my all-time favorite director. Literally, I have so much respect for somebody that's able to apply that nice slice of otter butter over whatever you give him. Like he works on studio projects like Pacific Rim and makes it something really interesting. And then he goes and makes like The Devil's Backbone or Pan's Labyrinth or Shape of Water and it's just for him.

But he makes it so compelling that it becomes a huge hit And gets nommed That's Yeah That's awesome But it was fantastic Highly recommended We still have not seen Black Panther

As of this recording That's true I actually bought Black Panther tickets And then had to give them up Because I realized I will For a rally

I have a show That conflicts With the showing So I'm gonna go Try and see it At some weird hour We should go see it together. Yeah, let's do it.

We'll figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's figure it out. Together we are one Black Panther. That's true. And one White Panther. Or each Half Panther. We should mention.

Yeah, no, that's true. I'm killed up in a ball. We're half Black, half Panther. Together we create one full Black Panther. But unfortunately, as much as I would like to have my recurring segment, which I definitely remember the name of and I don't need to look up.

Let me try. It's Jordan's awkward and completely vexing so awkward something. That's exactly it. Verbatim. That was amazing. How do you do that?

You're listening to headphones. All of the pauses and repeats of words. Actually, when I say it, it does sound a bit like that. So that's pretty accurate. However, that segment is now cancelled. Oh, wow. This week it is cancelled. Actually, when I say it, it does sound a bit like that. So that's pretty accurate. However, that segment is now cancelled. Oh, wow.

This week it is cancelled. Oh, damn. Because apropos of our topic today, I have been bullied. Whoa. I got bullied last night. Damn. And I'm going to show you precisely how I was bullied. Okay, here we go.

I brought up something kind of clandestine or cloak and dagger before we started the recording. It's behind my back right now. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. My very good friend, and at this point- Jordan point holding something and he hasn't showed it to me behind his back and he is now going to reveal it for the story and i still have no idea what gunshot sound just ends yeah wow um my good they still got uploaded my formerly good friend but after this now nemesis oh no zach who lives in my building, has just a precious habit of leaving the worst things outside of my door and then ringing the bell.

These have included long serial killer style scribblings of the lyrics to All Star. Oh, God. They have included pretty graphic drawings and, you know, just various things in case he thought. That means they're drawings of graphic novels. Yeah. Very accurate, actually. And free. Zach's very considerate in that he never wants me to feel too safe at any one

given time you know if i'm at home and i'm maybe watching a tv show i enjoy you gotta keep you on guard i'm all comfortable oh i might die today i remember all of a sudden so this was his latest contribution to this hellish uh saga oh no i want you to close your eyes and i'm gonna pull the thing out okay that's all right it's exactly what you think it is um i want you to close your eyes and i'm gonna pull the thing out okay that's all right it's exactly what you think it is um i want you to open your eyes and describe what you're looking at um i i i mean we could uh no no no same time by just calling it sin i i got this it's a it's a figure of of a little elf boy i'm gonna'll include a picture, maybe in the art. Oh, yeah, in your nightmares.

Just close your eyes and imagine the worst thing. It's a little elf boy, and he's wearing a Santa-y suit. It's so bad. He's wearing a little Santa suit, and he's looking to the right as if he's up to no good. He looks very coy. Yeah, he looks very coy yeah he looks very coy but his cheeks are very rosy and bulbous so he's like oh i've done nothing wrong i'll never tell

the worst thing about it now if you were to isolate just the head and at this point please look at the channel if you were to isolate the head this would be the last sight you see before you die but the head by itself whilst creepy coy and uh calculating right is you could maybe get away with that for a for a fun toy for your kids maybe maybe in the 50s maybe in the 50s you take away the the the censorship that i've applied with my palm right all right he's far taller than he needs to be looks like slender man It's the worst He's curled up in a ball I'm not even sure how to describe it He's doing a cannonball effectively

Except his back is perfectly straight If he were to scale he would be 9 feet tall It's horrifying Oh my god I've just revealed that the arms and legs Would in fact not stitch together In a cannonball shape But that's just how

He was folded I'm now terrified Oh no He also has no feet He has no feet He just has points Like spider limbs This is terrifying

We will post a photo Of this horrible Horrible creature Oh my god It's the worst thing Jordan's making him walk That's horrible Oh but fortunately

His hands are stitched together Like a grim hellfire nightmare Oh my god This's the worst thing Jordan's making him walk That's horrible Oh but fortunately his hands are stitched together Like a grim hellfire nightmare Oh my god This is what they do to you in Hellraiser the Christmas edition This is harassment I don't even know by who or to who Yeah yeah yeah Anyway thanks Zach

Yeah so Zach if you're out there Your message has been received We'll be wiring you the money Please give my daughter back Don't harm her So Jordan we have a topic today We do Perfect segue because that was horrifying bullying

And our topic today not unlike the boy Who's still looking at me His eyes follow you around the room Even if I face him the other way He'll turn over time I really don't want to put him anywhere in my room Yeah you gotta put him underground. Or in a fire.

But he will just become stronger. Okay. Excuse me, sir. Would you like some of this good stuff? Oh, you sir, would you like some of this good stuff? It's just a pamphlet. I know that sounds weird. Hold on. You look super familiar. Are you... Oh, you so? Would you like some of this good stuff? It's just a pamphlet. I know that sounds weird. All right, yeah, sure.

Take a look. Hold on. You look super familiar. Are you... Okay, this happens a lot. I'm a... Jarvis. You're Jarvis from the Sad Boys. No, I'm the other one. I'm Jordan. The British sidekick. Sidekick? I'm the main co-host. Anyway, that doesn't matter. Take a look at the pamphlet. You're a listener? to the show um yeah i've heard a few episodes it just looks like you wrote share sad boys with a friend and a bunch of different crayon that i did did it by hand uh later found

out that we have a printer and kind of lost a saturday to that one but i'm excited that you're interested and that you're listening to the show um yeah i listen every now and then yeah you guys like really big what are you doing on the street, the most valuable thing that you can do for us is actually promote the show to your friends. Because, hey, if you listen and you enjoy the show, it's pretty likely that people in your network would also listen and enjoy the show. Wait, so that actually helps you? It's incredibly valuable. Wow. It's the most valuable thing you can do.

I mean, yeah, my friend Derek would probably really enjoy the show. Hell yeah, let's get Derek onto the show. And maybe when you hang out with Derek, you tell him, I'm not a sidekick. I'm actually like kind of the co-host of the show. And if anything, sort of the main host. That's a big ass for me. I'm going to share it, but I can't. Right, but maybe if you share the show, he enjoys it.

Then you mention, hey, and Jordan's like a main guy. Oh, sorry, I'm getting a call. But he's like, don't forget to mention the main. I met the sidekick from the sad boy. No no but actually the other guy is way funnier our topic today is bullying and i wanted to start with a place where i definitely got bullied very early on which is elementary school oh primary school yeah thank you yeah yeah that's for our uh not american listeners it's for uh uh europe listeners, of which we have some. We do.

And some that are going to be joining us on the show probably very soon. I'm sure are, but don't tell nobody. It's a secret. It's a secret. I'll never tell. That's what he said. That was him. Get off the mic.

Oh, my God. Gerald? What's the first memory you have of being bullied? So I went for a little bit of context I mentioned it on the show before But I grew up in an almost exclusively white town And I did go to an exclusively white elementary school Not big school

Right, it was ethnically diverse But it was just painted white Yeah, it was very hard to see It was a white schoolhouse It was so bright All black students though Yeah, it was weird Hard contrast No so bright uh all black students though so yeah hard contrast um no i went to like an all caucasian school yeah um and i at the time

uh was mixed race which i still am right uh just discovering it figuring it out you know just started um but i remember thinking to myself uh that it i remember rather not really thinking about it because i was born in this town right out Gloucestershire yeah I was at Stroud Valley School wow a very cute name yeah green uniforms course uniforms because it's the UK yeah yeah um the U in UK stands for uniform uniforms the uniform kingdom thumbs up question mark yeah uniforms okay okay um but at the time it was not really a point of contention for me Because my mum obviously was never a bully A racial bully towards me And your mum is a white person

She is a white person unfortunately Despite trying her best She was stuck that way But while we were talking about it when I was very very young I remember she would reference it And prepare me and provide like context because I could see that I was different from other people. Right.

But it was never really like a point of contention or even a point of topic because most people wouldn't say it to me. They might say it to my mum. And then I remember one day when I was at school for the first time, somebody referenced it and they referenced it in not a bullying way, but just an exclusionary way. And this is maybe on a macro scale, a good example of why microaggressions are actually dangerous. Right.

They're not just things that us woolly liberals use to get you dang conservatives down. Like, they are things that can be really hurtful. And this started a trend of people assuming that I could either reach things, run for things, help with things. Wow. Just, like, be the physical person that helps.

Wow. Also at this point, no taller than anyone else. Right. Like same height, just a little bit. It was like they discovered you were Spider-Man and then just like started asking like, hey, that's up really high. Think you could use your webs to get Spider-Man? And it's like, I'm a child and not a superhero. My uncle Ben was just killed.

This is so inappropriate. No relation. I remember that being, the reason I mentioned that despite it not being active bullying was because I remember that more vividly than I remember many later occasions of active racial bullying. Right. Because racial bullying is,

especially when you're a kid, and it was my experience, it's just like this extension of a lack of empathy and cruelty and anger and that I could reconcile. Right. What I couldn't reconcile as a kid was, It's just like this extension of a lack of empathy and cruelty and anger. And that I could reconcile. What I couldn't reconcile as a kid was, oh, I'm like a different kind of human. In this school, I'm the help. Like I go and I pick up the stuff.

Right, right. You know, this was what? I'm 78 years old, so this was in the early 40s. This was what, 1998, 1999? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So at the time, I'm just like, okay, sure. Yeah, I guess brown people just do that kind of stuff. Okay, I'll get the thing off the shelf.

And they're just like, wait, no. It's like forcing you into this weird role that is subservient, almost. And I don't think it was, especially, you know, this is also Cotswolds Right In the middle of bumfuck England So people might just Not have known yet That that wasn't cool I'm not crystal clear It had reached But I mean this stretched

Throughout my life I was A classic was people You know Crossing the street Especially when I got bigger And then Not wanting me to stand behind them

Like ATMs People following me in stores That's the classic. But all that kind of stuff, I remember, as I say, much more vividly than the actual active bullying because the bullying is just like, oh, kids suck. We all know that kids suck. That's why we put them in a tiny jail every day because we can't let them out on the street. Totally.

But yeah, that was my first memory. How about you? So for me, going back to elementary school i kind of had the flip side uh i had the opposite experience um my school was all black that i went to um and i i've mentioned this before but i didn't really know any white people until i went to middle school and how old is middle school that's uh like 11 okay so that's like yeah yeah and so like there were a few of them in my school that i uh like 11 okay so that's like yeah yeah and so like there were a few of them in my school that i was like friends with but it was like predominantly black

and i so i what i mean is that like it was dominated by black culture and i wasn't really like i didn't listen to rock music until i was 11 because i was like what is this why does everyone know the words to journeys don't stop believing it seems as if everyone is currently possessed yeah what's that like a cultural undercurrent like a quick rant is like i don't know why it's so expected for me to know that song it's literally from the 70s you don't understand jarvis it's a white song yeah it's a very popular white song it was like did you all just take a pill and just know all these like did, did you come out of the womb with this? You take the blue pill and you get to attend the BET Awards and you learn all the lyrics to Nas tracks.

Yeah, my reference points were all like, I watch BET and stuff. So in elementary school, the thing I got made fun of for, because it wasn't my... Well, actually, I did get made fun of for the color of my skin, but sort of in a reverse way where people always assumed that I was half white. And I didn't know that I was because I only knew like my mother's black, every person who raised me was black. So I didn't know. And I didn't know who my father was. So I just like assumed because everyone was telling me that I was half white that I was, but it didn't really have anything to do with my identity because I didn't know what that meant right it was just like light skin because it's like there's a terminology for like light skin or like even you know colloquially pronounced light skinned you

know like that that's how I was like me uh and there was just like a lot of context there's like um sort of racial tropes that come with like being light-skinned did you find that that was established from day dot like people were immediately making that assumption or was it more when you got around like pop culture age no no it was definitely immediately and then the other things that because it wasn't always that that i was made fun of for um so i've talked about that i've talked about how i was made fun of for for talking white um which is just because i sound like this and i grew up in a place where people didn't sound like that but I don't know where I got you know my manner of speech from this is just like how I am right the other stuff that I got made fun of for

was like I had a lot of allergies so I my nose was always running so I was called snot nose I have a scar um I was born via c-section and have a scar on the top of my head where like hair doesn't grow. And when I would have like buzz cuts as a kid, people who were standing behind me would always like ask me about it. Right. Like, oh, did you know you're bald here or whatever? And it's like, oh, I had no idea. Every single time you gasped in shock and fear. Yeah, yeah.

What? And I also, when I was about five, fell backwards onto concrete steps and cracked my head open. So I have another scar where hair doesn't grow on the back of my head. So people would comment on that. I would get called gap tooth a lot because I have a gap in my teeth. So, you know, it makes makes sense i guess that's a step in the right direction checks out um it'd be called a gap teeth a lot because i i don't know wait and and on top of all that i was just made fun of for being smart because i was in a you know quote-unquote gifted math class and that like it wasn't as if i was in an entire curriculum

that was different than everybody it would be like i would leave to go to my class like special class and then come back and then uh because that made me different right do you think there was a correlation between the talking weight and that too um the public perception of class of i don't think anyone made that one made that like connection because they're you know kids are very like just whatever i can see i'm gonna comment on whatever like and they're you know kids are very like just whatever i can see i'm gonna comment on whatever like and they're not making connections yeah yeah that was like my initial experiences with uh with bullying and then that kind of continued throughout um elementary school and did you ever have or i'm sure you did because everybody does at some point many people

have multiple i'm wondering at what point in your life did you get a or the bully? Okay, yeah, because I was going to ask the same question to you. So I can start with this. Sometime in elementary school, I had a couple kids who would bully me, and they were, like, friends. So I think I was just easy to pick on. And I don't know, like, how prevalent fighting was at your school, but, like, it kind of is for some reason the way that like black kids get their aggressions out oh really yeah yeah yeah so it would always be like it would literally be like in a video game when you get a push notification that someone has challenged you a new challenger

has arrived like i would literally be walking home and i would get a note a real life notification from one of my friends or friends of friends it's like hey carlston wants to fight you not kidding that's like how it would be and i would be like what did i do to upset this man damn uh or it'd be like i can't even fucking remember the other guy's name um but i had these two guys who were like kind of bullies to me and i remember like uh calston they stole my like yugioh cards no i remember i had like a jinzo that was like a secret rare um okay now i'm here yeah secret rare from pharaoh's servant yugioh card actually still very rare to this day card do they play yugioh are they just being mean they um didn't really play yugioh they just like collected the cards and then like yeah and and i remember uh

i remember like although i can't imagine that helped much with your defense they were taking me like hey you don't even play yeah yeah exactly exactly i've also had in middle school i used to play magic the gathering and i had like kids who would walk around the lunch tables and like grab my deck of magic cards and run out the door um what i mean we'll get more into this in a moment yeah yeah the only reason that this isn't the most crazy heinous shit ever is because every child is like this yeah how buck wild is it yeah every child is like oh yeah i had don't have empathy i yeah um so i just remember i'll tell you this one story that like still to this day like makes me upset um my uh uh my like person who raised me who I call my mom like from a very early age like she raised me

from like zero to twelve um and then she passed away unfortunately so we I was like a big mama's boy uh and I was also a huge nerd and like used to play Yu-Gi-Oh competitively so I would go how old are you in this scenario 11 like I'm fifth grade basically uh i would go to yugioh tournaments at the comic book store and uh play against like the college kids i was in a college town uh and so i would i would not do that well but i would do okay i was like i could hang a little bit but i was still very young i was still like getting my sort of cutting my teeth in this like competitive playing things scene um but i really enjoyed it and i remember my my mom had like someone had bought a box of cards my mom had somehow convinced them to trade me this genzo uh just through like she was like very like a nice person and she was

like somehow got them to trade me this very rare card that i really really wanted right it's an awesome card too in that at that time and then this guy steals my the the the bully steals my card and the next time i see it it's like ripped into oh oh yeah it's like i remember like sell it i remember seeing my uh my card that i had this like sentimental attachment to like ripped near a gutter in my uh that's so weird i know it is weird um what i i i just that is there some kind of gene i just never had the compulsion for that yeah i agree what is the thrill you get from that i don't know i think it's being in control well yeah i think it's like uh i think it comes from its agency yeah agency and then like just not being in yeah yeah just in control of other

parts of your life and then like needing that outlet i um i want to ask you about your bully what was what was your like when did you get your first bully well there's a sort of segue to this from what we were just talking about i am personally of the mindset that it's a this this strange cultural point of patronization that we always frame bullies as kids that have their own problems. I think that's very common, and I definitely don't want to detract from that, and there is always some kind of nurture-based source for that. I don't think people are born with the bully gene.

Agree, agree. However, many of the bullies that I've known in my life, and I say this without having a lot of insight into their lifestyle, they were just kind of dicks Yeah yeah yeah Everybody has issues, everybody struggles with things But some people externalize that in different ways And I don't think it's as easy a translation as it often gets simplified to

As My dad hits me, I'm gonna hit you I'm sure that's very common But a lot of the time it's My dad is a lawyer in the city And doesn't spend a lot of time with me And I spend more time with my mum So I'm very friendly with women

But also kind of commanding over them And I hate men And it's like these weird And that manifests as Like if I ever make a joke about the law He'll just start attacking me Like oh I don't even know what I did Sorry

Yeah yeah I think that's the issue And I think that's what blocks a lot of negotiations Around putting bullying away. It's always like, hey, we need to talk to the kids and say, hey, don't hit them. You know that's bad, right? Right, right. Yeah.

He didn't hit him because he thought, oh, well, this is fine, right? Hitting's fun and surely nobody gets hurt. They hit them because they don't have a value set that devalues hitting somebody. And there's this sort of fire that builds up that needs a release. And they don't know. They don't have any strategies for like releasing that you literally don't have anything else at that point in your life it's like like i just know i can do that this is masturbation for me and then yeah yeah this is every this is everything for me literally all of my i've been charging this laser and i have no outlet for it and i just it's like you're

holding you you really have to go to the bathroom you've just been holding it for a long time and you don't know where to go so you just throw up yeah you don't even be yeah you just don't have a bathroom I have to do something yeah yeah um but yeah my first uh bully bully um the nice thing is and I always I was always told this right and in retrospect thank god it true, I don't remember his name. Okay. I don't really remember any of their names. I don't remember the...

I said someone else's name earlier. I don't remember the name of the guy who ripped up my Jinzo card. I remember the name of a different dude who was like, wanted to fight me one time, but I don't remember the dude who did the deed. What if it was Yugi? Whoa. Oh my God. He was too powerful.

He had to destroy the card. But you were saying. But the, fortunately I don't remember any of the names. I remember the names of people that I had like weird contentious relationships with when I was older that could maybe be classified as bullying like in college and stuff. But no, when I was a kid, I was lucky enough to run in circles

where I never really established a bully bully. Like there were different periods of time where different people would be angry with me or be hateful towards me. Or like, again, they're releasing that fire. I'm sure I was annoying on time, time to time. And then they would release it on me and they would like call me the N-word.

Like as opposed to peeing, they would call me the N-word. You know, it's their release. Which I think is a thing also worth addressing is that while I do not believe that insulting somebody for having a big nose or insulting somebody for being overweight is at all comparable to their race. Right. Using the N word.

Right. For kids, it is. Well, yeah. It is synonymous. Well, there's only, I think that like it feels like it might feel wrong to hear that. But at the same time, like you're the building blocks of like being everything is like the same size everything you cry for really simple stuff because you think it's the end of the world yeah you cry as hard as if you just found out you were going to die when you

like lose your i'm sure if i found out i was going to die i wouldn't cry as much as i did when like i didn't get my way like i didn't get a video game that i wanted for christmas i had to get about eight to eight thirty yeah yeah like that because your point you just accumulate all these points of reference that like puts things into perspective yeah and babies start with cry completely i'm going to die and i am so fucking happy and comfortable right now i'm gonna go to sleep that's like your two ends of the spectrum yeah and everything in the middle has to be filled in with experience when you're 11 years old even 15 years old you got a lot of time you got a lot of things and experiences to learn particularly the things and your brain is still developing to have like

empathy and stuff which you don't have at that point yeah uh but yeah that was a really common thing that came up for me when i was uh getting bullied in high school uh which i suppose would also be middle school in my case i was about 13 right which we call high school or secondary school um in my secondary school a thing about 13, which we call high school or secondary school. In my secondary school, a thing that would happen really commonly was I would just walk past people I didn't know, and they would just go, hey, what's up? N-word. Oh.

Okay, yeah. Hmm? Yeah. Excuse me, sir. And of course, like, you know, you're a geeky little kid with a couple friends, but you're not with them much of the time. You're just walking around thinking to yourself, maybe you've got some headphones in, and somebody says that to you.

I now have agency as an adult to either go, well, that was a crazy person, I'm going to go home, or, excuse me, what did you just say? That was a nuts thing to do to a stranger or to anyone. And then as a kid, you just swallow it. You go like, um, okay, then back to class. Back to learning about Henry V. The contrast is very upsetting.

But I was fortunate enough to, at least in my memory, never have, like, the dude. Interesting. Steve Barnes. He's got his baseball bat. Get off me, Steve. I'm in the dang locker. Why do you sound like a movie trailer announcer who's being bullied by Steve Barnes? This summer,

I got beat up at the pool. New Line Cinema presents Me Getting My Ass Kicked by Steve Barnes. Classic Steve. By Michael Bay. Steve, give me my dang cards back, Steve.

Seriously, though. Yeah, but if you do have them. If you do have them, I'd like the back in one piece, please. I would love if he is just sitting, listening, and remorseful uh the dude i'm still sad about that so one thing i wanted to mention about that is like i was lucky enough to not have like random n-word usage because i didn't or at least be called the n-word as a slur yeah because i just

wasn't around the people who could do that in a slur way yeah because if it's like but if it's like black people call black people that all the time so like wasn't that weird you're like oh thank you yeah yeah um but when I was much older I experienced like some like drive-by people like with their windows down and like just yelling out the n-word and at that point it's it's pretty weird it's like those people are just people who have that same fire in them that they can't expel. You got to 30 and you still didn't figure out where the bathroom was. You still can't pee. I'm so lucky to have had that sort of development.

Maybe as a result of being at the brunt of some of this bullying that's taught me about the effects that others actions have and like i don't know i just think that that from that experience i've been roughed up to a degree where it's made me a more it's made me a better person and a more thoughtful person even though in the moment it was like the worst thing i could have possibly experienced yeah um so is the question like and the question is how do you think that both your experiences with bullying have shaped you as a person yeah so this is something i think about a lot uh particularly around uh racial discrimination and school environments particularly i just hated school the entire experience was a wash for me right the entire

experience everything i learned i learned from youtube, which is why I'm so smart. No follow-up comments required. But I, a little bit of transparency on the show. My number one dream, like the thing that I aspire to do is establish enough of a comfortable lifestyle that I can have kids. Like children are the thing that I'm most excited about. Yeah. I think I'll be a good dad and I look forward to it every day. And, you know, that excites me.

Right, right. So just on the back burner, you know, I'm in no rush, but it's out there and that's the thing I look forward about. Yeah. I think I'll be a good dad and I look forward to it every day and, you know, that excites me. Right, right. So just on the back burner, you know, I'm in no rush but it's out there and that's the thing I look forward to. Absolutely. And I wrestle with the idea of what school environment I would send my kids to constantly.

My hope is that I would be in a space, you know, like San Francisco where there are just as functional alternatives with a little bit more oversight because I believe that the school system as it exists, at least in the UK and from what I understand the US one,

is fundamentally broken. It is not how human beings develop. It is not an environment that is conducive to that. I think that there's a lot of competing interests that result in the ideals being sacrificed for some harsh realities of incentives basically we could we could do a whole uh other podcast series of episodes me complaining about the school system but to kind of uh and i would like to do an episode on cyber bullying as well because we haven't touched on that and i would like to talk about it actually yeah to sort of conjugate my thoughts on

how the school system affects my my perspective there i am fearful but cautiously optimistic right that you know in some way we'll just develop a better cultural understanding of how people react to those kind of stimuli and environments um but i also think to myself pretty often yeah it was good for me look i mean look at me now which man to be totally honest with you is not that different a philosophy from i was in in World War II. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was incredibly traumatic and I can't sleep and I hit my wife. But, you know, I can drive my car pretty good. I served my country and I'm better for it.

Like, I don't know if my perspective is skewed. Yeah. And it almost certainly is. But I value that experience. I value the perspective it gave me. I value the opportunity to be empathic. I value empathy more now as a result as well i think if you're raised i was raised single child single mother environment and mother's a very empathic

and loving person right i probably could have been a little delicate for the real world yeah i not got like a uh apprenticeship in bullshit yeah you know conflict i think of it like this i'm a pretty optimistic person and i think that while these experiences shaped me ultimately for the better, there were very harsh way to go about it. Similar to like some people learn to swim with classes where they have an increasing like difficulty scale of what they're doing. And they have like a tight feedback loop for their progress. And some people just get thrown into the deep end. Right. And like it's sink or swim yeah and i think that bullying is a very sink or swim way to develop yeah and it can crush people and it has and that's kind of why i like want to talk about

cyberbullying at some point is because like not everybody is able to have that elasticity and that bounce back yeah and i think that we are lucky to have sort of come out of it in the way that we did and to have had later experiences that taught us how to compartmentalize positive aspects yeah not just in that environment but in life in general if something goes wrong try and take that and boil it down to something practical i think of it as like oh what doesn't kill you makes you stronger type situation but it could actually kill you and so and so the fact that we are like we survived that and are stronger for it isn't to say that it is inherently valuable yeah i think that it has value but it is a high volatility in terms of like kind of what you were saying about about

schooling i would hope i guess we're talking about schooling because it's like the well one it's like where you spend all your time as a kid and it's also like the primary place that bullying happens because your primary interactions with other people yeah like i hope that like my kids could be in a very culturally diverse integrated environment where you're you have to learn about where other people come from first and foremost and like that that way, the every, if everyone's different, then there's not so much like of pointing at like specific differences in

people. Cause if you're like, we're all this way and this person's different. And now I'm able to project all these stereotypes I have. That's a, that's a point of leverage that kids have because their brains are dumb. And, and it's,

it's, it's like literally the only like line they can draw from point a to point b yeah if you scatter that and if you make it not a direct line it's like well all right well you're from a different place and you have a different background and um you love pretzels you hate me yeah yeah i think we're when it's like that then the clicks that form are like uh like in mean girls where it's like all right we're all pretty all pretty socioeconomically the same, and we all have the same racial background. And so we're forming cliques based on something superficial. I think that that is going to happen regardless.

I think that that's just human nature. Particularly with the level of granularity a child's mind can operate on. higher i think it's at a more manageable level at that point because it doesn't sort of dig into something as core to someone's being as their like the color of their skin uh yeah or something like that and so i don't know that like my i i would hope that like my kids are like you know bullied for for dumb shit but not having to question their like personhood yeah because bullying at like a at a meta level is just a more intensive more aggressive version of criticism right yeah like it's a really really bad outlet for criticism yeah what the you know what a bully is on some level trying to do is go ah change yeah fear

saber-toothed tiger lock the cave like that kind of stuff Don't be you Like the philosophy Is at a very very base level Kind of logical Kind of Yeah Like you're going like Oh that person's got the flu Better make sure

They don't have the flu anymore Get rid of them This person has leprosy Get them out of the colony right Total Whereas Practically speaking That doesn't fucking work

You don't get to just go like Oh my god Everybody that is slightly different They just leave And then everything will be fine right Yeah People will be like me I like um but like fundamentally if we can kind of parlay that into an actual healthy dialogue it's okay to criticize each other i i i agree and i think that like our tools for criticizing each other are very blunt and they will get better

over time and hopefully like things are worthy of criticism it's just like when you have a hammer you're just like ow you hit me with a hammer and it's like oh it's because i didn't know the didactic equivalent how do i communicating like suck you up with a hammer yeah um so that's about all the time we have today uh but we've got some homework for you jordan and just like school just like school the homework is to just tell us about your bullying experiences you can you can reach us on twitter at sadboyspod

or on facebook at sadboyspod yeah hit us with anything hit us with you know what the bravest amongst you just post the name of your bully

oh god damn full and last name social security number address facebook link facebook link kpal link

I want to venmo them to really show them how mad I am yeah I look forward to seeing them to show them how mad I am. Yeah. I look forward to seeing them. And as always, we love you. And we're sorry. Bam. Thank you.