Video Transcription
BULLYING: Tackling bullying with humour
Bullying – it’s one of those buzzwords that gets used a lot. But what can we do if we’re on the receiving end of it? Sometimes, you’re given the advice to fight back or ignore it, and sometimes this can make the situation worse, especially if people are doing it for the reactions of their friends rather than our own reaction.
At Rocket, we love throwing curveballs, so here’s one for you. We’re going to look at how we can respond to bullying using humour.
Let’s start by defining exactly what bullying is. It’s easiest to recognize bullying when the behaviour falls into all three of these categories:
- It’s happening on purpose: When they’ve said or done something with the intention to hurt or upset you. This can be in person or online.
- They have unfair power over you in some way: This could mean many things, like an automatic advantage over someone else. For example, they might be physically stronger, more popular, or have social power. And if someone’s perceived as different, well, this could be used against them too.
- The behaviour is repeated: So, if it’s a one-off, it can still be pretty awful, but if it happens more than once and becomes a pattern, that’s when we’d consider it to be bullying.
And it doesn’t have to be the same type of behaviour every time. This includes any ongoing efforts to troll your content, provoke, threaten, humiliate you, or be abusive.
Okay, now that we’ve cleared up how to identify bullying, let’s discuss how we can use humour to de-escalate the situation and get ourselves (or someone else) out of it. Using humour is about taking the power back.
Imagine every day when you’re finally settling in to eat your lunch, the same student comes over to you and tries to rile you up.
“Oh, look at you eating all alone. Have you got some kind of problem, loser?”
Okay, first approach – using physical humor:
“Yeah, I am coming down with this problem. It’s this, um, rash on my arm. You see that? Yeah, it’s pretty bad. But don’t worry, I got some cream for it though. Thanks for asking.”
Next idea – drop a really bad joke to create a distraction:
“Hey, what do you call a noodle that’s actually fake? An impasta. Get it?”
Third approach – a comeback:
“If you’re waiting for me to care about your opinion, you better pack a lunch too. It’s going to be a while.”
Or a comeback to the comeback:
“You know what? Some people should just use a glue stick instead of a chapstick.”
“Alright, alright, you prepared that one earlier, didn’t you?”
“Yep, I guess you’re just that predictable.”
The important part about giving a comeback is to use it as a way to shrug off and de-escalate the situation. It can be super random. The point of using humour isn’t to make them laugh or like you, so don’t worry about their reaction. The aim is to use it as a way to create a distraction, diffuse the aggression, and not make the situation worse.
Responding with humour can also be used online. It’s really cool because you have time to prepare what you want to say and you’re behind the screen. If you’re copying a bunch of online abuse, let’s not feed the trolls by retaliating.
You can try posting instead of a sassy gif or a sarcastic meme. And if you want to be really prepared, you can have some examples saved to your camera roll or you can hit up a witty friend for some advice.
When it comes to disarming awful situations with humour, the point is to be short and sweet and deflect so that the group starts talking about something else. When your mission is accomplished, we can send a private message to anyone targeted or affected to check in on them and make sure they’re doing okay.
Yeah, we think it sucks that anyone has to deal with bullying in the first place, but hopefully, these tips can help you stand your ground, dust it off, and show that you won’t stoop to their level.
Video by Project Rockit
