The Social Death Penalty: Why Being Ostracized Hurts Even More Than Bullying

I'm sorry if I sound like a heartless robot, but I never understood feeling ostracized. I fit the strange loner stereotype perfectly, but I think the opinions of people are only as important as you make them. If I see you as an asshole I don't value your opinion enough for it to hurt me.

I had a girl I liked in high school make a joke of my appearance in front of her friends, they all laughed hysterically but it had no effect on me, it only changed my opinion of them. I won't judge myself by what other people think or do. In my mind there is no such things as social status either, only cool people and assholes. If we get along I'll treat you like family, if we don't, you can # off. My clothes ain't trendy enough? Ok, cool. I wish you luck in your egotistical search of clones.

It's ok to spread awareness that it hurts, but assholes will never go away. More effort has to go into building our immune systems. There are some old saying about holding hot stones and getting burned. If you don't learn to let it go, you take some of the blame.

This isn't directed at you buzzy, but I feel like our society as a whole is getting dangerously close to the promotion of self loathing. The PC police and activist groups have brought a lot of attention to pain, and we've made it very important. We have all these forbidden words, and we scream at the top of our lungs any time someone does something that might hurt someone somewhere, but where is the empowerment? We have the protective bubbles and loving arms, but what are doing to make people not need them?

I wish I never was popular in high school, and if I was a loner maybe I would have actually graduated instead of party the whole time and skip classes. Most of the popular kids I was friends with followed the same path so in the end I look back a at all the "nerdy" kids and most of them seemed to do really well in their adult years. I was never one to bully and always tried to be friends with everyone even those who weren't as popular and have even spoke out when I saw people acting mean for no reason. I ended up getting a good trade skill but always wonder where I would have ended up if I was left out of the group.