FTFA:

It looks as though the victims are the other side of the same coin.

And what's not mentioned in the article is how the ramifications of bullying stick with someone for the rest of their life - there the "mousy ones", the ones without "self confidence", the ones that "don't fit in", etc....

It wouldn't surprise me the least if many of the permanently unemployed are part of this group. So, I think it costs society too.

What a lie!

Being an aggressive incompassionate sociopath lands you a career in management. You get to be the boss of that nerd you bullied, and you get to continue bullying that nerd into working long hours for low pay.

Reality sucks.

Even the most amazing street fighter who has gotten himself into hundreds of fights can still loose an eye against an amateur. Street fights are not a sport. Various environment props and even weapons are more than likely if the opponent is stupid enough to pick a fight in the first place.

The best way to win a fight is by never fighting at all.

You both completely failed at learning jack, and resorted to the threat of violence. NERD FAIL.

Learn social skills. THAT'S the lesson. They aren't hard and a handful of social cues makes all the difference.

I was the typical introverted high school nerd (5'4 at the time), and had a 6'5" upper-class psychopath following me around and finding new ways to harass me.

I talked to my principal over it (God bless you Roger Hood!). He told me next time it happened, kick his ass and he (the principal) wouldn't punish me.

A few days later at PE we were playing soccer, and whenever I had the ball he would "accidentally" kick me in the leg as hard as he could. For days, it felt like a knife every time I put weight on that foot. Hurt so bad it took my breath away.

Two days later I spotted him in the hall. I kicked him in the jewels, and laid him flat on the ground. I proceeded to spend the next 3 minutes kicking and punching him in the balls, the sides, the head, anything I could hit. I didn't feel any pain in my foot at all during this. Eventually he was bawling so loud that the girls in a nearby classroom came out and rescued him (and had the gaul to ask why I was picking on the poor psychopath and being such a mean person).

Two things happened: the psychopath transferred out of the school a week later, and *no one* ever messed with me again.

I wish we could all get along. But some whack jobs only understand the language of violence, and you have to be willing to speak their language to teach them a lesson.

I think the biggest challenge in Aikido is finding a club that offers unrestricted sparring. Without that, you can never learn to actually defend yourself.

I briefly practised Aikido having trained in Sambo and Muay Thai. What shocked me (and caused me to leave every club I joined) was that everything was very slow and everyone always knew what was coming; as a result everyone thought that they were great because they didn't know how little they actually knew. This is in contrast to the other arts I have trained in, where (mostly) free sparring from the very first lesson means that you're acutely conscious of the limitations of what you know.

If you can find an Aikido club that shares premises with other martial artists and lets practitioners of different arts roll together then I can see Aikido being an effective discipline. Unfortunately this sort of practice, which isn't uncommon for judokas (who often spar with BJJ fighters or crosstrain for MMA), seems to be unheard of in Aikido, at least everywhere I've tried. It's similar to the problems in Karate and Taikwondo - if you don't allow any influence from outside the ecosystem then you can easily end up with an art that is useless when the rules of that ecosystem are removed. (That's not to say Karate or TKD are useless by nature, just that in their modern form they are normally taught by someone who has never learnt the weaknesses of the art. )

dude, you kicked and punched him in the balls! ... for 3 fucking minutes!

not cool man... not cool.

The problem is that for some people, basic hand to hand to hand fighting or grappling (preferably a bullshit free low fat type such as boxing or jiu jitsu) is preferable because you can pick up the basics quickly and not invest huge amounts of time if you are content with knowing the basics of fighting and self defense but don't find it to be an enjoyable hobby. On the flip side, you can work your entire life to master akido.

I think you're confused about who's the psychopath in your story.

More strictly(at least in my experience), parents and teachers, and admins are actually very interested, with occasional exceptions, in addressing the issue(When I was in school, they were constantly emitting pious anti-bullying PSAs, having observed administrators in an occupational context, their bookshelves and seminar schedules are packed with mentions of the issue, written by assorted well-meaning education Ph.Ds).

The problem, though, is that they generally aren't willing to face the reality of the issue. They cling to the illusion that, with the right magic words and social niceties and apologies and shit, everyone will just be able to get along and be nice to each other. The fact that "X is a bully" implies "X is a sadistic bastard who derives pleasure from inflicting pain on those weaker than him" was just too unpleasant to enter their analysis of the situation. Oh, no, if we just call in one of X's victims and have them talk over their differences(nice way to let X know who squealed on him, assholes, that isn't going to go badly), we can all come together and sing "kumbaya" in joyous harmony. This basic failure made all their well meaning efforts utterly futile, and not infrequently counterproductive.

The trouble is, the sort of well-meaning softies who care the most about bullying are the ones who have the greatest difficulty wrapping their minds around the fact that they are dealing with genuinely crafty, vicious people. A bully/victim dynamic is not a "misunderstanding". There is no "talking over" to be done. It is an application of power and violence, just because they can, and because they enjoy it. The sort of person who is all empathic and becomes a guidance counselor or whatever just isn't very well equipped to understand that. They have such a long(and vicerally immediate) history of caring, and feeling other people's pain, that they have difficulty imagining the inner lives of people who don't care, and who enjoy others' pain. Even if told, the abstract model is so alien to their emotional experience that they just can't take it seriously and grapple with its implications to a useful degree....

I really can't blame the small kids. Size matters in this society. I don't remember if it was Crick or Watson who said this, but when asked if they were for genetic engineering of children, they responded with this (to paraphrase):

His point being that tall people have an edge, of course - not that every parent want's their kids to be CEOs.

I once worked for a guy who insisted that he got where he was by hard work. He was 6' 3", handsome Italian guy who was also a Yale football star who graduated with a degree in Economics - I don't know how well he did. Anyway, business opportunities just came to him - yes, he was a multi-millionaire. I saw his books. He was always telling me that I need to develop some "self-confidence". Easy for him to say.

When Dave Chappelle was on the "Actors Studio", he kind of chewed out a white guy about the opportunities he got because he was white and he probably never even realized what they were.

I understand. People are basically primates. The taller you are the better. The whiter you are the better.

It's not blatant. It's just how folks react towards you on a subconscious level. Blacks do it to other blacks - ever hear of the "brown paper bag" rule?

Here's an example that's a little more conscious: hot chicks. Everybody kisses the ass of the hot chick.

That's the part I don't understand, since it appears the ones getting bullied may also be incapable of learning better.

No, very fucking cool. It's what those fuckers deserve. If you pick on those smaller or weaker when you get your balls mashed you deserve it. If you don't want to risk your balls don't pick on those who have no choice but to resort to ball breaking.

I've been practicing Aikido for over a decade and have been instructing for a few years now. There are several things that are wrong with your comment that everyone should know:

1. Learning Aikido will most certainly not make you invulnerable. No amount of martial arts/gun practice/voodoo etc. will do this. It may give you the slimmest advantage in a violent confrontation. That is worth a lot more than most people think it is, but if you enter a violent encounter there is a very good chance that you will get injured severely.

2. It may be true that the final goal for Aikido is to not hurt someone, but that level of mastery is outside the limits of what most people can accomplish. When I do Aikido in a real world situation it is violent and aggressive, because I'm not good enough for it not to be.

3. By the time you've gotten good enough in Aikido to make it practical for self defense, you are long past needing it to handle school yard bullies.

At the end of the day if you have a problem being bullied, it is a social problem. No amount of martial arts (no matter which you choose) is going to solve that issue. Gain some confidence, do some sports, meet some friends, and learn to interact in social situations. You may have to fight and even take a beating, but believing in the karate kid myth is not going to really help you out of it.

Having said that, studying Aikido is a whole lot of fun and teaches you all kinds of things about yourself. If you are interested in it (or any other martial art) go check out a class. The style of the art is a lot less important than if you like the instructor and other students and if you can stay healthy doing it long enough to get good. Also, if anyone in any art tells you that they have the solution to all violent encounters, or that their art is better than any other, that is a big red flag, the truth is that violent encounters come in all shapes and sizes and nothing will prepare you for all of them.

Investigate Columbine and you'll find Eric and Dylan were badly bullied, including specifically by some kid who went by, I think the name was, "Rocky".

Humiliation can be a big part of it. More fundamentally the issue is feeling devalued. Ruin someone's sense of self-worth and they become a serious danger.

For essentially the same reason that we don't send rape victims to jail along with the rapist. It's just not what our social meme believes is just.

Three minutes of ball kicking is nothing compared to the physical and mental abuse these kids put up with. Try putting up with having shit dumped on you constantly for months or years at a time and tell me you wouldn't snap.

At least for that guy it only lasted a few minutes, the pain a few days. People who are bullied have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.

REGARDING:
"To me this represents a huge leap forward in understanding nerd psychology"

The statement above indicates that the writer has limited understanding of the issues or the problems they present.
It is interesting that even those who purport to be interested in psychology exhibit such overt bias to the issues being studied.

The trouble here is that once we pigeonhole the individuals as 'bully' and 'nerd' we create powerful image stereotypes which
undermine examination of more subtle forms of abusive behavior. Thus abuse goes unnoticed and unaccounted because the
social group is looking for the stereotype rather than the reality.

In fact, the very act of using 'naming' to qualify one group of people as outside the stereotypical norm is, in itself, a form of bullying.
This is because 'naming' is commonly used to dehumanize the target and desensitize the social group to further targeting of the victim.

It is common for people who have suffered abuse to turn abuse outward against others and inward in forms of deprecation and self destructive behavior.
  This can provide even more ammunition to the abuser who, seeing that the victim(s) are making light of the abuse, or worse participating in it,
  feels that it's actions are in some way normal and justified. The actions become socially acceptable because the abused has/have validated it as a norm and so has everyone else.

This is the problem with terms like 'nerd', 'geek', 'bully', 'nigger', 'fag', etc.. The words are just words but the intent, how ever masked, is the same.
The intent is to marginalize and control possibly to victimize and exploit people for gratification. The names mask the issues of abuse and helplessness.

There is a great deal of institutionalized exploitation of technical people in our society. For some reason even
the technical people seem to fall for this and don't recognize when it is happening.
(ie: not getting paid for overtime simply because this makes I.T. somehow not cost competitive with shoveling gravel [??!!])

People should try to avoid using grouping or stereotypical association when describing events. The results compound and
create an environment that is just sad and unjust for everyone.

You're not a geek or a nerd. You're a skilled human being with only so many valuable hours in life, just like everyone else.
Refuse the name [title ??] and the marginalization that comes with it.