[quote=Brovo]... Duh. That's exactly what I said.

Bullies prey on the weak. That's what they do. That's what any person looking for an easy target does. I used Hitler as a comparison but you seem to have failed to notice the part called "all of human history". If Hitler was the only mad dictator in history that needed to be stopped with arms, then I'd call it a blip. However, he wasn't. There have been hundreds, potentially of people who, with even a little power, abused the shit out of it to attack and bully weaker neighbours, weaker people, and so on. Whether it was the Catholics burning witches and pagans at the stake and fear mongering the populace into believing what they told them to, or a completely batshit Stalinist dictatorship that consumed multiple nation states and enslaved them, in the process murdering millions , the same theme remains prevalent: Those who are strong and malevolent will bully those who are weak and those who don't fight back.

Period. That is the song of human history: Religious, political, economic, ethnic, or otherwise, when one group felt it was stronger, it would bully another into submission. That is how life was for a very, long time. That is why I used it as an example, because you can see human nature in human history. You want to know the ones that history notes often weren't swallowed? The ones who fought the hardest, smartest, dirtiest, and most cunning of ways. Unless the sides were stupidly uneven any advantage could be circumvented through superior smarts and a simple determination to survive.

Will it dissuade all bullies? No. Some bullies are sociopaths. They fight for the sake of it. However, the vast majority of bullies are cowards. If you stand up to them and spit in their face and fight them, punch them if they punch you and don't hesitate to make them pay for making you suffer you will scare the vast majority of them away in one go and earn a reputation that will persuade other bullies to find different marks.[/quote]

I was trying to highlight the difference between typical bullies and Hitler, but I probably shouldn't of mainly repeated your first paragraph to explain how.
Hitler was not someone who only picked on target's who could not defend themselves/were willing to fight back. Nor did he flee once friends like America got involved.

He stuck around until the end. Now, you could argue that his army was powerful enough and he was winning enough of the war that it was natural for him (like a bully) to keep going, and that by the time he was losing fleeing was useless cause he'd just get chased. But even if there was dominance, this was still an example of someone who picked on target's who fought back, rather than early on switching to weaker targets. That's what I (poorly) was trying to argue/point out with that bit there, Hitler didn't exactly fit that bill.

Further below we do detail a disagreement on how bullies operate... which does come into some relevance here. In my definition/experience bullies continue to fight if you fight back (I'll detail specifics and why in that part specifically), so what Hitler does here would still make sense/count as operating as a Bully. But if we treat the definition as only picking on the weakest of targets, then there's area's that don't match. With most other examples in human history, there is a lot of this as well. Those who fought more than they could handle. 

There are a few arguments to be made here, there were some who simply fought those that they had about no chance in losing against (ex: Raiders), but those rarely flourished into things like empires (Exception: Rome. They lost later when rebellion and invasion reached their door) because even if they did win there was too little gain/benefit from it. Also you can look at examples such as wars and treated a war as say a single bully encounter in comparison depending. 

Because it's not like a country can constantly toggle in and out of war status with a country whenever they like, them reaching the point that they lose could very well be treated as the bully learning that the victim gives up a fight and is not worth the trouble. That it counts as that initial encounter that draws the bully off. But at the same time, isn't the fact there are some who takes such risks against bigger targets over bigger rewards suggest the action is more logical/thought out and is not simply about dominance? Also, they could still try surrendering in the war if they truly learned this wasn't an easy victory and would rather stop wasting time here so they can pick on someone weaker.

[quote=Brovo]Never once did I argue for third party interventionism. In fact, I tend to disdain it for being as useless as you point it out to be. For someone to survive they have to fight for themselves. It's been that way for four billion years, no amount of civilization is going to change primal behaviour like that overnight, , leave alone how they should deal with more violent tendencies.[/quote]

The Third party argument honestly wasn't even meant to imply you disagreed but rather reference america in the WW2 comparison above.

I don't think anyone (here, I recognize schools act like this [u]all[/u] the time) is suggesting that we change bullying overnight though. But more looking at the model/system we use to respond to it/prevent it with and questioning how much violence (if any) needs to be used in response. Also we as a species used to be far more violent than we are today, we evolved to a point where we are capable of not fighting for long enough to actually evaluate and look at issues such as men and women identities. The less humanity has had to focus on violence the more resources we've had to focus on other areas, it can argued that the rate of success of our species can be directly compared to how violent we are.

[quote=Brovo]Having also been bullied because you apparently also missed part, fighting back worked perfectly fine for me... And for every other person I knew. The fact that you landed the sociopathic kids is unfortunate but it happens. In that case you've really got no out, refer back to the abusive parent bit, where my only response on that is that it's likely a lose-lose situation no matter what way you slice it.[/quote]

And I can easily say "For me and every other person I knew fighting back did nothing. The fact you landed the cowardly kids is fortunate, but it happens". 
I think we both already address/are aware of that both kinds of bullies exist, but with that being the case simply saying "Fighting back" is not always the best idea because we are aware there are a kind of bully that doesn't work for. 

With abusive parents I do admit with how terrible our services against such abuse are at the moment it is pretty difficult to suggest anything to work with it. But I think everyone here can agree it's not violence (which we already seem to agree with) may it be by the victim or by a third party.

Though, maybe I'm just reading too much into this but there seems to be a lot of anger/hostility in these replies.
Are you ok Brovo? Did I hit a nerve or something? :/

[quote=Brovo]Wut. Wait, uhh... You realize the topic is about physical violence right? If you get hit, that's not them pushing your buttons: That's them trying to . The only logical response to that is to beat them harder than they beat you, or if you're in a very shitty position, find a way to escape and only fight as long as is necessary to ensure escape.

Common sense Gwazi, c'mon.[/quote]

Push your buttons as in they know how to get a reaction. They know what to do to make you respond (which however, is very easy when they start a fight). It is a logical response, but it's still a response. A response that shows that they can act as an inconvenience to you, annoy you, get in your way, act bigger than you even if they only win due to numbers etc. It's a bit tricky for me to keep arguing with logic here cause in my experience bullies are largely absent of logic, it simply boils down to they get to act like an annoyance and mess things up to you and this makes them feel bigger than you and they get a kick out of it.

[quote=Brovo]lolwut no. They're thinking "holy shit ow that hurt." They're either going to come back with friends in which case you do the same (or if you don't have any friends there's always your best friend, swiss army knife as a threatening tool), or they're going to fuck off and pick weaker prey. More often than not, it's the latter. You're just not the worth the effort, you're not that important. To supposition that the bully would come back exclusively to get to you is to create a world view in which you are somehow the centre of this bully's life, when in most cases, the bully has picked you to spit on because he knows he can get away with it and then not give a flying fuck five minutes later. That's the whole point of being a bully: Making someone weaker than you so you can feel better about yourself temporarily when you do other shit.[/quote]

Most bullies I have deal with don't act like this, I've had one or two that did (and as a result they were short lived) but this is not the case with most in my area. It doesn't even suggest you're the center of their life though, but rather it's a source of fun/enjoyment from them. They get a sick kind of thrill by fighting you, picking on you and because they find it fun they'll come back and do it later. Now note in my case there was an outside circumstance underway, two actually.

1) This really started at a new school, that opened that year so every child was new. They were scared, desperate and looking to find people to be friends with, to be better than, and all generally overwhelmed by all the unfamiliar faces.

2) I started that school with a teacher who very publicly/openly hated me. Basically turning a blind eye to children picking on me and the teacher himself treated me like shit. He gave the go ahead to the class (which through gossip spread to the school) that I was an ok target to pick on. Now considering point 1 where everyone was new and looking to establish dominance, label people etc. I'm not too surprised I may of suffered an out of the norm bullying behaviour as a result.

However, even after leaving said school for another where no one followed me from bullies that I faced there didn't act much different. Granted the mob mentality of "Everyone in the school including the teacher says this is fine" was gone, but simply fighting back did not work as a deterrent regardless. These were people who regardless of no teacher go ahead, or the fact this was an old school where most people knew each other for many years were willing to return to old victims that were willing to fight back, and in both cases this was something they seemed to enjoy and have fun with. 

[quote=Brovo]The topic is quite literally about physical abuse as said by you, why do you keep bringing up verbal abuse?[/quote]

It was brought up once, and briefly at that as a side note that it's really the worst of what those who simply choose to ignore the bully will get. While those who fight back, often end up with the physical bullying.

[quote=Brovo]Why would you even put this on the same plane of existence as . One is temporary frustration that everyone goes through in life and the vast majority come out of A-okay. The other leaves psychological and physical scars that live with you for the . This is like comparing killing a cow for food to murdering people and cannibalizing their corpses.[/quote]

And it wasn't a comparison, it was a side note.

[quote=Brovo]Good god this is a false dichotomy if I've ever seen one.[/quote]

Good thing I wasn't making a false dichotomy then.

[quote=ShonHarris] Violence is so often a symptom and we would better invest ourselves by exploring the contributing factors.[/quote]

Speaking as someone with experience in therapy that's centered around trying to find the trigger/cause of things, I strongly agree with this statement.

[quote=ShonHarris]First, I forced those targeting me to engage with me in a public place, or not at all. 

Second, I gave those who cared at some level a heads up of what was going on.[/quote]

1st: How could you always set that up though? 

2nd: By this I assume you mean you told friends and others about how you were bullied?

[quote=ShonHarris]My aggressively vigilant fans bided their time for a while, but ended up cornering me in our lunch hall, well, more off the side of our lunch hall for something feigning solitude. Public enough though, I responded their heads up by getting loud. No one wouldn't know what was going on. Those who did give a shit and I'd told would collect, perhaps not to stop the situation immediately, but at least to see that my head was not beaten in without some help. I left the knife behind, because I'm human. Principles have a way of tarnishing just as the first blow reminds you what pain feels like and the meekest can become the most sadistic. For me the situation concluded after a good share of people collected, having heard my narrative of what was happening as I shouted it, and this crowd collectively told them 'to leave me alone'. They didn't really step in, but they all spoke up, and that pretty much ended things for me.[/quote]

That also seems to be a lucky roll of the dice though too. Many don't have the crowd of friends to do such a thing, or simply have good meaning acquaintances/strangers around willing to help. Where I went to school just about everyone stuck to themselves and their current group, not ever leaving it to help another person. And if they went to a fight it was because it was fun to watch, not because of any want to help people.

I mean I'm glad this worked for you, but I just don't see this working for most people. Especially when the person using it is labeled at the geek/nerd at the bottom of the social ladder.