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I don't know if this is something people say in other countries, but in my country, there's this common cliché or "wisdom" where adults will assure you that the people who picked on you in environments like school will universally develop lives of hardship later on, one way or another getting into mayhem.

I asked my mother one day what happened to all those people growing up. I can sense she may have been sugar coating it, but she said something along the lines of "well, I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and became a teacher, and waited some more, and finally watched as my bullies had to go into retirement five years late, yay" (okay, not really like that, but it might as well have been).

Yeah, common theme in my experience that what we hope for is never "that" set in stone. No matter where in the community (or even long-distance communicating) you knew them from, based on life, how much approximate correspondence do you associate with that mindset in the first paragraph?

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[-] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 95 points 2 months ago

Why would I spend any effort on keeping tabs on people who made my life miserable?

[-] GeekFTW@lemmy.zip 31 points 2 months ago

This lol.

I'm fucking 40, anyone I grew up with who made my life miserable are people who I have had no exposure to or communications with since I graduated high school June 16th 2002. Anyone since then who makes my life miserable for more than a few minutes gets told to fuck off on the spot lol.

[-] cobysev@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

You graduated on a Sunday? My school always did graduations on weekdays. I graduated about a week earlier than you did. Juuuust about to turn 40 myself.

And yes, I've either befriended my old bullies (a lot of them were just lashing out because they had a shitty home life/no one to listen to them), or they've gone off to live their lives and I never heard from them again.

My class is finally at the age where they're keeping tabs on who has died since the last reunion, and the list is very short with none of my former bullies on it.

[-] GeekFTW@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 months ago

Might have been a few days off with the date, it's been a minute lol.

[-] JustZ@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Did you look that up or are you one of those people that knows days from dates ?

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[-] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago

To preserve one's childlike belief in a just world, of course.

[-] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 months ago

Yeah I forgot about those chucklefucks aeons ago

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[-] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 29 points 2 months ago

I haven't met a single person I went to school with, since I left my home town to go to university. So, no idea.

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[-] renlok@lemmy.ml 29 points 2 months ago

I've no idea, I haven't thought about them since I left school and now I can barely remember their names.

[-] frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 28 points 2 months ago

The serious psychos are in and out of jail. The ones who were just kinda dicks sometimes (which to be honest probably includes me) are basically okay. And why shouldn't we be? Being a dick when you're still learning to be a person shouldn't carry a life sentence of any kind.

[-] JayTreeman@fedia.io 13 points 2 months ago

The jokes I said as a teenager would get me fired today, and I've usually been more progressive than my peers.

[-] Chef_Boyardee@lemm.ee 25 points 2 months ago

There was a kid in grade school growing up that was a bully. He made a kid cry while we were waiting for our class picture to be taken in the 6th grade, and you can see that kid crying in the picture. I still think about it often.

The bully ended up being one of the greatest running backs my county ever knew. He was a game changer.

I randomly decided to look up the crying kid from the school picture a couple years ago. He is now a very successful man. I couldn't be any happier seeing that. It almost brought me to tears.

The bully was shot and killed in the streets a couple years after graduating high school.

[-] shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago

The school must've not taken care of the kids well if they just let the photographer do a one-take like that.

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[-] Nemo@midwest.social 22 points 2 months ago

Definitely thought this was going to be about the other kind of baddies, in which case the answer is generally "they're married, with kids".

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[-] Zak@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago

When we were both five years old, I knew one of my classmates would end up in prison.

Most kids can be jerks on occasion, and I can think of a few examples where that applied to me as well as it could to anyone. I haven't generally kept track of people who bullied me in school; I imagine most of them grew out of it, and a few didn't. This guy was something else, as if cruelty was the only thing that brought him joy.

At 19, he and two others beat a taxi driver to death. He was convicted of manslaughter and spent more than a decade in prison. A quick web search suggests he's out of prison and working as a car salesman now.

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[-] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 20 points 2 months ago

No idea. I don't pay any attention to them. I hope they're happy and doing fine.

[-] Clbull@lemmy.world 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They're all very successful now. This whole notion that bullies and assholes would be bagging my groceries and asking me "you want fries with that" in adulthood is BS.

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[-] LaggySnake@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

tbh I can't even remember any of their names, neither of the ones that were being friendly with me.

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[-] dotslashme@infosec.pub 15 points 2 months ago

I have no idea, I don't hang out with bullies.

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[-] theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

I never saw them again after graduating

[-] banana_lama@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago

I assume that's the best outcome generally. Just forgetting they existed

[-] TheRealKuni@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

My bully from grade school is serving up to life in prison for attempted murder (he shot two teenagers while he was an adult, something gang related I think) and also sex with a minor.

Not that he doesn’t deserve it, he absolutely does, but part of me feels bad for him. He never stood a chance. His home life was fucked, he was always on this path and nothing was going to stop it.

[-] Kondeeka@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

One of my former bullies ended up working for a local carwash, I found out when he had to wash mine.

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[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

How would I know? I left my hometown.

I did see my high school bully occasionally in college. I was in my 5th year of undergrad and he looked like a grad student. But I was usually walking from my fwb’s dorm to class, so i was doing plenty fine myself.

I hope these people are better and happier but I don’t care to find out.

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

A few years ago, my baddie killed himself. No idea what was happening in his life at the time. I hadn't seen him since high school, which was 25 years ago. I saw the obituary and thought it was surprising and interesting, but didn't feel bad, or good about it in any way.

[-] somehacker@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

Fuck me if I know what any of them are doing with their lives. Part of me sure wishes that the shitty people from my past are getting what’s coming to them, but also what difference does it make to me what karmic justice may or may not await them.

My life is objectively better than when I had to deal with their shit. Why waste my mental energy on them?

[-] BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

I don't know any of them anymore, but the ones I'm aware of on Facebook all have "School of Hard Knocks" listed as their school they attended.

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[-] gerryflap@feddit.nl 10 points 2 months ago

Many people who were assholes as kids turned out to become chill adults. I had a person who I considered a best friend suddenly turn on me in my last year of primary school. He always targeted me specifically and Istill remember coming home crying from the bullying. However, our lives diverged and we didn't really meet until late in highschool somewhere in a bar in the city. We were both already a bit tipsy (alcoholic age was 16 y/o at that point here), and when he ran into me he basically just acted as if we had never not been friends. It was like the old friend was back, rather than the guy who caused so much pain. It was like he never realized what he had done. At that moment I realized we both had changed so much since the moment that he was bullying me, and I chose to just be glad to reconnect with an old friend.

This story goes for quite a few people who bullied me. Pretty much all of them, when I met them years later, seemed blissfully unaware of the pain they caused and just greeted me as an old friend or classmate. And with all of them I also recognised that they had grown into chill people, and had changed so much that they weren't really the same person anymore. So I chose to also consider them old friends or classmates, and if I ran into them now I'd probably just have a nice chat about what our lives became.

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[-] Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

A few of them died from drug overdoses or landing themselves in jail on domestic violence, but most of them grew up and have families and are pretty chill these days. I've buried the hatchet with anyone like that from high school.

[-] Cypher@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

Two of them were jailed for murder and attempted murder, in unrelated incidents.

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[-] GraniteM@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

I was curious about a guy who bullied me in elementary school so I looked up his name on Facebook. His profile picture had a pro-life message in it. I was not at all surprised.

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[-] AnalogyAddict@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

I don't even remember the names of most of my bullies.

[-] Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

Became CEO, manager and the like

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[-] GarlicToast@programming.dev 8 points 2 months ago

Not sure about all of them, as I don't want them in my life. But I found out by chance that one of them became a social worker. I saw another in an acceptance exam to an academic program, he failed, I got in.

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[-] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 2 months ago

He tried to jump from one Jeep to another while offroading at speed, missed, hit his head on a rock, and died. The driver did time because of his actions. He was a massive piece of shit, even years after high school. I feel sorry for his family.

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[-] WoolyNelson@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

I met one during college. We were both very different people by then and went out for lunch.

While there were no apologies (there were lines crossed by both of us), there was closure.

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[-] over_clox@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

I ended up ghosting/ditching most of my own age group, since most of them got hooked on various substances and going down the wrong path.

Yeah it kinda sucks, but I don't wanna find myself in and out of jail for the rest of my life.

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[-] HurlingDurling@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Last I heard of her, she's still a baddie, but now she's a real estate agent that is into crystals and horoscope, and cats.

[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

I met one of the guys again who bullied me in school. He was a junkie, begging for money at the train station.

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[-] neidu2@feddit.nl 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

One dead, the second one with his life just as stagnant as it was 20 years ago, and the 3rd one I honestly have no idea. 3rd one wasn't really bad, he just fell in with the wrong crowd. I ran into his sister a couple of years ago, but she didn't know his whereabouts either. But last time she heard feom him he was doing surprisingly well.

[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

I don't expect the odds of karma kicking them in the junk to be much higher than average maybe +5% to 15% max.

[-] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago
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[-] anarkatten@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago

One bully of mine actually beat a young girl to death at a private party some (~10) years ago. Served just a few years prison sentence. I heard that when I was still on facebook, and I'm glad I'm not there anymore.

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this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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