Originally published at: Will Smith offered this excellent advice on avoiding physical violence | Boing Boing
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Ah, useless advice from out of touch people - one of the hallmarks of my youth.
When I got bullied in school, using my head didn’t help. You can’t narc or you get it worse. The teachers didn’t notice and/or didn’t want to notice. But boy howdy they would notice if you fought back and you’d get in trouble for it. If you tried to use your head by outsmarting them, they’d just resent you more. If you tried to use your head to sabotage or punish them some other way, you’d be the creepy revenge psycho. There was no winning. And no amount of pep talks or inspirational speaking would resolve it.
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Well then. Seems he’s resigned from the Academy, too? A choice made in a few seconds like that has done a lot to his reputation. I never even knew about the Scientology school until all of this…I think a lot of people started to learn some things…I’d like to see him have a chance for redemption, honestly. It seems really unfair to erase decades of his contributions over a rash set of choices made in a just a few moments…
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I was bullied regularly in a class early in high school. It wasn’t physical, except for the one time the kid sneezed on me. I did nothing but keep my head down. Eventually the teacher pulled me aside one day and asked if I’d like him removed from class. I said sure.
Everything that happened was while she wasn’t in the classroom. I never narced. I only recently realized that someone must have informed her on my behalf, but now I don’t know who to thank.
And that kid who picked on me? I’ll never understand him. He approached me in the hall weeks afterward, said I got him kicked out of class, and then said he should beat me up. I told him he hated the class and he should thank me. And then he did.
All circumstances are different. I’m not sure I could have survived the torment you experienced. I was lucky to have someone willing to look out for me, a teacher willing to take action, and a confusingly moronic bully.
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Don’t forget that “just ignore them and they’ll stop” also didn’t work either, because they didn’t do it to provoke, they did it to establish dominance.
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Well, as german chancellor Konrad Adenauer once said: “Was schert mich mein dummes Geschätz von gestern?” - “What do I care about my dumb babble of yesterday?”
Yeah very true, a lot of “advice” to victims of anything ends up just being victim blaming based on shallow assumptions and the desire not to get one’s own hands messy but still feel helpful and good. I’m fairly convinced that advice is 99.9% unhelpful though I’m also sure at some point I’ve taken good advice.
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Its a fair point. However, he did walk on stage in the middle of a broadcast in front of millions of people and sucker-punch the host and suffer no consequences for it. Something has to be done. Has Smith even personally apologized to Rock? (Just issuing a press release, created no-doubt by his PR handlers, is not cutting it!)
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Sad irony. I will never understand the social media mental gymnastics the went down to ‘defend but not condone’ this move, that will probably go down as one of the most supremely stupid and weak self-owns anyone has achieved on national television.
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I have to say it was rather…strange to see many of the reactions - mostly across the 'net. It was like a Rorschach blot, I suppose.
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I’m not saying there should be no consequences at all. I’m saying I hope it’s not something he cannot come back from, is all. A path to redemption is something that should always be possible, given he follows the correct behaviors.
And maybe it’s going to be analyzed forever like the Zapruder film (back and to the left), but I think it was a slap, not a punch?
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Maybe avoiding physical violence involves wearing a helmet? 
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