What happened to all the baddies you knew growing up?

Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 95 points –

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?

106

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

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.

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.

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

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

I looked it up, because my high school graduation date was right about that time. I was curious if I graduated on the same date.

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

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.

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

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.

Living the dream, the best revenge is a life well-lived.

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.

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

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".

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.

He must've been unbearable if you knew his fate at five years old. I barely had any concept of prison when I was that age, in fact I was one of those kids who thought it would be easy to just slip through the bars if that ever happened.

I certainly didn't have an adult understanding of what prison is, but I knew people who committed really serious crimes like murder went there. I expected this person to do something like that, and I wasn't far off.

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

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.

I myself am somewhere in the middle on this. All my classmates were basically this to me because the school allowed it, then when time came to get a job, they were so used to the school environment which disfavored me at their benefit that they ran into a speed bump and ended up feuding with each other. By a rare good stroke of luck, this means I'm my employer's favorite.

There may be one exception. A kid in the year above me who I didn't personally know but looked like one of the many people that bullied me was killed on a night out when he tried to break up a fight.

It made national news, but mainly because it led to an underage drinking scandal where it turned out loads of pubs weren't checking ID. He was only 17.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

A bully having a pro-live message? Surprising. You know what's not surprising? How much you can save by switching to Geico.

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.

As friendly as the two of you are, I would encourage you to not be afraid to explain to him the pain he caused.

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

Wow, so much murder on this thread. What have I done?

I guess you asked for updates on people whose behaviour could be indicative of larger and on going behavioural issues.

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.

Became CEO, manager and the like

Of anything big?

Their own companies as entrepreneurs xd. Meanwhile, I became a slave engineer

If you're in America, not only are small business loans often forgiven if the business fails, but failing as "CEO" is generally seem more positively on a resume than succeeding as an employee.

Just saying, only you know your circumstances, but it's probably a more viable option than you think.

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.

Having receieved lessons of the social worker field, it always scares me to think old bullies are filling in the roles.

I mean, it's possible that's remorse, education, acceptance, and repentance at work.

Not all bullies are really bad people at heart ... some just have a bad home life and nobody to teach them healthy outlets or how to make friends.

Not just that though, but depending on where you live, social workers themselves can be the bullies. In particular, in the US, the CPS, a branch of social services, is perhaps the epitome of capitalistic abuse. They make a living by framing people for domestic abuse messes and ruining everyone's lives when society is peaceful. Social services is as corrupt as gains will motivate them to make it.

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.

Was he drunk or high? As much as I feel bad for those who make awful mistakes, why would anyone do that?

He wasn't to the best of anyone's knowledge, but the driver was drunk. He was as dumb as a box of hair. He was into (American) football since he was a young kid and, knowing what we know about concussive brain injuries, I suspect he was suffering from brain damage.

They say people with brain injury are advised against getting drunk in general. Which means I wouldn't put it past him based on those details.

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.

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.

What do you mean by closure?

This new version of them was not someone I could hate.

We were completely new people, so it felt like the "us" from before were gone. There was no need to hold onto any of the hate.

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

How did you two react to seeing each other with him in that state of being?

I recognized him. I doubt he recognized me. I ignored him.

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.

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.

Yikes. Always thought it weird when violent crimes get you less than nonviolent ones.

Died or sent up the river

The Hudson river?

Colorado

Ah. Around where I am, sending someone up the river is usually a euphemism for sending someone to Dannemora, which is a prison near where I reside.

Sounds like a good placefor baddies

Yup, it's as maximum security as one could get. If I'm not mistaken, both the guy who killed John Lennon and the second-in-command of Charles Manson had been there at various points.

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

One died in a car accident, the other main one had a lot of babies who now have their own babies. I moved continents and changed my name through marriage before I opened any social media accounts, so I have no idea what happened to the bulk of them.

One was in a car accident, ended up a quadriplegic.

Another one, last I saw, he was pumping my gas.

People who were bullies in high school earn more on average. I'd say they are probably doing better.

My grandma came in with a hot take on this.

"If she was a bitch at 17, she is a bitch at 70."

One of them is in jail for a looong time. Gang activity including relation to murders. Not sure if he pulled the trigger, but he was the "leader", lol

I'm friends with them! 😃 People can change, and they're nothing like their former selves. They understood that acting rude to me and others when we were little was a wrong thing to do and now they're just regular nice people who are super chill!

My Jr Highschool bully ended up accidentally shooting and killing his friend a few years later in high school. He dropped out and found Jesus, seemed to be dealing with it on his own by the time I graduated. Haven't heard a thing about him in the decade or so since.

I know at least one of them was arrested for B&E and possession with intent to sell of meth (though it was immediately after high school and I'm sure he's out by now). The rest, don't know don't care.

What's B&E?

Breaking and Entering. He (and two others) were burglarizing homes.

A town near where I grew up had an epidemic of that. The teachers treated the bullies like their favorite children, the next thing you knew they had burglarized every single unlocked vehicle in the entire town for drug money on multiple occasions and were arrested right before they would've graduated from high school. My friend was one of their brothers and I remember it got so bad they graduated him despite him not passing just to remedy the memory of trying to overshadow him.

More often than not people become bullies because they have a hard life in the first place. So, sure, feel superior and have this "gatcha" moment or grow up and feel bad for these people, it's your choice

You're not wrong, though I wish they wouldn't take it out on random individuals around them.

I wish that too and to change that, we need to help both victims and bullies since both are victims of the system