robot wrote:
By all means, talk about me behind my back. I don't want to hear about it. Being teased in school was the worst thing that people could do to me. My face got bright red. I wasn't able to hide how much it bothered me. I just wanted to disappear. At least if someone is talking about me behind my back, I'm not there to listen to it.
Not that I think either is better than the other, but I'd rather not be confronted with it.
Ditto. I've experienced both. I've had the unpleasant experience of being publically taunted, and unless one has actually experienced it, they have no idea how bad it is.
When I look at the options... being criticized in public is one thing, and not necessarily that bad. Someone randomly telling you what they don't like about you in public (Example: "What crawled onto your hair and died?" or something of the sort) isn't all that bad. It gives you the option to retort with your own snarkie comment and then it's over.
Being
taunted on the otherhand, is something no one should have to live through. Believe me. It's awful. I experienced times when multiple students were openly talking to the teacher about how much they hated being around me. While I was right there. And the teacher did nothing to stop it. And even worse things, which I'd rather not get into as they're still painful and embarrassing, even though that was years and years ago.
Being talked about behind my back? I'd welcome that over the other. We all have our own little opinions about eachother, good and bad, don't try to deny it. We may try to pretend to be perfect and only think good things about the people we know, but deep down we have opinions about eachother that we keep to ourselves. Usually anyway.
I've been known to talk about people behind their backs. Example: I know a girl, whom I'm friends with. We're not super-close, but we talk sometimes. Thing is, there's this one thing about her that I find extremely annoying. The thing doesn't come up often, so I leave well enough alone. I'll get over it eventually, but sometimes when it does come up, I feel the need to rant. So instead of telling her to her face, in public or in private, I go to a close friend, and have a miniature rant to them privately about the girl. Once I get it out of my system, I feel fine. And everyone's happy.
So yea, I wouldn't care if someone talked about me behind my back. Talk about me behind my back, do it as much as you like. As long as I don't have to hear it and be subject to the pain and humiliation, then I'm perfectly fine. Because just as I have every right to have an opinion about you, you have every right to have an opinion about me. And you also have every right to express it. I'd just rather it not be to my face.