Brexit, MAGA, Uber, you name it. Why does the Bullying-Industrial complex scale so well as a platform?
Maybe because Bullying is infectious and asymmetric, with just one bad apple turning a whole nation toxic, or a whole office, with the pinprick precision of just a couple of surgical bullying attacks. Bullying gives you a lot of bang for your buck.
OK, but what is the business case behind bullying? Maybe Bullying is simply a pretty blunt Weapon of Mass Distraction that allows Bullies to secretly rob their gawking audience blind? Personally, I find the Distraction Theory, put forward by Obama, quite sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-8umkOxCsQ
So. Who are pioneers in studying Bully-ology?
Maybe professor David Graeber from Paris, with his framing the Deep Structure of Bullying as a triad of Bully, Victim, Audience as a destructive performance piece? What makes the Bullying drama so effective is that it pulls the gawking onlookers into the „You Two Cut it Out“ fallacy (also known as False Equivalence or He-Said-She-Said) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-the-bully-s-pulpit.a4.pdf
Another thought leader in Jerkology seems to be professor Robert Sutton from Stanford with his pretty convincing tripartite terminology of „Temporary A-hole“, „Certified A-hole“ and „Enabler“.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFTkQmPw2Gk
What can be done about A-Holes, be their Certified or Temporary?
These options get discussed quite a bit: Finding allies, reading up on the phenomenon, studying bullies like specimens of Ebola, never giving in or up. And lastly: the Noble Art of Not Giving a F—.
What are your favorite approaches to the current era of Bullying as a Business Model? How do you deal with it yourselves?
Hilmar Schmundt 