mhoyeOne of the things I’ve learned about the consequences of bullying is that when people tell you things like “I’m pretty bad at math” or “computers aren’t for me” or “I don’t really get art or fashion” and you talk to them for a bit what you often find - not always, but often - is what that really means is “somebody treated me like shit for trying to like this when I was 9.”
People will tell damn near any awful, demeaning story about themselves, build a whole identity around damn near any narrow, constrained, paranoid worldview only to give themselves some glimmer of meaning, some reason, when the alternative - the truth - is all that pain, all the cruelty of the people inflicting it, meant nothing. Confronting the fact that you've spent a lifetime convinced to hate something you could have loved, for no reason at all, is too monstrous to consider.
Dreaming of dad jazz.@mhoye let's also consider the terrible culture around "if you're bad at something you should never ever do that thing"
Reina 
@mhoye Thanks. I needed to "hear" this :)
I've recently started enjoying fashion which took me years to do, in many ways because of a combination of bullying as a kid and feeling this need to dress the way people expect rather than how I want.
The Animal and the Machine@mhoye @Daojoan
Seconded. Although I think a lot of the problem is that some people’s lives are so empty the only thing that gives them meaning and a sense of something bigger than themselves is to be a part of the tribe.
The next step is the reverse engineered logic of ‘I’m not evil, I am good’ and so therefore ‘my opinions are the right ones’ closed mind. You cannot defeat this bubble of logic as it’s sealed off from rational thought. The final piece is that empathy is taught, or we as a species could never have hunted. If you don’t learn to care you have no input to shake your logic.
You are left with a small town with a small town mentality and of the fresh blood, well, the smart people leave.
ethan@mhoye The opposite of this also constrains people: spending a lifetime convinced to love something that you should have reconsidered many times.
It took me about twelve years to decide I was no longer Christian (or religious).