When Did Civilization Decide Cruelty Was a Pastime?

America has always had a strange, almost romantic relationship with bullying. A hundred years ago, bullying didn’t hide in comment sections or lurk behind burner accounts — it strutted in broad daylight. It wore the sharp suit of Jim Crow laws, dressed itself as “tradition,” and dared anyone to call it what it was: systemic humiliation. On playgrounds, bullying was the “boys will be boys” excuse, an age-old cultural permission slip that mistook cruelty for character-building.

Today, bullying has evolved. It’s traded fists for Wi-Fi, lockers for livestreams, and gossip chains for viral hashtags. It doesn’t just trip you in the hallway; it follows you home, onto your couch, into your phone, embedding itself into your sense of self. The digital age has weaponized ridicule with a permanence past generations couldn’t fathom. Cruelty is now not only tolerated — it’s monetized. And here’s the punchline no one laughs at: bullying has never been an exception. It’s one of civilization’s most enduring traditions.

The Evolution of an Old Predator

Bullying didn’t spring into being with TikTok trolls or Twitter (sorry, “X”) pile-ons. It has always been with us, shapeshifting to match the times.

• Early 20th Century: In the Jim Crow era, bullying wasn’t a schoolyard spat. It was written into law. Entire communities were built on the sanctioned belittlement and subjugation of others. Violence and public humiliation weren’t aberrations — they were Tuesday.
• Mid-20th Century: As America industrialized and suburbanized, bullying found new stages: classrooms, workplaces, military barracks. It wore the face of hazing rituals, sexist “jokes,” and that quiet but vicious ostracism reserved for anyone who didn’t fit the mold. Pop culture reinforced the image: the schoolyard bully as a staple character, whose cruelty was entertainment, not trauma.
• Late 20th Century: The 80s and 90s saw bullying drift toward psychological warfare. Whisper campaigns, body-shaming, and targeting of LGBTQ+ youth flourished, often invisible to adults who thought bullying meant bruised knuckles, not broken identities. Schools began “anti-bullying campaigns,” but more often than not, the system worked harder to maintain order than to protect the vulnerable.
• 21st Century: Enter the algorithm. Social media transformed bullying into a spectator sport with global reach. Now cruelty is scalable. Anonymity emboldens attackers, virality immortalizes humiliation, and the platforms profit. The playground is infinite and the audience unblinking.

In short, bullying hasn’t disappeared — it’s gone digital, efficient, and disturbingly marketable. Just because science has evolved, doesn’t mean that homo sapiens have mentally caught up with that evolution.

When Did Bullying Become Socially Acceptable?

The uncomfortable answer is: it always was. Civilization has long normalized cruelty, so long as it wears the right costume. Racism, sexism, homophobia, classism — each offered society a way to justify bullying as “order,” “tradition,” or “just a joke.” The digital age hasn’t invented bullying; it has only amplified it and put it on display.

What’s different now is the currency. In the past, bullies gained local dominance. Today, they gain followers, sponsorship deals, even fame. Cruelty has been rebranded as content, and platforms cash in on human suffering one click at a time. It’s not that bullying became acceptable — it’s that we stopped even questioning its profitability.

Why Don’t Victims Speak Up?

Here cognitive psychology gives us uncomfortable insight. Victims often don’t speak because:

• Learned Helplessness: After repeated punishment or dismissal, people stop believing their voice matters (Weiner, 1992).
• The Bystander Effect: When cruelty happens publicly (in schools or online), others assume “someone else will step in.” Usually, no one does (Latané & Darley, 1970).
• Fear of Retaliation: Speaking up often brings more attacks, not less. In the digital sphere, calling out harassment can lead to dogpiling, doxxing, or worse (Dutton, 2007; Hobbes, 1651; hooks, 1994).
• Institutional Betrayal: Victims who do speak up often find their schools, employers, or platforms minimize or dismiss their claims. Protecting the reputation of the system frequently outweighs protecting the individual (DuBois, 1899; Foucault, 1995; Foucault, 1988; Foucault, 2003; Hobbes, 1651).

And when victims do win some semblance of justice? It’s often long after the damage has been done. Trauma lingers. Reputations crumble. The internet never forgets. In other words, silence isn’t weakness — it’s survival.

Civilization or Civil Illusion?

Now to the most unsettling question: when did civilization become uncivilized? Maybe the more honest answer is that civilization was never truly civil in the first place. Cruelty has always been part of the bargain. What we call “civilization” is simply the management of power — and where there is power, there will be those who use it to diminish others. Philosophers have long wrestled with this paradox:

• Hobbes suggested humans are beasts needing control; perhaps bullying is the leftover snarl in our domestication.
• Foucault argued that systems discipline us through subtle humiliations; bullying is not a glitch but a feature of control.
• bell hooks challenged us to see domination itself as a cultural sickness — one we still haven’t cured.

So maybe we shouldn’t ask when civilization became uncivilized. Maybe we should admit that incivility has always been its shadow, lurking just out of view.

What Now?

If bullying is as old as civilization, is there a way forward? Possibly. But it requires honesty.

1. Call it systemic, not just personal. Bullying isn’t one mean kid or one cruel comment; it’s a cultural permission slip granted over and over again.
2. Build systems that protect victims first. Schools, workplaces, and platforms need to stop prioritizing reputations and revenue.
3. Shift cultural reward systems. Stop rewarding cruelty with attention. Shift the algorithm from clicks to care.
4. Teach resilience without romanticizing suffering. Pain doesn’t always “build character.” Sometimes it just builds scars.

Civilization may never be perfect. But it doesn’t have to be cruel.

Conclusion

So, when did it become acceptable to bully? Always. Why don’t victims speak up? Because the systems designed to help them weren’t built to listen. And has civilization become uncivilized? Probably not — it just never lived up to its sales pitch. Perhaps the most civilized thing we can do isn’t to deny our capacity for cruelty, but to confront it — to stop pretending bullying is a glitch in the system and admit it’s one of its oldest features. Only then do we stand a chance at rewriting the rules. Until then, bullying remains the pastime of a society still learning what it means to be human.

 

References

Du Bois, W. E. B. (1899). The Philadelphia Negro: A social study. University of Pennsylvania.

Dutton, D. G. (2007). The psychology of genocide, massacres, and the extreme violence: Why “normal” people come to commit atrocities. Praeger Security International.

Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1975)

Foucault, M. (1988). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason (R. Howard, Trans.). Vintage. (Original work published 1961)

Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76 (D. Macey, Trans.). Picador. (Original work published 1976)

Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan: Or the matter, forme, and power of a commonwealth ecclesiasticall and civil. London: [Publisher unknown].

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.

Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Nassem, E. M. (2023). The application of a Foucauldian approach to analyse school bullying: a critique. Pastoral Care in Education, 43(1), 88–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2023.2271473

Weiner, B. (1992). Human motivation: Metaphors, theories, and research. SAGE Publications.