Why Do We Allow Blatant Bullying Here?

This is part question, part rant, and part plea.

I love this community. I love this web site. I am grateful to @admin and anybody else involved in creating this space for us. I am even more grateful that the site is ad free and free of charge.

We have some wonderful people here -- of every stripe imaginable. We have young and old, all kinds of sexual orientations, gender identities, races, ethnicities, shapes, sizes, educational background, widowed, married, partnered, poly and mono -- a freaking cornucopia of people.

The thing that brings us all together and the thing that most of us have in common is that we identify in one way or another as non-believers in the supernatural. Our own awesome space!

There are differing opinions. There are agreements. There are people who care about each other and care about this community. Just read through the threads and you will see post after post, and comment after comment, and reply after reply of support, sharing of life experiences, words of encouragement, suggestions, humor, advice, heartfelt condolences, jokes, and enthusiastic cheerleading.

An area where I see many of these strong, outspoken and compassionate members not showing up is when one of our members -- especially somebody new -- is being bullied. I'm truly sadly disappointed about that.

Time and again, I see a member verbally sparring with somebody with clearly no real purpose except to be demeaning, condescending, and flat-out mean-spirited for what appears to be NO reason except that he or she can. Being sarcastic and occasional short-fused is one thing. To belittle somebody is a whole other situation. And, when my own mouth drops, I think "Well somebody will say that is not cool." But so far, by and large, people don't and people haven't.

So, I'm curious and I genuinely want to know why don't some of us stand up for somebody who is being bullied? Why aren't some of us doing our part to say "We don't treat people that way here."?

Is it not wanting to make waves?

Is it not wanting to upset the apple cart?

Is it not wanting to lose favor with the bully?

Are you so easygoing that you simply don't recognize bullying?

Is it truly just not caring?

My personal solution has been to simply block people. But a couple of recent threads have really hit a nerve with me. I could have chosen block, but that would not have done anything for what I see as a failure on our part as a COMMUNITY. We do everything else so WELL. Why aren't we doing this?

In real life, would you let somebody behave so poorly toward another member of your family or your community -- or would you say "Not here and not today, champ!" ? I'd like to know from your OWN perspective. Not maybes. Not hypotheticals. Not "If the person can't take it...." I sincerely am interested in knowing about when YOU have seen it, and what YOUR gut reaction was, and how YOU came to the decision to just keep scrolling.

Thank you for listening and hopefully sharing your own thoughts on this. No matter what you write, I really do appreciate your sharing and your insight.