The part of the world where I'm from, bullying wasn't something that happened often in our school. We were somewhat of a tight knit community of sorts where bullying wasn't tolerated and frankly it never occurred to any of us to bully someone, I guess.
The rare instances when they did happen, they were taken quite seriously and there were consequences. You wouldn't want to be the parent who got called to school cuz your kid was being a dick.
Of course, there were the occasional playground brawls, it wasn't all boring mind you, but those were always one-offs and a few days later you'd see the same folks back to their old selves hanging around together.
Maybe I'm lucky that I didn't get to experience bullying, or maybe I was oblivious to it when it happened around me, but whenever I see things related to bullying online I feel sad because - why would you do something like that? Of course, I'm not stupid to not know the answer but it's something that I can never relate to as a person who hates seeing others in pain :|
But something I can never understand is why it's tolerated like it's some sort of necessary evil? The existence of "zero-tolerance policies" and the easy-going attitude to it is the real issue here, methinks.
In conclusion, fuck bullying.