Comment by catalogia
5 years ago
> "This is everyone's fault who didn't dogpile the people who were being terrible."
That presumes that "dogpiling" would actually stop the behavior, rather than getting people to dig in their heels and further inflame tempers.
Even so, it can serve two purposes: the author feels defended and acknowledged and the author feels relieved as the heat is, at least temporarily, directed at someone else. And this is the worst case scenario.
The author feels defended, but the subject of the dogpiling feels attacked. Maybe that leads to deescalation, but that's far from a foregone conclusion. Bullying bullies often further normalizes the act of bullying in the eyes of the bullied bully, as well as potentially normalizing bullying in the eyes of observers.
There are better ways to handle situations like this.