Most of the bullies I dealt with were in college or business jabronis in the workforce since I was homeschooled (that’s a rant for another day) so YMMV. I also stopped getting bullied physically by everyone except my parents as a small child, so I don’t have any advice for that.

tl;dr: bullies stop when it’s not worth picking on you.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but these have all worked for me with various people bullying me verbally / emotionally.

Hippie shit:

Understand why they’re doing this: most of them are deeply insecure about something and are deflecting from that. You could figure out what that is and make fun of it, but that is the path to the dark side. Instead, acknowledge it in your head. “He’s picking on me because he has a stutter.” “She got frozen out of her friend clique because they think she’s weird and is lashing out.” It’s amazing how that knowledge helps you ignore whatever they’re saying. State of mind is key. They morph from some awful monster you have to hide from into a pathetic jerk that has to put down other people to feel ok.

Just straight-up gray rock them. They need a reaction. One-syllable responses (“huh”, “yep”, “really?”, “ok”) are not fun for them and most of them will move on to easier targets.

Do an image audit and makeover: get some nicer clothes, change your hair, take care of yourself. This boosts self-esteem and also confuses the bully. They’ll probably have new material once they unblock their second nostril and get enough brain oxygen to do serious thought, but you can be ready for that. My little cousin was getting bullied in middle school, and my aunt’s solution was to buy him brand new clothes, give him a faux hawk, and get his ear pierced. It worked!

This one’s innate for me, but I have what my wife refers to as “resting warlock face.” I assume it’s mostly just a look of grim concentration trying to navigate the universe, but it mostly just looks like I’m trying to set whatever I’m looking at on fire with my mind. People generally do not want to approach that.

Chaos agent shit: The following can be used to great effect, but might also get you punched. Deploy with care. Getting punched is not a good way to deal with being bullied.

Aggressively refuse to understand what they’re saying. Ask a lot of questions. When you finally decide you’ve figured it out, say “OH, you were making fun of me! You should lead with that next time.” Next time, interrupt with “just to clarify, you’re making fun of me right now? OK. It’s hard to tell with you.” and then fold your hands and stare directly at their forehead / nose / whatever works, expectantly. This takes some of the power back, throws them off their script, and makes the whole encounter deeply unfun.

Be funnier. I discovered George Carlin during his post-shilling for AT&T phase, when he was good and angry. It’s amazing how he puts sentences together to convey maximum vitriol in a funny way. I listened to him obsessively (also Eddie Izzard, Mitch Hedberg, Dylan Moran, and lots of others) and can fall into a rant mode and get the crowd back on my side. Bullies want easy, predictable targets. Being funnier than them changes the power dynamic and makes them want to disengage.

Keep the riff going without them. “You fucked my mom? Did she at least charge this time? I keep telling her that she can’t keep taking charity cases. If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” I found I could always go grosser and darker than the bullies. If they get uncomfortable or cross a serious line (or you’re uncomfortable going further), end with “we were having a nice conversation about [whatever the original subject was] and you had to make it weird.” Don’t go so far you become the bad guy; I keep racial/gendered/ableist stuff out of my vocab.

Good luck and to reiterate, don’t do chaos agent shit if it’ll get you punched.

You’re so young, I know this may not help, but please remember this is just right now, not forever. Things can and will improve.

Are you in a bigger school? Any other neurodivergent people you could align with?

The best you can do is try to remove yourself from the situation when you can. Try to not engage with people you know will cause trouble for you.

It also can help a lot to find likeminded individuals to befriend. Join or start a club relevant to your interests and make friends when possible.

It’s a lot easier to bully someone isolated.

My go-to is a three step process. The first insult goes unheard, the second goes one of three ways. If the insult is minor, in case they’re “ribbing” I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and give a shrug or other “I know I’m weird, but I like it that way” sort of response. If the insult is severe or out-and-out malicious, I’ll give a very muted, unemotional response, like “uh huh…” Or “glad you think so…”

If they go for a third to get a rise out of you, go for the throat. Make direct, fierce, and very forced eye contact. Completely face them. If you know them, you could opt to make a very grave, personal insult on something that you know will cut them deeply, but it must be acurate and not at all overstated. I don’t use that approach anymore, but instead the better option is to call them out within earshot of others. Show the anger on your face but show none in your voice. “Does anyone else feel like this guy likes being a prick? Does anyone else think he’s cool because he’s an asshole?” Draw eyes. Call out his name. Ask if anyone else thinks he’s a bully. Put the spotlight on him without drawing on any direct insult.

Hey bud, sorry you’re dealing with this.

I want you to know you’re in good company, though. SO many adults were bullied in school and made it through. Realistically, some of your ancestors also were bullied and made it onward to live great lives (which eventually led to you being on this planet). You have that same resilient spirit in you and you’ll make it through!

As for what you do with bullies: The best thing I’ve seen is when someone was getting bullied and the person being bullied said “this is so boring. You’re really boring.” and just walked off. If a bully escalates beyond that to violence, wait for them to touch you first and then destroy their ass.

Just: In my personal experience from way back when? Being such a terrifyingly violent little shit that no-one wants to risk setting you off may have its drawbacks, but it damn well works at getting bullies to knock it off. But being terrifyingly violent doesn’t mean you need to be an asshole when not provoked.

Sadly I can not give you good advice. I always pushed back hard but that didn’t help either and gave me a bad reputation with some teachers too. The only positive thing I tell you is that in my experience the higher you go in education, the idiots who do things like that get rarer. The only thing that helped me a little was finding nice people who were also on the fringes. Once you are part of a group, bullies are more careful.

I’ve found that if someone tries to insult you, you can just agree with them. That’s all the advice I can really offer, other than the obvious ignore/stay away from the bullies.

two solutions, one violence. It will have consequence as then the school will come for your ass.

Two, the police.You are currently being the victim of a crime. What they are doing is illegal and a visit to the police station may calm them down. The thing is, they don’t only target you because you are both weird and better than them. They are targeting you because they feel like you are weak and they will face no consequence. The best idea to get rid of them is to bring down consequences on them. Report them to everyone, inside and outside school, be vocal about what you are living through

My observation is that bullies bully, because they’re insecure about their own worth. They try to make themselves feel better about themselves by putting others below themselves. The more worth they perceive in you, the more they want to put you below themselves.

The vile thing about your age is that pretty much no one has much actual worth to show for themselves. You’re still going to school, so you haven’t yet achieved much for society. When you get out of school, you’ll still have plenty time to achieve things for society, but it can still make people feel bad about themselves until then, and some of them react by bullying.

So, yeah, basically two things:

1. It will get better. Adult bullies are quite rare, because adults generally have self-worth.
2. Try to make friends. Bullies won’t go after you, if they feel like many others are on your side, because those others are your (mutually relevant part of) society. They can really shred those bullies’ self-worth.

If you’re struggling with proper friendship, this does not need to be proper friendship. It can absolutely be transactional, like maybe you can explain certain subjects to them or heck, bake cakes, and they’ll do the emotional work of integrating you into their friend group.

I’m not sure it’s a good option, but I’ll tell you how I dealt with it.

I tried to respond in an unexpected way. Specificaly, a way that robbed them of their pleasure for doing it. They want to make me to feel bad. I’d show them I was far better at that than they ever would be.

Maybe I doubled down on their insult, explaining to them it was worse than they thought. Or I’d start talking to them like they’re my therapist, unloading whatever else was depressing me. Stuff about my parents, or siblings, teachers, whatever. As long as it was related to what they said, they new they wouldn’t get what they wanted from saying that in the future.

This might not be in your wheelhouse. It might not work for anyone today. But it was effective for me roughly 30 years ago.

Reading through the responses you’ve got so far has been quite interesting. Plenty of good advice, and some I don’t agree with. I’d also point out that gender does factor in, since kids usually form their groups around gender and those groups seem to operate under different sets of rules. Everything I say is from my experience with the male dominant groups, as well as assuming we aren’t talking about bullying that includes physical violence.

I’d advice not to throw a tantrum or completely ignore them either. Former is exactly what bullies want, and latter allows them to run the show. I saw someone advice a surprising reaction, and I agree with that approach, as it messes their script. But it has to be surprising in a way that doesn’t imply they got to you. One could try laughing with them or agreeing with something negative they said about you and compliment them in turn (when it can be done truthfully). Claiming that they are boring you also sounds like an interesting method, but I haven’t tested that one myself.

I’ve personally also found being curious to be an effective tactic, especially around your age when the kids in general start to question things. For me curiously asking about their motivations for their behavior (“Why do you think you feel the need to bully others?”) and such often resulted in them either starting to question their behavior themselves, or avoiding me to avoid the questions. I suppose they didn’t like being treated like a curiosity or a strange research subject very appealing either. One could also use insecurities of the bullies in one’s advantage with this method, as those are usually easy enough to figure out… but that could backfire should one be too confrontational.

Something I’d caution against is direct confrontation, but it can sometimes work if you’re sure you can win that exchange and the ones that will follow. If not, it might just make the situation worse as a win like that is a gourmet meal to bullies and they’ll want more.

Unfortunately, the things you or any outsiders like teachers (if they bother to try) can do to stop bullying is quite limited, and very much dependent on your exact situation. Most effective method by far seems to be the group in which the bullies are in (or one they respect) to turn against them, disapproving their behavior or starting to exclude them when they do bully. That probably won’t help you right now, but keep that in mind if you end up part of a group where someone tries to elevate themselves by bullying. Then you might get a chance to save someone else from being bullied.

First, if everyone you meet is a jerk, you might be pissing people off and that’s on you.

If this is not the case, you need to confront them. Bullies are a fact of life. It gets WAY worse later in life if you can’t deal with them.

Not many people will admit it, but hauling off and hitting someone picking on you is a top three experience. It doesn’t even matter if you win. Bullies establish self-worth by degrading others. If you make it easy, they’ll hang around.

Don’t rise to it, bullies do it for entertainment or to look big. Keep your head down and focus on the things you enjoy in life. Be open about your autism, you never know where you might find some allies.

From what I learned, these guys usually pick on people who walk alone or don’t have friends because they seem more vulnerable. Stay close to your group.

Also, this: https://youtu.be/7oKjW1OIjuw