I have often wondered whether bullies are just continuing learned behaviour; they themselves have been bullied, know how bad that made them feel and so they do the same to someone else because they know how much hurt and the misery it will cause them. I suspect that their are dozens of reasons as to why they select their victim; jealousy, identifying that their victim is "weaker" in some way or even just that it makes the bully feel powerful and in control for once. After the suicide of a local schoolgirl, because she'd endured 3 years of continual bullying by a group of girls at her school, the school admitted that they'd known she'd been badly bullied and had tried to intervene and break up the group of bullies. But they'd then moved to online social media bullying and the school was powerless to intervene. I've wondered since whether that group of schoolgirls, having seen the outcome of their campaign, felt remorse, guilt or regret or whether they somehow still felt justified for having been complicit in a girl's death. And how will they come to feel about it in years to come when they look back and think of what they did.