Less than a month ago, in the town of South Hadley, Massachusetts, a 15-year-old Irish girl named Phoebe Prince killed herself. Apparently, she’d been the victim of intense bullying, of both the IRL and cyber varieties, and two days before a big high-school dance, she committed suicide. Pretty miserable.

For me, it hits especially close to home because, well, it is close to home: South Hadley is right next door to Amherst, where I grew up.

Sadly, this doesn’t feel all that new—and not just because the bullying reminds me of the crap that I experienced as a weird little kid 25 years ago: the jap-slaps that knocked me to the ground in the hallways, the cruelty and negativity that I too often turned back on the two or three kids who were even more mockable than I was. (Sorry, Seth. Sorry, Leah.)

No, in my time too there were some pretty miserable outcomes. A friend OD’d on heroin, others committed suicide or were killed themselves, a teacher was busted for child porn possession. It all kinda sucked (though strangely, I have generally good memories of my childhood), but none of this, as far as I can tell, was related to bullying.

I don’t mean to minimize Phoebe Prince’s death, but I suspect there’s more to this than just garden-variety childhood bullying. I don’t understand what’s changed between the taunting of my youth and the bullying of today. Is it really that much worse? How does humiliation-via-Facebook (or whatever kids these days are using) differ from the old-school humiliation in front of the entire school? Were we stronger back then, or just more accepting of the inevitability that the bigger, richer, better-looking, more sociable kids would pick on us? Did we just suffer through it all only to develop even more fucked-up lives? And how did Uma Thurman make it out okay?

Anyway, in the immortal words of Big Fun: