I heard the various terms of abuse at school and probably indulged them in the way you do as a kid.
In America, the stories we tell ourselves and we tell each other in fiction have to do with individualism. Every person here is the center of his or her own story. And our job as people and as characters is to find our own motivations and desires, to overcome conflicts and obstacles toward defining
Never assume, no matter how strong the temptation, that other people are low-life lying manipulators without a shred of human decency.