So basically you are saying is once you are targeted by a bully there is no hope? If you are speaking from experience I am sorry that you felt that way. Bullies can be dealt with, it isn't an overnight process but you don't have to sit there and take their harassment nor beatings.
It doesn't matter if you sit and take 'em, or do something about it. If those kids want you harmed, YOU WILL BE HARMED. Bullies don't work alone anymore either.
And yes, I am speaking from personal experience. The only way for bullying to stop is two fold. Boredom, or one of you moves away far enough to no longer make it matter.
There's a reason why bullying never stops, from school to the workplace to relationships and anywhere else in life.
The average bully is someone so insecure in themselves that they need to valid their 'power' and dominance that they will target the 'weakest' looking target. You can fight back? They'll up the ante, and keep upping it until they get satisfaction, or in some cases, something drastic happens, like a severe injury and/or death. If you're lucky, you'll prove to be too challenging to crack and they'll get bored of trying. Or you leave schools or whatever.
Yes, bullies suffer from rather hard cases of low self-esteem, and the only way to make themselves feel bigger is picking on someone else. And nothing anyone can do will stop it.
I'm assuming that you might have caught that YouTube video of a bully who picked on a fat kid, and the fat kid, having had finally enough lifted the bully and dropped him, hard? And if you remember, when they got the kid on camera asking if he'll stop. Remember what he said? He said no, he'll keep doing it. And if you think that's an uncommon situation, you'd be sadly mistaken. I happen to live near two schools, read the newspaper and catch odd bits of news, and one thing remains: Bullying is not easy to deal with.
It's nice that Ponies tried to deal with it, but the problem is there's no way to sanitize what Bullying is for Children's TV.