As I said previously, this is the first time I'm trying to articulate these issues, so I haven't got myself together. — T Clark
I've been a bully before, one of the things I remember most acutely about it - or rather remember as conspicuous in its absence - is that cruel actions aren't seen as cruel to the target. Their humanity is suspended in the decision to belittle them. The target becomes part of the narrative of jokes surrounding them. Their needs were silenced and the dissatisfaction of those needs is their only voice, spoken in my terms; as hilarious weakness. Formally, they were not excluded by my (and friends') actions because they were already excluded from any empathy as a prerequisite to bully them without cognitive dissonance or bad faith. Truly authentic cruelty. If it wasn't so funny we wouldn't have all laughed.
We were absolutely playing and infinitely playful - the target had no recourse, anything they did was interpreted as part of the game we made of them. It was play all the way down, only it was indifferent to them all the way down. Really - how funny, to suffer. — fdrake
Humour can free you from this defensive mechanism, a type of abstract thinking.
It gives you power, right? What I get from your post is that you were coming from a position of powerlessness. That's where I came from too. Humor and philosophy, both, provide a sort of power. Words too. They're a kind of mesh, if you can access it, that lets you pull yourself out of whatever you were in. People respond to this as well: If you can can master these tools right, people will take you at your word. This is a weird thing: If you're sufficiently smart, able to do things with language, people will believe what you tell them. — csalisbury
I don't buy a lot of what you say about yourself. I think you're probably much more interesting than how you self-present (which is, frankly, boring.) I think the qualities that attract people (and posters) are ones you cover up when you talk about who you are. — csalisbury
The hardest part of all this is that what you do may not fit well with who you think you are. — csalisbury
I've been finding the discussion disturbing. I find myself wanting to turn away from it. I guess that means I find it stressful. — T Clark
What I mean is that sometimes lovers are equal partners dealing with the business of life. At other times one lover wants to show off and be admired by the other ('I'll be the child and you be the impressed parent.') Of course the unpleasant stuff is one partner trying to parent the other oppressive. Or trying to play the child when the partner is in the mood either for adult-adult conversation or are themselves impatient to be the adored child.
Boy. This is hard to read. I'm trying to think of myself in similar situations. The only times I can remember having a reaction similar to what you're describing is the contempt I have sometimes felt for people, usually boys or men, acting, being weak, vulnerable, pitiful. Thinking back, it's probably always boys or men. Not a good feeling. Looking back on it from many years in the future, I came to realize my feelings of contempt happened because I recognized the same weakness in myself. It was shame. Is that what you're describing, or is it something else? Is it purely social behavior - something you do with a group of friends - or would you do it when it was just you?
I think you nailed it. I know this contempt. It's all their in the word 'pussy,' which in a crude vocabulary serves as both the primary kind of sinner and the officially sanctioned object of desire. A rough theory would be that men repress their vulnerability and find it again at a safe distance in a woman (in the heterosexual case.) He is the shell. She is the shameful but delicious goo inside.
I appreciate this, fdrake. I have been bullied. I am quiet and small in stature and he was a very big man and profoundly aggressive and because I did not respond to his sexual advances he resorted to true authentic cruelty. It was horrible being a joke to them because my humanity was taken away from me and those who followed him and believed in him appeared as though they were allowed to treat me that way. That laughter at the so-called 'weakness' is pretty shocking.
The worst part about it was that I thought he was a good person, I really wanted to believe it.
I think we could give examples for both the bad and the good to humour, so I am unsure how to proceed. Are you suggesting that perhaps humour is too ambiguous because it is an oversimplification?
For better of for worse, this is the most stressful thread I've ever participated in. A conversation about patterns of conversations. Every post is both part of the conversation and also an object to be talked about as example within the conversation....ahhhh
I don't think the reason I obtained remorse or even stopped is because I saw myself in the target. Some of it was that I couldn't get away with it any more; I did find more socially acceptable cruelties which took a lot longer to stop; some of it was humanising the target. One of the rationalisations - well, it was true at the time for me - I had to vindicate the bullying was that since the target was a member of no social groups, and the social group I was in allowed him a limited amount of autonomy. Remember, only insofar as he was forced to be the unwilling jester, the sad clown. Him being bullied was a social contract of inclusion as much as it was a series excluding and belittling actions. Every skilled bastard fosters codependence and feeds off it. — fdrake
Honestly, I'm feeling pretty bold in this discussion. Boldly going where I haven't gone before. Boldly expressing my lack of boldness. — T Clark
I think you're missing that the middle ground is always contested territory. — fdrake
And maybe that's the real solution, which is just to admit an incompatibility when you realize that your sensitivities don't match up. That is not a "let's all get along" attitude though, but more of an admission you don't get each other, where the sensitive person is always feeling wronged and the less than sensitive guy feels like he's always having to apologize.
But, it does abandon the idea that one side is more right than the other, with it being no more correct to yell "bully" as it is to yell "pussy." As long as both have the ability to successfully interact in their own worlds apart from each other without conflict, then maybe that's the safe place to stay.
We have a problem, let's agree to ignore it. — fdrake
it engenders a kind of agent-agent ethical decision in which one party is radically indifferent to the other; so much so that 'let's agree to disagree', in all its reasonableness, acts as a principle to ignore yourself as a thorn in another's side. When they can't, by assumption, see it like the triviality it is. Gentle ribbing is usually done precisely by people who have a broad sense of triviality in interaction, and we shouldn't let ourselves seize the middle ground purely out of our own sense of reasonableness; the tyrant (edit: or the bureaucrat) is the model of such self justification. — fdrake
Everything, including words, can be used as a tool to exploit the vulnerable and mockery is a type of manipulative tactic that devalues humour itself and disorients the audience and the victim without appearing responsible for the cruelty. "I was just joking!" Humour has a function for joy, but the dimensions of this function are accessed and exploited by a manipulator to coercively influence authority. Essentially, it is all about intent and our individual motives and the culture or social conditions must provide the platform that is conducive to good behaviour as much as it is responsible for the bad. There are bad people making bad jokes, but we do not eliminate jokes to eliminate the bad. We challenge the motives. — TimeLine
A description of what it means to avoid conflict. One area where I'd disagree is that the conflict that is avoided is not wiped away as trivial, but it is avoided precisely because it's seen as critical and unresolvable. I appreciate this description might be my own neurosis, but it's nonetheless personally truthful. That is to say, if you are very leftist and I'm not, we could get along quite well as long as we made our dispute a trivial part of our relationship. That is, we must declare not to personally care about that difference because it isn't trivial. It's critical, and if we allow it to remain in the forefront of our interaction, we are not be able to get along. — Hanover
I dated a very liberal woman once, and I told her that nothing she believed offended me, that she was entitled to all she believed, and I even truthfully stated to her that I liked it that she held passionate views, despite I disagreed with her in very large part. And she had trouble with me, saying she had trouble divorcing her personal opinions from our relationship, although she finally came to terms with it. The challenge was hers far more than mine because I have no problem avoiding conflict. She did. God did she (but that's another story). — Hanover
Perhaps, but this is over generalized and non-contextualized. It is possible the person was just joking. In The Office video posted above, those in the office were truly joking, and the real response they were looking for was for Andy to have played along, to have thrown back a figurative punch at them (not a literal punch into the wall). It was playful, non-malicious wrestling to them. To Andy, it wasn't. I'm not declaring who gets to decide the truth here, as both confidently have their perspectives, but mean humor is a thing, but it's not meant to truly be mean. It's meant to be funny. Know your audience I guess. — Hanover
You're video was not a joke, it was a problematic interaction just like those terrible singers who go onto a singing show and are told they are terrible singers only to flip out and start getting all defensive and attacking the judge for being a fool. It is malicious in the instance where the person does sing well but is told by a bully that they have a shit voice, just as much as it is funny when jokes are said about weirdo princesses singing to magpies. The audience is irrelevant, it is isolating the intent. — TimeLine
Both you and Michael did the same thing when I chimed in about BMI age. It was not meant to be mean in anyway, but the intention is to downplay the seriousness and to expose the ridiculous. — TimeLine
It is malicious in the instance where the person does sing well but is told by a bully that they have a shit voice, just as much as it is funny when jokes are said about weirdo princesses singing to magpies. — TimeLine
Perhaps he was unreflective and regurgitating things he's seen before, perhaps he knew what he was doing was wrong but continued anyway because, at least, he knew what he was doing was wrong. Perhaps he was frustrated because you'd shown him the limitations of his power; and how humiliating that a simple 'no' suffices to destroy a persona. — fdrake
Did you take actions to avoid being bullied or did you allow (he made?) his bullying to become a twisted intimacy between you? — fdrake
How is that any different from bullies like yourself that seemingly think you have a right to ridicule?
Why is it that if you don't like something or someone - which is normal - that you feel justified to act out as though seeking a social means to enable reasons for behaving badly? There is clearly an ego here but also a sense of entitlement that stems from a lack of empathy.
My intent would always be to be funny, but some people who I might expect to get it, won't, and they'll be like "fuck you" and I'll be like "doubly fuck you" and I'll be joking, and they won't, and then no amount of splainin works. — Hanover
Of course, because Michael tends to get it, as does Sap and Baden, but others not quite as much. So if I tell Baden I accidently had sex with his stupid fucking dog last night thinking it was his mom, he'd respond in kind, whereas if I told some other people that, they'd be sort of pissed off, like why is this moderator telling me he fucked my dog and is insulting my mother. I'm proud of that example of a good joke, by the way. — Hanover
We all can act without knowing why and in this instance you may genuinely believe that you are simply joking back, but what you are really doing is responding or reacting rather vindictively with the intent of hurting their feelings. — TimeLine
Those guys, by the way, reacted negatively to my joke, deleted it and stopped talking to me for a while; how dare I not tell them they are beautiful, amazing people, two men doing what millions of men do in a machine called the same shit as everyone else. — TimeLine
They quickly regretted their reaction because I am awesome and I know a lot of people at the gym and everyone who read it thought it was funny and thought the guys were overreacting jocks, so they're all be like sniffing around me now and saying nice things about my hair and clothes, and I be like whatevs. — TimeLine
So if you got this complex play book, why open it for me? Is it because your love now is so deep it's time for the big reveal or perchance you have abandoned it for a new playbook, like maybe if you talk all silly hip and drunk and shit maybe you can get Hanover to do the same. Hellz no you can't. Shit don't work wid me no way.They prolly in a bad mood. You're so sensitive. In saying that, I sometimes intentionally disregard your jokes not because I didn't laugh or I didn't find it funny, but because I cant be fucked since my only chance to be on here is late at night when I am sleepy and in bed. You're so exhausting, always 'TL TL, look at me look at me, pick me pick me" I be like whatevs. — TimeLine
There was this girl at work. I'll call her Megan because that's her name. She tole me this story after we got to know each other later on. She would walk by me in the hall and say hi to me and I'd not say hi back. She then started not saying hi and just staring at me to teach me a lesson. I still didn't respond. She thought we were in this big standoff and that she was getting the best of me. Once she got to know me, she realized I had no earthly idea of the battle that had been waging.However, it also does open potential discussions about power-relations here, too. My dismissal of your jokes, for instance, is a type of power over you, a mode of discourse intended as a rhetorical strategy to control for my own benefit — TimeLine
What you don't say dear Princess is that you felt bad about what you did and so here you try to pretend they sort of deserved it. — Hanover
There was this girl at work. I'll call her Megan because that's her name. She tole me this story after we got to know each other later on. She would walk by me in the hall and say hi to me and I'd not say hi back. She then started not saying hi and just staring at me to teach me a lesson. I still didn't respond. She thought we were in this big standoff and that she was getting the best of me. Once she got to know me, she realized I had no earthly idea of the battle that had been waging. — Hanover
Is it because your love now is so deep it's time for the big reveal or perchance you have abandoned it for a new playbook, like maybe if you talk all silly hip and drunk and shit maybe you can get Hanover to do the same. Hellz no you can't. Shit don't work wid me no way. — Hanover
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