Insults And Their Application (non wc3)

[Ecto]

This is something I wrote for English class, as a sort of joke when we were asked to write about an interest of ours. Unfortunately, it sort of grabbed me, and ended up becoming more than twice the allowed length, so I wrote another one, desribing my personal relation to insults, and how they've affected my life. If anybody wants to see it, you're welcome - granted of course, that you have the stamina to read through this thing.

It is an experiment in handling a stupid subject with extreme seriousness (except in the places where it's not serious at all), so let me now how it worked out, will ya?

Insults and their application

Foreword
Since the dawn of time, insults have been an important weapon in the arsenal of humans. When mankind arose, we had a newly developed ability to pronounce consonants that the apes from which we evolved lacked. We didn’t waste a moment of time to put this new ability to good use, because after all, the guy next door is an asshole, and yes, I banged your mother yesterday.

In this essay, we will have a look upon the varying types of insults and their structure, the circumstances under which they arise, and the people who conceive them.

Keep in mind, of course, that people are different, and thusly, take offence to vastly different things. While this essay is written with the general populace of the western cultures in mind, you might still come across people that react very different from what you would expect. In those cases, improvise. Improvisation is the insulter’s best weapon, as it allows him/her to keep on top, even if met with unexpected counter-insults, or arguments from more than one front.

The Structure of an insult
Before we begin discussing the uses and effects of insulting people, we will have to know what it is that makes an insult an insult. When looking to define the term “insult” there is two main schools of thought, which use two different definitions.

>> A statement or action which affronts or demeans someone
And
>> A rude expression intended to offend or hurt

For the purpose of our essay, we will stick to the former definition. While it’s an interesting discussion whether an insult is defined by the intent behind, or by the way it is perceived, we can’t use an insult for anything, unless somebody is affronted or demeaned.

In order for an insult to exist, there are three conditions that must be fulfilled.
There must be an insulter – or there will be no insult.
There must be one or more victims – By victim, we mean a person who is offended or demeaned by our statement. An insult is, as stated before, only useful to us if it provokes a reaction. (Note: a person can be considered a victim, even if the insult is not directly aimed at him/her. For instance, you could insult animal rights activists by saying that animals are nothing more than food that has legs and does not spoil)
The insult must be perceived – does the insult exist if it’s alone in the forest? Maybe, maybe not, but an insult, no matter how brilliant, is pointless if nobody hears it.

These are the basic rules of insulting. A good insulter will keep these in the back if his/her head at all times. Never utter an insult if it is in violation of any of these rules. It will avail you nothing.

Exchange-types
There are many reasons you’d want to insults somebody. This could be for want of material gain, to vent your frustrations, to get respect among your peers, score with the opposite gender, lose some ire or inspire it in people you don’t like. For the purpose of this essay, we simplify things a bit, and define the four major exchange-types in which insults might appear.

There are the jabs, where one person insults another, but without a reply. This can happen because the insulted does not realise that he’s being insulted, because of slang, inside-humour, or technical terms which often has fun results if there are others, less inept people around. It can also be because the insulted is a pussy who believes in “turning the other cheek”. OR, there can be a problem on the insulter’s side; that his/her insult is lame, lacking punch, and not worth responding to, or that he him/her -self has not got enough respect in the immediate community for anything he says to be considered as having any substance.

Then there are the quick exchanges, where one person insults another person, and the other person responds in kind. These usually are either the result of the two being friends, and not taking the insults seriously – hence the lack of need for a third insult – or there being some sort of time-pressure applied, such as when people walk past each other in a hallway and both are in a hurry, or other people are breaking them up from a fight or some other conflict.

Then there are the longer exchanges of insults. Arguments, fights, disagreements, or flame-wars. Whatever you want to call them, they have one thing in common: They tend to drag out.

In order to improve the efficiency of your insults, you’ll want to be able to recognise these different exchange-types, and apply the proper insults for different occasions.

For the jabs, your best bet is a quick, vicious strike – something that really hurts. You’ve only got one hit, and you’ll have to make it count. To this end, it’s often rather effective to comment on some part of your victim’s physique.
“Oh man, you’re such a useless wanker” will usually be shrugged off without a second thought, but “Wow, your nose is huge. You could cut the next Mt. Rushmore from that thing!” will sting a lot more, providing of course, that the victim actually has a large nose. The victim will be a lot more prone to considering whether they have a large nose, than whether they are in essence useless wankers. In short, find something exploitable about the person, and exploit it. Nobody is perfectly average, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to find something.

During quick exchanges, much the same rules apply as in the jabs. Quick and vicious, something that’ll sting for a while. There is though, the added possibility of a response type of insult, if you’re not the one who initiates the exchange (you wimp). This can work great, if you’re a quick thinker
(“Man, you look like an asshole today!” – “Yeah, your mother kept me up all night!”)
Or it can be catastrophic if you just say something random or irrelevant. Nobody likes the kid that says random stuff all the time. Don’t be that kid.

The longer exchanges are by far the most complex. Often, you will want to decide upon a theme - a leitmotif, if you will – to which you can return and use as a sort of reference. Follow-up jokes are difficult to pull off, since your opponent has lots of possibilities to cut in and interrupt you, but are also very strong when pulled of correctly, and can be hurled out very quickly if you manage to leave your opponent speechless for a couple of seconds. Something to be aware of in the longer exchanges is that not only do you have the possibility of responding to insults send your way, twisting it around, you are in fact sometimes expected to. A good insult, followed up with a solid silence, indicating that a response is requested can be difficult to verbally deflect, and can silence you long enough for your opponent to fling another insult your way. This, again, is where the ability to improvise is golden. If you have nothing to say to an insult, there’s not much to do. Your opponent will insult you again, and you’ll get another chance to grab the ball, and turn it around.

Circumstances
Insults appear under a magnitude of different circumstances. We will mention some of the most common ones here.

Many insult-exchanges happen while people are eating. At the family dinner table, over lunch with the colleagues or classmates, even in the fancy restaurant. These are unusually intimate, and the face-to-face kind of situation means that it will very easily get stand-offish. It’s a common trick for journalists (in fact, it’s something you MUST know) for interviewers, that you never sit face-to-face with the person you’re interviewing. Instead, you sit at a slight angle, to let people open up, without feeling as pressured. This isn’t how it is if you do stuff over dinner. Unless it’s a very relaxed meal, it’s considered socially unacceptable to just get up and leave (and this probably does matter to you, you wimp, even though it shouldn’t). This means that most insults will lead to open conflict (as in: “Fuck you, asshole, I’m not listening to you”) because people feel cornered when they can’t leave, a very bad environment for the insult to really flourish (there will be too much at stake, and your insults will not be appreciated for their beauty in the least). Therefore, it’s important that you keep the insults pretty well hidden, especially if there’s a small audience (like the rest of the family), and light-hearted, or the situation will become too “heavy”.
When insulting over dinner, a lot of attention will usually be paid to what you’re saying, so this is where you don’t botch up your grammar, and get your quotes just right, because in a sparring of insults of this nature, your opponent can easily remove focus from what you just said, by pointing out a mistake you made, and then insulting you from that base. Finally, gauge the general atmosphere. If people around you are getting annoyed with you, for insulting somebody in particular, you might want to try a new approach. That is not to say that other people’s opinions should mean a lot to you, just that when nobody think you’re funny, you probably aren’t. If you’re going for a conflict, it shouldn’t be too hard. Just find something to argue about, and do it without compromise.

Another place, where insult-exchanges often take place, is classrooms. If there’s a discussion about something, best of all politics, it’ll be surprisingly easy to slip in a quite obvious insult or five – especially if the teacher does not want to interrupt what he or she considers a passionate argument. Implying that somebody is a Nazi (“that’s not a valid argument because this and this, go play with your gas chambers or something”), goes over unusually well in many places, because you often obtain some kind of “immunity” while discussing in a classroom. Most of this hinges on you having a relaxed teacher. Some teachers will allow absolutely no insults, implied or otherwise, but these are luckily usually not the teachers that open up a politic debate anyway. When insulting somebody in the classroom, it’s important that you do it in a funny way. Being a mean asshole is nice, but people don’t find it funny, and being funny is crucial in the classroom. Nobody wants to sit through ninety minutes of some idiot being a smart-ass, so this is one of the cases where you’ll definitely want to lay off, if the public opinion seems to be against you.

One very notable place, where insults exchanges are very prone to taking place, is the Internet forum. The Internet forum is interesting in that it totally changes the rules of engagement. Most importantly, you’re using the written medium. This means that there will be no tone of voice. As thus, sarcasm registers very poorly, and a lot of nuances are lost. This radically changes the way people communicate. Also, you don’t have to answer immediately, as when arguing in person. You can take the time, to think out your insult in detail, and think through possible counter-insults your opponent might come up with. Another thing to note is the fact that your entire conversation is available at any time. This means that you don’t have to option of denying that you said something, if you actually did say it. The freedom provided by the laxer response times are much needed, because you’ll need a lot more coherency in your arguments. Contradicting yourself, and being called on it, does not make you look like the coolest kid on the block, so you’ll want to make up your mind before you throw yourself into a heated argument. Changing your opinion halfway through will only get you in trouble. It’s important to explore your possible ways of compensating for the somewhat stunted communication. Pretty much all forums have a score of smilies that can be used together with text, to describe the way it’s meant to be understood. The smilies are double-edged though, since they often make it hard for other people to take you seriously. Always try to emphasize your core points with italic or bold text – it will make your insults that much more burning.

The chat-room is much like a forum, with a few exceptions. You’ll be expected to answer a lot faster, and thus, you will also usually screw up a lot oftener, if you don’t have a lot of expertise. On the bright side, what happens in a chat-room does not stay printed on the wall for eternities, so it’ll be a lot easier to live down if you fuck up.

Effects and acting
Sometimes, you will find yourself in the middle of exchange of insults with a (relatively) large audience. This usually happens if you insult somebody around a lot of people that don’t have anything to do. A prime example is the pause between classes at school, where insulting someone can get everybody’s attention, simply because they don’t have anything better to do. In these situations, crowd control is essential, because victory in these cases is determined by who everybody laugh with. This is where acting comes in. Not acting as in Hollywood, or the Opera, but acting with your body language. When you have a lot of people’s attention, gesticulating becomes a powerful tool. When your opponent says something, look incredulously at him, shake your head slightly – yet enough that you know everybody will notice. Place your hand on your forehead and look down, shaking your head, or move your hands out from your sides, palms towards the sky, in height with your chest and look at him as though he’s insane. You can even turn around and mumble a bit, as though you don’t understand what the hell just came out of his mouth – the possibilities are endless. It’s important though, to not overdo it. If you stand around, shaking your head and laughing for too long, people will realise that you’re stalling for time, and that just doesn’t go over well. So with acting, do it in moderation.

In Conclusion
Insults are a powerful tool. Easy to learn, but difficult to master. It would not be difficult to find numerous other clichés to describe the world of insults, but the best thing would be for you to try it yourself. You’ll not learn insults from reading an essay, you’ll learn it from insulting people. Just do it, it rarely really has any consequences, and you’ll definitely get some interesting reactions. If people can’t take a joke, are they even worth talking to in the first place? No. Fuck the bitches!

[NethioX]

ZZZzzZZZzzZZzzZZzzZZzZZzZZzZZZzzZZZzZZzzzzZZZzzZZZ ...............

[Ecto]

<.<
>.>
okay...

[PoWeR]

Did you actually hand that in?

[Ecto]

No, but I handed in something that was if anything more provocative, where I claimed that insults was an important social construct, and reccommended that everybody do it all the time. My teacher has a sense of humour

[Tapewyrm]

I don't reply to many threads, or indeed read many of them at all. It has been this way since I joined, way back in time.

But, I'm fucking glad I stumbled upon this thread. Excellent stuff, champ. I'm very impressed. I can see you going far in the Writing-World.

[Ecto]

Ah man, that's awesome. Thanks a lot!

[Sagetouch]

Rofl, you could even go so far as to say that its justified and nessisary under americans social contract. That obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement between them to form society. Basis for growth aswell developing sense of humor is essential to adaptation. Lol got it?

[Ecto]

You're saying that to survive as a race, we'll need humour, and the only way to get humour is to insult each other? <.<

[truewt]

this is really good read!

[quethree]

lol danish noob your writing sucks MAJOR ass! My DOG writes better than you.


gj, gave me a couple of good laughs

[HS.oOb]

Nice read. Some of the images you created were ones I could relate to so well! Like the fast-witted 'Quick-Exchange' battles me and my cousins all have over dinner ^^