20 September 2019
One of the easiest ways of insulting people is to tell despicable lies about them or people dear to them. Mothers remain the gold standard of rich and rewarding targets. This is particularly effective against adolescents whose personal value is often predicated on the perceived value of their pack and most especially their blood kin. In short, “Diss my dog, diss me!”
This tactic is far less effective against the more emotionally stable (or “mature”) as broad insults to unknown third parties have less power in light of realizations that can range from “This idiot doesn’t know my Mom” to “’Bitch’? Really? Is that all you’ve got? You don’t know the half of this woman’s strength!”
If you’re really intent on insulting someone, the best way is to tell him something that he believes. But how to know what your target believes? Listen, watch, and learn.
People are often eager to tell you what they believe. Ignore this. As (fictional character) Greg House says, “Everybody lies.” Whether he meant it literally (as in “everybody”) or colloquially (as in “everybody, everybody else, most people, some people, few people, nobody, or just me”) it’s a fair warning. Sure, there are some careful analysts who can sift nuggets of truth out of mountains of lies, but most of us don’t have that kind of time.
So if explication is not reliable, how can we tell what people believe?
Watch what people DO. Behavior is much more sincere than oratory, especially if money is involved. For example, recently Michelle and Barrack (Bubback Hussein Walker Bush 44) Obama gave us about twelve million good reasons to believe that they don’t take environmental hysteria seriously, nor particularly fear Miami’s, Micronesia’s, or Martha’s Vineyard’s being inundated by the rising sea. Here, again, “do” trumps “say.”
The other reliable way that people will tell you about their real feelings and standards and expectations is through their accusations. Just as with “everybody lying,” everybody also projects. We can hardly help it. Our natural assumption is to believe that everybody is like us. Liars will never believe you and thieves are convinced that you’re trying to rip them off.
It’s also why such a sweet guy as myself is the eternal chump.
Another way to insult people, albeit clumsily and often inadvertently, is to offer broad criticisms of popular stereotypes. Those who are eager to seize offense will assume, with certitude, that you mean them if they happen to match some superficial characteristics. Many others might reasonably infer insult if you have failed to adequately identify qualifying modifiers. Others may breeze by such qualifiers and assume that by “some” you mean “all.”
So be careful with stereotypes. Even if they are exaggerations, the middle-management martinet, the sedentary clerk, and the emotionally retarded tech type are still based on reality, and to the sufficiently tender, they’ll sting as badly as actual facts. (Caveat in re retarded techs: Insulting us is generally a lot safer. We often don’t even realize it’s happening.) As far as using stereotypes in general: If I’ve misspoken, I’m sorry. If you’ve misinferred, I’m sorry.
On the other hand, as (fictional character) Chief Smitherman says,
“If you think it’s an unfair stereotype, don’t live up to it.”