On insults

[nancylebov]

I try to avoid insulting people, and one of the things I like about my button business is that it's a way of demonstrating that you can be funny without being nasty.

One reason to not insult people is that while insults are a good way of getting attention, it's very likely that the attention will go straight to the insult, and anything else you were trying to say doesn't get noticed.

Also, insults run the risk of having the behavior you don't want getting incorporated into the person's self image. Someone does something stupid. What you want is for them to be more alert, better informed, and/or better at deduction. If you call them stupid, they might believe you, and give up on thinking. Or they might hate you, and only think when they aren't doing something you want. (See first point.)

Michael Vassar came up with a plausible reason for identity-based insults. They may well be useful for breaking one kind of defense. If someone has stolen and you call them a thief, it's a way of saying, "It was really you who did it. Don't pretend it was some momentary lapse that doesn't matter." However, the first two drawbacks still apply.

One thing I've learned from the current difficulties with the Hugos is that people wildly underestimate the effects of the insults which come out of their own group. Insults which seems like good fun, the simple truth, and a pleasing exercise in group bonding are remembered in detail and with fury by the other group.

However, while there are good reasons for not insulting people, I do have a another reason-- a gut-level belief that I wouldn't be good at it. My expectation is that the other person would just insult me back and I wouldn't have a good fast reply. I have no idea whether this is a good enough reason. Perhaps I should practice.

I've wondered whether there's a biological basis for this sort of aggressiveness or lack of same. Usually, I have a sense that other people are human spirits, and should not be bent, folded, spindled, or mutilated. Occasionally, this feeling has evaporated. It's just not there. Fortunately, I have enough investment in my reputation that I don't do more than get slightly snippy, if that much. (I'm talking about my online behavior.)

Anyway, I'm curious about other people's experience with using insults. Have you found insults to be a reliable tool for getting people to do what you want? Or if not reliable, no worse than other methods? If you've changed your level of insultingness, why did you do it and how has it worked out?

Thoughts about getting attention without using insults?

Comments

[chalcedony_cat]

I have the feeling I am sticking my (unknown to you) finger into some ongoing conversation and thus perhaps missing much nuance, but is it an insult to call someone a thief, when they have just stolen something? It seems to me just like naming reality.

As for the attention -- it seems entirely contextual, whose attention it is, what kind of attention one wants, what ends one is pursuing.

[nancylebov]

No, it's not an actual ongoing conversation, except in my head. It's more a matter of seeing a heavy use of insults online.

[chalcedony_cat]

I understand that. I do not see much that happens online in general, but I am relatively aware of the phenomenom.

[chalcedony_cat]

Also -- not to point any kind of finger at you -- but I am very wary of people for whom naming reality in the moment consists of an insult. Yes, thief is a charged word; perhaps within a relationship I might be kinder. But I have known many people to whom, if I said in the moment it was happening, "You are stealing," would react with horror -- how dare I say what is really going on? I am insulting them, etc.

[siderea]

You have put your finger on an important aspect of any discussion of insults. There is a qualitative difference between calling someone who stole something a thief and calling someone an asshole. And also consider the circumstance where A is angry at B for being late and calls B a "a low down dirty thief" in retaliation, possibly alluding to some previous beef.

Or multiple qualitative differences. For one thing, there are differences in specificity ("thief" is a more specific insult than "asshole"). For another, there's a difference, as you note, between calling someone something they plausibly are, and attempting to call someone something they either aren't, or the being of which is irrelevant, simply to cause retaliatory emotional pain.

But note, also, this discussion of "insults" presumes something about what they are, which is narrower than the whole class: it is assuming that an insult is basically a characterization, like name calling. But "your cooking sucks" is also an insult, and not apparently included in the class of speech under discussion. Even further afield, consider behaviors that are, in times and places, insults: refusing to make eye contact, shake hands, or acknowledge the other; spitting, bumping, knocking off hats; neglecting to include or to defer; etc. The Trojan War, the ancient Greeks tell us, started with the goddess of strife not being invited to a wedding, and, taking umbrage at the slight, crashing it with a golden apple marked "KALLISTI".

[chalcedony_cat]

Oh yes, of course; insult is cultural, contextual, personal. "Asshole" is for the right people in the right context not even an insult, merely a term of affection -- but that does not mean one should go around using it to strangers on the street.

Is "your cooking sucks" an insult to the person, or to the cooking? I would guess different cultures make different distinctions -- just as there are times & places in which insulting a man's mother was the worst thing one can do, but for me in my time and place, it has no charge.

[siderea]

I don't even think we have to go to cultural differences; I'm pretty sure I can moderate the insultingness of "your cooking sucks" entirely through tone of voice, from terms of endearment right up through dagger to the heart, and that's before even tweaking context.

But if I were pissed off at someone for, say, being late, and when they arrived I raged at them that "You are thoughtless, lazy, and inconsiderate! You are a terrible driver, a bad dresser and your cooking sucks!" there's no question that it's intended as an insult. Context.

Two true stories. I am a therapist and I once ventured to call a patient a bitch ("....bitch!"); it was all in the context: the patient preened with pride and laughed at the joke. Another patient... catechized me that he self-identified as an "asshole", and would I kindly get it; this bemused me at the time, but it turned out to be absolutely correct and hugely clinically relevant.