A pet peeve

I've got a couple, actually. I'll probably examine each of them in turn along the way, but I was having a conversation with someone today and this particular bugbear of mine popped up: aggression disguised as humour. The poor girl had really suffered from it at some point in the past, and I think we've all seen it in action. Some twat who thinks it's cool and edgy to roundly abuse someone for the benefit of a crowd of sniggering fuckwits and his (in my experience, we are normally talking about men) own pathetic lack of self worth. It can be that they're generalising wildly about something, or laying into someone in particular. You might even have been on the receiving end of it, but each time the feeling is the same: is he being serious? It sounds like a joke, but there's a bit of needle in there... what should I do?

You've got a couple of choices, and none of them are particularly appetising. You can't just slink away, it's wrong on every level. If you try and brush it off and laugh along, you'll end up hating yourself, and if you object to what's going on you inevitably hear a variation on, "Jesus mate, I was only kidding. You need to lighten up."

Except they're not kidding. You know it, he knows, everyone else knows it but somehow you end up being the bad guy because you're doing the right thing. Communication is more than 90% non-verbal, and while I'm aware that the majority of humour happens at the expense of something or someone everyone knows when they are laughing along with someone or when they are being laughed at - and in turn, people know when being laughed at becomes a form of bullying from some arse who wants to see what he can get away before going and hiding behind the 'just a joke' excuse.

It's cowardly at best and often downright infuriating. It provokes exactly the same feelings in me as seeing a gang of kids terrorise some unsuspecting victim just because they can.

What's all of this got to do with anything that I'm meant to be using this blog for? I'm not sure. Normally the sort of conversation that triggered this entry would have been mentally filed away and forgotten almost immediately, but this had been turning over and over in my mind all day. I've been feeling increasingly annoyed by this sort of behaviour as well.

Is it just that I'd found out that somebody I liked and even respected - professionally - had been known to stoop to this sort of behaviour? Dunno. Is this sort of bullying connected to the issues I want to work through here? Eh... I can't be sure. Just felt I had to put it out there.

On a positive note: coffee and doughnuts is much better than tea and scones. It just is.

Peterson.