{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "Male pattern bonding seems bizzare from the outside, so here's the secret to it: you trade insults as a joke to show you'd never...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/187126542034/", "html": "
Anonymous asked: Male pattern bonding seems bizzare from the outside, so here's the secret to it: you trade insults as a joke to show you'd never really mean it. So, for example, a casual \"What's up, faggot\" between friends will mean \"I know you're a girly boy and I'm okay with that, we're all cool with that\". You never say it if you know it will hit a nerve. Only if you're so close that you know there's no way in hell it will be taken as an insult. If you mean it as an insult, you're not friends. You're a dick.
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morlock-holmes:

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When I was in college, a friend of mine told me about a game he used to play with the members of his band called\u00a0\u201cHey, Asshole\u201d.

The way you play is, when you see one of your band members turned around, you throw an empty water bottle at the back of his head and shout\u00a0\u201cHey Asshole!\u201d as loud as you can.

This guy was also, genuinely, one of the nicest, most thoughtful and generous people I have ever met.

That having been said,\u00a0\u201cWhat\u2019s up, faggot!\u201d can mean a lot of things. It can, and does, mean what you say, but also

\u201cWhat\u2019s up, faggot?\u201d can mean,\u00a0\u201cI think you\u2019re a loser and a liability until you prove me wrong, so start proving me wrong.\u201d

\u201cWhat\u2019s up, faggot?\u201d can mean,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m looking down on you, but I figure I\u2019m so much higher in the pecking order that I can call you names and get away with it and you\u2019ll sit there and take it.\u201d

\u201cWhat\u2019s up, faggot?\u201d can mean,\u00a0\u201cYou look like a faggot, so me and my buddies are going to kick your ass.\u201d

For a lot of us, it\u2019s actually pretty hard to tell the difference. For all that men get dinged for having less emotional intelligence, you do generally encounter most of those different meanings at one point or another and have to parse them out through subtle social cues.

When the person on one side of the equation and a the person on the other disagree about which meaning is being used you get into trouble.

There was this friend in high school, he was kind of the alpha of our beta pack. And we were high school boys so of course we ragged on each other all the time and we noticed he more than the rest of us was freaked out by gay shit so obviously in the lounge of high school before classes (which \u201870s vets told us used to be the smoking lounge) I\u2019d ambush and glomp and full-mouth kiss him

And then eventually he declared himself bi on the way to declaring himself gay, and we were like \u201cfuck we can\u2019t tease him about getting with boys anymore, that doesn\u2019t work now\u201d so we did the opposite, he\u2019d be like \u201coh I\u2019m going to spend some time with Seth\u201d, when back when he was posing as into girls he\u2019d been as ribald about intentions as us teenage boys would be, and I\u2019d be like \u201cby which you mean gay buttsex with men\u201d and he\u2019d be like \u201c\u2026yes\u201d

Cause \u201chaha ur gay\u201d and \u201chaha ur insecure about being gay\u201d worked just as well as teases, we were all together doing each other the teenage boy service of constantly probing for vulnerability but then just counting coup instead of doing damage, like \u201chaha that\u2019s a weakness that people can notice and leverage, maybe work on that\u201d

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