Split from https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/sotm-at-thinkgeekcom-4744
jsz2 wrote:
The problem is that associations can be stronger than meanings.
Well said. English is not so much a language as an extremely dysfunctional form of low-level telepathy, in which everyone broadcasts their thoughts on a different wavelength and hopes that the receiver is tuned to be capable of interpreting it correctly.
Silverleaf wrote:
"Poof"? We're going for homophobic insults now?
Not really, I was just trying to think of specifically British slang. The only other example I could think of was "danglies" which is a body part rather than a whole person.
"Is there beauty in a forest, if no creature stops and calls it lovely, now and then? Isn't that what 'sapience' is for?"
--David Brin, "Brightness Reef"
I have never heard anyone use that as an insult, British or otherwise. Where are you getting these from?
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
As I said, it's not an "insult" because it describes a body part rather than a person, which is why I didn't use it in the first post of this discussion; it's a vulgarism, so it came to mind when brainstorming rude things to call someone in British, but didn't fit the context. I've probably absorbed a few of these from other sources (Monty Python or Dr. Who perhaps?) but the source I'm sure of is the character "Spike" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as he is both from England and extremely profane.
"Is there beauty in a forest, if no creature stops and calls it lovely, now and then? Isn't that what 'sapience' is for?"
--David Brin, "Brightness Reef"
Ah, the Britishness of a fictional character who is neither played by a British actor nor written by a British writer nor directed by a British director. That truly represents Britishness about as much as my extremely poor impression of my friend from Albuquerque saying "Hi there pretty girl!" to my dog represents the US, or my appalling stereotyped Australian phrases which are specifically designed to wind up my Aussie friends reflect them.
Did Spike really refer to someone as a "dangly"? As in "you are a dangly"?
It's just not a word we use like that unless we're deliberately trying to sound like a baby or something. Sure, you might kick someone in the danglies, if you were a 6-year-old-boy who couldn't say a less infantile word like maybe "bollocks". It's the equivalent of talking about you pee-pee or pointing out a moo-cow.
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
I figure if Austin Powers would have said it, everyone in England is saying it. ;)
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
After seeing a few of your comments and posts, Envisioner, I have to ask. Do you like anything?
"It beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick..."
This is the best split post yet.
I was hoping for a philosophical treatise on the nature of insults in modern social discourse. Or at the very least that someone had really gone off on someone else in another topic and it got split off here so we could all watch. Color me disappointed.
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
Whether or not something is insulting:
Based on the intent of the speaker or the reaction of the target, or something else?
Discuss.
If the comment is not meant to be insulting and is not taken to be, then it is not insulting.
If the comment is meant to be insulting and is taken to be, then in is insulting.
If the comment is meant to be insulting but is not taken to be, then it is certainly an insult, just not an effective or accurate one.
If the comment is not meant to be insulting but is taken to be... well, then it gets tricky. An obviously innocuous comment is not really an insult, where as an obviously extremely offensive comment is (with 'obviously' taken to mean it's obvious to all except the insulter/insultee). In the middle, things get really fuzzy.
“You gotta have blue hair."
-Reckless
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
Is this not that kind of thread?
Stop lurking, it makes you look like a villain target
When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all
Shut your festering gob you tit! Your type really makes me puke you vacuous, coffee-nosed, maloderous pervert!
Incidentally, these kinds of insults (which are clearly meant to be insults, but not meant to be insulting) belong in a category of their own that I'm not sure how to classify. They're not meant insultingly, and (I hope) not taken as insults, and yet...
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
I'm sorry sir, this is Abuse!
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
A pribbling, milk-livered excuse for a Shakespearean insult list
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
I completely approve of this, thou dankish onion-eyed foot-licker.
Just assume I'm always doing that.
Damn it, Ronway!
What didst thou call me, you churlish pottle-deep flap-dragon?
"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"
- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
The title of this newly-split topic...sounds a bit unfriendly. Perhaps it should be clarified "Discussion of insults" or something.
Oh yes, quite a few things! I like SOTM, obviously, and I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I often like Monty Python and I at least sometimes like Dr. Who. I also like a variety of things not mentioned in the quoted post, including but not limited to cat macros, cute puppy pictures (actual puppies are sometimes even more cute, but have undesireable side effects if usage is continued beyond the extremely short term, so I mostly just stick with pictures), hyper-realistic fantasy art, the novels of David Brin, Iain M. Banks, Larry Niven and numerous others less immediately at the tip of my tongue, a significant percentage of other games of various sorts (some of which I like almost as much as SOTM, at least one or two I actually like to an equal or perhaps slighter degree, and several levels that I like less than SOTM but still wish to play at times), Kentucky Fried Chicken and/or Popeye's, the local restaurant Hell's Kitchen when I can afford it (not to be confused with the Gordon Ramsay reality TV show or the New York City neighborhood), having more money than I know what to do with, being free to sleep late in the morning and stay up all night, staying in hotels, reading Wikipedia and TVTropes articles when I have that kind of free time, fancy self-serve frozen yogurt shops, the textures of silk and cashmere, and various increasingly not-family-friendly topics which thereafter come to mind, nudge nudge wink wink say no more.
It's just that I tend to take these things for granted, feel entitled to enjoy them every moment that I am conscious, and complain bitterly about anything I am forced to put up with which is even slightly wrong according to my standards. So I tend to talk about all of the above things much less than I discuss, say, world politics, economic woes, or unsatisfying rules in SOTM or any other game.
No, as I clarified once before, that was NOT a word I could use as an insult for a person. I say this in the least insulting tone I can manage: you would find me easier to understand if you would carefully read what I am actually saying, rather than glancing at my statements and attempting to apprehend their overall meaning based on some possibly-inaccurate assumption you've made. (Actually, everyone would probably find everyone else easier to understand if they did that. We as a species really probably ought to try it sometime.)
That was pretty much the context he was using it in, except it might have been more along the lines of suggesting that someone grow a pair thereof. I forget the exact details but he was not using it as a name for a person, as I stated in a previous post, and then again above.
Oh, he uses that one too, of course. It's likely that the non-British Wheedon (like myself, up until you pointed out otherwise) considered them interchangeable - equally impolite terms for an impolite body part, used by an impolite member of a society that we Yanks perceive as alternating between exquisite politeness and startling lack thereof, both of which we view as tremendously entertaining (except for like old grannies and sheltered religious types, who probably don't react so positively to the second category).
"Is there beauty in a forest, if no creature stops and calls it lovely, now and then? Isn't that what 'sapience' is for?"
--David Brin, "Brightness Reef"
It's your topic, can't you edit it?
Ah. Indeed I can. I can also, and did, edit the post immediately above yours, a couple of times, to include responses to earlier bits of the thread. If I have any further such responses, I will instead edit them into this post. (Also, this is a self-reference.)
"Is there beauty in a forest, if no creature stops and calls it lovely, now and then? Isn't that what 'sapience' is for?"
--David Brin, "Brightness Reef"