In early 1980s, driving to the mall right before Christmas with girlfriend and her mom in their ancient huge Caddilac. It’s a zoo. Girlfriend’s mom consipates the whole parking garage by driving poorly and gridlocking the place. People are honking and yelling at her. She hangs out the window and yells, in a strong Fran Drescher accent: “YOU DON’T HAVE THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT!”
McDonald head. A little girl, maybe 4, called me McDonald head while laughing hysterically and pointing, for like 10 min straight. This was more than 20 years ago and I can still hear her laughter.
How old were you back then?
Grown ass man
“He always was a bit of a… reader when he was young.” said with such utter contempt and disgust; like it was a terrible thing.
Given:
You lack the capacity to experience imposter syndrome.
I called out man in his fifties being sleezy around women who didn’t have any company.
I roasted him , to which he responded “you are bad” (in my native language that word would specifically mean bad at something).
Bad at WHAT bro?
Assuming you are finnish and google translate did my right, olet huono
That’s correct.
What I said to him among other things, “mee muualle siitä setämieheilemään” =" why don’t you go be ‘uncle man’ elsewhere."
Uncle man would be something used to call out middle aged men who are being nasty, usually for women much younger than them.
“YOU DRIVE VERY FAST”. Screamed at me out her minivan window by a middle aged Indian woman making a left across traffic in front of me. Still cracks me up.
“You’re not good for much, but you do a damn good vacuum.”
-60yo lady to 20yo me, bookshop job.
“You’re too hard to hug.”
I’m a muscular dude. This was a complaint from a woman I knew. It was not a compliment, she genuinely refused to hug me when we greeted each other.
Was she particularly skinny? A friend of mine with a similar problem explained that because she was very skinny (actual eating disorder), any slightly hard surface puts pressure on her bones (especially ribs) painfully even when doing it gently, and she would feel pain even by sitting on a chair without a pillow between her body and the wood surface. Muscle and fat help coushon and spread the pressure across a larger area so most people don’t experience this pain.
Toxic polyamory situation. A partner I lived with and was once very in love with fell away when she got interested in someone new. It was messy and shitty. I wound up dating someone new, who I had a great relationship with, and it was very physical. But I still lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with my ex.
My ex was a bit weird. She sort of viewed relationships as whatever things with no boundaries. Folks just do whatever they want in the moment and there’s no fidelity according to her. (Things I learned after I fell in love with her. Woof.) She also had intoned a few times that my new partner was a slut, which was sort of funny, given that my new partner had a pretty strong moral code.
My ex got a little less interested in her new guy, and tried to seduce me one night. And I rejected her. We had officially ended things, and I did not want to revisit that.
My ex sneered at me. “Fine. I hope you’re happy with [New Partner], and I hope [NP] is happy with you and your… magical penis!”She practically spat that out at me, and… yeah. It was as funny then as it is now.
And for the record, it’s not magical. I just like to put top hats and little capes on it sometimes.
I was in an open relationship once. It seemed fun on the surface, and it was definitely a very physical thing, but I realised that on an emotional level things just weren’t clicking: one moment she would refer to me as her boyfriend and her ex as the other, and then in another instant that would be flipped.
I had no clue where I stood with this girl, and planning for any kind of future was impossible. Once I exercised my right(?) to sleep with someone else, I was labeled as a fuckboi and she broke it off. Stressful as hell. Dodged a bullet.
Anyway, congrats on your magic dick.
There seems to be a fundamental equality problem there.
“Edomite!”
I was getting onto a bus, someone looked me over and spat out the word. It was clear from the tone that it was an insult, but it also sounded suspiciously bronze age, so I was very excited to find out what it meant.
Turns out it’s a biblical reference used by some black nationalist groups in the US to refer to white people as unclean or diseased. Edom was one of several late bronze age Canaanite kingdoms. At one point the torah describes them as slightly paler and dirty, hence the insult.
I told a cousin once I wasn’t going to be lectured on morality by a woman whose sole contribution to society was how much money she could spend at a liquor store. That whole post I wrote was honestly, according to my brother, some of the best criticism he’s read, quote, “You called her a lush without ever actually using the word, while also going up one side of her and down the other, saying everything the rest of us wanted to.” That cousin, to this day, will not interact with me at family gatherings.
I also once threw shitty advice I was given back into my boss’s face in my resignation text, to the point where he mentioned it felt “personal” when he called me to try to get me to stay. That was the resignation friends/family told me I should be a writer because, “You have a knack for telling people to go fuck themselves in a way where they thank you afterwards.”
My go to, though, when someone insults me is to usually respond, “I’ve been called worse by better.”
I’ve been called worse by better
I’m trying to work out which is worse:
- Mr Rogers calling me a Disappointment, or
- Donald Trump calling me a Shithead
I think you’re right and that being given a lesser insult by a nicer person cuts deeper.
Is that even a close call? If Trump called me a shithead I’d wear that as a badge of honor. If Mr Rogers called me a disappointment I would question my life choices.
My grandmother called me a braindead bastard once when i was like…9
Neither of those adjectives were applicaple to me considering i was in the gifted courses in school and her son is my father who had already married my mother when they had me
You’ll be thrilled to learn, then, that there’s only one adjective in that insult.
You might be surprised to learn that words often have different meanings and sometimes they can be nouns or adjectives
Perhaps a lesson in heeding your elders’ word then.
It’s hard to underestimate you
This is very powerfull because it has no slurs, polite, does jot compare you to something like a 8 years old insult and makes you think about for a moment. When the meaning sinks in you realize its power and it hurts.
Insults that compare you to something aren’t that powerful.
Insults that describe you, like this one, have a great impact.
Holy shit, this is crushingly depressing. And wasn’t even directed at me.
From a certain angle it could be a compliment. “I know how good you are, so I can’t undersell you”
Use that angle when someone calls you out on this insult.
Nah man, this is a straight punch to the soul lol
Kid called me “a pocket” once. That might not sound so bad, but he said it with a real mean sneer.
That kid probably fills his pockets with mud and stones, and the blood of his enemies.
