"Things You Should Never Say To" Posts: A How-To

[RoxMad]

I was going through some of these posts while I was bored and noticed how ridiculous most of the replies are. As I understood it, "Things You Should Never Say To" posts are intended for replies specific to the character. You wouldn't say this reply to that particular character because it would seriously upset them as a result of some instance in the movies. As I take it, these are supposed to be funny, witty posts. People seem to have taken them as a go ahead to bash on a character. Not that it matters; everyone is entitled to their own feelings and opinions, after all, and a piece of artwork (be it a movie, song, story, photo, or drawing) can evoke different emotions and associations in everyone. I found a few amusing comments in a post and decided to hop around and look at the others. It seems that for every .5 witty comments you get, you get about 15 irrelevant... sad (to be kind) ones. Random things like "You're ugly," "You're fat," "So and so is cheating on you," etc. run rampant throughout these posts. This doesn't bug me in the sense that I think "Hey, that's not nice!" I just wonder if people realize that if one were to walk up to a random person and say "You're ugly," etc., that person most likely would not fly into a fit of rage. They may go " Okay..." and that would be about it. True insults really cut at the mind because they have relevance to some occurrence or personality trait that the person is somewhat self-conscious about. Good insults are also often stated calmly and with no anger in the voice. The deliverer knows the magnitude of his/her words, and so doesn't need to use tone to try and drive in the stake. Being angry yourself lessens the effect of your insult since the person you are insulting can see that you are also agitated and, so, in an unstable state of mind.

So, there you have it. Just wanted to see if it bugged anyone else and to help those of you are are, ahem, insult challenged.

[WildSimba]

I fully agree with you. These insults should be more thought out, for the simple fact that it's not really a true insult if it's completely irrelivant... and good example with that one. True insults do come from the heart, and are usually not out of the blue things.

[RoxMad]

[quote="WildSimba"]True insults do come from the heart, and are usually not out of the blue things.[/quote]

That's hilarious, but it's kind of sad that it's true. I'm glad you agree. I was concerned that this might not go over so well with some people.