Vituperative monikers

[Xelor]

My tenure on DP has exposed me to a behavior I occasionally encountered when I was a kid: name-calling. I and my best friends weren't name callers, but, of course, we were kids; thus we had peers, a couple classmates, who occasionally were. Teachers were the butts of those kids' character assassination. Even so, by the time we were in college, nobody conjured inane or "cutesy" appellations to deride others. Even the kids who earlier did had, by then, grown out of it. That's not to say as young adults we didn't censure individuals whom we disdained. We just didn't do it puerilly.

How do such rebukes manifest themselves? Well, by being demonstrably true. Whereas "****head" (and other such simple vulgarisms), or "Pocahontas," "Rump," "The Orange One," "Xenophobic Sweet Potato," "Ocasio Lenin," "Little Mario," etc. may garner a chuckle, there's not much gravitas to it for it's but an insult. More importantly, simple insults are handily dismissed or disregarded as just childish epithets. On the other hand, when one calls the creepy old guy who's always pawing and pushing himself on young women a "petty lecher," he knows he is, just as well as does the speaker and everyone else. He can't "run" from that recrimination. When the girl who's just barely got "Cs" gets too big for her britches, calling her a "conglomerate of intellectual constipation," or even "nitwit," hits home, has gravitas, stings deep because she knows damn well that, relative to her peers, she's not the brightest light in the candelabra, and now she's been disabused of the fiction that her vacuity may have gone unnoticed. (Of course, knowing herself gormless -- though not to a Dunning-Krugeresque extent -- she'll abjure, at least prospectively, chiding others for their moments of mental midgetry.)

Castigation of that sort isn't insulting because it's true. Instead, it's chastening and discomfiting because there is, from that point on, only one course of recovery from it: change.


From time to time on DP, I notice folks (I don't know who, nor am I going looking to recall who) levy laconic lambasts. My question is this: why? And let me be clear, the focus of my inquiry is not what other DP members and readers think of one who calls others names; it's about what the name-caller thinks of him-/herself and the strength of one's own position. I'm asking because doing such a thing, particularly as an adult, says more about the labeler than about the labelled. I don't understand why one would "bend over backwards" and so readily to reveal oneself by resorting to a vituperative moniker.

 

[Winston]

My tenure on DP has exposed me to a behavior I occasionally encountered when I was a kid: name-calling. I and my best friends weren't name callers, but, of course, we were kids; thus we had peers, a couple classmates, who occasionally were. Teachers were the butts of those kids' character assassination. Even so, by the time we were in college, nobody conjured inane or "cutesy" appellations to deride others. Even the kids who earlier did had, by then, grown out of it. That's not to say as young adults we didn't censure individuals whom we disdained. We just didn't do it puerilly.

How do such rebukes manifest themselves? Well, by being demonstrably true. Whereas "****head" (and other such simple vulgarisms), or "Pocahontas," "Rump," "The Orange One," "Xenophobic Sweet Potato," "Ocasio Lenin," "Little Mario," etc. may garner a chuckle, there's not much gravitas to it for it's but an insult. More importantly, simple insults are handily dismissed or disregarded as just childish epithets. On the other hand, when one calls the creepy old guy who's always pawing and pushing himself on young women a "petty lecher," he knows he is, just as well as does the speaker and everyone else. He can't "run" from that recrimination. When the girl who's just barely got "Cs" gets too big for her britches, calling her a "conglomerate of intellectual constipation," or even "nitwit," hits home, has gravitas, stings deep because she knows damn well that, relative to her peers, she's not the brightest light in the candelabra, and now she's been disabused of the fiction that her vacuity may have gone unnoticed. (Of course, knowing herself gormless -- though not to a Dunning-Krugeresque extent -- she'll abjure, at least prospectively, chiding others for their moments of mental midgetry.)

Castigation of that sort isn't insulting because it's true. Instead, it's chastening and discomfiting because there is, from that point on, only one course of recovery from it: change.


From time to time on DP, I notice folks (I don't know who, nor am I going looking to recall who) levy laconic lambasts. My question is this: why? And let me be clear, the focus of my inquiry is not what other DP members and readers think of one who calls others names; it's about what the name-caller thinks of him-/herself and the strength of one's own position. I'm asking because doing such a thing, particularly as an adult, says more about the labeler than about the labelled. I don't understand why one would "bend over backwards" and so readily to reveal oneself by resorting to a vituperative moniker.

Some people get their jollies in life through ridicule, I can't say I'm innocent.

 

[Parrish]

Xelor, , I refer to the current resident of the WH as 45, the president or POTUS because I'm sick of hearing and seeing his name hundreds of times a day.

 

[justabubba]

My tenure on DP has exposed me to a behavior I occasionally encountered when I was a kid: name-calling. I and my best friends weren't name callers, but, of course, we were kids; thus we had peers, a couple classmates, who occasionally were. Teachers were the butts of those kids' character assassination. Even so, by the time we were in college, nobody conjured inane or "cutesy" appellations to deride others. Even the kids who earlier did had, by then, grown out of it. That's not to say as young adults we didn't censure individuals whom we disdained. We just didn't do it puerilly.

How do such rebukes manifest themselves? Well, by being demonstrably true. Whereas "****head" (and other such simple vulgarisms), or "Pocahontas," "Rump," "The Orange One," "Xenophobic Sweet Potato," "Ocasio Lenin," "Little Mario," etc. may garner a chuckle, there's not much gravitas to it for it's but an insult. More importantly, simple insults are handily dismissed or disregarded as just childish epithets. On the other hand, when one calls the creepy old guy who's always pawing and pushing himself on young women a "petty lecher," he knows he is, just as well as does the speaker and everyone else. He can't "run" from that recrimination. When the girl who's just barely got "Cs" gets too big for her britches, calling her a "conglomerate of intellectual constipation," or even "nitwit," hits home, has gravitas, stings deep because she knows damn well that, relative to her peers, she's not the brightest light in the candelabra, and now she's been disabused of the fiction that her vacuity may have gone unnoticed. (Of course, knowing herself gormless -- though not to a Dunning-Krugeresque extent -- she'll abjure, at least prospectively, chiding others for their moments of mental midgetry.)

Castigation of that sort isn't insulting because it's true. Instead, it's chastening and discomfiting because there is, from that point on, only one course of recovery from it: change.


From time to time on DP, I notice folks (I don't know who, nor am I going looking to recall who) levy laconic lambasts. My question is this: why? And let me be clear, the focus of my inquiry is not what other DP members and readers think of one who calls others names; it's about what the name-caller thinks of him-/herself and the strength of one's own position. I'm asking because doing such a thing, particularly as an adult, says more about the labeler than about the labelled. I don't understand why one would "bend over backwards" and so readily to reveal oneself by resorting to a vituperative moniker.

in a similar vein, i question why some DP members are so concerned about the posting styles of other forumites
maybe it is because they have so little of substance to contribute that they choose to express their tiny, stunted thoughts well - if we accept being verbose as a synonym of 'well'

 

[bluesmoke]

My tenure on DP has exposed me to a behavior I occasionally encountered when I was a kid: name-calling. I and my best friends weren't name callers, but, of course, we were kids; thus we had peers, a couple classmates, who occasionally were. Teachers were the butts of those kids' character assassination. Even so, by the time we were in college, nobody conjured inane or "cutesy" appellations to deride others. Even the kids who earlier did had, by then, grown out of it. That's not to say as young adults we didn't censure individuals whom we disdained. We just didn't do it puerilly.

How do such rebukes manifest themselves? Well, by being demonstrably true. Whereas "****head" (and other such simple vulgarisms), or "Pocahontas," "Rump," "The Orange One," "Xenophobic Sweet Potato," "Ocasio Lenin," "Little Mario," etc. may garner a chuckle, there's not much gravitas to it for it's but an insult. More importantly, simple insults are handily dismissed or disregarded as just childish epithets. On the other hand, when one calls the creepy old guy who's always pawing and pushing himself on young women a "petty lecher," he knows he is, just as well as does the speaker and everyone else. He can't "run" from that recrimination. When the girl who's just barely got "Cs" gets too big for her britches, calling her a "conglomerate of intellectual constipation," or even "nitwit," hits home, has gravitas, stings deep because she knows damn well that, relative to her peers, she's not the brightest light in the candelabra, and now she's been disabused of the fiction that her vacuity may have gone unnoticed. (Of course, knowing herself gormless -- though not to a Dunning-Krugeresque extent -- she'll abjure, at least prospectively, chiding others for their moments of mental midgetry.)

Castigation of that sort isn't insulting because it's true. Instead, it's chastening and discomfiting because there is, from that point on, only one course of recovery from it: change.


From time to time on DP, I notice folks (I don't know who, nor am I going looking to recall who) levy laconic lambasts. My question is this: why? And let me be clear, the focus of my inquiry is not what other DP members and readers think of one who calls others names; it's about what the name-caller thinks of him-/herself and the strength of one's own position. I'm asking because doing such a thing, particularly as an adult, says more about the labeler than about the labelled. I don't understand why one would "bend over backwards" and so readily to reveal oneself by resorting to a vituperative moniker.

“name-caller… says more about the labeler than about the labelled.”

I believe, and catch myself sometimes, that most everything we say about others, even when true, says more about us than others.

 

[bluesmoke]

My tenure on DP has exposed me to a behavior I occasionally encountered when I was a kid: name-calling. I and my best friends weren't name callers, but, of course, we were kids; thus we had peers, a couple classmates, who occasionally were. Teachers were the butts of those kids' character assassination. Even so, by the time we were in college, nobody conjured inane or "cutesy" appellations to deride others. Even the kids who earlier did had, by then, grown out of it. That's not to say as young adults we didn't censure individuals whom we disdained. We just didn't do it puerilly.

How do such rebukes manifest themselves? Well, by being demonstrably true. Whereas "****head" (and other such simple vulgarisms), or "Pocahontas," "Rump," "The Orange One," "Xenophobic Sweet Potato," "Ocasio Lenin," "Little Mario," etc. may garner a chuckle, there's not much gravitas to it for it's but an insult. More importantly, simple insults are handily dismissed or disregarded as just childish epithets. On the other hand, when one calls the creepy old guy who's always pawing and pushing himself on young women a "petty lecher," he knows he is, just as well as does the speaker and everyone else. He can't "run" from that recrimination. When the girl who's just barely got "Cs" gets too big for her britches, calling her a "conglomerate of intellectual constipation," or even "nitwit," hits home, has gravitas, stings deep because she knows damn well that, relative to her peers, she's not the brightest light in the candelabra, and now she's been disabused of the fiction that her vacuity may have gone unnoticed. (Of course, knowing herself gormless -- though not to a Dunning-Krugeresque extent -- she'll abjure, at least prospectively, chiding others for their moments of mental midgetry.)

Castigation of that sort isn't insulting because it's true. Instead, it's chastening and discomfiting because there is, from that point on, only one course of recovery from it: change.


From time to time on DP, I notice folks (I don't know who, nor am I going looking to recall who) levy laconic lambasts. My question is this: why? And let me be clear, the focus of my inquiry is not what other DP members and readers think of one who calls others names; it's about what the name-caller thinks of him-/herself and the strength of one's own position. I'm asking because doing such a thing, particularly as an adult, says more about the labeler than about the labelled. I don't understand why one would "bend over backwards" and so readily to reveal oneself by resorting to a vituperative moniker.

“name-caller… says more about the labeler than about the labelled.”

I believe, and catch myself sometimes, that most everything we say about others, even when true, says more about us than others.