Given:
You lack the capacity to experience imposter syndrome.
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!"
“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.
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
Stealing this
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.
I was walking from the corner store when there was this guy freestyling. I was wearing a white shirt with red stripes all over it. He pointed at me and says where's Waldo, where's Waldo, he too bald to hide. So yeah.
I still have the shirt and I wear it as junk clothes. I always think Waldo when I put it on.
How old were you back then?
Grown ass man
I used to be over 350 lbs. with long, thin, greasy hair and a very pale complexion. My nose isn't long, but it's a bit pointy. Probably had dark eye sockets if I'm being honest about my health at the time. Anyway, my friend's brother stood in front of me when we were sitting around drunk, and said "No offense, but you look like the Penguin (from Batman) right now." Then went on to try to make that sound less offensive by suggesting it was just the lighting or the angle or something. But I knew what he was talking about. He was absolutely right. I never felt worse about myself.
Thankfully I lost all that weight over a decade ago. Shaved my head, got healthier, grew a beard, and had what my wife calls a tremendous glow-up. But I used to be the Penguin... So you should watch out.
Not me but: “I was showing the new system to anons father. Have more luck teaching a rock how to float.”
"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.
"Edomite"? Oh, like one of Yakub's creations?
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.
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.
That sucks, man.
I’ve been some stripe or other of non-monogamous for most of my adult life, and those types of relationships are often the ones that people experience first when they dip their toes in.
It’s honestly kind of maddening, because beyond making it seem like everyone who is poly/nm/whatever are all horny sociopaths (because almost everyone has something like that as a first story), it’s harmful. It’s physically and emotionally unsafe for the person who gets shafted. It treats people like they’re disposable and frankly, it’s selfish, insecure, and sometimes malevolent bullshit dressed up as a hippy-dippy love-fest.It’s really fucking hard to be ethically nonmonogamous, and I wish people would stop pretending they knew what they were doing. No one knows, and it’s the faked confidence that gets so many people in trouble. People just trust someone to take care of them, and then the other person fails because they’re human, and humans fail. And yet… I can’t imagine not being this way, for some dumb fucking reason.
"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.
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.
Please tell me to go fuck my self in the coolest way possible
Lol, sorry buddy, not something I can just... Do. There's gotta be context/history/etc, lol, they've gotta earn it.
Alright Blitz. What was your previous job?
What is your current job?
You shit on your cousin as a drunk and she still continues to arrive at the Family Estate.
What's your deal rich man?
Yeah I want the full story here, we need details
"Your opinion matters as much as anne franks drum set"
"Go lick a dead camel jackass!"
Shouted by a friend at a high school bully from a moving car. 😂
"You're not good for much, but you do a damn good vacuum."
-60yo lady to 20yo me, bookshop job.
I stole it from Babylon 5, but "assassin of joy" is one I've used a few times
Reminds me of a line from Community: "You're more like a fun vampire, instead of sucking blood you just suck."
Lots of good lines in that show.
Xathras have hard life. Probably have hard death. But at least that way, there’s symmetry.
Once the avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.
"You fucking Alaskan!"
I laughed uncontrollably for several minutes after receiving this compliment. Wrong continent, buddy.
As an Alaskan, I will say that that is a compliment of the highest order.
Now, if somebody had called you a Texan, that's basically a slur. An insult of the greatest magnitude.
Living in the same latitudes I could only take it as a compliment.
A kid once asked to pet my dog and I said no. Kid then proceeded to tell me my dog looked evil. I was enraged. She is a dog, she can't be evil, and she's absolutely terrified of strangers but especially kids.
Usually when I have to deny people petting this dog, I'll offer to let them pet the other dog who's normal, but fuck that kid, you don't get to pet any dog today.
Not said to me but someone I know, “you’re a lanky string of piss”.
"Call him... call him 'piss lips', but don't tell him I said that."
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.
A friend of mine who's a professional singer got told by his former conductor upon firing him, "well, see, if a violinist has a bad instrument he can just replace it. But in the case of a singer, well, it's just not so easy." Very roundabout and very crushing.
A random little kid at the park called me “gummy face”, and I definitely did not cry about later that night.
The human equivalent of drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth.
That or smooth brain.I have heard having autism being used as an insult
The strange part is that, even though i have autism and the person saying that insult knows that i have, i have never been called that, even avoiding to tell other people if asked
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
I was in gifted courses in school and I'm a fucking idiot. All it did was teach me rudimentary Spanish and make me a target later.
"You know enough to be dangerous"
It can be used as either an insult or a compliment.
"You look like Ramsey Bolton"
Oh I got one from when I was a kid: my sibling's friend once valled her an "invertebrate brain". I'm glad she didn't have any vertebrae in there!
I got called "Mr. Left Face" once.
I got told I sound like Dukie from "Adventures of the Gummi Bears".
"your such a horrible person, Mr Rogers wouldn't even want you to be his neighbor"
I like "mouth breather" from Stranger Things it has the right sound and pacing to make a good insult but doubles back as a wtf thinker moment. In an emo moment where the person wants to auto respond to everything in argument, it is funny to manipulatively force them to deny it, then call them out on how stupid they are for saying they do not breathe.
FYI "mouth breather" predates the setting of Stranger Things by decades. It's also not about manipulatively forcing them to deny it: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/508300/mouth-breathing-as-slang-for-stupidity
… then call them out on how stupid they are for saying they do not breathe.
Either you’re a mouth breather yourself or you’re a Fallout ghoul or something.
Also the amount of times I heard people called mouth breathers when I was in the Corps is off the charts.
That I'm a gay n word. Like, I am neither so what's up with that? He quickly biked off and I couldn't get him to clarify.
That might have been a reference to a very old Slashdot meme, ca. 2002. Sometimes those words were combined; there was a movie with the words + "from outer space"; and there was a telling group GNAA.
Now, is that what they were going for? Only you can answer that. It's a pretty deep cut into a pretty nerdy corner of the Internet.
"Look at you! You're scrawny, you're an alcoholic, if you didn't have such a big dick you wouldn't be worth nothing!"
"If you enter a room it feels like someone was leaving" - but in an ironic way.
Kill yourself sound so weird to me
