Hello everybody,
This week we’re looking at banter.
Paid members can hear my audio narration at the end of the newsletter.
It’s the season of garden parties.
I stood in a circle of people talking about books. Given this was a summer fête for authors and publishers, talking about books is a strong opener.
My bottle of San Miguel was already warm. Even in the English summer’s mild heat, a few ice cubes in a plastic tub are rarely enough to keep beers cool for long. But I wasn’t here for the beer; I was here for the chat and a bit of old-school networking.
I was yapping away to a group of like-minded, lovely authors and having a great time. One was telling me about a five-day live-action role-playing holiday he’d just come back from. He had camped out in a tent for a week, dressed as an ice cleric, with 4,000 other denizens of Anvil.
“So, one day we had to have a battle. About 500 people were told to dress as orcs and—”
“Can I just barge in?”
A lady who we’d not met, didn’t know, and hadn’t seen coming cranked open our circle and wiggled her way in. She obviously thought it was better to ask forgiveness than permission, because barge in she did. We were torn away from the battlefield of Anvil and turned to face Mrs. Barge-In. Polite wan smiles, nondescript grunts, and a swig of warm beer.
“Right, let me guess,” she said, squinting and pointing at us in turn. “You’re all authors, right?”
Nods.
“Okay, you are definitely sci-fi,” she said to the LARP man. Nope. Not even close.
She went around the circle playing her guessing game until she came to me. She stood back, looked me up and down, and said:
“Well, clearly not fashion.”
Oof.
“No? Oh, well, it can’t be something cool.”
Oof.
“Philosophy?! Told you: not cool. Does anyone even buy philosophy books?”
Oof. Three for three.
Mrs. Barge-In was what my friends and I used to call a “dickhead.” Of course, being a British male born in the 1980s, I can take and give my fair share of loving abuse. We used to call it “banter” before Ricky Gervais and the zeitgeist turned the word into a cringeworthy cliché. Tomfoolery. Ribbing. Repartee. Banter will have to do.
So, the question that came to me on the long train ride home was: Why do I view Mrs. Barge-In as a dickhead and my closest friends as banter-merchants? Well, this week we look at the philosophy of banter.
Go well,
Jonny
The Banter Test
Every few months, my kids’ school will send us an email about “roasting.” Roasting, in case you’ve never seen stand-up roasts on Netflix or Comedy Central, is when you take banter to a high-intensity, unrelenting extreme. You pile in on one person with a flurry of slurry. Names, wrapped in insults, served with a garnish of mockery. In theory, it’s meant to be good-natured fun. In practice, especially in person and at schools, it’s bad-natured cruelty.
The school email will say — quite rightly — that we cannot create a culture of bullying and cruelty. I was a teacher for a very long time, and I’ve always found that for every one kid who can laugh the roast off or get over the harm pretty quickly, there are five who will internalize those words and carry them for a long time.
And yet, I call my friends names. “Alright, cock?” I’ll message my best man. I’ll make a joke if my brother stumbles on a step — “Did you have a nice trip?” Classic. I’ll pile on when my friends all start talking about the time James fell in the river while punting in Cambridge. But I will welcome the abuse as well. I’ll laugh out loud when Sam posts a particularly horrible photo of me in the group chat. My closest friends at work have made an emoji of the time I jumped out of my skin on camera. I chuckle every time I see it.
So am I a hypocrite?
A lot has been written about the difference between bullying and banter, and anyone who has worked in or around schools or HR will have read their fair share. Bullying is persistent. Bullying is about power. Bullying violates boundaries. True, of course, but I would like to argue that the defining characteristic of a bully vs. a banterous friend is all about love.
Yes, yes, roll your eyes and swipe away. Mini Philosophy has gone all soft. You came here for formal logic, syllogisms, and ethical dilemmas. Love? Sounds a bit hippy. Might as well be LARPing as a pixie priest with a heart-shaped amulet and a glitter wand.
But let’s make it less woolly. I think we can define love as being fundamentally other-regarding. Immanuel Kant once wrote that “the duty of love for one’s neighbor can be expressed as the duty to make others’ ends my own.” To love is to want the other person to succeed. It’s to want them to flourish, to be happy, and to win in whatever race they want to enter. And, most importantly, when you love someone, you do not use them as a tool or a means to your own ends.
The difference between banter and bullying — an arsehole and a close friend — is the reason for the jibe. Mrs. Barge-In was throwing out insults around a summer party because she wanted to seem witty and hilariously insouciant. “What a hoot!” we all say in her next-day imaginings. By calling me boring, philosophy unpopular, and my outfit ill-fitting, she was trying to farm attention and affection from everyone else. She put others down to make herself feel big.
Simone Weil once argued that when we intentionally set out to hurt other people, it’s a sign that we’re lacking something important in our lives. She thought that there was something vampiric about an insult or harm. It takes from the other person what we are missing.
Some people might think that all kinds of insults are a kind of vampirism. There is no such thing as a victimless jibe. I’m not sure. For me — and for many of my compatriots, certainly — a little back-and-forth is how we bond. It’s how we have fun. Sometimes, it’s even how we cope. Laughing at the world can make it easier to hold.
But in each case, I care for the person, and they care for me. Of course, this is true for friends and family. Often, you have to establish a degree of familiarity before you dare to make these jokes. As a good friend of mine put it, “I know from experience you need to know a person at least thirty minutes before she starts insulting you.” At least buy me a drink before you ridicule my entire raison d’être.
But this is also true for strangers. You don’t have to be Jesus of Nazareth to love strangers. A great many people I know and respect approach other people with a kind of Kantian other-regarding love. And Mrs. Barge-In wasn’t one of those people.
I think a world without banter or insults would be a sadder, darker, and less friendly place. In fact, if I’m right in what I’ve written here, it might even be the truest test of character and a relationship. If someone does mock you and it feels funny and light — they’re a good person, and it’s a good relationship. If someone else says that exact same thing and it feels sharp and cruel — that’s important information to have.
Banter is how we know who we really love.
IN A QUOTE
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