A Quick Thought on Insults

2025/11/03

As is the human experience, in the company of my friends I have witnessed many insults directed at various absent persons, most often those making fun of their appearances or their "odd" behaviours. However, as I have seen, these insults seem to do more damage to innocent bystanders than not. What do I mean by this?

This is what I mean: those insults that you are hurling do not exist in isolation. More likely than not, you're probably hurting one of those people standing around you. Even if you may not see it, if you, for example, insult a person's appearance, there's a good chance at least one of your friends is going to be hurt by it, for a variety of reasons! They might share that person's fashion sense, their appearance (in their head; you might not share that view that these two "radically different persons" look similar, but everybody has their own personal view of themselves), or for any other reason that You do not know as you casually remark that a person is "particularly ugly". If you are not careful, you might also be letting your friend know that you hate a particular characteristic of them.

One time, in school, a friend asked me to write some notes for them as they were to be absent that from a particularly important math lesson. In order to make my usually incomprehensible notes palatable, I went through the extra effort of colour-coding and writing in my best handwriting. Upon receiving it the next day, my friend began to study it. Another friend that also happened to be absent that previous day came up, and remarked, "Wow, what gay guy wrote those notes?" After telling him that it was I who wrote those notes, he apologised profusely.

That guy was a good friend who just happened to have a loose tongue at that one moment. I don't blame him at all for that comment. However, I'd like to imagine that it illustrates my point. He thought he was just insulting a stranger, but it was really me, standing right there.

Of course, insults are sometimes warranted, but in my opinion it is a much better choice to at least think for a moment before saying something barbaric, and to ideally reserve insults for those worst circumstances, whenever they may happen. There also exists insults that are less indiscriminate in their nature. I find it a handy rule of thumb to focus on a person's actions rather than those innate attributes, but there are exceptions to everything.