Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: This one originally aired September eleventh, two thousand eighteen, and
Speaker 1: it's an episode we did about teasing. Yeah, this one,
Speaker 1: this one was really fun, you know, getting into like
Speaker 1: what teasing means, both when you know children are doing
Speaker 1: it or if a parent is doing it like or
Speaker 1: adults doing it to each other. Like what is this
Speaker 1: thing we call teasing? And how does it factor into
Speaker 1: the complexities of human communication and our social structures. Let's
Speaker 1: jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey you, welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I've got a question
Speaker 1: for you. You ever find yourself in that situation where
Speaker 1: you're hanging out with people, it's all good fun, everybody's
Speaker 1: there's banter going on. One person is teasing another person
Speaker 1: over something kind of funny, some funny foible of their personality,
Speaker 1: and there's that moment, there's that awful little moment where
Speaker 1: there's kind of a pause after somebody says some some
Speaker 1: teasing joke and then you realize like, oh no, suddenly
Speaker 1: it has gotten serious. Oh yes, I mean it's especially
Speaker 1: if it it's a multi person group and and there's
Speaker 1: a bit of piling on occurring. They'll be there, I've
Speaker 1: seen this, this happened, where they'll they'll be a breaking
Speaker 1: point where the person has had enough and and and
Speaker 1: you realize, oh, no, lines have been crossed and now
Speaker 1: this person is gonna leave and we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: resolve this uh via emails later. Uh yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: as ter it's a terrible feeling because things have spiraled
Speaker 1: out of control. Something that was playful and um and
Speaker 1: just part of hanging out has now become divisive. Male
Speaker 1: the best place to work out tents, social disputes, Well
Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes it depends, and I mean, I guess it
Speaker 1: depends on what role one had in the in the breakdown.
Speaker 1: I've been fortunate enough to to not be like at
Speaker 1: the epicenter of the of the breakdown generally, so um
Speaker 1: email tends to suffice for me. You know, you never
Speaker 1: have to worry that when you type a smiley emoji
Speaker 1: that will look like a fake smile. When you actually
Speaker 1: smile at somebody, you always gotta worry like does this
Speaker 1: look real? Is my face moving? Right? So you just
Speaker 1: have to use the authentic smiling emoji, not the unauthentic one.
Speaker 1: You know, it's all on the micro expressions of the emoji.
Speaker 1: What's the inauthentic one that's like colon and clothes brackets.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm talking about the ones that actually, like
Speaker 1: the little yellow face with a smile, like you'll know
Speaker 1: it when you see it. Okay, but is everyone can
Speaker 1: realize that at this point we're talking about teasing today
Speaker 1: on the show, and teasing is weird territory to try
Speaker 1: and figure out deceptively, so really um for many of
Speaker 1: us looking back on our child hoods, it's it makes
Speaker 1: up some of our worst memories of social interaction. And
Speaker 1: as as a parent, I have a lot of apprehension
Speaker 1: about it, you know, regarding my own child, the inevitable
Speaker 1: struggles that he's gonna gonna face. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: there's this weird cult of the tease that is often
Speaker 1: difficult to understand. We see teasing in our media and
Speaker 1: it's sometimes presented as in a fun comical light. We
Speaker 1: also see adults for whom teasing is a standard part
Speaker 1: of their interactions, not fighting with each other, but but
Speaker 1: just picking in various ways that it's it seems like
Speaker 1: they're just terms of endearments, joking, benign criticism. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it and uh, it's often a case where I look
Speaker 1: at it and I realized, well, this is clearly part
Speaker 1: of their social dynamic. It wouldn't necessarily work in my
Speaker 1: social dynamic, but I guess it's okay. Uh. We see
Speaker 1: it factor into courtship as well, which also has a
Speaker 1: way of of seeming weird and sour at times of
Speaker 1: an outside perspective. Well, I mean, there's there's two very
Speaker 1: different ways it can take place. There's a kind you
Speaker 1: can see, a kind of friendly sweet teasing that takes
Speaker 1: place between people in the courtship relationship. And then there's
Speaker 1: like the pickup artist version of it, where somebody's clearly
Speaker 1: like making a power play, right. And then likewise, we
Speaker 1: also see this this space, this sort of ambiguous space
Speaker 1: where playful teasing gives over to what is clearly something
Speaker 1: based in hate and abuse name calling, uh, that occurs
Speaker 1: among children and even among adults. Obviously, even at the
Speaker 1: highest levels of government, you see name calling used in
Speaker 1: a in a hurtful fashion. So if you start, if
Speaker 1: you start picking out, and I imagine a lot of
Speaker 1: your doing this as well, thinking of all the varying
Speaker 1: levels of teasing that are going on in your immediate
Speaker 1: environment and um in politics and the media, etcetera. On
Speaker 1: the street as you're driving your car and listen to
Speaker 1: this podcast. You know, it's enough to make you wonder
Speaker 1: if if we're just nothing more than just cruel apes
Speaker 1: jockeying for social position. Uh, And it's any wonder we
Speaker 1: managed to emerge from these social interactions with self esteem
Speaker 1: and respect for our fellow humans. But part of the
Speaker 1: issue here is that while all forms of teasing share
Speaker 1: common features, there are at least three distinctive forms of
Speaker 1: teasing that are often signal, that are often singled out
Speaker 1: and definitely deserve mention here. Okay, well what would those
Speaker 1: forms be? All right? Well, the first is pretty obvious,
Speaker 1: and that is that is the hurtful teasing. And I
Speaker 1: think it's one of those things where we all we
Speaker 1: all know it when we see it right or hear it.
Speaker 1: This is obviously the domain of bullying and harassment, and
Speaker 1: yet at the same time it's the sort of teasing
Speaker 1: you might see in a celebrity roast, or some of
Speaker 1: you are more viciously charged humor or political humor. I
Speaker 1: guess you could also say it's maybe the domain of
Speaker 1: the jesture, the fool and the clown. Uh and important.
Speaker 1: These are important roles throughout human history. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I might argue that the fool in the
Speaker 1: Shakespearean sense requires its own category here, because the fool
Speaker 1: has a lot of power and freedom, and that's important
Speaker 1: power and freedom. Like they're the only member of the
Speaker 1: lower classes who can point out the flaws of the
Speaker 1: monarchs and the upper classes and get away with it.
Speaker 1: There's something about the ridiculousness of the fool that allows
Speaker 1: a critique of power that might result in a beheading
Speaker 1: if you made the same critique in a serious tone.
Speaker 1: And likewise, a king who beheads a jester every week
Speaker 1: is a terrible king. They look weak. Yeah, it makes
Speaker 1: the king look foolish if the king overreacts to a
Speaker 1: to a comical critique, right, I think you're pointing Joffrey
Speaker 1: from Game of Thrones, is this type of ruler where
Speaker 1: you realize, oh, he's terrible, he's totally incompetent. Look how
Speaker 1: thin skinny is against uh, the humorous criticism of the
Speaker 1: court fool. Well, it codes so easily for us. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the clearest signs of a toxic personality is
Speaker 1: somebody who's unable to accept criticism and even benign criticism,
Speaker 1: or to be the butt of a joke, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody who cannot tolerate that, right, especially because of the
Speaker 1: positive role that teasing plays in our culture. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so much teasing that is not hurtful, hateful. I
Speaker 1: mean it is a constant feature of conversation between friends,
Speaker 1: between couples, between family members, between educators and the people
Speaker 1: they educate. Teasing, you know, there's like a sweet, benign
Speaker 1: form of teasing that's absolutely essential to these relationships. You know.
Speaker 1: I do have to add one more thing about the
Speaker 1: gesture first, though, Okay, And there is there is this
Speaker 1: this curious aspect of the dynamic you see with kind
Speaker 1: of a classic gesture situation, but also in modern political humor,
Speaker 1: there are two extremes that are both equally well maybe
Speaker 1: not equally, but they're both cringe worthy, certainly when the king,
Speaker 1: the rule, or the politician, whoever the celebrity is too
Speaker 1: thin skin to let humorous bashing go where they have
Speaker 1: to call out, say, you know an episode of Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live, right, if you made a joke about me,
Speaker 1: how dare you? Right? Yeah, that is is cringeworthy and awful.
Speaker 1: But on the same hand, and this is something that
Speaker 1: I believe It was pointed out on an episode of
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist history podcast, there's also this danger in
Speaker 1: what happens when the king says, yeah, this gesture guys great,
Speaker 1: I'm going to hang out with him and do a
Speaker 1: skit with him, or yeah, that's Saturday Night Life skit
Speaker 1: is funny. I'm gonna appear on that Saturday Night Life
Speaker 1: skit with the person doing an impression of me. There
Speaker 1: can be uh, too much protection of one's dignity is
Speaker 1: a bad sign, but too much surrender of one's dignity
Speaker 1: also looks kind of bad. Like, you gotta find the
Speaker 1: middle ground. You want the ruler that that ultimately has
Speaker 1: very little to do with the gesture and doesn't politely
Speaker 1: laughs perhaps but leaves it at that. I know exactly
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, Like when presidential candidates go on SNL,
Speaker 1: that's always like, I don't know, it's just always terrible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But one of the points that Malcolm Gladwell made in
Speaker 1: his shows that it takes the punch out of the
Speaker 1: political humor, like you managed in a way, it's like
Speaker 1: it's a genius move I guess for the politician, because
Speaker 1: you have you have killed the humorous skit. You have
Speaker 1: you have killed the power of the humor in a
Speaker 1: way that you could never do by attacking it. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it doesn't make you look great, but it
Speaker 1: also is a type of defense mechanism. It undercuts any
Speaker 1: truly biting criticism that's hidden there in the in the
Speaker 1: comedy if you go on stage with the comedian. Yes,
Speaker 1: but before we were talking about the Jester, we were
Speaker 1: we were about to get into playful teasing, you know,
Speaker 1: the sweet form of teasing, right, And obviously there's a
Speaker 1: line between hurtful and and u and playful teasing. Good
Speaker 1: luck finding, especially with people you're maybe not that familiar with.
Speaker 1: But yeah, especially in close relationships, you tend to see
Speaker 1: these you know, you see in jokes and you see
Speaker 1: established safe zones for playful teasing. Uh. For instance, if
Speaker 1: my wife teases me about some nerdy hobby of mine, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's really more of a form, more of a
Speaker 1: term of endearment. Or if she teases me about liking
Speaker 1: robot music, like like really robotic sounding electronic music, and
Speaker 1: uh and teasing me about how awful it sounds. Uh,
Speaker 1: like like this is that this feels good when we're
Speaker 1: doing it. I don't feel hurt or defensive about you know,
Speaker 1: my my love of dungeons and dragons, or or or
Speaker 1: my miniatures painting miniatures, or yeah, or my affinity for
Speaker 1: the music of autech or that sort of thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think almost all good romantic relationships include an element
Speaker 1: of teasing. I don't you know. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be overly general. So maybe some people people make it
Speaker 1: work in all kinds of ways, but I rarely see
Speaker 1: what seems like a happy couple that doesn't tease one another, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like you do. And this is
Speaker 1: something we're gonna return to throughout this episode. This idea
Speaker 1: that that teasing it is is an opportunity for bond
Speaker 1: for me and the establishment and the maintaining of bonds.
Speaker 1: And but obviously you need a safe place for the
Speaker 1: teasing just you know that all of us, I think
Speaker 1: we're going to have unless we are some sort of
Speaker 1: like inhuman politician type, you know, we're going to have
Speaker 1: those areas that we are cool being teased about in
Speaker 1: areas that we're less comfortable being teased about. You know,
Speaker 1: thinking about several of the areas that that teasing functions
Speaker 1: in our our social interactions, one of which is sort
Speaker 1: of reminding people of hierarchies or establishing hierarchies. That it
Speaker 1: does something of enforcing a pecking order. Number two is
Speaker 1: maybe like establishing a criticism of somebody's behavior, and number
Speaker 1: three is allowing bonding. Put these three things together, and
Speaker 1: it seems like a key place where teasing should come
Speaker 1: into play is education, right, because that's a place where
Speaker 1: you need a hierarchy between teacher and student. You want
Speaker 1: to teach lessons and you also want to have a
Speaker 1: good relationship. That's right. So this brings us to this
Speaker 1: third area of teasing, educative teasing, and this pops up
Speaker 1: in areas that you wouldn't quite expect it as as
Speaker 1: we'll discuss a little later. One example is that is
Speaker 1: that of a frat boys giving each other's nicknames based on,
Speaker 1: you know, various bone headed things they've done. Uh and
Speaker 1: and this can be viewed as a way of of educating,
Speaker 1: of laying down various um moral rules or or social expectations.
Speaker 1: Right d a teasing, you might get nicknamed like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, toilet head because you fell asleep with your
Speaker 1: head in the toilet, right, And the idea is, don't
Speaker 1: do that, don't drink so much that you sleep in
Speaker 1: the toilet. But then again, one of the things I
Speaker 1: noticed about that kind of teasing is that toilet head
Speaker 1: might originally be applied as a sort of like moral injunction,
Speaker 1: but the toilet head make may well come to identify
Speaker 1: with the nickname and say, that's right, that's who I am.
Speaker 1: I am toilet head forevermore, and I will embrace it. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: some anthropology just point to specific traditions of educated teasing
Speaker 1: between parents and children in various Indigenous American um cultures,
Speaker 1: and the idea here is that it's a form of
Speaker 1: teasing that can work better to impart knowledge of social
Speaker 1: rules and emotionally instilled ideas. However, we We didn't really
Speaker 1: focus on any of that for this research, but I
Speaker 1: just want to let everyone know that that that is
Speaker 1: an area of study now. As far as these three
Speaker 1: terms for types of teasing go, I I feel like
Speaker 1: there's some difficulty in how we use terms here because
Speaker 1: I admit that I would typically reserve the word teasing
Speaker 1: for the more benign or playful forms, like what we
Speaker 1: were calling hurtful teasing, the kind that's actually cruel and
Speaker 1: mean spirited. I would not usually call teasing. I'd probably
Speaker 1: call it bullying or harassment or something. Um though. It's
Speaker 1: what What this highlights is that the line between playful
Speaker 1: teasing and hurtful bullying is not always clear. It's not
Speaker 1: always clear to the person doing it, It's always not
Speaker 1: always clear to the person receiving it. What sometimes ment
Speaker 1: is benign or playful by the teaser can feel like
Speaker 1: bullying to the tea Z and sometimes more benign or
Speaker 1: playful forms of teasing. I bet you've been there for this.
Speaker 1: I think we sort of talked about it at the beginning.
Speaker 1: It starts off as a friendly and playful session of
Speaker 1: ribbing that somehow catches this terrible momentum. I don't know
Speaker 1: what causes it, but that momentum it edges into harder
Speaker 1: and meaner stuff as it escalates, and it's this enormously
Speaker 1: painful and uncomfortable thing to witness. And looking back, I
Speaker 1: can remember instances of this in my life where I
Speaker 1: watch something like this happened to somebody else, and in retrospect,
Speaker 1: like I wish I'd found a way to step in
Speaker 1: in the moment and stop it. But it's so much
Speaker 1: easier to to to feel that kind of policing authority
Speaker 1: in retrospect in the moment, to step in like that
Speaker 1: into clear teasing to have gone too far requires you
Speaker 1: to take this major risk. It feels like you're violating
Speaker 1: a taboo. You're making it weird. You know you know
Speaker 1: about making it weird right um, And in the moment
Speaker 1: you're never really sure if you've like misread some kind
Speaker 1: of unspoken set of cues. Maybe everything's actually okay, and
Speaker 1: you're the one who's making people feel bad by getting
Speaker 1: serious from out of nowhere. It can be a really
Speaker 1: difficult and complicated UH dance to to navigate. All right,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna we're gonna really get
Speaker 1: into the question of teasing and what purpose it truly serves. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So one of the big names that comes
Speaker 1: up in teasing research is that of psychiatry and psychology
Speaker 1: researcher Dr Keltner, who has written on this, researched on this,
Speaker 1: and one of the big pieces that is often circulated
Speaker 1: is a two thousand and eight New York Times piece
Speaker 1: titled in Defense of Teasing. Uh, And he also directs
Speaker 1: the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab, So this is like right
Speaker 1: in his uh, his area of focus. Yeah. Kiltner makes
Speaker 1: an interesting point, which is that a lot of our
Speaker 1: social conventions in the modern age, I think, are centered
Speaker 1: around trying to make social interactions more safe, which in
Speaker 1: a way is a good thing. Right. We we all
Speaker 1: know how destructive and terrible bullying can be. We've all
Speaker 1: seen the kind of teasing in a relationship and you know, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody's somebody's got a new boyfriend and he's teasing her,
Speaker 1: but he's like going a little hard. It doesn't quite
Speaker 1: seem so sweet. And when you think about stuff like that,
Speaker 1: it can be very easy to start to start to
Speaker 1: view teasing is this really negative thing. It's this this cruel,
Speaker 1: malicious force that permeates our culture and and make you
Speaker 1: want to do things to eliminate it. Right, Well, how
Speaker 1: can we get people to not act like this? But
Speaker 1: I feel like teasing is a situation where you really
Speaker 1: don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Speaker 1: Well you don't, but you you want to protect the bank.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. I mean throughout this episode, I kept
Speaker 1: coming I keep coming back to UM, my own son,
Speaker 1: and I just want to protect him so much from
Speaker 1: these things. At the same time, I realized I can't
Speaker 1: protect him there from everything. I can't just chadow him
Speaker 1: through school and you know, feed him excellent, you know comebacks. Uh,
Speaker 1: anytime anybody is is trying to tease him, he's going
Speaker 1: to be teased. It's it's inevitable, and he it's probably
Speaker 1: inevitable to that to engage in teasing Um. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it is hard for me to just
Speaker 1: really get behind everything Kelton is saying about just the
Speaker 1: importance of teasing, Like I still my impulse to protect
Speaker 1: is too strong. Well, I mean, I think the point
Speaker 1: he would be making is the good kind of teasing
Speaker 1: is not actually hurtful. It's not actually something that needs
Speaker 1: to be protected. And he's not advocating that that bullying
Speaker 1: should be permitted. It's very clear about that. But but
Speaker 1: but he does, let's make this strong, strong case that
Speaker 1: that teasing is an essential part of our social interactions.
Speaker 1: And in fact, he points out that the teasing is
Speaker 1: pervasive in the animal world. Right now, we generally think
Speaker 1: of teasing as uh, well, you know, as a verbal phenomenon, right,
Speaker 1: and I guess you do have to think of of
Speaker 1: human teasing as as a lot of things with humans
Speaker 1: happens to be you think of it as a linguistic
Speaker 1: and cultural complication of an impulse that may also be
Speaker 1: found within uh languageless animals. And so, for instance, Keltner says, quote,
Speaker 1: the centrality of teasing in our social evolution is suggested
Speaker 1: by just how pervasive teasing is in the animal world.
Speaker 1: Younger monkeys pull the tales of older monkeys. African hunting
Speaker 1: dogs jump all over one another, much like pad slapping
Speaker 1: joking football players moments before kickoff. In every corner of
Speaker 1: the world, human adults play peekaboo games to stir a
Speaker 1: sulking child. Children as early as age one and mimic
Speaker 1: nearby adults and teenagers prod one another to gauge romantic interest.
Speaker 1: In rejecting teasing, we may be losing something vital and
Speaker 1: necessary to our identity as the most playful of species.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I'm pretty on board with his
Speaker 1: message there. It's the the difficulty comes in our uncertainty
Speaker 1: about recognizing the line between benign teasing and hurtful teasing.
Speaker 1: And and I think it's because there's that ambiguity, because
Speaker 1: there's always the danger that you you're not necessarily going
Speaker 1: to be able to recognize immediately the difference between one
Speaker 1: or the other. It's exactly the same problem I was
Speaker 1: mentioning a minute ago, where you like, think back on
Speaker 1: a time you saw somebody getting teased and went over
Speaker 1: the line, but you didn't stop it. Um, it's because
Speaker 1: of that ambiguity, like you didn't know if you should
Speaker 1: step in or not. And that ambiguity makes us uncomfortable
Speaker 1: because we know teasing this over the line is wrong,
Speaker 1: but you can't always see the line in the moment.
Speaker 1: It would be interesting to hear from from Edrick writers
Speaker 1: out there who are listening to the show on this
Speaker 1: because it does make one think that the message should
Speaker 1: not be hey, kids don't tease one another. It should
Speaker 1: maybe be more here areas where it is not cool
Speaker 1: to tease. You like, it's not cool to tease someone
Speaker 1: about their physical appearance or the characters or stereotypes, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: but various behavioral teasing. I don't know how, I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you end up teaching such nuance? Maybe you
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, you can't. It has to generate
Speaker 1: via the social interactions. Here's something I would say, Um, well,
Speaker 1: with a with a big exception for we can talk
Speaker 1: about the jester in a second. With a big exception
Speaker 1: for the jester. Maybe one thing is that you shouldn't
Speaker 1: tease somebody unless you like them and they know you
Speaker 1: like them. That's true because otherwise, if the if the
Speaker 1: existing social dynamic is is anything different than you are
Speaker 1: perhaps not engaging in pure teasing. No, I mean, then
Speaker 1: it becomes bullying. When you tease somebody you don't even
Speaker 1: like her respect obviously you're you're going to be tempted
Speaker 1: to edge over into some form of cruelty. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of cruelty, we have to think a kaind of of kings,
Speaker 1: and of course the jester. Keltner points out that that
Speaker 1: in the tradition of the court jester, you could say
Speaker 1: teasing is quote, a playful, provocative mode of commentary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I mean, as Touchstone said and
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's as you like it quote, the fool don't think
Speaker 1: he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to
Speaker 1: be a fool. You know, that's hundreds of years before
Speaker 1: all the modern research on illusory confidence and dunning Krueger
Speaker 1: and all that. I think this reveals that a key
Speaker 1: social good of even harder edge teasing is that when
Speaker 1: it's properly applied, it can be kind of a leveling tool,
Speaker 1: Like it knocks down the wicker men of big egos
Speaker 1: and and pops the balloons of unearned self confidence that
Speaker 1: we see so often in our highest levels of leadership.
Speaker 1: But of course, just as often it's applied the other way,
Speaker 1: and in a very bad, destructive way. It gets applied
Speaker 1: from the top down by the inflated ego against the
Speaker 1: less empowered. I guess it's sort of like a hierarchy
Speaker 1: enforcement mechanism. But the bottom up form, the jester driven form.
Speaker 1: I think that's a that leveling instinct is a useful
Speaker 1: social good and a form of freedom. Teasing is an
Speaker 1: arena that allows us to experiment with language, with personality
Speaker 1: and relationships. It's sort of an open ended game that
Speaker 1: we can use to manage relationships and learn about each other. Now,
Speaker 1: Calton and Keltner also turns to the work of linguistic
Speaker 1: anthropologist Penelope Brown and cognitive anthropologist Stephen Levinson, who I
Speaker 1: believe we've we've touched on both of their work before
Speaker 1: on the podcast, but their work that he's referencing here
Speaker 1: is more specifically aligned with the study of politeness. But
Speaker 1: of interest here is the their focus on two forms
Speaker 1: of communication, like basically breaking down communication into two forms.
Speaker 1: So we're talking mostly about linguistic communication here, but on
Speaker 1: the on record communication and off record communication. Okay, so
Speaker 1: tell me the difference. Okay. So on record communication is
Speaker 1: just literal direct speech. You take it literally. It's meant
Speaker 1: meant to be taken literally. It's clear, and it's direct.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of speech you would want from
Speaker 1: your doctor or your lawyer or whatever. Right if you
Speaker 1: if someone were to come up to you on the
Speaker 1: street and uh and say, hey, you've got something on
Speaker 1: your face? Um, Like that's clear, Like, hey, I think
Speaker 1: there's some food on your face. You need you might
Speaker 1: want to get that off Like they're they're not playing around.
Speaker 1: They're just letting you know. It might be socially awkward,
Speaker 1: but they are being direct in their communication. They're they're
Speaker 1: not they're not joking, they're not being vague about it.
Speaker 1: Off the record is veiled meeting metaphor alternative meaning. So
Speaker 1: this is if someone were to come up on your
Speaker 1: street and be like, hey, um, you got a little
Speaker 1: something right there. Hey, if you you know, if they
Speaker 1: were kind of kind of beat around the bush a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, you might want to take a
Speaker 1: look in a mirror. Bro right, Yeah, that kind of
Speaker 1: thing where it can it's off the record, and it
Speaker 1: can be in a way that is meant to, uh
Speaker 1: to make the the the message softer, or it can
Speaker 1: go the reverse, right, it can it can make it harder.
Speaker 1: You could be straight up mocking somebody on the street
Speaker 1: for the little bit of lunch they still have, you know,
Speaker 1: caught in their beard. Yeah, it seems the key to
Speaker 1: the off record communication is is some form of ambiguity.
Speaker 1: And one reason is that off record communication is sometimes risky, right,
Speaker 1: people want deniability if their message is not well received.
Speaker 1: Off record communication is the kind of communication where you
Speaker 1: can say I was just kidding. On record communication, you
Speaker 1: cannot plausibly say I was just kidding. And you've all
Speaker 1: been there when somebody delivered on record communication and then
Speaker 1: tried to I was just kidding afterwards. It doesn't work there. No,
Speaker 1: there's generally no room for for retreat, except to like
Speaker 1: physically retreat. So the point here is that in modern
Speaker 1: human interactions, you don't always want to be direct on record.
Speaker 1: Your communication doesn't always work for the same reasons that
Speaker 1: it's not practical to always be truthful. White lies are
Speaker 1: sometimes required or lies of emission. Uh, And so it's
Speaker 1: it's sometimes necessary to communicate via off record communication to
Speaker 1: say something and signal some other meaning, as annoying as
Speaker 1: it can be at times. Obviously, we can all think
Speaker 1: too situations where someone is not direct with us and
Speaker 1: we wish they were direct. Oh yeah, I mean pretty
Speaker 1: much everything we're talking about today that has a possible
Speaker 1: good social good, you know, useful social role also can
Speaker 1: be used for evil. I mean, every shifty, dishonest guy
Speaker 1: you know uses a lot of off record communication and
Speaker 1: always wants to be able to kind of weasel around
Speaker 1: about what he said or what he meant, And so
Speaker 1: Kellner argues that teasing is quote just such an act
Speaker 1: of off record communication. Provocative commentary is shrouded in linguistic
Speaker 1: acts called off record markers that suggests that commentary should
Speaker 1: not be taken literally. So there's some sort of uh,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of a wink there, right, But I
Speaker 1: don't think this should cause us to sort uh communication
Speaker 1: into like on record which is important, and off record
Speaker 1: which is not important. Yeah, I mean, to your point,
Speaker 1: it may be very important. It just might be socially delicate,
Speaker 1: or you don't want to overstep the boundaries of your
Speaker 1: established relationship with someone, and it may be essential to
Speaker 1: to to to to to provide that wink to let
Speaker 1: them know via you know, some sort of hand signal
Speaker 1: or some alteration of your voice, or even the use
Speaker 1: of rhyme or the mimicking of of of of some
Speaker 1: other individual. It could be key to letting them know
Speaker 1: I'm I'm using off record communication here, even even though
Speaker 1: what I'm about to tell you is important. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on record communication and off record communication. I would
Speaker 1: say our respectively analogous to work and play, and play
Speaker 1: is very important. Play is where we learn how to work. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it allows us to send messages in a in a
Speaker 1: masked way or at least a kind of like a
Speaker 1: lubricated way. Socially. Uh, this this may be a terrible example,
Speaker 1: but but one that I have observed before. If you've
Speaker 1: ever seen say an individual come out of a public
Speaker 1: restroom and uh, and they say, who do not go
Speaker 1: in there, or give you some sort of like joking warning,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. Made. It tends it are it
Speaker 1: Definitely I would say definitely works better than if they
Speaker 1: were to look you square in the eyes and say
Speaker 1: do not go in there. Though that's sort of like
Speaker 1: five minutes, you know, Like then that's self deprecating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's also it's like awkward for both parties. But
Speaker 1: if but if there's a joke there, like then it's
Speaker 1: kind of like I'm kind of making fun of myself
Speaker 1: and I'm also kind of making fun of fun of you.
Speaker 1: But I'm also providing definite information that you should be
Speaker 1: aware of regarding the the the aromatic state of this bathroom.
Speaker 1: You're about to enter well to to incorporate teasing. I
Speaker 1: can see how in that situation, teasing if somebody else
Speaker 1: could actually be used to diffuse tension and make them
Speaker 1: feel less bad. So like say you have to go
Speaker 1: into a bathroom after somebody else and it smells bad,
Speaker 1: and the other person knows that they've been in there,
Speaker 1: and you know they're probably feeling embarrassed. You might be
Speaker 1: able to say something that's like a tease of them
Speaker 1: that indicates that they shouldn't actually be You know, you
Speaker 1: can both laugh about it, which actually feels better than
Speaker 1: just leaving it, leaving it unsaid and the person feeling
Speaker 1: awkward and embarrassed. Though I'm not necessarily advocating making fun
Speaker 1: of people's body smells, You've got to judge the situation
Speaker 1: case by case, Keltner says. Quote in teasing, we become actors,
Speaker 1: taking on playful identities to manage the inevitable conflicts of
Speaker 1: living in social groups, which is as kind of crude
Speaker 1: as this example we just laid out, is it. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is an example of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: I mean that is the inevitable conflict of living in
Speaker 1: social groups, of going to restaurants and sharing restaurants, and
Speaker 1: they also may allow us Keltner argues to engage in
Speaker 1: the sort of social contest that may prove physical and
Speaker 1: deadly in other species and ded we see plenty of
Speaker 1: non human species that have evolved drama dramatized status contests
Speaker 1: that don't involve combat. You know, uh, some sort of
Speaker 1: like feathery display or or even a display of something
Speaker 1: that might otherwise be used for for combat. But some mean,
Speaker 1: some means of of engaging in social contest that doesn't
Speaker 1: actually require two individuals to to fight until one backs off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is the kind I would
Speaker 1: call teasing. I guess there might be elements you call
Speaker 1: this gets up against when exactly I would actually use
Speaker 1: the word again, But it's clearly Yeah, it's clearly part
Speaker 1: of human culture that we use words and like insults
Speaker 1: and humor and stuff like that to manage hierarchy navigation.
Speaker 1: You're trying to take down the person above you, and
Speaker 1: you can do it with a witty comment. But stuff
Speaker 1: like that isn't always isn't always in this playful, sweet
Speaker 1: realm of teasing. I mean that kind of stuff can
Speaker 1: actually you pretty biting, right. But but the argument here
Speaker 1: is that even in playful teasing, there is this potential
Speaker 1: for uh for establishment of a pecking order. And that's
Speaker 1: just another way that teasing and requires us to walk
Speaker 1: a fine line right enhancing social connection while also establishing
Speaker 1: a pecking order. Like it's sounds it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that when you when you boil it down, um,
Speaker 1: like imagine like setting out to do that consciously, like
Speaker 1: all right, I've gotta I need to walk into the
Speaker 1: office today. I needed I need to tear everybody down
Speaker 1: just the appropriate amount so that we all feel a
Speaker 1: little closer, but also that it's so that everybody thinks
Speaker 1: that I'm superior or that I have the appropriate place
Speaker 1: in the social dynamics of the office. You're describing management
Speaker 1: strategy probably probably so no, no, no, that's not fair.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I unfortunately, I think there are
Speaker 1: some people who are that deliberate and that calculating about
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff they say in a workplace. They're
Speaker 1: not just talking to you about whatever they're thinking abou out.
Speaker 1: They're making a comment to you in front of an
Speaker 1: audience based on how it will benefit them. Now, we
Speaker 1: mentioned frat frat brothers. Earlier, Keltner observed it among frat brothers.
Speaker 1: In one study, teasing nicknames seemed to be quote more
Speaker 1: morality plays based on misdeeds that they were encouraged to
Speaker 1: move beyond. And among teens, teasing is a vital part
Speaker 1: of a flirtation, a way of testing out others and
Speaker 1: looking for genuine signs of interest. Yeah, and as I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, I mean I feel like this can easily
Speaker 1: go two ways. There is a very sweet kind of
Speaker 1: teasing that takes that takes place in courtship, and then
Speaker 1: there's definitely a gross form of it that's some kind
Speaker 1: of social leverage trick, right, And then there's also something
Speaker 1: problematic too about like if you established this rule that like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're teasing you because they like you, like, then that
Speaker 1: that and that may be the case, I mean that
Speaker 1: it often is the case. It clearly is. But if
Speaker 1: you but then it goes too far. If you established it,
Speaker 1: then is this excuse for for problem amatic teasing, right,
Speaker 1: like oh, that's just boys being boys or girls being girls?
Speaker 1: Then you know, is it or are we using that
Speaker 1: to cover up something that should be um policed in
Speaker 1: some fashion? Well, often we are. This is yet another
Speaker 1: case where it would be great if we could always
Speaker 1: clearly see what the line is. And people's discomfort comes
Speaker 1: in because sometimes it's not clear where the line is. Now.
Speaker 1: On the subject of of teasing among committed partners, uh,
Speaker 1: he points out that there is a language to it,
Speaker 1: you know, they're all these little in jokes, and he
Speaker 1: points to two studies that have shown that married couples
Speaker 1: with a rich vocabulary of you know, various teasing nicknames
Speaker 1: and ends of formulate insults, they tend to be happier
Speaker 1: and more satisfied. And that's the sweet kind. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: he also adds that it may help diffuse arguments over
Speaker 1: really explosive issues, and that the terminology of the teasing
Speaker 1: as well as often drawn from the same metaphors we
Speaker 1: use for for love. They have to do, for instance,
Speaker 1: with with food or small animals, right, like referring to
Speaker 1: somebody as like a dum playing or a muffin or
Speaker 1: something like that, or a or a bunny. Yes, though
Speaker 1: apparently they did. It does depend on the language. Here.
Speaker 1: I remember speaking with U, an individual of Thai descent,
Speaker 1: and about how the use of pig or piggy or
Speaker 1: you know, it's tie equivalent was a term of endearment,
Speaker 1: especially for young children, whereas in English that the term
Speaker 1: maybe has a has a bit more like spike to it,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna call someone a pick or a piggy.
Speaker 1: So a term of endearment in one language or culture
Speaker 1: is not necessarily going to translate equally into another language.
Speaker 1: Oh but I can actually see, like even in English,
Speaker 1: a great novel where you establish a character's relationship, what
Speaker 1: we're like, a wife calls her husband little piggy or something.
Speaker 1: That seems that that's good, that's good character right there. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of material out there on teasing, and
Speaker 1: we can't possibly touch on all of it here today.
Speaker 1: After all, it does seem to be a major aspect
Speaker 1: of human social dynamics, and the legacy of childhood teasing
Speaker 1: seems to be quite long. A lot of studies look
Speaker 1: at childhood teasing and and the ramifications of it for adults. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of what I saw was just study after
Speaker 1: study looking at whether child whether children perceived teasing as
Speaker 1: harmful or not, and generally they did. Now, one of
Speaker 1: one of the problems here is that it does come
Speaker 1: down to that perception, how is the instance of teasing perceived?
Speaker 1: And and and here we see this this this this
Speaker 1: case where an instance of teasing might well be perceived
Speaker 1: by one party as being playful and another party as
Speaker 1: being harmful. I mean, going back to our initial example.
Speaker 1: You know, in in group social dynamics, where someone goes
Speaker 1: over the line, I mean most of the most of
Speaker 1: the cases, and the person is not thinking I'm going
Speaker 1: over the line, I'm going for it, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: for the hurt point. Here, well, sometimes they are, I mean,
Speaker 1: there there are clearly different categories here. There is like
Speaker 1: very often teasing is going to be perceived as good
Speaker 1: natured by the person doing the teasing and as mean
Speaker 1: and hurtful by the person receiving the teasing. But also
Speaker 1: there there are two different versions of what's going on
Speaker 1: in the perpetrator's mind. You've definitely seen cases where somebody
Speaker 1: who genuinely meant no harm accidentally hurt somebody's feelings with teasing.
Speaker 1: And then you see cases where people try to cover
Speaker 1: their butts afterwards, like clearly they let some you know,
Speaker 1: hurtful inclinations reveal itself too much. They were being mean,
Speaker 1: but then afterwards they can be they can retreat. It's
Speaker 1: off record communication, so they can be like, oh, I
Speaker 1: was just kidding. I didn't mean any harm, don't you know,
Speaker 1: don't get upset. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,
Speaker 1: but they kind of did, right. Yeah, I was looking
Speaker 1: at a paper here, two thousand paper titled I Was
Speaker 1: Only Kidding Victims and Perpetrators Perceptions of Teasing by Robin M. Kowowski,
Speaker 1: and he points out that via seventy two person study,
Speaker 1: I found that perspectives might refer lect of the views
Speaker 1: of perpetrators and victims. The teaser remembers it more as
Speaker 1: fun and focused on behavior, and the person being teased
Speaker 1: remembers it more as hurtful and potentially focusing on their appearance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another thing. So one area in which teasing, I
Speaker 1: think is just never acceptable. I mean you just never
Speaker 1: want to go there is teasing about innate characteristics, not
Speaker 1: not like about what somebody just did, but about what
Speaker 1: they look like about their body, about fundamental personality issues.
Speaker 1: It comes back to like the educative aspect of teasing,
Speaker 1: like you can you if it's if it's if there's
Speaker 1: something educative about it, it's like you should be doing
Speaker 1: this differently, where you should have done this differently. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, people for the for the vast
Speaker 1: most part, cannot do anything about their their physical appearance,
Speaker 1: you know. But but I've I'm sure you've seen this
Speaker 1: where people tease somebody and it edges into teasing about
Speaker 1: innate characteristics, and when they get called out, they try
Speaker 1: to retreat to to like pretending they were just reacting
Speaker 1: to behavior or something. No, no, no, no, I didn't
Speaker 1: mean that, I meant this other thing. Yeah, Or they're
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were
Speaker 1: just being mean, and so I was going to be
Speaker 1: mean too. I didn't realize that we were being playful
Speaker 1: or that we were critiquing things they had choices about. Now,
Speaker 1: this this leads me to a question that I've I've
Speaker 1: had in my mind for a little while here, and
Speaker 1: that is, do certain people invite more playful and potentially
Speaker 1: hurtful teasing than others, and if so, what are the factors?
Speaker 1: So I've observed this in social situations in the past.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a number of our listeners have as well.
Speaker 1: In social dynamics, some individuals seem to attract more teasing
Speaker 1: attention than others. And why is that? I think based
Speaker 1: on some of what we've discussed here so far, we
Speaker 1: could we could really point to various causes apparent social status,
Speaker 1: attractiveness and desirability, but also difference outside or status, really
Speaker 1: any area that would seem to invite, invite off the
Speaker 1: record linguistic attention right. Well, because teasing has so many
Speaker 1: different uses and meanings, there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways that it can be attracted. I mean, one thing
Speaker 1: that you can see is that obviously in hurtful teasing,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of cruel the thing I wouldn't
Speaker 1: usually call teasing cruel, mean spirited bullying. I think the
Speaker 1: people who attract that are people who look like easy targets,
Speaker 1: people who are lower status in the community where they're
Speaker 1: being teased, people who have less power to respond. I mean,
Speaker 1: bullies pick on people they perceive to have a weakness. Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the jester type of of teasing,
Speaker 1: I think obviously they're the people who are going to
Speaker 1: be attracting it, are going to be prominent, high status people,
Speaker 1: and high status people also tend to invite the different
Speaker 1: kind of teasing that's not even really teasing. But Keltner
Speaker 1: talked about it in this article when he talked about
Speaker 1: how frat brothers give each other nicknames. There's a kind
Speaker 1: of teasing as praise that frat pledges show towards the
Speaker 1: senior brothers of the fraternity. Uh. So it's structured like teasing,
Speaker 1: but it's really more of a veiled compliment. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you've seen this before,
Speaker 1: where like people will be obsequious by pretending to rib
Speaker 1: somebody above them, but in a way that's not actually
Speaker 1: for anything bad they did, but really is more for
Speaker 1: something good about them. Yeah. Yeah, you do see examples
Speaker 1: of this, uh from time to time, almost kind of
Speaker 1: getting into the idea of like hot shaming somebody, right,
Speaker 1: like making fun of them for being attractive, making fun
Speaker 1: of them for being successful or something that in that regard.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously in the fraternity context, a lot of
Speaker 1: this is going to be like pretending to rib an
Speaker 1: older frat brother for his you know, drinking ability, or
Speaker 1: his sexual prowess or something. Uh. It's not really in
Speaker 1: that context perceived as an insult, but they structure it
Speaker 1: like one. It's a strange phenomenon. But but come back
Speaker 1: to other people who seem to invite I think one
Speaker 1: thing that is common to most forms of more barbed
Speaker 1: teasing is that it's invited by people who do not
Speaker 1: appear to have a very well developed sense of humor,
Speaker 1: or people who appear to take themselves very seriously. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've observed this, right, Robert, Yes, I've definitely seen
Speaker 1: this h in play, you know, in various work environments
Speaker 1: over over the years, where the person who takes themselves
Speaker 1: very seriously just it almost requires you to to take
Speaker 1: them down a pay not if they can't laugh at themselves, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, and then this is something that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to take place like face to face obviously, Like
Speaker 1: like if you have a say you have a boss
Speaker 1: that is just really self involved, you you cannot help
Speaker 1: but make fun of them with a co worker, you know,
Speaker 1: regardless of if you if you ever do anything or
Speaker 1: say anything that you know that that that individual is
Speaker 1: ever gonna hear, you still have to at least joke
Speaker 1: about them, uh with your other coworkers. Right, And as
Speaker 1: Keltner points out, the dynamics of teasing tend to change
Speaker 1: dramatically around eleven or twelve, around that that kind of age,
Speaker 1: which is about the age that he says kids most
Speaker 1: often learn to hold contradictory ideas about the world in
Speaker 1: their head at the same time these you know, that's
Speaker 1: the the idea of negative capability, the thing that allows
Speaker 1: the ironic stance, and this allows them to see subtleties
Speaker 1: of teasing and participate in it, especially on the receiving end,
Speaker 1: in a more graceful way, without interpreting all of it
Speaker 1: as bullying and bad. You know, that's one big difference
Speaker 1: is that when you're an adult, it becomes you learn
Speaker 1: how to take a joke usually, you know, like you
Speaker 1: learn how to be the butt of a of a
Speaker 1: good natured piece of criticism as long as it's not
Speaker 1: like really cruel, uh, to be the butt of a
Speaker 1: good natured piece of criticism or or teasing, and to
Speaker 1: not get too upset about it. But kids don't have
Speaker 1: this ability. They are not good at this at all.
Speaker 1: Kids take themselves very seriously. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take one more break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back we will discuss teasing in bonding. Thank alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, So one of the funny things I discovered
Speaker 1: in this episode is there's this entire academic journal called
Speaker 1: Discourse Studies, all all kinds of research about the ways
Speaker 1: people communicate, and they have this amazing way of like
Speaker 1: mapping out conversations in a way that includes all this
Speaker 1: information about tone and about gestures and laughter and how
Speaker 1: different kinds of laughter sounded. It looks like computer code.
Speaker 1: It's like conversations translated into cobal. You should look this
Speaker 1: up if you get a chance. It's it's pretty interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: But I was just looking at one study from Discourse
Speaker 1: Studies in that was published this year in called getting
Speaker 1: to Know You Teasing as an Invitor Patian to Intimacy
Speaker 1: in Initial Interactions by Michael Hall and Danielle pill at
Speaker 1: Shore and so that they write about how before the study,
Speaker 1: teasing was often assumed to take place mostly or exclusively
Speaker 1: between people who have previously who have previous relationships, who
Speaker 1: have some degree of intimacy. But this article examined conversations
Speaker 1: between unfamiliar people who were becoming acquainted, and I thought
Speaker 1: this was interesting. They found that teasing does play a role, uh,
Speaker 1: and the role it seems to play in this kind
Speaker 1: of conversation and the getting to know you conversation is
Speaker 1: a sort of experiment, is testing the new acquaintances willingness
Speaker 1: to become more intimate, because I definitely know this feeling
Speaker 1: like you're at a party or whatever, you know, any
Speaker 1: place you've got to meet new people, and you're talking
Speaker 1: to somebody new for the first time, and for a
Speaker 1: while in that first conversation, you don't know if this
Speaker 1: conversation will sort of escalate into a relationship and a
Speaker 1: point of familiarity where you might start to think of
Speaker 1: this person as a friend, or if you're just exchanging
Speaker 1: pleasantries until you can move on, right, Yeah, So you
Speaker 1: never know. Some sometimes you think it's gonna go one
Speaker 1: way and it goes to the other. And this study
Speaker 1: found that teasing plays an important role in this and
Speaker 1: getting to know people as a bid for increased intimacy.
Speaker 1: So the researchers taped and studied thirty initial interactions, twenty
Speaker 1: four of which twenty four out of the thirty featured
Speaker 1: one or more sequence of teasing. And the teases were
Speaker 1: produced by and directed at both male and female speakers
Speaker 1: of varying ages. And this is fascinating. The researchers discovered
Speaker 1: that there was a clear pattern to the teasing exchange
Speaker 1: in the initial conversations. So first, something teasable would happen.
Speaker 1: There's a triggering action by the tease target that affords
Speaker 1: the tease, and then second there's the tease at a quote,
Speaker 1: a teasing action directed at the tease target. And then
Speaker 1: third there's affiliation, a mutual ratification of the non seriousness
Speaker 1: of the tease and the author's right quote given. Teasing
Speaker 1: is one way of criticizing another. It constitutes a potential
Speaker 1: breach of tact or interactional propriety in initial interactions. However,
Speaker 1: participants can construe this potential impropriety as an invitation to intimacy,
Speaker 1: as it involves the proposal of a shared ironic stance
Speaker 1: that may be either accepted or declined by the target
Speaker 1: of the tease. So teasing in initial interactions, teasing while
Speaker 1: first getting to know somebody can essentially be an off
Speaker 1: record invitation to escalate the interaction and open up possibilities
Speaker 1: of friendship. It's a sort of ambiguous, off record way
Speaker 1: of saying will you play with me? And of course
Speaker 1: reading through these you know these like Cobal conversations. You
Speaker 1: see that a lot of the signaling both ways here
Speaker 1: is relegated to nonverbal signals. There's intonation, uh, facial expressions, laughter,
Speaker 1: And you know, one thing I think about it is
Speaker 1: how sometimes a teasing interaction doesn't even necessarily involve words,
Speaker 1: Like think about this situation. Somebody says something teasable, and
Speaker 1: all you really need to do for a subtle tease
Speaker 1: is to respond with a certain facial expression or type
Speaker 1: of laughter, and the teased person has the option of
Speaker 1: either joining you and and laughing along with you, or
Speaker 1: rejecting the bid to join you in the river of
Speaker 1: irony and staying on dry land, at which point you
Speaker 1: realize like, oh, okay, this conversation or this relationship is
Speaker 1: not going to a friendly place, or that this is
Speaker 1: not the this is not the safe point for teasing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's very possible. I think we can all
Speaker 1: think the situations like this where you're kind of doing
Speaker 1: this playful teasing and then you realize, oh, maybe this
Speaker 1: individual is very serious about this particular aspect of their
Speaker 1: personality or the world. Like they do not They're they're
Speaker 1: not game for say, uh, you know, political based humor
Speaker 1: or teasing, but they may be open in other areas.
Speaker 1: And then it's also ultimately part of the social dynamic, right,
Speaker 1: figuring out like what is the shape of my relationship
Speaker 1: with this person and what is the shape of this
Speaker 1: relationship going to be? What are the avenues for bonding
Speaker 1: and teasing that can take place. Yeah, I was reading
Speaker 1: another article about teasing as bonding and it talked about
Speaker 1: how one of the main features of teasing is the
Speaker 1: creation of distinct alliances between participants in a conversation. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know, we we see this happen all the time.
Speaker 1: Teasing is going on, and it forms factions in a conversation.
Speaker 1: People can either join in with the teasing and now
Speaker 1: they're on a team together, or they can like resist,
Speaker 1: or they can you know, it's often a form of
Speaker 1: like joining people together against an isolated recipient. And this
Speaker 1: can take very cruel forms. Of course, this is where
Speaker 1: it can very easily turn into bullying, where in group
Speaker 1: members strengthened bonds by teasing somebody from the out group
Speaker 1: or somebody new. But I've also noticed that this form
Speaker 1: of teasing as alliance formation can be really positive. It
Speaker 1: can have really really sweet forms. Here's one very specific
Speaker 1: benign way I've seen happen a lot in my life.
Speaker 1: It's when there's someone who's uncomfortable or unfamiliar in a
Speaker 1: social group. Say a person's over at your house for
Speaker 1: the first time and they've never been there before that
Speaker 1: you know that they're not one of this this social
Speaker 1: in group yet, and a member of that social in
Speaker 1: group tries to make the new person feel comfortable and
Speaker 1: welcome by inviting them to participate in teasing of another
Speaker 1: member of the in group. Like A very common version
Speaker 1: of this is I see, um, a wife trying to
Speaker 1: make somebody feel welcome in her home by inviting that
Speaker 1: guest to join in with her in teasing her husband. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can think of examples where my wife
Speaker 1: has done this, where essentially what she's saying is like,
Speaker 1: this is my husband, here's this nerdy thing he likes.
Speaker 1: It's okay to tease him about it because as it
Speaker 1: is part of our dynamic, and you can share to
Speaker 1: a certain extent in this dynamic as well. Ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's an inviting thing, and it also tells that
Speaker 1: person it's safe here. It says you're not going to
Speaker 1: get your head cut off for mocking the king, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: beheading always a sign that that that a dinner party
Speaker 1: is going terribly wrong. It's it's a demonstration that there
Speaker 1: is no Jeoffrey in this house. But it's also a
Speaker 1: form of social bonding and alliance formation. It allows the
Speaker 1: person to feel like they are you know, the that
Speaker 1: the crucial that the bull's eye of the in group
Speaker 1: right now. Though then again, because because teasing has all
Speaker 1: this in built ambiguity and risk, there there's always the
Speaker 1: risk of seeing something like that edge into actual mean
Speaker 1: spiritedness in a couple. You know, I hadn't really thought
Speaker 1: about this before, but I was thinking of my own house.
Speaker 1: A lot of teasing, linguistic teasing, mind you, is aimed
Speaker 1: at our cat and our signing engaged in this is well,
Speaker 1: you know, we we treat the cat obviously like a
Speaker 1: like a queen. You know, she has even has a
Speaker 1: pedestal that she lays upon, and you know she hasn't
Speaker 1: made in the shade, and you think, yeah, we we
Speaker 1: love the cat. But at the same time, we have
Speaker 1: all sorts of ridiculous names for the cat. We're always going, oh,
Speaker 1: what is the cat? Doing. Now we're essentially teasing the cat,
Speaker 1: and it is a very safe zone for linguistic teasing,
Speaker 1: you know, because the cat doesn't care. The cat doesn't
Speaker 1: know what we're saying. Well, you know why cats are
Speaker 1: great to tease. It's because they take themselves very seriously.
Speaker 1: They do that, They are very to take themselves very seriously,
Speaker 1: whereas there is there is certainly more of an air
Speaker 1: of the jesture to the dog. Though we make fun
Speaker 1: of our dog too, and he deserves it because he's
Speaker 1: very funny. But it does make me wonder to what
Speaker 1: extent pets then, you know, they they are enabling this
Speaker 1: avenue of bonding. Uh that that that that involves teasing.
Speaker 1: I think in this world where we're trying to be
Speaker 1: sensitive and socially conscious and not and not hurt people
Speaker 1: and necessarily but at the same time, but where we
Speaker 1: also recognize the absolutely necessary value of positive teasing. If
Speaker 1: we need like a theory, we need like a theory
Speaker 1: of teasing to guide our teasing so so that we
Speaker 1: we always understand where it's going and we don't accidentally
Speaker 1: pilot it into the rocks of of of bullying. I agree.
Speaker 1: I wonder if we need like posters, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of like a military propaganda posters that are instructing us
Speaker 1: about teasing, Like what is good teasing, what is bad teasing?
Speaker 1: What is teasing accomplished? What should we tolerate? What should
Speaker 1: we not tolerate? Yeah, I don't know exactly what the
Speaker 1: best rules of the road are. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: some things you should not do, but it would be
Speaker 1: good to have positive rules as well. How do you
Speaker 1: know you're on the right track when you're teasing somebody? Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the most part, we're all just winging it, aren't we. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you're trying to you're trying to read read
Speaker 1: their reaction, Like if it's good natured teasing, if it's
Speaker 1: between people who are friends or in a relationship, they're
Speaker 1: teasing each other that you know, you read their their
Speaker 1: facial expressions and all that, and you can generally tell
Speaker 1: if things are going well. But it's harder to tell
Speaker 1: for some people than others. And it's harder to tell
Speaker 1: in some situations than others. All Right, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: and close it out there. But obviously this is a
Speaker 1: topic that everyone is going to have some contribution for.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone has experience with teasing or being teased
Speaker 1: both of you know as children is adolescence as adults
Speaker 1: and UH, and we'd love to hear how you take
Speaker 1: some of the ideas that we've discussed here to UH
Speaker 1: to dissect teasing that has occurred in your life where
Speaker 1: you see occurring around you. We'll tell you how to
Speaker 1: reach out to us here in a minute. But first
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