Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I've got a question for you. You
Speaker 1: ever find yourself in that situation where you're hanging out
Speaker 1: with people. It's all good fun, everybody's there's banter going on.
Speaker 1: One person is teasing another person over something kind of funny,
Speaker 1: some funny foible of their personality, and there's that moment,
Speaker 1: there's that awful little moment where there's kind of a
Speaker 1: pause after somebody says some some teasing joke and then
Speaker 1: you realize like, oh no, suddenly it has gotten serious.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I mean it's especially if it it's a
Speaker 1: multi person group and and there's a bit of piling
Speaker 1: on occurring. They'll be there, I've seen this, this happened,
Speaker 1: where they'll they'll be a breaking point where the person
Speaker 1: has had an enough and and and you realize, oh, no,
Speaker 1: lines have been crossed, and now this person who is
Speaker 1: gonna leave and we're gonna have to resolve this uh
Speaker 1: via emails later. Uh yeah. And it's a ter it's
Speaker 1: a terrible feeling because things have spiraled out of control.
Speaker 1: Something that was playful and um and just part of
Speaker 1: hanging out has now become a divisive email the best
Speaker 1: place to work out tense social disputes. Well sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: it depends. I mean, I guess it depends on what
Speaker 1: role one had in the in the breakdown. I've been
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to to not be like at the epicenter
Speaker 1: of the of the breakdown generally, so um email tends
Speaker 1: to suffice for me. You know, you never have to
Speaker 1: worry that when you type a smiley emoji that will
Speaker 1: look like a fake smile. When you actually smile at somebody,
Speaker 1: you always gotta worry like does this look real? Is
Speaker 1: my face moving? Right? You just have to use the
Speaker 1: authentic smiling emoji, not the inauthentic one. You know, it's
Speaker 1: all on the micro expressions of the emoji. What's the
Speaker 1: authentic one that's like colon and clothes brackets? Oh no,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the ones that actually like the little
Speaker 1: yellow face with the smile, like you'll know what when
Speaker 1: you see it. But is everyone can realize at this point,
Speaker 1: we're talking about teasing today on the show, and teasing
Speaker 1: is weird territory to try and figure out deceptively, so really, um,
Speaker 1: for many of us looking back on our childhoods, it's
Speaker 1: it makes up some of our worst memories of social interaction.
Speaker 1: And as a as a parent, I have a lot
Speaker 1: of apprehension about it, you know, regarding my own child,
Speaker 1: the inevitable struggles that he's gonna gonna face. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, there's this weird cult of the tease
Speaker 1: that is often difficult to understand. We see teasing in
Speaker 1: our media, and it's sometimes presented as in a fun
Speaker 1: comical light. We also see adults for whom teasing is
Speaker 1: a standard part of their interactions, not fighting with each other,
Speaker 1: but but just picking in various ways that it's it
Speaker 1: seems like they're just terms of endearments, joking, benign criticism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it and uh. It's often a case where I
Speaker 1: look at it and I realized, well, this is clearly
Speaker 1: part of their social dynamic. It wouldn't necessarily work in
Speaker 1: my social dynamic. But I guess it's okay. Uh. We
Speaker 1: see it factor into courtship as well, which also has
Speaker 1: a way of of seeming weird and sour at times
Speaker 1: of an outside perspective. Right. Well, I mean there's there's
Speaker 1: two very different ways it can take place. There's a
Speaker 1: kind you can see, a kind of friendly, sweet teasing
Speaker 1: that takes place between people in a courtship relationship. And
Speaker 1: then there's like the pickup artist version of it, where
Speaker 1: somebody's clearly like making a power play. Right. And then
Speaker 1: likewise we also see this this space, this sort of
Speaker 1: ambiguous space where playful teasing gives over to what is
Speaker 1: clearly something based in hate and abuse name calling uh
Speaker 1: that occurs among children and even among adults. Obviously even
Speaker 1: at the highest levels of government, you see name calling
Speaker 1: used in a in a hurtful fashion. So if you start,
Speaker 1: if you start picking out and I imagine a lot
Speaker 1: of your doing this as well, thinking of all the
Speaker 1: varying levels of teasing that are going on in your
Speaker 1: immediate environment and um in politics and the media, etcetera.
Speaker 1: On the street as you're driving your car and listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast. You know, it's enough to make you
Speaker 1: wonder if if we're just nothing more than just cruel
Speaker 1: apes jockeying for social position, uh, And it's any wonder
Speaker 1: that we managed to emerge from these social interactions with
Speaker 1: self esteem and respect for our fellow humans. But part
Speaker 1: of the issue here is that while all forms of
Speaker 1: teasing share common features, there are at least three distinctive
Speaker 1: forms of teasing that are often signal, that are often
Speaker 1: singled out and definitely deserve mention here. Okay, well, what
Speaker 1: would those forms be? All right? Well, the first is
Speaker 1: pretty obvious, and that is that is the hurtful teasing.
Speaker 1: And I think it's one of those things where we
Speaker 1: all we all know it when we see it, right
Speaker 1: or hear it. This is obviously the domain of bullying
Speaker 1: and harassment, and yet at the same time it's the
Speaker 1: sort of teasing you might see in a celebrity post
Speaker 1: or some of you are more viciously charged a humor
Speaker 1: or political humor. I guess you could also say it's
Speaker 1: maybe the domain of the jester, the fool, and the clown.
Speaker 1: Uh and important These are important roles throughout human history.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, I mean I might argue that the
Speaker 1: fool in the Shakespearean sense requires its own category here,
Speaker 1: because the fool has a lot of power and freedom,
Speaker 1: and that's important power and freedom. Like they're the only
Speaker 1: member of the lower classes who can point out the
Speaker 1: flaws of the monarchs and the upper classes and get
Speaker 1: away with it. There's something about the ridiculousness of the
Speaker 1: fool that allows a critique of power that might result
Speaker 1: in a beheading if you made the same critique in
Speaker 1: a serious tone. And likewise, a king who beheads a
Speaker 1: jester every week is a terrible king. They look weak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes the king look foolish if the king overreacts
Speaker 1: to a to a comical critique, right, I think you're
Speaker 1: pointing Joffrey from Game of Thrones is this type of
Speaker 1: ruler where you realize how he's terrible. He's totally incompetent.
Speaker 1: Look how thin Skinndy is against Uh, the humorous criticism
Speaker 1: of the the court fool. Well, it codes so easily
Speaker 1: for us. I mean, one of the clearest signs of
Speaker 1: a toxic personality is somebody who's unable to accept criticism
Speaker 1: and even benign criticism, or to be the butt of
Speaker 1: a joke. You know, somebody who cannot tolerate that, especially
Speaker 1: because of the positive role that teasing plays in our culture.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much teasing that is not hurtful, hateful.
Speaker 1: I 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, and there is there is this this
Speaker 1: curious aspect of the dying ammic 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 skinned 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 or yeah, that's Saturday Night Life
Speaker 1: skit is funny. I'm gonna appear on that Saturday Night
Speaker 1: Life skit with the person doing an impression of me.
Speaker 1: There can be uh, too much protection of one's dignity
Speaker 1: is a bad sign, but too much surrender of one's
Speaker 1: dignity also looks kind of bad. Like you got to
Speaker 1: find the middle ground. You want the ruler that that
Speaker 1: ultimately has very little to do with the gesture and
Speaker 1: doesn't politely laughs perhaps but leaves it at that. I
Speaker 1: know exactly what you're talking about. Like when presidential candidates
Speaker 1: go on SNL, that's always like, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: just always terrible. Yeah. But one of the points that
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell made in his show is that it takes
Speaker 1: the punch out of the political humor, like you managed
Speaker 1: in a way. It's like it's a genius move I
Speaker 1: guess for the politician, because you have you have killed
Speaker 1: the humorous skit. You have you have killed the power
Speaker 1: of the humor in a way that you could never
Speaker 1: do by attacking it. Well, yeah, I guess it doesn't
Speaker 1: make you look great, but it also is a type
Speaker 1: of defense mechanism. It undercuts any truly biting criticism that's
Speaker 1: hidden there in the in the comedy. If you go
Speaker 1: on stage with the comedian. Yes, oh, but before we
Speaker 1: were talking about the jester, we were we were about
Speaker 1: to get into playful teasing. You know, the sweet form
Speaker 1: of teasing, right, And obviously there's a line between hurtful
Speaker 1: and and u and playful teasing good luck finding, especially
Speaker 1: with people you're maybe not that familiar with. But yeah,
Speaker 1: especially in close relationships, you tend to see these you know,
Speaker 1: you see in jokes and you see established safe zones
Speaker 1: for playful teasing. Uh. For instance, if my wife teases
Speaker 1: me about some nerdy hobby of mine, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: really more of a form, more of a term of endearment.
Speaker 1: Or if she teases me about liking robot music, like
Speaker 1: like really robotic sounding electronic music, and uh and teasing
Speaker 1: me about how awful it sounds. Uh like like this
Speaker 1: is that this feels good when we're doing it. I
Speaker 1: don't feel hurt or defensive about you know, my my
Speaker 1: love of dungeons and dragons, or or or my miniatures
Speaker 1: painting miniatures, or yeah, or my affinity for the music
Speaker 1: of autech or that sort of thing. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: almost all good romantic relationships include an element of teasing.
Speaker 1: I don't, you know. I don't want to be overly general.
Speaker 1: So maybe some people people make it work in all
Speaker 1: kinds of ways, but I rarely see what seems like
Speaker 1: a happy couple that doesn't tease one another, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like you do. And this is something we're
Speaker 1: going to return to throughout this episode, this idea that
Speaker 1: that teasing it is, is an opportunity for bond forming
Speaker 1: and the establishment and the maintaining of bonds. And but
Speaker 1: obviously you need a safe place for the teasing. Just
Speaker 1: you know, all of us, I think we're going to have,
Speaker 1: unless we are some sort of like in human politician type,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to have those areas that we
Speaker 1: are cool being teased about in areas that we're less
Speaker 1: comfortable being teased about. You know, thinking about several of
Speaker 1: the areas that that teasing functions in our our social interactions,
Speaker 1: one of which is sort of reminding people of hierarchies
Speaker 1: or establishing hierarchies. That it does something of enforcing a
Speaker 1: pecking order. Number two is maybe like establishing a criticism
Speaker 1: of somebody's behavior. And number three is allowing bonding. Put
Speaker 1: these three things together, and it seems like a key
Speaker 1: place where teasing should come into play is education, right,
Speaker 1: because that's a place where you need a hierarchy between
Speaker 1: teacher and student. You want to teach lessons and you
Speaker 1: also want to have a good relationship. That's right. So
Speaker 1: this brings us to this third area of teasing, educative teasing,
Speaker 1: and this pops up in areas that you wouldn't quite
Speaker 1: expect it as, as we'll discuss a little later. One
Speaker 1: example is that is that of a frat boys giving
Speaker 1: each other nicknames based on, you know, various bone headed
Speaker 1: things they've done. Uh And and this can be viewed
Speaker 1: as a way of of educating, of laying down various
Speaker 1: um moral rules or or social expectations. Right, you teasing,
Speaker 1: you might get nicknamed like, I don't know, toilet head
Speaker 1: because you fell asleep with your head in the toilet, right,
Speaker 1: And the idea is, don't do that. Don't drink so
Speaker 1: much that you sleep in the toilet. But then again,
Speaker 1: one of the things I noticed about that kind of
Speaker 1: teasing is that toilet head might originally be applied as
Speaker 1: a sort of like moral injunction. But that toilet Head
Speaker 1: make may well come to identify with the nickname and say,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's who I am. I am toilet Head forevermore,
Speaker 1: and I will embrace it. Yeah. Now, some anthropologists point
Speaker 1: to specific traditions of educated teasing between parents and children
Speaker 1: in various Indigenous American um cultures, and the idea here
Speaker 1: is that it's a form of teasing that can work
Speaker 1: better to impart knowledge of social rules and emotionally instilled ideas. However,
Speaker 1: we we didn't really focus on any of that for
Speaker 1: this research, but I just want to let everyone know
Speaker 1: that that that is an area of study. Now, as
Speaker 1: far as these three terms for types of teasing go,
Speaker 1: I I feel like there's some difficulty in how we
Speaker 1: use terms here because I admit that I would typically
Speaker 1: reserve the word teasing for the more benign or playful
Speaker 1: forms what we were calling hurtful teasing, the kind that's
Speaker 1: actually cruel and mean spirited. I would not usually call teasing.
Speaker 1: I'd probably call it bullying or harassment or something. Um though.
Speaker 1: It's what what this highlights is that the line between
Speaker 1: playful teasing and hurtful bullying is not always clear. It's
Speaker 1: not always clear to the person doing it. It's always
Speaker 1: not always clear to the person receiving it. What sometimes
Speaker 1: ment is benign or playful by the teaser can feel
Speaker 1: like bullying to the teaz 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 is actually okay,
Speaker 1: and you're the one who's making people feel bad by
Speaker 1: getting serious from out of nowhere. It can be a
Speaker 1: really 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.
Speaker 1: Thank thank thank Alright, we're back. So one of the
Speaker 1: big names that comes up in teasing resear is that
Speaker 1: of psychiatry and psychology researcher Dr Keltner, who has written
Speaker 1: on this, researched on this, and one of the big
Speaker 1: pieces that has often circulated is a two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight New York Times piece titled in Defensive Teasing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he also directs the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab. So
Speaker 1: this is like right in his uh, his area of focus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Keltner makes an interesting point, which is that a lot
Speaker 1: of our social conventions in the modern age, I think
Speaker 1: are centered around trying to make social interactions more safe,
Speaker 1: which in a way is a good thing. Right. We
Speaker 1: we all know how destructive and terrible bullying can be.
Speaker 1: We've all seen the kind of teasing in a relationship.
Speaker 1: And you know, somebody's somebody's got a new boyfriend and
Speaker 1: he's teasing her, but he's like going a little hard.
Speaker 1: It doesn't quite seem so sweet. And when you think
Speaker 1: about stuff like that, it can be very easy to
Speaker 1: start to to start to view teasing is this really
Speaker 1: negative thing. It's this this cruel, malicious force that permeates
Speaker 1: our culture and and make you want to do things
Speaker 1: to eliminate it. Right, Well, how can we get people
Speaker 1: to not act like this? But I feel like teasing
Speaker 1: is a situation where you really don't want to throw
Speaker 1: the baby out with the bathwater. Well you don't, but
Speaker 1: you you want to protect the baby. That's the thing
Speaker 1: I mean. Throughout this episode, I kept coming I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to um, my own son, and I just
Speaker 1: want to protect him so much from these things. At
Speaker 1: the same time, I realized I can't protect him there
Speaker 1: from everything. I can't just chattow him through school and
Speaker 1: you know, feed him excellent, you know, comebacks. Uh, anytime
Speaker 1: anybody is is trying to tease him, he's going to
Speaker 1: be teased. It's it's inevitable, and he it's probably inevitable
Speaker 1: to that to engage in teasing. Um. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, it is hard for me to just really
Speaker 1: get behind everything Kelton is saying about just the importance
Speaker 1: of teasing, like, I still my impulse to protect is
Speaker 1: too strong. Well, I mean, I think the point he
Speaker 1: would be making is that 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 is not advocating that that
Speaker 1: bullying should be permitted. It's very clear about that. But
Speaker 1: but but he does 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 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 language less animals, and so, for instance,
Speaker 1: Keltner says, quote, the centrality of teasing in our social
Speaker 1: evolution is suggests by just how pervasive teasing is in
Speaker 1: the animal world. Younger monkeys pull the tales of older monkeys.
Speaker 1: African hunting dogs jump all over one another, much like
Speaker 1: pad slapping joking football players moments before kickoff. In every
Speaker 1: corner of the world, human adults play peekaboo games to
Speaker 1: stir a sulking child. Children as early as age one
Speaker 1: mimic nearby adults and teenagers prod one another to gauge
Speaker 1: romantic interest. In rejecting teasing, we may be losing something
Speaker 1: vital and necessary to our identity as the most playful
Speaker 1: of species. I mean, I think I'm pretty on board
Speaker 1: with his message there. It's the the difficulty comes in
Speaker 1: our uncertainty about recognizing the line between benign teasing and
Speaker 1: hurtful teasing. And and I think it's because there's that ambiguity,
Speaker 1: because there's always the danger that you you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to be able to recognize immediately the difference between
Speaker 1: one or the other. It's exactly the same problem. I
Speaker 1: was mentioning a minute go where you like, I think
Speaker 1: back on a time you saw somebody getting teased and
Speaker 1: it went over the line, but you didn't stop it. Um,
Speaker 1: it's because of that ambiguity, like you didn't know if
Speaker 1: you should step in or not. And that ambiguity makes
Speaker 1: us uncomfortable because we know teasing this over the line
Speaker 1: is wrong, but you can't always see the line in
Speaker 1: the moment. It would be interesting to hear from from
Speaker 1: educators 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 know, like it's not cool to tease
Speaker 1: someone about their physical appearance or the characters or stereotypes, etcetera. Uh,
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 is anything different, than you
Speaker 1: are perhaps not engaging in pure teasing. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: then it becomes bullying. When you tease somebody you don't
Speaker 1: even like her respect, obviously you're you're going to be
Speaker 1: tempted to edge over into some form of cruelty. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of cruelty, we have to think again of of kings,
Speaker 1: and of course the jester. Keltner points out then 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 in
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 edged thing is that when
Speaker 1: it's properly applied, it can be kind of a leveling
Speaker 1: tool like it knocks down the wickerman 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 as 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: Culton A. 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: that 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 if someone were to come up on your street
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, um, you got a little something
Speaker 1: right there. Hey, if you you know, if they were
Speaker 1: kind of kind of beat around the bush a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, you might want to take a look in
Speaker 1: a mirror bro right, Yeah, that kind of thing where
Speaker 1: it can it's off the record, and it can be
Speaker 1: in a way that is meant to, uh to to
Speaker 1: make the the the message softer, or it can go
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: There's no there's generally no room for for retreat except
Speaker 1: to like physically retreat. So the point here is that
Speaker 1: in modern human interactions, you don't always want to be direct.
Speaker 1: On record communication doesn't always work for the same reasons
Speaker 1: that it's not practical to always be truthful. White lies
Speaker 1: are sometimes required or lies of emission. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: it's it's sometimes necessary to communicate via off record communication
Speaker 1: to say something and signal some other meaning, as annoying
Speaker 1: as it can be at times. Obviously, we can all
Speaker 1: think too situations where someone is not direct with us
Speaker 1: and we wish they were direct. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: pretty much everything we're talking about today that has a
Speaker 1: possible good social good, you know, useful social role also
Speaker 1: can be used for evil. I mean, every shifty, dishonest
Speaker 1: guy you know uses a lot of off record communication
Speaker 1: and always wants to be able to kind of weazle
Speaker 1: around about what he said or what he meant. And
Speaker 1: so Kellner argues that teasing is quote, just such an
Speaker 1: act of off record communication. Provocative commentary is shrouded in
Speaker 1: linguistic acts called off record markers that suggests that commentary
Speaker 1: should not be taken literally. So there's some sort of
Speaker 1: a uh, there's some sort of a wink there, right,
Speaker 1: But I don't think this should cause us to sort, uh,
Speaker 1: communication 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
Speaker 1: delicate or you don't want to overstep the boundaries of
Speaker 1: your established relationship with someone, and it may be essential
Speaker 1: to to to to to to provide that wink to
Speaker 1: let them know via you know, some sort of hand
Speaker 1: signal or some alteration of your voice, or even the
Speaker 1: use of rhyme or the mimicking 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 on record communication and off record communication. I would say,
Speaker 1: our respectively analogous to work and play, and play is
Speaker 1: 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. We'll give you some sort of like joking warning,
Speaker 1: that's a good one. Maybe it tends it are it Definitely,
Speaker 1: I would say, definitely works better than if they were
Speaker 1: to look you square in the eyes and say do
Speaker 1: not go in there. Though that's sort of like five minutes,
Speaker 1: you know, like then that's self deprecating. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: also it's like awkward for both parties. But if but
Speaker 1: if there's a joke there, like then it's kind of
Speaker 1: like I'm kind of making fun of myself and I'm
Speaker 1: also kind of making fun of fun of you. But
Speaker 1: I'm also providing definite information that you should be aware
Speaker 1: 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 on 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 group. Which is as kind of crude
Speaker 1: as this example we just laid out, is it? I
Speaker 1: mean it that is an example of what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. I mean that is the inevitable conflict of
Speaker 1: living in social groups, of going to restaurants and sharing restrooms.
Speaker 1: And they also may allow us Kelton argues, to engage
Speaker 1: in the sort of social contest that may prove physical
Speaker 1: and deadly in other species. And indeed, we see plenty
Speaker 1: of non human species that have evolved drama dramatized status
Speaker 1: contests that don't involve combat, you know, uh, some sort
Speaker 1: of like feathery display or or even a display of
Speaker 1: something that might otherwise be used for for combat. But
Speaker 1: some mean, some means of of engaging in social contest
Speaker 1: that doesn't actually require two individuals to to fight until
Speaker 1: one backs off. Yeah, I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: the kind I would call teasing. I guess there might
Speaker 1: be elements you call this gets up against when exactly
Speaker 1: I would actually use the word again, But it's clearly yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clearly part of human culture that we use words
Speaker 1: and like insults and humor and stuff like that to
Speaker 1: manage hierarchy navigation. You're trying to take down the person
Speaker 1: above you, and you can do it with a witty comment.
Speaker 1: But stuff like that isn't always isn't always in this playful,
Speaker 1: sweet realm of teasing, I mean that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: can actually be pretty biting, right, But but the argument
Speaker 1: here is that even in playful teasing, there is this
Speaker 1: potential for uh, for establishment of a pecking order. And
Speaker 1: that's just another way that teasing and requires us to
Speaker 1: walk a fine line, right uh, enhancing social connection while
Speaker 1: also establishing a pecking order. Like it it's sounds it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that when you when you boil
Speaker 1: it down, um, like imagine like setting out to do
Speaker 1: that consciously, Like, all right, I've got a I need
Speaker 1: to walk into the office today. I needed I need
Speaker 1: to tear everybody down just the appropriate amount so that
Speaker 1: we all feel a little closer, but also that it's
Speaker 1: so that everybody thinks that I'm superior or that I
Speaker 1: of the appropriate place in the social dynamics of the
Speaker 1: office you're describing management strategy. Probably probably so, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not fair. But yeah, I mean I unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: think there are some people who are that deliberate and
Speaker 1: that calculating about the kind of stuff they say in
Speaker 1: a workplace. They're not just talking to you about whatever
Speaker 1: they're thinking about. They're making a comment to you in
Speaker 1: front of an audience based on how it will benefit them.
Speaker 1: Now we mentioned frat frat brothers earlier, Keltner observed that
Speaker 1: among frat brothers, in one study, teasing nicknames seemed to
Speaker 1: be quote more morality plays based on misdeeds that they
Speaker 1: were encouraged to move beyond, and among teens, teasing as
Speaker 1: a vital part of a flirtation, a way of testing
Speaker 1: out others and looking for genuine signs of interest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned earlier, I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: this can easily go two ways. There is a very
Speaker 1: sweet kind of teasing that takes that takes place in courtship,
Speaker 1: and then there's definitely a gross form of it that's
Speaker 1: some kind of so shull leverage trick, right, and then
Speaker 1: there's also something problematic too, about like, if you established
Speaker 1: this rule that like, oh, they're teasing you because they
Speaker 1: like you like, then that that and that may be
Speaker 1: the case, I mean that these but if you but
Speaker 1: then he goes too far. If you established it, then
Speaker 1: is this excuse for for problematic teasing? Right, like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's just boys being boys or girls being girls? Then
Speaker 1: you know, is it Are we using that to cover
Speaker 1: up something that should be um policed in some fashion? Well?
Speaker 1: Often we are. This is yet another case where it
Speaker 1: would be great if we could always clearly see what
Speaker 1: the line is and people's discomfort comes in because sometimes
Speaker 1: it's not clear where the line is. Now. On the
Speaker 1: subject of of teasing among committed partners, uh, he points
Speaker 1: out that there is a language to it, you know,
Speaker 1: they're all these little in jokes, and he points to
Speaker 1: two studies that have shown that married couples with a
Speaker 1: rich vocabulary of you know, various teasing nicknames and ends
Speaker 1: of remulate insults, they tend to be happier and more satisfied.
Speaker 1: And that's the sweet kind. Yeah. And he also adds
Speaker 1: that it may help diffuse arguments over really explosive issues
Speaker 1: and that the terminology of the teasing as well as
Speaker 1: often drawn from the same metaphors we use for for love.
Speaker 1: They have to do, for instance, with with food or
Speaker 1: small animals, like referring to somebody as like a dumpling
Speaker 1: or a muffin or something like that, or a or
Speaker 1: a bunny. Yes, though apparently it does depend on the language. Here,
Speaker 1: I remember speaking with an individual of Thaie descent and
Speaker 1: about how the use of pig or piggy or you know,
Speaker 1: it's thie equivalent was a term of endearment, especially for
Speaker 1: young children, whereas in English that the term maybe has
Speaker 1: a has a bit more like spite to it, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna call someone a pick or a piggy. So
Speaker 1: a term of endeuarment in one language or culture is
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to translate equally into another language. Oh
Speaker 1: but I can actually see, like even in English, a
Speaker 1: great novel where you establish it character's relationship, what we're
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: perceived and and and here we see this this this
Speaker 1: this case where an instance of teasing might well be
Speaker 1: perceived by one party as being played well and another
Speaker 1: party as being harmful. I mean, going back to our
Speaker 1: initial example. You know, in in like group social dynamics,
Speaker 1: where someone goes over the line, I mean most of
Speaker 1: the most of the cases, and the person is not
Speaker 1: thinking I'm going over the line, I'm going for it,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go for the hurt point. Here, well, sometimes
Speaker 1: they are, I mean, there there are clearly different categories here.
Speaker 1: There's like, very often teasing is going to be perceived
Speaker 1: as good natured by the person doing the teasing and
Speaker 1: as mean and hurtful by the person receiving the teasing,
Speaker 1: but also there there are two different versions of what's
Speaker 1: going on in the perpetrator's mind. You've definitely seen cases
Speaker 1: where somebody who genuinely meant no harm accidentally hurts somebody's
Speaker 1: feelings with teasing. And then you see cases where people
Speaker 1: try to cover their butts afterwards, like clearly they let
Speaker 1: some you know, hurtful inclinations reveal itself too much. They
Speaker 1: were being mean, but then afterwards they can be they
Speaker 1: can retreat. It's off record communication, so they can be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I was just kidding. I didn't mean any harm, don't
Speaker 1: you know, don't get upset. I'm I didn't mean to
Speaker 1: hurt your feelings, but they kind of did, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was looking at a paper here, two thousand paper
Speaker 1: titled I Was Only kidding Victims and Perpetrators Perceptions of
Speaker 1: Teasing by Robin M. Kowowski, and he points out that
Speaker 1: via seventy two person study, I found that perspectives might
Speaker 1: reflect the views of perpetrators and victims. The teaser remembers
Speaker 1: it more as fun and focused on behavior, and the
Speaker 1: person being teased remembers it more as hurtful and potentially
Speaker 1: focusing on their appearance. Yeah, that's another thing. So one
Speaker 1: area in which teasing I think is just never acceptable.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just never want to go there is
Speaker 1: teasing about innate characteristics, not not like about what somebody
Speaker 1: just did, but about what they look like about their body,
Speaker 1: about fundamental personality issues. It comes back to like the
Speaker 1: educative aspect of teasing, like you can you if it's
Speaker 1: if it's if there's something educative about it, it's like
Speaker 1: you should be doing this differently, where you should have
Speaker 1: done this differently. But I mean, you know, people for
Speaker 1: the for the vast most part, cannot do anything about
Speaker 1: their their physical appearance, you know. But but I've I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've seen this where people tease somebody and it
Speaker 1: edges into teasing about innate characteristics, and when they get
Speaker 1: called out, they try to retreat to to like pretending
Speaker 1: they were just reacting to behavior or something. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean that. I meant this other thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Or they're kind of like, oh, I'm sorry, I thought
Speaker 1: we were just being mean, and so I was going
Speaker 1: to be mean too. I didn't realize that we were
Speaker 1: being playful or that we were critiquing things they had
Speaker 1: choices about. Now, this this leads me to a question
Speaker 1: that I've I've had in my mind for a little
Speaker 1: while here, and that is, do certain people invite more
Speaker 1: playful and potentially hurtful teasing than others? And if so,
Speaker 1: what are the factors? So I've observed this in social
Speaker 1: situations in the past, I'm sure a number of our
Speaker 1: listeners have as well. In social dynamics, some individuals seem
Speaker 1: to attract more teasing attention than others. And why is that?
Speaker 1: I think based on some of what we've discussed here
Speaker 1: so far, we could we could really point to various
Speaker 1: causes apparent social status, attractiveness and desirability, but also difference
Speaker 1: outside or status, really any area that would seem to invite,
Speaker 1: invite off the record linguistic attention right. Well, because teasing
Speaker 1: has so many different uses and meanings, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways that it can be attracted. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing that you can see is that obviously in
Speaker 1: hurtful teasing, you know, the kind of cruel the thing
Speaker 1: I wouldn't usually call teasing cruel, mean spirited bullying. I
Speaker 1: think the people who attract that are people who look
Speaker 1: like easy targets, people who are lower status in the
Speaker 1: community where they're being teased, people who have less power
Speaker 1: to respond. I mean, bullies pick on people they perceived
Speaker 1: to have a weakness. Now, when it comes to the
Speaker 1: jester type of teasing, I think obviously they're the people
Speaker 1: who are going to be attracting it, are going to
Speaker 1: be prominent, high status people. And high status people also
Speaker 1: tend to invite the different kind of teasing that's not
Speaker 1: even really teasing. But Keltner talked about it in this
Speaker 1: article when he talked about how frat brothers give each
Speaker 1: other nicknames. There's a kind of teasing as praise that
Speaker 1: frat pledges show towards the senior brothers of the fraternity.
Speaker 1: Uh So it's structured like teasing, but it's really more
Speaker 1: of a veiled compliment. Do you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen this before, where it like people
Speaker 1: will be obsequious by pretending to rib somebody above them,
Speaker 1: but in a way that's not actually for anything bad
Speaker 1: they did, but really is more for something good about them. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do see examples of this, uh from time to time,
Speaker 1: almost kind of getting into the idea of like hot
Speaker 1: shaming somebody, right, like making fun of them for being attractive,
Speaker 1: or making fun of them for being successful or something
Speaker 1: of that in that regard. I mean, obviously, in the
Speaker 1: fraternity context, a lot of this is going to be
Speaker 1: like pretending to rib an older frat brother for his
Speaker 1: you know, drinking ability, or his sexual prowess or something. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not really in that context perceived as an insult,
Speaker 1: but they structure it like one. It's a strange phenomenon.
Speaker 1: But but to come back to other people who seem
Speaker 1: to invite I think one thing that is common to
Speaker 1: most forms of more barbed teasing is that it's invited
Speaker 1: by people who do not appear to have a very
Speaker 1: well developed sense of humor, or people who appear to
Speaker 1: take themselves very seriously. I'm sure you've observed this, right, Robert. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've definitely seen this implay, you know, in various work
Speaker 1: environments over over the years, where the person who takes
Speaker 1: themselves very seriously just it almost requires you to to
Speaker 1: take them down to pay, not if they can't laugh
Speaker 1: at themselves. I mean, and this is something that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to take place like face to face obviously,
Speaker 1: Like like if you have a say, you have a
Speaker 1: boss that is just really self involved, you you cannot
Speaker 1: help but make fun of them with a coworker. 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. I mean, as long as
Speaker 1: it's not like really cruel, uh, to be the butt
Speaker 1: of a good natured piece of criticism or or teasing
Speaker 1: and to not get too upset about it. But kids
Speaker 1: don't have this ability. They are not good at this
Speaker 1: at all. Kids take themselves very seriously. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take one more break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will discuss teasing U
Speaker 1: in bonding. Thank thank you, thank you. Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So one of the funny things I discovered in this
Speaker 1: episode is there's this entire academic journal called Discourse Studies,
Speaker 1: all all kinds of research about the ways people communicate.
Speaker 1: And they have this amazing way of like mapping out
Speaker 1: conversations in a way that includes all this information about
Speaker 1: tone and about gestures and laughter and and how different
Speaker 1: kinds of laughter sounded. It looks like computer code. It's
Speaker 1: like conversations translated into cobal. You should look this up
Speaker 1: 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 ten called
Speaker 1: getting to Know You Teasing as an Invitation 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 acquaint sense,
Speaker 1: is willingness to become more intimate, because I definitely know
Speaker 1: this feeling like you're at a party or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: any place you've got to meet new people, and you're
Speaker 1: talking to somebody new for the first time, and for
Speaker 1: a while in that first conversation, you don't know if
Speaker 1: this conversation will sort of escalate into a relationship and
Speaker 1: a point of familiarity where you might start to think
Speaker 1: of this person as a friend, or if you're just
Speaker 1: exchanging pleasantries until you can move on, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you never know. Some sometimes you think it's gonna go
Speaker 1: one way, and it goes to the other. And this
Speaker 1: study found that teasing plays an important role in this
Speaker 1: and 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 was thinking about it
Speaker 1: is how sometimes a teasing interaction doesn't even necessarily involve
Speaker 1: words like think about this situation. Somebody says something teasable,
Speaker 1: and all you really need to do for a subtle
Speaker 1: tease is to respond with a certain facial expression or
Speaker 1: type of laughter, And the teased person has the option
Speaker 1: of either joining you and and laughing along with you,
Speaker 1: or rejecting the bid to join you in the river
Speaker 1: of irony and staying on dry land, At which point
Speaker 1: you realize like, oh, Okay, this conversation or this relationship
Speaker 1: is not going to a friendly place, or that this
Speaker 1: is not the this is not the safe point for teasing,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean it, it's very possible. I think
Speaker 1: we can all think two situations like this where you're
Speaker 1: kind of doing this playful teasing and then you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe this individual is very serious about this particular aspect
Speaker 1: of their personality or the world. Like they do not
Speaker 1: They're they're not game for say, uh, you know, political
Speaker 1: based humor or teasing, but they may be open in
Speaker 1: other areas. And that is also ultimately part of the
Speaker 1: social dynamic, right, figuring out like what is the shape
Speaker 1: of my relationship with this person and what is this
Speaker 1: shape of this relationship going to be? What are the
Speaker 1: avenues for bonding and teasing that can take place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was reading another article about teasing as bonding and
Speaker 1: it talked about how one of the main features of
Speaker 1: teasing is the creation of distinct alliances between participants in
Speaker 1: a conversation. Of course, you know, we we see this
Speaker 1: happen all the time. Teasing is going on, and it
Speaker 1: forms factions in a conversation. People can either join in
Speaker 1: with the teasing and now they're on a team together,
Speaker 1: or they can like resist, or they can you know,
Speaker 1: it's often a form of like joining people together against
Speaker 1: an isolated recipient. And this can take very cruel forms.
Speaker 1: Of course, this is where it can very easily turn
Speaker 1: into bullying, where in group members strengthened bonds by teasing
Speaker 1: somebody from the outgroup or somebody new. But I've also
Speaker 1: noticed that this form of teasing as alliance formation, can
Speaker 1: be really positive. It can have really really sweet forms.
Speaker 1: Here's one very specific benign way I've seen happen a
Speaker 1: lot in my life. It's when there's someone who's uncomfortable
Speaker 1: or unfamiliar in a social group. Say a person's over
Speaker 1: at your house for the first time and they've never
Speaker 1: been there before that you know that they're not one
Speaker 1: of this this social in group yet, and a member
Speaker 1: of that social in group tries to make the new
Speaker 1: person feel comfortable and welcome by inviting them to participate
Speaker 1: in teasing of another member of the in group. Like.
Speaker 1: A very common version of this is I see, um
Speaker 1: a wife trying to make somebody feel welcome in her
Speaker 1: home by inviting that guest to join in with her
Speaker 1: in teasing her husband. Okay, yeah, I mean I can
Speaker 1: think of examples where my wife has done this, where
Speaker 1: essentially what she's saying is like, this is my husband, Uh,
Speaker 1: here's this nerdy thing he likes. It's okay to tease
Speaker 1: him about it because it is part of our dynamic
Speaker 1: and you can share to a certain extent in this
Speaker 1: dynamic as well. Ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: an inviting thing, and it it also tells that person
Speaker 1: it's safe here. It says you're not going to get
Speaker 1: your head cut off for mocking the king, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: beheading always a sign that that that that a dinner
Speaker 1: party is going terribly wrong. It's it's a demonstration that
Speaker 1: there is no Jeoffrey in this house, right. But it's
Speaker 1: also a form of social bonding and alliance formation. It
Speaker 1: allows the person to feel like they are you know,
Speaker 1: the that the crucial that the bull's eye of the
Speaker 1: in group right now. Though then again, because because teasing
Speaker 1: has all this inbuilt uh ambiguity and risk there, there's
Speaker 1: always the risk of seeing something like that edge into
Speaker 1: actual mean spiritedness in a couple. I hadn't really thought
Speaker 1: about this before, but I was thinking of my my
Speaker 1: own house. A lot of teasing, linguistic teasing, mind you,
Speaker 1: is aimed at our cat, and our son engaged in
Speaker 1: this as well. You know, we we treat the cat
Speaker 1: obviously like a like a queen. You know, she has
Speaker 1: even as a pedestal that she lays upon, and you
Speaker 1: know she hasn't made in the shade and OK, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we love the cat, but at the same time
Speaker 1: we have all sorts of ridiculous names for the cat.
Speaker 1: We're always going, oh, what is the cat doing? Now?
Speaker 1: We're essentially teasing the cat and it is a very
Speaker 1: safe zone for linguistic teasing, you know, because the cat
Speaker 1: doesn't care. The cat doesn't know what we're saying. Well,
Speaker 1: you know why cats are great to tease, it's because
Speaker 1: they take themselves very seriously. They do that, They are
Speaker 1: very to take themselves very seriously, whereas there is there's
Speaker 1: certainly more of a an air of the jesture to
Speaker 1: the dog. Though. We make fun of our dog too,
Speaker 1: and he deserves it because he's very funny. But it
Speaker 1: does make me wonder to what extent pets then, you know,
Speaker 1: they they are enabling this avenue of bonding, uh that
Speaker 1: that that that involves teasing. I think in this world
Speaker 1: where we're trying to be sensitive and socially conscious and
Speaker 1: not and not hurt people and necessarily but at the
Speaker 1: same time, but where we also recognize the absolutely necessary
Speaker 1: value of positive teasing, if we need like a theory,
Speaker 1: we need like a theory of teasing to guide our
Speaker 1: teasing so so that we we always understand where it's
Speaker 1: going and we don't accidentally pilot it into the rocks
Speaker 1: of of of bullying. I agree. I wonder if we
Speaker 1: need like posters, you know, sort of like a military
Speaker 1: propaganda posters that are instructing us about teasing, Like what
Speaker 1: is good teasing, what is bad teasing, what is teasing accomplished?
Speaker 1: What should we tolerate, what should we not tolerate? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what the best rules of the
Speaker 1: road are. I mean, I know some things you should
Speaker 1: not do, but it would be good to have positive
Speaker 1: rules as well. How do you know you're on the
Speaker 1: right track when you're teasing somebody? Yeah, for the most part,
Speaker 1: we're all just winging it, aren't we. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: you're trying to you're trying to read read their reaction,
Speaker 1: like if it's good natured teasing, if it's between people
Speaker 1: who are friends or in a relationship, they're teasing each
Speaker 1: other that you know, you're reading their their facial expressions
Speaker 1: and all that, and you can generally tell if things
Speaker 1: are going well, but it's harder to tell for some
Speaker 1: people than others. And it's harder to tell in some
Speaker 1: situations than others. Alright, we're gonna go and close it
Speaker 1: out there. But obviously this is a topic that everyone
Speaker 1: is going to have some contribution for. I mean, everyone
Speaker 1: has experience with teasing or being teased, both you know,
Speaker 1: as children, as adolescents, as adults and uh, and we
Speaker 1: would love to hear how you take some of the
Speaker 1: ideas that we've discussed here to uh to dissect teasing
Speaker 1: that has occurred in your life, you see occurring around you.
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