I use this humour a lot with friends, even when there is noone else present to impress. It’s also something I do with close friends especially, where there is that trust already. It doesn’t feel like I’m being challenged when one makes such a joke against me, and the same vice versa. Perhaps this humour was borne out of status competition and has just become a cultural trend one must adhere to, like manners.
I dislike the idea of setting out boundaries against this kind of humour, I feel that I wouldn’t be able to connect to people here and even existing friends in the same way, for being too over-sensitive, and it seems silly to make a deal out of something relatively insignificant which I do not feel affected by. Is this just screaming out to the world that I am a person of low self esteem? I do not feel as such.

Do you have any thoughts? I had the same conflict from when you talked about your past with manipulative women in the PM podcast.

Cheers

“It was a typical Saturday night in London; we were sipping cocktails at one of the most fashionable clubs. [...] We were attracting plenty of male attention and, as a result of that and some lethal cocktails, our egos were getting bigger and bigger.

Men were sending us bottles of champagne; some were brave enough to come over to speak, some tried to dance with us, but all were sent back to their tables with tails firmly between their legs. We even turned down two fairly well-known celebrities, who were particularly annoyed with us for not falling at their feet like most women immediately did.”

The thing was, we didn’t care. We were on a high, enjoying being together, laughing at the attention we were receiving, and besides– two out of the five of us had boyfriends.” (Kezia Noble, The Art of Seducing Women, Introduction)

I absolutely cannot read shit like that without being filled with envy and some sense of anger. I want what they have, and do you know what a man would have to be or accomplish to even get a taste of that? I want help dealing with those feelings also. Also some macro sociopolitical/psychological analysis would be good.

LOL…!

It’s kind of awesome – that someone else actually got that it’s both kind of a funny joke, but also is somewhat genuinely representative of the theory as well.

When I wrote it, I totally thought that it’s a joke on one level but also a somewhat realistic depiction of the social dynamic on another. It’s pretty cool someone one caught that.

Paul, that’s a joke on one level but not on another. GoT shows a society with very little of the social infrastructure you find in civil society. Even basic aristocratic norms such as the inviolability of guests get disregarded. And there is no norm of respecting nayone who cannot kick your ass, either immediately or down the road.