Further reflections on the Narcissistic intimidation I have recently faced from a so-called friend.
We all like to think we have a sense of humour, and that we can take a joke as much as we can tell one. Trouble is, much wrapped up and presented as a joke is simply an insult, an act of bullying and a form of intimidation.
Fortune tellers will invariably tell customer-clients that they ‘have a strong sense of humour’. Being ‘humourless, miserable, a sourpuss and killjoy is not something anyone is likely to appreciate being.
What is a joke? What is funny?
A spoken joke is an observation or story with a punchline. It is not simply a swearword or insult. Pointing at someone and yelling ‘hey fatso’ regardless of whether they are obese, overweight, etc, is not a joke, but simply a statement, a cutting and insulting remark. Anyone laughing along with it is just callous. Meeting someone looking upset by something said or done to them with ‘“where’s your sense of humour?” is a very negative thing to do. A sense of humour is not being willing to be the straight-man, without consent or warning, to a boundary disregarding onslaught of digs, snide remarks and put downs from the same source over a long or even a short period of time.
Much humour is often cruel. Barry Humphries, in his Dame Edna Everage persona, said that he got by and an developed an entire career from the misfortune of others. The comedy of someone falling on a banana skin or taking a custard pie to the face can be entertaining. It can also be mean, as in someone intentionally putting a banana skin out awaiting someone falling on it. The first reaction on seeing someone fall over should be a concern that they are not injured. Finding it amusing can sometimes come later. The sadist will simply laugh, and probably photograph the mishap or fall into the trap for posterity and delay (possibly indefinitely) any offer of concern or assistance or offer to get help.
I am not a fan of TV prank stunt shows where a film crew, using hidden cameras, often in conspiracy with the victim’s family and friends, dupe someone into thinking their house or car has been destroyed, and watching their look of increasing horror and anxiety before finally revealing that it was just a joke, pointing to the cameras and thanking them for ‘being a laugh’. They haven’t been a laugh. They have been a unwilling victim. The only thing they are seen as being good sports for is in consenting to let the footage of their distress and frustration air, which they often do as they would look churlish not doing so.
I use humour in my poetry performances, much of it situational. If there are victims of the jokes they are clearly fictional. A joke in which a vampire mistakes a solar eclipse for night, or someone stealing a time machine finds an out of order notice on board after ending up somewhere horrible. To date I have not had vampires or time travellers complain that my material is offensive to them for obvious reasons. Other work I do is self-depreciation, drawing in deadpan tones on my thoughts on myself and silly things I have done or seen. Sometimes I move into areas of political satire and broad social commentary. I also do lots of serious writings.
Being balding and overweight, I have been an easy target for stand up comedians who make ‘slaphead’ jokes “I bet your head slides off the pillow in bed doesn’t it?’ gags for much of the act. I don’t find it offensive, just lame, boring, predictable, lazy and low cliched common denominator. A good comedian is simply transcending such juvenilia.
Narcissistic bullies often get milage on a targeted victim through often extremely nasty insults and put down-lines even outside of a comedy club or performance environment. Having recently struggled with and narrowly survived bowel cancer, and burdened with a stoma bag for life, I have reason to feel like life has subjected me to some serious unfunny situations. I can squeeze humour from this, and do so, with one of my unused stoma bags transformed into a glove puppet prop when I present poems and funny stories about the absurdities of life with a stoma bag. I am however acutely sensitive of the bag and reasons for wearing it. I have a strong sensitivity to feeling people will be uncomfortable near a thinly hidden filling colostomy bag and keep their distance from me. I have raised such worries openly on forums online and in communication with friends. For all my use of my stomas as glove puppets, I am undergoing counselling for anxiety and mild depression.
So imagine my shock, anger and distress when, after being invited to a new year’s eve party last year, I witnessed a late arriving guest who has already frequently insulted me, interrupted my conversations, and obsessively pedantically corrected everything he can from what I have said, as he arrived late, and loudly made a diva tour of the then crowded room I was in, shaking hands with everyone present, (including many people he had never met before) but walking past me twice to do so, (indicating with eye contact that he knew full well I was present) before finally turning to me as if finally seeing me for the first time, offering his hand as if to finally include me in the greeting, only to then pull his hand back, grimacing as if seeing a pool of vomit, going ‘Eeeew no, I don’t think so. Not you. No.” He then turned without another word and left the room.
I looked round to see that no one else present had seen what he did to me. I had no direct witnesses. I just felt shocked disbelief. I was tempted to alert the party hosts on the spot but chose not to as I had no wish to bring them into a conflict at a party that I knew was very important to them (the first one they had hosted in two years due to the Covid lockdown.
Twenty minutes later, the ht and run narcissist returned to the room, stared at me intensely for several seconds before leaning in with his face close to mine, saying “What I did was just a joke. I was joking! It was just a joke right! “ He stomped off again, and again I was left speechless, this time shocked and angered. He was trying to silence me from fear I might yet report him, and sensing he had gone too far this time. It was akin to a paedophile telling a molested child that their activity together was innocent and their little secret. Offending a cancer patient is not quite that monstrous but it is way removed from acceptable social interactive behaviour.
Six months on, I finally challenged the offender on his attack, *time and geography prevented it being sooner) to find he neither admitted or denied it but simply claimed no recollection of the events, and stomped off unwilling to discuss the situation further. . I finally revealed my worries to the party hosts after this, thinking they might be difficult to persuade into thinking a friend of theirs would ever say or do such things to another friend of theirs. In fact, they were aware that he has a reputation for such activity and see it as typical of him. I was told that I should just dismiss the confrontation I faced as a joke, albeit an insensitive one that may not have been in the best of taste. I said that I regarded the confrontation as outright bullying, to be informed that it can’t be that as bullying needs to be repeated and a pattern of behaviour, while I faced a singular incident of ‘humour’ that only affronted me because it triggered my already existing anxiety and depression. THe host made it clear that he had no desire to request that the offending guest never treat me (or presumably others) in such a way again.
There is so much wrong in this that it is hard to know where to start.
1/. The ‘Eeew not you’ comments were not a joke at all, by any definition, in good, bad or any taste, but simply a direct, and coldly calculated verbal assault. It was the spoken equivalent of simply spitting in someone’s face. There was no gag here, no punchline, just an empathy-free, flat statement that someone was too repulsive to shake hands with or wish a happy new year. There was no way for me to appreciate or be in on ‘the joke’. I was simply the mark for someone to target to make himself feel in some way in control; and superior.
2/. This was bullying. The claim that bullying needs to be repeated to even qualify as bullying is complete garbage. I know some legal definitions claim repetition is required but these are widely discredited as a simple web search will show, How many times do you have to steal to be called a thief? Does a rapist, murderer, litterbug, or paedophile have to commit their offence a second time before it counts as what it is? Of course not, and the same applies to bullying.
3/. In fact the offender has repeatedly committed such action, against me and towards others. As the host said, in writing, the offender has a reputation for such incidents. I am not aware of how the host knows of this. Direct personal experience? Hearing of it from third parties? How does the host fail to see this awareness as a serious concern? Is s/he afraid to challenge the offender? Is s/he in some way entertained by and envious of the events witnessed or described.
The offender has struck at others. I have personally contacted others he has engaged with, many of who have also faced abuse from him, and shared some of their experiences with me in confidence. One friend quit an online community of friends my offender is in (as am I) after he caused them problems during a Zoom meeting he hosted (for which reason I chose not to participate) where the offended party was mocked for his/her politics (hardly extremist) and then muted to prevent them from talking further to the host or even to other zoom-event participants. The event heavily contributed to my friend quitting the social group entirely.
So is it still not bullying if the second incident of it is to a separate person? Can you bully as much as you like as long as each attack has a fresh target?
In fact, the offender has targeted me personally many times, mostly to lesser degrees, but clearly takes great delight in trying to derail me from talking to others (on any topic), obsessively pedantically correcting me at every turn for the slightest slip, barging in to interrupt, patronising me, taking the conversation off at tangents, getting very angry in a furious display of passive-aggression, if I ever correct him, resenting it if I get any more attention than he does. In some cases the interruptions come even while I’m just being asked how I am or if I had a nice/safe journey on meeting friends unseen for some time. Precious moments are simply ploughed into the ground in a rush for Narcissistic vain personal ego massaging vanity.
After I challenged my offender about his behaviour at the new year party, and he displayed classic Narcissist ‘selective amnesia’ in a gambit to break away from me, he joined in with me and guests a new party (a birthday event) within minutes of my challenge, boldly joining in the conversation, and showing zero signs of being remotely shaken by the talk he had just had with me, while giving me knowing defiant looks to show off that he could do so.
The following morning, (he, I and many guests stayed at the party house overnight), he continued holding court and dominating all conversation. When I got a rare chance to comment to the group and made a knowingly dreadful pun on the topic being light heartedly covered, my offender was desperately quick to ‘Hat me’, ruining a long standing innocent tradition.
Hatting is actually an informal tradition in the social circle. It was started by a much loved and now deceased member in which anyone sharing a groan inducing joke is painlessly slapped with a light hat or cap, ie, a woollie hat. Many of my puns have earned me such hattings and I have given a few, and everyone knows and doesn’t mind this.
On this occasion it was very different. My pun was not seen as too bad by most guests, but my offender was greedy to exercise the hat, even desperately looking round and asking for one for a few minutes to get hold of one to march triumphantly over the room towards me, again, knowing full well what had gone on between us the night before. I saw the hat coming and felt trapped. Protesting or refusing to be hatted or treating the approach as assault and resorting to self-defence would look bad on me. To anyone else present, it was just tradition in practice again, same old same old. My assailant had me right where he wanted me, and I was powerless to do anything. A pleasant tradition was suddenly horribly weaponized.
The famous quotation often attributed to Edmond Burke applies here. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Such cruel cutting remarks do not offer a joke where teller and recipient get to both find enjoyment, and there is not even any audience other than the perpetrator. It is a set of actions and remarks intended to one exclusive purpose, generating hurt, distress, anxiety, alienation and emotional breakdown in the victim, while the offender, acting like a psychic vampire, feels victorious, empowered and the thrill of getting away with it. This is not humour but pulling the wings of helpless flies or tearing legs off a spider.
To know it goes on but not intervening to help prevent future offences might feel like being neutral and sitting on the fence, to stay on good terms with both parties. It actually puts the fence sitter right into willful or unwitting collaboration with the offender who will be very quick to exploit the silence to make sure the victim knows there is little of any hope of assistance – “the cavalry is not coming to the rescue. You are utterly expendable and you either stay in my power to torment you at will or you just go away and leave me to find a new victim.”
I drew the host of the original party’s attention to the feeling I have that the ‘eeew, not you’ abuse was all the worse for coming at me with it knowing I’m already on a downer due to being in cancer remission and bearing a stoma for life. The host responded that my assailant had probably not even taken that into consideration and I was only seeing it that way through a distorting lens of being already depressed.
WHHHHAT???? 1/. Irrespective of whether I was physically/mentally ill or not, the direct, calculated attack on me, literally treating me like a disgusting mediaeval leper unworthy to be verbally wished a new year let alone shook hands with, was a direct violation and unprovoked verbal assault anyway. I did not take it badly from depression. I took it badly because I was totally expected to take it badly. I would defy anyone facing such behaviour without warning and with zero provocation, not being deeply hurt or offended by it. In this respect, my cancer and stoma are actually irrelevant. I was subjected to unadulterated unprovoked verbal bullying.
2/. My offender knows full well that I have been through cancer and now sport a stoma. I announced my condition on an online forum he is a member of from the first day I had my prognosis. I gave regular often daily online and forum updates as my struggle went on. 3/. Several members of the forum organised and presented me with a generous fund to help get me through the crisis at its peak. Whether or not he contributed to it or not, he was more than aware of it. If he did contribute to the fund it does not make his later abuse more acceptable – if anything it makes it more of an act of betrayal than before. Being nice to someone on Tuesday is not a justification for being nasty and mean to them on Wednesday. 4/. My wearing a stoma was (at the time of the new year attack) a prominent factor in life shared by my offender’s long term partner’s father, who has since been able to have surgery to remove the stoma). With so many reminders, it would be impossible for my offender to forget my condition, and as said in point one, his behaviour towards me was not a joke, In good, bad or indifferent taste) was just raw unadulterated cowardly nasty abuse and BULLYING, regardless of my health situation anyway.
When the jokes are directed continuously at the expense of the same individual, or group/class of individuals it is never a joke, but a campaign, agenda and programme of intimidation, which needs to be addressed with urgency by everyone. Do not be an audience for bullying disguised as comedy. The biggest clue to it not being done with humorous intent is that it obviously just not funny.
Imagine someone you know and thought of as a friend just unexpectedly and deliberately spat right in your face. Is it funny? Is it? Is it? Is it?
By saying to someone it was just a joke that you failed to find funny, the blame shifts to the victim, making them feel thin skinned, weak, -over-sensitive, while the Joker ends up laughing louder from the additional pain this causes to the victim.
Link to a site addressing toxic amnesia from Narcissists.
Narcissist Quotes: Toxic Amnesia
Arthur Chappell
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