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On mockingOn mockingPosted Jun 14, 2012 13:19 UTC (Thu) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375)Parent article: On mocking
Playful teasing is also regarded as a sign that someone is properly a member of the group - you know that trash-talking that goes on between compuet games players and sports competitors? That's a positive use of mocking to let people know that they're valued.
The issue of smack talk being unprofessional is interesting. In the hacker circles of Unix's past, the desire to show your technical skills with a good patch was completely balance by a flaming if you got it completely wrong. That culture helped people raise up the quality of their work - both to show of technical prowess and to become part of the community valued to the point that they are mocked. There's a USA-nian view of what it is to act professionally which would object to that, but the raw fact remains that even within that professional culture, the in-group playful teasing still happens, in its own way.
K3n.
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On mocking Posted Jun 14, 2012 13:35 UTC (Thu) by sumanah (guest, #59891) [Link]
It's interesting that you mention that sort of teasing-as-bonding. It takes a tremendous amount of trust and ease, or unspoken intracultural knowledge, to assume that someone else's mockery means "I like you, stick around." It's hard enough to get that message across *in person*; across timezones and cultures, and stripped down to Unicode, it's roulette.
I believe it was John Scalzi who said "the failure mode of clever is asshole." I remember that every time I write something subtly humorous in a wikitech-l email, remember that my developers' list has people from dozens of countries who mostly speak English as a second language, and either take out the joke or replace it with something more obvious and mark it with a ;-). I can make people laugh when I see them in person. I won't sacrifice some unknown contributor's morale for the sake of fulfilling a passing impulse to jest.
On mocking Posted Jun 14, 2012 21:55 UTC (Thu) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]
"Playful teasing is also regarded as a sign that someone is properly a member of the group"
I think that would accurately describe the situation if a) it was directed mainly at members of the group (whatever the group is), and b) there was usually some obvious attempt to be funny.
On a), it looks to me like it usually goes "down" the (semi-official) hierarchy, sometimes "sideways", but rarely up.
On b), the Quotes of the Week will indeed give some playful examples. But in a lot of cases the writer sounds genuinely angry and doesn't appear to be making much of an attempt to be funny.
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