I think it’s important to be mindful on what you’re trying to achieve in a social setting. If your goal is to make friends, you may have to clean up your act - meaning you may have to discard some behaviours unconducive to achieving said aims. For example, shaming behaviour like telling someone “Eh you burden lah”, mocking someone for their appearances, or insinuating and associating them with negative stuff.

In fact, these behaviours are actually the norm in a lot of social groups. Now why is that so? It’s like some people have become callous after being on the receiving end of abuse. I actually have a friend like that. He thinks that everyone should ‘grow a thicker skin’ and be able to take insults. Well that’s what he says as justification to insulting people to maintain his position at the top of the dominance hierarchy (at least that’s what I think he’s doing). In the first place, why should anyone tolerate insults and mockery of their appearance, behaviour etc?

I understand the utility of insults and mockery in deterring people from transgressing group rules. However, aside from that, I don’t see a point in doing that other than putting someone in their place. It’s a massive dick-waving to climb or maintain your position at the top of the dominance hierarchy. In my unit, a headquarters, where anyone with the minimal competence can survive; trash talking, gossiping and one-upmanship becomes a vital outlet to jockey for power, status and influence.

He prided himself for being ahead of the pack and being able to say whatever he wants to whoever he wants. For example, a storeman once called him to ask about something they were buying. The conversation went like this:

Storeman: Eh where is the equipment we ordered? Warrant P asking for it.

 

He: You tell Warrant P to suck my dick la!

 

Storeman: Eh he is right beside me leh

 

Afterwards Encik texted him and asked, “What was that?”

 

To which he replied, “Oh Encik don’t mind me, I talk like that one.”

In the end nothing happened to him. He was assured that nothing would happen to him because the Encik would looked petty if he were to complain to our sir. See he’s consciously pushing the boundaries of what is socially accepted. Constantly experimenting what absurd thing he can do and get away with.

There was a period of time when he kept bullying me with another colleague. When we were having lunch together, I told him to stop it. He said, “I trust myself to know when to stop it.” That is as good as saying, “Don’t worry I know when to stop the bullying, I know your limits.” What a load of shit. How would he know what is the person’s limits? When the person being bullied tells you to stop it, you better take his word for it. If someone who is suicidal tells you to stop bullying, you jolly well stop it (not that I’m suicidal). I told him you can choose not to stop it, but that would mean you don’t care about others. You can’t have it both ways. 

He prided himself for calling out others bullshit, yet he is oblivious to his own bullshit. The irony. He held his callousness as a badge of honour, and prided himself for not taking offense. That’s his idea of masculinity. I disagree with that one-dimensional definition. I believe you can be socially savvy, sensitive AND tactful (maybe not towards everyone but still). 

Now that I think about it, that seemed like his passive way of saying, “I don’t want to stop bullying you, make me.” This is pretty much in line with his comments on other occasions - If you don’t like it, punch me lah. The colleague who bullied me eventually had a falling out with him, and did not speak to him at all. After my co-worker ORD (operationally ready date, the day you finish National Service), my friend wanted to contact him but reach out because of their relationship. He asked me to contact him which I did not. Now if he wanted to make friends in the first place, taking this dominance game too far is counterproductive. Why would he want to keep in contact with someone who verbally abused him and tried to psychologically dominate him…

Despite my co-worker’s poor adaptive behaviours, he did have some valuable insights into my behaviour. According to him, he intentionally resisted our friend’s psychological dominance by getting into fights with him. It was not a full-fledged fight anyway, more of like hitting each other with files… He said I was an odd one for not resisting. That along with other stuffs opened the floodgates for me to reflect and improve on myself. Getting feedback from him was one of the best things I did.

On the other side, the argument is since you never know who you will meet, and some of them will be verbally abusive - you should learn to cope with them. While I agree, I also think it’s important to cultivate a nurturing space in your life for the following reasons: 

1. Life is too short to spend being engrossed in Menspeak, it’s tiring to have to constantly ‘defend’ yourself. The time and energy freed up can be better invested in having more meaningful conversations.

2. When you lead by insulting and mocking, the rest follows. That will reach a point where everyone becomes desensitized to bullying and resorts to insulting/mocking each other at every possible turn. How would anyone then feel safe to open up and talk about the things that truly matter? It’s clear that this behaviour is counterproductive to making close friends and building a ‘tribe’.

There was a meetup I participate in occasionally and a lady in her 30s was present. When we hanged out together, I mockingly called her auntie and some of the guys followed suit… They thought it was funny. I admit I was an asshole. Assholes ruin things for everyone, yet few dare to coordinate their actions and make it costly for them to continue their behaviour. If my goal was to make friends and create a safe space, that was certainly counterproductive.

The key question here is - what are you optimising for? If you want to forge a nurturing relationship, be nurturing. If you want to forge one based on love of sports, be sporting. My point is making friends and forming a group of friends doesn’t happen naturally. It takes intentional effort and a certain set of skills not found in most people. What ‘set of skills’ are not found in most people? I’ll write about the underlined phrases in other posts.

There are people in my unit who ORD without making long-lasting friends after National Service (NS). This doesn’t just happen unless someone is intentional about making friends and cultivate that. These are the same people who were usually engaged in dominance game, instead of be-your-friend game. For example, there was a guy in my unit who was hyper-aggressive; he was the stereotypical beta vying for alpha/top-dog status. Did he continue to meet them after NS? I’m not surprised if he didn’t.

I think a large part of making friends is akin to playing long-term games. Play it in such a way that you’ll be invited again. If not, it’ll be very hard to make friends and cultivate meaningful relationship. Play nice, play fair. Don’t be obnoxious, constantly trying to one-up someone else, trivialise their pains, monopolise the conversation, and talk over them.

Further reading:

Social Status: Down the Rabbit Hole

Most people over-tolerate assholes, which lets them get away with it

We need to get better at dealing with assholes if we are to progress as a species

Last updated: 25 July 2021