In spite of a series of previous articles published on the forum which eloquently call for decorum and propriety on the part of villagers, recently, a mild furor of sorts was provoked on the NVS as a result of a spate of insults and counter insults initiated by a particular villager who had to be temporarily sanctioned.

Observing that the call for decorum and propriety has been fruitless, some celestial beings in their subliminal wisdom mysteriously descended upon me in a most forcibly manner, making me put finger to keyboard in an attempt to establish some kind of order to regulate the act of insult passing, which appears to be an inherent part of the human psyche and perhaps an unavoidable unintended consequence of the right to free speech which the NVS advocates. The following article is therefore not my will but my command as I really have little or no control over what I write at this point in time. 

Initiating the uninitiated

The uninitiated may think insulting is an easy matter, to be lightly entered into without any forethought. I want to submit that this is not at all the case as the ability to insult well, like all things in life requires practice. A good insult is much like a work of art, the delivery of which takes quite a bit of practice to perfect, though in some cases some gifted individuals, as if in possession of some inbreed talent, effortlessly seem to manage this . In order to guide the unwary, I was provided  with an instrument known as an insultometer which I will use to come up with a few rough guidelines and quick references  in the art and science of the insult . But before I go into the details, I would like to make a few observations about insulting in general.

The etiquette of insulting 

1.Depending upon the motivation, context, intents, manner of delivery and a thousand other considerations, insults can be good, bad, dangerous, useful or useless. The cardinal rule of the insult is that if you must insult be prepared to accept the consequences. 

2.One is generally courting trouble by going around wantonly and indiscriminately insulting everything and anything in sight. By doing this, one's sanity will easily be called into question and the attention of the moderators and admin on a board would be attracted in a very short time. Therefore insults should never be indiscriminate nor even written in senseless anger 

3. If on a board such as the NVS, one is the  object of an insult, an option is to desist from responding in kind and to report the incident to the admin/moderators. Another option is  ignore the insults and do nothing more. Yet another option is to respond in kind. However once the decision to respond in kind has been made and the exchange of insults have began, there is virtually no limit to what can be written or to what manner of insulting that can take place. At that point, one no longer has the moral right to expect that anything is sacred. One should therefore expect to attack and be viciously attacked in return. This will include attacks on  persons, family, family dog, dead and living parents, “tribe” race, e.t.c.. Consequently, anyone who wishes to start or trade insults should think very, very carefully about the consequences before commencing. 
 
 

4. If a third party akin to an innocent bystander doesn't like what the combating parties have  freely committed to; that is the public trading of insults and  calls upon the parties to stop, decency dictates that one or both parties take their  quarrel elsewhere to avoid disturbing the peaceful enjoyment of uninvolved parties on the board. In the past, this writer had to pull out of enjoyable fights, (while making a complete ass of himself) in order to spare the feeling of others whose enjoyment of the board was being infringed upon .  

Having finished with the above, we are now free to explore the topology of insultology as detailed below 

The portrait of an insult 

For the benefit of the undiscriminating, whose taste in the insult is as yet unrefined, using my cosmically provided insultometer, starting on a scale of 1 to 10, I will now detail a few of the possible forms of insult. This list is by no means exhaustve and the reader should feel free to amend as they may wish

The lazy insult

Not usually effective, these category of insults are not interesting and simply include comments such “you are a fool”, “you must be an idiot, e.t.c.

C’mon people!. If you hate something or someone enough to bother about insulting , at least put some energy into it. These kinds of insults speaks volumes about the mental state of the deliverer, potraying one as an indolent , unimaginative fellow.

Rating: 0/10 -Not good , Reflects badly on  the instigator. Do not use

The pointless insult

Akin to the the lazy insult as described above. The insulter rambles on and on, in no particular direction for apparently no reason at all leaving the intended object of his ridicule and observers scrathing their heads.

Rating: 1/10 -Bad. Observers will believe you are incapable of coherent thought. Do not use  

The unrefined insult.

Unrefined insults are crude, crass, comments which are tasteless in nature and  which could have the unintended consequence of coming back to bite the abuser, rather than doing much damage to the target of abuse. These are usually delivered in a fit of extreme rage. If deemed uncharacteristic of the deliverer, may be excused only on the grounds that that the abuser has for one reason or the other been unreasonably pushed by his or her tormentor/inner demons beyond the limits of his or her human endurance .

Generally not recommended and to be avoided at all cost as it portrays the abuser as immature and not in control of his or her emotions.

Rating 3/10; Childish and ineffective. You may come across as slightly insane. Not recommended

 

The subtle insult.

This is my favourite type of insult. To be calculatingly served cold and  delivered in the most backhanded possible way. When properly done, the object of your derision may not even aware of your scorn. In extreme cases, the duped may even compliment you on your generosity and join in with debasing him/herself. This form of insult is particularly effective against the slow, pondering dimwitted sort of fellows who loiter around webboards in the hopes of fomenting violence, imagingining themselves clever by half. To my delight, I recently observed a deft delivery of this kind of insult by a technically savvy sister to a skulking domkopff who had been amusing most, making a fool of himself while hallucinating about his own intellect.

One of the  best ways to pass along this kind of insult is by apparently making a compliment, therefore be very wary of nice people  who might say thing like 

“You look great this morning, you hairdo is better than……”   

or “ you are different from the rest of….” 

or “if only more …..people or all….. were like you” 

Now, although I have seen some masterly delivery of these kinds of insults in my time, the one that readily comes to mind right now is that recently passed along by a certain British lady MP. In a moment of sheer genius, the said lady managed to insult millions of people of two nationalities on two different continents by making supposedly innocuous compliments.The truly masterful accomplishment is that she has lots of supporters in her target audience thanking  and defending her for this .

Rating: 7/10- A very good form of abuse, highly recommended. To be sparingly used on the unwary. Could backfire as people could pay you back in you own coin and make a fool of you.

The Undetectable insult

This category of insult is easily and by far the oga kpata-kpata of all insults, by far the most brilliant and devious. With this one, you can never go wrong and you can insult entire individuals, entire nations and even a whole continent.. You get to sanctimoniously beat your chest; coming out smelling of roses while simultaneously debasing your opponents even while the pathetic fools are blissfully unaware that they are  being insulted.. The first and most essential step in the successful implementation of this type of insult is the recruitment of the most influential members of the community you wish to make the  object of your insult onto your team. A president or finance minister guarantees runaway success beyond your wildest dream. The best part of this type of insult is that you never have to defend anything, because more than enough members of the insulted community will leap to your defense…….I will expatiate on this latter.  

I will illustrate how this insult works on an individual level by recounting an interesting article I  once read, which was written by an animal rights activist who was trying to drum up recruits for his cause. The article was brilliant but what stuck to my mind was how the fellow  sliped in the apparently  innocent inference that people who champion the rights of minorities should equally be willing to champion the rights of animals.  The irony of course is that a lot of the members of the minority community, especially those who might be fervent animal lovers, will actually agree with this line of reasoning, praise the article to no ends and thank the author. Specifically because of this kinds of insults, I  stopped reading magazines like the National Geographic. 

I’ve also read a lot of articles exhorting the ( brute like )strength of Africans , without of course making any direct references to the brute part. Strangely enough, many Africans actually take references to the strength of their race as a compliment, unmindful of the fact that if sheer strength alone were the criteria by which the world were ruled, elephants and hippos would be king..   

Very hard to to master by mere mortals, this type of insults are almost the exclusive preserve of institutions and nations who excel in the ironic. In this category of  insults comes the award of Nobel prizes to Africans for supposedly wonderful achievements in peaceful living and tree planting. These are obviously well deserved  two in- one prizes  being that ordinarily, Africans are  expected to be incessantly at each other’s throats when taking a break from planting their homes.  

As already earlier mentioned, once you have recruited a “President ” or  Finance “minister”, the possibilities of this kind of insult is endless, hence, not to be omitted from this category is the “ forgiveness” of “debts.”  and the setting up of “human rights commissions and courts” by  precisely the very same people who  in the first instance did just about everything possible and impossible to bring about the problems that guaranteed the occurrence of “debts” and human rights transgressions. Of course, these are the very same people whom under normal circumstances are most sorely  in desperate need of forgiveness and/or trial!. Once everything is in place for the actualization of this insult, you simply sit back and watch as your target of exploitation hands over all their  remaining inheritance (whatever is left over from what you haven’t stolen in the first place!).  

As already mentioned, this type of insult is almost impossible to detect and about the only indications that one may have been insulted would be the slightly nauseated feeling in one’s stomach and a slightly bitter taste in one’s mouth when watching tormentors smile all the way to the bank or engaging in  orgies of self congratulation.

Rating 10/10 . Highly recommended. Very enjoyable when used on other people though painful if one is at the receiving end.To be used at on all possible occasions especially against stupid people. 

The  useful insult.

We now come to the crux of the matter, the main thrust of this article and the justification for the permission of any and all insults. It is because this category of insult exists that we as a society, whether we like it or not, must allow for the possibility all other forms of insults. This insult is best regarded as a duty performed out of charity and a sense of responsibility, to be used copiously and heavily only when it is transparently obvious that  the object of your abuse is fully deserving. Although, it can be argued that one may be wrong in assessing that a situation calls for the use of this insult, in principle, the use must be permited.  Hopefully, one’s altruistic disposition will not be remiss on third parties who could likely support the laudable goal by joining in and raining invectives on the head of the adversary.

Rating ;1000/10- Case close. Good reasons to use must be obvious to most. Further exposition below.  

Although a lot of people will argue that there is nothing like a useful insult, I for one disagree. Otherwise know as the corrective insult, this is perhaps the only morally permissible sort of insult and is preferable to all the other insults already explained above. Hopefully, the corrective insult , if applied sharply and in time could save a situation  from degenerating. In this case, the public interest is served and a public good accomplished. This form of insulting must not be gratuitous, requires discipline on the part of the instigator as the overriding purpose of this insult is to correct and admonish.

It is said that the ancient Romans used to have a slave follow behind a victorious general in order to whisper the words “remember, you are only human” into the ears of the victor.  

While some  try to make a distinction between the insulting of persons and the insulting of an office occupied by a person, I for one do not make such distinctions. As far as I am concerned, nobody and no office is too big to be insulted simply because no person or office established by humans  is infallible. So if a president starts to behave like an area boy, I consider that to be the appropriate time to introduce the president to our friend, the insult. When successful people behave as if they are messiahs and sycophants or self-interested foragers gather round them like vultures to a kill, feeding their very  human foibles, a lot of damage can very quickly be done to society. Therefore, in order to remind those who may have forgotten that they are only human, in order to prevent and control damage, in order to prevent abuse of power and other vices, it may well be necessary to bring in our guest of honor the corrective insult. 

Hence if I or any other persons, especially those in public trust, in society, whom we have supposedly entrusted the running of our future and very lives to happen to be acting like a bunch of jackass and all reasonable/ decorous attempts at calling attention to this harmful behavior has fallen on deaf ears, it is entirely appropriate  and even mandatory that individuals and society should  reserve the right  to put a stop to harmful behavior by all means necessary, including the use of insults. 

That this right , like all other rights is subject to abuse is a price that we are all better off paying. 

Robot  # 1 | 05.09.2006 23:55

...Read the full article.

Auspicious  # 2 | 06.09.2006 08:42

Dear Professor DeepThought: Kindly indulge me; I have what I think is a simple question for you. General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (Rtd) ruled Nigeria for 8 solid years. Eight years of deceptions, manipulations, intimidation, coercions, exploitation, abuse of office, corruption and a plethora of other vices that was capped with the 'almighty' sin of snatching from Nigerians, just like that, that Watershed of Elections that was the June 12 elections of 1994. The elections were reported to be the freest and fairest in the annals of our history as a nation. 13 years later, like Terminator's Schwarzeneggar, he is "BACK!" to seek the same Office as a civilian President. I read your recent article on "Insultology" and, aside from tickling me to no end, I gleaned certain knowledge about types of insults and their various applications from the article. My question is this: Does General Babangida's latest quest constitute an insult on our collective psyche as Nigerians? If yes, what type of insult might his be? And if not, which I doubt is the case, why is it not an insult? I remain, a devoted fan of your newly-introduced field of Insultology Auspicious.

Anike  # 3 | 06.09.2006 18:33

DT, This yah article sef tiri much (3 much). This is what they call free education (or seminars?) that we need in Nigeria. Talk about the Federal Institute of Insultology. The thing wey Jonathen go start o.. chei! e too tall.

Shoko Loko Bangoshe  # 4 | 06.09.2006 18:56

DeepThought, From one insultologist to another, thank you very much for this article which I hope will expand the growing field of insultology. I think people have for too long adopted a cavalier and unscientific approach to this most skilful of disciplines, leading to the kind of crude amateurish insults that we see on the board today. It is my hope that an awareness of the benefits of consulting an insultologist before embarking on a round of verbal warfare will greatly improve the quality of insults on this board and arrest this very worrying trend. With that out of the way, I have some questions that I hope you can apply your brilliance in the field to: 1. I hear that there is a radical team of insultologists working on the "perfecter-than-perfect" insult which, they claim can be deployed leaving its victim thinking that someone else is responsible for the insult. What do you reckon their chances of success are? 2. There is another team of insultologists that is working on an Insult of Mass Destruction which, they claim, is capable of wiping out entire populations of messageboards where it is deployed. Do you see this ever coming to fruition, and what would be the implications of this on the trading of insults? 3. There is a school of thought that says that the current classification of insults is too narrow, and that any sensation that causes discomfort to the experiencer (such as a badly sung song, strong body odour or the hum of a mosquito) should be called an insult. What say you? 4. What are the internal states of happiness of a self-insulter? Does the happiness he gets from insulting himself outweigh the unhappiness he gets from being insulted by himself? I eagerly await your response. Yours sincerely, Shoko L Bangoshe

DeepThought  # 5 | 09.09.2006 02:50

Ausp, I answered your question here in the thread section of the NVS Dear fellow student of Insultometrics (SLB) Nothing distresses me more than seeing our esteemed profession brought to disrepute by amateurish wannabes who have no appreciation of the delicate act of the insult. But with efforts such as yours and mine, there is hope. The Perfecter-Than-Perfect insult 1.Concerning the perfecter-than-perfect (p-t-p)insult, as you will recall , there is furious debate raging within the insultology community about the development of this particular insult. While some feel that it is a truely radical depature from all previous forms of insults, opposing schools of though believe that it may only be an highly advanced form of the undetectable insult. Nevertheless, everyone agrees that this would be a great improvement over the undetectable insult which in its pure form is merely very hard to detect, as the p-t-p insult insures the insulter, in the unlikely event that the insultee somehow manages to find out that he or she is being insulted. But I think the p-t-p insult is already being deployed, albeit prematurely by some rash insulters against some insultees. For example, the Bush administration tried to use it, somewhat amateurishly, I might add in an attempt to muddy the waters in its present course of madness in Iraq. Closer to home, the undefinable insult perpetuators like IBB, OBJ and their ilk are visiting on Nigerians may actually fall within this category. I need to add that I personally, believe that the p-t-p insult when fully developed , will in the hands of a skillful insultologist, be a frightully effective weapon to be further used in deflecting arguments which traces SOME of the ills of so called third world countries to the harmful effects of practices like colonisation, neo-colonisation, neo-imperialism, e.t.c . The ultimate purpose of this insult, I think will be to absolutely ensure that an insulter escapes any responsibility or consequences of insults to the highly discerning insultee . We'll just have to wait and see the how successful this insult will be. The Insult Of Mass Destruction 2. Some say that the insult of mass destruction is one which is so dangerous that all efforts must be made to ensure that it never sees the light of day on any messageboard. But one must never forget that all posting on messageboards ultimately come to the attention of and must be judged by the the Ubiquitous Noticer otherwise know as the U.N and that the U.N is the ultimate judge of what is allowable on public mesageboards. Unfortunately, things are not so simple as we have discovered that the body of the U.N is seriously divided over the development of this particular type of insult - with some members believing that it is unfair that other member's wish to pass a resolution to forbid this particular insult . The problem as I see it, is that efforts by those members of the U.N wishing to ban the development of the insult of mass destruction may be "too little, too late "as more participants than the U.N would care to admit already come fully armed to the board in combative mode bearing crude forms of this insult, while many others secretively deploy this weapon while putting on the front of alterboys. Therefore , I suspect that all attempts at censorship or banning of this kind of insult by the U.N will not succeed, but only serve to drive perpetuators underground with disaterous consequences for members unjustly forced by the U.N to give up development of their own arsenals when such perpetuators finally unexpectedly emerge after a season. Therefore in the interest equity and the balance of insultive terror, I don't support the banning of this insult, no matter how dangerous it would appear to be. In fact I would go as far as suggesting that allowing everyone to develop and hold in reserve this kind of insult would actually prevent its use, as sensible people would know that they do not have a monopoly of insults and it is not in their interest to go about deploying this kind of insult So in an uncertain world, as long as other participants on messageboards have this kind of insult in their arsenal,I would respectfullysuggest that if one is to survive on messageboards the U.N, admin and moderators should very carefully and responsibly consider allowing the real , imagined or potential acquisition of this kind of insult in order to protect one's self from total destruction. :p Current Classifications 3. I agree that the classification of insults are currently too narrow. Take heart, efforts are being made to broaden the scope. In fact, in the near future, a mere look/glance may be considered an insult and the very existence of people we don't like breathing the same air as some of us or treading the same ground as us,will be classified as an unbearable insult. Then at the very least, not only will things like offensive breadth, body ordor and such be classified as insults, they will additionally be seen as insult multipliers or insult enhancers as I will explain in the answer to question 4 below. The Self-Insult 4. What are the internal states of happiness of a self-insulter? Does the happiness he gets from insulting himself outweigh the unhappiness he gets from being insulted by himself? 4.Ahhh... I see you have save the best question for the last. By far the most baffling form of the insult; its pyschogenesis as yet not precisely known, though brainwashing combined with a false sense of superiority are suspected factors. We have recently seen a spate of self insulting articles on the NVS apparently by some of "us", purporting to analyze the state of development of certain "tribes" , ethnicities and races. For purposes of much over rated decorum, I am constrained from mentioning names, especially as I do not personally feel insulted by such articles. Shrewd observers have also suggested, possibly by analyzing the conduct of a certain individual on this board that, people who have a history of "mental" or "kraze" in their family seem to derive inexplicable pleasure,which far outweighs any unhapiness, when they engage in all forms of self inflicted insults. However, this observation should in no way discourage otherwise sane people with poor judgement who wish to try their hands in the art of insultology, from trying to achieve a similar level of epiphany, if sufficiently incenced by any particular post on this or any other messageboard. Insult enhancers Just as there are force multipliers, we need to know that there are also insult enhancers which are any actions and/or any modes of behaviour engaged in by the self insuslter which enhances his or her internal state of happiness when engaging in self insulting. Though its very hard for people of normally sound minds to achieve the internal happiness state of the self-insulter, careful study of the criminally insane mind of the self insulter reveals that a tremendous aid to reaching this state (while hurling insults under the guise of writing articles or pretending to engage in debate)seems to involve the growing of one's hair as long as possible and refusing to comb it. Concommitantly,water must be regarded as the enemy and the self insulter must at all cost,shun bathing. The brushing of teeth or the peformace of any bodily hygeine must be also be spruned. If the foregoing is strictly adhere to, soon an otherwise sound mind would join the ranks of the self hating insulter. Cheers.:D