Counter-jokes
Hello guys,
the jester is a type of power mover who's difficult to counter because he's using humour as power moves. Humour is viewed as positive because it brings pleasure and bond people. So to defend against a jester, as I learned in PU, you have to stay in the humour.
When a joke is made as your expense, you lose status. So the concept of Counter-joke is that you defend and instead of losing status you gain status because you're able to be funnier than the jester power mover. Here is an example:
- Are you dumb? counter jokes: "you did not know that...?", "Yes, that is why people..." AND laugh. That is important, because the laugh "takes off the edge" but officialise the counter-attack.
Generally, to defend against jester, this has been proposed by @kavalier (for reference):
- Frame him as a jester and use it to dominate/judge him
- One-across instead of one-up him
What is the power of counter-jokes?
Well, you stay within the friendly frame of "humour" and beat his frame with a one-up most of the times.
How to do a counter-joke?
First, it's important to recognise when a joke is disempowering you
Second, it's mostly a matter of improvisation: you turn the joke around and send it back to the sender. It's a battle of wits.
Cheers!
Yeah, counter-jokes are great... If you can come up with any.
If that's the case, it's golden, while you effectively self-defend -or even "win", it also shows wittiness and maintains the good mood -as you say, it also adds value to the people around-.
The issue I see with these:
Quote from John Freeman on July 31, 2022, 9:32 pm
- Are you dumb? counter jokes: "you did not know that...?", "Yes, that is why people..." AND laugh. That is important, because the laugh "takes off the edge" but officialise the counter-attack.
Is that they stay within the initial disempowering frame of you being dumb.
That may come across as accepting disrespect/disempowerment.
I was just remembering a one-up I received some years ago, when I was one-upping a guy in jest. I don't remember what exactly I said to him, but his answer stuck:
Kavalier: one ups power-aware guy (everyone laughs)
Him (very relaxed tone, after laughing a little bit with the other folks - not too much. When the laughs started to die, he quips): Kavalier uses to be pretty chill. It must be the influences [around him].
Boom. He didn't even have to think of a counter-joke. It sounded very smooth, very low key, but he pulled some heavy guns there, framing me as not acting normal and as someone easily influenced. I couldn't think of anything to say and I totally deserved that one 🙂
This is worth watching in its entirety. Great analysis from CoC.