“Just kidding.” I said. But I wasn’t. I meant ‘midget’ in every sense of the word, and my little brother who suffers from chronic short guy complex knew it too. Despite how hilarious it seemed at the time, I know it was wrong of me, yet what bothers me most is the disclaimer at the end.
“Just kidding.”
We constantly use it, along with countless other disclaimers, to negate the meaning of our previous statement. By saying “just kidding” or “no offense,” our sentences become pointless; our ideas innocuous, and if anyone responds harshly our response is simple, “Dude I was just kidding.” You’re not allowed to react to my idea, because my idea is meaningless. I am no longer held accountable for my own ideas, and your feelings in response to my statement mean nothing.
Why do we do this? We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by meaningless chatter (don’t believe me? get a twitter), yet we don’t think our own ideas to be trivial. If your think your own ideas to be so, rethink them, and keep them to yourself. Yet if you stand believe your ideas to be the correct ones, stand behind them. I imagine someone telling a friend who wants to audition for American Idol “Dude, you’re a terrible singer…..no I’m just kidding.” Thousands of eardrums could have been saved from just a little honesty. Don’t demolish your own arguments with, “I’m just saying.” Let’s stop negating our own ideas, and start considering the effects they have on others.
We use phrases like “just kidding” to distance ourselves from something we’ve said that doesn’t quite fit in the present social situation. I think this reflects how we’ve adapted to the social media revolution, with people having more poking things to say because of a conversational wall that is usually there
I really enjoyed reading your blog because it brought me to a weekend a couple of weeks ago. My friends and I were out at a frat party when a friend of a friend was introducing a brother to us. Let’s say the guy’s name was Steve. So Steve shook the girl’s hands and after they introduced themselves, he said “No offense, but I don’t really care about names.”
We all looked at each other but did not say anything.
About half an hour later my friend Caroline asked Steve to take a picture of the girls… Steve replied with “No offense but I don’t take pictures, I’m IN pictures”
To which Caroline finally replied ” saying NO OFFENSE does not make you any less of a douchebag”
Long story short we don’t like Steve and phrases like “just kidding” and “no offense” have no real meaning.
I think the use of “just kidding” is a way of allowing people to say what is really on their mind without it having the same consequence as it would if they just said it alone. We all have that urge to simply through something out there in conversation, and if it’s bad, it usually just becomes, “oh, I’m just kidding”.
What you wrote about really is true. People are afraid to say what they really mean, or they realize what they said could be considered insulting so they say it doesn’t mean anything. People really do say a lot of meaningless things. We should really think before we speak.