What To Know Before Joining A Ridicule

Can Pwecious Wittle You Handle Group Taunting?

Tom Navratil
Slackjaw

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Illustration by author

People who have never experienced a ridicule tend to imagine a swirl of couples and threesomes engaging in vigorous, creative sarcasm, 24–7. The reality is more complex, genius breath.

Members of our ridicule interact with each other in myriad ways. If ‘myriad’ is not in your scrawny vocabulary, look it the fuck up. For example, I might choose to gently mimic another person’s speech patterns all night, and the next day join a discussion group to spray spittle-laden invective across the coffee table.

Most people in the ridicule are paired up with a primary derision partner, and then negotiate arrangements for other one-on-one encounters, ranging from scoffing and spoofing to full parody. Or two couples will get together to satirize each other’s partners. Once in a while, the entire ridicule will gather in a room, get comfortable, and enjoy an evening of good-natured ribbing.

We also have members who don’t do derision at all, and only rarely engage in mockery. They’re involved for their own reasons, which is so empowering. Gag.

Face it: every group is probably going to have a loser or two.

But still, there’s plenty of casual sneering to go around, believe me.

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Tom Navratil
Slackjaw

Tom Navratil writes fiction and humor from an undisclosed (because nobody ever asks) location outside Washington, DC.