Just a little bit of banter?

A massive part of friendship is about being able to have a laugh with each other right? Being able to have a joke and poke fun at each other yes? But what happens when it goes too far?

Getting to know each other you find out what their sense of humour is, and what you all find funny. More importantly you find out where to draw the line with that person. One thing about friends, is that you respect each other’s taste in humour and tastes in general.

So mix those two together, all friends poke fun at each other and most of the time it's harmless and just a bit of fun, but occasionally it does go too far and people at times get offended. What makes it worse is that sometimes people don't recognise the problem, what confuses me is why does this happen, and why are people so stubborn to admit where the mistakes lie?

In every friendship group there are certain things everyone takes the piss out of. Take my house for example, we're all amazing friends, but we take the piss out of each other’s accents, where we come from, stuff we do etc etc like every other group of friends do. And everyone has a different sense of humour and everyone has a different sense of what is 'too personal' etc. Everyone can only take so much direct banter, and occasionally people fall out over people taking things too personally. But really is anyone to blame?

When arguments like that happen, no one really is to blame. It's just a case of conflict of humour. If someone gets offended over what someone has joked about at their expense, but meant no personal harm to it. It simply is a case of whoever made the joke should accept that they hurt the feelings of their friend by accident, and apologise. Just as the person who took offence should accept that their friend meant no harm by it. It only takes a minute and the problem is resolved.

But sometimes this doesn't happen and in the heat of the moment people get pissy, which is only natural, but sometimes people don't learn from hurting their friends, because to them it's only a bit of fun. I've seen so many arguments over facebook etc over conflicts in people’s sense of humour. The fact just stands with this. Look at how many people are on your friends list? Do you expect EVERYONE to share the exact same sense of humour as you? No. It's the same with close friendship groups. You might all be close friends, but you don't have the same tastes, or the same feelings.
I personally do think at times that people don't realise they're being offensive, they just see what they're saying as funny and forget what they're saying can offend people. And sometimes after jokes have gone too far, people forget that after that, it only takes the smallest joke to bring all that emotion back again, and it seems that they're being unreasonable, but the they're only acting on their emotions, and people can't help how they feel.

Sometimes people start to feel a little victimised within their group, because as jokes get worn, people tend to take them a step further to keep the humour in them so they don't get old. And there's nothing wrong with that, but when the person who it's aimed at is starting to feel uncomfortable about it, no matter how much you feel it's just a bit of fun, you just stop. Fair enough you don't mean anything by it, but the easiest and the right thing to do is to stop whatever is causing that person to be offended or upset.

I've seen way too many friends fall out over shit like this, and it's really not worth the friendships it's broken.
You might feel you're not doing anything wrong with your jokes, but the reality is that the situation will never go away if you keep throwing the same jabs at people. The cause of the problem is people being upset with what's being said and whether you can justify them being upset by it or not. By ignoring the fact they're upset and carrying on with it, is just holding the problem there.
People don't always seem to accept the differences in people's humour and personal boundaries, and it causes way too many problems. But the easiest way to solving the problem, (and barely anyone does it) is just by removing what’s causing the arguments.
Accept that the person it's aimed at is getting upset and offended, and accept that your friends mean no actual harm by it. It's just their way of having a laugh. It sounds so easy, and to be honest, it really is. I really believe that it's something more people need to recognise.

Rant of the day over... opinions? :) Or email me at Shaneyxcakes@gmail.com for advice/ideas for blog topics :).