Additionally, as you can see, it's listed right over there in my dislikes that I hate insults veiled as jokes. Using the 'I was just kidding' backpedal excuse when you've insulted someone pisses me off like the sight of those giant crosses of Doom over at Fort God (and those crosses make me pretty damn pissed. I wonder how much money it took to build those things? Money that could have been better spent a billion other places, like a charity or something. But that's another rant). Look, I know what satire and sarcasm are. Douglas Adams and Dave Barry are two of my favorite authors, for Christ's sake. But there's a difference between funny and being an ass.

And regardless of whether or not you really were just joshing, if you hurt someone, it doesn't matter. Putting it off as a joke and shirking the responsibility of hurting someone's feelings is definitely the behavior of an ass.

Now I know there are times when people (such as me) can misunderstand a joking comment, or take a jest for vitriol. But when you directly insult someone without any diction or other tone marker to indicate you were only kidding, then you can't use that excuse to save yourself.

Not that the rant offended me that much, except for that first brief surge of annoyance and anger when I read it and then that guy's response. Mostly it's just this practice of calling something a 'joke' instead of taking some fucking responsibility that I wanted to bitch about. Grr.