Don't you be talking trash about my mother!

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It's a pop culture trope that people get incredibly worked up when someone insults their mother in some generic way. The insult is never seems particularly hurtful, particularly since insulter often couldn't possibly know whether it's true.

I have never done this, could not imagine myself doing so, and have never seen anyone else do it. Why would you even care? It seems so stylised, kinda like when the benches empty in baseball.

Have you ever done this? Have you ever seen anyone else do it? Stories please. (It doesn't count if insulter knows the insult is true/justified and it is very hurtful, as in "you're mother is a drunk" when she's an alcoholic or something.)

Side-discussion: best mother insult? Mine: you're mother is so fat that it is noteworthy, which is why I bring it to your attention.

― caek (caek), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 20:33 (twenty years ago)

Your mother's so ugly I wouldn't fuck her with your dick.

― bobilly, Wednesday, 26 April 2006 20:38 (twenty years ago)

I fear this thread is about to turn

http://www.lynwodemanor.co.uk/g/stress.jpg

― Ricky Nadir (noodle vague), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 20:40 (twenty years ago)

too late.

― Man Man (kenan), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 20:42 (twenty years ago)

and have never seen anyone else do it

for real?

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 21:01 (twenty years ago)

Mr T should intervene with a rendition of "Treat Your Mother Right"

― JTS (JTS), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 21:25 (twenty years ago)

i had a kid come up to me at a bus stop in high school asking why i insulted his mama. He had some friends with him. he was younger than me. he got all up in my face. i didn't insult his mother. i didn't even know him. i was just walking by with my girlfriend. i explained to him that i didn't insult his mother, and that i don't even know his mother. i might have been frightened, and i was definitely caught off guard. he obviously wanted to start a fight with me, or make me back down. i backed down, he won.

― brontosaur, Wednesday, 26 April 2006 21:29 (twenty years ago)

You won

― bobilly, Wednesday, 26 April 2006 21:30 (twenty years ago)

well, by my standards i won. by his standards, he won.

and since the thread is about why people get super duper upset when someone insults their theoretical mother, its all about seeing who is the alpha-male, someone either backs down or gets beat up. i was the lesser male in this situation.

― brontosaur, Wednesday, 26 April 2006 21:36 (twenty years ago)

having a 'mama joke' arsenal(and flair for delivery) was integral to making it through junior high with dignity intact, at least for black kids. It hadn't even occured to me that it was possible to be offended until I was in college and a dude whose mother had died made it clear he didn't want to be included in the snapping session that was starting up.
It's just a contest of cleverness and showmanship(in which you not 'yo mama' is the object to be destroyed), the 'mama' is almost proverbial, although if there's the right comfort level between friends you can actually talk about their real mama or daddy without things getting too testy.

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 21:43 (twenty years ago)

xpost yeah dude just wanted to fight you. oldest trick in the book, he might not have made it up technically but thugs who wanted to fight back in school somehow always had a flunkie on hand who would play instigator and say you said something, as if they needed a justifiable pretense(see: Bush/Iraq/Powell/UN) to greenlight an attack

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 21:50 (twenty years ago)

yeah, my situation doesn't really have much to do with the yo momma joke template. thats obviously just cleverness and showmanship. i mean if the kid had come up and insulted my mother, then it would have made more sense, i could have come back with something, no matter how lame. but it wouldn't have made much sense to tell a yo momma when thats the sort of thing he's upset about.

my situation is more like: "you scuffed my shoes! get down there and clean my shoes.", points to tiny imperfection in shoe.

i never cleaned anyone's shoes. i don't even think i ever stepped on anyone's shoes.

i wonder what made me such a target?

― brontosaur, Wednesday, 26 April 2006 21:52 (twenty years ago)

i wonder what made me such a target?

you're svelte and wear stylish sweaters = perfect storm of hateability
I would have kicked your ass in Costa Mesa if Ned hadn't stepped in! that meddling bastard!

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 22:18 (twenty years ago)

well, i was svelte back in the day, but i certainly wasn't stylish. maybe it was my raw sex appeal... and my acne.

i could've taken the both of ya, but your woman was there and i didn't want to embarass you.. or mess up my sweater.

i guess i should throw in a yo momma joke here to keep it on topic... uhm..

"yo momma is so ugly, i wouldn't even fuck her with your dick."

― brontosaur, Wednesday, 26 April 2006 22:27 (twenty years ago)

that's the spirit!

― tremendoid (tremendoid), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 22:31 (twenty years ago)

jhoshea, yes, I have never seen this happen. Might be worth noting here that I'm British.

― caek (caek), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 23:14 (twenty years ago)

http://www.futurama-madhouse.com.ar/grabs/4acv14/414nl-47.jpg

"Your Mother!"

― Trayce (trayce), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 23:17 (twenty years ago)

Once some asshole rockabillies came up to me and my mate Henry going "ere did you give my little brother shit last night? YOU DID MAN WE SAW YOU". Henry having not even been in town the night before was baffled and trying to deny it and they got more and more threatening...

...until, bless her, my 4'11 grandma came storming over, said "YOU LEAVE THOSE YOUNG KIDS ALONE!!!" at the rockers. Who stopped suddenly, looked extremely contrite and mumbled "sorry m'am. Must have the wrong person" and buggered off!

'speckt for their mums and grannies, I guess. It was pretty funny.

― Trayce (trayce), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 23:20 (twenty years ago)

My mother is so dumb she didn't teach me the difference between "your" and "you're" when posting to ILE (works better written down).

― caek (caek), Wednesday, 26 April 2006 23:20 (twenty years ago)

Insulting someone's Mom, when I was a kid, was a definite taboo unless you were just plain stupid and crying for a beatdown. Mothers, no matter how ugly, were never mentioned in heated moments.

― Jay Vee's Return (Manon_69), Thursday, 27 April 2006 00:03 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, it can be about the alpha-male thing, but a lot of the time it's just this cultural artifact. I remember a guy in fourth grade getting upset to the point of tears over someone saying something about his mother, but he wasn't aggressive about it at all.

― Dan I. (Dan I.), Thursday, 27 April 2006 01:18 (twenty years ago)

I was totally puzzled by this as well. People at school would often use variatioons on "I fucked your mum last night," and I'd just be baffled: "Are you serious? That's gross! She's 25 years older than you!" Sometimes they'd even shorten it to just saying "ya mum!" as a retort. It always struck me as extremely weak and unimaginative, and not in the slightest bit offensive.

― Andrew (enneff), Thursday, 27 April 2006 01:59 (twenty years ago)

These jokes don't translate well into Italian! I had a flatmate refuse to speak to me for a couple of days when I started off with what I thought was the equivalent of "yo mama she so fat..." and laughted instead of finishing it. I didn't realise that the phenomenon hadn't made it to that part of the world and he genuinely thought I was calling his mother (who he cherished as only Italian men can) fat!

Oh how we laughed about it afterwards...

― Kv_nol (Kv_nol), Thursday, 27 April 2006 09:14 (twenty years ago)

http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2006/04/30/the_rallying_re.php

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Sunday, 30 April 2006 16:56 (twenty years ago)

I like this thread.

― Tracey Hand (tracerhand), Sunday, 30 April 2006 20:48 (twenty years ago)

Side-discussion: best mother insult?

'Your mother holds you down while your father f***s you up the a***'. A friend once yelled this at a taxi driver and he got out of his car and chased her down the road.

― ratty, Sunday, 30 April 2006 20:50 (twenty years ago)

hahaha holy shit, I'd never be able to say that without cracking up halfway through it.

One of my favorites -- "ya mama so fat, the back of her neck looks like a pack of hot dogs."

― pixel farmer (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 30 April 2006 20:57 (twenty years ago)

five years pass...

My mom called me for the third time in about seven years about weird threatening phone calls. She never goes to the police about it because who would stalk some fat old lady in a wheelchair. I don't know what to do, I told her she has to report harassing phone calls to the police. But people think that if it's an old person, it's not to be taken seriously.

― โตเกียวเหมียวเหมียว aka Colored on TV! (Mount Cleaners), Wednesday, 28 March 2012 18:38 (fourteen years ago)

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