"No Offense"
Written by Chloe Crawford, Former Student on Tuesday, January 13, 2015
“I bet you weigh like two pounds!” a friend jokes as we sit around the lunch table. I laugh off one of the back-handed compliments that I’ve grown used to, but think of how it’s not the first I’ve heard about my size that day. That followed by the term “no offense” are some words heard a lot on a daily basis.
If you listen around you’ll hear a lot of asteism being passed around by students to each other. Just because backhanded compliments are passed around a lot and that term is then followed by a laugh or “no offense,” does not make them okay. It does mean the person who is receiving these so called “compliments” is okay with them because they laugh it off.
If you look up the term “backhanded compliment” the first thing to come up is the Wikipedia page describing an insult. Some people will look at a backhanded compliment and say well it’s half of a compliment so it’s not bad! Correction, just because it is half of a compliment, does not exclude that it is also half of an insult.
When you look up the term “no offense” confusion of the actual definition pops up. How are we supposed to use this term? A website that typically states the definitions of slang heard in pop-culture known as Urbandictionary.com, says no offense is used before or after saying something insulting. This is how most people use it today, though the original purpose of the term is to be used when saying something that could be taken offensively, but is not intended to be offensive or hurtful.
Remember how in middle school they started to lecture all of us about bullying? They never mentioned that no offense could be seen as a bullying tactic. It’s not as bad as physically harming another person, or calling them names, or any of the other topics teachers or concerned parents really covered, but it’s still bad to think of using no offense or back-handed compliments to cover up an insult.
So, it might be a little cliché or cheesy, but think back to what they told you about bullying in middle school, which was think before you post or say something in order to spare someone else’s feelings, because something that could be seen as funny or covered up to you, might be really hurtful to somebody else.
