I'm a man, and literally every male friend I've ever had engages in this kind of banter. If you and your friends don't, you are outliers.
I like how you've defined yourself as the norm and not the GP, even though you're both calling from your personal experience with a sample size of one.
It's fascinating for me to watch these comment threads blow up, I hadn't thought this would take off so much.
It's a constant stream of "but my guys don't do this" "but my guys do do this".
It's all just rephrasing of, well, this is the highbrow culture, and this is the working class culture, and I'm in one or the other and you're abnormal.
The reality is that it's just two different worlds and where they clash things get weird.
Looking at _so many_ responses to my post, almost none of which actually have new content, makes me think this is some sort of dead internet bots vs. bots contest.
Only one side is making positive claims in this thread.
I never made a claim that "all men do X" or that "shop talk and banter are fairly universal". I did point out that I and my friends do not mock our friends and colleagues.
Still avoiding positive claims, but here are some normative claims:
- I object to claiming that mocking is normal and acceptable in all groups of men
- some, not all, working class subcultures use mocking as a shibboleth
- this aspect of those subcultures is not a thing I think "we" should valorize