YOUR MUM!

…and other such wild accusations cannot really be classed as banter in this day and age, this is largely due to the immaturity factor of such a claim. But, of course, you are no doubt unfamiliar with the immaturity factor; I should explain.

When one wishes to partake in banter, one must first consider a number of factors before just blurting out the first thing that pops into your head. As mentioned above, one such factor is the “Immaturity Factor”. This is quite simply the maturity level which you would expect a statement to come from; the best example of this is the abysmal playground retort “I know you are, but what am I?” This has a maturity level of that of a 6 year old and should never be considered as a good retaliation unless you wish to be ripped to shreds by your peers.

Another very important thing to remember is to make sure the banter is related to what has already been said. That is to say, if a peer produces a direct insult about the size of ones genitals, you must retort with a counter argument in the same vein. Now, this is not to say the more intelligent among you cannot subtly alter the course of the argument by combining two “semi-retaliations”. The best way to show this is with a Gantt Chart.

So, what else is involved in the perfect banter? Well, a small amount of personal knowledge should be known about the target. However, one must not rely on this too heavily because you won’t always have access to such resources and you run the risk of making the banter too personal, which is just not funny. The professional bantarian uses such tools as regional dialects and t-shirts in order to ascertain the area of origin of their target. Regional insults are old classics and will never go out of fashion, but try to avoid the more common insults such as southerners are rich, welsh shag sheep, and northerners are poor. There is a definite saturation of amateur bantarians who simply recite such garbage day in, day out. One must be clever and use regional information, but mould it to their will. For example, we can take the stereotype that southerners are rich, stuck up nonces and magically transform this into a rather delightful bit of banter, thus:

Thus concludes the lesson. Go out, start insulting, but remember the rules and don’t get hurt.