Somebody asked why banter in the UK is ‘so top tier’ – 21 answers that will make you proud to be British

13.

‘I remember turning up to a delivery in shorts, and as soon as I got out of the cab it was “Bloody hell geezer, you get those legs mail order?”

“Off Temu, same as your teeth”.’
–widdrjb

14.

‘Sarcasm is the national language.’
–Adventurous-Dog-3786

15.

‘Because we cope with life by being very darkly funny. I’ll give you an example: When my friend was dying of cancer, he did an update of himself on FB in hospital, oxygen in nose and hooked up to all sorts of scary machines and his best mate since they were 4 wrote “Fucksake, all that chemo and you’re STILL a ginger?” And everyone was crying because that was so moving.

‘Pisstaking, banter, sarcasm and understatement are how we communicate. It’s much more sophisticated than outsiders realise. And it starts from the moment you learn to talk.’
–Curious_Reference408

16.

‘It comes from trust, and social testing. In the UK nobody likes you if you can’t take a joke, or if you take yourself too seriously.

‘Guys will roast the shit out of each other because its funny, and because it brings the group together. Being able to laugh at yourself with the group is a sign of trust because friends can get away with calling each other stuff that would usually start a fight if you said it to a complete stranger.’
–No_Effective_4481

17.

‘We’re a small island with a lot of people on it. We spar verbally because at the end of the day we still all have to live together.’
–Hollyhop_Drive

18.

‘It’s ingrained into our culture. My favourite example is good old Thomas the Tank Engine – watch a few of the originals on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean. Every storyline hinges on one train or another taking themselves too seriously, getting knocked down a peg, and learning to laugh at their own mistakes.

‘We start ’em young and go from there.’
–deep-blue-seams

19.

‘We have this unique way of weaponising our language. well that’s what your mum said.’
–malkebulan

20.

‘If you could survive the apprenticeship’s Transit Van Banter to the site at 6 am, you’re now a man, my son.

‘Ancient British Proverb.’
–Top-Confidence-3885

21.

‘Serious answer – because life for the British working classes has generally always been hard. Think less Downton Abbey, more Shameless or This is England.

‘Following the idiom “You have to laugh, otherwise you’d cry”, we adopt dark and sarcastic humour to extract what little humour and joy however we can to endure systemic poverty or financial stresses an bureaucratic oppression.

‘It also becomes a social qualifier on the basis of mental or emotional resilience. You can’t expect somebody who folds and cries at having the piss taken a bit to ‘have your back’, however somebody who can take a harsh joke about themselves and fire back with a sharp retort or witty comeback shows that they can think on their feet and ‘give as good as they get’.

‘Marinade that through a society for several hundred years and there you have it – British piss-taking banter. Pretty much the only thing we reliably export these days and the working folk who made it still get fuck all from the profits.’
–bladefiddler

Source r/AskABrit Image Screenshot