beefing by cutting
the social mores of the regency era of britannia were no less subtle than our own.
gentlemen of the era—different modes of social sniping were gendered—made use of the cut to express contempt for another. the cut, essentially, was a refusal to acknowledge the presence of another, and was a devastating social attack when executed skillfully.
a honed art, the cut was taxonomized into numerous varieties. in order of ascending offensiveness, a few options (although many more have been identified):
The cut infernal, in which a gentleman ignored the presence of another by kneeling and pretending to lace his shoes;
The cut sublime, in which he pretended to stare off into the distance at some imagined cloud formation or steeple;
The cut modest, wherein a gentleman simply looked away from his target and neglected to acknowledge his presence;
Cruelest of all, the cut direct: staring an adversary in the face and, in spite of the common knowledge of all present, pretending not to know him.
cuts were essentially refined passive aggression. the idea was to publicly express another’s exclusion from one’s own sphere, and put the victim in an incredibly awkward spot. an exemplar executed from two luminaries of the age, from a victorian retelling:
It is well known, in all probability, that George IV contemplated with as much disgust and horror the increasing rotundity of his ‘presence’ as ever a maiden lady of a certain age did her first grey hair. Soon after the bell affair, the royal beau met his former friend [Beau Brummel] in St. James’s Street, and resolved to cut him. This was attacking Brummell with his own pet weapon, but not with success. Each antagonist was leaning on the arm of a friend. ‘Jack Lee,’ who was thus supporting the Beau, was intimate with the Prince, who, to make the cut the more marked, stopped and talked to him without taking the slightest notice of Brummell. After a time both parties moved on, and then came the moment of triumph and revenge. It was sublime! Turning round half way, so that his words could not fail to be heard by the retreating Regent, the Beau asked of his companion in his usual drawl, ‘Well, Jack, who’s your fat friend?’ The coolness, presumption, and impertinence of the question perhaps made it the best thing the Beau ever said, and from that time the Prince took care not to risk another encounter with him.
component analysis of the cut as a mechanism for beefing
what are we moderns to make of the cut? let us consider some of its features.
the cut was passive-aggressive rather than aggressive. by this, i mean that contempt is expressed indirectly rather than directly. no viewer would mistake the cut as anything but aggression, but an element of plausible deniability put the onus of explicit conflict on the recipient of a cut.
the cut was performative in practice. while one might execute a cut in private, its effectiveness would be quite limited. the point was to force another into an awkward social position and force them to react on the fly, in front of an audience.
by making a beef very public in dramatic fashion, the cut pressured third parties to take sides, or at least to be parties to the beef. of course they may not have wished for this in the least; one might make comparisons to moderns who impress unwilling onlookers into participating in the public fetishes as voyeurs.
of these features, the first was an appropriate adaptation for a civil society. when personal violence is verboten under local norms, aggression is best carried out as a war of maneuvers rather than a war of destruction. this fosters creativity in beefing and limits its non-social impact, which i generally see as a net positive.
the element of performance was essential to the cut’s effectiveness. telling another they are dead to you in private is effective but not socially devastating. doing the same with plausible deniability in a social gathering is a display of untethered social power. while i do not see this as virtuous, one might view the effectiveness of a social method as neutral in isolation.
the final element—forcing at least the passive participation of onlookers in the humiliation of another—is the clearest antisocial element of the cut. typically randos want no part in the beef of third parties, by revealed preference of not taking part. a public demonstration of a beef at the very least forces others to no longer be able to cling to polite plausible denial of a conflict, and often serves as a catalyst for a cascade of allegiance. Needless to say this tends to be destructive to an existing social order.
occasionally this is called for, if such quiet avoidance is done in the passive service of a real crime, but most beefs are entirely petty and cuts direct or otherwise serve only to force the participation of unwilling thirds at their own expense. for this reason I tend to oppose the cut as a social maneuver despite their utility to users.