Category Archives: Stereotypes/Blason Populaire

Comedic Ritual

Age: 20

The Story:

“I’m going to tell a story about an improv comedy club on campus. We have a lot of initiation rituals that are funny and weird and cute. I remember when I first got on the team my freshman year, that night they called you, it’s like a football draft. You audition for two teams and then they all take turns picking who they want. I got picked by my team, then I got a phone call from an unknown number to  meet me at this location on campus. They told me to meet them at *REDACTED*, which is like this little stage. “

“I went there and it’s like the middle of night, it’s like 10 p.m. and I was alone and it was dark for a little while. I thought ‘what did I sign up for?’ then they all were like dark clothes and like cloaks and they yell like comedy rules out in the woods. Then all at once they scream and yell at you to get to the stage. It was like a medieval theme going on in there. After getting to the stage, then they knight you, so you get on your knees, and then they knight you in the name of the club. It’s all in the middle of the night and terrifying, and then they take you to a secondary location.”

Pretty much all the teams do this, they kidnap their noobs, they’re called the noobs, they’re the new people, then they bring them to this diner called *REDACTED*. The staff already know just right now because it’s been happening for years. And then they treat you to just a really nice meal at this diner.

Reflection:

The informant’s story was a perfect example of how in certain folk groups, folk members must go through rites of passage to fully be accepted into the respective folk group. Additionally, it highlights the specific rituals in place amongst acceptance. I thought it was very interesting to see that these rites of passage were not only an act of dedication, but mutually were an opportunity to show the understanding of the traditions and morals of the respective folk group trying to be joined. On a more personal note, it was interesting to see some of the stigmas I may carry about clubs with rituals be broken down or disproved by an actual perspective. I, as the outsider to the folk group, had my own connotations that did not actually align with the personal experience of an actual member of the folk group. Further, it lessened any stereotypes that I carry when hearing about group initiations when hearing of clubs. I realized that in believing that many club initiations are harmful or taboo, I participated in watering down the culture and lived experience of participants of those folk groups instead of having a direct contact and understanding.

Left-Handed People Are Evil 

Text: My roommate JS’s grandmother believes that left-handed people are evil. JS himself is left-handed.

Context: Told to me by JS one evening in our apartment. His grandmother’s family is from Texas, and the belief came down through her own family’s Catholic-inflected Mexican folk tradition. JS describes the belief as something his grandmother says with a considerable degree of humor, often teasingly, often when the topic of left-handed people comes up. They laugh together about the contradiction between the stated belief and his own existence as her left-handed grandchild. 

Analysis: What is interesting about JS’s case is that the belief is doing none of the work it was originally meant to do, and yet it still circulates, just in a different way. She says it teasingly, often when JS is in the room, and the two of them laugh about the obvious contradiction between the rule she is pretending to hold and the left-handed grandson she is pretending to call evil. The belief has been domesticated into a running family joke. The “left as evil” belief is one of the most widely distributed folk beliefs in the world, showing up in Latin Catholic, Chinese, Islamic, and Hindu traditions with varying degrees of severity. The Latin American Catholic version draws on the Latin sinister (left meaning unlucky in Roman augury), the goats placed on the left at final judgment in the bible, associations of the left hand with the devil’s preferred side. What JS and his grandmother share is the belief’s late life: a folk rule that has lost its teeth, but is yet useful, here as the setup of a joke that grandmother and grandson perform together.

Induction Pranks of Passage TTRPGs

The Informant

GL is a long time tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) player with years of experience as a Game Master (a special role in TTRPGs). When I first asked about Induction Pranks in TTRPGs, GL had some time to discuss with some other members of the community before our interview.

The Text

The informant reports a few different induction pranks and common shared experiences that qualifies someone as a member of the TTRPG community, distinctly differentiating two sets between GMs and players. For Game Masters, the common experience is dealing with the first problem player, a whole subset of narrative genres emerging from this experience can be found on the subreddit r/RPGHorrorStories. The informant cites chaotic and evil player characters, which is a distinct tradition of D&D alignment stemming from Original Dungeons and Dragons. When he exchanges stories with other GMs, while telling success stories can be fun, tales of how terrible a particular player was to work with is an effective way of relating to each other. For players, while the informant reports that the community is generally averse to gatekeeping in recent years due to the nerdy and niche reputation and history the game has, he recounts how older players in the OSR community will put new players through the “death funnel,” a meat grinder dungeon that will kill several player characters to get the player accustommed to the brutal game style of older games. We discussed how this reflects a cultural shift in the TTRPG landscape in the modern age where players become more attached to their characters and think of themselves as the hero of the story whereas older D&D is more about the dungeon crawl, with any given character not expected to live through the story.

We then talked about unique signifers of the TTRPG player identity, such as maps and miniatures, which led to our discussion of how conversely, despite being a “tabletop” game, most TTRPGs can be played without a map or grid or any miniatures at all with the “theater of mind,” which we agreed was very unique to TTRPGs as wargames tend to rely on a grid or map and the miniature sets. Extending from that, we discussed how owning a set of dice can identify a TTRPG player, particular the 20-sided dice, which is hardly ever used for any other game and iconic to D&D. If someone owns a cohesive themed set of dice from 4-sided to 6, 8, 10, 12, and 20, then that is a sure certain sign of a TTRPG player. In a way, the moment a player buys their own set of dice instead of borrowing someone else’s indicates a commitment and thus induction to the community. The other example he talked about was creating one’s own first character, which players nowadays are more likely to be attached to as mentioned earlier. Even though the character may never be played in an actual game, a TTRPG player can likely be identified by their excitement to share their character ideas, character sheet build, or even stories involving that character from a game.

Analysis

This was a particularly interview as the informant came prepared, giving a blason populaire about his own ingroup of fellow GMs and particularly problematic players who play chaotic and evil characters, citing a specific experience that identifies a particular community. Older players also have an “induction prank” for newer players when playing older systems to shatter their idea of TTRPGs before welcoming them to the experience, but it’s also interesting to note that this hobby doesn’t try to gatekeep newcomers with anything that could be qualified as hazing. Aside from the “death funnel” and Gary Gygax’s Tomb of Annihilation dungeon designed to kill player characters, we both thought of a particular video as an another example of this “induction prank” in D&D: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBmNThMZJ1U

“Off record,” he joked that the real hazing is letting new players play 5th edition (a particularly divisve version of the game he dislikes but is otherwise a popular gateway game), but he notes that many other players in the community would disagree with the sentiment of the joke. Noting the uniqueness of TTRPG dice sets, a rite of passage presents itself in the form of buying the first set of dice, an example of Stuart Hall’s reception with the expression of community membership identity performance via consumerism. We laughed about how cheap it is to actually buy a dice set (you can get like a pack of 10 sets of 5 dollars), but at the same time, nobody else would bother with buying such a set of dice.

Less materialistic indications of membership are player characters, where a newcomer exploring the hobby might borrow a prebuilt character while TTRPG players committed to the hobby will not only have the knowledge to build their own characters but be actively invested in them as a proxy of themselves that they would like to roleplay as. In a sense, this is akin to a fantastical identity localized within this particular hobby or at a particular table, and modern players who focus more on the epic narrative of a band of heroes on an adventure invested in the safety and prosperity of their characters as an extension of the performed identity of the self. This is comparable to the process of an initiation ritual for community membership.

Story About a Priest at a Wedding Party

Nationality: Irish

Occupation: Horse Race Track Manager

Residence: Waterford, Ireland

Language: English

Text:

Back in the day Murphy got married, but he hardly remembers it because of how much he had to drink, oh far far too much. At one point during the ceremony the priest came over to him and said “Murphy you are drunk” and Murphy said “how do you know father?” and the priest said “Because you are lying on the floor”. Murphy looked up at the priest and said “that may be true, but the best man is drunker than me” and the priest says “don’t you mean ‘drunker than I’?” and Murphy says “no father, nobody is drunker than you”.

Context:

When my aunt told me this story, she acted like it happened at a wedding that she went to as a child growing up in Dublin; only when I pressed further did she admit it was a story she heard, not one she observed. It is unclear if there was a specific wedding that this actually happened at, but the story had been passed down from her mother, and her friends had heard similar stories elsewhere. When I pressed more, she said that one of her friends heard that story but said it happened in Kerry (in the West of Ireland), and if the story took place there that would feed into stereotypes Irish people have about Kerry.

Analysis:

The way that my aunt acted like this story had happened at a wedding she went to reveals a lot about Irish communities. The idea of a priest being drunk at a wedding is funny, but the story works as a joke because it isn’t completely unreasonable. In many parts of Ireland (less so in Dublin, which is how I knew the story wasn’t a true experience of hers), the priest is a major part of the town’s social network, where he would know everyone and be at any major event like a wedding. However, a priest would also be willing to join in the celebration, which opposes their day to day holy life. Many people in rural Ireland have experienced priests acting in a very normal way outside of their holy work, but this is generally not talked about; this joke is a way of bringing up how priests are human just like everyone else.

Wolf of Wall Street’s got nothing on this…

Nationality: African American

Primary Language: English

Other language(s): French

Age: 65

Occupation: Management Consultant

Residence: Upstate, NY

Performance Date: 4/20/2025

Context: 

My informant, WB, is a family member of mine who lives in the Hudson Valley area of New York. For a while now, I’ve known WB to be quite amazing at spending money, teaching me over the course of my life the concept of not wasting money on things that won’t be intrinsic in some capacity, or I’d end up like ‘another man on the street.’ Now, I always wanted to know what they meant by ‘man on the street,’ and it turns out it wasn’t a saying, metaphorical expression, or proverb, it was a reference to a stereotype they hated, yet held dear: 

Text: 

“Men are better with money than women. Now I don’t believe that but it’s something I grew up hearing. I come from a matriarchal family of successful women who oversaw and currently still oversee the family finances and the family business. They have all fared well and have been given the respect of being good with finances by their male family members and spouses especially. I think that saying came from an attempt for men to control women, like historically. We can look back in history and see when a man married a woman, her riches became his to control. Specifically in the most recent history, Colonial America, who followed the laws of their mother country; husbands controlled the woman’s property!!!” 

Analysis: 

So, this piece reflects a common gender-based folk belief which operates more as a social myth or stereotype than a truthfully grounded in experience. Now what’s compelling here is how the informant challenges the saying from both a personal and historical perspective. They come from a matriarchal family, where women not only handle finances but have consistently done so with success and respect. That alone functions as a counter-example that refutes the original saying and exposes it as culturally constructed rather than inherently true. However, I’ve definitely heard of this stereotype in my own life too, and of course, being related to WB, I never believed it either. The informant then takes it a step further by providing some slight historical context that reveals how the proverb wasn’t just a reflection of beliefs at the time, but also a tool used to justify inequality. And of course, in my research, and general experience in American history courses, yes, this stereotype was used tangibly to oppress women in colonial times and even still now in the digital age. Sadly some things never change. Though what I find most powerful here is that WB doesn’t just dismiss the saying they expose its function as control and offer real evidence from their family to disprove it. This turns the proverb into a kind of anti-folklore, still resembling folklorism though, a saying that survives culturally, even when it’s contradicted by lived experience. It’s also a good example of how folklore can be deeply personal and political at the same time, and how challenging traditional sayings can be part of reclaiming cultural and historical agency.