No Offense, But...

I was getting ready to go out for Valentine's Day dinner.  I looked good. I smelled good. Then, a friend from my floor came into my room....

"That's what you're going out in?!  No offense, but you look hideous!"

Granted, I didn't exactly match.  But my skinny jeans and colorful floral top paired with a striped scarf and purple Converse shoes were all part of my statement of expression.... right? Even though I had felt confident two minutes before, I'll admit that my friend's comment made me wonder if I did actually look hideous.  Even though she began her insult with "No offense, but..." her words were no less offensive.  Imagine that.

That wasn't the first time I had heard it.  During a conversation with another friend recently, he admitted that his first impression of me wasn't a good one, saying that, "No offense," but upon first meeting me, he actually thought I was pretty strange.

We've all gotten a "No offense, but..." insult.  Personally, I've never understood this rhetorical tactic.  Urbandictionary.com defines it as "a phrase used to make insults seem socially acceptable," or explicitly, "something you say right before you offend the living shit out of someone."

In class, we've been discussing the role of pathos and ethos, or character and emotion, in effective public speaking.  Now I'll give my friends a little credit. I know their criticisms were meant to be constructive; neither of them would ever set out to hurt my feelings.  However, as rhetors with me as their audience, they destroyed my opinion of their ethos in the conversation.  In saying, "No offense, but..." they were in reality telling me that they were well aware of the offensiveness of their comments but had decided to make them anyway. They also did not consider the fact that injuring an audience's pathos is a very unlikely way to persuade them.  Their words proceeding, "No offense, but..." only caused me to become defensive, and when an audience gets defensive, a rhetor may as well be talking to washing machine.  As soon as I heard, "No offense, but..." I discredited their lines.  If making a comment can only be justified by turning it into a "No offense, but..." phrase, that comment may be better off left unsaid.