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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the men's remarks aren't often born of envy? It's common for men to say stuff like "That must have cost a pretty penny" or "He must have a small penis", regarding other vehicles.

And let's be honest, a unicycle is pretty amusing. My first impulse would be to make a joke.

Lastly, I'm not at all surprised that women, seeing a man performing a significant act of physical agility, might have some positive emotional reaction.

I'm most impressed by the systematic way the OP collected the statistics!

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Indeeed, I feel there's a defense mechanism in there about the implicit menace in someone doing something beyond your own ability.

Unycicling is easy to put down, but take the message above about running barefoot.

Seeing someone doing something unusual like that, something that people "just don't understand" leads to uncertainty. "Why I don't do that?", "Why I can't do that?"

And since as men we're culturally primed to rubuff such doubts, the response is ridicule: "Because he looks silly, and I'm smarter than him", "Bet he'll get scared if I stomp", etc.

People are so insecure sometimes

> I wonder if the men's remarks aren't often born of envy?

Is there any other way to interpret it? (Genuinely asking!)

Honest attempt at humor perhaps. Recognition of the absurdity of the act. Camaraderie done poorly.

I would bet that at least some portion of these are genuine (failed) attempts at camraderie or playful banter. But much like the cashier-jokes ("no tag, must be free") I bet it becomes really grating after a while. It's probably a novelty to see someone unicycling, but it isn't novel for the rider.

I kind of associate these types of failed jokes with a particular type of awkward middle aged-to-older dude who accidentally puts people down when trying to be funny.

I tend to implicitly associate unicycles with performative comedy. Probably due to a lot of circus and talent-show imagery. If I only had a split second to react to a unicyclist passing by, I might automatically assume that the rider is trying to be funny on purpose. And therefore (my subconscious leaps ahead) that the appropriate social reaction is to respond in kind with whatever humour I can come up with in that split-second, which will probably be an unoriginal and poorly-landing joke.

Ten seconds after saying it, my more considerate thought process will probably realize that the joke wasn't very funny, that the rider probably hears the same "joke" a hundred times per day, and that they might have just been enjoying their solitary unicycling hobby, rather than deliberately putting on a show to amuse the neighbourhood. But by that time they'll have long since passed by, and it would be too awkward to catch up and apologize.

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