Weird humour or am I overthinking it?

[IcebergToes]

I've recently made friends with two men, A and B. I met A through mutual friends and then A introduced me to B. We all got on really well, sometimes I would hang out with A and sometimes with both A and B. We don't know each other that well, so most of our time is spent on superficial subjects and making each other laugh. We're all pretty busy so we only meet up maybe once a week and we WhatsApp every 2 or 3 days, not as a group chat, that's just how often I talk to them. I imagine they talk and meet up with each other more often as they have been friends for much longer.

Just before Christmas I was invited out with them and another mutual friend but I couldn't make it. I did text A that evening to ask how things were going and if they had found a good pub. Just three short messages. A few hours later, I get a voice message from A's phone (but B's voice) replying to my messages saying "It's none of your business" and I could hear the other two laughing in the background. Then a text saying "Whose voice is that?". I thought it was a bit odd and I felt a bit stupid, so I didn't reply.

The next day B text saying "you're not upset about my message, are you? 🙄" I replied that it was a bit weird, but don't worry about it. He then replied "sorry about that 🙄". The conversaton ended and a few days later everything continued as normal. I figured that he probably just wanted to say something to me that evening but didn't really know what to say, so ended up saying something that wasn't actually funny.

A few days later, we were chatting on WhatsApp and he told me he had been doing a masters, I asked what in and he told me. I said I'd never heard of that and he replied "duh, everyone's heard of it". I assumed that was just his humour (because it was clearly a niche subject) and I continued chatting about other things.

Yesterday, I asked over WhatsApp about his masters and he was confused and asked who had told me that he had been doing postgraduate studies. I said that it was him who told me. He laughed and said he wasn't doing a masters and was probably drunk when he said it. I said that if I ever ask anything that's remotely serious, he deflects and talks nonsense but I can't tell when he's joking or telling the truth. After that he said he was drinking, didn't want to end up talking nonsense and so will talk to me another time.

I feel like I've offended him, but equally his jokes are weird and I don't know what to do with them.

They are both unbelievably childish and nasty. Run.

It's classic gaslighting.

Doing a masters is a weird thing to joke about, even if you are drunk.

I came here after the other thread.

Firstly, the reference to Gransnet by PP wasn’t funny. I think it was meant to be insulting. Haha, old people and their boring ways.

Integrated Current is a thing, but it’s been 30+ years since I did physics (with electricity specialist subject even) and I wouldn’t remember what it is and it was 100% not funny.

It sounds like person B has a drink problem and gets grandiose and bullshitting when he’s drunk. He’s bad news. Or boring news at best.

I'm not fond of people who take the piss but you don't know them well enough to know if it's meant to be friendly or they're just being nasty. I'd avoid.

Thanks for that. It's interesting to know that it's an actual subject. I now think that it was never meant to be a joke, but a way to answer my question without actually answering it.

I remember once chatting to A and he told me that he had been somewhere but didn't want B to know where, so when B asked, A told him that he had been at the library. I said that his excuse made no sense as the library wouldn't be open that late. He said that he knows, and because of that, B will understand that he doesn't want him to ask such questions. I thought that was a really convoluted way of saying "I don't want to talk about it".

Maybe B was doing the same with me. Maybe to him it was so obvious that he wasn't studying the masters, that I would then know to stop asking. Doesn't make it any less weird.

A and B seem to have developed their own way of interacting and they are roping you in. It’s either too early as you don’t know them that well, or they are a bit strange.

They sound an immature pair of pub bores.

Anyone making digs at others and being rude then dressing it up as ‘lighten up it’s a joke’ are the sort of dickheads not worth wasting time on.

Sounds like your sense of humours don't match. Not a big deal.

They sound like a proper pair of dicks. How exhausting! I would move on OP, leave them to their silly games.

We have a very similar sense of humour in person. But over WhatsApp, B becomes a bit strange. There is the possibility that he made up the masters to sound impressive - a bit odd to then totally forget about it though. I would be so embarrassed if I was caught lying.

He ended the conversation pretty soon after I had said about the masters thing, so he clearly wasn't happy about my comments relating to it.

I guess I'm clinging on to the friendship because in person we get on really well. But equally I can't seperate that from the person who makes up weird things and seems unable to talk about anything of any consequence. I have a feeling the friendship will quickly become boring. It's tainted my view of A, too. I can't shake off the feeling that I'm just a bit of a joke to them both.

These aren’t friends they are taking the mick.

During the week do A and B usually text you first, or do you text them individually because you spend a lot of time during the week thinking about them?

On an average day, how often would you think about A or B?

I'm just wondering if you are too reliant on these particular men as friends and therefore over-focused on them.

Then you end up working hard to maintain this friendship, not because you like these two people and know that they care about you and your interests, but because you feel needy about this friendship in some other way.

Especially if you are female and they are men, you might feel needy and approval-seeking towards men friends like this.
Sometimes that prevents us from seeing that people are not genuinely caring towards us.

Might be an idea to widen your circle of friends or seek more social events like classes or activities.

They sound like they were taking the piss doing that voice message.

""I remember once chatting to A and he told me that he had been somewhere but didn't want B to know where, so when B asked, A told him that he had been at the library. I said that his excuse made no sense as the library wouldn't be open that late. He said that he knows, and because of that, B will understand that he doesn't want him to ask such questions""

Are they the same culture? I'd have taken the first incident as a bad drunken joke. I think that as a pp said, B drinks more than you realise. He's definitely socially awkward and a bit of a piss taker. There's definitely issues there.

Completely agree.

Can I ask whether A and B are of the same culture? And is their culture one where traditionally men don't see women as equal to them?

You sent three texts while they were out. Don't you think they might have just found that annoying?

It was three messages in succession:
'Hi'
'Did you find a pub to go tonight?'
'Or is everythig closed?'

It wasn't that I prompted him several times throughout the night to talk to me.

I start conversations as often as they do. It's not like I keep trying to get them to talk to me.