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Is an insult still an insult if the person being insulted interprets the insult as a compliment?

For example, you are called a name, and the person calling you the name thinks the name is insulting, but you interpret the name as flattering.

You're debating the definition of an insult.
In Serious Debate.

So?

This brings up a few of interesting questions- first and foremost, when a message is communicated, which should be given greater importance- the intent of the communicator, an objective, impartial interpretation of the communication, the interpretation of the person/people that have been communicated to, or none of these?

This is the kind of thing that goes in General or Just For Fun.
Serious Debate is related to controversies, political and religious debates.

Says who, exactly?

I guess so, just not a particularity effective one. I mean, for the reverse case, if you accidently insulted someone with a compliment, then after everyone calmed down and was on the same page, everyone would still describe the utterance as an attempted compliment or something along the line, even if they tacked on some sort of verification that it was actually insulting, even if it was a compliment.

Edit: what's with the downvotes to the initial comment? Please fill in the guy with the robo-brain. Is there some sort of subtext or context or something-text that I'm missing? Because it seems like more than a simple yes or no question to me, although I suppose that on it's own is insufficient to categorize something as a serious debate.

From the Serious Debate Guidelines:
"Welcome to Serious Debate, the board where the verbose users are free to speak their mind and where we expect an actual willingness to discuss and debate."
That's literally all I could find, in the Serious Debate Guidelines, and general rules, that could be relevant. So as far as I'm aware, this fits in just fine.

On topic, I believe that the original intention of the speaker is most important. If not, we end up with a single statement which can mean any number of things.

The meaning is still intentional when throwing an insult, so I say yes.

@Max

A serious debate thread doesn't necessarily need to be a "controversy" or a "religious debate", as the rules for Serious Debate are simply keep the thread relevant, don't shitpost, and behave. This thread wouldn't be good for JFF, as this is intended for actual debate and taken with some form of seriousness, while JFF is for more silly threads, whether or not you necessarily want to take the thread seriously. That being said I feel like this thread should be moved to General, since it's more of a light-hearted thread, especially for Serious Debate.

Is an insult still an insult if the person being insulted interprets the insult as a compliment? 4 negative karma, moved to general, most of the conversation in every post talking about stuff off topic to original point.

I don't think so. The point of an insult is to… insult someone. If they don't take it as such, it's not really that insulting, is it? I guess it all depends on whether the point is to merely deride someone in front of others, or do it directly to their face or with their knowledge.

Max Birthday said:

Serious Debate is related to controversies, political and religious debates.

Serious debate's for anything you want to debate seriously. There could be a thread about whether tomatoes are fruits or vegatables and, so long as it is intended to be serious, with discussions over a tomato's biological design or the Nix v Hedden SCOTUS decision, it would fit right in.