I wanted to say something like your comment is just 1st order making people feel bad about 0th order making people feel bad, but then I'd be 2nd order making you feel bad about 1st order making people feel bad about 0th order making people feel bad, so then I just thought about how I felt and it was bad. What a mess. Good points about the importance of choosing a good peer group, I totally agree. It's really hard when you have more than one group.
Interestingly, I've learned to love having more than one peer group. I felt like a floater all through high school and college, like I didn't belong anywhere, but around age 30 I started viewing that as a source of strength rather than of weakness, and "I belong everywhere" rather than "I don't belong anywhere". My wife and many of my close friends (that don't belong to any particular peer group) are the same way.
There's a certain irony where, although it sometimes feels lonely being a floater, such people often seem to have higher status when viewed from the outside. They're confident enough to not be defined by their peer group, after all. Few people are, and many people wish they were.
Thanks for the positivity, it's hard to remember that how you see yourself is not how others see you. Whenever other people tell me that others look up to me I'm like wtf are you talking about. I have about five major peer groups, it's kind of like the jack of all trades, master of none conundrum.
It would depend on what you were actually feeling behind your appraising comment, would it not?
On the one hand, one tacitly feels contemptuous towards the other group and tries to come across as dispassionate in their appraising comment. On the other hand, one feels considerate (or neutral) and simply calls a spade a spade in their appraising comment.
When you take the entire context of people's interactions over time into consideration, the former is likely to be hurting (overall) and the later is likely to be helping (overall) even though certain specific instances may come across as the opposite.
tl;dr - feelings and vibes (over time) matter more than words (in individual instances).
