A scene worthy of a hidden camera. In line 5 of the Paris metro, from Gare de l’Est to get to Pantin, in Seine-Saint-Denis, the loud voice of a man close to me makes me jump. Obviously, he is confused on the phone. “I’m going to get you up in the air!” »he threatens.
I quickly understand that at the end of the line is his girlfriend, to whom he serves a more than flowery vocabulary to justify his infidelities. “Last time I had hormones, so I fucked that female dog. The others are all whores. But you are a queen. And a queen, she is patient and takes it upon herself. » Obviously.
Before concluding with: “I have already beaten the demon of violence, it only remains for me to defeat the one of sex. Don’t worry, I’m a man, I have needs and I’m still young. But in ten or twenty years, I will stop. » As I listen to him bragging about his performance and have a nervous giggle that I try to hide – like the other passengers – I can’t help but think of his sweetheart. How can she stay on the phone with him? How is it possible to be so blind to such red alerts? Is she a victim of domestic violence?
This man is what is called a walking “red flag”, or a “red flag”, in good French. The term characterizes without distinction a man or a woman who emits disqualifying signals from the start of a romantic encounter, whether by behavior or by a personality trait that we quickly guess is toxic.
Historically, this expression comes from military jargon. The armed forces plant a purple flag to express a potential danger, and therefore encourage people to take precautions. Like at the beach, where these little bits of crimson fabric regularly prevent us from going swimming. Even in our mailboxes, the spam filter uses it as an emoticon.
A viral expression
In 2021, the official Twitter account (now X) posts the message: “I’m not on Twitter” (“I’m not on Twitter”), accompanied by 20 red flags, just to emphasize that staying away from such an essential social network makes you someone resolutely out of the race. Two days later, the Bescherelle account writes: ” As of today “ with 10 standards, to underline the fault of language. Since then, as soon as a user tweets something perceived as problematic, they get tons of scarlet banners.
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