How do you change office perception?

[The LadyKiller]

I work in an office of many fellow 20-somethings, and the younger environment is nice. However, the workplace can turn into high school quickly. At the moment, I feel I am on the receiving end of some double-standards among my peers, and I'm not sure the best way to go about changing my perception.

Now to be clear, this doesn't involve our supervisors or managers (who see the amateurism and know I'm saying/doing the right things). Just us 20-somethings who are all at about the same level. I consider myself an upbeat/talkative guy who maintains a positive attitude at work. While I seem to know a lot of people and have some very good friends, a number of others feel and act like I'm a mean guy because......wait for it......I occasionally tweak some good-natured, tongue-in-cheek comments about their sports teams! People make fun of my sports affiliations too, but that doesn't bother me at all - what's fair is fair. But what does bother me is that these people start taking personal shots about my height (I'm not tall) or that I must be taking steroids to stay in such good shape (I'm clean) and they get APPLAUDED!? It's gotten to the point that these same peers don't take it seriously when I congratulate them on something. Even though we're all quite similar and some guys I know say offensive and downright mean things, I get the bad rap?

So, how do I best change this cr*p? I can abruptly become quiet and introverted, but that's not who I am. As a recent response to no one telling me what the problem is, I've become somewhat of the office vigilante, but don't think that's a long-term solution. Some of the newer employees at the company have run into some of my snobbier peers, and I'm not afraid to interject and straighten it out. I have enough clout at the company that those peers won't openly challenge me, plus they would be in the wrong. I am also not shy to doing minor pranks (clean, no risk of injury, doesn't affect the workflow) if I receive any flack from those snobbier folks. Keep it fun.

 

[( . )( . )]

So in other words how do you switch off from an office full of highly strung "wow, just wow" millenial kidults?

Yeah good luck with that one. A prescription of SSRI's like the rest of the country?

Don't call it an Encorpera cage ........It's the future you chose.

 

[The LadyKiller]

Ha! You're correct - it's tough. People are set in their ways and are often too stubborn to admit when they've made a mistake. What is an SSRI?

I was confused about what a "encopera cage" is, but found details in one of your earlier posts. Exactly true. I work in a corporate environment where, due to location, most of our friends are also ones we work with.