My European Trip, Part 6: Beta Confrontation
I was supposed to make this the final part of my European trip posts, but it was taking too long to write. Not only would it be inhumanly long and earn me my usual complaints about writing lengthy posts, it was creating a long gap in my posting. So I’m breaking up what was supposed to be my final post on this topic into 3 parts.
The BMOG (Beta Male Other Guy)
I’ve always had a problem with two social scenarios. Friends acting dickish to me and confrontation of a passive-aggressive, snarky, sarcastic variety. When a stranger acts overtly dickish to me, calling them on it is not a problem, but when it’s a friend it always used to catch me off-guard or make me doubt what was happening because I would often refuse to believe what my senses were telling me. This was especially true the closer I was to the person. As for the passive-aggressive confrontation, this used to be a problem for me because people who are really skilled at it know how to be just aggressive enough to let a sting be felt by their words, but passive enough that they could deny malicious intent if you call them on it and make you look like you’re the one overreacting. And if they’re really good at being passive-aggressive or you doubt your instincts in the slightest way, they can honestly make you wonder if you are imagining insults and being too sensitive. Or maybe you are overreacting.
Stephen Colbert: Basic Snarky Sarcasm = "Brilliant Political Commentary"
I always hear other men complain about having to watch out for alpha males in social situations, but I think in our feminized society this is an outdated concern. You have more to worry about from a beta male sneakily chipping away at you in a social situation with subtle, cutting remarks calculated to make you look bad while looking somewhat innocent in nature. These people have spent a lifetime honing these bitch skills, and to compete with them on it when you are not used to being in that mindset is suicide, similar to being a weekend warrior who picks up a basketball once a month at the playground going up against an NBA player. People like this, the Mo Roccas and Stephen Colberts of the world, usually spend just about every waking moment looking for an opportunity to be sarcastic or snarky, and have also gotten the balance between passive and aggressive just right to the point they can always deny having done anything wrong.
There was a guy I knew that was filled with these subliminal cheap shots, backhanded compliments and stealth insults, and it drove me crazy for several reasons. First, that type of behavior is catty and not unlike a teenage girl. It’s true beta male behavior. Second, if you return in kind and start responding with your own sarcastic comments, backhanded compliments and stealth insults, you just end up with two people looking like bitches rather than one. Both of you lose, and neither of you impress anyone, or at least anyone worth impressing. It’s a race to the bottom. Third, if you let it slide, you get a gnawing feeling of being punked and having let a person get over on you. Fourth, if you call them on the carpet, you look like an overreacting brute in a society that penalizes a man for doing real man shit.
The more intellectual a person deems himself to be, and the more arrogant he is about his own perceived intellect (doesn’t matter if the person is actually smart, just that he believes himself to be exceptionally so), the more likely he is to engage in this beta behavior. In Europe, particular Amsterdam, I found there were a lot more intellectual people there. And I mean sincerely intellectual, not the Stuff White People Like type of intellectual you find in big, American cities where people think they are brilliant freethinkers just for listening to NPR, pretending to like soccer, eating organic produce from Whole Foods and working Bush-bashing into every conversation they can. The intellectuals I found in Europe really had some interesting things to say about a wide variety of topics and showed some real intellectual curiosity.
The probing conversations I had with some of these types were a big plus of my trip. We discussed philosophy, world history, race, gender roles, happiness, great thinkers, Americas soft culture, and a host of other topics. Unfortunately, there was also a negative: having to deal with a small group of these intellectuals who were very arrogant about their European superiority and would look to engage in the beta confrontation I described above, especially once they discovered I was American.
Mo Rocca - Ultimate Embodiment of Snarky Beta Male
I found with the European variety of beta jerk, there are two stereotypes they would have about Americans. They either would think you were a stupid, testosterone fueled neanderthal that was too crude and unrefined to grasp the subtle nuances of irony and sarcasm and they could insult you to your face on all the reasons why America was evil and stupid and you wouldn’t get it. Or you were the type of intellectual American that was savvy and nuanced enough to grasp irony and sarcasm, in which case they expected you to be a Europhile and a self-hating American, a latte liberal from a big city that would agree with all the America-bashing he had to share, lament at your misfortune at being born in such a stupid, evil country and would bend over backwards to prove how much more enlightened you were than the average American neanderthal.
Little did these types know that although I was an American who was savvy and nuanced enough to grasp irony and sarcasm, thereby knowing when they were trying to put me down, I still refused to beg forgiveness for being American or apologize for my country in any way. I was as pro-American as the stereotypical neanderthal cowboy they loved to mock. This lead to some interesting confrontations.
But best of all, it gave me a chance to test out the new response I had been working on for dealing with the sneaky sarcasm and snarkiness of beta male confrontation: The Rearden.
Next: The Rearden
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You are breaking your posts into smaller bits, you claim to improve regularity. This bit has just enough info to tantalize us, but not enough to satisfy us. Damn you and your successful marketing!
As in…Hank?
Bingo. In fact, once you realize it’s Hank Rearden you can probably figure out the rest of how it goes.
Mu-hu-haahahahahahaa!!
awesome, looking forward to the next installment
damn, i used have a couple snarky beta male friends like this. your description of how you react to it is similar to my experience. i used to call them out on it in a humorously cocky way, but that “solution” never seemed to work for long. best to just screen for friends who are secure in themselves.
looking forward to the rearden.
Ah-ha! it (the rearden) must be coldcocking the snarky beta, yes?
Your post is so timely. I just had a falling out with this Indian kid I was hanging with over the summer. Initially, he seemed cool regularly inviting a small group of us to drink whiskey on his terrace overlooking the city. He was a big time beta, crushing on this Asian chick that was part of our little newly formed clique. When it was just the two of us having a drink he would go on and on about this girl. Of course the Asian girl was in a relationship with another guy that she wasn?t too happy with. We became friends and she would ask me for advice on a number of things as well as what to do about her relationship. I guess the Indian kid caught wind of this and when the group got together and the Asian chick was there that’s when the sarcasm and the snarky comments began. As is typically my style, I just didn’t respond to it but things got worse. I?m looking forward to hearing about the rearden to see if I could have handled that situation better.
Mr. Rawness,
This kind of attack happened to me many times. It always blows me away, because it means someone sees me as an “alpha” male! That’s the last word I’d ever use to describe myself. I can’t see my status in life intimidating anyone. I feel like an aging, under-achieving, Wally Cox type of guy. But apparently, my persona can intimidate other people.
Lately I’m dealing with a classic passive-aggressive guy at my job. He does nothing but hold up progress and stir up trouble, but I’m not in a position to hurt him directly. I’m practicing this strategy: I stroke his ego whenever I run into him, and defer to him in meetings so he has room to hang himself. Then, I leave him out of the loop on the actual work. I never consult him on anything, and if I get an assignment that can’t be accomplished without consulting him, I just don’t do it. This is working well so far; he’s making lots of trouble for others, and I hope he blows himself up soon by going too far.
Keep up the great writing! Post often and write them as long as you want!
Long-time lurker here. Even though I only agree with about 2/3 of what I read here and I’m further to the left than you politically speaking, I appreciate the intellectual rigor and humility that you demonstrate on this blog.
While I can appreciate sarcasm and snarkiness in moderation, I have serious issues with people (of both sexes!) for whom they constitute a virtual lifestyle. (Stephen Colbert and Mo Rocca, onscreen persona notwithstanding, worked very hard to get where they are, and they are almost certainly not in this category.)
As you seem to be implying, there is this unspoken idea among much of my demographic (post-college-educated 20- and early-30-something singles in destination cities) that low-ish tolerance for S&S amounts to naivete, oversensitivity, or lack of education. In my case, I just find too much of it to be soul-deadening.
I wish!
MBK – I actually don’t mind sarcasm and snarkiness when, like you said, they are done in moderation and they do not constitute your whole argument. If you have something substantial and well supported to say and you throw in a little sarcasm and snarkiness for humor, that’s fun. The problem is now people seem to think it’s the actual point of a conversation rather than a way to express a bigger point. Rather than being used as a means to an end, it’s actually the end.
I can’t speak as to how Colbert and Rocca act behind closed doors and I’m not denying they’ve worked hard, but their public personas are still part of the problem. The endless dry sarcasm and snarkiness that counts for deep thought, analysis and commentary among today’s 18-34 so-called intellectual in destination cities. I guess my bigger problem is their fanbase in particular, especially Colbert’s. It exasperates me to no end to see young, smart people keep praising him for being such a “genius” (now officially the most overused and currently meaningless word in our language) and so “brilliant” just for using SARCASM. I mean really, what is sarcasm except just saying the opposite of what you really mean in a condescending smug way. If that’s now “genius,” what counts as “mildly clever” these days? If sarcasm now counts as genius, my teenage niece’s friends are the equivalent of the Royal Society of London. Regardless of how they are behind closed doors or how hard they work, this new brand of celebrity persona, especially Colbert, have done a lot to promote this obnoxious, passive-aggressive beta mindset in this current generation of young men.
Every time I see Colbert give some commentary on an issue, I think about this article and wish he’d realize that sarcasm is not an argument:
http://volokh.com/posts/1165813933.shtml
Great post T. You hit the nail on the head when boiling this all down to the continued feminization of western culture. It let?s feminized “men” make themselves feel better because it’s become the acceptable way to show masculinity in their eyes. Funny isn’t it? Being cool used to be being a man now it means who is the bigger bitch.
The trick to dealing with these types of Europeans is to beat them at their own game. Maybe, just maybe, they’ve read Chomsky, Zinn, etc but are probably getting their dirt on America from their own intellectuals (which has led a third of Germans to think 911 was in inside job). Check out their former countrymen with beef about how things in Europe go down. Just polish up on your Ilkka Kokkarinen, Mark Steyn, Jean-Fran?ois Revel, etc before your next jump across the pond.
Come up with pithy quips of your own that put them on the defensive, instead of standing in as the official spokesperson for America and answering their endless line of questioning, like, “You should be thanking me. Sans anti-Americanism, what would be left standing in your political culture?”
My poor, naive sister did a semester abroad in Glasgow. One night, when she and a group of fellow exchange students from the States walked into one of pubs on campus, a group of Glaswegans started sarcastically chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
She sent me an e-mail the next day, asking what she might have done differently, as the poor thing didn’t want to offend anyone. I told her she should have informed her gracious hosts that it’s only hubris if you’re defeated.
My favorite exchange with an uppity piece of Eurotrash:
Eurotrash: America kills women and children!
Me: Not exclusively.
Of particular interest should be Steyn’s work on how PC Europe is handling the issues they’re running into with Muslim immigrants. Peep this. You can’t say a bunch of Muslims burned a bunch of cars on the set of Travolta’s new flick, even when it’s the truth. They’re “youth” and “immigrants”, which are both true, but doesn’t get at why there are demilitarized zones in Paris that the French police won’t go into after dark. Also, gay bashings are way up in Amesterdam. The European press is petrified of pointing out the obvious (lest they get offed like a Dutch cartoonist). Couple that with the fact that the Muslim immigrants are the only Europeans reproducing right now…
Just point out, whatever our horrid and numerous cultural shortcomings, 50 years from now that putrid and crass culture will be much better than the one found beneath the minarets they’ll be living under.
Stephen Colbert (the actor) is a bad example of snarky criticism. Of the two of them, Jon Stewart is a lot more sarcastic and cutting in his real-life persona. Colbert is essentially a fun-loving family man who (over)plays a pretentious blowhard on cable. His writers give him most of the snarky inverted criticisms.
That said, a lot of young people my age seem to favor an attitude of hipster irony that I find tiresome. The problem is less with the entertainment value of these shows and The Soup on E, than that young’uns think they should imitate them in day-to-day life.
Man, you’ve got real problems if you’re feel threatened by Mo Rocca!
There’s a big difference between “threatened” and “seriously annoyed.”