Write It Out
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Last year I did a series of posts about a social maneuver call the Rearden that you can use against passive aggressive pricks. It was generally well-received, but there was one installment of it that got mixed reviews, and that’s the part where I gave a specific example where I used it myself. The anecdote was about an exchange with a passive-aggressive Eurodouche.
It got some good feedback but also some negative feedback from commenters like
I don’t know man…
I see where you are coming from, and I agree with the analyses of conversational dynamics you post here, but something about the way you handled this rubbed me the wrong way. Felt too defensive. I would have handled it in one of two ways:
1) Early in the conversation you could have opened up an interesting discussion comparing the relative merits of the more isolated, atomic nature of American life versus the more friendly vibe you felt in AMS (you do agree that there is a qualitative difference, right? I myself found the open vibe in AMS to be refreshing).
2) If you you honestly felt the guy was trying to ho you up, better to go for the throat right away instead of psychoanalyzing and nitpicking. If it’s a “fight”, go on the offensive and start talking trash about what you think about the Dutch. That’s fun. But squirming around about what you think his motives are strikes me as ever so slightly bitchassed.
I like the idea of The Rearden in theory, but I don’t like this example.
All IMHO, of course.
Mu’Min/Obsidian also chimed in with:
Hey T,
Been awhile since we last chatted. So, I see I have some reading to do! I like “The Rearden” but I’m w/TC on this one: in any situation, Mu prefers the North/South approach, straightup, straight line, let’s have it.Now, if I had been in your shoes w/dude, I would have cut him right off at the knees, cut the ring off on him and made him duke it rhetorically right there. I would have put him back on his heels in a very dominant way, because that’s my nature anyhow. And he would either have to bring it, or stand down. Kinda what you’ve been saying about drawing them out into the open.
On the other hand, people who have been to Europe or other cultures where confrontation tends to be indirect like Japan all agreed with me to some degree. Wade Nichols said:
Good post!
I’ve had a few experiences similar to yours when dealing with Europeans and/or Brits.
One was when I was in New Zealand, hiking the Kepler Track, during Christmas/New Years. In one of the huts, 2 Brits basically started ganging up on my wife and I when they learned we were Americans. They played many of the same games you described, as they were bitching about Iraq, how Tony Blair’s “basically a poodle of the U.S.”, etc. etc. They tried to cast the U.S. as hypocrites since there’s a photo of Dick Cheney with Sadaam Hussein from the 1980’s, and that was somehow indicative that the U.S. was once cozy with him. I didn’t think of it at the time, but later on realized I should have mentioned to these 2 clowns that Britain also once went to war with a certain bunch of people, and that Britain is now friends with the descendents of those people. Today we’re called Americans!
Another time I’ve experienced the same also with a Dutchman. This guy was playing the not-too-subtle “Americans are idiots” game by asking me, “How come you Americans always go to McDonald’s when you’re overseas?” I should have countered him by asking him about the stereotype of Europeans all being a bunch of wimps that “swing both ways”, and ask him how many guys he’s slept with!
Joshua Herring wrote:
What a great post! I spent 6 years abroad, one of which was in Germany, so this sort of thing happened to me all the time. I disagree with other commenters that going for the jugular early on is the right approach. That was always my initial instinct too, but it doesn’t work because (as this encounter demonstrates) they can easily fall back on the faux “OH, I didn’t mean to offend.” It’s true that Rawness calls him on it eventually, but first you have to give the guy enough rope to hang himself. Sitting there and calmly letting him build up a bit belies any impression that you’re easily offended or closed-minded, or simplistic or whatever. Love the Rearden and will definitely plan on using it next time I’m in one of these situations.
Several blogs also linked to it favorably, but the blog articles were always written by someone who actually experienced what I was talking about firsthand. But I had a nagging curiosity about why the reaction was so mixed, and in particular why only people who experienced it firsthand supported my prescription of how to respond. But after a while, I just moved on to new topics.
The other day I came across the old post and suddenly it hit me. It was so obvious. When I was recalling the encounter the first time around, the memory was incredibly fresh in my mind. So mentally, I added all the necessary accompanying details like the vibrant vocal inflection, smiling facial expressions, soothing intonation and friendly body language. But in writing it down I left all those extra details out and related almost nothing but the text of the discussion. And when all you see is the pure text without all those other details that tend to soften the impact, the insults look much more direct to readers than it seemed to me at the time I was experiencing it. Similarly, the readers who visited or lived in Europe and had similar experiences with the people there when reading the text, thanks to their own experiences, were probably able to totally fill in those extra details and put the words more into the context needed to understand why going nuclear in response would have come off badly.
Realizing this gave me some more insight on passive aggressors. People who are really good at passive aggression have a talent of making their behavior, body language and voices so incongruous with the insulting nature of their words that you experience a slightly disorienting cognitive dissonance that causes you to doubt your own instincts. However just focusing on the words alone totally makes the insulting intention jump out at you clear as day, just like the Eurodouche’s insulting nature was much more apparent to those readers who were strictly focused on the content of his dialogue as opposed to the other readers who filled in a more vivid total picture of the encounter.
So in the future if you have what you think may have been an encounter with a passive aggressor laced with veiled insults and are doubting your instincts, focus on just the words and nothing else. Write it out if you have to and read it to yourself. Better yet, have someone else who wasn’t there and can’t fill in the extra details of the encounter themselves read it to give you their impression of what’s going on. Chances are that regardless of how the person was acting, if it looks like a blatant insult on paper, it was meant to be insulting.
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You could just repeat the words back in real time.
Yes, but sometimes nothing tops seeing something visually.
Good idea. Both you and Alex. Personally, i rephrase what that person is saying in a compact, direct manner and then pose it as a question back to that person. I first pick up on this from a co-worker who have this extremely repetitious habit of repeating exactly what you just say back to you in realtime. e.g. “Hey, Lucas, where have you been?” He will then immediately say “Entropy, you want to know where i have just been?” I notice this have the effect of making me reflexively, self-consciously re-examine the import/implications of what i am asking him. So, if the guy is trying to be sneakily passive aggressive, having that person openly self-conscious of their passive-aggresiveness is a good counter.
On a side issue, about the incongruency between words and body language and how that results in cognitive dissonance further emphasizes just how crucial body language is to game. One of the test i like to do is get a bunch of truly cheesy pickup lines…the cheesier the better, and try extremely hard to use body language, intonations, facial expression to make them still work. Other times, i like to see how well i can pick up a chick/makeout with her by saying as incredibly little as possible.
That is all for now.
Greetings Obs,
Why do you engage civilly with those racist rednecks over at Roissy’s blog?
ha…about Obsidian and those racial retards at roissy…what can i say? For the life of me there are a few things more beta than saying: you are important because you were born white. If you earn it, i can understand, but..grounding your self-worth in the accident of your birth. Please, bitch.
If you read roissy blog, generally, it is those race obsessed morons that are the least intelligent. The irony of it all. I dont know why Obsidian does it.
What’s Obsidian’s blog url?
He is far too polite and gentlemanly with those uneducated hicks.
I didn’t understand Alex J’s suggestion fully until I read Entropy elaborate on it. Yeah, that actually is a much better idea than I originally gave it credit for being. Especially how Entropy adds to it by saying to repeat it in question form. Good suggestions by both you guys.
Desi – Far as I know Obsidian doesn’t have a blog. He should get one though.
Entropy –
Agreed. And you can see in how the racists there type and deal with conflict that they were people who felt like outcasts growing up. Most people who dedicate themselves so strongly to racism or nationalism as an identity usually have a history of feeling like outcasts or never fitting in fully anywhere. They’ve never been part of an elite social group where they were selected for membership purely based on their individual merits. They were never among the popular “cool” kids growing up, they didn’t set the world on fire careerwise to the degree they believed they would growing up, they’ve never been superstars with the ladies like they would have liked…most of the elite, popular social groups they would have loved to be a part of rejected them in some form. Most of the social and professional doors they expected to be opened to them based on their education and college choices failed to open.
So what happens when you feel trapped in mediocrity and chronically rejected. You over-associate with something so broad and fundamental to your identity that no one can take it away from you, like your ethnicity, nationality or race. No one can reject you from those clubs, you’re a member just by being born into them. Rejection proof.
That’s why the HBD crowd is so obsessed with proving to everyone who will listen that whites are genetically predestined to greatness. If they can make general “whiteness” accepted as the ultimate esteemed elite social club, they now finally have acceptance in a clique that can’t be taken away from them. They won’t have to be good-looking, charming, charismatic, able to navigate social dynamics, play personal politics or be especially interesting.
Whether its people with a little too much nationalist pride, whites joining Aryan Nation in jail, blacks joinging Nation of Islam in jail, white academics subscribing to HBD or blacks in academia subscribing to afrocentrism, it all comes down to alienated people who never found any of the clubs they really wanted to be a part of when growing up willing to have them as a member, so they turn something that can’t be taken away from them like their race or nationality into the social criteria for their new society.
Also, it attracts people who are so disillusioned with their own individual achievements, especially their future opportunities to create great individual achievements, that they decide to piggyback on the achievements of their ancestors, or other members of their race or nation. It’s basically throwing in the towel on your individual capacity to earn greatness.
Like you said, very beta.
T,
I think there’s some solid science behind HBD but the bulk of the adherents are as you describe. Still, as the nationalist movements you site show frustrated narcissists who join forces can do a lot of damage. Which is why we need individual rights and equality before the law.
Hello – I do think there’s some solid science behind HBD but there’s also a large amount of omission required to make it work as well, which is one of my problems with it. Simply put, it’s advocacy. Highlight the facts that support your case, discredit or ignore any argument that doesn’t.
Advocacy is different than truthseeking. In advocacy you start with a conclusion you want to make and make the evidence conform to your pre-established conclusion. This is what lawyers do. In truthseeking, you start with the facts and use them to lead you to the conclusion regardless of whether it clashes with your ideology and leads you to unflattering areas. HBD people are advocates holding themselves up to be truthseekers. This is why they annoy me. That lack of intellectual honesty both about their discipline and their motives for engaging in it.
That just about sums it up.
I know quite a few afro-centrics as well who go on and on and on about how “they” built the pyramids, all the while living in a government project. LOL.
Basically it is people who have not achieved anything on their own so they attach to some ancient culture and claim that the same feats achieved in those ancient cultures were somehow achieved by them, several centuries later.
I don’t know about HBD, will read up on it though. If it’s like any other “scientific theory” out there, it’s nothing more than a theory, or a “possibility” i.e. a guess at what could be. You know, like string theory in quantam physics. With every theory there is probably some truth mixed with un-truth in it, and all theories have to be able to be falsified, or disproven in the scientific method.
From what I gather just from that site, when you mix HBD theory with “game”, the white dudes do not come out on top and hence they get all angry and jealous and start peacocking “well, we have higher IQs”, which in the case of Asians they say is a flaw (for game) but somehow in their case it is supposed to be an embellishment.
Go figure.
I think they are really, really, really intimidated by the sexuality of the African male. That obviously means they buy into the urban myth though, and well, that’s a whole other topic onto itself.
I’d have more respect for Steve Sailer if he’d educate himself about Africa. His posts explaining how present-day dysfunction in American black communities mirror patterns common in sub-Saharan Africa always draw from one or two articles from daily newspapers, not anthropology or historical journals. And he never mentions variations in individual tribes or mentions that middle class African immigrants usually abhor the the behaviors of the black underclass or goes into any detail that might deviate from his Afica=American black premise. Now the idea that there are commonalities in African diaspora cultures is reasonable but it takes more than talking to a few African cab drivers to establish that.
I’ve never even been to America and the few African-Americans I’ve met have been mostly academics – and I still recognize almost everything that Sailer writes about group differences. To me, the interest is rather simple: this multicultural project isn’t working as promised, to put it mildly, and I’d like to know why (while everyone else is busy blaming someone, either the locals or immigrants depending on their prejudices). The best place to learn something would be to read stuff from more diverse countries.
And the Sailer crowd has answers. The other crowd isn’t doing anything except screaming about how no one should listen to the HBD people since they’re all evil racists/frustrated losers/whatever or coming up with America-specific explanations that get instantly discredited for me if I’m seeing the same thing here. I don’t care what motivates them, I want to know if they’re right, and so far the non-HBD side doesn’t appear to have anything meaningful to say. The big leaps in thought tend to come from losers and outcasts anyway – scientists, too, have the practical issues of a career to worry about and if you’re on a good track you don’t want to risk it on controversy. The more respectable someone gets, the blander their ideas become.
roissy’s comment section is becoming a dumpster, true, but it’s not limited to race stuff. It’s just what happens when a blog gets too popular – 900 comment threads will bury quality discussion no matter the subject.
I agree that motivations don’t matter if the person is right. But motivations do matter if they lead to erroneous jumps in logic or a myopic worldview that keeps people from seeing the big picture. For example the self-validating motivations many in HBD circles have keep them from acknowledging the validity in Jared Diamond’s work.
I agree that diversity as we are currently carrying it out isn’t working jaakkeli. But the problem is, pointing it out over and over again is not the same as pointing out a solution.
Maybe I’ve missed the solutions Sailer and company have pointed out. Please share some of the politically viable solutions and action platforms that he has come up with. If there is indeed anything feasible and actionable I’ll give him credit where it’s due.
India is a good example of an extremely diverse country with many languages, cultures and religions living side by side.
Yet, by and large, everyone is expected to marry within their own caste/religion/socio-economic background/language group/even state. That’s how the marriages are arranged.
A brahmin from Kashmir (extreme North) would not be arranged in marriage to a brahmin from Kerela (extreme South). The cultures/languages/customs/cuisines are very different, though the caste and general religious affiliation is the same.
T. Raw. You are absolutely right. I have nothing really to add.
Simply, what is your accomplishment in life? Who cares if Isaac Newton is white or indigo? To quote neitzsche, “this is my way, where is yours?”
jaakkeli,
There are many blogs where middle class blacks vent their frustrations with the black underclass. The fact that it is difficult for anyone, due to reasons of political correctness, to criticize underclass behavior in blacks will require an outlet. BTW, my best friend is a public defender for the court system and she claims that black underclass defendants blame their criminal activity on racism and get sympathy from friends and family and while white underclass defendants make similar (though non-racial) self-pitying excuses for committing crimes and not paying their child support but the other people in their lives usually won’t accept it and that makes a lot of difference. Anyway if you are a social conservative the book “The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families” by James Q Wilson goes talks honestly about the problems posed by low black marriage rates without the racialized boasting common at isteve.com and, it seems, roissy’s.
Hi Entropy,
You’re right that the fact that Isaac Newton was white impacts whites’ lives not at all, but one thing I have noticed is that blacks who dismiss any notion that affirmative action, outsourcing etc. have any impact on negative whites make basically the same argument by saying that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are white. I’ve known blue-collar blacks who frequently co-miserate with white co-workers over the same financial problems and health insurance problems and somehow forget about them when discussing racial grievances. Mind you these blacks aren’t racial separatists; they are just average people who listen to Michael Baisden. If the fact Isaac Newton was white doesn’t make the average white person a genius the fact that Warren Buffet is white doesn’t make the average white person rich.
Hello:
Totally agree, and I don’t want anyone to think I exempt blacks from this criticism just because I’m black too. “WE built the pyramids,” “WE were slaves,” etc, they sound as ridiculous as modern day white people working at a cubicle saying “WE invented everything.”
Also, even though I get frustrated at the recent quality of his commenters (and the lame flirting from various people and rapidfire comments from that Gunslinger guy annoy me more than the HBD stuff actually) I don’t want to turn this into a Roissy-bashing forum. The guy is a great writer, and can write really provocative prose, even when I disagree. I still consider myself a fan.
I figured out that Gunslinger’s first lanuguage is not English and that is why his comments are so incoherent.
On roissy. Oh, absolutely. I like most of his writings. Deft, acute, and lyrical. I read his post about once a week or so…i dont bother with the comments…i hate the endless flirtations that goes on in there too…I think his blog will be better served if he periodically shutoff the comment section for a week, or a couple of days, at random.
Hehehe. Actually, i think the withdrawal effect of random comment shutoff on his commentators will serve as a good exercise in Operant Conditioning. Probably makes them even more addicted. Hahahaha.
Yes, blacks argument about “we built the pyramid” is just as annoying.
I have said all i have to say about race. Let’s get back to GAME.
Will anyone of you light a cigarette for a woman without being asked? I think it lowers your value–insofar volunteering to do anything for a pretty woman without being prompted–will lower your value. I will recommend a robust cigarette-centered NEG to go along with your assistance to help her light her cigarette. Baring that, dont help her at all.
That is my view, anyways. Some disagree though.
One last thing, forgot to add it to the previous post….Making this into a roissy bashing blog will be hugely, super, mega BETA to the nth power.
Not sure calling this maneuver “The Reardon” is such a good idea–there’s already an entry in the Urban Dictionary, and it isn’t all that pretty:
http://www.urbandictionary.com.....%20Reardon
Figured I would check in and was surprized at not seeing everything on your site be about black. Then I saw michel jackson post and I am like ok he was a big star sure can see a bunch of posts on him for someone who is obsessed. Then I look in comments and see talk of Roissy’s blog. About how intellectual you are as you pass thoughts around on the redneckability of the comment section. Then go on to talk about black and white. Jealousy very high brow.
Yes Gunslinger, you admit you came here not for anything constructive but SPECIFICALLY looking to pick a fight about race, but me, I’M the race obsessed guy. Black black blackness, all the time, that’s me. Even though you ADMIT you came here just to look for black-related posts to prove something to yourself. However you’re not race obsessed at all. I am. Fucking idiot. Please give me a little bit of hope about you and say you can at least grasp the idiotic hypocrisy of what I just described. Are you really that logic impaired Greg or do you just really, really like irony?
Let me just add one more thing Greg. I didn’t introduce the topic of Roissy’s commenters here, others did. And I agreed, a lot of them are race obsessed idiots (note I never said anything about rednecks, I have no problem with rednecks, nice strawman though). But I said that I didn’t want this to become a regular theme around here because I like and respect Roissy and his talent, however I feel about some of his commenters.
And what do you do? You come by announcing you came and combed through the blog just to “check up” on me and gauge how racial and black-oriented my blog was, in efforts to I guess prove I’m race obsessed. No other reason. WOW, THAT ILLOGICAL COMMENT WENT A LONG WAY TO PROVE YOU’RE NOT A RACE OBSESSED IDIOTIC COMMENTER! I totally see I was wrong now.
No I was here to see if it had changed maybe I could learn something but all I see is all about race as your hysterical reaction proves. I wanted to give you a second chance like the problem with most white people. You don’t get a second chance when dealing with groups of blacks normally. Roissies is not all about race which is why I enjoy it so much yet a large percentage of audience is black. Makes it meaningfull to know that not all black are obsessed about race just most of the bloggers. Thanks.
Find the race in my new blog. So you can understand difference between race obsessed and not race obsessed.
You came here to “give me a second chance?” I never asked for any second chances from you, I don’t give a fuck what you think about me. Who the fuck are you that I have to earn any second chances from you or care about your approval? What have you shown about yourself that puts you in any position to judge me when it comes to being obsessed about race? Especially when you come here admitting you came here specifically to pick a fight about race and to evaluate my blog to see how “black” they were. What on earth gives you the moral high ground when judging someone else for race obsession after you just announced race baiting was your sole purpose for coming here?
And I think deep down you realized your logical fallacy, as in your next comment you backpedal with “Oh, I came here in peace to see if I could learn something positive about race.” Yeah, right.
Wow, so “I can understand?” You’re going to enlighten me?
Here’s a better idea. Eat a dick.
I wouldn’t have posted except that you decided to chime in on something you don’t understand. You are too obsessed with race to think about anything else.
No I came here to see something positive about woman, life, money, sex anything else besides race and I am dissapointed in you since you know you stopped commenting at roissy because oh god the couple race threads. Then you chime in on your own on your own blog about race. The irony was perplexing. Trying to act like taking some high ground but you just couldn’t help yourself could you.
Gunslingergregi´s last blog ..Toss out a sensation to quell the look at global warming (retardation).
I understand you just fine, you race obsessed nut. Anyone objectively reading this comments thread understands you just fine. You say I’m too race-obsessed to think about anything but race after you initially announced you came here thinking about nothing but race and with sole purpose of examining each post for racial content. Seriously, do you really think you can come back from that? You outed yourself as a hypocrite. Do you know how ridiculous you look trying to pass judgment on me from on high after that faux pas? You came here announcing you arrived solely and specifically to evaluate my site for signs of pro-blackness and to pass judgment on me. Then you finally found something you could latch on to and chimed in. Then you realized you played yourself and proved me right by announcing your intentions for coming here in the first place, thereby revealing yourself as the race-obsessed one, thereby losing any moral high ground you were pretending to have. Now you’re backpedaling furiously with shit about “I came in peace” or “No I came here to see something positive about woman, life, money, sex anything else besides race.” I can’t even take credit for the verbal smackdown, it’s like you singlehandedly did the work for me.
I did not introduce the topic of race into this comments section. Some chick came in here thinking I was Obsidian and asking about the racist commenters at Roissy’s. Others joined in with their own thoughts. I simply told her I wasn’t Obsidian, this isn’t his blog, and gave my own opinion on the racist commenters and then decided to nip the whole topic in the bud before the whole section began to revolve around that topic.
Then for you to sanctimoniously swoop in saying what you did I found as obnoxious as Oprah coming around to criticize someone’s weight. Anyway, I’ve wasted enough time with you. If you read through this blog and honestly come away thinking it’s a race-obsessed blog, I don’t care. Never come back then. I’ll live.
You keep saying each post I [blah blah blah blah more of the rambling, deluded race-obsessed pot having the audacity to call the kettle black. Carry on people, nothing to see here - T. AKA Ricky Raw]
Listen up Greg. I don’t need advice on how to “heal my inner self” or whatever crap you were trying to say in your last comment I cut short. Your change in tactics of using new age pychobabble is a transparent attempt to reframe the argument and regain the moral high ground and change the focus from the hypocrisy you obviously regret revealing in your first comment. You’re the one who admitted you came here for no other reason but to prove to yourself I’m black obsessed and pass judgment from on high about how about how racist my blog is. Game over. If anyone revealed themselves as race obsessed in general and black-obsessed specifically, it’s you.
So let’s get a few ground rules straight. I don’t value your opinion. At. All. You have no place telling me how to heal my inner self, because your’s isn’t healed. You need to read me and let me teach you how to heal your inner self. You’re the one who outed yourself as the black-obsessed one, not the other way around. You’re the one who needs to read my blog to learn to be less black-obsessed, not the other way around. You don’t come here saying you wanted to see if I “learned anything” or to “give me a second chance,” it’s the other way around: I decide if you learned anything and whether I want to give you a second chance. I don’t go to your blog to learn how not to be a race-obsessed hypocrite, you come to my blog to learn that. You revealed yourself to be a race-obsessed hypocrite in the comments section the moment you admitted your motivation for coming here and your thought process when examining my blog, so you’re the one who has something to prove to me about whether or not they’re race-obsessed, not the other way around. Those are the ground rules, the only ones I’m willing to operate under. You can’t deal with that, leave. I never asked your incoherent rambling ESL, rapid-fire tourettes sentence fragments commenting ass to come here anyway.
Based on your previous comments on Roissy’s and your admitted purpose in coming here, the idea of you coming here and lecturing me about being less race-obsessed shows as much self-awareness and capacity for grasping irony as OJ Simpson offering a good husband marital counseling.
Sanctimonious hypocrite.
Sorry bro, I will be less retarded and race obsessed in the future.
You’re the best and I lost my head. It’s all good!
Gunslingergregi´s last blog ..Helicopter Rides
Gunslinger’s spam is the reason a lot of old timers don’t check out Roissy’s site any more.