communication, condescending twatbags, language, overly helpful people

“I’m callin’ you out like a sneaky snake…”

I remember back in the early aughts, while job hunting, I got hooked on Mad TV. There was a hilarious sketch featuring a paranoid middle management guy named Sean Gidcomb who was obsessed with the office supply closet. He would accuse his co-workers of being “sneaky snakes”, stealing the pencils, staplers, toilet paper, and computer paper. He was rigid about their work habits and absenteeism. And he held the prospect of being fired over their heads to keep them in line.

Don’t we all know controlling micromanagers like this character?
Sneaky snake!

The character of Sean Gidcomb is, of course, an exaggerated stereotype of a certain type of person we all know. If we didn’t know someone who acted like Sean in some way, this routine wouldn’t be funny because people couldn’t relate to it. However, I’m willing to bet that most Americans– and probably a lot of Europeans (especially Germans)– can relate to this type of busybody.

I don’t work with other people very much anymore, so it’s been a long time since I had to deal with someone like Sean in the workplace. However, I do often run into this type in my online endeavors. These are the hyper-anal types of people who appoint themselves the law and order keepers. I usually refer to them as “overly helpful people”, but they aren’t always coming from an apparent place of help. Sometimes, that behavior comes from a deep need to look superior to other people, or to subtly tear people down… in a “sneaky snake” kind of way. I think that kind of behavior is meant to make someone who feels insecure or “small” feel better about themselves by being subtly negative or corrective. They don’t want to be obvious about their negativity, because that would not be socially acceptable. So, instead of being outwardly rude or upfront, they’ll be sneakily passive aggressive and covertly controlling.

I happen to be very sensitive to this type of behavior. Much like people who snipe at others in underhanded ways because of childhood trauma, I am sensitive to that manipulative behavior due to my own baggage from childhood. I grew up around controlling, manipulative people who were always issuing corrections and criticisms. So, when someone acts that way toward me as an adult, I tend to notice immediately and issue a response.

Many times, my responses tend to be more obvious call outs, which put the other person on the spot. I don’t mind criticism or correction when it’s really warranted, but I truly don’t appreciate passive aggressive digs. And I almost always notice them, too. Then, when I respond, the other person tries to gaslight, saying that what I read or heard wasn’t really what I read or heard.

Here’s an example from 2014 or so… (just to keep this post somewhat safe from a shitshow).

There was a woman in my online life that I used to know from a messageboard I hung out on in the days before Facebook. I found her incredibly insufferable. It was like she went out of her way to be rude and condescending to me. Back in the days when we posted on the messageboard, this woman would seemingly make it a point to contradict or criticize. I tried to ignore her, but she just continued her behavior, either not realizing or not caring how obnoxious and overbearing she was. (for more on this, click here)

I tried to be assertive, but she got offended and sent me angry private messages, accusing me of “insulting” her. I wasn’t insulting– I was pointing out that I found her comments rude, belittling, and offensive. She insulted me first, which is why I responded in the direct way I did. But no, I never called her names, told her to “fuck off and die”, or anything like that. What I wrote was, “Whether or not you mean to come across that way, your comments to me are belittling and offensive.”

Finally, once the messageboard fell apart, we all moved to Facebook, and I unfriended her.

Unfriending the offender worked fine for a long time. But unfortunately, we had mutual friends, and I would still run into her on occasion. One day, I left a comment on a mutual friend’s post, and the overly helpful person decided to leave a little passive aggressive dig that I found very offensive.

Here’s an excerpt from my original post about this on the Blogspot version of OH:

I was fine with letting her be her and letting me be me… until a couple of nights ago, when a friend posted about marijuana.  She wanted to know if we thought it should be legalized.  I said it should; that way, I could smoke it next week while hanging around my family.

Ms. OH pipes up with a quip about how some laws were meant to be broken, insinuating that smoking pot is no big deal.  And maybe it’s not if you don’t have a job where drug testing is done.  I wrote that I don’t have a problem with recreational pot use, but Bill doesn’t like marijuana because he used to live with a couple of potheads in college.  He didn’t like that the pot seemed to make them less than ambitious.  He also doesn’t like smoke.

Ms. OH comes back with “He’s never lived with alcoholics? 😉 ;)” 

Looks like a simple comment, right? But because we used to hang out on a messageboard, I think she knew full well that alcoholism is a sore subject to me. Why would you add winkie smilies if you aren’t implying that you “know” Bill has had “experience” with drunks?  If it were an honest and serious question, there wouldn’t be any winking going on, right?

I continued:

I think if she’d left off the winkie smilies, I probably wouldn’t have gotten so aggravated.  Alcoholism is a very sore subject for me and I don’t think it’s funny.  Alcoholism has personally caused me a lot of pain.  People I love have also been hurt due to alcoholism.  I grew up with an alcoholic who abused me.  Moreover, some might even call me an alcoholic because I really do like my booze– though Bill says he doesn’t think I’m abusive or mean when I drink. 

But even if alcoholism weren’t a sore subject, I don’t like her and I don’t enjoy interacting with her.  This week has been stressful enough for me, dealing with people who are crazy makers.  I feel pretty certain I don’t want to interface with Ms. OH again.  So I decided to block her.

I told Bill that I thought I’d soon get an email from her.  Sure enough, I did.  She wrote that she didn’t understand and demanded to know what she’d said to offend me.  Seems to me that if someone blocks you on Facebook, it means they don’t want to talk to you.  But she can’t accept that and has to know why… and she seems to think I owe her an explanation, as if we were actual friends.

Years later, as I think about this, I realize that there are a lot of people out there who struggle with their own feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, and low self-esteem. They’re always looking for someone to pick on in some way. When they spot someone who seems like an easy target, they can’t seem to help themselves.

I know I have served as an “easy target” to a lot of people. Maybe it’s because I am the youngest of four by more than several years, and my family regularly discounted and belittled me when I was a child. So I still have that unsure side to me that comes out, attracting “overly helpful” people like blood to a shark. However, just as our dog, Noyzi, loves people naturally, but is automatically affected by prior abuses that make him skittish and scared, I am affected by that unfinished old business.

Naturally– I am not as unsure as I seem. Naturally, I am someone who is pretty assertive. But I was taught not to be that way by controlling, manipulative, critical people when I was not in a position to defend myself as well. It’s hard to lose that old way of surviving, even when it no longer works. So I still have people in my life who are comfortable being shitty to me.

Below is more from my 2014 post:

It is possible that [the sneaky snake overly helpful offender’s] comment about alcoholics was innocent, but I am guessing it wasn’t.  I’ve been around her enough to know that she’s one to be snarky.  She has a way of looking down on people.  I don’t think she was intending to be funny or even friendly.  Besides, I honestly think she’s an asshole; so this decision was years in the making.  To be clear, I didn’t block her because of one stupid comment; I blocked her because she has a very long history of irritating me and most interactions I have with her raise my blood pressure.  And when I have told her why she gets under my skin, she gets pissy. 

She just rubs me the wrong way and either can’t or won’t modify her behavior.  And I would be wrong to ask her to modify it.  She obviously has friends and loved ones who love her just the way she is.  I’m obviously the one with a problem, so I just decided to quietly walk away so I don’t have to read her shit anymore.

But she apparently doesn’t want us to part company… or she wants to engage me in some dialogue as to why I don’t like her.  I just want to say to her, “Don’t go away mad.  Just go away.”

Not everyone is going to like you.  Lots of people don’t like me for whatever reason.  Not even a mild mannered, even tempered guy like Bill is universally liked by everyone.  You’re not a bad person, Ms. OH.  You just get on my fucking nerves.  So please just leave me alone.  There are a lot of people out there who will happily be buddies with you.  I am not one of them. 

Years later, I unblocked Ms. OH because, at the time, I was a lot more conservative about people I blocked on social media. Nowadays, when I block someone, they tend to stay that way. In any case, when I popped up on her radar again, Ms. OH sent me a private message apologizing for whatever it was she did to upset me. I appreciated that and accepted her apology, and life has gone on without her particular brand of passive aggressive microaggressions. However, more of her ilk have popped up– giving me a chance to practice being assertive.

Yesterday, I was watching cop videos on YouTube, and there was a cop who incorrectly used the non-word “irregardless”. A lot of the cops I watch on YouTube annoy me anyway, because quite a few of them are high on power trips. I know they have difficult jobs that are very stressful. Some of them have other issues that exacerbate, like bad marriages or substance abuse issues (lots of drunk cop videos on YouTube, too). I probably shouldn’t watch those videos, since they seem to trigger my authority issues.

Those who know me, know that I tend to be a stickler when it comes to words. “Irregardless” is not a word that well educated people should use, because it’s a double negative. The word “regardless” means without regard. When you add the unnecessary prefix “ir” to it, you get “without without regard.”

I posted that the word “irregardless” is not a word. And it’s not. I even double checked before I made that claim. Some might say I was being critical when I posted my comment, and in fairness, I was. But the actual offenders weren’t going to read it. It would be different if I posted that to a friend. It was posted to no one in particular, as the person who said it is some cop on YouTube in Wisconsin.

Just as some people abuse reflexive pronouns, and overuse fifty cent words like “utilize”, when they could just as easily use “use”, in an attempt to sound smarter, others think they should say or write “irregardless” instead of “regardless”. It’s a pet peeve of mine, but easy enough to ignore when I complain about it, especially when I put the complaints on my own page.

You’d think my comment wouldn’t attract controversy. And yet it did. Someone asked me what my “criteria” was for a real word.

That struck me as a pot stirring dig, because I don’t think the person who asked it was being serious. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be a dig, but that’s how the question came across to me. I’ve known this person for years and I’m pretty sure she knows that “irregardless” isn’t a real word. She just wanted to call me out, like a sneaky snake… maybe knock me down a peg. Maybe that’s an appropriate thing to do sometimes, but I didn’t think that particular post warranted a challenge. So, instead of answering the question, I asked one myself.

“Why do you ask?”

The response was telling, as the person wrote that they were “just curious” and “had no agenda”. The “no agenda” part kind of confirmed my initial suspicions that the question about my “criteria” was a dig. I was reminded of when our toilet clogged in our last rental house and the landlady immediately said, “We’ve never had this problem before!”, when I had never accused her of anything. When people add extra unsolicited information when something goes awry, it’s usually because they do have an agenda of sorts… and are maybe trying to establish an alibi or cast blame.

Former tenant did the same thing when she volunteered that she and her husband were moving mid tour because they needed to be closer to their babysitter. We never asked them why they were moving, and simply telling us they needed to be closer to the sitter sounded disingenuous. If they’d just said they needed to be closer to work, that would have been a lot more believable. The bit about the sitter rendered their excuse to bullshit, kind of like a person telling me they have “no agenda” is likely bullshit, too.

I know some people might think that my reaction to this is ridiculous and over-the-top. And to those people, I’d basically say that people discounting my reactions is one reason why they are so extreme. Because I have a right to feel any way I do, and I have a right to express myself. You might think it’s crazy and an overreaction, but I have these reactions for a reason… just like people issue those little passive aggressive digs for a reason.

I’m sure the people who do this kind of shit don’t actually mean to be irritating. I know I irritate people. I generally don’t mean to do so. A lot has to do with old baggage I need to unload. I think most people who issue passive aggressive digs are looking for control, or a way to even the playing field somehow. And my over-the-top responses to them have a lot to do with my own authority issues… which come from having a lot of controlling and criticizing people in my life when I was growing up. I don’t respond to control freaks very well anymore. I tend to rebel, sometimes, by getting pissed and writing blog posts. Maybe that’s passive aggressive, too… but I don’t want to get in a fight. I just want to be heard.

People can always choose whether or not to read the blog, right?

Anyway… that’s today’s deep thought. Now, time to get dressed. We need to go to the hardware store and get a new sun umbrella. Our old one (of two years) broke yesterday. So, sayonara, until tomorrow (probably).

  

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complaints, rants

Being “canceled”…

As someone who grew up in the 70s and 80s, it’s been a surreal experience to go from having in person relationships to online relationships. I remember when I was dating Bill, I told my mom that we’d met in a chat room. My mom was horrified. She thought it was so weird. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t tell her what kind of chat room it was. 😉

Nowadays, a lot of people meet and even become friends online. Some people never meet in person. Others are people we once knew offline, but then continue a relationship on the computer. I think communication has really changed significantly with the development of the Internet. In many ways, it’s made people a lot less civilized than they once were.

Take, for instance, my experience yesterday. On Wednesday, I had shared an article about Mike Pence, who was talking to Kamala Harris at Joe Biden’s inauguration. I remarked that Mike Pence had really redeemed himself in my eyes over the past couple of weeks. I said I thought he had a hell of a lot more class than Trump does. I thought some of my more conservative friends would appreciate the nod to Pence, but I immediately got backlash from so-called friends about this statement.

One of them got so pissed that she eventually blocked me, having also criticized me for saying I was going to buy a Donald Trump toilet brush for my bathroom. My remark to her, when she said she wouldn’t want anything “Trump” in her house was, “Luckily, it’s not your house.” I was totally kidding when I wrote that, but apparently, it struck a nerve. In my defense, I read her comment back to me yesterday morning, while sitting on the toilet and before I’d had my coffee. Maybe she thought it was rude for me to say it wasn’t her house, but I think it’s rude to criticize people’s shopping choices– *shrug*.

For context, we were discussing my new Angela Merkel citrus strainer, which Bill was using to make me a celebratory cocktail on Wednesday night. I have started collecting funny household items, particularly if they involve politicians. I also have a Margaret Thatcher nutcracker, and Soviet Matroyshka dolls that feature all of the former leaders up to Yeltsin. I had commented that the only Trump item I would want is a toilet brush. I wouldn’t want the toilet paper, since I don’t want Trump’s image that close to my genitals. However, I think he’s perfectly useful for scrubbing shit residue from my toilet. It was a joke, anyway.

Yes, I finally bought one… I need a new one anyway. I also used to have a Michael Vick chew toy before Arran destroyed it.

I can only assume that I got “canceled” because this person, whom I once knew and greatly respected offline, is gay. Mike Pence is famously anti-gay, and when he was Indiana’s Governor, he had no regard for anyone identifying as LGBTQ. Many homosexuals suffered under his regime. I don’t agree with, or condone, the way Pence has treated homosexuals. I suspect he does it because of his deeply religious nature. Like it or not, most religions are against homosexuality. I don’t think being anti-gay is Christlike behavior myself, but as we all know, lots of people have different views and don’t care what mine are.

Whether or not anyone wants to believe me, I actually don’t give a flying fuck what someone’s sexual orientation is. I have several gay relatives, one of whom has become somewhat close in the past few years. My sister-in-law is a lesbian who has been married twice to women. I also have a fuckload of gay and lesbian friends, all of whom I value. I don’t give a shit what anyone does in their bedroom, as long as the people participating can and do consent, and there aren’t any pets or livestock involved.

The person who canceled me yesterday was someone I had considered a friend, but clearly it wasn’t so… she didn’t value my friendship at all. I say this because this one incident involving my comments about Mike Pence upset her so much that she very quickly dropkicked me out of her Facebook sphere. She did so, even though I reiterated repeatedly that I didn’t vote for Pence, and wouldn’t vote for him. I simply recognized that instead of going along with Donald Trump’s criminal QAnon gang, he’d followed the law and probably spared us a bloodbath. And then after that, he was the only representative from the Trump administration who attended the inauguration and acted like a mature and civilized human being. Maybe it shouldn’t impress me that he did his job, but it really did. I see nothing wrong with stating that.

I used to not have any appreciation whatsoever for Pence, so the fact that he’s gone up a few notches doesn’t mean that I love him. The bar was set very low, so any positive regard that came from the past couple of weeks still doesn’t negate his actions of the past. And I truly thought I was being nice when I made that comment on my own page. I certainly didn’t imagine it would turn into a controversy. Perhaps it wouldn’t have gone so far south if I hadn’t used the word “redeemed”. But it was late in the evening; I was feeling emotional, and had enjoyed my evening wine.

I bring this up today because I’ve been really disturbed by the phenomenon of cancel culture. People don’t want to discuss things rationally anymore. We have arguments, and if someone disagrees, it turns into a hair flip and a “Fine, we’re done!” attitude. I know that this wouldn’t happen so quickly if folks were face to face, but it’s hard to do that right now, thanks to the pandemic.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Last summer, when Mary Kay Letourneau died, I got into an argument on RfM with someone who called me a “rape apologist” because I expressed condolences to those who had loved her. The woman who called me a rape apologist insisted that having any positive regard or empathy for Mary Kay Letourneau meant that I condoned her actions against her former student, Vili Fualaau, who later became her husband. Vili was at Mary Kay’s side when she died. He is also now a grown man, and obviously didn’t consider his former wife his rapist, even if the law and society say she was.

While I agree that what Mary Kay Letourneau did was very wrong, she did do her time in prison. And even though she went to prison, Vili Fualaau was waiting for her when she got out. They were married for twelve years, divorcing only because Vili wanted to start a marijuana farm and couldn’t legally do so with a convicted felon as his spouse. My thinking is that whatever I might think of Mary Kay Letourneau’s actions are secondary to what her victim thinks. She paid her debt to society, and she clearly had people in her life who loved her, including her ex husband. Although Mary Kay is dead, those people are still left behind and were grieving their loss. They deserve respect and sympathy, even if Mary Kay, herself, might not have.

The same thing goes for anyone convicted of a crime. Very few people have no one in the world. Very few people are so awful that there isn’t someone who appreciates and loves them. So when I express sorrow for someone who’s done bad things dying or being injured, it’s not just for that person. It’s also for the innocent people who love them regardless of any negative things they’ve said or done. I feel like I should be allowed to do that without being labeled, chastised, or canceled. In a different era, I probably would be. Or, at least I might have a chance to explain, right?

I can understand why people cancel each other. Nowadays, we’re all bombarded with so much information and relationships tend to be wider and more shallow, rather than deep and narrow. We live in an era where it’s easy to become acquaintances, especially online, but it’s hard to become real friends. And so, when someone is annoying or upsetting, we can just change the channel, as it were, or click the unfriend or even the block button. I’ve done it myself a few times, although I usually do it to strangers before I’ll do it to people I’ve interacted with regularly. I usually don’t unfriend people for being offensive unless they are repeat offenders and I’ve asked them to stop at least once. A person I’ve actually met really has to upset me before I ostracize them completely by hitting the block button. I’ve never done it to a relative, although some of my relatives have done it to me. The vast majority of the people I unfriend get dropped because I don’t actually know them or speak to them, they’ve gone inactive for a long time, or they’re dead. I reserve blocking for people who won’t leave me alone, people who are stalkers or creepy, or people who have been deliberately hurtful.

I know a lot of people are perfectly fine with calling people out and “canceling them”, as if they’ve never done anything wrong themselves. But personally, I find it a very disturbing phenomenon. I’m a big believer in allowing people to be heard, even if what they have to say isn’t something we want to hear. Sometimes unpleasant messages have truths within them, and sometimes group think can obscure humanity. For instance, some years ago, I watched a Disney propaganda film about the rise of Hitler. It’s called Education for Death.

This is a pretty interesting film…

At about five minutes into the above video, we see a schoolboy named Hans in Germany being taught about a fox hunting and killing a rabbit. Everyone in the class is all about the fox killing the rabbit except the little boy, who expresses sympathy for the creature. He’s ostracized and ridiculed for having a different viewpoint, so under tremendous peer pressure, he eventually loses his natural regard for the rabbit and joins his classmates in their bloodthirsty enthusiasm for killing. The narrator says sarcastically, “Hans has now come around to the ‘correct’ Nazi way of thinking.”

Now, I am not in any way comparing what happened to me to Naziism. What I’m trying to point out is that respectful discussions and sharing different perspectives are good things. It’s useful and helpful to talk about different views. I see nothing wrong with recognizing something good in someone’s actions, even if that person has been “canceled” or is not politically correct or popular. Like I said, I don’t think there are too many people who are truly all good or all bad. I do think “all bad” people exist, but my opinion is that there are very few of them. And a person should have the chance to redeem themselves, if they can. It’s not a good thing for someone to go through life being hated by everyone.

I also think hating people takes a lot of energy. There are a couple of people in the world that I can honestly say that I legitimately have no regard for at all. I have my personal reasons for feeling that way about them, though, and I don’t expect others to feel the same way I do. Having negative feelings about those people who actually harmed me in a personal way already takes a lot of energy. I don’t have the energy to spare to also hate politicians with whom I disagree. Trump, of course, is a different matter. I probably do legitimately hate him, and I make no apologies for that. But I’m not going to kick people out of my life for disagreeing with me. If I did that, I’d never speak to my family again.

My former friend apparently loathes Mike Pence. She has her reasons for loathing him. I probably even agree with her for feeling the way she does. But prior to the other day, it was not something we’d ever discussed. I can’t say we really discussed it the other day, either, since she quickly got pissed off and split. She just expected me to share her view and canceled me when I didn’t. Or, at least that’s what I concluded, since she didn’t talk to me about what had upset her so much. And I was left realizing that this person I had once respected, and had even told that I respected, had no respect whatsoever for me.

I know some people will tell me I’m too sensitive. In fact, when I posted a thought about this situation, I got a comment from someone who acted as an apologist and gave me advice. Advice was not really what I was seeking, though. What I was doing was requesting that those who are too immature to have a respectful discussion to go ahead and unfriend me now. Because that’s not how I “do” real friendship– at least not with people I actually know and care about offline. And I am not going to let anyone tell me how to think or what I can or can’t say. I’d rather have fewer real friends than a bunch of fakes clogging up my feed.

If I want to commend Mike Pence for following the law and showing dignity at the inauguration, that should be my privilege, especially on my space. Real friends will let me say that and have a rational and respectful discussion if they disagree with me. They won’t flip their hair, call me names, or cancel me for voicing my opinion. And if that’s the kind of person you are, as my ex friend said, “count me out.”

In other news… yesterday, we found out Arran has a mast cell tumor. He has to have surgery on Monday. Here we go again.

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