I know what you mean. I had to get a customer service agent to fix a thing yesterday and when I finished explaining it (with slow, deliberate, Josh Clarity), I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared to hear a stupid question that only someone who ignored every single thing I just said could possibly ask. I swore to myself that I would not go into That Mode, at least not instantly. And then, she said, "Ah, I see exactly what happened and I'll have it fixed in just a minute." And then....she did. 😲😲😲
Regarding your last two pars. How about going back and being extra nice to the young black man. How do you know what was or is going on in his life. Of course, stores should expect all employees to shine with a smile but when it doesn't happen it isn't always because they're vile or young or anything else. Maybe someone close is sick as hell or a friend ... the Christian thing to do would be to be nice to both favouring nor fearing one or the other. Best, Brendan Hanrahan
I'm getting new glasses frames this week & I've been tempted multiple times to see if I can politely find a way to ask the other Millennial who's been assisting me with modifications if she's migrated here, because she's been so much friendlier than I was expecting. It's sad that it's notable.
The double whammy for me is encountering unexpectedly both courtesy and competence. I find myself so delighted and encouraged, and then somewhat saddened that such experiences are uncommon.
Coda—For most of my life, other people have told me that I obsess over “little things.” Things that don’t matter. “Why are you so upset? That doesn’t mean anything.”
Because I’m aware of my own histrionic personality tendencies, I’ve tried to be self-aware about my reactions. Am I obsessing over little things that don’t matter? Is it all “in my head?”
Readers, I’ve decided that the answer is “no.” And I think I’ve let my awareness of my own failings turn into a new insecurity. I think I’ve listened to other people too much, and blamed my own neuroticism for too much.
I’m very imperfect, but I am not dim or unobservant. At 48 years old, I am not young, either. These decades of adulthood have taught me real things. I have observed real, objective behavior, and real, objective, predictable patterns of behavior.
These things are happening outside my head. They’re happening independent of my emotional disposition. They may “feel” differently to a more even-keeled person than they feel to me, but they are not fantasies that exist only in my head.
This is why I write about these “little”, “unconnected” things. They are neither little, nor are they unconnected. They are part of the unraveling of the cultural fabric, and they are weighty and serious. I am noticing real patterns that affect our lives, and someone needs to chronicle them.
We don’t experience history from the vantage point of the White House, or a capital building, most of us. Nearly all of us are just ordinary, work-a-day people who live and work and shop in a fixed location. We experience history on the small and domestic scale.
I'm not a member of any club or group and fit no box, whatever you say. Some people need to grow up and if someone doesn't greet them with a trumpet overture of love just suck it up and grow up and move on without making assumptions about strangers you know nothing about. Sheesh, we do feel entitled, don't we? Always offended so easily? Best, Brendan Hanrahan, UK Society of Editors, full member
Josh, sorry to see that you had to close off comments to your post from yesterday about "Capture the Flag." I hope my comment was not part of the problem. At any rate, I can relate to your frustration in being polite to the person working the checkout line. I've worked that side of the line in my younger days and also waited tables. It's rough going - for every nice person you meet there are at least ten others who are dolts, if not a__holes. Having done that to earn a living, I give these folks a pass thinking that maybe they started out "being human" but were beaten down by the dregs of humanity. These days as sort of a sociological experiment I take the initiative of being personable. Some managers apparently require the checkers to say one of two things - they never seem to say both. One is "How are you?" delivered in a monotone so flat that it must have taken years to perfect. The second is likewise a question but also delivered like a declarative statement: "Did you find everything you were looking for?"
This is where my experiment begins. I say in my best stage voice, "I'm OK. And how are YOU today?" with a special emphasis on "You." More often than not, the checkers are jolted out of their coma, he or she looks up at me, usually blinking in the way people do when regaining consciousness, and stammers, "Uh, oh, I'm fine." If the second expression is used - there must be a rule about not using them together - "Did you find everything..." I answer, "Oh yes - and MORE!" If the checker is even partially conscious the person becomes aware that i made a funny and they respond with a knowing smile in acknowledgement of my riff on impulse buying. All this takes place in under a minute especially if I have only a few things. As I grab my stuff and move along I have a bit of satisfaction thinking that perhaps I turned a robot into a human being - at least for a moment.
You have this amazing ability to give incredibly clear and concise words to these disjointed, nebulous feelings of unease I often experience from being out in the world these days.
You say exactly what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, with such precision so often. And I love you for it. There. I said it and I don't care who knows it.
Thank you. Thank you for being a human out there. Someone who truly understands and is unafraid to say it for the world to hear. I feel your passion and I feel your pain. I've read comments on your posts where people think you're being possibly over the top. I know you're not. See, I don't just *live* in Brooklyn, I'm 50 and I'm actually *from* here. This tells you 2 things: I come from a time when this place was difficult and produced tough people, who took no shit, who could see it coming from a mile away. It also tells you I'm in the deepest, bluest of the blue, wokest, most ridiculous places in the country... just like you. Your observations are 100% correct.
People who want to argue that you're just talking about "very online stuff" couldn't be more wrong. If you live in a deep blue area, this has bled into every personal interaction you have *in real life*.
Since I left the bubble, my neighbors don't talk to me anymore. Any time I've tried to have a calm, rational conversation with another adult here, it's gotten really ugly.
From the time I expressed to one devout Branch Covidian neighbor that I had no intention of taking the shots that were still being developed at the time, unless they could prove they were safe (oh, look at that, turns out they weren't... who could've seen that coming?) to a recent exchange I had with a fellow parent from my daughter's play group that got so bizarre, it left me shaken for days. The subject? Can you guess??? This grown-ass, middle-aged white WOMAN, a mother of 2 children, "birthing person and chest-feeder", was sitting on a park bench, pontificating about a friend of hers who has an 8 year-old child (natal male) whom she socially transitioned as a 6 year old, who didn't feel safe at one play group because... wait for it... the facilitators didn't want her to read a book about trans kids at story time to their children. They didn't kick her out, they didn't ask her to take her Transhausen-by-Proxy crazy self or poor, confused child out of the group. No, they simply told her "no, we don't think that's appropriate for the group." Apparently "no" is not allowed. She sat there clutching her proverbial pearls at how transphobic this group was, how unjust it was that her brave, virtuous friend had been so maligned, smugly telling me that we live in the most transphobic, homophobic, racist country in the world. She even relayed a story about (I kid you not) her gay brother being a transphobe himself because he won't comply with the trans narrative, bigot that he is! (The horror!) Then this WOMAN finishes with her coup de grace...the spiel, you know the one, about how "gender is a spectrum, puberty blockers are magic because they just pause puberty, etc..." we've all heard it, they all read from the same script. She was so pleased with herself that she didn't notice I wasn't nodding in agreement.
Thing is... even a year or two ago, I might have believed the same things, fallen for the same bullshit, but I woke the f*ck up. And I made the mistake of telling her so.
I quietly and respectfully told her that sex is a binary, not a spectrum. How you present in the world has nothing to do with your biological sex. Puberty blockers are medical malpractice and harmful to young children. And I told her that her brother is correct and that maybe she should listen to the lived experience of a "G" in the LGB+++ alphabet soup they've tacked onto the rainbow flag. Maybe someone *from* the so-called "community" has some valuable insight that she, a privileged, white, straight, "cis" hetero-normative woman in Park Slope, Brooklyn might benefit from hearing. You can imagine how the rest of this conversation went. We didn't yell, we didn't argue. I saw the look come over her face when she realized I wasn't buying what she was selling. You'd think I just shit my pants from the look of horror on her face. She immediately jumped up, made an excuse about being late for an appointment, collected her daughter, and literally ran out of the park.
She stopped texting me for play dates, even though our daughters adore each other and they're too young to care about any of this bullshit. My husband was very exasperated with me because he's much better at shutting his mouth, even though he agrees with me. He was raised in a Jehovah's Witness family, so he knows how to keep his trap shut for fear of repercussions.
So yes, Mr. Slocum, you are not imagining that these real-world interactions are changing you. Making you more distrustful, making you second-guess every exchange. Thank you for observing these things, reflecting on them, and trying to come out a better person for it, despite the nonsense you see around you.
Now you know why I love you and why I'm honored to have your presence in my life and I'm not afraid to say how much I need to hear your voice and appreciate that I'm not alone out here! Thank you!
I am frequently thankful that I no longer live in New England because I believe you. That statement makes me sad on several fronts. There are certainly pockets of this behavior where I live, but it is not the norm. Unfortunately, when one has to interact with “customer service” by phone then I imagine I have entered some yet unnamed circle of hell.
Is it just me or are most human interaction in heavily Wokified areas seem heavily superficial?
I’m noticing a few major differences between the “woke” and “non-woke.” One is the woke’s reliance on credentials and signaling virtue. That’s not to say the non-woke don’t do it either but the woke seem keen on judging people first through those lenses, and of course on whatever immutable characteristic and/or new classification their priests in activdemia cook up.
A key example of this is this ridiculous LA Times column where the author, a snobby woke elite with a vacation home in the mountains, is trying to reconcile with the fact their “Trumpite neighbors” shoveled the snow out of their driveway. They’re generally puzzled at the whole thing and how to reciprocate.
Josh, I hope you are working on a manuscript for the book you need to write. You have an excellent ability to describe your experiences and interactions with people and the milieu in which they happen. Who knows. Maybe you will actually cause a change for the good, though it's doubtful that the people who need to change would ever read it. But I would!!
I agree with you and I attribute the insensitiveness of employees on the cell phone. It's more and more apparent that those that grew up in the age of cells phones are more and more selfish and rude that is IF you can get them to take the phone out of their faces. It's like entitlement.
"Am I obsessing over little things that don’t matter? Is it all 'in my head?'”
I hardly think so. You're just more alert. If you'll forgive me for saying so I, like you, have a habit of coming in first at playing spot-the-asshole. The reward is to be treated like a jerk who isn't as smart as the cool kids but time and time again I've been proven right. Example: The moment Sam Harris started a podcast on Dave Rubin by frontloading it with personal attacks instead of just criticizing his positions and failed to invite Bret Weinstein on his show over their disagreements regarding covid (while hanging out with machine whores like David Frum), I knew that something had gone horribly wrong way before his notorious meltdown. Or, while still a Democrat, upon getting the first email from the Clinton campaign entitled "Ready for Hillary?" as if her victory was a foregone conclusion and we'd better get used to the idea of her becoming president, I knew the implied towering arrogance spelled trouble. I still thought she was going to win but could see that the ambient certainty of her enjoying a crushing victory was misplaced. In both examples the evidence of trouble was always there. People just didn't pay attention.
So, you're good at spotting assholes and brewing trouble. As long as you don't get cocky and keep an eye out for indications that maybe you're wrong, you'll do fine and render a necessary, if grossly underappreciated, service to the world.
Keep up the terrific work and wouldn't it be nice if you were just as good at picking stocks?
I know what you mean. I had to get a customer service agent to fix a thing yesterday and when I finished explaining it (with slow, deliberate, Josh Clarity), I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared to hear a stupid question that only someone who ignored every single thing I just said could possibly ask. I swore to myself that I would not go into That Mode, at least not instantly. And then, she said, "Ah, I see exactly what happened and I'll have it fixed in just a minute." And then....she did. 😲😲😲
What an incredibly sad state of affairs we are in where the least bit of politeness shocks us.
Regarding your last two pars. How about going back and being extra nice to the young black man. How do you know what was or is going on in his life. Of course, stores should expect all employees to shine with a smile but when it doesn't happen it isn't always because they're vile or young or anything else. Maybe someone close is sick as hell or a friend ... the Christian thing to do would be to be nice to both favouring nor fearing one or the other. Best, Brendan Hanrahan
I'm getting new glasses frames this week & I've been tempted multiple times to see if I can politely find a way to ask the other Millennial who's been assisting me with modifications if she's migrated here, because she's been so much friendlier than I was expecting. It's sad that it's notable.
The double whammy for me is encountering unexpectedly both courtesy and competence. I find myself so delighted and encouraged, and then somewhat saddened that such experiences are uncommon.
Edit to add:
Coda—For most of my life, other people have told me that I obsess over “little things.” Things that don’t matter. “Why are you so upset? That doesn’t mean anything.”
Because I’m aware of my own histrionic personality tendencies, I’ve tried to be self-aware about my reactions. Am I obsessing over little things that don’t matter? Is it all “in my head?”
Readers, I’ve decided that the answer is “no.” And I think I’ve let my awareness of my own failings turn into a new insecurity. I think I’ve listened to other people too much, and blamed my own neuroticism for too much.
I’m very imperfect, but I am not dim or unobservant. At 48 years old, I am not young, either. These decades of adulthood have taught me real things. I have observed real, objective behavior, and real, objective, predictable patterns of behavior.
These things are happening outside my head. They’re happening independent of my emotional disposition. They may “feel” differently to a more even-keeled person than they feel to me, but they are not fantasies that exist only in my head.
This is why I write about these “little”, “unconnected” things. They are neither little, nor are they unconnected. They are part of the unraveling of the cultural fabric, and they are weighty and serious. I am noticing real patterns that affect our lives, and someone needs to chronicle them.
We don’t experience history from the vantage point of the White House, or a capital building, most of us. Nearly all of us are just ordinary, work-a-day people who live and work and shop in a fixed location. We experience history on the small and domestic scale.
It matters. Someone needs to write it down.
And—thank you for noticing.
I'm not a member of any club or group and fit no box, whatever you say. Some people need to grow up and if someone doesn't greet them with a trumpet overture of love just suck it up and grow up and move on without making assumptions about strangers you know nothing about. Sheesh, we do feel entitled, don't we? Always offended so easily? Best, Brendan Hanrahan, UK Society of Editors, full member
Yes, agreed, being extra nice also encourages codependency, the thinking that if only you can make the other person happy, you’ll be happy.
Josh, sorry to see that you had to close off comments to your post from yesterday about "Capture the Flag." I hope my comment was not part of the problem. At any rate, I can relate to your frustration in being polite to the person working the checkout line. I've worked that side of the line in my younger days and also waited tables. It's rough going - for every nice person you meet there are at least ten others who are dolts, if not a__holes. Having done that to earn a living, I give these folks a pass thinking that maybe they started out "being human" but were beaten down by the dregs of humanity. These days as sort of a sociological experiment I take the initiative of being personable. Some managers apparently require the checkers to say one of two things - they never seem to say both. One is "How are you?" delivered in a monotone so flat that it must have taken years to perfect. The second is likewise a question but also delivered like a declarative statement: "Did you find everything you were looking for?"
This is where my experiment begins. I say in my best stage voice, "I'm OK. And how are YOU today?" with a special emphasis on "You." More often than not, the checkers are jolted out of their coma, he or she looks up at me, usually blinking in the way people do when regaining consciousness, and stammers, "Uh, oh, I'm fine." If the second expression is used - there must be a rule about not using them together - "Did you find everything..." I answer, "Oh yes - and MORE!" If the checker is even partially conscious the person becomes aware that i made a funny and they respond with a knowing smile in acknowledgement of my riff on impulse buying. All this takes place in under a minute especially if I have only a few things. As I grab my stuff and move along I have a bit of satisfaction thinking that perhaps I turned a robot into a human being - at least for a moment.
You have this amazing ability to give incredibly clear and concise words to these disjointed, nebulous feelings of unease I often experience from being out in the world these days.
You say exactly what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, with such precision so often. And I love you for it. There. I said it and I don't care who knows it.
Thank you. Thank you for being a human out there. Someone who truly understands and is unafraid to say it for the world to hear. I feel your passion and I feel your pain. I've read comments on your posts where people think you're being possibly over the top. I know you're not. See, I don't just *live* in Brooklyn, I'm 50 and I'm actually *from* here. This tells you 2 things: I come from a time when this place was difficult and produced tough people, who took no shit, who could see it coming from a mile away. It also tells you I'm in the deepest, bluest of the blue, wokest, most ridiculous places in the country... just like you. Your observations are 100% correct.
People who want to argue that you're just talking about "very online stuff" couldn't be more wrong. If you live in a deep blue area, this has bled into every personal interaction you have *in real life*.
Since I left the bubble, my neighbors don't talk to me anymore. Any time I've tried to have a calm, rational conversation with another adult here, it's gotten really ugly.
From the time I expressed to one devout Branch Covidian neighbor that I had no intention of taking the shots that were still being developed at the time, unless they could prove they were safe (oh, look at that, turns out they weren't... who could've seen that coming?) to a recent exchange I had with a fellow parent from my daughter's play group that got so bizarre, it left me shaken for days. The subject? Can you guess??? This grown-ass, middle-aged white WOMAN, a mother of 2 children, "birthing person and chest-feeder", was sitting on a park bench, pontificating about a friend of hers who has an 8 year-old child (natal male) whom she socially transitioned as a 6 year old, who didn't feel safe at one play group because... wait for it... the facilitators didn't want her to read a book about trans kids at story time to their children. They didn't kick her out, they didn't ask her to take her Transhausen-by-Proxy crazy self or poor, confused child out of the group. No, they simply told her "no, we don't think that's appropriate for the group." Apparently "no" is not allowed. She sat there clutching her proverbial pearls at how transphobic this group was, how unjust it was that her brave, virtuous friend had been so maligned, smugly telling me that we live in the most transphobic, homophobic, racist country in the world. She even relayed a story about (I kid you not) her gay brother being a transphobe himself because he won't comply with the trans narrative, bigot that he is! (The horror!) Then this WOMAN finishes with her coup de grace...the spiel, you know the one, about how "gender is a spectrum, puberty blockers are magic because they just pause puberty, etc..." we've all heard it, they all read from the same script. She was so pleased with herself that she didn't notice I wasn't nodding in agreement.
Thing is... even a year or two ago, I might have believed the same things, fallen for the same bullshit, but I woke the f*ck up. And I made the mistake of telling her so.
I quietly and respectfully told her that sex is a binary, not a spectrum. How you present in the world has nothing to do with your biological sex. Puberty blockers are medical malpractice and harmful to young children. And I told her that her brother is correct and that maybe she should listen to the lived experience of a "G" in the LGB+++ alphabet soup they've tacked onto the rainbow flag. Maybe someone *from* the so-called "community" has some valuable insight that she, a privileged, white, straight, "cis" hetero-normative woman in Park Slope, Brooklyn might benefit from hearing. You can imagine how the rest of this conversation went. We didn't yell, we didn't argue. I saw the look come over her face when she realized I wasn't buying what she was selling. You'd think I just shit my pants from the look of horror on her face. She immediately jumped up, made an excuse about being late for an appointment, collected her daughter, and literally ran out of the park.
She stopped texting me for play dates, even though our daughters adore each other and they're too young to care about any of this bullshit. My husband was very exasperated with me because he's much better at shutting his mouth, even though he agrees with me. He was raised in a Jehovah's Witness family, so he knows how to keep his trap shut for fear of repercussions.
So yes, Mr. Slocum, you are not imagining that these real-world interactions are changing you. Making you more distrustful, making you second-guess every exchange. Thank you for observing these things, reflecting on them, and trying to come out a better person for it, despite the nonsense you see around you.
Now you know why I love you and why I'm honored to have your presence in my life and I'm not afraid to say how much I need to hear your voice and appreciate that I'm not alone out here! Thank you!
I am frequently thankful that I no longer live in New England because I believe you. That statement makes me sad on several fronts. There are certainly pockets of this behavior where I live, but it is not the norm. Unfortunately, when one has to interact with “customer service” by phone then I imagine I have entered some yet unnamed circle of hell.
Is it just me or are most human interaction in heavily Wokified areas seem heavily superficial?
I’m noticing a few major differences between the “woke” and “non-woke.” One is the woke’s reliance on credentials and signaling virtue. That’s not to say the non-woke don’t do it either but the woke seem keen on judging people first through those lenses, and of course on whatever immutable characteristic and/or new classification their priests in activdemia cook up.
A key example of this is this ridiculous LA Times column where the author, a snobby woke elite with a vacation home in the mountains, is trying to reconcile with the fact their “Trumpite neighbors” shoveled the snow out of their driveway. They’re generally puzzled at the whole thing and how to reciprocate.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-02-05/trumpite-neighbor-unity-capitol-attack
Josh, I hope you are working on a manuscript for the book you need to write. You have an excellent ability to describe your experiences and interactions with people and the milieu in which they happen. Who knows. Maybe you will actually cause a change for the good, though it's doubtful that the people who need to change would ever read it. But I would!!
I agree with you and I attribute the insensitiveness of employees on the cell phone. It's more and more apparent that those that grew up in the age of cells phones are more and more selfish and rude that is IF you can get them to take the phone out of their faces. It's like entitlement.
"Am I obsessing over little things that don’t matter? Is it all 'in my head?'”
I hardly think so. You're just more alert. If you'll forgive me for saying so I, like you, have a habit of coming in first at playing spot-the-asshole. The reward is to be treated like a jerk who isn't as smart as the cool kids but time and time again I've been proven right. Example: The moment Sam Harris started a podcast on Dave Rubin by frontloading it with personal attacks instead of just criticizing his positions and failed to invite Bret Weinstein on his show over their disagreements regarding covid (while hanging out with machine whores like David Frum), I knew that something had gone horribly wrong way before his notorious meltdown. Or, while still a Democrat, upon getting the first email from the Clinton campaign entitled "Ready for Hillary?" as if her victory was a foregone conclusion and we'd better get used to the idea of her becoming president, I knew the implied towering arrogance spelled trouble. I still thought she was going to win but could see that the ambient certainty of her enjoying a crushing victory was misplaced. In both examples the evidence of trouble was always there. People just didn't pay attention.
So, you're good at spotting assholes and brewing trouble. As long as you don't get cocky and keep an eye out for indications that maybe you're wrong, you'll do fine and render a necessary, if grossly underappreciated, service to the world.
Keep up the terrific work and wouldn't it be nice if you were just as good at picking stocks?
Member 3741 actually. Child