# Disagree with Miss Manners **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 11, 2024, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disagree-with-miss-manners/1001400 "2024-05-11T01:06:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 9
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2024, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disagree-with-miss-manners/1001400/9 "2024-05-11T05:15:05Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I have no familiarity with this alleged expert on manners, but I’ll say that @Exapno_Mapcase makes an excellent point. **Real** manners is about making people feel comfortable; fake manners, whether you call it “etiquette” or something else, can be nothing more than artificial pretension intended to elevate oneself by snubbing one’s perceived inferiors. Again, trying to distinguish between those two terms seems to me pointless and unsupported by actual linguistic usage. Yes, it’s always possible to (mis-)use a system of social conventions of some kind, whether you prefer to call it “manners” or “etiquette”, to embarrass somebody else about their social “inferiority”. But that is not what either manners or etiquette is intended to be about. I’ll just repeat some [relevant remarks](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-settle-this-disagreement-between-me-and-my-wife-lets-get-between-the-sheets/999146/78) I posted in a recent thread: > [@Kimstu](#): > > Certainly, there are some people who claim the authority of “etiquette” (or “manners”, for that matter) merely as a justification for gratuitous snobbish snootiness, but that doesn’t mean that anybody else has to agree with them. Ultimately, etiquette systems are fundamentally about creating a reasonable set of standard default social conventions, so everybody can avoid feeling inferior. [And furthermore:](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/please-settle-this-disagreement-between-me-and-my-wife-lets-get-between-the-sheets/999146/69) > [@Kimstu](#): > > The main reason that etiquette authorities exist is to provide decisive guidance on zillions of fundamentally arbitrary but impactful choices that random individuals would otherwise waste massive amounts of time and energy disagreeing about. Forks on the left or right? White shoes in winter? Hats worn indoors? Shake hands or bow? Which is correct? Does it matter? > > No, not really. But because most people learn these sorts of trivial conventions as part of routine everyday behavior, it can be disproportionately socially disruptive for them to be done “wrong”. > > So Miss Manners and her ilk undertake to be the referees who will make decisions about rules compliance, so that everybody else can get on with the game. As the rest of your post illustrates, when people get their backs up about the existence of arbitrary social conventions like how to cut up your food, and start feeling judged and resentful about the implication that they’re doing it “wrong”, then that often leads to lengthy justifications and discussions about whether some individual arbitrary convention actually “makes sense”, and by whose standards of “valid reasoning”, along with reiterated reassurances that it’s okay if somebody wants to do it differently. Alternatively, we can just shortcut the whole process by agreeing with Miss Manners that having systems of standard social conventions is useful, but that most of the conventions are admittedly arbitrary, and logical justifications offered on their behalf are mostly after-the-fact rationalizations. And that in any case [ETA: as Die\_Capacitrix also notes], etiquette always maintains that it’s much ruder to openly criticize or correct somebody for “violating” an arbitrary etiquette convention than it is to commit the “violation” in the first place. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/disagree-with-miss-manners/1001400)._