Inarticulate Rage GQ: What is the name of this stupid, insipid attitude I keep encountering?

The BBQ Pit
1

ARGHGLBLARGPTHBTT!

Rage. Rageragerageragerageragerage.

Okay, that’s out of the way. What prompted this didn’t even occur on this forum, but I’ve certainly seen it here in the past, and this seemed like the best place to hope to have a meaningful discussion about it.

I, I keep running into these people, that when you mention a serious issue, even in passing, feel the need to jump up and announce in jaded tones that since everybody knows that issues exists already, it’s not actually serious and not worthy of mention. It is one of the most bizarre attitudes I have ever encountered. It’s, it’s “preemtively dismissive”. I don’t know what to call it, I dunno, I don’t even know how to describe it exactly but it makes my head hurt so much just trying to figure out what the hell these people’s position is. Their position seems to be that the issue in question is beneath having positions on and so any position held is wrong merely by being in reference to something beneath their contempt. Or something.

The argument that prompted this was, of all things, a discussion on a forum about a webcomic, in which the issue of a diplomat character committing espionage had come up, and in which some people were arguing that the espionage was not a meaningful transgression because “everyone knows diplomats are spies”. I made the mistake of bringing up the recent expulsion of a Russian diplomat from the UK for spying, and that just seems to have encouraged the people whose bizarre arguments seem just a few steps shy of trolling.

The counter-arguments were essentially analogous to “It’s not a tragedy if someone gets gunned down in a bad part of town, because everyone knows people get gunned down there all the time. It’s just business as usual.”

I got the response here once when some one bafflingly lashed out at me for asking in GQ why Soy Sauce was black and Soy Milk was white, because… because I just don’t know why. They seemed to be offended by the idea that Soy could have a rhyme or reason behind it, that was worthy of inquiry.

I do not understand these people. Why is it so important to them that something not be important to someone else?

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It is the internet. If your thoughts are different than mine, then you are a stupid head.

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Perhaps they would say that they defend their own right not to care from your stance that they should care? Such discussions can become a battle of what issue we should spend our outrage on. And while some people have plenty of outrage, for some people their outrage is in short d supply.

Otherwise, the stance you described above: “You shouldn’t get worked up over case X because everyone knows that X-like stuff happens all the time” is indeed very annoying, especially if X doesn’t happen all the time.

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But what’s so crazy is we’re not even debating frequency! It’s a non-issue! The argument seems to be nothing more or less than that the relevance of an issue is negated by common knowledge of it.

It’s, it’s like that old Indie Rock Pete joke, about music being automatically bad because other people like it. The actual content of the music is irrelevant! It is genuinely bad purely on account of its distribution!

The argument goes like:

Normal Person: I like Song A! It’s catchy!

Person I Cannot Understand: Well, you’re stupid for liking Song A, because many other people like it too.

The postulates and the conclusion have no point of contact!

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I’ve mentioned this before, but I recall reading once that one of the strongest human desires is to seek out a perch from which to look down upon everyone else. There seems to be an even stronger inclination toward that type of behavior here on the Straight Dope. Here we have snobs, we have know-it-alls, and we have a fair number of the, ahem…underaccomplished, all seeking to boost their self-image by putting down the interests and/or knowledge of people they don’t konw on the internet, secure in the knowledge that they anonymity the internet affords will protect them from the consequences they would surely face should they acted that way toward anyone in person.

If I were you I would ignore them. There are enough knowledgeable and helpful people around here that it’s possible to get answers to almost any question that has a factual answer without the scorn and one-upmanship; you just need to know that sometimes it’ll become necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff.

In the case of what you’re talking about know, there is a certain segment of society who appears to believe that if something is widely accepted by the masses it is ipso-facto substandard because regard artist in question as having sold out to pander to the lesser tastes of the masses. They think the only good movies are small, indie productions that hardly anyone goes to see, or that the only good musicians are the ones doing their own thing which hardly anyone either knows about or appreciates.

Again, people like that should be ignored. If you want to talk about movies, seek out Equipoise and the people who discuss movies with her knowledgeably and without snobbery or rancor. If you want to talk about music or musical instruments, seek out Wordman or Le Ministre (the rest of whose name escapes me at the moment but he isn’t hard to find) and engage them. They attract respect and you could likely learn not only from them but from the people they engage with.

We have other people on this board who are very knowlegable about writing and the publishing business, people who are knowledgeable physic, astronomy, architechture…you name it. These people rarely, if ever, act like the sort of people you are talking about and they are generally happy to share their knowledge in a helpful and instructive way.

So people like those are the big dogs and the ones you want to to run with, and ignore the wanna-bes snapping at your heels. They have nothing of merit to offer and are only interested in talking to you try to make them feel better about themselves. They’re not worth the time it takes to condend with them.

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And kindly ignore whatever typos you find, I started that post after having already taken an Ambien and I must confess to having a fairly strong sleep-buzz going on right now.

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In the immortal words of Triple H, of WWF fame" Everybody needs someone to Jackoff on".

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Heh, thank you for the concurring rant, Starving Artist. Although, the Indie Snob argument I introduced was a bit misleading, as that attitude, while still stupid, is at least one I can get a grip on. Thinking about it more methodically, the Indie Snob Attitude can be stated more concisely as:

“That cultural object is not of high quality because it is widely recognized as being of high quality.”

-which at least makes a kind of demented sense, as there are aspects of cultural quality, and of the subjective experience of culture, which are positional, such as “originality” and “reciprocity”. The Indie Snob attitude is just about letting the perceived value of those aspects run wildly out of control, and devaluation of all other aspects. Again, demented, but at least understandable.

A better encapsulation of the attitude I’m speaking of, is taking the same logical structure and applying it to things which have little or no subjectivity:

“That crime is not a cause for serious concern because it is widely recognized as occurring often.”

“That current event is not important because it is already being heavily reported by the news media.”

“Whatever the answer to that scientific question about a product is, it must reveal a disparaging fact about its subject, because I think that subject is of poor quality.”

Those lines of thought, right there, are what I cannot cannot cannot understand. They are mindless.

What really, really gets under my skin about these people is that they never seem to add anything constructive to the conversations they insert themselves into. They’re not participating until they see the point they dislike, then they speak up just to dismiss it in a jaded tone without offering a counter proposal, and thereafter have nothing to contribute but snarky comments reiterating their disdain. And that’s why they’re so hard to avoid, too: you don’t start conversations with them, they start “conversations” with you, even if that word has to be seriously stretched to describe the exchange.

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Meh, seen this thread before.

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I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about, Strain of Thought - do you have an actual example of this? Is it just people being bored with Current Event X because everyone’s been talking about it too much for too long (for example, the earthquake in Haiti this year)? Or people saying that the Haitians got what they deserved for living in such a poor country?

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Friends of ours have a 20-year-old son who is majoring in political science. He’s always discovering unpleasant things for the first time, and having a lot thoughts about these things–pretty much the same thoughts everyone else had when they were 20 and discovering them for the first time.

I (30 years old) don’t really know how to react or what to say to him. Yep, the bad things are true. Nope, they wouldn’t happen in the best of all possible worlds. But kid… they’d be really, really hard to fix, and we’d rather not dwell on them any more than we already have. It’s boring for us.

Could that be what’s happening?

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I think the point is that when people are standing around the water cooler discussing how sad it is that Ellie from Accounts got carjacked, and some guy comes up and says people get carjacked all the time, that guy is a douche.

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Thank you so much, Jim! That’s a big help! Cat Whisperer, here’s your example. Jim just joined this conversation solely to suggest that we shouldn’t be having it because somebody else already did.

In regards to the Haiti example, it would mean making a point of dismissing the topic of conversation the moment it came up, when you had not talked to this person about it before, when it wasn’t even a central topic, and when you might not have even been directly talking to that person about it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with frankly saying “I’ve been hearing a lot about that lately, I’m weary of it, I’d rather not talk about it.” This thing I’m describing is jumping straight to attacking a person for even mentioning a topic in passing, even to someone else.

Really Not All That Bright, you’ve got a pretty good handle on the concept. It’s got some range, and also includes attacks against specific points within conversations as well as attacks against the topic itself, but that’s the gist of it. Somebody just can’t seem to stand that someone else is talking about something they don’t like. An example of the specific version would be if someone in the carjacking conversation mentioned a route they took that avoided a bad part of town, and someone felt compelled to walk up and declare it a bad route solely because it involved a toll road, and not add anything else.

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But, of course, you wouldn’t do that. You’re better than that. It’s all those people.

(just teasing. I agree 100%)

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Nu-uh. It makes you a dumb-butt.

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Or perhaps you’ve just been whooshed.

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Warning: Take Boyo Jim’s posts seriously at your own risk!

Okay, I think I’ve got it now, and I agree - if all you have to contribute to a conversation is telling people they’re stupid for having it, you can piss off.

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“Pretending” to be a jerk by behaving jerkishly and then being perceived as a jerk as a result is not an achievement. If Boyo is really putting on an act, perhaps next time he can whoosh somebody by pretending to be an intelligent and thoughtful person?

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The traditional response to discovering you’ve been whooshed is to chuckle self-deprecatingly and move on.

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Post-Ambien posting is the new drunk dialing. Man have I sent some doozies.