Pre-UCMJ, “silent contempt” was an offense in the military subject to non-judicial punishment.
IMHO, “not suffering fools lightly” is practced by self-congratulatory assholes, liable to the “when your only tool is a hammer…” fallacy. Like all weapons mastered by 11-year old girls, it’s used to establish heirarchy, not fight ignorance.
But I might be wrong. If i’m so smart, why aren’t I out there ruling the world instead of posting on an internet message board?
IME, rolleyes are generally used in real life only by kids (and I include teenagers when I say kids). It can be an expression of rebellion and/or disgust, in real life, when the eye roller knows that s/he shouldn’t speak his/her feelings. Eye rollers are generally brats.
On a message board, the eyeroll emoticon can be useful, in certain cases.
Don’t ever do it in front of a Judge.
I’ve seen what happens then, and it isn’t pretty.
Think “Contempt of Court”…really.
Oh, I roll my eyes on a daily basis at work. There’s a guy who comes up with the most inane things, I can’t think of any other response. Luckily our cube walls are tall enough that nobody can see me. He’ll spout his nonsense in crew meetings, too–and sometimes I can’t help myself. I should probably wear dark glasses to those meetings so I don’t get into trouble. What’s the eyeball equivalent of “biting your tongue” ?
“Fixing your gaze,” I would suggest.
As would I, too. Or, figuratively, let some thunderclouds roil behind your eyeballs while letting every muscle in your face go slack.
I’m not often morally offended, but there was a meet-up group I attended that had as a felolow member a young woman, comparatively attractive and intelligent, recently disharged from the army. One of the young men was highly smitten with her; much more so than she with him, and at a party she was demonstrating some of the “stress positions” she’d learned in Iraq on him. As a veteran who’d had a difficult time readapting to civillian life myself, and anti-war virtue of that experience as well, I considered asking them to knock it the fuck off and have a word to her about her readjustment process, but steered the course of MYOFB instead.
Later, during a formal group discussion, someone brought up the topic of killing. She merrily raised her hand to brag that she’d killed people, and with giggles dared anyone else to say if they had. I admit, if she were a young guy saying that, I’d have suggested she shut the fuck up, but instead I gave her as dead a look as anyone she or anybody else has ever killed.
I doubt that was why she dropped out of the group, but I think it was a more sincere response from me than if I’d rolled my eyes and sighed (or dropped a pair of lornettes and exclaimed “why, I never!”)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If you use a smiley in a post that is the least bit confrontational, you are an asshole and you lose the thread. This applies to most threads in GD and the Pit, and many threads in the other forums. I would go so far as to say that smilies almost always diminish a post, and never enhance it. People usually don’t even use them the way people use emoticons.
In fact, I suggest we consider a board-wide moratorium on smilies, wherein raw emoticons are permitted but aren’t converted into ugly little cartoons. I think we’d find that some of our more dickish posters will seem less dickish.
This is intersting to me - according to many posters here “rolly-eyes” is strictly verboten, while somehow “fixed gaze” is not? It would seem to me that they are essentially communicating a similar non-verbal message of disapproval. Why is one jerkish and the other not?
:rolleyes:
It’s less obvious. Like the poster above who said that her kid was suspected of having micro-seizures because she sucked at rolling her eyes, eye-rolling is very easy to see, and (usually) apparent about what it means. If you just fix your gaze hard on someone, as long as your facial expression is kept more neutral, it can be difficult to tell what is meant. You could be trying to process new information, you could be trying to stay awake, maybe you’re trying out one of those “hypnotize the minds of the weak!” pamphlets from the back of your comic books. It’s also harder for bystanders to tell your intent.
Far too predictable to be clever.
:fixedgaze:
I have never been accused of being clever. :rolleyes:
I’d support this if “cunt” were returned.
So it’s better because it’s more passive aggressive? I don’t agree. Of course, I tend to prefer saying “That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard” to rolling my eyes.
No, that’s not where was going with this.
The poster I first replied to asked what the eye equivalent of “biting your tongue” was, and I offered “fixing your gaze” as an alternate metaphor. Working in ophthalmology, we talk about gaze fixation fairly frequently, but it means being able to hold your eyes still, focus on an object, track an object with your eyes.
Another poster took the discussion of metaphor literally, to mean a hostile glare or something, so I tried to say that well, at least just focusing your gaze on someone was better than wild eye-rolling and sighing.
Gazing long upon someone is better than not looking at them at all, which I would classify far more readily as “passive-aggressive.” In fact, glaring hard is more aggressive than passive-aggressive.
Not to mention that piping up with “That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard” at a random point during a meeting is probably more likely to get the speaker bounced from it.
In the real world it is rude. I associate it with a slap. But, this is the Straight dope and not a regular board. It has it’s own rules of Chivalry. You get to know after a while who has some class and who’s an ass.
I enjoy Mundane.
What happened? I would suppose it could be contempt, but did the judge describe it for the record? Was there a fine or jail time?
:smack:
