Verbing *Gaslight* (open spoilers for an 81-yr-old movie whose plot is part of common parlance)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I know there are opinions out there to the effect that native speakers can’t make errors, and words mean whatever we want them go mean. I’m aware of them.

I still want to talk about whether we are getting full value out of the word “gaslight” (v.t.)

I read, just now, on another website, the reading of which was an excuse not to be doing what I was supposed to be doing, and had no other value, a woman complaining about how much her boyfriend gaslights her.

And I thought, "Isn’t it axiomatic to the idea of “gaslighting” as something special relative to just playing mind games or trying to drive someone batty, that the object of it does not know it is happening?

It was in the movie. The gaslights were fundamental to the plot, and a trick on the audience as well, because someone would usually come into the room right after they had dimmed or brightened, so we were never sure whether we were seeing Paula’s perspective, or an omniscient one.

And, then, it turns out that the lights, which are the one thing Gregory/Sergius isn’t doing on purpose, become the thing that trips him up.

That second part is just as fundamental to the reason the film is called “Gaslight,” yet not part of what people call “gaslighting” at all, so I guess we’re already getting away from the plot of the film-- but then why even bother to name the phenomenon after the film?

At any rate, * IS * not knowing that it is happening part of what gaslighting is, or does the term have no meaningful connection to the movie, it just sounds better than “lying,” “cheating,” or “fooling”?

2

ISTM the person being gaslighted can’t know it is happening. Otherwise, they would be immune to the gaslighting.

You have to make someone doubt their own perceptions, memories, or understanding of reality. That does not work if they are aware they are being manipulated.

The term itself is certainly connected to the movie. It makes no sense as a term without the movie as a reference.

3

Yeah, they can’t know it’s happening. BUT - the victim can be aware that someone is trying to gaslight them. Which may be a more accurate way to put it. Or maybe not - usage of “gaslighting” has expanded so much that it might just mean my friend is insistent that her memory of graduation 40 years ago is correct, and mine is wrong.

4

The original victim in Gaslight - a 1938 play and a 1940 British film before the 1944 American movie - was manipulated without her knowledge. That might not have been known to her, but all the audiences understood. Ever since gaslighting has been something that is recognizable as a process, if not necessarily in the early stages but in retrospect. The modern usage is not much of a deviation from that. There is usually a questioning first - am I being gaslighted? - and then a conclusion either believing that one has or hasn’t. Since manipulation is a fundamental aspect of humanity the term is a useful shorthand, even though it is so vague as to produce any desired answer. As long as one can discuss it in the modern sense and get immediate understanding, its serves its purpose.

Even if the modern usage had absolutely no connection to the film, so what? That words only have their original meaning is a common fallacy. Once a word falls into the common discourse it takes on a life of its own, and may change, distort, or reverse the original meaning. Yes, “words mean whatever we want them to mean.” That can cause confusion. Not desirable, yet every word and every sentence can and often does cause confusion. Cite: the entire history of the Dope. When a word becomes so noticeable that the American Dialect Association pronounced it the most useful word of the year in 2006, it’s time to give up pedanticism and acknowledge the new world.

5

IMO, it’s a wildly overused word, particularly in the context of Internet arguments, where it often seems to mean something along the lines of disagreeing with someone.

6

Yeah, I think it means manipulating someone without them being aware they are being manipulated. Tricking them in a particular way.

7

Lately, instead of the currently trendy “You’re gaslighting me!” I’ve taken to using the old classic “You can’t kid me!” I might also adopt “Trying to pull the wool over my eyes, eh?”

8

Yeah, I’m weary of having to explain that not agreeing with someone and trying to change their mind is NOT gaslighting them. It’s just disagreeing and arguing.

9

I agree that mere disagreement is not gaslighting. Gaslighting does need an element of manipulation, as several have mentioned.

In the current US situation (and elsewhere) there are political parties who operate on talking points. These talking points are virtually never expressions of fact; they are, instead, selected or even distorted facts which are intended to sway listeners/readers to some position favored by the issuer of the talking points.

I’d maintain that the use of such talking points during arguments IS reasonably called gaslighting, in that the intent is to change views via false or distorted information. It’s the falseness (or distortion) that constitutes the manipulation, which makes it “gaslighting.”

Mileage may vary.

10

I think that this is a part of the expanded reasonable use of “gaslighting”, but I’d say that in order to truly feel like gaslighting there has to be a “big lie” aspect to it as well. So not only use of distorted facts, but facts that are so counter to reality that the only way that they could be true is if all of your previous facts you thought you knew were wrong.

So, when you look at a “big lie”, it does feel like the other side is trying to gaslight you, by asking you to doubt all of your own reality, because that’s the only way the lie would be true. Instead, they come off as insulting because they think me an idiot, and they probably never thought they could persuade me anyway. But if the Big Lie is thought of as discourse that is meant to be persuasive to me, gaslighting is a fair word to describe it in that it asks me to question my previous reality.

11

It’s a reasonable refinement of the concept. (But we’re still going to see people using “gaslighting” for communication that’s simply distorted or false, and is intended to manipulate.)

12

I am having a hard time seeing how someone could be gaslit (gaslighted?) by political talking points from a stranger, however false or rhetorically manipulative they may be. For better or for worse, just about everybody recognizes that political speech is likely to contain half-truths, distortions, or outright lies. If someone engaging in partisan political rhetoric says something that is at odds with the listener’s perception of reality, the listener isn’t going to question their own sanity or perceptions, they’re just going to question the speaker’s truthfulness. (Obviously, people can be deceived by political speech, but usually when it’s about stuff outside of their immediate experience, or when it reinforces their own perceptions rather than challenging them.)

I guess I could imagine gaslighting happening in a political setting if there was an attempt to manipulate people’s memories of something they personally saw and heard, e.g., through deepfakes, but otherwise it’s just regular garden-variety propaganda.

13

Eh…not so sure. I mean, maybe?

There is a recent video of Bernie Sanders traveling through West Virginia and talking to voters there. The video portrays West Virginia voters as really liking him once they meet him. One voter says she thought badly of him until she prepared to meet him (knowing she would be on the video she watched some speeches then met him). She was surprised at how different he was from the portrayals she’d seen till then.

I am not sure that is gaslighting though. Maybe?

14

In the book Gaslighting: How to Drive Your Enemies Crazy by Victor Santoro published in 1994 by the now defunct Loompanics he does credit the 1944 film for originating the term.

The book list numerous ways to mess with people. It also has the disclaimer many books published by Loompanics (and its infamous rival Paladin Press) had: "This book is published for entertainment purposes only.)

15

I wish I believed this for even one second. The number of people historically who have failed to recognize that they are being fed “half-truths, distortions, or outright lie[s]” is legion. (“Great in number.” A meaning that has expanded from the original sense of a unit in the Roman army into a metaphor for large size without reference to any specific number.)

16

Is there a “reverse” gaslighting?

Suppose someone is schizophrenic. They think they are hearing voices. People around them tell them they are wrong. There are no voices.

Is that gaslighting but in a “good” way? (You are telling someone that their reality is “wrong.”)

17

When a toddler is scared of a monster under their bed, And you tell them there’s no monster there, that is a good version of gaslighting.

And it’s probably more likely to increase the child’s understanding, by pulling the bed away from the wall and showing them.

The schizophrenia patient will be harder to comfort.

18

The point of true gaslighting is to slowly drag the target into an alternate frame of mind. Ideally a doubtful and controllable one.

Nobody enters an abusive relationship with the conscious goal of becoming abused and trapped. They get in and are gaslit until they believe they have no chance outside the relationship.

Current politics is similar. We often comment around here about how utterly different the world a Faux viewer inhabits from the real one we see and report on every day. Their Portland is burning; the real one is full of people enjoying a normal life, but seasoned with boutiques & funky coffee houses.

Those viewers aren’t converted at the end of their first 30 minute dose of Faux. It takes a lot of repetition of fake “facts” before they push aside the real facts the audience used to know & believe.

If I’m sitting at a bar or whatever talking w some random somebody who trots out a Faux talking point to me, they aren’t trying to gaslight me. They’re trying to (charitably) persuade or (uncharitably) browbeat. They believe the BS they’re uncomprehendingly repeating. Which is different from the talking head delivering the BS on TV or the scriptwriter writing the BS. Those people know it’s fake and proceed anyhow. Those people are gaslighting.

19

Unfortunately I’ve seen it used to describe a disagreement more than the proper definition. Most of the time it’s from someone getting their ass kicked in an argument or someone who can’t conceive of ever being wrong.

20

Yeah. “I don’t believe in your facts” is not equivalent to “You are gaslighting me.” But a lot of people use it that way.

IME it’s mostly the folks whose “facts” come from propaganda sources who fall into this usage. Which in effect becomes them acknowledging the reality that for their team “Every accusation is a confession.”