seawasp | Re: Thoughts (Reply)

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It's easier with obviously fragile people, but possible for most. Consider we have a shitty society that's bad at meeting human needs and unhealthy to live in: that means a lot of people are faking and skating their way through it.

Another aspect is target sighting -- the ability to look at a person, listen to them, and identify their weak spots. Nobody is invulnerable; anybody can be hit; it's just a question of how many chinks a given individual has and how accessible they are. A well fortified, healthy, resilient individual will rarely if ever do things that mark them as a legitimate target. Conversely, bullies are flimsy as a group because they're pushing down other people to make themselves feel better. Trump voters, for instance, tend to think that gender has to be earned rather than being innate; whenever someone thinks of something as fragile, that's a vulnerability.

I've never bothered using the authority angle because most people in the mainstream don't use facts to assess what I say in the first place. It's about finding a phrase or observation that can hook into their own worries, so it will eat at them even if they don't consider me a credible source. Get them to attack themselves.

One wicked example I've seen was actually graffiti: "You left the oven on." Everyone who has used an oven in the last day or so will think, "Did I?" Most will shrug it off. But someone with a sketchy memory, or anxiety, or OCD, may become trapped a loop.

People have different skills. A socially popular person would fight back differently.

Me, I was in my tweens before I started to get any real ability to filter out the target lock; I would blurt out life-shattering observations without realizing it. And it was several years later before I started putting concerted effort into building a safety cover for the tac nuke that is my mouth. This is a pattern I've observed with some other nerds too.