don't talk to people who talk like this
or, the fool's handbook
I’ve been thinking about the most annoying behaviors I’ve encountered in person and on the internet lately for completely healthy and normal reasons, and so I’m going to pass off my sage advice to all of you.
If people use these tactics in a conversation or argument, just stop talking to them. They’ll only waste your time.
People who only deal in hypotheticals
Every time a certain kind of person learns I’m a pacifist, they immediately begin inventing scenarios where they want me to admit that I would, in fact, commit violence. This usually involves forcing me to imagine terrible things happening to loved ones.
Don’t do this and don’t talk to people who do this.
People who ignore your point to badger you over word choice
This is most often experienced on the internet and you’ve probably seen this happen or even been foolish enough to participate in an argument online and so been subject to it. You’ll see a multi-paragraph response or even an entire essay and someone will ignore every point brought up in order to try to make the argument about the fact that you spoke imprecisely about something or even made the devastating error of committing a typo!
This is harder to do in person unless they interrupt you.
People who interrupt or talk over you
We’re all guilty of this at times, and that’s fine. Or, it’s not, but we all do the best we can. Except for a certain kind of person! These people will usually end up having an argument with their invented version of you while you sit idly by while they rant and rave about something they’ve decided you believe.
But, really, if you’re in a discussion, conversation, or argument and it’s been five minutes or more since you’ve spoken an entire sentence, just walk away.
People who only want you to admit that they’re right
No matter what you say or what you do or how much proof you bring to the discussion, these people don’t care. They just want you to tell them that they’re right and you’re wrong. They’re not even listening to you.
The conversation becomes an endless cycle, which usually leads to them inventing hypothetical situations wherein you are, in fact, wrong, no matter what the evidence says.
The only thing worse…
People who keep arguing with you even after you admit they’re right
For some people, fighting is just a compulsion. Even when you’ve come around to see things the way they do, they will keep arguing with you.
You may ask yourself, Why?
No one knows!
Some people are just miserable and insufferable and so they torture every idiot foolish enough to talk with them.
These people enjoy fighting. They just want to fight. They don’t care what about or with whom. They’ll spend their whole life using al the tactics above just to keep fighting with you.
People who yell
Life is annoying enough without standing there while someone yells at you.
People who have a pet topic
No matter what you’re talking about, these people will pull the conversation or argument to some separate thing that they want to be mad about, no matter how disinterested you are.
People who learned to talk about the world through twitter, tumblr, or Fox News
I mean, who has the time to listen to this?
There are many obvious linguistic ticks that people learn on the internet and sometimes they begin to invade the real world and it’s an easy tell that they don’t really have anything interesting to say.
People who have a website where they write essays
Don’t encourage us.
And to add a bit of lightness to this post leading into the weekend, here are some fun things I encountered this week.
This short video is so good. Stop-motion samurai fight!
Weird and wild and evocative.
My good friend Grant Wamack started serializing a novella at his substack. Check it out.
Jayson Young, another friend of the newsletter, got me reading/rereading all of Cormac McCarthy this year and his write ups of The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark are well worth your time. (I’ll probably be writing something about Cormac McCarthy near the end of the year after I’m done reading/rereading everything)
My good friends J David Osborne and Kelby Losack are serializing some bonkers novels through their patreon that are deliriously fun. I need to catch up on them myself, but they’re a real good time.
I’m sure I’m forgetting some other groovy stuff I encountered this week.
And, you know, I should keep pushing my own stuff.
Sign up for the Goodreads giveaway for Colony Collapse! The giveaway runs until the 21st!
Speaking of which, Colony Collapse is out in two weeks!
I’m giving away the ebook of Howl! The sequel is coming at the end of April with the third in the series coming end of May. So catch up now!
I sure would appreciate if everyone reviewed Glossolalia and Howl and At Home Inside You!
The audiobook for Sing, Behemoth, Sing is now out! Narrated by the incomparable Kelby Losack who also did the Glossolalia audiobook and will be doing the Howl and Iron Wolf audiobooks too.
I have probably been all of these people at some point. Maybe at some point yesterday. Good reminder to do better!
My wife is a pacifist Quaker and yes, somehow the topic brings out a need for people to be all, "But what if a horde of Nazi vampires had a nuclear weapon and you knew that they would use it unless you shot just the one chief Nazi vampire who also was secretly suicidal and wanted to be shot?" Somehow nobody does this for any other topic. Nobody says, "I don't think you should sexually harass people at work," only for people to jump out of the woodwork and say, "But what if the world was going to end unless you sexually harassed the receptionist, just one time, and it wasn't even that bad, but it would definitely cause genocide if you didn't..."