the stupid act

[egypturnash]

One other random thought about the weekend's Bullies Vs. Furries drama...

One theme that popped up several times in the replies from the SAers, when they bothered with anything longer than "tl;dr", "fag", or "i bet you like to fuck animals" is denigration of the fact that, oh dear, some of the furries are very smart people who have done a lot of reading and know lots of big words.

Accusations of trying to look smart by casually referring to philosophers or thinkers; accusations of pulling out a thesaurus to look smart. Of trying to look smart in general.

What the hell's wrong with trying to look smart? What's wrong with really being smart?

I've had people try to troll me with the "you use lots of big words to look smart" attack, and I'm always vaguely thrown by that. No, I don't. I use lots of big words because I know lots of them. Obscure references get tossed out now and then because I've read them and think they're appropriate to the discussion. I don't need to reach for a thesaurus because I have one in my head. People who've met me iRL know that, while what I write online is a little more polished than what I say off the top of my head, and I curse more often in the flesh, I generally sound the same. Same vocabulary, same references.

Why is it that making a casual reference to the classics makes you look like you're trying to be smart? Why is calling someone a "myrmidon" instead of a "goon" inherently bad? I've spent all this time learning crazy words for the sheer joy of it; why do some people want to make me out as an asshole for using them? Why is whimsey, surrealism, and intelligent playfulness considered bad by so many people? Because being smart is somehow bad. Don't show off the fact that you use your brain. Don't admit to having read anything besides popular magazines. Don't admit to having a familiarity with myth. Don't admit to being smart, act dumb.

I hate this culture.

Comments

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

I refuse to call these people bullies, since the lions' share of them are teenagers, and somewhat below what I would consider threatening in any way shape or form.

And I'll totally take Somethig Awful guys dissing me for acting smart, because the converse is true in the workplace; acting smart and being smart are generally things that get you promoted, get your business off the ground, and make you more successful. They have their forums, I'll have my new car, and we'll all be happy!

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Okay. Bully wanna-bees. Internet bullies.

Being smart hasn't gotten me ahead in the animation world yet. I'm not sure if this is because Spümcø is an outpost of Bastard Culture, because I don't have enough drive, or because I'm too crazy for people to be comfortable with me around. Maybe all of the above.

"Act Like a Dumbshit and They'll Treat You Like an Equal"

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

acting smart and being smart are generally things that get you promoted

I'm tempted to good-naturedly call bullshit on that -- at least, I think it depends largely on the environment, and in many hierarchical corporate big-pond sort of environs, intelligence that doesn't fit the HR specs or have letters behind it (like B,M,S,P,H, and D, but rarely A) goes unnoticed -- but we'll have that one out some other day. ;D When we do, though, man, do Lediva, Postrodent, and I have some frustrating stories for ya from the clerical pool...

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine was viciously beaten in RL by 15-year-olds once. Because his ethical system constrained him... he let them. I'll tell you in private sometime who it was, but in the meantime I'll just note that the lion's share of influenza germs are also much, much dumber, younger, and smaller than us. :)

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Well of course most simply, when you use all these big words, they don't know what the hell you're talking about. They probably think you're making up a lot of them!

Maybe they also associate intelligence with unpleasant authority figures. When u talk all fency u sound like fifth grade English teacher. Bully no like. Bully hate English teacher too cuz she give F! Stoopid teechr make big deel ovr unimportnt thingz lik speling and punchu... punkcha... puk... putting all the little marks on.

It can be frustrating to be so much smarter than someone that you can't even impress them with it, can't it?
"U R DUM FAG"
"Oh, really? I discuss Schopenhauer on a regular basis with Dorothy Parker herself!"
"O SHE UR LEZZIE LOVER EH LOL"

(Me, I'm somewhat in awe of people like you and postvixen... I don't get some of your references either, but I want to. Ohh man, I've never read "Invisibles" or seen "A Clockwork Orange" or whatever! How long would it take me to catch up with you guys?? Where would I find all these books and movies and albums and things?? I really feel halfway between the gutter and the stars.)

It's a wide wonderful world out there, but the bullies who hate it all tend to be so unedjamacated that they've never even heard of about 99/100 of it and don't even know what they're hating. They grew up in such a small drab world that they have stunted imaginations.

At least that's what I figure. Y'know, from just sitting here armchairing.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's probably part of why it pisses them off. "She called me a sycophantic myrmidon of a kakistocracy! Doubleyou tee EFF! I don't wanna pull out a dictionary to troll this bitch, I'll just call her a fag and paste in goatse.cx!"

The more lucid ones will occasionally drop the ironic "act" to admit that half of why they argue like a motard is to try and rile us into wasting ten minutes to an hour frothing at the mouth with just a few seconds of vomiting their garbage.

If only you could see my mental list of '"things I really should read someday"! This past Christmas, I jokingly told my mother that maybe while I was home I'd read the edition of Proust I happened to notice on her shelves. And I probably should at least try to, someday. So much philosophy and non-genre fiction and... stuff... and never mind the Great Movies I haven't seen; I've probably only seen a couple hundred movies in my entire life so far!

Mostly you find these books and movies and albums and things by following up on the suggestions of friends whose taste you at least halfway trust. *grin* I keep a list of recommended books in my PDA!

I'm just glad I never closed off my imagination like these types seem to have. Like most everyone in the modern world seems to have.

[mattlazycat.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love the cute little ! :)

I too utterly despair of the mindset that shuns education, the use of multi-syllabic words, and the occasional flexing of the brain-muscle. The low-grade SA goons (of the kind that find pestering PV so richly amusing; the kind that Lowtax probably dislikes, as noted elsewhere) aren't so much bullies as pigs wallowing in shit. That they parade their idiocy (especially when it's faked, or at least exaggerated) as some kind of worthy mental state isn't ironic, rather it's pathetic.

What next? Take the piss out of people with jobs, disposable incomes and stable relationships? Perhaps being able to cook and count are next on the list of scorn-worthy abilities.

But then the impact of being mocked by someone who prizes stupidity is fairly minor, as Peggy says. Wow, people think I'm clever! Great! Who cares that they think clever isn't laudable, or that they think I screw animals. Bollocks to them. I'll take their back-handed praise — the rest isn't worthy of consideration! :)

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

A Netflix subscription plus Amazon would pretty much cover it, at least for my lowbrow tastes. :)

[bohor.livejournal.com]

Why would you ever care what people like that think?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Because sometimes they seem to make up the vast majority of the internet. Now and then I wonder what it's like to be 'normal'. If I'd be happier and more content, or at least worried over things that're more comprehensible to most people.

Besides, I saw a couple hundred variants on moron "humor" this past weekend. There must be some appeal to it, but I'm damned if I can see what it is - it really strikes me as, at best, a funny-once.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

Heehee, and I notice the troll in question has a strikethrough over his username. That seems to be such a wonderfully reliable indicator that "Here once stood a JERK."

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

It's not just 'bastard culture' or whatever SA is, but rather an underlying theme in our day and age. I still remember way back in K-12 that being smart meant being ostrisized. It was a bad thing. I think intelligent kids not doing well in school is more a response to peer pressure than anything. So yeah, this culture sucks in that respect.

Heck, I still hear it in college. "So-and-so is going to destroy the curve, curse them!" Or something similar. If I cared enough, it'd just take a smack and a "Then work at it, dumbass." comment to convey my sentiments. Even upity people in the workplace who try to excel just because it's their gumption to become pariahs.

Ah well. Maybe this just means that SA and the like are just retaining the high school mentality into adulthood. Not the rampant immaturity, but the larger mindset that tows the status quo.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I managed to do pretty poorly in school without much in the way of 'smart=bad' socialization. *grin* But I digress.

I wonder how hard it would be to try and create a viable "smart=cool" meme to spread through the modern culture...

SA and the like definitely seem high-schoolish to me. Attention-seeking teens trying to prove how clever and all-knowing and world-wise and funny they are. For all I know most of them are teens.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

I think this is pretty much true--how often do kids get told "Hey, don't get smart!" and other variations? And the nerds, of course, generally get the shaft. We're sort've programmed from high school that intelligence = nerd = social skills of an incontinent mongoose.

If I may digress into a favorite rant, I think the problem is that high school these days, rather than learning skills by doing something useful or meaningful, it's all basically rote learning (particularly and sadly the sciences, where experiments are conducted in a try-to-match-the-book way positively antithetical to the actual spirit of scientific experimentation.) So the learning elements are frequently just a wash, and high school becomes not unlike jail-lite--tedious, mandatory, and forming its own immediately important social structures. And the problem is that if you don't conform to the status quo and instead try to work your brain and mine the teachers for as much knowledge as possible, you basically fall into the toady/prison snitch category--someone who's not appropriately loyal to the status quo, and get treated accordingly by your fellow inmates.

Unfortunately, some people retain this far past the point where they could actually get a useful skill and leave it all behind.

[corvirax.livejournal.com]

Hm. Here's my guess as to why being smart is grounds for mockery and loathing:

Educated people are more likely to ignore inane mockery and stock insults in an argument as meaningless chaff that distracts from the real meat of an argument, and instead try to get the mocker to elaborate, to back up their opinion with sound reasoning, more in the manner of a classical or academic debate rather than a schoolyard insult-slinging match. Being unable to support their assertions (f'rexample, "omg u furries r dogfucking preverts and have teh ghey") makes the mocker look weak and stupid compared to their educated opponent's (hopefully) well-reasoned refutation of the same. So educated people pose a threat to the mockers, because they hate having their ridicule turned back on them by being made to look stupid. Even worse, when someone uses words or arguments that they just don't understand, it makes them feel stupid, and no-one likes to feel stupid.

So the best way to defuse that threat is to belittle people for being smart in the first place - so the first salvo of insults is fired, the OMG TEH SMRT person responds with a cogent, reasoned argument, and the mocker follows up with accusations of "trying to be smart", swallowing a thesaurus or whatever - like you say, it tends to throw the smart person off their stride, as not only is it not pertinent to the argument at hand, but there's not really any obvious way to counter it because the smart person generally doesn't follow how being educated, intelligent or reasoned is a bad thing.

The mockers, noticing that this approach tends to get the smart people to throw up their hands and abandon the field of combat in disgust (which is obviously identical to surrender), adopt ridiculing "trying to be smart" as a defensive strategy to counter intelligent arguments that would otherwise annihilate them.

That's my impression, anyway.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oooh. Good theory. The low-level dorks may not be sophisticated enough to work out these tactics, but they are good at aping their leaders, who are.... I know I get a little burst of annoyance every time I see an intelligently-expressed thought replied to with just "fag", even if I'm not the one who's being trolled.

And of course, if you delete the stupidity, or ban its perpetrators, or whatever, then they claim victory. Which, unless you are completely enlightened and have transcended all mortal worries, does hurt a little, no matter how much you brush it aside...

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

To be fair to them, I did throw a big brain-shaped rock at the hornets' nest... I raised the intelligence and erudition issue in this particular case, with the specific intention of making myself seem arrogant and goading a clumsy attack (or making one of them break character and start a discussion, because I'm even better at debates than I am at trolling *wink + radiant grin*).

But the principle you describe is absolutely right and I do keep seeing trolls resort to it. For instance, apparently that Genghis Gerbil guy (whose anti-roleplaying article I trashed) whined about me both on EAF and CYD, saying it was "just a joke" -- basically, he couldn't believe I'd put all that effort into something he hadn't even put that much thought into.

Go you, Genghis. Go you.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

They just can't believe that we actually can be entertained by, like, sitting around and thinking about things! And contemplating layers of meaning beyond the immediately obvious!

When I'm not actually looking at them, I can feel sorry for them because of that. But it's hard to feel sorry for them when they're running around screeching and crapping everywhere.

[pobig.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of something (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6tefue%24b3k%241%40shell11.ba.best.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain)
merde posted a few years ago.

What can one say to such people? "You're no fun, you're no fun, you're no fun at all."

[adequatemagic.livejournal.com]

I just want to note that is is now your fault that I have re-found merde after a 4 year haitus.

Go you. :)

[barberio.livejournal.com]

SA goons are a poor copy of Kibologists. Who wernt that entertaining in the first place...

[hydra-velsen.livejournal.com]

I wonder why anyone would use Myrmidon as an insult. the Myrmidons were the most honored sect of warrior in some Persian countries in the middle ages, best I recall.

[obonicus.livejournal.com]

Way before the middle ages.
And it doesn't have the same connotation as 'thug' or 'goon'.

[paka.livejournal.com]

That's basically my high school experience - don't be smart, don't carry a sketchpad, don't be caught with a library book anywhere outside the school library. I really hate it, but don't know anything to say that would be more coherent than anyone else's comments so far. On the other hand all of this suggests a batch of high schoolers applying a high school social dynamic online with absolutely no change.

[donnaidh-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Didn't you know? The Onion says that it's just not nice to be smarter than other people (http://www.livejournal.com/users/donnaidh_sidhe/242849.html).

[lediva.livejournal.com]

If your response to "Say something intelligent." is "You're just trying to look smart!", you've already lost.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

It may also be amusing to try the two-pronged approach, sometimes known as the 'Brooklyn Einstein':

"I sound smart because I am smart, idiot. I graduated with a 3.9 GPA, was in NHS and a National Merit scholar. And I fucked your mother."

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

...you did? I never knew.

[cryo.livejournal.com]

come on peg... you know better than to let the "normals" get to you. The last thing you should do is have to justify yourself. You're witty, intelligent, and have talent. Herd mentality is just that. In the end, we'll eat them... with a Fresca.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I usually manage to avoid it, but watching them do their genericizing little thing in a herd is depressing. Plus grousing about this distracts me from more important things I'm putting off. *smirk*

Eventually I'll figure out how to not worry. But then I'll have to figure out what to do about the part of me that's saddened by such an aggressive waste of human potential.

[terzy.livejournal.com]

"Smart is not a four letter word. That would be Smar."

Daria

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

I sympathized with Daria before, but never so well as I have in the last week. ;)

"They're gonna love you guys..."