Flattery will get you somewhere
Apr. 19th, 2022 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primeidealI feel like I already made this post, but maybe I just thought about it and grumbled IRL instead of posting, heh. It's a thought I've had before.
When I was in middle school, my band directors were very proud of us (and, by extension, themselves for teaching us so well). They would say stuff like "this is a pretty tricky piece, there are high schools that would probably have difficulty performing this, but we're giving it to you eighth-graders. Why? Because you're awesome and we know you can do it." And you know what? It worked for me. I appreciated being patted on the back and it pumped me up, even if I was only one of dozens, to feel like we were collectively "overachievers" in this context. Later, my brother and sister would make fun of this tendency from the directors (similar things in high school).
So, yes, there are times when telling your target audience "you know what? you're very special and talented, pat yourself on the back!" succeeds in giving them an ego boost, making them inclined to view you in a favorable light. There are also times when they will roll their eyes and laugh at you.
But there are times when this can backfire and just make you look stupid. "Hey guys, guess what? Not a lot of people know this, but actually, the earth goes around the sun! So next time you see some backwards person spouting geocentric nonsense, just remember: the earth really does go around the sun. The more you know! (: "
Presumably the intended goal here is, when people who actually do know that the earth goes around the sun hear this message, they think "wow, this is an obscure fact but I'm so enlightened I already knew that! Better pat myself on the back because I'm really smart." What actually happens is, they think, "this person I'm talking to has no idea what the 'average person' knows."
You sometimes get cases such as that time Donald Trump described Frederick Douglass as “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.” And along with lots of people, my reaction was "wow, Trump is so clueless he has no idea who Frederick Douglass is!" If we want to be extremely charitable, you could maybe say "oh, he just thinks his audience might not know who Douglass is," although you don't even have to assume this. Either way, it just makes him come across as clueless.
And when I see people addressing only others in their cultural bubble with "um actually" type smugness, it makes them come across as clueless too! Whether they're creating an edgy webcomic or a dry academic book. Like...you spend long enough in bubbles, you should know who your target audience is!
(The example that stuck with me was a webcomic who wrote a blog post about confirmation bias type things. One of my friends pointed out that all the examples given of "you might find this troublesome, but it's true, ~examine your feelings~" are likely to be much more surprising and/or unsettling to right-wing people, and the blog in general skewed lefty. So one of his friends commented "maybe it's just a set-up for a follow-up blog post where he points out the cognitive biases that made those examples come to mind first!" Which might have made the original post particularly appealing to left-wingers who could be like "I knew that all already, I am very smart." Except...it wasn't. Just smugness that kept going around.)
When I was in middle school, my band directors were very proud of us (and, by extension, themselves for teaching us so well). They would say stuff like "this is a pretty tricky piece, there are high schools that would probably have difficulty performing this, but we're giving it to you eighth-graders. Why? Because you're awesome and we know you can do it." And you know what? It worked for me. I appreciated being patted on the back and it pumped me up, even if I was only one of dozens, to feel like we were collectively "overachievers" in this context. Later, my brother and sister would make fun of this tendency from the directors (similar things in high school).
So, yes, there are times when telling your target audience "you know what? you're very special and talented, pat yourself on the back!" succeeds in giving them an ego boost, making them inclined to view you in a favorable light. There are also times when they will roll their eyes and laugh at you.
But there are times when this can backfire and just make you look stupid. "Hey guys, guess what? Not a lot of people know this, but actually, the earth goes around the sun! So next time you see some backwards person spouting geocentric nonsense, just remember: the earth really does go around the sun. The more you know! (: "
Presumably the intended goal here is, when people who actually do know that the earth goes around the sun hear this message, they think "wow, this is an obscure fact but I'm so enlightened I already knew that! Better pat myself on the back because I'm really smart." What actually happens is, they think, "this person I'm talking to has no idea what the 'average person' knows."
You sometimes get cases such as that time Donald Trump described Frederick Douglass as “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more.” And along with lots of people, my reaction was "wow, Trump is so clueless he has no idea who Frederick Douglass is!" If we want to be extremely charitable, you could maybe say "oh, he just thinks his audience might not know who Douglass is," although you don't even have to assume this. Either way, it just makes him come across as clueless.
And when I see people addressing only others in their cultural bubble with "um actually" type smugness, it makes them come across as clueless too! Whether they're creating an edgy webcomic or a dry academic book. Like...you spend long enough in bubbles, you should know who your target audience is!
(The example that stuck with me was a webcomic who wrote a blog post about confirmation bias type things. One of my friends pointed out that all the examples given of "you might find this troublesome, but it's true, ~examine your feelings~" are likely to be much more surprising and/or unsettling to right-wing people, and the blog in general skewed lefty. So one of his friends commented "maybe it's just a set-up for a follow-up blog post where he points out the cognitive biases that made those examples come to mind first!" Which might have made the original post particularly appealing to left-wingers who could be like "I knew that all already, I am very smart." Except...it wasn't. Just smugness that kept going around.)
