‘staring into the camera like you’re on the office’ is such an interesting cultural phenomenon because it points to one of my very favorite things in pop culture, which is the use of commonly known fictional situations to indicate an emotion or context that is extremely specific and can’t necessarily be communicated with language alone.
why do characters on the office look into the camera? on the office, the characters are being filmed as part of a documentary; they understand they are being filmed and can acknowledge that fourth wall and those theoretical future viewers. but because the office is a comedy, that fourth wall acknowledgement is not about explaining motivations or gaining approval for an action, but about sharing an agreement with a group of people who are not actually there.
characters on the office look into the camera when something ridiculous is happening that no one in the room thinks is ridiculous but the person looking at the camera, were they to say ‘this is so ridiculous’ to the people in the room, their comrades in fiction, they would get serious pushback or anger; to those characters the situation is serious. the character looking into the camera is a more objective viewer, like the audience, and by looking at us they’re putting themselves on our objective team. and in the future when this ‘documentary’ would air, they would be vindicated as the person who understood that the situation was ridiculous.
so in real life, when we talk about ‘looking into the camera like we’re on the office’, this very specific emotion is what we’re referring to: that we’re in a situation that any objective viewer would find inherently ridiculous, and are seeking acknowledgement from an invisible but much larger group that would agree with us, even though nobody in the situation would do so. we’re putting ourselves in an outsider position, a less emotional position, and inherently a more powerful position, because we’re not vulnerable to being laughed at like all the ridiculous people we’re among. we’re among them, but we’re not with them, and the millions of people watching us on theoretical tv would be on our team, not theirs. that’s such a specific idea and concept, and one that’s really hard to communicate in pure language. but we can say ‘looking into the camera like we’re on the office’ and it’s much easier to communicate what we mean.
for me that’s what pop culture is for, and why it’s so important that it’s pop culture. maybe it feels more special if it’s only you and a grape who know that something exists, but the more people consume something, the more its situations and reactions become common knowledge, a sort of communal well from which we can draw to articulate real life problems. and ultimately, the easier it is for us to communicate and understand each other.
language
Things that, as a mentally ill person, I do not find offensive:
- Using the words “crazy” or “nuts” or “insane” to describe something unexpected or incredible, such as “Mars has two moons?! That’s crazy!” or “Wow, those Westboro Baptists sure believe some crazy shit” or “that party was insane!” or “You really think you can have unlimited chocolate by cutting it a certain way? Are you insane?” or “One Direction’s fans went nuts when they stepped out of that chariot.”
- Using words like “lunatic” or “madman” to describe someone who’s behavior is fanatical, like “Why is that raving lunatic shouting about abortion at this soldier’s funeral?”
Things that, as a mentally ill person, I find incredibly offensive:
- When you use the words “crazy” or “nuts” or “insane” or “lunatic” or “madman” or any variant as a way of dismissing me or people like me and acting like we’re not full people
- The portrayal in the media of mentally ill people as not existing beyond their illness on the rare occasion we’re shown as existing at all
- The portrayal of mentally ill people as dangerous, or more violent than mentally healthy people, or less intelligent and competent to run their own lives than mentally healthy people, and the fact that a lot of writers don’t seem to understand that “mentally ill” is not a motivation.
- The fact that every time there’s a mass shooting or a bombing or an attack and they can’t scapegoat a religion or race for the crime, the perpetrator seems to grow a mental illness just in time for the trial, and people think that explains (or in some cases excuses) what they did
- The fact that when people push for not allowing people who can’t use them responsibly to own weapons, they always seem to start at “mentally ill people” on the list of people who shouldn’t be allowed handle weapons, even though there’s no correlation between mental illness and violence.
- When people say “you’d have to be crazy to (commit atrocity)” even though no, sane people commit atrocities all the time. In fact, most violent crime is committed by people with no mental illness.
- The fact that I have literally seen otherwise-progressive people suggest that all mentally ill people be registered by the government, and perhaps required to identify themselves, and maybe imprisoned for public safety if the need arises. How would you have us identify ourselves? Should we wear a patch on our clothes, or just present our papers upon request?
But I think what really gets me the most:
- When mentally healthy people call others out on our behalf when it comes to things on the first list, but remain completely silent about, or even actively complicit in, everything on the second list.
When mentally healthy people call others out on our behalf when it comes to things on the first list, but remain completely silent about, or even actively complicit in, everything on the second list.
Boom.
(I am fully understanding of people who are not okay with the first couple of things up there; I personally am not really bothered by it though.)
I’m in this category too, with a sidebar of “because I make my living with words, I am trying very hard not to use those words casually, even though a look at my older work makes it clear that they don’t bother me–I’ve been living with a diagnosed mental illness since I was nine, I am harder to bother than that–because there is no good reason to use a word that hurts someone if an alternative that works just as well can be found.”
I personally also have a thing with words that most people don’t find offensive: ‘idiot’, ‘moron’, ‘dumb’, even ‘stupid’
I actively notice them in my own speech (less actively in others’) and feel very bothered when I can’t easily replace them
like yep those… used to be actual used legit medical terms. im more familiar with the russian vocabularly for this kind of shit and that bothers me too but these days i dont really read (or write) a lot of stuff in russian that would use this kind of unrefined language
just. people get really surprised when i express that i have a problem with these but??? theres a history to them??? and it IS a history of ableist violence? and it’s the kind that specifically focuses on people who have more difficulties advocating for themselves… and a lot of these difficulties are TO THIS DAY ableist violence, limiting autonomy of adult people because they ~aren’t smart enough to think for themselves~
I even get a lil twitch every time the word ‘intelligence’ isn’t used without a narrower context that would explicitly clarify&limit it to basically ‘competence in this specific thing’
like im autistic and i limit who i tell about it because of that specific attitude towards ‘idiots’ and ‘morons’ and ‘ret*rds’ that i don’t want to be hit with
personal relationships with language are weird and complicated
anyway that aside ^^^ @ the entire second part of that post
Saw you wanted so non-ableist terms! Hope this helps a bit.
non-ableist alternatives for insulting people or things!
1. please do not say “l*me”
tacky
2. please do not say “d*mb” or “st*pid”
- illogical
- foolish
- silly
- nonsensical
- obtuse
- sophomoric
- ignorant
- incomprehensible
- irrational
- senseless
- vapid
3. please do not say “cr*zy,” “ps*cho,” or “ins*ne”
- ridiculous
- unfathomable
- erratic
- illogical
- unbelievable
- unreasonable
- absurd
- wacky
- eccentric
- out of control
- unpredictable
- wild
- preposterous
- ludicrous
- outlandish
Being bisexual is normal
Being pansexual is normal.
Being a lesbian is normal.
Being gay is normal.
Being trans is normal.
Being non-binary is normal.
Being ace is normal.
Being aro is normal.
We are normal. We are natural. We are more common than we realize.
We are extraordinary.
[clipped for space]
if you say you are normal, then why’d you follow up with extraordinary, which of course, not normal?
-rubs temples- Because this is a positivity post?
Because our existence as LGBT+ people is normal, but we as individuals are extraordinary? Because we are natural and common and not abnormal and not strange, but we are also amazing and great and cool?
Like, it’s an affirmation post. This isn’t complicated.
Words have not only literal meaning, but also emotional meaning. Normal/abnormal assigns positive value to ‘normal’ and negative value to ‘abnormal’. Ordinary/extraordinary, meanwhile, does the exact opposite, uplifting the unusual instead of demeaning it.
Moreover, ‘normal’ has an implied meaning of not just statistically common, but ‘something to aspire to’. Normal => normative. And ‘abnormal’ means something to stamp out, something negative, something that SHOULD be normal instead of what it is.
That’s what this post denies: that people who are LGBT+ should aspire to not be, and instead uplifts them with their differences all whole and beautiful.
That’s how it works as a positivity post without breaking any logic.
What I’ve heard is that the term MOGAI was coined by a pedophile who wanted to use it to include pedophilia as some sort of validating gesture? I haven’t looked it up, though, so I could be wrong.
TBH I really don’t care how it’s been coined because that’s VERY OBVIOUSLY not the current use. The ace community is p big on supporting and amplifying voices of sexual abuse survivors in it, at least the part I know, and that’s the part I picked up MOGAI from, so… I won’t even bother to google bc tbh this is irrelevant. Gay used to mean joyous, so what?
loudest-subtext-in-television:
I love that “homage,” “pastiche,” “reboot,” “retelling,” and “fanfic” all mean the same damn thing, except that the last one is written primarily by women for free, and often includes sex, especially queer sex, so it’s delegitimized in the eyes of society.
And by “I love” I mean “I don’t love” because apparently we can just pick and choose what words mean
I totally agree with the point being made by the OP, but want to point out the irony in the politics of remix being described here.
You see, “homage,” “pastiche,” “reboot,” “retelling,” all tend to be less <i>original</i> than fanfiction. And I use the word “original” knowing how loaded, and potentially meaningless it is — it’s the criteria used by copyright law for a text worthy of being covered by copyright, and also as part of the definition of plagiarism. Works in the genres of “homage,” “pastiche,” “reboot,” “retelling,” are nearly always assumed to be original enough to be copyrightable in their own right, despite being derivative works.
These remix categories are all expected to explicitly rework a story while adding in a few new frills, and yet somehow, magically, that re-working makes them “original”. Yet that magic does not apply to fanfiction, which is seen as much more derivative and less worthy of respect.
Here’s the irony I mentioned. Fanfiction often jumps off from the source and tells a new story, or fills in a gap in the story it’s responding to (commonly with queer romance or sex). In many cases, fanfiction, while still a derivative work, is fundamentally much more “original” than the mainstream and more legitimate forms of remix, as it is telling a new story altogether.
Interesting, isn’t it, that the form of remix which is often most “original”, in that it offers more than just a retelling with new frills, is derided as the most derivative.
As the OP says, it’s not a coincidence that fanfiction is the version of remix currently considered least clever or worthy of respect, and is primarily a women’s genre and often also a queer genre.
Headcanon: Polly Perks swears like a sailor who teaches truckers in their spare time.
She grew up in a bar, and even in a respectable one like the Duchess, exposure to a certain sort of lexicon is hard to avoid. The bar’s patrons thought it was absolutely hilarious to hear the little tyke with the angelic blonde curls spew profanity that could peel paint, and she received no end of guffawing encouragement. Her mother, when she found out, was decidedly less amused. There was a talking-to, the threat of the Girls’ Working School was leveled, and Polly stopped the words from coming out her mouth. She couldn’t stop them coming in her ears or going through her head, however, and after a while, she stopped feeling bad whenever a particularly Abominable phrase darted through her mind when the slop bucket spilled.
And then she enlists, and it’s a whole other language. Maybe, at first, the old training holds, but she’s a soldier lad now, and soldier lads don’t say “sugar” when they mean “shit.” There’s a certain thrill in saying things that Polly knows she shouldn’t, and Ozzer loves it. The socks are talking, and they’ve got a lot of things to say: Groophar this, %@#$*! that, look at me, I’ve got the filthiest mouth, look at me, I’m badder than all of you, watch me as I swear and pick my nose at the same time. It’s a form of posturing just like everything else, all the lads competing to be seen as the best (or worst.) Polly’s got a head start on all of them, and she capitalizes on it like hell.
And then… she gets promoted to sergeant. The socks don’t do the talking anymore, but sometimes, the stripes do. You wouldn’t believe the things she’s said just to make sure her little lads are listening. Interestingly, it turns out that swearing sort of… loops around. Once you’ve conquered the highest echelons of foul language, you can take any five words* from a children’s dictionary and make them sound like something that would burn your grandmother’s ears off. It is an art, and Polly Perks has mastered it.
*Sergeant Perks’s regiment are the only soldiers known to cringe at the sound of the word “sugar.”
YES
GOD BLESS
because a recent post made me curious…
Which statement do you find more comforting?
– I would never do this.
– I have no reason to do this.
The latter, because people who say the former are usually wrong, and people who say the latter have probably thought about it. They might later decide…
Yes but on the on the other hand, and since you did specify ‘more comforting’, I cannot conceive of a world where the phrase ‘you have given me no reason to hurt you’ is actually comforting, because, conversationally speaking, there’s always an unspoken ‘yet’ tacked on the end of a phrase like that.
Whatever the action in question is, ‘I have no reason to do it’ does not imply that you do not intend to do a thing, but very strongly does imply that, the second your situation changes in the right way, you will without a moment’s hesitation start doing that.
Everyone knows, really that ‘I would never do that’ is not actually an ironclad declaration that, whatever the future may bring, X will never happen. But it’s a declaration of intent.
What I’m seeing in this thread is a divide between people who think “I cannot conceive of myself doing this” is preferable to “I can conceive of myself doing this, but have no reason to do so,” and vice versa.
Has anyone in the former group been diagnosed with autism, and/or do you identify as an abuse survivor? Because at this point I’m also seeing a division there too. (Feel free to ignore this if you match those criteria, but don’t feel comfortable talking about it. Your comfort is more important than my desire to do badly applied social science. XD)
I’m definitely autistic, and I’m in the former group. I’ve definitely experienced people saying “I would never” and then doing it anyway, but the other could also be a lie just as easily.
Although a variant on the second option that I personally would find even more reassuring is the confused “why would I do that?”, suggesting that they have no reason to do the thing WITHOUT suggesting that they’ve considered doing the thing.
Another anecdatum! Thanks! 😀 And yeah, I can see why “why would I do that?” would be more comforting. It’s kind of got the best of both worlds going for it, assuming of course that the confusion is sincere.
Conclusion: people are complicated. XD
Some of the other discussions on this post interested me, so I figure I’ll just put my thoughts here…
-“I have no reason to” doesn’t actually give me much control. The world does not consist solely of myself and the speaker; reasons could easily arise from elsewhere.
-To the extent that it does give me any control at all, it sounds like a threat.
-Saying “I would never” changes the situation in a way that the other statement doesn’t, since if a reason to do so should arise, the person who’s said it will have whatever aversion to doing the thing they previously had, plus the fact of having promised not to. This isn’t guaranteed to stop them, but the purely informational “I have no reason” doesn’t suggest they have any aversion to doing the thing, nor does it function as a promise to give them one. Does that make sense?
-Context! The action under discussion and how it came up in the first place matter. Because if someone just comes up out of the blue and says either “I would never stab you” or “I have no reason to stab you”, I’d find both those things creepy as fuck!
because a recent post made me curious…
Which statement do you find more comforting?
– I would never do this.
– I have no reason to do this.
The latter, because people who say the former are usually wrong, and people who say the latter have probably thought about it. They might later decide…
Yes but on the on the other hand, and since you did specify ‘more comforting’, I cannot conceive of a world where the phrase ‘you have given me no reason to hurt you’ is actually comforting, because, conversationally speaking, there’s always an unspoken ‘yet’ tacked on the end of a phrase like that.
Whatever the action in question is, ‘I have no reason to do it’ does not imply that you do not intend to do a thing, but very strongly does imply that, the second your situation changes in the right way, you will without a moment’s hesitation start doing that.
Everyone knows, really that ‘I would never do that’ is not actually an ironclad declaration that, whatever the future may bring, X will never happen. But it’s a declaration of intent.Huh. This is exactly the opposite of my analysis, although I note that “you have given me no reason to” is very distinct from “I have no reason to”.
I would say “I have no reason to” implies, at least for now, lack of intent to.
The thing is, “I would never do X” virtually never has any meaning but “I think X is immoral to do and that I am a good person”. But that’s effectively meaningless, because nearly everyone will do things they think are “immoral” except that there’s a good reason why they have to do it this time. So people do things like that all the time, and then continue to insist that they would never do them, because it’s not really a factual claim, it’s a claim about their perception of themselves.
“I have no reason to do X” implies someone who’s actually thought about the issue, and that generally means, to me, that they’re likely to have actually considered it and have reasons which will make sense if that ever changes.
See, this is making me wonder if the point of this excersise is idiomatic as much as it’s psychological, because I have never heard anyone phrase anything as specifically as ‘I have no reason to X’ unless they’re trying to get out of a conversation without technically lying. “DId you eat the last bit of cake” “I have no reason to eat the last bit of cake” “Would you eat the last bit of cake” “I have no reason to eat the last bit of cake”, et cetera. “I’ve got no reason to hurt you” is definitely prelude to a mugging.
I know I said “I cannot concieve” up there, but that’s not actually true (in my defence I have had quite a lot of wine this evening); I can definitely concieve of a situation where this almost lawyer-speak kind of phrasing could be more comforting, it’s just that that concept doesn’t mesh at all with the way people around me talk.
I have to wonder if this is an American thing, because the way Americans talk baffles and terrifies me.
because a recent post made me curious…
Which statement do you find more comforting?
– I would never do this.
– I have no reason to do this.
It’s logically wrong, but I personally find more comfort in the first sentence. Neither holds as much solid proof as to make me find them true, but I find much less belief in claiming there is no reason to do something, versus claiming you wouldn’t.
I don’t know if I’m reading into it like a lie – i.e., putting more details into something than is necessary, or emphasizing a detail that wouldn’t normally be emphasized – although I do suspect that’s the case.
I have a healthy amount of severe distrust for people in general.
Huh, interesting. So — and tell me if I’ve misunderstood you — you think both of them are probably a lie, but you think the first one is a more comforting lie?
Ooh, this is interesting.
If I can contribute some anecdata: I’d personally trust someone more if they said the second one. It’s less comforting, but if you’re aware that you’re a human being whose motives can eventually change, you are probably a more reliable person than someone who’s convinced they will never ever do a bad thing.
Actually, this depends on who says this and what I already know about their motives and likely behavior.
“I would never do this” implies that a person has a reason to NOT do this, regardless of whether or not they have a reason to do it. If I know them as a trustworthy person who sticks to their principles and their word, this will be more comforting. If, however, they are a sneaky sneak who only acts for their own gain, I know that they are likely to disregard the reason to NOT do this if there is a better reason to DO this, and this statement is just sounds in the wind.
“I have no reason to do this” implies that a person might possibly do it if they had a reason to, and is therefore more likely to be precisely honest. If I know them as a sneaky sneak who indeed would possibly do anything if they had a reason to, this is as comforting as it’s going to get – they are likely not literally lying. If, however, they are a trustworthy person who generally sticks to their word, I would find it much less comforting as opposed to a promise to never do it ever.
A good juxtaposition would be Lina Inverse and Xelloss from Slayers (BECAUSE I AM A WEABOO).
If Xelloss says “I would never do this”, this is in most cases a straight-up lie that is too obvious to even register as such – he would do almost anything under his orders. He would usually say it in the process of denying the obvious, actually, the thing that already happened. “Xelloss, was it you that ate all the candy?!” “I would never do something like this!” => 90% chance it was Xelloss, or he would simply say “no”.
If Xelloss says “I have no reason to do this”, he’s most likely being honest and just straight-up informing you about the current status of the situation. Literally and with all kinda-threatening implications that he would if he did have one.
If Lina says “I would never do this”, this is either analogous to Xelloss obvious tongue-in-cheek, or “cross-my-heart-hope-to-die”, as she is much more heroic, straightforward and honest, and principled. That’s not your reading of Lina Inverse? Doesn’t matter, for the purpose of this analysis I’m going to treat her as one. So if Lina says “I would never do this”, she is pretty likely to really mean it.
If Lina says “I have no reason to do this”, she is very loudly NOT saying the previous one – implying that yes she would. “You won’t hurt me?” “I have no reason to” => is basically a threat. Lina normally makes decisions not just on the basis of “do I have a reason to do this or not” like Xelloss does (or verbally and loudly pretends to ok let’s not go into headcanons), she evaluates the whole mixture of pros and cons. If she says “I have no reason to do this”, then it really hinges only on whether or not she’s going to get that reason.
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