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Can you please expand on this: People are nicer to you if you're a jerk?

jondubois 10y ago
Rich people like jerks. It's about respect - Maybe related to our animal mentality. Being a jerk is an 'alpha' male/female trait. As much as people try to pretend that they're rational human beings, the laws of nature are still running the show. Unfortunately, we haven't yet evolved enough to view 'intelligence' as an alpha trait when it comes to social hierarchy.
- _0ffh 10y ago
  And never will. How would anyone be able to judge someone else's "intelligence"? The simplest thing might be by proxy, testing how knowledgeable someone is. But knowledge is highly diverse, and I'd have a hard time to judge someones knowledge about something where I am not an expert myself. I've more than once witnessed people impress others with their deep "knowledge" about subjects where I was in a situation to discern that they were spouting superficially informed hogwash. It's one of the central societal problems: How can I know who's expertise I can trust unless I have that expertise myself?
Applejinx 10y ago
I've done both too: ran a entreprenurial business for close to ten years and then converted it to a Patreon when my payment processor went bust, intentionally 'marketing' it as a swing from competitive to largely charitable. I only made money when I was prepared to push really hard and be obnoxious. These days I refer to the behavior mockingly as 'all caps' and lots of exclamation points. It translates into shouting over people and steamrollering them with enthusiasm, as engagingly as possible. It also sharply limited what I could do: I had to couple the hyped enthusiasm thing with market choices that were extremely 'safe'. It becomes a numbers game like internet advertising. Once you're intentionally shooting for statistical positions and backing it with aggressive, emotional dominating, you're a jerk and the best you can hope for is that you can be a jerk with a heart of gold who keeps their promises. In order to get a large enough proportion of the market listening that you can do that, there is no 'nice' option and no way to be cooperative or coexist with others: the first order of business is to shut everybody else up, dominate them so that you are heard. Funny thing is, now I am leveraging frugality and some private capital sources like I was a startup again, in order to plausibly make the impresson that I'm like some zombie movie adversary: can't be killed now that I'm Patreon-funded, and expressing this determination to plow onwards producing frighteningly huge quantities of product for 'nothing'. I'm looking to be an existential threat to the companies I used to have to be a jerk alongside. So I am being a jerk to them, while professing how great it is to not have to be a jerk to customers and regular humans. So EVEN THEN people are nicer to you if you're a jerk, so long as you're a jerk towards the right entities :)

Rich people like jerks. It's about respect - Maybe related to our animal mentality. Being a jerk is an 'alpha' male/female trait. As much as people try to pretend that they're rational human beings, the laws of nature are still running the show. Unfortunately, we haven't yet evolved enough to view 'intelligence' as an alpha trait when it comes to social hierarchy.

_0ffh 10y ago
And never will. How would anyone be able to judge someone else's "intelligence"? The simplest thing might be by proxy, testing how knowledgeable someone is. But knowledge is highly diverse, and I'd have a hard time to judge someones knowledge about something where I am not an expert myself. I've more than once witnessed people impress others with their deep "knowledge" about subjects where I was in a situation to discern that they were spouting superficially informed hogwash. It's one of the central societal problems: How can I know who's expertise I can trust unless I have that expertise myself?

Applejinx 10y ago

I've done both too: ran a entreprenurial business for close to ten years and then converted it to a Patreon when my payment processor went bust, intentionally 'marketing' it as a swing from competitive to largely charitable. I only made money when I was prepared to push really hard and be obnoxious. These days I refer to the behavior mockingly as 'all caps' and lots of exclamation points. It translates into shouting over people and steamrollering them with enthusiasm, as engagingly as possible. It also sharply limited what I could do: I had to couple the hyped enthusiasm thing with market choices that were extremely 'safe'. It becomes a numbers game like internet advertising. Once you're intentionally shooting for statistical positions and backing it with aggressive, emotional dominating, you're a jerk and the best you can hope for is that you can be a jerk with a heart of gold who keeps their promises. In order to get a large enough proportion of the market listening that you can do that, there is no 'nice' option and no way to be cooperative or coexist with others: the first order of business is to shut everybody else up, dominate them so that you are heard. Funny thing is, now I am leveraging frugality and some private capital sources like I was a startup again, in order to plausibly make the impresson that I'm like some zombie movie adversary: can't be killed now that I'm Patreon-funded, and expressing this determination to plow onwards producing frighteningly huge quantities of product for 'nothing'. I'm looking to be an existential threat to the companies I used to have to be a jerk alongside. So I am being a jerk to them, while professing how great it is to not have to be a jerk to customers and regular humans. So EVEN THEN people are nicer to you if you're a jerk, so long as you're a jerk towards the right entities :)