Validation by Exaggerating Harm is Straight Out of the Propagandist Playbook
I was told that she had fallen during the graveyard shift (10 p.m. – 6 a.m.) and face-planted into the asphalt. That she refused medical attention despite her face being a bit mangled, and that she had been sitting in the Denny’s for several hours. I was also told that she needed to check out of her room in the next hour or she would be evicted unless she paid for another night.
It was also apparent that both Security and the outshift manager had had enough of her. My heart went out to her as this was just not her night.
I see her sitting in a booth, gingerly sipping at a milkshake. She resembles a matronly librarian. She is surrounded by several bags and a large purse. The left side of her face is swollen, her bottom lip is huge and she has a contusion on the bridge of her nose. Both eyes are black.
I introduce myself and ask her if she’s alright and if there’s anything I can do for her before she checks out of her room (my attempt to be kind while still emphasizing that she has to leave or be escorted off the property). She quietly begins explaining what happened and how insensitive the security staff was, how horrible the Denny’s waitress was, how awful the hotel manager had been to her. It’s her birthday, she informs me. Her bruised eyes well up with tears as she speaks and her hands shake. She tells me that she is an author and shows me a photo on her phone of her at a book signing. Her husband is an astro-physicist and she is in Las Vegas for business. She has no vehicle and isn’t sure what to do.
“Okay. Helen? Let me go and see if we can extend the check out time and if you’d like a meal instead of a milkshake, I’m glad to take care of that for...”
“I’m not feeling very well,” she interrupts. “I have a form of epilepsy and my medication isn’t reacting well to the trauma of the fall. Last year I had a tumble and felt the same way. My husband...” and she continues to softly drone on in a manner that prevents me from exiting the conversation without being rude. I stand up and slowly start to back away because I have work to do and need to see the hotel manager about her potential eviction.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, Helen.” I turn to the waitress. “Please take care of anything she needs and I’m happy to comp it.” And I head back to the casino.
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I’ve done quite a bit of pruning from my social media outlets. Recently I culled my Facebook friends from nearly 4,000 to less than 500 in part because there were so many on there I couldn’t recall ever meeting or corresponding with and in part because the increased intensity of rhetoric from both the Alt Right and the Woke online was making me hate humanity and pushing me further toward the political center than I like.
This did not, however, prevent me from landing upon the #TalesfromHisShadowat16thStreet thread. From what I gather an exclusively black theater company was commissioned by 16th Street Theater Artistic Director Ann Filmer to do a show and had a less than ideal experience with their production.
Among their difficulties was an uncertain comp policy, poor communication about the extension, a series of parking tickets issued by the City, and someone calling the police on the audience from the theater. Remember that the Chicago Theater Community is now populated with the Woke and a small army of Self-Loathing White People (although they don’t so much loathe themselves as much as white people in general) so it would not be appropriate to place blame on their woes on disorganization, the city’s near constant state of revenue via parking tickets, or a random asshole deciding that 911 was the call to make for some random reason. No, it all boils down to Filmer’s apparent racism.
If you’d ever spent fifteen minutes with Filmer you’d know how silly and childishly destructive is this rationale.
Sounds like an exclamation of frustration rather than an intentional trigger.
The fact that the cast is black in this case is entirely beside the point. Also, that’s a LOT of hashtags.
“Why can’t I have what I want?! Racist!”
“Harrowing and depressingly common…” is histrionic. “…racist treatment…” is character assassination.
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By the time I return to Helen, she has eaten a small meal but is now slightly sick. She needs a wheelchair to go to her room to retrieve her belongings before checking out and, while she suddenly feels the need to vomit the food she just ate, she can’t walk the twenty feet to the bathroom to do so. I grab her a Denny’s bag and help her around the corner a few feet where she barfs in the bag, returns to her seat, and I dispose of the bag. She also wants to be transported to a nearby emergency room due to her epilepsy and weakness.
Each time I check in on Helen it is like walking into one of those old jungle movies with the quicksand pits. She has been so maligned in the past eight hours that a genuine gesture of kindness and respect is grabbed onto like a vine from above.
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Goebbels is known for the statement “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The complement to this idea is that if you exaggerate the harm enough, people will take the offense more seriously.
Take Donald Trump for example. His language choices are intentionally hyperbolic. He routinely elevates perceived enemies into traitors to the State and rants on and on about witch hunts and lynchings. The Left takes the bait and wastes time arguing the semantics of his grievances (“Witch Hunts are against women!”) and the Right buys into the faux seriousness of them and responds in outrage.
It doesn’t help that the Left elevates his discourse as assault and his rhetoric as violence. These concepts are simply ridiculous and even the dumbest of his supporters can see that.
Does anyone really believe that the police shooting 700 people (most of them white) is an “epidemic of police violence”? The very definition of “epidemic” includes the idea that it is widespread. Seven hundred out of 350 million people is hardly widespread.
Is it at all reasonable to consider the decision for people to boycott the stand up comedy of Louis CK and the destruction of his career? The guy is still making a better living that 95 percent of the country, right?
Are comments and questions about gender or race genuine aggressions or simple curiosity and is there actually violence involved? If it is true that words are the same as violence can I press charges against the guy who flipped me off and called me an asshole for taking too long to turn left last week? Can the smirking MAGA hat kid sue thousands of Twitter bullies? Should Trump be impeached for saying shitty things about, well, everyone?
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It turns out that in order to help Helen go to a medical facility, it is the strict policy of the casino to call paramedics despite her desire to simply get cab fare. I ask her if that is okay with her and she frets a bit, complains some more about being asked to either pay for another night or leave, and finally agrees.
One of my peers pulls me aside.
“You know she’s pulled this before, right? I mean, we all appreciate you going out of your way to help her but she’s trying to work you to get something.”
“I can’t believe that,” I respond. “She really fell and was really injured and, I don’t know, when I look in her eyes as she’s telling me her story, I believe her. Maybe she’s inflated her grievances as they relate to security and hotel management but I still believe she deserves our assistance in every way.”
The paramedics arrive. As they are talking to her, she is overheard complaining that she had, in fact, been hit by a security van and wanted to press charges against the casino. She tells them that the staff refused her food or water and that she had been ignored for hours.
We don’t have a security van. And it wasn’t her birthday, either.
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In all of the back and forth in the #TalesfromHisShadowat16thStreet nonsense, I caught the following justification for the calling out of Filmer.
“Toxic behavior is called out so it’s amplified and people aren’t suffering alone when they choose to speak up instead of being “easy to work with.” Call outs happen as a result of dead ends. A result of communication failures over and over again.”
Like Helen, a woman who fell and wanted as much attention as she felt she deserved, the story of the company at 16th Street likely started as a simple desire to be given something more from a less than organized institution but as their demand for better organization, better communication, and easier to navigate organizational procedures were left unmet, the story became inflated. Let’s not pretend that this some sort of cry for empowerment. Let’s not pretend that this is somehow connected in any way with the longstanding legacy of racial inequality in this country. This is simply lying to get attention, exaggerating harm by using buzzwords, and hoping that solidarity will come via the internet.
Even the term toxic behavior is suspect. I find bullying someone via social media to be toxic but I’m not unloading on specific people or even naming them in this piece because I find that behavior TOXIC. See how that works, dipshits? Bullying someone, even when you think the cause for such behavior is justified, is horseshit and creates more discontent than restorative justice. Lying to exaggerate the harm, redefining what words you use to elevate that harm, all in order to get the attention so that you can get what you want makes you one of the dickheads in the equation.
No different than Helen. No different than Trump.
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I was thoroughly discouraged by the revelation that Helen had been grifting for attention, a comped meal, and the hope for a free night in the hotel. I felt used and betrayed by someone I didn’t know and will unlikely ever see again. There is a psychological reason for this sort of behavior:
“Histrionic personality disorder is characterized by constant attention-seeking, emotional overreaction, and seductive behavior. People with this condition tend to overdramatize situations, which may impair relationships and lead to depression. Yet they are highly suggestible, easily susceptible to the influence of others.”
This is humanity. This is now. Surrounded by histrionic personalities who now have a megaphone to the rest of the histrionic personalities. It’s a cold comfort that these raging attention-seekers represent a tiny portion of people out there because they are so loud but it is good to be reminded how few there are.
As much as I am disheartened by Helen’s lies and hyperbole, I refuse to allow her example to color my perception of others in need. Likewise, I’ll not allow the propaganda of the Woke or the Trump to draw me into a hopeless cynicism.
I will, on the other hand, be conscious of the hyperbole and conflation and recognize people so desperate for power or control or just a free room. Not distrusting but not naive, either.
