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The Languages of "The Office"
Venkat Rao has followed up his analysis of office dynamics as reflected in The Office, which we discussed last month, with one titled Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk. The Office is running a little thin of meaty examples to make his points in delineating the ways of PowerTalk — the language of the Sociopaths — so Rao reaches out to Goodfellas, Wall Street, The Boiler Room, and Making Jack Falcone. The entire analysis illuminates and is illuminated by a diagram of the disparate languages that Sociopaths, the Clueless, and Losers speak to each other and among themselves.
What about clueless loser sociopaths? How do we^H^Hthey communicate? Or do they just use all of these different "languages" to talk to themselves?
Didn't read TFA - just skimmed it a bit, but let me get this straight, some guy has analysized a bunch of fake conversations (that were created by the various shows' writers) in order to produce an explanation of real world office dynamics?
Do I have that right?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The site in TFA is slashdotted. Are we talking movie ("do you have your TPC report") or TV ("hey Pam, come and work for the Michael Scott paper company")
Seriously. Why the hell is this on Slashdot AT ALL much less on the front page? Even in whatever field this is attempting to masquerade, this isn't even craptastic. It's just crap.
There's certainly layers of nuance and meaning that can get heaped onto human communication. As an aspie geek, it's very easy for me to get what was literally said and completely blow past the subtext. "What's wrong?" "Nothing." "Ok! I'll be on my way." Nooo, that's the nothing that means there's something and I'm supposed to fish.
However, the author really starts heaping on the layers of meaning in his examples. It reminds me of the conference scenes from Dune where whole conversations are intuited from the lifting of an eyebrow. "I knew it, he knew it, he knew I knew he knew it, but he didn't realize I knew he knew I knew he knew it. The twitching of my pinkie finger drew his attention away from my own eyebrow thus concealing my knowledge." Puts me in mind of great bits of comedy where sophisticated and devious characters are speaking obliquely around a topic of great significance, doing so in such a way that they soon realize they're not entirely sure if they're both having the same conversation.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
You mean COBOL?
Don't watch the telly, it will melt your mind. Kill your TV.
that these stereotypes of behavior are aspects of everyone's personality, including yours
i would have hoped that people would have realized thinking about the world in this cliquish way went out of fashion in high school. simply because you realized in high school (or should have realized) that people aren't cartoonish cardboard cut-outs of one dimensional behavior
show me someone who is supposedly dead center for being, say, the "sociopath", and i'll show you their empathetic qualities. now also show me someone who is supposedly far removed from being the "sociopath" and i'll show you the sociopathic side to their personality
it makes for good television, but real people are a lot more complex than this derivative reductionist thinking that sells people short. its entertaining, but in real life, its brutalizing to your social interaction
thinking about people this way only hurts you, in the end, by hobbling you with a poor model of human thinking and interaction. such that you reduce the richness of your own social experience up front before you even have a chance, because your mentality has overly simplified the people around you. you sell them short, and in turn, you only wind up selling yourself short
in other words, you've become the source of the problem: i would call a person who uses these stereotypes as a way of thinking about people around them the only truly one-dimensional stereotype that has a ring of truth: "the feckless tool"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can't be bothered to read the entire article before saying this.
I don't claim to not stereotype at all - it's an outgroup homogenity bias that all of us have built into us. But I've learnt not to classify people into categories, rather assign qualities to each person I meet instead. I find that a much more natural order of thought in my head, but almost useless to compare notes with.
At least this way my vocabulary-of-people is more like words instead of just individual alphabets (yeah, you sound like an ... alpha-male).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Seriously, if you're going to post this drivel, at least acknowledge the superiority of Ricky Gervais' version. I'm an American, and even I resent it when people assume that "The Office" is synonymous with the Greg Daniels version.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This article is about the sociological maladjustment of screenwriters.
It has nothing to do with real dynamics, or actual language used by anybody.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Shhhhh..... Big Brother Balmer does not like to hear things like that! *sigh* I guess we'll have to do another ritual sacrificial to set things right again.
GET THE NEW INTERN READY GUYS!
I love random hex numbers! Just like this one, 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Can we get a mirror. The entire domain has been /.'ed to hell
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
The Office and other Workplace fiction are written by people who have never worked in a real world workplace, or if they have it was merely as a stopping point for them.
Thus they don't know a thing about it...but...they're creating an entertaining fiction. To acurately reproduce workplace interaction would be very boring TV. So they're doing what they need to do...but there's no reason to try and interpret that dialogue as if it were real.
It has been a way for powerless losers to get back at uppity assholes. Doesn't work quite so well with group-think delivery, though.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
The article seems to be inaccessible, so here's a link to the Google Cache (text-only version)
My response to what people have said here so far (and I haven't read any of the article yet) is that this is not social theory, it's business theory. It's not supposed to define how you relate to people or how you perceive them. It's intended as an analysis of business dynamics, which is to say it's about how workers in different positions respond to their position and the position of those around them. From what I remember about the earlier article, I would say that even just among the "Losers," their goal is to focus energy into other parts of their lives, parts that have nothing to do with business or their job. When the characters leave the office, this entire analysis falls apart, and this does not invalidate the analysis because it's not intended to reflect each person's entire life.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
so you've had 5 minute conversations with a bunch of people you didn't really want to talk to. and based on that, you think this permits you to give them heavy condemning labels
no one is one dimensional
but if you still want to make the case that someone out there is one dimensional, i nominate you, based on the shallowness of what you've just written
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not as long as the sociopaths exist, buddy!
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I always thought of it as a poor man's Glengarry Glen Ross
And considering that my pick is an all-male flick, which describes most of the close-quarter workplaces we're accustomed to, feel free to chime in.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Sociopaths (that is, people with a brand of Antisocial Personality Disorder that have a pathological failure at true interaction with society) is probably not the correct term for the people at the top. What these people actually have is more likely Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Last train's eleven, it's now quarter past
Why're you tryin' to make the evenin' move so fast
I'm in real trouble but I can't go back home
They locked the doors and I'm left out alone
You can come to my place and sleep on the couch
Lots of people do it and we won't leave you out
Hard times out on the Street
Hard times, hard to beat
The painted lies they all hand you
I'm a loser on the road
I'm a loser on the road, yeah
Euston station and it's cold as ice
AlI night specials, they move you on
But me and Ginger over there
We got this thing where we really take care
I'm a loser, I'm a loser
I'm a loser
Let's translate the diagram into a logical statement:
if you're not a sociopath, you are either clueless or a loser
I don't think the author fully understands what a sociopath is.
ever heared of LaTeX + Gastex + Jastex?
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I think he's talking about 1-dimensional to a first-order approximation which is in-line with my experience as well.
"Only a schmuck works for somebody else."
Thanks a lot everybody. The fact that everything on the first page of responses (group think) beat down the TFA... Now I must read everything by this guy. ... my proving word is remorse
Actually....
I mostly agree but, I have met at least one counterexample, a true sociopath. Not just met, but actually lived with him.
He was really an excellent liar, and to that end, was very one dimensional in his underlying purpose... it was all about him and what he wanted. However, so much so that he was willing to lie and act to get what he wanted. He wasn't just two faced, he was three and four faced. He would act one way, then, in private, "drop the act" and seem genuine and sincere.... except... it was just another act.
Actually it was impressive, and the moment that the acts started crashing into each other, he skipped town. For weeks afterwards, people were swapping stories and having little "aha" moments about the web of lies he told.
I am talking about an extreme case. The kind of guy who could tell you he was attending classes at a school, even talk intelligently about what courses he was taking, all that checked out. Except, the school had never heard of him. He used to write bad checks to his old landlord, then steal the bounce notices from their mailbox. Always talked up my crew of friends about what a horrible battle axe his roomate of where he was leaving was, anything to control the flow of information, to misdirect, to get him sympathy, to make him money.
There was exactly one moment in knowing him that I knew he was sincere. We were watching the news stories after 9/11 about people selling any old chunk of concrete as a "souvenir from the towers", and he said "Damn, I wish I had thought of that".
Anyway, you are right, the VAST majority of the time, but.... such people ARE out there. I think we should be glad they are rare.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"