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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.
I too once thought as you do. Then I met WAY more people than I ever wanted to. These sterotypes *DO* exist. They even strive to live up to the expectation of the sterotype. They are actually proud of the 'highs' and 'lows' of each one. They embrace it.
Are they totaly 1 dimensional? No. But they do not stray far from it. I can think of at least 5 people I have met (out of hundreds) that exhibit 1 dimensional behavior.
They do exist. Some have learned to hide it as they know what they do is somehow 'wrong'. Most people are a bit more well rounded though.
Also what you see on tv/movies is usually the exaggerated version. Why? Because it gives the show a focus.
I'm not so sure. For one, I'm probably reading this slightly differently because the most I've watched The Office is during previews of reruns on an off channel interjected into Simpson's shows, so the character names mean nothing to me.
My career so far fits his stereotypical loser: due to my autism, I'm unable to make the low-work, high value deals of the sociopaths. Due to my idiot-savancy, I'm too smart to do any more than the minimum necessary. So I'm certainly usually in "wait out the clock mode" except for the few times a week somebody brings me an interesting problem and I jump into clueless mode enough for them to keep me around. (usually- doesn't always work and I've been both first and last laid off in downturns).
Despite my brilliant ideas, I do speak in something very like his Gamespeak, in that I view economics as a problem in Game theory. Due to that, I seem to run into mental blocks talking to sociopaths; the biggest two are their belief that *hard work=success* vs my belief in luck, combined with their belief in infinite resources available vs my belief in a finite world bordered such to create a zero sum game.
Due to that, we're talking different languages so much that the black line on this guy's diagram represents an utter lack of communication.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Mod parent up. The UK version is a real observation of life, much like The Royle Family, and its accuracy is what makes those shows great.
Someone once said to me: "Steve Carell tries to be funny. Ricky Gervais acts like a guy trying to be funny".
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Not meant to be a dig at the military- if anything, I have great respect for those willing to go above and beyond the "bare necessity" that I do.
In fact, I'd say that the country *owes* a full retirement to anybody who has ever been in combat- that "little bit of money off the GI Bill" is an example of the sociopaths politicians disrespecting the value of your service. The reason this stereotype calls you clueless is because you don't realize just how little they gave you in return for you risking your life.
But they're definitely an example of the "clueless"- because that's what the clueless do; risk their lives in return for a "little bit of money off the GI Bill".
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.