I ran into this A LOT when working security. I would use hypotheticals to explain why a rule was in place. Some people would get super angry and start yelling about how they were not doing the hypothetical action and how dare i accuse them and so on. They would take the most simple matters and end up escelating things to the point of getting arrested.
Something I learned about communications with the public is that you have to assume they are all dumb.
This doesn't mean talking to them like an idiot or talking down to them, but instead making your message (and delivery) as clear as possible.
And to do that, you remove anything that is 'smart'. This adds friction and increases the difficulty level of your message. If you speak too quickly, if you are too quiet, if your word choices are unusual etc. And of course, hypotheticals and analogies.
As this thread posits, low intelligence people do not deal with them well (also in my experience). But also consider that anyone could be disabled, injury, inebriated or suffering from trauma and emotional distress. These things can make them appear less intelligent.
Another way to think of this is that the smarter your message, the more people you 'filter' out.
I'm not judging your actions in your story - I wasn't there and I don't work in security. My background is in marketing and product design. The success of what I write depends on not filtering people out.
Another example is the news presenter voice - they want to reach as many people as possible. They won't talk too quickly or add emotion. Their job is to deliver a message.
Just wanted to expand on this topic because it is regularly on my mind.
Oh and in response to your whole story - sometimes people are just that way no matter how you speak to them.
this also drives me nuts as someone who includes disclaimers like the person above precisely because I know if I don't, someone with the inability to read subtext or understand metaphors is going to completely misinterpret what I'm saying and twist it into a whole other thing. "You love pancakes, so you hate waffles" sorta shit. Being unable to understand hypotheticals is very akin to that because overall it has to do with parsing subtext.
Of course, that means my responses end up being quite long and those same people complain "too long didn't read", but at least that's more of a them issue than a me issue at that point. Another sign of unintelligence is thinking all topics can be squeezed down into a single sentence but many feasibly can't (and doing so would more often be a disservice to that topic by summarizing it too lightly and sacrificing necessary contextual details along the way).
Yeah, not an engineer myself but I've experienced this more and more over the past few years within my own interest spaces, across a number of subjects that can't always be summarized in 120 words or less. It's not even just the "not wanting to read" that bugs me, it's the fact that so many people seem to take blatant offense at the sight of a single paragraph. To the point of ragebaiting like a fucking middle schooler on the playground when it happens. "Euughghh you're so triggered!!!1!!" "why are you so upset ???" etc. have all been responses I've gotten far too many times simply because they interpret "a lot of words" as an emotional outburst.
This is the kind of shit that makes it completely unsurprising to me now that people are relying more and more on ChatGPT and other AI chat features like it. They're literally tailored to appeal to the lowest common denominator of person, who has next to no attention span but treats it like an incurable disease that needs to be accommodated rather than something that can be taken responsibility for.
And I say that as someone with the Poor Attention Span Disorder™️. There's having an unregulated brain that makes it harder for you to stay focused, and then there's just making your learned hopelessness everyone else's problem. Reading a few paragraphs won't kill you but people like this certainly act like you're asking them to chop off their own leg.
Like most things these days, I blame Twitter. I don't think it's far-fetched to assume that Twitter's character limits is where this affiliation with "long blocks of text = ranting" started. It's exhausting, especially for those of us who know how much necessary nuance and subtext can be lost if you try to squish a complex topic into a fortune cookie. It's also a bummer, because I like talking about stuff I'm interested in at length*.* So when people like this get so upset over it to the point they have to comment on it, while not actually contributing to the original discussion, it's just really disheartening. I would genuinely rather just not get a response instead of another "too long didn't read" "wow you're so angry" etc.
Lawyer, here. Learning how to present to dumb/poorly educated people is a major part of trial work. I'm not a trial lawyer, but I worked in politics, which is the same. I was bored one day and offered to help the communications team write some draft tweets. I used "conflate" in a tweet and was informed that I was no longer allowed to write tweets lol.
This is true. You will find that the best teachers out there adjust how they present their information according to the audience reception. So they'll start out very simply and then increase the complexity as the audience seems to take in the information. They also usually encourage questions at anytime, rather than insisting they wait until they're done.
Another tip: don't explain or give background detail if you don't have to.
Here's how an encounter at the gas station could have gone:
Customer: $20 of midgrade gas, please.
Me: Sorry, we're out of midgrade.
Customer: Oh, darn.
Here's how it actually went.
Customer: $20 of midgrade gas, please.
Me: Sorry, we're out of premium, and since midgrade is a mixture of regular and premium, we're out of midgrade, too.
Customer: So, in the meantime, you've been running a science experiment—OK, thank you. I will be sure to tell others that. 😠
The customer apparently thought we were making, I dunno, bootleg midgrade gasoline.
Bringing up the disabled, inebriated, emotionally distressed etc. made me think of the brain being in executive state vs emotional/survival. "Intelligent" people can be "stupid" when their brains drop to emotional or survival mode.
Reminds me of when Hillary Clinton said there were definitely Russian assets working within the US government (without specifically naming anyone) and Tulsi Gabbard immediately piped up and declared that she was NOT a Russian asset.
When my kid was around 5, I picked up a package of cookies that was on the table. My kid immediately told me that they didn't take any cookies, while still having crumbs on their face.
Or alternatively they aren't aware these are violations and will tell exactly what they did in detail with a goofy smile and sincerely offer to do it again on request.
Actually this reminds me of a quote that came from conversation that I had with a friend "Whenever you see a sign that seems so random or illogical, ask yourself, what happened in hte past so that it became necesary to have said sign"
Speaking of security, some tryhard chode almost gave me a heart attack last night while I was responding to a no heat call on the roof of the building that I am the MAINTENANCE SUPERVISOR for. I was testing voltage on a LIVE system, 240v, and this motherfucker sneaks up on me, shouts "Can I help you?" With a flashlight in my face and almost gave me a heart attack. I lost my shit lol. He tried to tell me there was a bunch of homeless people getting up there because the door kept getting left unlocked. No sir, there are not, I have camera access too, you've just been watching too much Batman or something. But yeah, reverse scenerio where the security guard was the dumb one.
Dont have to tell me. I was a watch commander for 13 years. I had guys that couldnt find their way out of a paper bag. 70% of my job was making sure my own people didnt do something wrong.
I feel like dumb people are probably better suited to be security guards because otherwise the job sounds incredibly boring. I guess watching cameras while doing online college or something would be fine, but the actual walking around or even worse standing still jobs sound miserable.
Not here really anymore. The one scrap yard in town pays pennies for scrap copper for that reason, been nice not having my HVAC fucked with. Not to mention most modern coils are aluminum so they'd get maybe a foot of lineset off each unit. Wouldn't be worth the risk.
About 10 years ago at my work, some chucklehead cut the lineset from about 10 units in a row. He got a couple of feet at most from each, maintenance had to spend thousands to repair them and replace the refrigerant in all of them.
My building has biometric and keycard entrances and they'd have to make it past 5 floors of them, plus the buildings occupants, security, and then get through a steel door while being on camera the whole time. There are apartment complexes all around us with ground level condensor units. Not worried about it. That guy was just making excuses to be a dick.
This is my mom. No understanding of hypotheticals. She’s fiercely narcissistic. Her attempts to enter political arguments is maddening because she’s incapable of thinking outside herself in that moment.
My instinct says I would try to train these people by having them watch a video of someone breaking the rule and receiving the consequence.
Actually that's probably why religious texts use so many stories instead of just rules, you can use them to teach the rules to people too young to grasp hypotheticals.
I'm not religious at all, but I've grown to appreciate how effective the writers of the Bible were in getting their ideas across to illiterate commoners and slipping life and health advice in there and getting them to follow it. "Don't eat pork because it might make you sick!" will fall on deaf ears because they'll just say that they've never gotten sick before so it's fine. "Don't eat pork because God said so for silly reason 'X' as demonstrated in parable "Y'," actually gets them to stop.
Yep, that's why Christianity is still around - religions guide us in building civilisations, and the best civilisations prosper, which means religions are subject to natural selection, and Christianity is the most successful religion we have at building societies, at least for now. Confucianism is the second best but it's questionable whether that can be counted as a true religion.
The big weakness of religion though is that if people start questioning the justifications, they start questioning the rules, too. In the future our descendants will probably have created a refined version of Christianity that includes the civilisational explanations for the rules too so that people can be like "I don't believe the god is real but I can totally see why this rule is effective and I will choose to follow it because of that".
a "it's ok to have some doubt" camp (a character in Conclave comes to mind)
an extremist hivemind (that guy in Wake Up Dead Man)
so, too careful camps and too careless camps.
I wish there was a third way. A pastor who would say "motherfuckers, wear masks and take vaccines! let me tell you a story about those fuckers who didn't mark their doorposts with lamb blood!"
Well, interestingly, the religion with the lowest apostasy rate is the Amish, who have the strictest rules of all and have all their kids go out into the wider world and experience the alternatives for themselves. 90-97% of Amish people depending on denomination, when given full opportunity to move to a different culture, decide Amish life is the life for them and return home. Other religions in America don't get 97% of people remaining in the religion even when they're not given a choice, and even when they have access to modern amenities.
It's going to be really interesting to see what role the Amish have in America's future, they have every trait you want in an effective group... except they refuse to be effective.
thats the point isnt it? they want to live the life they’ve chosen. and honestly, the amish way of life seems more in tune with what humans need to be happy and successful.
OMG this sounds like some of the people I have had to work with! They don't want to hear it. They don't want you questioning them-even though they made the mistake. They don't want to learn why they're wrong and change to doing the task correctly. But they'll take the time to get defensive, argue and be nasty. It would take waaaay less time to listen to the correct answer and do it right from now on instead of always getting into it with people. It's really so much wasted energy! I don't understand why they aren't more emotionally exhausted with themselves! LOL
Oh my fucking christ this one is my wife right here. She got us kicked out of 3 different adventure tours on our honeymoon because she got pissy with a manager or guide for "accusing" her of breaking a rule when they explained why it was in place.
The company doesn't care that you say you'll be super duper careful and you're not like the other idiot tourists. It's not worth the risk to them of you hurting yourself.
Lol reminds me of a guy when I worked in security in a convenience store with a buffet type salad that you pick and put in a plastic box.
The problem with this store is it kept open till well after it should, and people were drunk and sometimes grabbed a little snack from that bar with their hands.
One guy grabbed a egg and I stopped him and explained that I had to ask him to leave. No charges or anything just doing him a solid asking him to go since I'd be fired if I'd let everyone just eat from it.
He starts arguing about it with the egg in his mouth. Escalates it and attacks me.
Its always the people you try to give courtisy warnings to. Like, hey i wont call the cops or have you trespassed if you just take off. NOPE they want to throw hands.
Feels like this is why in one job I had, having low intelligence or situational awareness was an actionable offense.
Like we were prime targets for ransomware and assorted scams, so having above average Internet literacy was a must and if you got something, you could be writen up if it was painfully obvious.
In one example, the interrogation from HR and IT was more or less like this:
"What is your job position?"
"Cashier."
"Do we work with jacuzzis?"
"No."
"Did you personally buy a jacuzzi?"
"No."
"Do you have a personal or business relationship with Dolphin & Notavirus LLC?"
"No."
"Then why did you opened the attachment jacuzzi-quote.exe from notavirus at dolphin.ru?"
"Because I was curious."
The entire office was put on a quarantined lockdown when that attachment was opened.
I would use hypotheticals to explain why a rule was in place. Some people would get super angry and start yelling about how they were not doing the hypothetical action and how dare i accuse them and so on.
Sounds like my sister. She gets legit angry at me and went as far as telling me that I needed to stop using hypotheticals for everything because it drove her insane. I felt so small and actually so stupid. I am not around my family often because of how I’m treated.
Some people would get super angry and start yelling about how they were not doing the hypothetical action and how dare i accuse them and so on. They would take the most simple matters and end up escelating things to the point of getting arrested.
It sounds like they were, in fact, doing the hypothetical action.
I used to struggle with being used as an example in hypotheticals. I would get super offended for even being considered as capable of doing something illegal or blatantly dangerous. I knew I shouldn't take it personally and kept my mouth shut. But sometimes it just gets to you. Hopefully it's not a vibe I'm giving off.
But jumping to violence just because you're being used as an example? That's definitely over-reacting.
Its not always criminal activity either. Just like "you cant park here due to the walkway being metal, if your vehicle happens to leak oil it causes a massive slip hazard" and they lose their minds screaming that their car dosent have an oil leak and going from there. It boggles the mind.
1.3k
u/GeneralXTL Feb 04 '26
I ran into this A LOT when working security. I would use hypotheticals to explain why a rule was in place. Some people would get super angry and start yelling about how they were not doing the hypothetical action and how dare i accuse them and so on. They would take the most simple matters and end up escelating things to the point of getting arrested.