Are you a truth-shouter or a cutlery-loader?

Quoted from http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/015056.html, by Abi Sutherland (Note: later parts of the linked thread stray into ITA-type material and therefore contain descriptions of abuse, but I only want to talk about the OP for now, and I don't think what I'm excerpting needs content warnings.)

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I'm not claiming this has total validity, since it doesn't explain my own behavior particularly well. But it does seem to explain at least certain types of conflicts, and it's an interesting toy model.

To conclude with a meme: tag yourself, I'm a truth-shouter (sorta) (once you actually force me onto the offensive and prevent me from dealing with a problem by trying to paper it over with half-remembered rationality terms or stuff it into some dark dissociated corner somewhere).

 

I am currently staring at the description of the cutlery-loaders and actually not being able to see that viewpoint. It is frustrating to feel so utterly baffled in the "how the fuck does a person think this way?!" when it isn't, say, most of what Trump says (Huh is Trump a cutlery-loader?).

I can see firing cutlery in a fight if one starts lashing out, I think I must have done that at some point, but that is the type of stuff that one quickly realized had no place there... Because you don't believe it/you shouldn't have said it/it's only purpose was to hurt and that is pretty shameful. I am such a truth-shouter that it is actually hurting to think of the other style of arguing, and the comment that "it is equally valid" in conflict has me going "but it isn't that is hurtful and cruel and irresponsible and Wrong!!!" but I can't quite articulate it! That said I tend to prefer mediating or avoiding conflict perhaps even ignoring it.

 

wow!!! i see a lot of the worst conflicts me & my dad have had mirrored in this. it's not 100% accurate by any means, but he definitely seems to be more of a truth-shouter and i am (sort of) a cutlery loader- that part about it driving cutlery-loaders "nuts to be called on things they said for emotional effect rather than content"- like holy shit i have been there, i have done that.

me and my dad have had some awful screaming matches where it seems like we're having two separate arguments in two rooms and we aren't talking (or shouting) at each other. it can get pretty awful. i primarily argue by pathos, appeals to emotion, and i use words more for their effect than their Literal Truth, while my dad is a very rational person who argues rationally. he's a coder and he processes things sort of like a computer- and i know i've confused and annoyed him before because i was giving him data that Did Not Compute while i was getting annoyed that he wasn't listening to me, and it felt like he was dismissing my words because he didn't agree with them, when really he just didn't understand them, and he didn't know how to articulate that.

lately (and i mean like a few months ago) we sort of had a breakthrough where we realized that we weren't communicating to each other affectively and we decided that we needed a better method for handling our conflicts. my dad promised that when our arguments (arguments in the sense that we have different beliefs and we are both Opinionated so we like to talk about them) get heated that we will stop, take a break, and do our separate research, then come back and sort of share what we learned? it seems to be working to stop us before we get to the point where i start arguing primarily to hurt him and he starts screaming instead of listening. (i said some awful shit to him when i was in my Freshman Feels phase and thought it was my Duty to Convert Him To Liberalism)

anyway, this is super interesting to me. i'll have to bring it up to him and see what he thinks.

 

I think I'm a mix of these types, but lean truth-shouter, since i've been emotionally repressed since i was a child. My boyfriend however is definitely a cutlery-loader, and it took me a lot of hurt to learn how to ignore what he says when i notice he's like that. we don't really violently argue a lot nowadays thanks to that, but we had a lot of pretty ugly near-breakups because i took what he was saying just to hurt as truth.

 

Usually a truth shouter though sometimes I am a cutlery loader just for the sake of it. Got to fight. Got to rile people up and get into a dumb argument. Though usually when I do this it's not out of malice more...Fun? Like it's not out of malicious intent towards the person being engaged. It's more I want to stir up shit for the sake of watching the house burn down. It's wanting to fight for fighting's sake. Though sometimes I have admittedly gotten into arguments with people just because I wanted to get them riled up and upset.

My more serious conflicts tend to be truth shouting though. Sometimes it can be very dogmatic truth shouting at that.

 

As in the film, cutlery-loading is an act of desperation for me when I've run through all the truth I can think of and it doesn't seem to be working.

 

That makes me think. When I'm not able to de-escalate arguments via truth shouting and I've finally given up on it I just. Stop entirely a lot of the time? And just kind of sit there and become a target of abuse because I can't do anything else. So why even bother trying. Maybe if I lay down on the floor they'll get bored and leave me alone. Then I proceed to not even bring up the issue at all and hide away. Occasionally testing the waters before hiding away again.

It's rare when I actually lash back maliciously. Usually if I get to a breaking point I just stop and attempt to leave.

Which isn't to say my truth shouting is pleasant or useful when I get to desperation mode. Because it's not.

 

Well that explains a lot. I'm a truth shouter, and I'm p sure my parents are cutlery loaders; whenever I pick apart their argument logically they get really offended for taking their words too seriously

 

Truth-shouter, although I try not to get into actual arguments if I can help it, and end them quick if I can't. I used to get into a lot of arguments the internet, for fun, until I realized I was being a cruel asshole for kicks and it was only feeding my worst tendencies.

I refuse to deal with cutlery-loaders at all. I will walk away - physically as well as metaphorically - if an argument starts going to unreasonable places, but I just shut the door entirely on insult flinging and namecalling. People can say what they mean to me, or keep it to their own damned selves, as I do not exist for them to throw their emotions at.

 

for me cutlery-loading isn't so much getting people riled up for the heck of it, but- like the op says, when i'm Arguing Opinions in Person, i'm primarily speaking more from a place of "i feel, this is how i experience things" and i'm not interested Formal Debate Time, With Sources™. and it can get really really frustrating to me, when someone else is doing FDTWS™ because it feels like they're not listening to me or invalidating my opinions because they come from a place of subjective emotions and not Objective Truth. and when i was younger and less emotionally mature, when i got to that place of frustration, i started using words to Hurt because i know how to be very quick and very very mean when i want to be. i don't like that about myself, but i also don't think cutlery-loading is an inherently bad method of argument.

 

Maybe not! I don't require all arguments to be Formal Debates and I don't believe in objective truth (at least, insofar as things that can't be backed up by chatlogs and posts), but once things start straying from "I'm feeling X and Y [because of Z]," my Wall O' Boundary goes up for the sake of my own sanity.

 

that i definitely get!! i am probably talking more to my own baggage re: people who have dismissed me because i'm emotional than anything in your post. i had a lot of guy friends who said stupid shit about feminism in high school/college, and at a certain point "where are your sources" "i'm a goddamn woman and my sources are i know what i'm talking about shut up" gets real damn exhausting, i'm still pretty sensitive about it XD

 

Heh, no, I totally understand! That kind of shit gets my back up real fast, too. :T Being emotionally disconnected doesn't equal being objective, and I don't have a lot of patience for people who act like it does.

 

it is soooo frustrating, especially because the way i react to that kind of dismissive "I don't feel anything about this so I'm Right" is by getting more flustered and more emotional, which gives the other person more ammunition to dismiss me which makes me more flustered and more emotional which...

i've learned to just leave it at "i am no longer interested in having this conversation with you, this is not productive, we're done." but it took a loooooooot of work to get there, man.

 

I hate conflict because I want to cite sources and have a reasoned debate, but my ability to construct an argument that goes clearly from A to B seems to go down in direct proportion to the intensity of emotions in the air. So in the heat of an intense argument, I turn into a cutlery-loader. And I hate it. I know that "I am having a very strong feeling about this" isn't an argument in favor of my point. I could work with it except that sometimes I can't even figure out what very strong feeling I'm having! I try to remove myself from the situation when emotions start running high because there's a very low chance that I'm going to be able to contribute anything helpful.

 

Ohhhh lord I just realized I am definitely a cutlery-loader when the argument becomes a real argument. Up until the point I get emotional, I'm usually great at being rational and calm and keeping things from getting too heated. When the argument gets emotional tho... different story altogether.

I realized just now that my mom is a truth-shouter, and suddenly all of our arguments make so much more sense. She'll actually stop me if I say "You do [x thing] all the time!!" and say "I most certainly do not! I might do [x thing] a little, but I don't all the time!" Like she was trying to rationalize an argument that was based completely on emotion, and it's so frustrating for me because that's not what I was saying, I was just saying you do this thing often enough to elicit an emotional response. I'm thinking this is also why she tries to insult me when we fight by saying "You're just like your daddy!" (And to which I always respond "Well I see why he acts the way he does, being married to someone like you!") Because my dad and I both argue very emotionally.

Maybe that's why me and my dad always end our arguments more quickly, because we both get all our emotions out in a fight without actually taking what the other says too seriously and without trying to be rational or organized. Huh. This is actually really interesting to think about.

 

I am pretty sure I'm a cutlery-loader? If I mentally categorizing something as a 'discussion' I'm able to be a truth-shouter but the moment my brain says "this is an argument" I'm loading my cannon with knives.

My step-dad is a cutlery-loader all the time, which can be frustrating if I haven't twigged onto the fact. We have fun basically arguing nonsensical points at each other otherwise though.

 

i sort of start off as a truth shouter (in the sense of truth as described by op) and if i get refuted i can turn into a cutlery loader. it's an overly defensive sort of thing. if i'm angry and you correct me, i'm more likely to stick to my guns than hear what you have to say, but later when i think about it i'll probably agree with you.

i also sometimes use anger as a way to express things i can't normally in regular discourse, but then disguise myself as a cutlery loader later if i feel like i shared more than i wanted to by saying i don't feel as strongly as what i said. which really isn't a good thing to do but i'm not very good at sharing negative feelings because that shit was dangerous to do growing up.

 

@seebs I think this thread might help with your stated confusion as to which things people say are to be treated as meaningful and which not. I started out with the sincerity cannonballs, and realized I needed to leave the thread precisely because I realized that, having exhausted my supply with no apparent effect, I was starting to reach for the nails and crushed glass of "OKAY FINE".

 

Truth shouter for sure, that description pretty much matches me precisely, although the unfortunate nature of Perceived Truths as opposed to objective truths sometimes causes issues when someone is shouting the objective truths in my direction. Things get drawn out as all hell if I'm mistaken about some aspect of the conflict but I'm convinced I'm making sense and have a full understanding of what's going on.

I tend to attempt to drop arguments with cutlery loaders the moment I realise the forks are flying unless I log it as meaningless frustration. My mother had a tendency to fire the entire kitchen drawer and then some, so I've not got a lot of tolerance for it.