08:58 pm - A question on Snacky's Law
Snacky's Law:
Whenever two (or more) groups of people are arguing, anywhere on the web* (usenet, mailing lists, message boards, blogs, etc.), inevitably, someone on one side of the argument (regardless of age or gender) will compare the group on the other side to "those bitchy girls who made everyone's life hell in high school."
I've recently wondered why people would so often not only choose to be much more specific than just a general accusation of "you people are all a bunch of assholes/bitches/bastards/etc", but use the same specific comparison. Some ideas that have occurred to me:
- Rhetorical effect: the negative emotions associated with the memories of being bullied in high-school are powerful, and the accuser wants to associate those emotions with the accusee.
- For various reasons, arguments on the Internet can become a lot more vicious than the same arguments would be if done face-to-face, and people associated that sort of viciousness with the "mean girls" from high-school.
- The accuser doesn't perceive her opponents as just some random bitches who just happen to share the same oppinion, but as a cohesive group of bitches that perform their bitchery as a group, behavior they have only seen before amongst the mean girls from high-school.
- The accuser perceives her opponents as a group which considers itself to be superior to the accuser's group, and they behave bitchly toward the accuser's group to demonstrate their supperiority/dominance.
Is there anything that I'm missing? Any of my ideas that are totally of base?
The internet = highschool
That and "mean girls in highschool" are associated with cliquish behavior. "Those mean jocks from highschool" doesn't have the same omph effect.
Still seems strange to me that people would so commonly perceive their opponents to be behaving cliquishly. But then again, "my oponents are a monolithic group" seems to be an extremely common perception, and "monolithic" on the personal level probably translates to "cliquish".
It's like the geek social fallacies. Everything goes back to the bad experiences in high school.
It's pretty much this.
Everyone in fandom considers themselves the nerdy-but-secretly-much-better-than-ever
The irony being that very few of the "cool kids" or "mean girls" or "stupid jocks" are actually online and arguing in fandom, and they're accusing their fellow nerdy outcasts of being something that's equally horrifying to each side.