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To those reading this post in the future and unaware of what a watsonianism is, let me explain what a watson-incident is. You see, a watson-like-incident is a case where an ugly troll gets approached, asked out or flirted with, and then the troll makes a huge big scene about the “inappropriateness” of the approach or move that was made upon it. It usually involves interpreting the motivations of the approacher in the worst possible way while coming up with conspiracy theories that make Alex Jones and Glenn Beck look like a polyanna. By the time the whining is over, the troll would have equated its having to have rejected a unwanted suitor to the horrors suffered in a genocide.
Most people looking on at such an event can’t help but wonder why the troll is exploding into such embarassingly, over-exaggerated fits of paranoia-induced lunacy that they make Alex Jones blush. Well, a lot of people have been giving guesses mostly centered around theories about the troll trying to get attention to compensate for its ugly trollhood. Turns out, these theories might be right. There’s some evidence on why some people want to advertise to the world that they rejected someone, and even make a big show of how they had to be mean about it.
Source: Jeremy Nicholson
There is also a psychological tendency to bias the attributions about the requester. The Fundamental Attribution Error illustrates that individuals are likely to attribute the behavior of others to disposition or personality, as opposed to situational factors (Ross, 1977). In other words, when an individual is disinterested in the offer of another person (a behavior), he/she is more likely to attribute that disinterest to a characteristic of the requester (e.g. they seem unattractive, boring, or uncomfortable), rather than to factors within themselves or the situation (e.g. they are in a bad mood, disinterested, or distracted). So, there is a bias to blame the requester for not liking the request – even though many other factors often actually cause the disinterest.
Finally, there are also Downward Social Comparison processes that can even make some people feel good when they view others badly. This has been studied particularly in instances of racism, but it certainly applies to other forms of prejudice (Fein & Spencer, 1997). Essentially, people can get a self-esteem ”boost” from putting others down (like when they “reject” others harshly). This is especially likely to occur when they are feeling badly about themselves, or are not thinking about the situation fully (e.g. distracted, drunk, etc.).
Put it all together…and that is a recipe for a very difficult interpersonal situation. If someone is not interested in a date request, it can feel bad or difficult to say no while empathizing with the person asking. There is an automatic psychological bias to incorrectly blame the requester’s personal characteristics for being disinterested in the request. Also, there can even be a temptation for a self-esteem boost by devaluing the other person, while exercising the “power” to say no. No wonder, even with the best of intentions, it often goes so badly…
Also look at: Chucky’s genius explanation of the same, but from another perspective
Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com
A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb “to like” from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture’s substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they’re designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren’t fixated on your liking it. (I’m thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.)
But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable.
Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com
If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick.
Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com
The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.
Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?
There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie.
This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.
Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com
The big risk here, of course, is rejection. We can all handle being disliked now and then, because there’s such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful. The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking.
And yet pain hurts but it doesn’t kill. When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s” is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer.
Technology Provides an Alternative to Love. – NYTimes.com
When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.
And who knows what might happen to you then?
Rejection Protection Syndrome: A Deadly Dating Disease | Full of Hate and Ready to Date (Blog)
It’s a monster that’s been hurting men since the time of Jesus.
It creates drunk idiots. It creates douchebags. It creates fake personalities. It creates sad women everywhere.
In one moment you feel compelled to talk to that cute little blonde who’s sitting alone, and the next second you’re wondering how it all went so horribly wrong.
Do you suffer from the 7 symptoms of Rejection Protection Syndrome?
What is RPS? It’s about your fear of rejection and the crazy things your ego does to protect it’s self.
Every man has suffered from Rejection Protection Syndrome (RPS) at one time or another, and more then likely you’ve had more then one symptom of it. Your fears and insecurities, driven by your ego, may sometimes compels you to resort to multiple “attraction tactics” in an attempt to avoid the imagined pain of rejection, with devastating consequences (such as a lack of dating opportunities or mate choice.)
The root of this disease (unease) is your fear of rejection, or more accurately your fear of what that possible rejection might mean (about you.) Your ego, in an attempt at self preservation and possibly the enjoyment of emotional drama, will fill your head with the “voice of reason” which is meant to guide you from pain and suffering, but instead can completely sabotage your success:
- If she doesn’t like me that means I’m a loser.
- If she doesn’t like me that means I’m ugly.
- If she doesn’t like me that means no girl like me.
- If she doesn’t like me that means others will laugh at me.
- If she doesn’t like me that means my friends will tease me.
- If she doesn’t like me that means it’ll be awkward every time I see her at work.I suspect deep down you realize that none of these “logical” conclusions are accurate, or even remotely helpful, except in that they help you avoid meeting new women.
When you suffer from RPS you might not even realize it… especially since it stays well hidden until you’re in the heat of battle (interacting with an attractive woman.) This is when most of our insecurities arise, when we’re most vulnerable. RPS is your ego’s way of protecting you.
The ugly realization is that as you work to protect your ego, inflating it by bragging, stroking it with endless encouragements, and attempting to puff up your importance as a means to positive emotional growth, you’re actually training yourself to become externally dependant upon the approval of others and the outcomes of external events. Instead of leaving you erect with excitement, strengthened and purposeful, you’re left feeling nervous, dependant on the next good outcome, and helplessly flaccid.
Rejection Protection Syndrome: A Deadly Dating Disease | Full of Hate and Ready to Date (Blog)
SYMPTOM 3: EXPECTED REJECTION PROJECTION
Example of Expected Rejection Protection:
Dude 1: “Um.. hi! Hahaha… um, so what brings you girls out this evening? Hahaha… Um.”
Chick 1: “Oh, ya, we’re out just having some drinks, talking girl stuff actually.”
Dude: “Well I just wanted to, um, come over and tell you how beautiful you are. I guess you likely have boyfriends eh? Hahaha…”
Chick 2: “Um, thanks. Um, well ya, we’re both taken. But thanks for the compliment.”
Dude: “Hahaha, ya.. well I figured you would. Um, well in any case it was really nice to meet you gals! Have a good night!”
This symptom is the most widely suffered amongst men. It manifests it’s self so completely that we’re almost completely blind to it. This symptom might not even stop you from meeting and approaching women, which is why it goes unnoticed, but it will ruin your chances of putting your best foot forward.
Here’s the problem – assuming lower value than her and therefore assuming her disinterest. It’s that simple, but it’s devastating to her attraction levels. As soon as a girl senses your lack of confidenece she’ll automatically start feeling less attraction towards you - she’ll see it in your eyes, she’ll hear it in your voice, and she’ll feel it in your energy.
Rejection Protection Syndrome: A Deadly Dating Disease | Full of Hate and Ready to Date (Blog)
SYMPTOM 4: SELF SABOTAGE
Example of Self Sabotage:
Drunk Dude: “Ha ha ha, oh man, you have huge boobs! Hey, I hope you brought enough for the rest of the class… burp…”
This symptom is very much like expected rejection projection, except instead of assuming her rejection you actively seek it. This tricks you into feeling like you’re in control of her rejection.
The following passages come from Self-Made-Man… One lesbian journalist’s year spent living as a man.
It’s a wonder that men and women ever get together. Their signals, by necessity, are crossed, their behaviors at cross-purposes from the start. I was beginning to feel happier than ever to be a dyke. As a woman, it was a lot easier to meet women, because even in a dating situation there was always the common bond of womanhood, the common language of females that often makes even strange women able to chat amiably with each other, almost from the moment they meet.
I wondered if the same thing would happen here. Would these women lower their defenses if they found out I was a woman? After another ten minutes of condescension, I realized that this was going nowhere, and that I might learn more about Ned if I let them in on the gag.
I had to repeat the phrase ”I’m really a woman” four times before they got what I was saying. There was a moment of absolutely stunned silence, and then the inevitable “No way,” in chorus.
Then, with startling quickness we all began chatting like hens. Their aloof facade fell away, and not, I sensed, just because of the conversational fascination of the disguise, but because they felt disarmed enough, knowing that I was a woman, to let me in. The inclusion was even physical. When I’d approached as Ned they had been sitting facing the bar. They had only bothered to turn halfway around to talk to me, their faces always in profile. Now they turned all the way around to face me, their backs to the bar. I understood this reaction immediately. I had predicted it.
But still a part of me resented their prejudices. I was still the same person I had been before, just as any given strange man is a person beneath his blazer or his baseball hat. As a woman, I was accepted. As a man I had been rejected yet again. I understood intimately the social reasons for this, but it seemed unfair all the same.
I found myself thinking about rejection and how small it made me feel, and how small most men must feel under the weight of what women expect from them. I was an actor playing a role, but these women had gotten to me nonetheless. None of these interactions mattered. I had nothing real at stake. But still, I felt bad.
So how must men feel when it’s a true encounter and everything in the game seems stacked against them? They make the move, or the women bluff them-without tipping their hands into making the move. The guys step out (stupidly, it now seems to me) into the space between, saying something irreversible and frank-a compliment or an outright indication of interest-and most of the time the women step away, or laugh disdainfully, and the guys are left with their asses in the wind. That’s the sport, and men are the suckers.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that in this atmosphere, as a single man dating women, I often felt attacked, judged, on the defensive. Whereas with the men I met and befriended as Ned there was a presumption of innocence~that is, you’re a good guy until you prove otherwise~with women there was quite often a presumption of guilt: you’re a cad like every other guy until you prove otherwise.
“Pass my test and then we’ll see if you’re worthy of me” was the implicit message coming across the table at me. And this from women who had demonstrably little to offer. “Be lighthearted,” they said, though buoyant as lead zeppelins themselves. “Be kind,” they insisted in the harshest of tones. “Don’t be like the others,” they implied, while having virtually condemned me as such beforehand.
The bitterest women I met were usually in their midthirties or older. They’d been through the mill a bit and they’d probably had more than their share of hellish dates or hit-and-run relationships before I came along. To hear them tell it, the pool of eligible, mature, stable, reciprocating, emotionally evolved men out there was small and polluted, and having to wade through it when what you wanted most in life was to settle down and start a family would be enough to shorten anyone’s fuse.
Then again, many of the women I met weren’t emotional giants either, nor were they particularly well adjusted or stable. They just considered themselves to be such. And even the ones who knew they were damaged seemed to feel entitled to expect stolidity from a man, as if, in the time-honored way of things, a man is supposed to be strong, to hold things together for his woman, to hold her up when she can’t do it herself.