A lot of the time when trying to untangle concepts or explain issues, I ignore the fact that a lot of the behaviour in the relevant space is bad faith. This is me using that trick.
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Let me teach you a nonstandard dirty rhetorical trick: People really don't like to admit that they have done something morally bad, so it is *really* useful to argue in such a way that they can cast their behaviour as an honest mistake.
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I don't do this unless I think it's plausible that there is also confused usage / honestly mistaken behaviour out there, but by framing mistakes as the main problem rather than ethics, I give people the ability to save face as they mend their ways.
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I rarely expect people will mend their ways as a result of this unless they were actively mistaken, but it removes a way to derail the conversation, and gives people who were genuinely mistaken a way to change behaviour. This shifts the norms, removing plausible deniability.
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Treating people as having the potential to be better than they are is almost always a good move, and will often cause them to rise to the occasion - sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly.
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This doesn't of course apply to landlords (and only applies partly to bosses) because you don't actually have enough power over them to get them to change their behaviour through rhetoric in the first place.https://twitter.com/GeniesLoki/status/1302868016837931008 …
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End of conversation
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I think of this as a special case of "leave a line of retreat". If you want someone to do/accept X voluntarily, you usually need to make it possible for them to do so while retaining face. Where "admitting you did something bad" definitely counts as losing face.
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The *really* dirty version is to leave them their retreat until they've taken it and *then* point out the moral judgement.
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Let people save face
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Is this non-standard? Saving face and preserving other’s face is one of the most common, ordinary conversational moves.
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Every time you say “let’s go to my place Netflix and chill” instead of “want to fuck?” Every time you steer the conversation to a topic that won’t make them say something they don’t want to. We are collectively and collaboratively saving face.
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