MetaJess

Rudeness and arrogance are fascinatingly context-dependent. Sometimes you’ll get called rude and arrogant for plainly speaking the truth. (Of course, then you get belligerent assholes who use “I’m just telling the truth” as an excuse for being dicks. There’s layers to this stuff)https://twitter.com/Altimor/status/1158442218765447170 …

Politeness often involves introducing implicit social fictions. Eg, Larry might’ve seemed rude if he said plainly, “I don’t need your money”. To be polite, he might’ve had to say something like “I appreciate the offer”. That might actually be a lie, though. And lies do cost you

Most of us live in an ordinary social reality where the cost of maintaining little fictions are dramatically outweighed by the benefit of warm relations to others. I’m not so sure “person building Google” lives in that reality. Maybe they need to be honest to a radical degree

And maybe Larry thought he was being honest and kind by “being rude”! This seems likely, given my interactions with the kind of people who I know who might do something like “let’s build something to index the world’s information” before anybody properly realized it would make $$