Some context:
Ei-Nyung & I were talking about a friend’s blog, where we were discussing the damage spoilers can do. In the comments to that thread, someone posted a spoiler. My contention was that this person was an asshole to do so, Ei-Nyung wouldn’t apply that label, because in her perception, there was potential for misunderstanding – “pulling the pigtails of the one you love,” as she said someone else had put it.
That led to a pretty long discussion of what “being an asshole” really meant. To me, the posting of a spoiler that was being explicitly discussed in the thread is the very definition of what being an asshole is. The awareness of the person of the damage that they were doing is essentially irrelevant. Anyone who was even marginally literate could read the preceding discussion, and any reasonable person would have made a correlation between their actions, and the content of the discussion they had just read.
I guess there’s an implicit contract between people in my mind, that it is the responsibility of each of us to “read the room,” as it were, and behave accordingly. Failing to do so is a failure to uphold your end of our social bargain, and it makes you a jerk.
This applies not only to one-time interactions, such as the asshole who posted the spoiler, but also to a situation where you walk into a room, say, full of mourning people, and tell a fart joke. If you couldn’t divine from the context that people weren’t in the mood for a fart joke, or a fart joke wasn’t appropriate at that time, then *you are an asshole,* regardless of your lack of intent to be one, or to explicitly cause harm.
This particularly applies to a coworker of mine, and even some friends of mine. In the case of the coworker, I just think he’s an egomanical asshole, but in the case of my friends, they’re still *good people* at heart, but they can be *assholes* at the same time. I’m an asshole a good portion of the time, sometimes completely accidentally, sometimes quite explicitly, and purposefully. Sometimes I just don’t realize the significance or the consequence of the action, which in Ei-Nyung’s interpretation, would actually preclude the label, but I simply don’t agree with that. I think the thing to do is acknowledge *when* you’re being an asshole, and either work to change it, or realize what the ramifications are. Or embrace them, whatever.
To sum up – in my definition of what an asshole is, there isn’t the need for conscious malice – your actions dictate your status, not the intent. In Ei-Nyung’s, if you don’t have the *intent* you’re not an asshole. To me, I can only divine intent from actions, or a collection of actions. I guess it’s not just that actions speak louder than words – I think it’s that in certain cases, the actions make the words completely irrelevant.
Is this about what I said in Chad’s blog? Because you’re crazy if you think I spoiled anything. 😛
– Mike
I’m going to hop on the Ei-Nyung bandwagon and disagree with you. I think you’re defining two types of situations that lead to a common conclusion, and judging the actors equally at fault.
Simply, you’re equating negligence resulting in some harm with the intent to cause that harm and that harm being the result.
Like a guy practicing his swing with a baseball bat and not noticing that someone is behind him, with a guy intentionally hitting the other guy with a bat.
And this is simply semantics, but I reserve “asshole” for the guys/gals with the intent to do harm, or a willful disregard for the possibility that they will do harm (i.e., an awareness that harm is the likely result, but not caring).
For people without the intent, I call them the usual litany of things, “idiot,” “moron,” etc.
Of course, this isn’t an original idea. It’s basically the structure of convictions for actions leading to the result of the death of another person. You have your “manslaughter” where it was negligence, and then “murder” where there was an intent.
That’s the gist of my argument, pretty much.
My feeling is that they are still responsible for their actions which were in fact asshole-ish, but it does not inherently or necessarily color their character with asshole-ishness. It can, of course, paint them as negligent, oblivious/clueless, etc.
The pigtails comment I quoted was from Mike. 🙂
Actually, the conversation arose from your (Mike’s) blog entry where you talk about how some people seem to be intentionally spoiling Harry Potter for people, and someone left this comment. <-- DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE LATEST HARRY POTTER BOOK!
I totally forgot I posted about that. Oh no, it’s happening to me too!
I love how disagreeing with Seppo means you’re on the eingy bandwagon. 😉
My bandwagon encompasses a variety of things. I can only assume that a_b is now also a big fan of So You Can Dance.
Er. So You Think You Can Dance, I mean.
Blogger comments always expose my most lazy typing/lack of proofreading.
I only hopped on the Ei-Nyung bandwagon for one stop. I hopped right off once it headed towards the intersection of Waste O’ Time Street and Foolish Avenue in Crazyville.
🙂
But the stop after that was gonna be great! It was going to be Beat Up A_B and Take His Wallet Then Submit His Cries To Overheard In New York. 😀
The guy is an asshole. Seppo wins. He thought about it, wrote it, pressed the “post” button. There were three steps that went into the process and at no point did it stop him from doing what he did. It’s not the end of the world, but the guys an asshole.
And if he’s not an asshole, he sure isn’t not an asshole.
I’m with Eingy on this one. Intent is needed to make someone an asshole, otherwise they’re just a schmuck.
It’s a matter of context, though – whether or not the *intent* was there is irrelevant, if the *context* makes it clear to any reasonable person that an asshole-like action shouldn’t be undertaken.
I guess to me, there’s essentially no distinction between “schmuck” and “asshole” except what *you* perceive their intentions are. There’s also some situations where the context simply *doesn’t matter* and the spoiler discussion was one of those. Regardless of the spoiler’s (n.) intent, the context of the interaction, to any reasonable person, IMO, discussed exactly the harm done by acting the way they did, and yet, they acted that way anyway.
Maybe there’s some other context that was present between the other parties discussing the issue, but I believe that any reasonable person *should* have understood from the discussion that this course of action was an asshole-ish one, and thus, asshole.
Bingo again.
If even’s post was about how a friend of his was suffering from AIDS and how it was really depressing him and the next reply was a link to the “Everybody Has AIDS” song from Team America, he’d also be an asshole. The context of his post kills all arguments. It wasn’t random and god, I hope it wasn’t an attempt at comedy.
That’s a bad analogy. How about this one?
I’m posting about how I still haven’t seen the Sixth Sense and, miraculously, have managed over the course of the past few years to avoid any spoilers.
If the first reply to my post was THE spoiler of the movie, that person would qualify as an asshole.
Or maybe I’d have been asking for it….I don’t know.
IMHO, the difference, as A_B mentioned, is in the intent of the author. I am asshole, but every time I am, I KNOW I AM BEING AN ASSHOLE. And there are plenty of things that I do, not on purpose, that could be perceived as me being an asshole, but I would apply the title of JACKASS to those situations. If you feel like you know this person well enough to know they did it on purpose, then they are an asshole. But be careful, this is all a judgment call. You might think they are being an asshole, while someone else might think they are being a jackass. Or a Dick. Or a wanker. We all have different applications and meanings to words. Personally, I think that Helava is a sQuink.
jackass.
Don’t you mean asshole?
*ducks*