This is a matter of female hardwiring and is completely unavoidable. Think of it in terms of her needing to clear out everything in her I/O buffer.
It's a good chance for you to practice communications skills in general, and alot of that is performative, IE, pretending to pay attention: Interject frequently but not constantly, "Uh huh... Yeah... Oh, really... Okay, I get that."
Also, occasionally INTERRUPT her verbal chain-of-consciousness flow by asking a question. You don't have to be interested in the subject but you do need to ask the question. Pick a genuine point of ignorance on your part, then start with an interruption, "Excuse me but...," Next comes your interrogative, "What do you mean ______?" During her answer, throw in more interjections, "Uh huh... Yeah... Oh, really..I get that."
Bonus technique; focus on only one her right eye when you ask a question and are listening to her answer.
For women, an active listener is a man who is an excellent communicator.
I was gifted a book Benjamin Franklin wrote about himself and in his early years he studied how to converse better when trying to win an argument. I don't recall all of it, but something that stuck with me is errily similar to the The False Communication Red Flags.
The reasoning behind the style was something along the lines of "if you pose your point as a question and not an absolute statement, you keep your opponent's mind open to considering the point. Whereas if you make a statement, the other party assumes there's no room for debate and doesn't bother engaging."
I never thought of Franlkin as a Gamma, but I've also never applied the SSH to any of the Founding Fathers.
Damn, was Franklin a Gamma?? I'm going to reread his biography with SSH in mind.
Vox- being female, I’m confused as to why performative communication is not itself communicative in your view.
This isn’t a word for word convo, but is a consolidation of a social situation that’s going down in my office right now. Except that instead of involving two women there’s like 6, which adds to the complexity. But I wanted to simply for an example-
Woman A, “musing” about her work day:
“Becky was at the ice cream social today and let it slip that her boyfriend is now her fiancée. But she didn’t tell any one directly. She just slipped it in and said, boyfriend tehehehe now fiancé. It was really irritating. I wonder why she didn’t just come out and say to everyone that she got engaged?”
Woman B: She’s always made sure to say boyfriend, instead of Jim’s names. Do you think that maybe she’s still embarrassed that Scott divorced her and wants everyone to know she’s still hot cause she scored Jim?
Woman A: She certainly thinks she’s the hottest girl at to office. Honest question- do you think it’s weird that she won’t let other girls use the bathroom when she’s in there?
Woman B: haha- yeah. No one can know she poops. Maybe she doesn’t poop and gets though butt sucker spa treatment things, and doesn’t want anyone to find out. I seriously hope Jim knows what he’s in for.
Woman A: I doubt it, this marriage probably won’t make it three years either. But do you think we should throw her an engagement party anyway?
Woman B: Ooooh, yes, of course. That would be so cute.
———————-
A and B have both performed being innocent of judging Becky, because they’re just “wondering.” But they’ve also out-grouped her as vain, shallow, obsessed with reclaiming status after her divorce, and possibly not good enough for Jim to stick with.
More importantly, both being married for two decades in their first marriages (which they already know) they’ve confirmed with each other that they have and get to hand the social status attendant to being married.
Being a divorcee, Becky can’t expect an engagement party directly since it isn’t her first marriage, which is low status. And woman A and B are securing their higher status by deigning to recognize Becky’s new situation, even though it’s a more unreliable second marriage.
The communication is dishonest because both are pretending that they don’t already think Becky is bitchy and shallow and deserved her divorce.
But it has a game theory competent to it in that if either is wrong about how the other perceives Becky, she’ll be out grouped instead by Becky and the other woman for being a gossipy bitch. So they both “wonder” and are “concerned” to maintain the position of not-a-bitch while making soft offers to out-group Becky and secure their position via-a-vis each other.
The communication succeeeds, because they secure their higher first-time-marriage status by “generously” recognizing Becky’s second attempt to gain married status.
Its performative communication in that neither is really trying to convert anything or learn anything from the other about Becky. She’s just their vector for performing “not-a-desperate-divorcee” in order to line out the office pecking order.
But I wouldn’t say that the communication lacks content, the performance itself is highly communicative- in the same way that two men fist fighting to impress a girl and gain status is communicative.
Women like to be smaller than their men, they would try to minimize arm swinging. They would try to keep up pace with legs, which may look like a bigger swing in arms but only for balance. The arm swinging is visible in other aspects like if the girl is performing a task at a work place in front of a guy she likes. There are exaggerated movements, some are subtle, some clumsy and obvious. Other women/competition would know immediately. The said alpha would be able to pick up on it. I can list some female demonstrations ive seen -having interest in something that is male dominated such as games -sniffing food -marveling at something mundane -trying to take up the alphas attention by talking about their family. -making their body visible. Some are so egregious.
As for storytelling, i love retold stories. People can only remember so much. I was thinking that the world needs a legit historian, maybe you vox?
My grandfather was a great storyteller. He knew so many people during his life and had all kinds of funny, dramatic or interesting stories to tell about them. Now that he's gone I am disappointed in myself that I never wrote them down because I am starting to forget them. He used to tell the same stories too, but I never minded that because I just liked listening to him.
I use false communication red flags often. I learned English through TV and movies where this type of lingo is common usage. Enforces the stereotype of „German = Gamma“.
My father is dying. He went to his GP this week after just being discharged home from the surgeons and the change between visits -- he had a checkup late last year -- shocked his doctor. He is retelling the stories I have heard from my childhood, and my wife has heard multiple times.
But these are now precious, for these are the last times we will hear them in this life.
Are you recording them? It's easier than ever, built into most phones and laptops these days. I've been interviewing my older relatives in the last few years, so I can hear those stories after they're gone.
A storyteller, telling an interesting story well, is invited to repeat his story many times. There's talent surely, but also craftsmanship.
One skill is paying attention to, and accurately reading, audience reactions, and then adjusting the story to its response. Even when the story is word-for-word the same, it's a bit different also: That's performing for others.
Women are natural story-tellers because they need to tell the same story to their children a gorillion times. They're naturally handicapped at the craft because they get terrible confirmation cues. "Tell it again, mommy, daddy" from little children, who want a lot from the story; only a little bit of it is to be entertained. From men, when the woman was young and hot, and she can make nonsense noises and get encouraging responses.
So there are three positive performative communication paths for both women and low-status men: the technical: to learn the craft; and relational: to love and be loveable.
Or, the third, hard, simple path, as we are often advised: Shut up and listen.
1. If they think the person is just in need of understanding, they can get lengthy in explaining. A bravo is the person to whom many things are delegated to, so this I natural.
2. If they think it's an honest debate, they'll go with dialectic. They're usually more intelligent and informed, and want people working under them to do the tasks.
3. They will start engaging in heated rhetoric to put people in their place and get them in line when detected, or if they see it is a unscrupulous/untrustworthy actor
4. They will quickly stomp out rebellion and sedition if detecting it.
Or the alpha will step in to back up his men at any point he decides is necessary.
Vance quickly went through the modes of communication on the live TV, as he realized what kind of discussion he was engaged in. If Z had backed down, the discussion would have gone back to the other forms of communication as well. But it didn't, so we saw what obviously occurred.
Vance is good at speeches and prepared remarks because they are planned and he is a good communicator. The speech he gave at the security conference was a tour de force.
In the moment, his natural instincts take over and his lower order programming kicks in.
Arguing for Vance, if he is Bravo then he could have misperceived Z as belonging to Trump, and was trying to police Z as an insider before Trump had to deal with it. In that case, Vance actually expected Z to apologize and express thanks on the spot, and Vance was just wrong about Z.
Trying to rationalize away the evidence to argue a man has a certain rank is a sign that he isn't that rank, and that you are emotionally invested in a false impression.
A Bravo with the wrong expectation would have the spot-judgement and experience to figure out his approach isn't working. He'd be prepared for non-compliance and be ready to apply pressure to move the conversation in the right direction. Vance did not perform at a Bravo level, which indicates he isn't a natural Bravo.
The point of the SSH is to accurately evaluate behavior for better analysis/predictions, not try to artificially fit people to a rank to feel good about them or yourself.
I have no more information about why Trump does things than you do. Vox has made the point before that the analysis here is focused on what is objectively observable - What, not Why.
What is observable is that Trump chose Vance as VP. Vance had done very well in various prepared speeches. Then in this recent exchange, Vance performed less well when dealing with unexpected Gamma behavior from Z. Trump felt the need to jump in and dress down Z, when ideally Vance would have shut down Z and Trump would have intervened to protect Z and play the part of moderate statesman restraining his enthusiastic and protective right-hand man.
In the future, we will have opportunities to observe if Vance can improve on his performance; or if Trump picks battles to avoid Vance being put in those situations. We still won't have the "why", but we can learn a lot from these "whats".
I read that as "I wonder why Trump made Vance his VP?" which illustrates Vox's point in the article, a performative question. But it's in reply to SirHampster, as if you're wanting him to tell you the where-fores of another man's (Trump's) decision/action. No man can tell you that answer.
Neither can a woman tell you the answer. But being a woman I read the question as an invitation to buy into a tangential dialog unrelated to the subject at hand. If I accept the bait, I may respond with any number of statements that will begin with "probably", "may be", "perhaps". This response from me is a performance to signal to you that it's now your turn to soliloquy a reply to your own question.
SirHampster is not a woman so he will do whatever man do with performative questions.
At a minimum, you'd expect a Bravo to extend his Alpha. Trump has been approaching most of the transparently Clownish as enemies, with his tactics tailored to the targets.
If Vance were Trump's Bravo, I'd expect him to be supporting those tactics instead of making things harder.
That was a beautiful story about your grandfather. In my youth I was annoyed by often repeated family stories. Now, I wish I could hear them told to me again.
We’ve lost the social structures for oral traditions, but still have the instinct.
So people end up retelling the same family stories without the skill of a bard, and without a cultural context that ties the stories to each other for a cohesive mythos.
I had the chance to hear stories from a nurse colonel who served in both World Wars, spent years working at various embassies, and - perhaps most importantly - had stories about my family and their lives stretching back into the 1800's. She was my great-great-aunt, and I spent hours a month at her nursing home for years.
I regret how little I listened to her slow spiraling rambles through time.
Most people, to say they don't pay attention to body language isn't quite right, they take it in naturally, with some having a better natural understanding than others. Some people are body language blind to the extent that it's labelled a medical condition, but unfortunately for such people to have a lack of one quality is merely to be in the range of human states.
The more interesting of these deprived people, like the more interesting of those who cannot innately understand facial expressions, learn painstakingly what various forms mean.
Truthfully such rare people have a better understanding than most more average people. Normal people have but a normal level of unthought understanding of body language.
Even many alphas should be operating on a high level of unthought understanding, the more exceptional if course will have mastered their innate talent.
Noticing, in general like all things has a base level of talent that determines how much training gets out of it.
Thing is though, while if you are particularly deprived, you need to put on more understanding to read people, most people get along just fine blithely for even should a man be a chronic noticer, a fine reader of flesh...
What does that matter if he never does anything with that knowledge?
Cry of futility aside, man or woman but probably especially woman, what the body says could well be more honest.
In some cases, it tells you that a young man enjoyed the performance of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean far far too much.
This teller doesn't regret those days, but he does miss them.
"Honest question..." usually precedes an attempt (successful or not) at verbal savaging. It sounds nicer than "Can I ask you something incredibly insulting/ private/ personal?", with the added advantage that the questioner can pretend he is asking with the permission of his intended victim.
Performative communication is vital for women.
She will HAVE to tell you how her day went.
This is a matter of female hardwiring and is completely unavoidable. Think of it in terms of her needing to clear out everything in her I/O buffer.
It's a good chance for you to practice communications skills in general, and alot of that is performative, IE, pretending to pay attention: Interject frequently but not constantly, "Uh huh... Yeah... Oh, really... Okay, I get that."
Also, occasionally INTERRUPT her verbal chain-of-consciousness flow by asking a question. You don't have to be interested in the subject but you do need to ask the question. Pick a genuine point of ignorance on your part, then start with an interruption, "Excuse me but...," Next comes your interrogative, "What do you mean ______?" During her answer, throw in more interjections, "Uh huh... Yeah... Oh, really..I get that."
Bonus technique; focus on only one her right eye when you ask a question and are listening to her answer.
For women, an active listener is a man who is an excellent communicator.
I was gifted a book Benjamin Franklin wrote about himself and in his early years he studied how to converse better when trying to win an argument. I don't recall all of it, but something that stuck with me is errily similar to the The False Communication Red Flags.
The reasoning behind the style was something along the lines of "if you pose your point as a question and not an absolute statement, you keep your opponent's mind open to considering the point. Whereas if you make a statement, the other party assumes there's no room for debate and doesn't bother engaging."
I never thought of Franlkin as a Gamma, but I've also never applied the SSH to any of the Founding Fathers.
Damn, was Franklin a Gamma?? I'm going to reread his biography with SSH in mind.
Vox- being female, I’m confused as to why performative communication is not itself communicative in your view.
This isn’t a word for word convo, but is a consolidation of a social situation that’s going down in my office right now. Except that instead of involving two women there’s like 6, which adds to the complexity. But I wanted to simply for an example-
Woman A, “musing” about her work day:
“Becky was at the ice cream social today and let it slip that her boyfriend is now her fiancée. But she didn’t tell any one directly. She just slipped it in and said, boyfriend tehehehe now fiancé. It was really irritating. I wonder why she didn’t just come out and say to everyone that she got engaged?”
Woman B: She’s always made sure to say boyfriend, instead of Jim’s names. Do you think that maybe she’s still embarrassed that Scott divorced her and wants everyone to know she’s still hot cause she scored Jim?
Woman A: She certainly thinks she’s the hottest girl at to office. Honest question- do you think it’s weird that she won’t let other girls use the bathroom when she’s in there?
Woman B: haha- yeah. No one can know she poops. Maybe she doesn’t poop and gets though butt sucker spa treatment things, and doesn’t want anyone to find out. I seriously hope Jim knows what he’s in for.
Woman A: I doubt it, this marriage probably won’t make it three years either. But do you think we should throw her an engagement party anyway?
Woman B: Ooooh, yes, of course. That would be so cute.
———————-
A and B have both performed being innocent of judging Becky, because they’re just “wondering.” But they’ve also out-grouped her as vain, shallow, obsessed with reclaiming status after her divorce, and possibly not good enough for Jim to stick with.
More importantly, both being married for two decades in their first marriages (which they already know) they’ve confirmed with each other that they have and get to hand the social status attendant to being married.
Being a divorcee, Becky can’t expect an engagement party directly since it isn’t her first marriage, which is low status. And woman A and B are securing their higher status by deigning to recognize Becky’s new situation, even though it’s a more unreliable second marriage.
The communication is dishonest because both are pretending that they don’t already think Becky is bitchy and shallow and deserved her divorce.
But it has a game theory competent to it in that if either is wrong about how the other perceives Becky, she’ll be out grouped instead by Becky and the other woman for being a gossipy bitch. So they both “wonder” and are “concerned” to maintain the position of not-a-bitch while making soft offers to out-group Becky and secure their position via-a-vis each other.
The communication succeeeds, because they secure their higher first-time-marriage status by “generously” recognizing Becky’s second attempt to gain married status.
Its performative communication in that neither is really trying to convert anything or learn anything from the other about Becky. She’s just their vector for performing “not-a-desperate-divorcee” in order to line out the office pecking order.
But I wouldn’t say that the communication lacks content, the performance itself is highly communicative- in the same way that two men fist fighting to impress a girl and gain status is communicative.
Women like to be smaller than their men, they would try to minimize arm swinging. They would try to keep up pace with legs, which may look like a bigger swing in arms but only for balance. The arm swinging is visible in other aspects like if the girl is performing a task at a work place in front of a guy she likes. There are exaggerated movements, some are subtle, some clumsy and obvious. Other women/competition would know immediately. The said alpha would be able to pick up on it. I can list some female demonstrations ive seen -having interest in something that is male dominated such as games -sniffing food -marveling at something mundane -trying to take up the alphas attention by talking about their family. -making their body visible. Some are so egregious.
As for storytelling, i love retold stories. People can only remember so much. I was thinking that the world needs a legit historian, maybe you vox?
My grandfather was a great storyteller. He knew so many people during his life and had all kinds of funny, dramatic or interesting stories to tell about them. Now that he's gone I am disappointed in myself that I never wrote them down because I am starting to forget them. He used to tell the same stories too, but I never minded that because I just liked listening to him.
I use false communication red flags often. I learned English through TV and movies where this type of lingo is common usage. Enforces the stereotype of „German = Gamma“.
Between visual media, social media, and "professional communications," the pattern is pervasive.
100%! Think of the scourge of Whedon's "Buffy-speak" throughout the 90s and the aughts until it finally died in the teens.
My father is dying. He went to his GP this week after just being discharged home from the surgeons and the change between visits -- he had a checkup late last year -- shocked his doctor. He is retelling the stories I have heard from my childhood, and my wife has heard multiple times.
But these are now precious, for these are the last times we will hear them in this life.
Are you recording them? It's easier than ever, built into most phones and laptops these days. I've been interviewing my older relatives in the last few years, so I can hear those stories after they're gone.
A storyteller, telling an interesting story well, is invited to repeat his story many times. There's talent surely, but also craftsmanship.
One skill is paying attention to, and accurately reading, audience reactions, and then adjusting the story to its response. Even when the story is word-for-word the same, it's a bit different also: That's performing for others.
Women are natural story-tellers because they need to tell the same story to their children a gorillion times. They're naturally handicapped at the craft because they get terrible confirmation cues. "Tell it again, mommy, daddy" from little children, who want a lot from the story; only a little bit of it is to be entertained. From men, when the woman was young and hot, and she can make nonsense noises and get encouraging responses.
So there are three positive performative communication paths for both women and low-status men: the technical: to learn the craft; and relational: to love and be loveable.
Or, the third, hard, simple path, as we are often advised: Shut up and listen.
Bravo communication can go a few ways.
1. If they think the person is just in need of understanding, they can get lengthy in explaining. A bravo is the person to whom many things are delegated to, so this I natural.
2. If they think it's an honest debate, they'll go with dialectic. They're usually more intelligent and informed, and want people working under them to do the tasks.
3. They will start engaging in heated rhetoric to put people in their place and get them in line when detected, or if they see it is a unscrupulous/untrustworthy actor
4. They will quickly stomp out rebellion and sedition if detecting it.
Or the alpha will step in to back up his men at any point he decides is necessary.
Vance quickly went through the modes of communication on the live TV, as he realized what kind of discussion he was engaged in. If Z had backed down, the discussion would have gone back to the other forms of communication as well. But it didn't, so we saw what obviously occurred.
Vance is good at speeches and prepared remarks because they are planned and he is a good communicator. The speech he gave at the security conference was a tour de force.
In the moment, his natural instincts take over and his lower order programming kicks in.
Arguing for Vance, if he is Bravo then he could have misperceived Z as belonging to Trump, and was trying to police Z as an insider before Trump had to deal with it. In that case, Vance actually expected Z to apologize and express thanks on the spot, and Vance was just wrong about Z.
Trying to rationalize away the evidence to argue a man has a certain rank is a sign that he isn't that rank, and that you are emotionally invested in a false impression.
A Bravo with the wrong expectation would have the spot-judgement and experience to figure out his approach isn't working. He'd be prepared for non-compliance and be ready to apply pressure to move the conversation in the right direction. Vance did not perform at a Bravo level, which indicates he isn't a natural Bravo.
The point of the SSH is to accurately evaluate behavior for better analysis/predictions, not try to artificially fit people to a rank to feel good about them or yourself.
I agree that it is about prediction. Why did Trump make Vance his VP?
I have no more information about why Trump does things than you do. Vox has made the point before that the analysis here is focused on what is objectively observable - What, not Why.
What is observable is that Trump chose Vance as VP. Vance had done very well in various prepared speeches. Then in this recent exchange, Vance performed less well when dealing with unexpected Gamma behavior from Z. Trump felt the need to jump in and dress down Z, when ideally Vance would have shut down Z and Trump would have intervened to protect Z and play the part of moderate statesman restraining his enthusiastic and protective right-hand man.
In the future, we will have opportunities to observe if Vance can improve on his performance; or if Trump picks battles to avoid Vance being put in those situations. We still won't have the "why", but we can learn a lot from these "whats".
"Why did Trump make Vance his VP?"
I read that as "I wonder why Trump made Vance his VP?" which illustrates Vox's point in the article, a performative question. But it's in reply to SirHampster, as if you're wanting him to tell you the where-fores of another man's (Trump's) decision/action. No man can tell you that answer.
Neither can a woman tell you the answer. But being a woman I read the question as an invitation to buy into a tangential dialog unrelated to the subject at hand. If I accept the bait, I may respond with any number of statements that will begin with "probably", "may be", "perhaps". This response from me is a performance to signal to you that it's now your turn to soliloquy a reply to your own question.
SirHampster is not a woman so he will do whatever man do with performative questions.
It’s not a tangent. The point is that Trump knows Vance better than any of us. If Vance was a delta, would Trump have picked him for his VP?
This system is predictive. I interpret the system to predict an alpha presented with this position to put a trusted bravo in the VP spot, not a delta.
I hope so. But time will tell.
At a minimum, you'd expect a Bravo to extend his Alpha. Trump has been approaching most of the transparently Clownish as enemies, with his tactics tailored to the targets.
If Vance were Trump's Bravo, I'd expect him to be supporting those tactics instead of making things harder.
No. Definitely not. And he repeated the error two days later.
Women, look for a guy who walks with you like this
['Do the Mario' outtro]
https://youtu.be/65uNCLBTje0?si=Rdn5QMBcWu7LyCvS
That was a beautiful story about your grandfather. In my youth I was annoyed by often repeated family stories. Now, I wish I could hear them told to me again.
We’ve lost the social structures for oral traditions, but still have the instinct.
So people end up retelling the same family stories without the skill of a bard, and without a cultural context that ties the stories to each other for a cohesive mythos.
I had the chance to hear stories from a nurse colonel who served in both World Wars, spent years working at various embassies, and - perhaps most importantly - had stories about my family and their lives stretching back into the 1800's. She was my great-great-aunt, and I spent hours a month at her nursing home for years.
I regret how little I listened to her slow spiraling rambles through time.
Your tribute to Avalanche was quite touching. 🥹
Most people, to say they don't pay attention to body language isn't quite right, they take it in naturally, with some having a better natural understanding than others. Some people are body language blind to the extent that it's labelled a medical condition, but unfortunately for such people to have a lack of one quality is merely to be in the range of human states.
The more interesting of these deprived people, like the more interesting of those who cannot innately understand facial expressions, learn painstakingly what various forms mean.
Truthfully such rare people have a better understanding than most more average people. Normal people have but a normal level of unthought understanding of body language.
Even many alphas should be operating on a high level of unthought understanding, the more exceptional if course will have mastered their innate talent.
Noticing, in general like all things has a base level of talent that determines how much training gets out of it.
Thing is though, while if you are particularly deprived, you need to put on more understanding to read people, most people get along just fine blithely for even should a man be a chronic noticer, a fine reader of flesh...
What does that matter if he never does anything with that knowledge?
Cry of futility aside, man or woman but probably especially woman, what the body says could well be more honest.
In some cases, it tells you that a young man enjoyed the performance of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean far far too much.
This teller doesn't regret those days, but he does miss them.
"Honest question..." absolutely hate that. So, the rest of your questions are dishonest then? Hush it.
"Honest question..." usually precedes an attempt (successful or not) at verbal savaging. It sounds nicer than "Can I ask you something incredibly insulting/ private/ personal?", with the added advantage that the questioner can pretend he is asking with the permission of his intended victim.
"Friendly reminder" is my gamma thorn's favorite.
"Just adding context", ""We all already agreed"