When Was The Last Time You Got Your Ass Kicked? | Hacker News Reader

When Was The Last Time You Got Your Ass Kicked?

thelastpsychiatrist.com

28 pointssumeetjain22 comments

I used to get my ass kicked a lot because I didn't really understand the psychology of confrontations, and I was obviously weak. If a confrontation like the one here happens, the most important thing is to not display fear or annoyance. (The is exceptionally hard to do, but after you have had your ass kicked a lot it gets easier.) Then, you basically have two choices:

1) Diffuse the situation. An example of this would be to meet the intimidator on his own level of casual conversation, but with obvious elements of friendship or compassion (that perhaps are genuine, or just brazen). Invite the guy to have a seat with you. When the guy asks "When was the last time you got your ass kicked?" You can say "I get my ass kicked a lot, but I haven't had it kicked yet today." Once I was walking home through the ghetto with a pizza in my hand, almost to my apartment. The guys on the porch next door say "hey, you brought us pizza." I walked straight towards them, and asked who wants a piece, with a smile on my face. A couple pieces of pizza is a small price to show you are not afraid.

2) Or you can escalate the situation. This doesn't mean throwing the first punch (necessarily) but it could mean keeping your mouth shut, not responding to the initial questioning, then 5 seconds later getting up from the table. You go somewhere and come back quickly. When you return to the situation, you have the leg-up. You could have called someone, you could be carrying something. The dynamic is different though. At this point, keep your hands in your pockets, stay calm, and ask "what do you want?" After that don't say another word. You are harder to size up at this point, and there's a chance the intimidator will go away. If not, you can leave the place, or you can grab the person by their shirt and walk forwards with them and release them. They'll be very angry, but they'll realize that you are serious and unafraid to fight. There are a few key things to remember once the physical part of the conflict begins:

- No talking, threatening or noise-making. Just do what you need, be forceful and catch the other person off-guard.

- Most intimidators looking to start a fight are looking for some kind of foreplay or testing of your confidence. Don't allow that. Say as little as possible. When it comes time to act, prior to the first contact the movement should be casual but in their direction, and then silent and forceful when you have to touch the other person.

In 95% of situations, you are better off leaving. But if you are forced in something you have to deal with, deal with it confidently and calmly knowing that tomorrow you'll be able to look at yourself in the mirror, even if you do have one black eye.

This may be the dumbest piece of advice I've ever seen hit HN:

"Hi, my name's Sean, what's your name?"

"Get your punk-ass away from me, I don't want to know you."

Congratulations. You just got yourself in a fight. It wasn't going to happen anyways (and it didn't in the show). But now it will.

In his analysis of the situation, the kid didn't actually want to fight, but was just trying to look cool in front of his friends - "no one would think any less of you for backing down from a 17 yo black teen than if you backed down from a grizzly bear." That said, the sentence could probably be phrased a little more politely.

Why is that dumb? What's wrong with a fight? IMHO a fight is better than waking up knowing you are a coward.

Jesus.

Someone comes up to you and you don't want to talk to them, how about start with "excuse me, I'm busy"?

What's wrong with getting in a fight with a minor? Jail's a good start.

Where I live that fight will include you, the kid, all his buddies, and his mates outside that you havn't notice. It probably ends when one of them jumps on your head or sticks a knife in you.

Here's where I decided to flag this stupid article.

totally off topic: I just saw the company you work for. I developed the mentality that I have while doing a 14 month bid. I did pretty much the same thing you do only I didn't have permission.

I blame the article for this conversation, not you.

I actually used this one once, disclaimer: I was not actually in prision but I am big enough and bald enough for it to be believable, anyway it went something like this:

Drunk guy with buddies asks me if I have ever had my ass kicked, My response was:

prison 93, I got jumped by four men in the yard, man 3 of beat the hell out of me and shived me in the arm (I have a huge scare on my arm and showed it to them) but that fourth one, I got him good. Ripped his larynx out I did, you ever seen that happen boys, it makes the strangest sound, kind of like a pig squealing.

Worked like a charm, His buddy chirped up, come on man, lets go it's not worth it. His buddy gave him an out because he saw that I was steadfast so my story was possibly true. He readily took the out with a f*u man to save face.

Side note: I look like a big younger Jack Nicholson so I can give someone a pretty crazy look if I want to, that probably played into the situation.

Great article, if undermined by the author's penchant for labeling every foible of modern life a result of everyone's inescapable narcissism.

The four great truths in this article:

> It just so happens that sex and violence are the only two things that you can't fake, and we keep coming back to them as the definitive "measures of the man."

> No, we're not sexist, we're narcissists: it's not about you, it's about us.

[Ed: "we/us" here is men, "you" here is women]

> While we're at it, we can all agree this would be a completely different scenario if it was a white kid rolling up on a middle aged black man on a date; or a black kid vs. black adult. No matter how equal opportunity you think you are all of those are different. Black kid on white adult is crime/poverty; white kid on black adult is racism; and black on black is "one of those things, you don't get involved."

> The Bully Dialogue-- where they spend ten minutes chatting nicely even though both of you know you're eventually going to get stuffed in a locker-- is another Cognitive Kill Switch, which is about reversing power and dominance.

> No, we're not sexist, we're narcissists: it's not about you, it's about us. [Ed: "we/us" here is men, "you" here is women]

I thought about quoting this as well but didn't know what to say about it. But it reminds me of a recent conversation I had with my two adult sons where I said, basically, that feminists are whiny cry-babies because the whole point of equality would be that gender doesn't matter. So the whole screechy "I'm a woman and I want my rights taken seriously" (or whatever) approach not only completely misses the point but actually undermines the goal. (This made my oldest son laugh. He informed me that a lot of men think feminists are whiny crybabies and it's funny to hear his mom say the same thing.)

So I just really liked the line. In a bizarre way, I find it encouraging. :-D I'm glad someone quoted it.

edited: "feminists are whiny cry-babies because the whole point of equality would be that gender doesn't matter." see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_feminism

My kids have context, something members here lack. It's been a long day. Probably no point in trying to elaborate right now in order to be understood. Suffice it to say that I was simply trying to express why I liked the quote from the article. Perhaps that was done badly.

Thank you for editing out the personal insult and adding a citation instead.

That was the most incoherent thing I've ever read.

Not only was it terribly written, but it was terrible advice (assuming I understood the author's thesis... I'm not exactly clear on that).

It's articles like this that make me want to work harder to get my downvoting priviledges.

Can someone please TL;DR? I lost track at point #8 and then noticed I'm not even half way yet

If you can't be bothered to read it, you probably don't really care anyways, so what's the point in providing you a TL;DR?

> If she is a reasonably attractive woman-- defined as not bathing in smallpox-- then all that she gets, all day, is practice appraising men and filtering through their words.

Whether or not they get a lot of practice, I've known a good number who filtered and came up with the straight-up wrong answer every time.

Louie is a surprisingly good show. I think I like it for the same reasons I like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, which is it sticks out from the rest of tv (American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Bones, House, Law and Order, etc.) I think what's nice is that its not just another over used trope, spin off, sequel, trilogy, reproduction--it's original. I especially enjoyed the episode with his mom. The authors arguments are really interesting and I tend to agree with her. There are flaws in everything though.

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