The Failure Mode of Clever (2010)

You need to give an introductory class in yourself to others, over and over again, at the risk of boring yourself to tears, in order not to be judged by low-context people for your high-context comments. Which is a lot less fun than being clever. But probably more fun than being ostracized.

So it's basically impossible to perform yourself in a high-context way on an open social media platform like Twitter, because people reading you for the first time will always misread you, and rarely want to spend the time to understand the context. And as a result we have the usual fireworks of misunderstanding.

I've been a fan of Scalzi's twitter and blog for a while and this is one of my personal favourites.

It's kind of the general case of Poe's Law.

I now ask myself (usually) "Does correctly interpreting my comment/joke require the reader/listener to know that I am clever, droll, sarcastic and definitely not-a-nazi?"

It's a good thing to keep in mind: if you really want someone who you're pretty sure already disagrees with you to at least entertain an alternative viewpoint, being clever isn't the way. Simple, straightforward and polite is the best point of entry.

If they're willing to pay attention, then you can try introducing some complexity in a more intelligent manner. Note the word 'clever' has a lot of negative connotations - highly manipulative people are generally described as 'clever'. Consider also the phrase 'too clever by half' - it's a way of stating that someone isn't trustworthy.

For anyone unfamiliar with Scalzi, he’s an accomplished science fiction author. My favorite of his is Redshirts, an odd take on a Star Trek-esque world.

https://whatever.scalzi.com/about/books-by-john-scalzi/

I wouldn't say it's necessarily 'asshole'. I've learned this lesson from my own behavior and watching people in my family. Sometimes the failure mode is that they just have no idea what you're talking about and are confused. People don't trust people who confuse them, so it's a good idea to be direct until they know your personality and how to interpret you, as the article suggests.

This has been very clear after this was written if you look at internet communication over the past 12 years, just people desperately chasing internet points (upvotes, clicks, whatever) with attempts to be clever, and when it fails it just seems to breed toxic assholishness.

We could sometimes afford to be like "oh, that person tried to be clever, maybe I should give them another shot instead of just lazily judging them on a sample size of one"

Now close to retirement as an engineer, I've met and worked with many people, mostly men. I've been telling the new workers who get hired the only thing that really matters to your co-workers is your reputation. If you pull your work load and are willing to help others, good things will always return to you from your fellow employees. However...

<The failure mode of clever is “asshole.”>

There will always be some of these clever people! Either they will attempt to prove their superiority or prove how stupid you are. This, of course, ruins their reputation. When I've respectfully tried to clue them in when they complain because they think others don't like them or quit helping them, they almost always are completely amazed that someone could actually think they are lacking in social skills. Oh well.

If you enjoyed that, maybe you might think well of some pithy musings along similar lines:

https://www.wisesayings.com/tact-quotes/

I particularly like the ones which relate tact to cleverness or wit.

I don’t get what is meant by clever in this context, how do you “cleverly” introduce yourself by writing to someone?

I do agree with the broader point about cleverness’ failure mode though.

I suspect the reason this article came up was because it was referenced by a comment on another recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32337934 (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32337520 ).

The advice my adult children remember most from me, especially when visiting rarely-seen family, is "Don't try to be funny, try to be nice."

Or just be clever and accept what happens. I am content with that approach.

Although, when I am emailed by strangers offering work, I am polite.

it has been quite some time since I read this, perhaps 12 years, and I had forgotten the salient point that it is about the first private communication with someone the initiator of communication does not know, in that context trying to be clever and failing to seem clever to the person being contacted makes one seem an asshole.

So while it could also be that internet mob decides that someone failing to be clever is an asshole it should be noted that the failure probably was quite larger of a failure, given that it was misinterpreted by a mob probably reading something on social media they sought out and not just a single person getting contacted out of the blue.

I was thinking this was about devs writing overly clever code and leaving it uncommented for the next guy to work out wth it’s doing. Asshole indeed.

Well, good advice.

I really like Scalzi’s sci-fi, especially the audio books narrated by Will Wheaton- I am fairly sure I have listened to all of them.

They may consider you an asshole. But if they do then you can enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that they are dumber than you.

That's the implied equation. We all know it well.

And consider the realm of smart specialists. Every time your circle and the other guy's circle fail to intersect. So he fails to get your subtle jokes. Which happens a lot. Bam! There's another dumb asshole.