Introduction
I’ve observed some trends in online communities and material as of late, and I’ve found that my writing style has been inadvertently influenced by reading too much of them, and not always in good ways.
I’m certain that there are more appropriate and descriptive terms for the styles I’m trying to describe, but my knowledge of psychology is rusty so I’ll describe them as best I can using my own words instead. Hopefully, these will ring a bell if they do already exist.
Pre-emptive self-defence
This is a writing style that authors use to defend themselves in advance by giving excuses—or justifications, depending on how you look at it—either in descriptions of their content or at the start of their content. For example, people may write “disclaimers” about their lack of qualifications, or highlight how little time they’ve spent on writing and researching the topic beforehand sometimes—or often—to worrying extents.
Or, when holding positions in more subjective fields (such as entertainment) where the extent of knowledge itself matters more than impossible-to-verify statements of fact (which movie character is the best?), people seem to do either one of two things:
1. They may exaggerate the amount of time they’ve spent on their research in order to inflate their credibility
2. They may understate the amount of time they’ve spent in order to impress others by how much they can achieve in such little time
Of course, this doesn’t mean that every single author (or creator) who states how much time they’ve put into something is being dishonest in some way; if you’ve spent the last 6 months working round the clock on a solo game project you’d understandably feel quite and want to share that feeling of achievement in some way, but if the main selling point of your game—or your argument—is how much time you’ve spent on it, then it’s probably going to raise some eyebrows instead.
If it makes me happy it’s true
Not necessarily a style in and of itself, though it certainly manifests as one, at least in the form of typically non-sequitur thought-terminating cliches. Perhaps resulting from the combination of “if you offend anyone you’re in the wrong” and “anyone can be offended by anything”, the moment anyone claims to derive happiness from something, nothing else can be said against that person or their claims (as people like to personally stand behind their claims for some reason).
That said, thought-terminating cliches have existed for millennia, so perhaps this is just another manifestation of it, just with a worryingly broader scope as it can now be used effectively to refute factual statements and arguments because, somehow, not feeling offended takes precedence over the brief discomfort of learning from one’s mistakes.
Worse still, one can feel offended over anything! Even things they just made up a second ago in order to avoid admitting a mistake, and claim to feel offended that their feeling offended was questioned, ad infinitum.
To be continued
More to come!