On Blankfaces

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5675

by science4sail • 5 years ago

43 30 5 years ago

hlandau• 5 years ago

The term "vogon" has also gained some popularity to describe this archetype, in addition to the UK term "jobsworth".

Those sound a lot better. I especially like "jobsworth" as it's immediately obvious what its intended meaning is (beyond it being derogatory, which you can gather from context).

Using the term blankface would at most get you some blanks stares in return. Unless people mishear you pronounce the "n".

flir2• 5 years ago

Jobsworth.

amadeuspagel4• 5 years ago

Some people will object that the term “blankface” is dehumanizing.

Indeed.

The reason I disagree is that a blankface is someone who freely chose to dehumanize themselves

This sounds like an excuse that would work for almost any kind of dehumanization.

bawolff• 5 years ago

Yeah, that's a pretty unconvincing excuse he gave.

Although i think in this case its a bit of a tautology - the fundamental feature of beurocracy is its dehuman-ness. Any descriptor of that is going to be dehumanizing because fundamentally that's what its describing.

Zababa3• 5 years ago

Aren't they the ones dehumanizing people in the first place by choosing to follow rules instead of listening to fellow human beings?

amadeuspagel4• 5 years ago

This - the idea that it's OK to dehumanize people as long as they themselves dehumanize others (by not listening to them?) - also sounds like an excuse that would work for almost any kind of dehumanization.

MikeUt• 5 years ago

But is that dehumanization inaccurate? Does it give the wrong impression? The answer to both questions seems to be "no", so he does not need an excuse - his defense is truth.

re• 5 years ago

Website is struggling and returning a lot of 504 errors; cached copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20210802205031/https://www.scotta...

coverband• 5 years ago

I just use “asshole” in all the contexts he mentioned. It just fits perfectly.

thechao• 5 years ago

Malicious compliance.

artfulhippo• 5 years ago

Brilliance and creativity do seem to offer some protection against blankfacedness—possibly because the smarter you are, the harder it is to justify idiotic rules to yourself—but even there, the protection is far from complete.

Brilliance and creativity correlate with nonconformity, but general intelligence probably doesn’t [0]. At least, in my experience, many people apply their (higher than average) intelligence primarily to ‘hoop-jumping’—complying assiduously with the norms of the system. When people with less general intelligence are sticklers for the rules, it’s usually because they aren’t empowered to make an exception: a fast-food worker won’t give out extra sauce packets because consultants with Ivy League degrees calculated logistics and revenue projections that can’t tolerate the slippage.

Given that smarter people can justify anything more easily, it stands to reason that idiotic rules would be more easily justified as one gets smarter.

[0] terms defined by one's propensity to obtain useful answers to important questions (brilliance), high scores on hard tests (intelligence), and surprising solutions for typical problems (creativity).

theologic• 5 years ago

This is similar to Graeber "Bullshit Jobs" model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

The wiki entry is a quick read, and he categorizes jobs that really don't improve the world, thus they are Bullshit Jobs that drain the economy. The challenge of course is where to draw the line....

908B64B1973• 5 years ago

Reminds me of the "Karen" meme [0] that ridiculed the behavior of "speaking to the person in charge" when dealing with blankfaces blindly applying policies. The meme has become a weapon to make fun of anyone questioning the blankface's authority.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53588201

amadeuspagel4• 5 years ago

Ironic that you're angry about the "Karen" meme but accept the blankface meme without hesitation.

kgarten3• 5 years ago

I always have a bad feeling in my stomach when the Karen meme comes up. Compared to blankface, it seems misogynistic to me.

I agree that blank face is problematic, dehumanizing. Yet, Karen seems worse

908B64B1973• 5 years ago

The Karen meme ridicules people trying to bypass the blankfaces to directly talk with the policy-makers. It also puts them into the same category as racists calling the police on minorities quite literally minding their own business.

Blankenface2• 5 years ago

That article has a photo of a rich white woman (with a long history of abusing the legal system to get what she wants, it turns out) pointing a handgun at black people peacefully walking on the street in front of her house. Doesn't really support your claim very well.

In any case: the term "Karen" well before it was an internet meme was coded language for people of color to talk about white women exploiting their gender and racial privilege to boss PoC around when they're doing something the Karen doesn't like. --- Edit: my bad, I had Karen confused with "Becky." Becky is the term used by PoC to describe privilege-abusing white women. ---

Sidewalk Susie, Permit Patty, and BBQ Becky. All white women confronting people of color for doing things they don't like, bossing them around and when that doesn't work, siccing the police on them, because they know that cops come running for white women. No "blankfaces" to be seen.

It's also used by people in the service industry to describe white women who try to order them around and are abusive because they think they're entitled to special treatment. Karen is a Karen not because she wants to "speak to the person in charge" but because she thinks she's special and important...and in turn demands to speak to people in charge. A store or restaurant employee who loses their job if they don't follow a company policy is not a blankface.

908B64B1973• 5 years ago

In any case: the term "Karen" well before it was an internet meme was coded language for people of color to talk about white women exploiting their gender and racial privilege to boss PoC around when they're doing something the Karen doesn't like. --- Edit: my bad, I had Karen confused with "Becky." Becky is the term used by PoC to describe privilege-abusing white women. ---

I had no idea.

Karen is a Karen not because she wants to "speak to the person in charge" but because she thinks she's special and important...and in turn demands to speak to people in charge.

I feel like that was the original use of the term and then it grew to anyone who wants to "speak to the manager" and then to white women being racist.

A store or restaurant employee who loses their job if they don't follow a company policy is not a blankface.

Depends on the policy really.

astramlp• 5 years ago

Twenty years ago, all the conformists in my age cohort were obsessed with the Harry Potter books …startlingly puerile and unoriginal mass-marketed wish-fulfillment fantasies.
Today, those same conformists in my age cohort are more likely to condemn the Harry Potter series … Naturally, then, there was nothing for me to do but finally read the series!

I think this type of smug contrarianism is more in want of a shorthand label than the age-old trope of bureaucracy-abuse. The type of person that feels the need to spend 1/3 of an opinion piece painstakingly justifying the use of a pop culture reference that, yes, he knows, would be outrageously juvenile and plebeian for a man of his station, and must be accompanied by a warning so the sheer dissonance does not distract from his very important point.

Surely a man of his “brilliance and creativity” would realize that “Blankface” will only conjure the image of an emoji in the minds of conformist plebs :|

pseudalopex• 5 years ago

He reinvented the NPC meme.

kgarten3• 5 years ago

On a tangent: The characterization of Harry Potter is way off … I missed the whole craziness and just read it last year.

I have to say it‘s amazingly well crafted and holds up as world literature.

Important: Voldemort just gets his power from people who go along, who dehumanize … We need to stand together despite all of our differences. Harry is not the chosen one or has any special power. There are no clear good and evil lines (it’s complex: the most impressive, likable and heroic character after the last book is Severus Snape :) that twist really got me.

Say what you want about Rowling, but her storytelling is amazing (playing with troupes and expectations).

There are some cringe worthy parts, yet any of the great literature works I reread has them. (Lord of the Rings, the great gatsby, how to kill a mockingbird… )

treesprite82• 5 years ago

A blankface is anyone who enjoys wielding the power entrusted in them to make others miserable by acting like a cog in a broken machine, rather than like a human being with courage, judgment, and responsibility for their actions. A blankface meets every appeal to facts, logic, and plain compassion with the same repetition of rules and regulations and the same blank stare

From my (thankfully limited) experience of working with customers, it's occasionally a case of "I actually mostly agree with the rule and think you're causing a scene over nothing, but saying so directly would only make you more irate".

The anecdotes given have a certain smell like they've been filtered through viewpoints distorting things in favor of the author or their family member, and that in reality there's probably a reasonable alternate side. For example I'd guess "the blankface lifeguard made up a new rule on the spot that she needs to retake the test" turns out to be something like the pool administration introducing a new ability check for under-18s, and the idea that the author's daughter "passed" but got failed by the lifeguard is more along the lines of the author thinking she deserved to pass but the lifeguard being the one actually capable of making that decision. Or the "more and more convoluted bank details" anecdote - if the *same form* is being sent back then it sounds like the author initially missed fields on it.

Definitely not to say that there aren't people and scenarios just like what the author describes, and not to say it's not a real problem. But deciding that "thousands" of my interactions must have gone the way they did because the other person wanted to make others miserable feels like it's potentially taking the easy way out to avoid self-reflection or sincere attempts to understand. Reminds me a little of 18:46-21:52 in https://youtu.be/TebCHHCw9rY?t=1126

On Blankfaces

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