1) People are jerks.
2) People can only act based on the information they have access to.
3) People are naturally inclined to believe they are correct.
There are very few legitimate reasons why someone should be a jerk. People that are rude for this first reason are the genuinely unsavory type of people that the general populace of society does well to ignore and disparage. These are the people that fall along the Rudeness Spectrum between murdering innocent people and trolling YouTube videos. I don’t think you need me to explain why people like these don’t add anything positive to society, but I also like to think people like these are actually fewer in number than we might naturally suspect.
Now, there’s the people that are rude for the second reason. These are the type of people you look at, and you don’t understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, but if you asked them they probably wouldn’t think they were being rude. Take, for example, the chick that cuts you off in traffic—no, not even in traffic, just on the long, lonely highway with no one around and no reason for her to merge and cut you off. Yeah, cutting someone off is rude, but I like to think that people don’t drive like that on purpose. They just lack information. Maybe they are willfully ignorant (maybe they just merge without checking their mirrors, for example) but the truth of the matter is that they are acting on whatever information they have access to.
Sometimes, Group #2 might be rude because of something we don’t tell them. For example, I was once talking with a friend of my same faith about why people leave the Church. Basically, I said that the only reason why people leave the Church is because they don't have a strong enough testimony and he said something that our religious leaders cite more often, that being that people leave the church because they’ve been offended. Now, these comments always bother me because I’ve experienced many offenses at church that I feel to be far beyond the typical “offended inactive member” and I’ve never even considered leaving the Church. I’ve never left the Church because I have a personal, strong, unwavering testimony that the Church is true.
But, was he being rude? Maybe, but not necessarily intentionally. He doesn’t know what I’ve gone through, and so he wouldn’t know that I might know a thing or two about overcoming offenses. (That's not even taking into consideration what he's experienced that I haven't; perhaps to him, I was being rude.)
The third group of people is similar to the second, as being correct requires something to be correct about and a means to be correct about it (i.e. information). In reality, everyone thinks they are correct, but there are a few “sub-types” that are typical of the “correct rude person.”
Type A: The Know-It-All. This is the person that will always correct some poor grammar; this is the person that knows every little tidbit of trivia about every little scene from a movie and must tell you every single time you watch the movie with them; this is the person that will deny any inaccurate statement to their grave. I have yet to figure out if Know-It-Alls actually take themselves seriously, or if they know they don’t really know everything about everything and just have insecurity issues that they think no one will like them if they are wrong about something. Typically, I find that people don’t like The Know-It-All, so for their sakes, I kind of hope it’s the first.
Type B: The Academic. This is the person that will assert comments as though they are fact for the sake of brevity rather than accuracy. They will do their best to support their claims with data and analysis and everything like that, and the good Academic will acknowledge that there are exceptions to every generalization they make (either overtly or implied through subtext). Typically, I find The Academic is successful in (you guessed it) the academic world where they can share their assertions in forums where their assertions are understood to follow certain academic formulas (if in writing) or in forums where further discussion easily follows (a classroom, lecture, etc.). However, the same lingual tactics they might utilize in their theses might be ill fit for everyday conversation. You might imagine (in my opinion, rightfully so) that it is often difficult for The Academic to make the transition because, as I pointed out, it’s just typically much more efficient to communicate that way, in their minds.
Type C: The Banshee. The Banshee is a close cousin of the common Internet Troll and acts like The Know-It-All on steroids. They aren’t just out to prove to the world that they are correct—they want the world to know that everyone that disagrees is w-r-o-n-g-WRONG! Take my “Feminism 101” grad student instructor last semester: I disagreed with her on several points and she therefore decided that because I didn’t come to her same conclusions that I never did my reading and that I refused to think critically about the class materials. I read every stinking word she assigned and it’s because I didn’t accept the assigned texts at face value (i.e. I thought about them critically) that I disagreed with her in the first place. She proceeded to grade me down on virtually every assignment once she figured out I really wasn’t just going to mindlessly puppet her (in a junior level theory class? I'm paying tuition to get a real education so, uh...NO, I don't THINK so!). She’s the perfect example of The Banshee: she wasn’t going to be happy until I worshiped the ground she walked on and thanked her for showing me the proverbial feminist light, since, obviously, there are black-and-white, right-and-wrong answers when it comes to social theories. Obviously. (/too soon? heh...)
Type D: The Talker. This one might be a bit of a stretch, but I think there’s some important distinctions between them and The Know-It-All. First, this person only passively believes they are correct. That is, they won’t be offended if you disagree with them or even if you correct them if they are factually wrong on some subject. They do like to share their opinions, though. They like being the center of attention. Sometimes The Talker is friendly and lovable, and I believe there are times when every group of friends needs at least one Talker to keep things interesting. However, occasionally The Talker will just talk. And talk. And talk until it seems like they’re talking just to hear the sound of their own voice. I have a hard time believing that The Talker thinks what they're saying has no value, so I must reason that they think their opinions are correct enough to warrant being voiced in the first place. Maybe I’m wrong.
I think it’s easy to see how The Banshee and The Know-It-All can be rude. It’s probably just as easy for The Academic to be rude, but I think they are more likely to be rude in how they say things rather than what they say. The Talker, I think, is more likely to be rude on the basis of speaking only in terms of their own experience (like Group Two) than the other three are, but I think it’s certainly possible for The Talker to be rude in other ways too. Maybe their drive to dominate the conversation is taken to mean they don’t value others’ opinions as much as they value their own, for example.
So now comes the real question…When you’re being rude, why do you do it?
I think I’m mostly part of Group #2, with a side serving of The Academic from Group #3. I think my life experience is a valid source of information. I acknowledge that others may not have had my same life experience, and so I acknowledge the value in studying and coming to understand others’ perspectives, but that does not mean that I have to take up their perspective in its entirety to assess my life, nor does it mean that they can ignore mine. Further, I think I make the best judgments I can with the information I have. I am not opposed to obtaining further information, but I will use the information I have to support the claims that I make. Lastly, I accept the fact that as a theorist, my job would not exist if opposing views did not exist. Really, I should be grateful to the crazy feminist that tried to convince me of the “errors” of my ways: she’s my job security.
--Heather
--Heather
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