Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION - Posts Tagged "red-flags"

Today is Saturday, and as promised -- or threatened -- I have returned to discuss personality red flags. Nowadays, everyone is so-well versed in pop-psychobabble terminology that this might seem pointless, but these are red flags which might be less familiar to you: they are things that I have noticed nearly always indicate the bearer is a jerk, a monster, or just a defective personality generally. And this is coming not from a denizen of the psychiatric ivory-tower, but a man who has encountered every type of criminal known to man: murderers, robbers, arsonists, rapists, thieves, wife-beaters, con artists. I grant you that a few of these fall into my own personal pet peeve category, but that does not make the dye in the particular flag any less red.

OVERTALKERS. Chronic overtalking is more than rude and annoying, it is a sign that the person in question is a) uninterested in anyone else's opinon, b) feels a need to dominate and control situations. It is a sign that they care very little for other people and don't respect them. Overtalkers are dangerous because they often bully themselves into positions of authority without being able to lead. What leader can make informed decisions without listening?

PEOPLE WHO WON'T TAKE YES FOR AN ANSWER. This is a person who may seem perfectly normal and sociable, but in reality is simply a contrarian. They will oppose any firm opinion you express, even if they actually hold the same opinion themselves. An example from my own experience would be when an acquaintance at my gym saw my boxing T-shirt and said, “Man, that was a great fight.” I replied, “Best I've ever seen.” He immediately said, “It wasn't that great.” I'd had it with the son of a bitch by this point and replied, “Yes, it was – the best fight I've ever seen and maybe the greatest fight ever.” He looked like I'd shot his dog and never spoke to me again. Contrarianism stems from a deep-seated fear of other people's strong opinions. It is found in people with big but fragile egos who feel insecure in the face of security and want to bully anyone who displays it.

PEOPLE WHO CAN'T LAUGH AT THEMSELVES. The ability to rib yourself, and be ribbed, over the blunders, stupidities, and fooleries that we all commit on a daily basis says a great deal about your ability to see your own life in perspective, and to efface your ego. The inability to do this is a gigantic red flag: I've never met a snob, bully, egomaniac or narcissist who found the slightest humor in themselves, or could make the distinction between being kidded in good fun or being insulted and attacked.

PEOPLE WHO CAN'T READ THE ROOM (OR A FACE). I'm aware some people have conditions that make it impossible for them to read social cues, facial expressions, and tones of voice, and I genuinely do feel sorry for them. However, such people are generally intolerable and having to deal with them regularly is infuriating: more than that, they may be showing signs of something else: narcissistic dickbagery. A person who tries to hold an unrelated conversation with you when you are visibly exhausted, in pain, or upset is – at best – someone who doesn't give a damn about you, your health, your sanity, or your feelings.

MONOMANIACS. “A monomaniac is a person who can't change their mind and won't change the subject.” Anyone who has but one topic of conversation is to be avoided at all costs, for the simple reason they are crashing bores. They are also obnoxious: they will always seek to turn any conversation in the direction of their obsession, and then control the conversation. Such people have no interest in any one else's opinions, thoughts, or feelings, nor can they read the social cues, or act upon them if by chance they can read them. This leads me to....

HIJACKERS. Hijackers are people who are unable to get others to listen to them, usually because they are unpleasant or uncharismatic: so they hijack social occasions planned and organized by others for their own selfish purposes. A person who announces their engagement at their sibling's sweet sixteen party is a hijacker; so too is the person who comes on the social media platform of a much more popular friend or relation and posts something guaranteed to shift conversation from the intended topic to themselves and their agenda. Hijackers are devious, manipulative, selfish people who try to compensate for their weakness through sly action.

PEOPLE WITH NO SELF-AWARENESS. A lack of self-awareness is often considered amusing in company: such people are viewed as entertaining. This tendency is however a sign of deep-seated narcissistic traits. Narcissists, as a rule, lack a sense of shame, so when someone behaves very badly, or says foolish things or lies or boasts outrageously without seeming to be remotely aware that they have done so, the red flag is flying like Old Glory on the Fourth of July. This entertainment you don't need.

PROJECTORS. One of the largest red flags you'll encounter is the person who thinks, because they are suspicious, mean-spirited, loveless, vindictive, petty, jealous, etc., that everyone else is, too. They project their own misanthropy onto everyone else. They do not believe in goodness, love, friendship, altruism, self-sacrifice, etc.: they view such things as con artistry used to disguise the base, selfish motives they themselves harbor and possess. These people also have a nasty tendency to assume that since everyone is going to betray them anyway, they had best strike first.

PEOPLE WHO HEAR WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR. I once took a photo of a woman in front of the Hollywood sign, using her camera. Later, she sent me the image, and I remarked, “Good picture.” A little while later we were talking and she said, “Remember when you said how hot I looked in that picture?” Wishful thinking is one thing. Delusion is another. But some people have brains like prisms, which refract what they actually see and hear into things they want to see and hear, so that they exist in a reality all their own, a fantasy world. You say, “You're pretty crazy,” and they will hear “You're pretty!” These folks are straight-up, stone cold psychos and have to be avoided at all costs.

PEOPLE WHO DON'T LEARN LESSONS. In college, I encountered a girl complaining bitterly that "every time I move into a house, my roomates always seem like cool people at first, but it turns out they're assholes and they all end up hating me." She admitted this had happened at least four times in her collegiate career. When I suggsted she might be the problem, she looked as if I had just sprung a second head. An inability to learn lessons or make conclusions from obvious evidence is generally a sign that the person, in addition to possibly being profoundly stupid, has zero self-awareness and cannot take responsibility for their actions. These types leave a lot of wreckage in their wake.

OVERSHARERS. I was once at a party and met a girl who, within moments of me being introduced, began to dive into the most intimate details of her past without any prompting and without any conversational context. Throughout the course of the evening I overheard her do this at least a half-dozen times to other people, totally heedless of the discomfort these details were causing the complete strangers she was evidently trying to impress. This sort of thing is more than mere social awkwardness: it indicates a deeper inability to understand how human interaction actually works, a tendency toward feeding on pity or attention, and, once again, a complete lack of self-awareness.

PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO WIN AT EVERYTHING. Did you ever have a slight disagreement with someone over some unimportant matter, and days later, get an e-mail from the person you were arguing with, featuring five links to websites proving they were right and you were wrong? Have you ever had someone stop everything they are doing, turn the car around, and pull a book off a shelf, just to show you there are 54 and not 53 countries in Africa? Worse yet, have you ever experienced someone who, having been proven wrong on a very minor point, will continue the argument, even after you have dropped it? These walking red flags are simply bullies of a more complicated variety than the sort that wanted your lunch money in fourth grade. They are the types who, if finally crushed in a dispute, will sulk, brood, give you the silent treatment, and plot petty acts of revenge for months or years, all over nothing. Seeing their self-worth in a perfection they don't possess, they will go to outrageous lengths to be right even when they are wrong.

PEOPLE WHO MAKE SUPERFICIAL JUDGMENTS. I once knew a man who prided himself on sizing up and appraising others on the scantiest possible information. Once arrived at, his opinions were inalterable: nothing people actually did after the fact mattered more than his hasty initial estimation of them. This is actually the essence of bigotry, and indeed, people who make decisive snap judgments about everything, usually with almost nothing to base those judgments upon, are bigots even if their metrics are not based on race, ethnicity or sex. What they see as “decisive” is really just moral and intellectual laziness coupled with the mean-spiritedness all bigots have at the core of their souls.

PEOPLE WHO ARE RUDE TO THE WAITER. A person who is as a rule rude to waiters, clerks, tellers, fast food employees, and service staff generally is a person who is a) a coward (service staffers can't fight back), and, b) a believer in feudal social hierarchies, i.e. that social status and money should determine how human beings should be treated. These are people uninterested in the actual worth of people as people. They may be sweet as pie to you, but you should remember that if you were the waiter, you'd be getting treated very differently indeed.

PEOPLE WHO OWN THINGS THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN TO THEM. From the Holocaust to slavery, it has become very chic for folks to act is they themselves carry post-traumatic stress from historical events which occurred decades, generations, even centuries before they were born. This phenomenon is part of a larger trend toward the fetishization of victimhood everywhere, but it is quite annoying on its own, and usually indicates that the person in question has bought into that trend. This type lacks identity and self-confidence and is covering guilt over their (probably) comfortable middle class existence by channelling long-dead ancestors who actually knew real suffering.

This list is hardly exhaustive, but does include most of the things I regard as more subtle (or less unsubtle) personality warning signs. I do not believe I have ever encountered a person who habitually exhibits one or more of these traits who was tolerable in the long run. Obviously some of my own personality quirks are at play in composing this list, but I never claimed to be quirk-free: merely passable at spotting red flags when they are flapping in my face.