Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to "This is a boys' club here."

Taking it personally.
Mary Anne — (archived)

Their grandstanding that people like me are stupid or slimey or dangerous is over the top.

"People like me"?

Time to analyze this. Let's see if I can do this without direct reference to deleted and other communication.

The now extinct post (apologies, To Whom It May Concern) to which you refer had a dramatic set of expressions, but expressed real concerns that desperate people might be snookered into using fake medicines or ineffective devices because the sales pitch is slick. Sometimes this kind of spending undermines the customer's finances, in much the same way as contributions to glib televangelists can. Sometimes it will undermine a customer's health, because it feeds her distrust of doctors (which, I know from personal experience, can be richly deserved) and changes it subtly to investment of precious time in non-medical activities, which are much different from non-traditional therapies. This has actually happened to people. It may have happened to someone close to the dramatic poster; I don't know. Witnessing this kind of personal disaster can inspire great passion in people.

When you say "people like me", are you identifying with the customer or the vendor?

The vendor was identified as slimey (it's all that snake oil) and potentially dangerous, not the customer. If you are acting on behalf of the vendor, I may have to reconsider what I said to RL, above, about the lack of commercial activities in your posts.

As for the "stupid" part, that is pure projection, taking it personally. A lot of people have been taken in by clever advertizers with bad products. That doesn't make the customers stupid. It makes them vulnerable. I've been a sucker before, but with a vacation package rather than with health issues. It cost me money, but I learned a lot about sales techniques, and that lesson has benefitted me enormously over the years.

If you're approaching things more or less as a lark, none of this applies to you, and you can just forget it, you know, brush it off, rather than jumping to the conclusion that you are under attack rather than an idea or activity. You can even say, "That's nice, but that's not me." Or, "That's not nice, but I don't care, because that's not me."

A strong opinion, strongly expressed, isn't personally insulting as long as the opinion has no personal slurs contained in it. People have equal intrinsic dignity. Ideas don't. Please don't mistake the two.

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