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Is there a term for when your behaviour/rhetoric is over-determined by (your anticipation of) the responses of your perceived opponents? 🤔 my instinct says “reactionary”, but turns out that that word is already loaded to mean something quite specific
It’s not just about being guarded or defensive- it’s when you devote significant energy into visibly preparing to counter-attack. Ironically this often ends up goading people to attack you because they find your presumptiveness insulting. Which then confirms your assumptions...
I think I’m liking “over-preemptive” sometimes preemptive action makes sense, but it’s a situational tactic, not a sustainable mode of being https://t.co/RN7XQXQVtA
There’s something about the supernormal stimuli of accumulating negative experiences and interactions online that makes it very easy for even thoughtful, reasonable people to become over-preemptive. In fact it can seem like the thoughtful, reasonable thing to do! 🤔
Its perfectly reasonable to take precautions in anticipation of future pain, considering that you’ve been hurt before. “Fool me once,” etc. what’s hard is to go meta & evaluate whether the counter-measures are actually helpful. Easy to do it off-field, but in the heat of things,
Anyway this is just something I’ve been reflecting on. I think I’m pretty natural at being an optimistic, good-faith-assuming person, and despite that... I do feel like I’ve picked up a bit of over-preemptiveness via osmosis on twitter. Gotta return to the present 🧘🏾♂️❤️ https://t.co/Lwap1v00Am
I just realized a funny trap here, like the anxiety trap where you get anxious about being anxious once you realize you’re being over-preemptive, it’ll be tempting to preempt ways in which you can stop being over-preemptive 😂 which will be exhausting and lead to bad crashes
@visakanv Hmm I've been thinking about this recently too: https://t.co/rlhth39f8n