What is behind “who-do-you-think-you-are” attitudes?
No, it’s not a superiority complex. It’s entitlement. Keep reading to know why.
I’ve been meditating on a recent interaction. It wasn’t here on Medium, it was elsewhere, but it left an impression on me. At first, I thought I wouldn’t bother blogging about it; today, however, I’ve changed my mind. I’m sure there are other people in the world who went through the same, so if I can be relatable to them, I’m glad to help.
You see, I don’t just blog to vent about people. If you see my personal posts like nothing more than petty revenge, I feel very sorry for your lack of depth. Grow up a bit, then come back and re-read them. Perhaps THEN you’ll see what I meant. My motivation in “writing about people” is in order to help my readers learn things. Although, sure, I know when the shoe fits, suddenly the tables turn. If I could have a euro every time someone supported my writing when it wasn’t about them, then turned around and tried to silence me when it WAS… I’d be a millionaire. I “love” when people say I betrayed them. No, sir; no, madam; no, NB person. I didn’t. I showed you from the very start how I operate; you were just naive to assume you’d be an exception. That’s not my problem. If people show me their darkness, I expose it. I’ll keep the secrets, the oaths and the confidential stuff, but the HUMAN bullshit will get exposed. I don’t turn a blind eye because “uwu bffs, some shit about feelings or whatever”. Nobody is entitled to my good grace; if you push the limits of acceptable behaviour, I’ll let you go. I cool down as fast as I warm up. Don’t take me for granted.
On another note, if anyone is butthurt, I invite them to blog about me too. Let’s keep the conversation going. The last thing I’d want to do is silence anyone, exactly because I won’t tolerate it from them either (I’ve mars in Gemini, ya know). Do so on your own blogs. A vague blog post on your place does NOT equal an angry comment with personal insults on mine. They’re not the same thing. Learn about consent and boundaries before thinking you can “one-up” to me. And maybe, just maybe, stop underestimating me. Stop thinking it’s easy. Stop assuming you can break me with little effort. That’s insulting to say the least. If you wanna get at me, you’ve gotta set that laziness aside and work HARD.
So, with that out of the way, and hopefully having put the toddlers back in their place, on to the useful stuff:
Let’s break down this behaviour into bite-size layers so we can see through it together:
Namely, there are 3 key layers we can peel through here.
- On the surface, there is a perceived hierarchy. When someone says or implies “who do you think you are”, they’re communicating that someone should be put back in their place. Really, the wording doesn’t matter, I’m talking about the attitude. You can reword “who do you think you are” in a lot of ways, you can even tailor it to a specific situation (ie, “I’m working on this thing longer than you, so don’t you think you can teach me something new”) and essentially, it means the same. Don’t be pedantic. I studied Linguistics at uni (yes, I know, one of my many random qualifications out of necessity) AND translate since 2012. I can and will outsmart pedantic people. I even have fun doing it, so don’t get me started.
- Under the surface, there is anxiety. In order to say “who do you think you are”, you need to feel anxious. It doesn’t matter why, but the feeling must be there. I mean, if you feel unharmed by someone, you won’t have a reason to challenge them.
- On its deepest level, there is entitlement. This is the hardest layer to detect, so much so that it took me a couple of days after the interaction to notice this layer was there. It is, though. Anxiety alone might put you on alert and think of how you want to react… But it won’t MAKE you react in actuality, if that makes sense. Entitlement is a feeling that carries just the right amount of outrage in order to propel someone to take action.
So the sequence of events goes like this: first, a person HAS a sense of entitlement about who they’re willing to listen to and learn from, specifically. Second, when this isn’t corresponded, they feel unsettled and prepare the attack. Third, they actually attack, under a façade of uneven power structure (“me superior, you inferior”) which may or may not be real. Keep this in mind.
If the uneven power structure isn’t real, well, then, that’s just childish; But sometimes, this could still happen if the person who put you back in your place does indeed have power over you. It could be a boss, a parent, etc. Authority could be REAL, and the person can STILL feel threatened by you. Maybe they have impostor syndrome. Who knows. The truth is, a truly self-confident boss, or leader, or parent, won’t feel the need to validate their authority. Do you see where I’m at?
Before any childish people even CONSIDER telling me “well, Meron, you ALSO try to put people in their place; you ALSO feel anxious; you ALSO have entitled attitudes” — don’t. For your own good, don’t. I’ll tell you one thing, and it will shut you up before you even reach the goddamn keyboard: I know. I know it and admit it. I have the balls to admit my own goddamn flaws, and that’s because I KNOW I’ll have addressed them and reached some progress faster than you can type whatever insult you were thinking there. What about you though? Stuck with an unaddressed problem for fear of facing the shadow. Only the insecure put up certain kinds of walls.
As I said, I’m no easy target. If anyone wants to hurt me, try harder. And besides, I’m attacking no-one. I’m just dissecting. Invasive procedures are uncomfortable, painful, and often mistaken for wounds, aye, I’ll give you that — but they’re never uncalled for.
This has nothing to do with anyone’s character or value as a person. Nobody is immune to making that mistake.
As I always say, it’s normal to be wrong; It’s only bad to insist on staying wrong when you find it out.
And again, this isn’t about “disagreeing that you’re wrong”. Usually, if you TRULY think you’re right, you’ll try to show that. Well, that’s not what I have to deal with on an almost daily basis. What I have to deal with is people who can’t argue with me; they just want me to unsay the thing. Why? Entitlement. They probably even agree with my assessment; but out of pride, out of not thinking I’m “good enough” to fit their criteria of “worthy teacher that deserves to be listened to”, they won’t admit it.
So no, I’m not “hard to disagree with”. Disagree away, my friends! But actually fucking do it. Give me a counterargument. If you don’t, you’re not disagreeing. You’re dressing up a resistance with a façade of disagreement. And then you get mad when I take it down to reveal what’s under it.
What’s that saying again? Can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen? Well, let me rephrase it in my own special way: afraid of surgery? Don’t go see the surgeon. Nobody is being coerced.
…And just like that, although I was inspired by a recent event, I didn’t even tell you the story. In fact, I won’t. It’s irrelevant. All you need to know is it culminated in someone asking me, in their own words, who did I think I was.
In case the person is reading, now they’ll have an answer. If they aren’t, there is no need either way. The answer is first and foremost meant to help others deal with ad hominems.
So, who do I think I am? Well, here is what I think I am: a person who crossed someone else’s path. Our differences came to the fore, and this person chose to use the conflict unproductively. This is a common mistake phlegmatic people make: they panic when they see a disturbance, just like water “prefers” to stay still if it can. But as it happens, not all disturbances are necessarily evil. Sometimes, they’re necessary for movement.
I’ll use metaphors here, but I hope the message is easy: you can hate fire as much as you want. You can claim it’s too hot, too expansive, “doesn’t know its place”, wants to burn beyond the delimited box and that makes it rude, and so on and so forth. That’s all very true. But you know what else is true? Fire makes life possible. Get rid of every semblance of this element in your life, and you die.
Yes, there is value in picking your teachers. It’s a good thing to know who you like and who you dislike. That makes you difficult to control or manipulate. But there’s another side to that coin — there are lessons in life we opt out of because we’re simply afraid of them. It’s to our detriment. So, sometimes, it needs to be against our will. Keep one messenger away, and you’ll meet others. It’s nothing personal. It’s just life.
