[Ansteorra] RE: the Attack of the "Authenticity Police"

Marc Carlson marccarlson20 at hotmail.com
Thu Jul 14 12:31:18 PDT 2005


>William Willett & Robin Lindsey moiranliam at earthlink.net So here's the 
>question I have after reading this thread:  What do you do for the
>clueless idiot to make them not-so-clueless, without being an arse 
>yourself?

I won't claim it will keep you squeaky clean, but I often found (when such 
things happened to me, since for some reason people are now really reluctant 
to correct me on ANYthing...) that , pausing for a moment to make sure that 
I didn't sound irritated or condescending (or as much as is possible for 
me), looking them straight in the eye, smiling and thanking them for 
pointing out my flaws and errors, and letting them know that I appreciated 
the time they took to go out of their way to do so.  And then going back to 
whatever it was that I was doing previously.

Admittedly, this doesn't have the deep visceral pleasure of, say, head 
butting them, but does have the benefit of not getting you thrown out of the 
better homes and campsites.  Condescendingly mocking them also has its 
pleasures, but isn't really going to defuse the situation.

If you are polite, and if they are on the ball, they may realize that they 
have socially transgressed, and if not - pointing it out to them may not get 
them to actually believe you.  You can always TRY pointing it out to them, 
but unless you are way more diplomatic than most people it's going to sound 
like criticism.

And really it's no more your place to point out what you see as the flaws in 
their behavior than it's their place to point out what they see as the flaws 
in your costuming.

Marc/Diarmaid





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