How to properly respond to verbal provocation

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

If you asked what trait is inherent in the “generation of zero”, I would definitely name one: intemperance in words and judgments. Destructive vocabulary, obscenities and excessive aggressiveness towards even the slightest deviations from your ideas about the world and "correctness" are just the tip of the iceberg. They provoke a verbal conflict on the Web in order to ban or make a victim of trolling; in real life - to attract the attention of others to you, to portray you as a source of conflict, or simply to get corny reasons for using force against you.

On the Internet and in offline life, you are provoked to aggression and violent reactions quite often. How not to sink to the level of the one who provokes you?

1. Stop for a minute and assess the essence of the dispute

99% of provocations are meaningless in their form, but clearly oriented in essence. It is important for the one who provokes you to achieve the release of your aggression: this way he will be able to control you and direct your behavior and emotions along the course that this person or group of persons needs. Fear, rage, hatred, misunderstanding, loss of a sober assessment of the situation is what people need who provoke you in chat or in personal verbal communication. Do not give them a reason to turn the tide in the direction that suits them. If the essence of the dispute lies in the banal "hating for fun" - you can not hope to find a rational grain in such a provocation.

2. Always continue to communicate politely and calmly

It has been noticed from personal experience that the transition to raised tones only winds up the interlocutor. But communication in a measured, confident and unhurried tone, on the contrary, makes the "over-presumptuous" slow down the pace and rhetoric.

3. Do not insult the interlocutor, even if he offends you

It is especially important when dealing with those who are superior to you in position and physical strength. For a police officer, "reciprocal rudeness" is an excellent reason to write a fine, close you for 15 days "for disobedience" or apply special means to you. For a crowd of street punks, this is a reason not only to take your wallet away from you, but also to beat you severely and cruelly. There are situations in which the instinct for self-preservation should prevail over the desire to achieve justice in the whole world. In addition, an argument in the language of an illiterate / ill-mannered person is a sure step "up a step down", and not a way to prove your superiority or defeat an opponent.

4. Don't argue about politics with strangers / strangers

Arguments about politics are generally thankless. A dispute with complete strangers or random companions / interlocutors in the club threatens either to escalate into a fight, or to become a pretext for deliberate provocation from various "people in uniform" and "propaganda of false values" will even happen much more likely and faster than the usual desire to wave fists towards a political "opponent").

5. Do not say / do not write what you will not be able to do

The Internet has accustomed us to relative impunity: hiding behind avatars, nicknames and properly setting the confidentiality of our profiles on social networks and online services, we now and then do not resist the temptation to go personal with complete strangers, teach them about their lives, wisdom - and some, especially the "talented" ones, even manage to threaten physical harm to casual interlocutors in the comments. Remember that this "impunity" is relative.

6. Bring any started business / phrase to its logical conclusion

For threats to court or for insults, for unreasonable demands and for well-founded claims - all this must be held accountable. Okay, when someone else bears such responsibility. It is worse if you yourself inadvertently find yourself in this role. So don't say, demand, or promise to do anything that you're not really going to do. Even on the internet. And the point is not even that screenshots do not burn.

7. Health is always more expensive

And in especially difficult and "neglected" cases of verbal provocations, when in front of you is not just an Internet troll or a street hooligan, but a person with clearly inadequate manners and ideas, I recommend not to forget a simple rule: it is better to seem like a coward for a mentally ill person or a bastard, how to suffer or even lose life because of the ridiculous desire to "prove" something to people who are out of tune with their heads and objective reality.