It's often used as social WD-40, and I think is possibly useful, sometimes, in that.
From my experience, if it's used as a conversational "safeword" - "Look, I'm getting bored/threatened/unhappy in this conversation" - I'd quite often respect it, and it's useful to have it there for that purpose. It's a way of people backing out of a conversation without revealing weakness as they would if they just said "Look, you're making me feel bad", or escalating the conflict by saying "Would you shut the fuck up, you're pissing me off."
There are other ways to achieve the same thing, possibly better ones, but you can't really expect everyone to use your preferred conversational codes.
In the political arena or the public eye - that's a different kettle of fish. But as a way of making sure a friendly discussion doesn't turn into a violent argument with an evening-ruining blast radius, I'm prepared to tolerate it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-06-04 03:14 pm (UTC)From my experience, if it's used as a conversational "safeword" - "Look, I'm getting bored/threatened/unhappy in this conversation" - I'd quite often respect it, and it's useful to have it there for that purpose. It's a way of people backing out of a conversation without revealing weakness as they would if they just said "Look, you're making me feel bad", or escalating the conflict by saying "Would you shut the fuck up, you're pissing me off."
There are other ways to achieve the same thing, possibly better ones, but you can't really expect everyone to use your preferred conversational codes.
In the political arena or the public eye - that's a different kettle of fish. But as a way of making sure a friendly discussion doesn't turn into a violent argument with an evening-ruining blast radius, I'm prepared to tolerate it.