Sensitivity as a Weapon of Mass Control
Somebody told me a meeting was traumatic.
A meeting. Forty-five minutes, conference room, somebody's numbers were not where they needed to be and it got said out loud.
Traumatic. That's the word that got used. In an email. Copied to four people.
And I'm sitting there thinking, do you know what that word is for. Do you have any idea what it was built to describe, who it belongs to, and what they went through to earn it.
It wasn't a slide deck.
Every disagreement is toxic now
Somebody disagrees with you at work, toxic. Somebody gives you feedback on a thing you made, trauma. Somebody sets a deadline, hostile. Somebody doesn't answer a text for four hours, abandonment.
These are words with weight on them. They were built for specific, terrible things that happen to people. And they have been picked up and worn as decoration by people whose worst day on record was a difficult conversation about a spreadsheet.
Nobody publishes the list
There's no list. There's no notice. Nothing arrives in the mail. You are simply expected to have known, in advance, that this week we are not saying that, and the fact that you didn't know is itself the evidence against you.
I am not a psychic. I have never been a psychic. Nobody in my family has ever been a psychic. And yet the standing expectation is that I should have consulted something before opening my mouth about a sandwich.
And it's never anything real
It's the word "crazy." It's "you guys." It's "long time no see." It's telling somebody they look tired, which is a medical observation.
It's asking where somebody is from, which was a normal question for four hundred years and is now a deposition.
The reaction is identical for every one of them. The face. The pause. The look around the room to see who else caught it.
And that look is the whole tell. A person who is actually hurt does not check the room. They're busy. They're looking at the floor, or at you, or at nothing. The other one looks around every single time, because the room was always the point.
Emotional hypochondriacs
That's the diagnosis. People who think being uncomfortable is the same thing as being harmed.
Discomfort is not injury. Those are two different states and one of them is a normal Tuesday.
Every joke needs a risk assessment
You run the tape forward before you open your mouth now. Who's in the room. Who's going to hear about it secondhand. Who is going to decide later, on their own time, in their own kitchen, that they were harmed by a sentence.
And intent got thrown out. Intent is not admissible anymore. What you meant is irrelevant and what somebody chose to feel about it is the entire record.
We stopped teaching people how to deal with the world
That's the actual shift and it happened quietly.
We used to prepare people for a world that was going to be hard, because it is, because it always has been, and because nobody was going to redesign it for them.
Now the most fragile person in the building sets the ceiling for everybody else, and everybody goes along with it, because objecting makes you the villain.
Here's what I actually want to say
Being offended isn't oppression.
Feeling bad isn't an emergency.
Sometimes the problem isn't the world. Sometimes the problem is that you desperately need thicker skin and nobody in your life has ever loved you enough to say it to your face.
Your inability to emotionally survive a sentence is not everybody else's social responsibility.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't this just asking people to care about others?
No.
Aren't you defending being cruel?
No. Cruelty is a real thing and this isn't it. That's the entire point.
What if somebody is actually hurt?
Then they're actually hurt, and you'll be able to tell, because they won't be checking the room.
Isn't discomfort sometimes a sign something's wrong?
Sometimes. Usually it's a sign you're doing something new.
Is this post going to offend somebody?
Yes.
Doesn't that prove your point?
No. That's far too convenient and you should be suspicious of anybody who claims it does.
So what's the fix?
There isn't one. Say the thing. Get reported. We're just spreading the blunt truth.
A note on safety
None of this is advice. Number five will end a friendship if you get the read wrong, and you will get the read wrong sometimes. We sell merch. We are not qualified to referee your family group chat, your workplace, or the argument you have been having with the same person since 2019. Do what you want. You were going to.
