Memetic Essays LIST - Manga Index
Introduction
Previously I wrote about the idea of an attention vampire.
This is somebody who does all they can to just keep talking and keeping other people listening to them. This requires a certain amount of status in the group, or the ability to manipulate the social conventions that prevent others from interrupting them, changing the subject, etc.
There appear to be a lot of behaviors that typify attention vampires, some of which I'll try to list here. They tend to be good examples of immunomemes (blocking memes).
It's Not About "Meanness"
One overarching theme in the behavior of the attention vampire is self-justification.
This is a deeply memetic concept, but it boils down to the idea that the attention vampire "feels" (1) they have the right to hold the floor and have everybody else shut up and listen to them. They feel that they have the right to hold forth and that anybody else speaking is an unwelcome, irrelevant, and inappropriate interruption. This is a self-reënforcing proposition in that the more the vampire feels secure, indeed, is secure, in deploying memes which support their holding the floor against all comers, the more they do it and that in turn supports, de facto, that they are doing the right thing, i.e., that they "deserve" to always be the one speaking.
So even though it seem that the vampire is being brutal and meager and treating everyone else shabbily, they probably do not themselves "believe" it to be so. Even when they brutally shut down other people who try to contribute to the conversation, they are paradoxically "grateful" to those people since they provide the vampire with opportunities to assert their own omnipotence by the very act of shutting them down. If they did not do this periodically, then, as we like to say in memetics, those memes would atrophy, everybody would forget they exist and perhaps be emboldened to try to unseat the vampire.
The make-up and dynamics of the memetic environment clearly tell the vampire that they are doing the right thing, that they in fact have the right to hold forth indefinitely and nobody else has the right to contribute. It is in fact a true and accurate description of the conversational environment. They keep talking, anybody who tries to contribute is seen as an annoyance, the vampire shuts them down (or somebody else does), and the vampire carries on.
It is a steady state, supported by all the actions of all of the participants. I'd like to try to list some of the behaviors.
List of Behaviors
Here are things that attention vampires do to keep the spotlight on themselves. One overarching theme is that of self-justification. The conversational environment contains memes, of which I hope to list and describe some below (2), that make up this environment, mostly deployed by the vampire, but also by the other members of the group, that keep the vampire sucking away at the whole group's attention.
These are pretty much all descriptions of "blocking memes" (immunomemes (3,4)) which allow the vampire (sometimes with the active help of other members of the group) to keep their fangs firmly attached to the collective neck of the group.
Just Letting it Happen:
Not saying anything when the vampire (or another group member) brutally shuts down someone trying to contribute, often by "Standing on Ceremony" for other group members.
Standing on Ceremony:
Members of the group attacking other members when they try to engage the vampire is a big way to get the talking stick back into the vampire's clawed hands. Capitalizing on bullying opportunities such as "don't interrupt" or "let them finish" or "I want to hear what they have to say" are facile ways for members to get their licks in, but also help the vampire. Those who help the vampire garner resonance through immunomemetic deployment, that is, tossing out blocking memes, even when it helps the vampire, since gives a (little) reward to the blocker, in the form of putting out a (blocking) meme which succeeds (by blocking and returning control to the vampire).
Ad Hominem Comments:
From the Latin, "To the person," an attention vampire will often use comments about a person, rather than comments about facts or logic or what has been said, to shut down an opponent. This is related to Personal Attacks, Name-Calling, Appeal to Authority, Virtue Signaling, Ankle-Biting, Posturing/Flexing, and even Coöption/Appropriation.
Personal Attacks:
"You think you're so smart!" or any of a myriad of comments designed to shame the interrupter. Can also be "Tautologies" or "Ad Hominem Comments" or "Focus on Beliefs" or such. Even such things, which can be Tautologies, as "You're always eating apples" which seem to ridicule the person, or make some significant point, but really say nothing and only serve to make the audience pause on the opponent for a moment, and thereby attach some king of vague sense of something being not quite right. Obviously, Name-Calling is a notable form of Personal Attack.
Name-Calling:
This one is pretty obvious, but flies by unchallenged a lot nevertheless. Obviously it's related to Ad Hominem, Personal Attacks, Focus on Beliefs/Opinions, Ankle-Biting, Constructed Reality, and Question-Begging.
Tautologies:
These are statements that are always true, but sound like the speaker is saying something, or making a real judgement. "You're always eating apples!" to belittle or shame somebody sounds like a criticism but it's really a statement like "two plus two equals four" (which also sounds like it might carry some secret hidden subtextual meaning). Tautologies can be used to look like a Personal Attack or an Ad Hominem Comment, and also just to "Run the Clock Out."
Appeal to Authority:
Saying that they themselves have some qualification or experience that makes them always right and any opponent always wrong, or some other entity (of which the vampire may have special knowledge) whose authority supports the vampire's right to talk or undermines other members' position.
Virtue-Signaling:
Related to "Focus on Beliefs/Opinions" as well as "Appeal to Authority" and "Résumé-Reciting". "Always Having to be Right" can be a kind of virtue signaling. The vampire purports to hold a position which is superior, politically, morally, etc., to anybody else, which gives them the high ground from which to attack any other position, even those which only seem to oppose the vampire's position of virtue (which can be used to turn the discussion into whether the other member's position agrees with the vampire's or not).
Résumé-Reciting:
Running through one's own resume and list of accomplishments is a red flag that one is a vampire and trying to bolster Appeal to Authority, Virtue-Signaling, Focus on Beliefs/Opinions, and even Running-Out-The-Clock attacks.
Focus on "Beliefs"/"Opinions" (1):
Kind of a hard one to explain, perhaps, and related to "Question Begging" in some cases. The vampire makes comments about how they or others "think" or "believe" or hold the "opinion" of such and so other thing. This moves the discussion one step further away from the facts or logic, or the ongoing narrative of the conversation, which gives them more power. Any statement may be contradicted or supported, based on what serves the vampire, depending on whether it goes against or supports the "belief" or "opinion." "Beliefs" and "Opinions," except when used as shorthands, are conversation blockers.
Posturing/Flexing:
A vampire may say things like "Well, I lived in San Francisco for ten years," or "I worked in the Film Industry for five years" or "I have a close friend / know lots of people who..." or "I graduated from Awesome Nuclear Quantum Tech University..." before or after they make assertions and use this to dismiss or attack others' statements or attempts to contribute. The Posturing/Flexing may be based on reality, that is, the vampire may actually have specific qualifications, but overstating them is a red flag, and may be related to Appeal to Authority or Ad Hominem, etc.
Coöption/Appropriation:
A vampire may assert that they are a member of a group, say, an oppressed group, to both bolster their own claims to have a right to talk about a certain subject, or to undercut and take over somebody else's trying to speak from that position. To take some jokingly-phrased examples, "As someone who pretends to be a Native American..." or "I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I play one on TV...". This is similar to Posturing/Flexing, Resume-Reciting, Virtue-Signaling, and Appeal to Authority, as well as Ad Hominem.
Question-Begging:
"Why do you think that Idaho Falls is a Pacific Northwestern city?" when the member said no such thing is an example. Any form of question that puts the opponent in a position of having to walk back or backpedal (or be perceived as doing so) is a way of gaining power, and also seeming to hand the talking stick to somebody else, only to see them founder with it and then yank it back, seemingly with full justification.
Empty Questions:
Leading questions, or questions that are weakly rhetorical. These put the other member on the defensive, force them to give an answer that would seem weak or overly lengthy, undermining their position. "Why didn't you just say that?" for example.
Outrageous "Facts":
Pseudo facts like "Thomas Edison invented the nuclear reactor in 1840" or "Japanese Ninjas used cocaine" or all kinds of conspiracy theorist ideas such as "we got Teflon from the extraterrestrials at Area 51" and so on. People who take the bait and try to oppose such facts set themselves up for a lengthy explanation that makes them look bad, weak, and they legitimize the fact in the process.
Constructed Reality:
Similar to and/or related to "Outrageous 'Facts'". Conspiracy theory or fringe religious types of discussions can be in this vein. Can be related to "Question-Begging" in that the vampire makes up a Reality purported to be "correct" and any opponents must first try to counter that Reality. Another Constructed Reality tactic is to build a reality that the opponent supposedly believes in. For example, "You feminists think that all men are sitting around on their couches, watching sports, scratching themselves, belching and farting, while gaggles of half-naked women hang around, bringing them beers and sam'mitches, at least when they're not leaving the man-cave to work three jobs at 70% the pay they deserve to support this man and his lifestyle." Wow. It's a compelling image, and it gives the group a lot of stuff to agree with and talk about. But anybody who describes themself as a "feminist" is automatically handed "Okay, so you agree with all that?" "No." "Oh, do you agree with the sam'mitches bit?" "No." "So you agree with all the rest as being pretty much what you believe?" "No, not as such." "Okay, you're just being difficult! I'm trying to meet you halfway! I'm trying to listen to you, but your position still just doesn't make any sense."
Hyperbole:
"Well, I guess we're all just doomed then!" could be a response to another member's input, or "Oh, well, I guess we'll just never know the answer." Similar function to "Exaggeration."
Exaggeration:
In addition to Hyperbole, the opponent is put in the position of having to make awkward qualifications that bring their own point back into relevancy.
Over-Emphasis:
This can be related to "Running the Clock Out," by the way. The vampire simply has to repeat the same points over and over again. Also an effective arguing/debating technique, since it gives the audience that the vampire's point is somehow correct or more important than the opponent's because more time was spent on it, and they heard it more.
Ankle-Biting:
A.k.a. "Knee-Biting." Jumping on petty mistakes and missteps (even those which didn't actually take place but may be convincingly made to seem to have taken place). These serve to derail the other members, make them seem unreliable, hold them up to ridicule and mockery, and ultimately give the vampire more power and opportunity to talk while bolstering their "authority" (see Virtue-Signaling).
Self-Justification:
In a sense everything the vampire does centers around self-justification. "I'm just trying to be fair," or Standing on Ceremony, that is, rigidly enforcing social norms when it serves them, but skirting them when they can get away with it and they are hard to enforce by others (like letting everybody talk). They have more authority to speak than others, because their résumé or educational background or experience is stronger, which may be stated explicitly, or upheld tacitly by how they speak confidently, or confidently shut down others with impunity, and seem to get away with it.
Running the Clock Out:
"Over-Emphasis" and "Tautologies" can be used to support a Running Out The Clock strategy. This is also a shallow technique for "winning" a debate or argument. The vampire hangs onto the talking stick and just keeps repeating their own talking points, even with little variation, until the time runs out and the audience is left with the impression that the vampire was "right" since their points were repeated more, and little else was said.
Summary & Conclusions
Attention vampires probably employ a set of tactics which take the form of "blocking memes" (immunomemes). Identifying these can help identify attention vampires, which can lead to helping the vampire to recover through targeted therapy (attention therapy and meme replacement therapy) or just be an indication that one needs to distance oneself if there is no willingness to find a cure.
Given the symmetry-breaking relationship between immunomemes and alliance memes, one might be able to see the vampire memes/tactics as one side of a coin, the other side of which might be a functional conversational strategy. This in and of itself might point the way to fixing bad conversations. Maybe these vampire memes can be somehow "flipped" to make them work in non-destructive ways.
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(1) Ideas like "feelings," "beliefs," "opinions," and so forth don't really have weight or meaning in macromemetics, except as shorthands. To say that "so-and-so believes such-and-such" is just a quick way of saying that so-and-so consistently puts out memes that defend and support such-and-such. Also, to say that so-and-so is inconsistent in his believe in such-and-such or "hypocritical" in his belief is also alien to macromemetics
(2) Some of the traits in this list of toxic behaviors are shared by attention vampires.
(3) Immunomemes are so called because they immunize the system against attempts to change it's state, that is, to move it into states where different members (agents) have new opportunities to participate in the activities of the system. So immunomemes, which we could also call "blocking memes," keep things as they are, or bring things back to where they were before somebody tried to shake things up. They resist change, resist new memes coming in.
(4) Interestingly enough, many if not all of the memes I describe as being characteristic of an attention vampire could also be employed to support a conversation, that is, to make a conversation more dynamic and non-attention-vampirey. This may be an example of symmetry-breaking (5) between immunomemes and alliance memes (support or acceptance memes (6)).
(5) I explain elsewhere how in my representational systems, immunomemes and alliance memes, or blocking versus support/acceptance memes, "look like each other." This is a rather strange result. Another important concept, Residual Memetic Debt, which are touched on in the following essays: The Candy Conspiracy, Libidinal Bribes and Memetic Debt, Memetic Loops and Residual Memetic Debt, Garnering Allies, The Grief of Loss, and Contact Memes and the Corporation among others, may shed some light on this difference. Probably some more research required here. Immunomemes leave the deployer saddled with residual memetic debt (this is bad) while alliance memes allow for resonance (this is good) and no memetic debt left over.
(6) Alliance memes, or memes that support or accept what one member has done, leading to its success where without the help it would end in failure, are like the opposite of blocking memes or immunomemes.
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