Yes! Coal for Christmas! Burns hot and long and fills the air with CO2 to green-ify the planet. More plants! Higher yielding farms! Increase species diversity!
OK, OK, still gotta solve that pesky fly-ash issue. Toxic with heave metals. I know!! Mix it with the grasshopper meal the progressives are gushing over. Tell them it has a high mineral content.
“OK, OK, still gotta solve that pesky fly-ash issue. Toxic with heave metals.”
Soluble mercury compounds are good for you! The little bit of sulpher in there makes sulphuric acid, and that leaches the tasty mercury out of the fly ash… 🙂
A few years back some company started marketing “Elf on a Shelf”. They get put up high and watch the kids all day and then go back every night to tell Santa who was bad or good. Snitch elves. I am staying out of the whole marketing gimmick.
My great grand daughter(almost 5) knows it is a toy, but she is going along with it. So the other day a big glass of water got spilled and guess who did it? The snitch elf, of course. Now the kid is in control, her parents won’t tell her the truth that it is only a toy, and since the elf told the child she did it, mom has to go along with it.
Don’t you love lying to the kids? And having them outsmart their parents?
We did the Santa thing, but our kids did not really believe it, nor did I expect them to, just go along with it for the other kids that might
A deeper psychological exploration of what you’re discussing would greatly benefit the 2A movement and the Conservative movement more broadly.
But that would take work, actually work, which is the one thing Conservatives never put in on this front.
Effortless victory is never effortless. It merely appears that way to the dimwitted, which is great when you’ve been manufacturing them as the bulk of the population for ~70 years.
Which sells everything from widgets to mortgages to full-blown totalitarianism. But don’t go telling people that, they’ll get angry at you for pointing out uncomfortable truths.
(Not that I disagree in any way with what you espoused, mind you… 🙂 )
How is this different from any other day?
I point out uncomfortable realities and people continue to ignore them because our species prefers to adapt to problems rather than prevent them. Sounds like a day that ends in “y”.
Would be interested in exploring the psychology more, not merely for 2A/conservative purposes, but because it sounds interesting. Can you take a break from insulting people and hold forth on the subject?
“Can you take a break from insulting people and hold forth on the subject?”
Oh, you’ll love this. LOL.
In a word, “No”. But not because I enjoy being an asshole.
Realistically, I tried that for years. It didn’t work very well. And you, Crimson, already know that this is true and why it’s true, at least you know it on some level because you went out and got Man’s Search for Meaning which approaches the topic obliquely.
Some people need a smack upside the head to get their attention, apparently. People here can’t even learn, over a goddamn decade I’ll point out, to stop feeding the trolls for a day. That doesn’t “annoy” me, it provides evidence that what I’m saying is true.
See, I put a slightly trollish edge on a comment and all of a sudden there’s a notable uptick of engagement. Now, I’m not super good at that because I don’t like doing it. But I can’t argue with what works because I track this. I mean, there’s a reason I can tell you that a troll and replies specifically to that troll generated 47.6% of all comments on a TTAG story, because I’m watching it and paying attention.
A huge percentage of people here (and everywhere) can’t deal with a moderately complex topic, because they find it boring, unless you make them emotional enough to engage with it. Then they go fuckin’ nuts and progress is actually made. Fire up that amygdala with a touch of anger or fear and watch them go to work. Goddamn fascinating. Touchy, sure. But damned effective. A little ham-handed when I do it since I don’t have decades of clinical research experience and billions of dollars here, so I’m not as good at is as an advertising company but that doesn’t mean I’m not making progress either. I’m also not a natural at shit-stirring as some people are.
Like the Left’s use of these tactics, this is about percentages. The high percentage move is to be a bit of a dick. I find that unfortunate but it is what it is. Starting out from behind means you’re going to have some rough patches. It took awhile to match the ME-109 and at least I’m not killing test pilots. Well, not yet at least.
So, it turns out, explaining emotional manipulation and how it’s being used against the 2A community (and Conservatives more generally) requires using those same manipulation tactics a bit to get a foot in the door to start passing information that helps those people combat the Left because the Right ain’t as factz over feelz as they claim to be (because that’s literally impossible with human brain structure) and they’re emotionally resistant to admitting this because of that prison/castle thing I’m so wont to talk about.
So, you need something that jump starts them to overcome that resistance. A touch of anger will do that and in this format it’s easier to generate than fear.
Example: Look at our number one resident troll on TTAG. That’s high percentage trolling for this environment. I mean, damned good. Engagement out the ass. He copy+pastes a bunch of shit like Vlad used to, adds some insults and just generally spouts nothing of actual value, and what happens? Often he gets 15 replies, sometimes dozens of replies, many of them LONG, well thought out and full of facts and shit.
And that’s sad since I’ll see a comment from someone else that actually deserves engagement and it gets little to none because so many regulars are busy playing intellectual whack-a-mole with some jerkoff they all hate.
What a waste, huh? All that pro-freedom brainpower, and the hours spent acquiring all that knowledge, wasted on countering some idiot troll. That energy could have been used studying people far more dangerous than a TTAG troll, realizing that the troll and Shannon Watts have a lot in common and then figuring out how to take those facts and spread them around to people who might listen rather than trying to shove them down the throat of someone who just wants to shitstir. Would you rather “beat” an internet troll or wreck Shannon Watts? Well, if you waste time with the former, the chances you defeat the latter get a lot smaller.
This comment section might hate that guy (our troll), but they LOVE to hate him. Which, by the by, is why he keeps doing that shit. It’s no different than atheists showing up on a Christian message board just to sow chaos. There’s no point to it beyond self-gratification for the troll (assuming it’s a person and not a bot).
So, apparently, the best way to get the tiger’s attention is the occasional kick in the balls. Even when the tiger is rather smart, it’s still got a brain that functions basically like a dumb tiger.
The truth here is that there’s a reason Conservatives don’t do this kind of “work”. It’s not something that comes naturally to them and it’s usually developed by people that Conservatives don’t engage with much IRL. That’s part of the Left’s secret. They operate more from the shadows than they’d like to admit. Studying them you’ll find this is true going back to at least the Commies infiltrating the labor movement in Chicago in the 1880’s.
There is however, a second reason. When this is pointed out to people, how and why this kind of overt manipulation works, Conservatives tend to be repulsed by the idea because they don’t tend to desire power over others (there’s your snitch elf connection if you poke around a bit with an eye towards what was sold by the company that made the elf). Therefore they recoil at the idea of this sort of system that controls people’s minds without those people’s knowledge.
But this system is just a box of tools, a toolbox IOW. You can use a toolbox to build farm machinery or to build tanks to oppress the people you don’t like. Tools are not moral, they’re just objects (or ideas in this case).
But knowing how this stuff works makes you very resistant to the system and you can spread that resistance to others by showing them how it works. Things that currently lurk in the background and slowly build effect can be neutralized if you see them, move them to the foreground, acknowledge them and then consciously ignore them. Part of how these things function is that they’re consciously ignored yet subconsciously uptaken.
You can take whole classes college classes on subconscious manipulation in movies back in the day. The provable results are mindblowing. Pepsi used to do this back in the day and Pepsi, not Coke, sales spiked mid-film right after the manipulation was deployed. Film schools teach this because it works.
I mean, consider Balenciaga for a moment. They have this ad that causes a stir, right but it turns out that people going back over their advertising find they’ve been doing this for years. How did kiddie bondage shit not get noticed when it was going on for years? Because this manipulation works, that’s how.
Back to trying to educate people about this; if you do that right then the manipulation system loses a lot of the power it currently has. Sure, it’s still dangerous to some degree but so is the gas burner on a stove. But we’ve learned how to control that burner and educate people not to be stupid with it, right? Accidents may happen but it’s not like gas stoves start raging fires 60% of the time they’re used.
The risk is there but it’s managed. That’s my goal with this. You can’t get rid of the risk entirely but you can mitigate a lot of it by showing people how this works. If everyone knows how it works, it loses 95% of its effect and now it’s easy to deal with. When only mal-intentioned actors know how it works they can get away with a hell of a lot. And they do.
I think we can change that. I think, because there’s ample evidence for it. 1->2->4->8… ideas spread like bacteria grow. And I suspect, based on Meerloo’s work, that resistance spreads the same way. Like a plasmid, if you want to roll with the bacteria analogy.
@Crimson
Modded. I’m sure my longer reply will be along tomorrow. (“I’ve been assured of this” LOL!)
For now, I’d simply say that if you can’t deal with me how are you going to deal with people who actually hate you and want to harm you? People who are willing to weaponize anything they can use to their advantage?
I generally stay away from personal stories but I’ll reiterate one I’ve told before, a nice small package that elucidates the point.
When I did safety briefings on a dive boat as a safety diver the entire presentation, which was essentially a script I developed, was done in what you might call “The Queen’s” (then, “The King’s” now), except for one part where I said “Remember, panic fucking kills”.
Now, why would I toss in that filthy language when I specifically avoided it everywhere else and kept things extremely professional?
Because the biggest takeaway from what I was talking about is that panic kills and the sharp departure from what these people knew as my “normal” mode of speech drew attention to those two words that bookended the shocking word, and those were the two words which I most wanted people to pay attention to. That made the three words, that dirty little phrase, extremely memorable. Which is what I wanted because panicking people were likely to kill themselves and me too because the person coming to get you in an emergency was me, very likely ONLY me.
And in case you’re wondering, yes I asked people later on what they remembered of the safety briefing. That’s how I developed the script. Hours later after half a day of diving and people remembered two words first and foremost. Sure, most remembered some other stuff but nearly everyone spit back one thing FIRST, those two words.
That’s the kind of manipulation I’m discussing here and it can be used for good or for ill. 95% of people are entirely ignorant of this and it’s not being used to help them the way I did it. It’s being used to screw them. That needs to stop.
Most people who know how this works are not as nice as I am. They don’t want you to know how this works. They want you ignorant so they can take advantage of you. For whatever reason, that seems impolite to me and I’d like nothing more than to make them choke on it.
Libruls have all those cruelty to children laws these days. You cannot allow your children outside, or you are a negligent parent. No fresh air and sunshine for the little arse biters, and certainly no dogs or kennels!
This meme leads to a bunch of questions like who plays the part of Santa? What is this metaphorical coal? How is it delivered? Would the “naughty children” even perceive it to be coal? If they did recognize it to be coal would they see it as a punishment?
And that’s before you even get into the utility of all of this.
Weird how memes function. Stranger still is how people who instinctively place great meaning in iconography are exactly the ones to miss this too. Almost as if the type to see the meaning in imagery are just the type to be manipulated by it.
10g of anthracite under a few million pounds of pressure gently roasted by the a few billion years of radioactivity decay heat for millions oy years yields a few grams of an eye-watering expensive crystalline carbon matter that vapid women adore, and industrialists require for precise grinding and polishing needs.
(But that obviously wasn’t what you were getting at, anyways, was it?)
EDIT – Way back then, coal was a metaphor for the hard manual labor of lugging it to the furnace every morning in the family home. Getting a lump of in their stocking was a reminder that they were lowest-ranking member of the family…
actually, diamonds do not form from coal (anthracite).
Its a common misconception that diamonds are formed from coal under tremendous heat and pressure. Coal is a sedimentary rock, its formed from plant material (as the carbon source) and is rarely buried to depths greater than two miles which is way too shallow for the heat and pressures needed to form diamonds.
In reality, diamonds are formed in igneous rocks called Kimberlites and Lamproites. It does need high pressures and heat to form diamonds. Diamonds are only formed in limited areas on the Earth. Some type form 90 miles or more below the surface where temperatures are at least 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Some types of diamonds form at a more shallow depth of 50 miles at a lesser but still high pressure and temperature.
Coal comes from plants, and didn’t form on earth until 3 – 4 million years ago. Natural diamonds formed about 450 million years ago way before coal even existed. The oldest land plants are younger than any natural diamond, so aside from the depth for coal being too shallow for the pressures and temperatures needed to form diamonds the timing doesn’t work out either for natural diamonds to have been formed from coal.
Graphite can be converted to diamond under the right conditions. By applying an HPHT method (extremely high pressure and high temperature) graphite can be converted into diamond. It’s been used but isn’t used much any more. You can also do it by using high explosives to blow up a block of graphite, you get very tiny diamonds out of it almost dust like.
No one really knows where the thing came from of Santa delivering a lump of coal to the bad boys and girls. There have been different origin stories, for example;
One is that it would signify a bad child being a lower ranking member of the family in consideration for nice things/treatment and as a punishment having to lug coal to the furnace of a home back when coal was a primary source of heating fuel. This arose in the late 18th into the 19th century.
Another one is in Austrian folklore, where ‘Father Christmas’ would give presents to good kids, while bad unrepentant kids would face punishment from a demon which would be in the form of beatings and being kidnapped and eaten and the lump of coal would be a warning to straighten up or a demon from hell would show up.
There is one from Italy. The tradition of La Befana, an old woman (some versions say its a witch) who delivered gifts. The basic origin story goes, when Jesus was born, La Befana saw a bright star in the sky and gathered some gifts to give to the baby Jesus, but she couldn’t find the stable. So each year she roams the land on Epiphany Eve (Christmans Eve) looking for Jesus and not finding him she leaves the presents for good children and coal, onion or garlic for bad ones (some versions say its to show her disappointment). Thus, Befana visited homes of children on Christmas Eve delivering presents to good kids but for the bad kids she would leave coal, onion or garlic.
The one that gave rise to our more modern day version arose after the Reformation when St. Nicholas was largely forgotten in Protestant Europe. But his memory was kept alive in Holland as Sinterklaas where St. Nicholas, a kindly older man, was said to arrive on horseback on his feast day, dressed in a bishop’s red robe and mitre and accompanied by Black Peter to help him distribute sweets and presents to good children or lumps of coal, potatoes, or switches from Black Peter to bad ones as a sign that St. Nicholas was disappointed in them and a warning to be nice. The Dutch bought the tradition to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in the American colonies, where St. Nicholas was transformed into Santa Claus by the English speaking majority common usage, the legend of a kindly old man was united with old Nordic folktales of a magician who punished naughty children and rewarded good children with presents. The resulting image of Santa Claus in the United States came forth more established in the 19th century, and he became the symbol of a gift-giving festival of Christmas in the United States. In Britain he was largely replaced with ‘Father Christmas’. The lumps of coal from Black Peter remained.
What ever the origin of the lump of coal thing for bad kids, the tradition story still remains.
Years ago my son had been naughty through the year. I put a piece of BBQ charcoal in a gift wrapped box. On Christmas day his mum said Santa knows you’ve been naughty. That’s why you have a piece of coal instead of a present.
Years later he thanked me because it pulled him back into line.
Send me the lumps of coal. Save me the work of digging it out of the coal seam on the back of my property and breaking it up for the forge.
As the youngest of 6 kids I learned Santa was a fairy tale by the time I was 4. If I see reindeer on the roof, there might be venison on the grill for New Years.
Damn, you have a coal seam on your property? Lucky bastard! You will be able to heat your home when the balloon goes up, and the grid goes down for good… 🙂
Where I lived in WV it was fairly common for folks to have coal seams on their land. Quite a few had coal rated stoves, very important if you don’t want to burn your house down. Sweat and time provided heating and cooking for the families.
In my youth I saw many people walking the rail road lines with baskets and bags. Coal trains would ‘shed’ coal along their lines and folks would pick it up. Technically illegal to be doing but folks did it anyway.
More impressive is how many different daughters throats he comes down.
That’s not Viagra, that’s some sort of dark, dark magic.
I resemble Santa. Beard. Belly. Glasses. I go for walks when the weather permits. This time of year I get gift wishes from total strangers. A lot of folks this year are wishing for cars.
A lady just asked me Friday. I asked her how could I bring a Toyota down the chimney. It was tough enough getting my fat ass down there. But give me your address and I’ll try.
Yes! Coal for Christmas! Burns hot and long and fills the air with CO2 to green-ify the planet. More plants! Higher yielding farms! Increase species diversity!
OK, OK, still gotta solve that pesky fly-ash issue. Toxic with heave metals. I know!! Mix it with the grasshopper meal the progressives are gushing over. Tell them it has a high mineral content.
“OK, OK, still gotta solve that pesky fly-ash issue. Toxic with heave metals.”
Soluble mercury compounds are good for you! The little bit of sulpher in there makes sulphuric acid, and that leaches the tasty mercury out of the fly ash… 🙂
Crush that coal and you are one third of the way to black powder. Thanks Santa!
What do you call a disruptive 8-year-old who does not believe in Santa?
…
…
…
…
…
A rebel without a Claus.
You are welcome. 🤠
Ba-dump-rump-crash!
is this from a template?
“What do you call a disruptive eight year old that doesn’t believe in Santa?” in my house? Disappointed.
A few years back some company started marketing “Elf on a Shelf”. They get put up high and watch the kids all day and then go back every night to tell Santa who was bad or good. Snitch elves. I am staying out of the whole marketing gimmick.
My great grand daughter(almost 5) knows it is a toy, but she is going along with it. So the other day a big glass of water got spilled and guess who did it? The snitch elf, of course. Now the kid is in control, her parents won’t tell her the truth that it is only a toy, and since the elf told the child she did it, mom has to go along with it.
Don’t you love lying to the kids? And having them outsmart their parents?
We did the Santa thing, but our kids did not really believe it, nor did I expect them to, just go along with it for the other kids that might
A deeper psychological exploration of what you’re discussing would greatly benefit the 2A movement and the Conservative movement more broadly.
But that would take work, actually work, which is the one thing Conservatives never put in on this front.
Effortless victory is never effortless. It merely appears that way to the dimwitted, which is great when you’ve been manufacturing them as the bulk of the population for ~70 years.
Which sells everything from widgets to mortgages to full-blown totalitarianism. But don’t go telling people that, they’ll get angry at you for pointing out uncomfortable truths.
So, who crapped on your Corn Flakes today?
(Not that I disagree in any way with what you espoused, mind you… 🙂 )
How is this different from any other day?
I point out uncomfortable realities and people continue to ignore them because our species prefers to adapt to problems rather than prevent them. Sounds like a day that ends in “y”.
Would be interested in exploring the psychology more, not merely for 2A/conservative purposes, but because it sounds interesting. Can you take a break from insulting people and hold forth on the subject?
“Can you take a break from insulting people and hold forth on the subject?”
Oh, you’ll love this. LOL.
In a word, “No”. But not because I enjoy being an asshole.
Realistically, I tried that for years. It didn’t work very well. And you, Crimson, already know that this is true and why it’s true, at least you know it on some level because you went out and got Man’s Search for Meaning which approaches the topic obliquely.
Some people need a smack upside the head to get their attention, apparently. People here can’t even learn, over a goddamn decade I’ll point out, to stop feeding the trolls for a day. That doesn’t “annoy” me, it provides evidence that what I’m saying is true.
See, I put a slightly trollish edge on a comment and all of a sudden there’s a notable uptick of engagement. Now, I’m not super good at that because I don’t like doing it. But I can’t argue with what works because I track this. I mean, there’s a reason I can tell you that a troll and replies specifically to that troll generated 47.6% of all comments on a TTAG story, because I’m watching it and paying attention.
A huge percentage of people here (and everywhere) can’t deal with a moderately complex topic, because they find it boring, unless you make them emotional enough to engage with it. Then they go fuckin’ nuts and progress is actually made. Fire up that amygdala with a touch of anger or fear and watch them go to work. Goddamn fascinating. Touchy, sure. But damned effective. A little ham-handed when I do it since I don’t have decades of clinical research experience and billions of dollars here, so I’m not as good at is as an advertising company but that doesn’t mean I’m not making progress either. I’m also not a natural at shit-stirring as some people are.
Like the Left’s use of these tactics, this is about percentages. The high percentage move is to be a bit of a dick. I find that unfortunate but it is what it is. Starting out from behind means you’re going to have some rough patches. It took awhile to match the ME-109 and at least I’m not killing test pilots. Well, not yet at least.
So, it turns out, explaining emotional manipulation and how it’s being used against the 2A community (and Conservatives more generally) requires using those same manipulation tactics a bit to get a foot in the door to start passing information that helps those people combat the Left because the Right ain’t as factz over feelz as they claim to be (because that’s literally impossible with human brain structure) and they’re emotionally resistant to admitting this because of that prison/castle thing I’m so wont to talk about.
So, you need something that jump starts them to overcome that resistance. A touch of anger will do that and in this format it’s easier to generate than fear.
Example: Look at our number one resident troll on TTAG. That’s high percentage trolling for this environment. I mean, damned good. Engagement out the ass. He copy+pastes a bunch of shit like Vlad used to, adds some insults and just generally spouts nothing of actual value, and what happens? Often he gets 15 replies, sometimes dozens of replies, many of them LONG, well thought out and full of facts and shit.
And that’s sad since I’ll see a comment from someone else that actually deserves engagement and it gets little to none because so many regulars are busy playing intellectual whack-a-mole with some jerkoff they all hate.
What a waste, huh? All that pro-freedom brainpower, and the hours spent acquiring all that knowledge, wasted on countering some idiot troll. That energy could have been used studying people far more dangerous than a TTAG troll, realizing that the troll and Shannon Watts have a lot in common and then figuring out how to take those facts and spread them around to people who might listen rather than trying to shove them down the throat of someone who just wants to shitstir. Would you rather “beat” an internet troll or wreck Shannon Watts? Well, if you waste time with the former, the chances you defeat the latter get a lot smaller.
This comment section might hate that guy (our troll), but they LOVE to hate him. Which, by the by, is why he keeps doing that shit. It’s no different than atheists showing up on a Christian message board just to sow chaos. There’s no point to it beyond self-gratification for the troll (assuming it’s a person and not a bot).
So, apparently, the best way to get the tiger’s attention is the occasional kick in the balls. Even when the tiger is rather smart, it’s still got a brain that functions basically like a dumb tiger.
The truth here is that there’s a reason Conservatives don’t do this kind of “work”. It’s not something that comes naturally to them and it’s usually developed by people that Conservatives don’t engage with much IRL. That’s part of the Left’s secret. They operate more from the shadows than they’d like to admit. Studying them you’ll find this is true going back to at least the Commies infiltrating the labor movement in Chicago in the 1880’s.
There is however, a second reason. When this is pointed out to people, how and why this kind of overt manipulation works, Conservatives tend to be repulsed by the idea because they don’t tend to desire power over others (there’s your snitch elf connection if you poke around a bit with an eye towards what was sold by the company that made the elf). Therefore they recoil at the idea of this sort of system that controls people’s minds without those people’s knowledge.
But this system is just a box of tools, a toolbox IOW. You can use a toolbox to build farm machinery or to build tanks to oppress the people you don’t like. Tools are not moral, they’re just objects (or ideas in this case).
But knowing how this stuff works makes you very resistant to the system and you can spread that resistance to others by showing them how it works. Things that currently lurk in the background and slowly build effect can be neutralized if you see them, move them to the foreground, acknowledge them and then consciously ignore them. Part of how these things function is that they’re consciously ignored yet subconsciously uptaken.
You can take whole classes college classes on subconscious manipulation in movies back in the day. The provable results are mindblowing. Pepsi used to do this back in the day and Pepsi, not Coke, sales spiked mid-film right after the manipulation was deployed. Film schools teach this because it works.
I mean, consider Balenciaga for a moment. They have this ad that causes a stir, right but it turns out that people going back over their advertising find they’ve been doing this for years. How did kiddie bondage shit not get noticed when it was going on for years? Because this manipulation works, that’s how.
Back to trying to educate people about this; if you do that right then the manipulation system loses a lot of the power it currently has. Sure, it’s still dangerous to some degree but so is the gas burner on a stove. But we’ve learned how to control that burner and educate people not to be stupid with it, right? Accidents may happen but it’s not like gas stoves start raging fires 60% of the time they’re used.
The risk is there but it’s managed. That’s my goal with this. You can’t get rid of the risk entirely but you can mitigate a lot of it by showing people how this works. If everyone knows how it works, it loses 95% of its effect and now it’s easy to deal with. When only mal-intentioned actors know how it works they can get away with a hell of a lot. And they do.
I think we can change that. I think, because there’s ample evidence for it. 1->2->4->8… ideas spread like bacteria grow. And I suspect, based on Meerloo’s work, that resistance spreads the same way. Like a plasmid, if you want to roll with the bacteria analogy.
@Crimson
Modded. I’m sure my longer reply will be along tomorrow. (“I’ve been assured of this” LOL!)
For now, I’d simply say that if you can’t deal with me how are you going to deal with people who actually hate you and want to harm you? People who are willing to weaponize anything they can use to their advantage?
I generally stay away from personal stories but I’ll reiterate one I’ve told before, a nice small package that elucidates the point.
When I did safety briefings on a dive boat as a safety diver the entire presentation, which was essentially a script I developed, was done in what you might call “The Queen’s” (then, “The King’s” now), except for one part where I said “Remember, panic fucking kills”.
Now, why would I toss in that filthy language when I specifically avoided it everywhere else and kept things extremely professional?
Because the biggest takeaway from what I was talking about is that panic kills and the sharp departure from what these people knew as my “normal” mode of speech drew attention to those two words that bookended the shocking word, and those were the two words which I most wanted people to pay attention to. That made the three words, that dirty little phrase, extremely memorable. Which is what I wanted because panicking people were likely to kill themselves and me too because the person coming to get you in an emergency was me, very likely ONLY me.
And in case you’re wondering, yes I asked people later on what they remembered of the safety briefing. That’s how I developed the script. Hours later after half a day of diving and people remembered two words first and foremost. Sure, most remembered some other stuff but nearly everyone spit back one thing FIRST, those two words.
That’s the kind of manipulation I’m discussing here and it can be used for good or for ill. 95% of people are entirely ignorant of this and it’s not being used to help them the way I did it. It’s being used to screw them. That needs to stop.
Most people who know how this works are not as nice as I am. They don’t want you to know how this works. They want you ignorant so they can take advantage of you. For whatever reason, that seems impolite to me and I’d like nothing more than to make them choke on it.
My aren’t you so special?
Why is a disuptive kid even IN your house? Banish him to the dog kennel till he decides life is better when you behave.
Libruls have all those cruelty to children laws these days. You cannot allow your children outside, or you are a negligent parent. No fresh air and sunshine for the little arse biters, and certainly no dogs or kennels!
The little brat will get ridden hard by the pony.
It’s OK, Santa, I still believe in you.
Santa’s da man!!
This meme leads to a bunch of questions like who plays the part of Santa? What is this metaphorical coal? How is it delivered? Would the “naughty children” even perceive it to be coal? If they did recognize it to be coal would they see it as a punishment?
And that’s before you even get into the utility of all of this.
Weird how memes function. Stranger still is how people who instinctively place great meaning in iconography are exactly the ones to miss this too. Almost as if the type to see the meaning in imagery are just the type to be manipulated by it.
“What is this metaphorical coal?”
Potential is one way to look at it.
10g of anthracite under a few million pounds of pressure gently roasted by the a few billion years of radioactivity decay heat for millions oy years yields a few grams of an eye-watering expensive crystalline carbon matter that vapid women adore, and industrialists require for precise grinding and polishing needs.
(But that obviously wasn’t what you were getting at, anyways, was it?)
EDIT – Way back then, coal was a metaphor for the hard manual labor of lugging it to the furnace every morning in the family home. Getting a lump of in their stocking was a reminder that they were lowest-ranking member of the family…
actually, diamonds do not form from coal (anthracite).
Its a common misconception that diamonds are formed from coal under tremendous heat and pressure. Coal is a sedimentary rock, its formed from plant material (as the carbon source) and is rarely buried to depths greater than two miles which is way too shallow for the heat and pressures needed to form diamonds.
In reality, diamonds are formed in igneous rocks called Kimberlites and Lamproites. It does need high pressures and heat to form diamonds. Diamonds are only formed in limited areas on the Earth. Some type form 90 miles or more below the surface where temperatures are at least 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Some types of diamonds form at a more shallow depth of 50 miles at a lesser but still high pressure and temperature.
Coal comes from plants, and didn’t form on earth until 3 – 4 million years ago. Natural diamonds formed about 450 million years ago way before coal even existed. The oldest land plants are younger than any natural diamond, so aside from the depth for coal being too shallow for the pressures and temperatures needed to form diamonds the timing doesn’t work out either for natural diamonds to have been formed from coal.
Graphite can be converted to diamond under the right conditions. By applying an HPHT method (extremely high pressure and high temperature) graphite can be converted into diamond. It’s been used but isn’t used much any more. You can also do it by using high explosives to blow up a block of graphite, you get very tiny diamonds out of it almost dust like.
No one really knows where the thing came from of Santa delivering a lump of coal to the bad boys and girls. There have been different origin stories, for example;
One is that it would signify a bad child being a lower ranking member of the family in consideration for nice things/treatment and as a punishment having to lug coal to the furnace of a home back when coal was a primary source of heating fuel. This arose in the late 18th into the 19th century.
Another one is in Austrian folklore, where ‘Father Christmas’ would give presents to good kids, while bad unrepentant kids would face punishment from a demon which would be in the form of beatings and being kidnapped and eaten and the lump of coal would be a warning to straighten up or a demon from hell would show up.
There is one from Italy. The tradition of La Befana, an old woman (some versions say its a witch) who delivered gifts. The basic origin story goes, when Jesus was born, La Befana saw a bright star in the sky and gathered some gifts to give to the baby Jesus, but she couldn’t find the stable. So each year she roams the land on Epiphany Eve (Christmans Eve) looking for Jesus and not finding him she leaves the presents for good children and coal, onion or garlic for bad ones (some versions say its to show her disappointment). Thus, Befana visited homes of children on Christmas Eve delivering presents to good kids but for the bad kids she would leave coal, onion or garlic.
The one that gave rise to our more modern day version arose after the Reformation when St. Nicholas was largely forgotten in Protestant Europe. But his memory was kept alive in Holland as Sinterklaas where St. Nicholas, a kindly older man, was said to arrive on horseback on his feast day, dressed in a bishop’s red robe and mitre and accompanied by Black Peter to help him distribute sweets and presents to good children or lumps of coal, potatoes, or switches from Black Peter to bad ones as a sign that St. Nicholas was disappointed in them and a warning to be nice. The Dutch bought the tradition to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in the American colonies, where St. Nicholas was transformed into Santa Claus by the English speaking majority common usage, the legend of a kindly old man was united with old Nordic folktales of a magician who punished naughty children and rewarded good children with presents. The resulting image of Santa Claus in the United States came forth more established in the 19th century, and he became the symbol of a gift-giving festival of Christmas in the United States. In Britain he was largely replaced with ‘Father Christmas’. The lumps of coal from Black Peter remained.
What ever the origin of the lump of coal thing for bad kids, the tradition story still remains.
Years ago my son had been naughty through the year. I put a piece of BBQ charcoal in a gift wrapped box. On Christmas day his mum said Santa knows you’ve been naughty. That’s why you have a piece of coal instead of a present.
Years later he thanked me because it pulled him back into line.
Send me the lumps of coal. Save me the work of digging it out of the coal seam on the back of my property and breaking it up for the forge.
As the youngest of 6 kids I learned Santa was a fairy tale by the time I was 4. If I see reindeer on the roof, there might be venison on the grill for New Years.
Damn, you have a coal seam on your property? Lucky bastard! You will be able to heat your home when the balloon goes up, and the grid goes down for good… 🙂
Where I lived in WV it was fairly common for folks to have coal seams on their land. Quite a few had coal rated stoves, very important if you don’t want to burn your house down. Sweat and time provided heating and cooking for the families.
In my youth I saw many people walking the rail road lines with baskets and bags. Coal trains would ‘shed’ coal along their lines and folks would pick it up. Technically illegal to be doing but folks did it anyway.
What Santa wont do for a lap dance.
Joe?
If Santa gets a BJ, she can find jewelry in her stocking… 🙂
The old joke is that the reason Santa’s so jolly is because he knows where all the naughty girls live.
*snicker*… 🙂
… still amazed how many times the ole geezer comes down the chimney in one night !
More impressive is how many different daughters throats he comes down.
That’s not Viagra, that’s some sort of dark, dark magic.
I resemble Santa. Beard. Belly. Glasses. I go for walks when the weather permits. This time of year I get gift wishes from total strangers. A lot of folks this year are wishing for cars.
A lady just asked me Friday. I asked her how could I bring a Toyota down the chimney. It was tough enough getting my fat ass down there. But give me your address and I’ll try.