riffs & rants blog

Sharks Don’t Jump

Don’t confuse outrage with jealousy.

Outrage is just a virulent disgust. There’s no secret motive. No epic struggle. No myth. No mystery.

Jealousy presumes someone’s envious. Covetous. And it is also the height of narcissistic egotistical arrogance. On both sides. Poachers, plagiarists, pretenders all claim that people who call them out and/or question them are jealous, envious, covetous.

Jumping the Shark

Such a stance deflects attention from their behavior and distracts from truth, further flavoring their poison koolaid flavored bullshit. It helps them continue to manipulate by setting up a personal vendetta-based vindictive reasoning for such strong opposition to them. This sets them up as a rare, unfairly maligned individual and also casts them as a messiah/martyr. At once mythical and sympathetic. Nearly mystical. And it distracts people from the reality at the heart of outrage: a clear, unvarnished contempt for their insidious actual intent, and their incredibly bad behavior.

When things are cast this way, the focus gets swung to the arguer, and people unfortunately get distracted from the actual the argument. It seems folks would rather believe an individual’s envy is at issue rather than the consider the merits of an argument against a charismatic offender.

Point of clarification. We live modest lives filled with love. Our personal choices, not a value judgement on the rest of humanity. We enjoy the successes of our business on merit, not in envy nor with malice.

So no, we’re not jealous.

We’re utterly outraged.

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