How to Give Big Egos a Taste of Their Own Medicine

We all have a repertoire of communication styles, a rhetorical toolkit from which we can pick the right tool for whatever communication job we face. Some rhetorical tools are intended for kindness, sympathy, generosity, acceptance, serenity, charity. Those tools come naturally to many people.

Some say those soft tools are the only tools we need. If everyone simply limited their communications to niceness, we could live in peace and harmony.

It’s possible to get through life with just those tools. It’s just unlikely. People who only have those tools are easily exploited by what I call god-playing total jerks (GPTJs), who have harder, sharper tools. Chances are, you’re going to need sharper, harder tools in your toolkit for those situations in which people are taking advantage of you. You’ll need sharp-tongued communication skills that you may not yet have or feel comfortable using.

If that’s you, it’s time to get over that discomfort. Life is a give-and-take in tight, dense crowds, people tucking in their elbows to make room for others but also GPTJs jutting their elbows to take as much room as they can get away with.

There are times when you’re going to need to jut your rhetorical elbows to get people to back off. If all you’ve got is soft tools, you’ve got no elbows to jut, or you’ll jut in devious ways. There are polite GPTJs. You might know some—people who pose as givers when they’re really takers.

There will be times when you need a sharp tongue in your communications repertoire.

You may think that you don’t have it in you, but maybe it’s just that you haven’t cultivated one, perhaps because you think it’s immoral. But it’s immoral to let people walk all over people. It’s your civic duty to get GTPJs to show some humility.

People say, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” That’s not quite right. It’s more like, “An I for an I leaves the whole world blind.” If it’s just your big ego against rival big egos, that’s a problem. Blind, god-playing rivals going at each other breeds blindness.

Still, there will be times when you have to give big egos a taste of their own medicine on behalf of humanity. It’s our civic duty to cultivate a sharp tongue and lash it at GPTJs, biting it short of becoming GPTJs ourselves.

We have to be very selective about where we employ our sharp tongue. You also have to watch out for your safety. There are plenty of situations in which passive-aggressiveness is your only option.

Passive aggressiveness has a bad reputation because it’s easily exploited. We do not begrudge a slave for getting back at their master in devious, passive-aggressive ways. Indeed, when we admire passive-aggressiveness, we call it passive resistance.

But people use passive-aggressiveness theatrically, playing the victim when they’re not, acting like they can’t speak their mind when they really can. That’s a problem with only having soft tools in your toolkit. You’ll reach for victim-playing, theatrical passive-aggressiveness.

I have made a decades-long practice of trying to taunt and humbly humble GPTJs. I have the temperament for it. Here are some suggestions for adding it to your repertoire. Perhaps by now, you’ve ready, having been run over by too many GPTJs.

Focus.

The problem with GPTJs is that they’re GPTJs. You may disagree with them about morals and values, but that’s just your opinion against theirs, and anyway, they don’t really have opinions. They’ll say anything to feel heroic, or like they’re gods—eternally right, righteous, and mighty. Focus on that, and they’ll prove it’s all they’ve got. They’re one-trick ponies. Their every response will prove your accusation correct.

Keep your doubts to yourself, but keep them.

The goal is to give them a humble humbling. Still, you don’t have to demonstrate your humility to them. By the time you’re ready to give them a tongue-lashing, they’ve already proven their indulgence in self-deifying fake objectivity. All they do is make pronouncements as though they’re god on high, the supreme judge, the measure of all merit.

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So don’t be mealy-mouthed about your bet that they’re total jerks. Assert yourself. Meet their fake objectivity with fake-fake objectivity. You know you’re not god, but any cheap trick they use, you can use back at them without fear, so long as you remember you’re not objective either. No one is.

Beat them to the punch.

GPTJs are prone to hyperbolic projection because there are strategic advantages to being the first to make extreme accusations. They gain two strategic benefits. First, if you respond in kind, they can dismiss you as just retaliating defensively. Second, they hope you’ll encourage them to tone it down, thus tying your hands on accusing them.

This is why it’s important to beat them to the punch. Put them on the defensive and keep them there.

Don’t take the debate.

If you’ve got a conscience, they’re going to tug at it. Keep your own counsel, and don’t accept them as coaches on how to be moral. They’ve already lost all credibility. If they accuse you of being a name-caller, embrace it. Yes, you name-call. You’re trying to name-call carefully, and besides, “Don’t be a name-caller” is name-calling.

If they try to shame you for shaming, it’s the same thing: Yes you shame, like everyone, but you’re not hypocritically dishing it out but unwilling to take it in. They don’t oppose shaming; they just want to humiliate you out of shaming them, which you will continue to do with relentless tenacity. Total jerks pretend that their endless whining about unfairness to them proves that they’re fair-minded. It doesn’t.

You have nothing to prove to them.

Exit with your dignity intact but undefended. It’s enabling and foolhardy to take moral counsel from sociopaths. You don’t care about changing their minds or earning their respect. You’ll say your piece and leave it at that.

Study the masters.

Watch celebrity roasts. Watch Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, and Ricky Gervais. They may not be your style, but they do reveal how to use bluntness to cut through.

Our fundamental civic duty is to humbly humble total jerks who will do anything to avoid humility. For that, you need a sharp tongue in your toolbox.