7 Phrases That Are Great Signs It's Time to Stop Talking

I guess occasionally someone wants to talk about the crime rate or income disparities between races and wants to throw in some caveats before they wade into a touchy subject, but anyone sensitive enough to discuss something that nuanced usually isn't going to toss out their entire viewpoint in half a sentence (the half after "I'm not a racist"). Anyone able to talk about a complex hot-button issue in an appropriate way has better and more specific caveats than the shitty old "I'm not a racist," which is apparently a good marker for illiteracy as well as racism.

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By the way, the above screenshots come courtesy of I'm Not Racist, But ..., which is one of several blogs that track this phrase across the Internet, showing that despite how well-known and mocked it is, you still can't swing a dead LOLcat without hitting an "I'm not a racist but" tweet or comment.

Other warning phrases along the same lines include "I tell it like it is" and "I'm outspoken and opinionated, and it might rub some people the wrong way." When you convince yourself that you are this TV character description, it goes a long way toward shielding yourself from finding out that you are wrong or said something stupid by allowing you to frame it as a bunch of closed-minded prudes/nerds/bourgeoisie being shocked that you are such a colorful individual. Of course they are calling you dumb because they can't handle your attitude, not because you claimed that horses were invented in the 1800s.

You get two kinds of statements out of this person. One, you get cliches they repeat from other people, which were possibly provocative and clever upon their first use, like the hoary "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," or a mangled paraphrase from Douglas Adams that they don't really understand. Basically, it's an attempt to copy the edginess of someone smarter and more original than they are with the effectiveness of a preliterate child copying the Declaration of Independence.

Take a look at this firecracker.

I wonder what kind of monocle-popping in-your-face sass I can expect out of this one!

Statements truly worthy of noted shockmeister Stuart Smalley.

In addition to advice you can find in your grandmother's needlepoint, you'll also find this type:

Oh boy, I bet this one's going to be a real live wire. I wonder what kind of crazy and offensive tweets we're going to get on this account.

So they promise a lot, but quite often deliver poorly remembered quotes from provocateurs who are now deceased, advice found on Precious Moments bookmarks, and AOL chat room filler.

Also a warning flag is anyone who brings up the Prisoner's Dilemma game theory scenario, which in theory is often relevant as a useful insight into discussing how people make decisions, but in practice is almost always inserted clumsily as a badge of behavioral expertise or something. Ten percent of the time people bring it up because they think it is relevant, and 90 percent of the time because they just read about it in Discover Magazine or Mental Floss.

There's always the possibility that someone who brings up one of these things genuinely feels it's the best tool to explain what they're getting at, but once they start to pile up, there can be no mistake. If someone mentions the Allegory of the Cave, the Prisoner's Dilemma, Occam's razor and Schroedinger's cat in the course of their argument, just drop everything and get the hell out of there before they start telling you the fable about the scorpion and the frog.

Don't know if I'm remembering this one right.

Self-diagnosed people can be at best the cause of an awkward social situation and at worst dangerous. If you're suffering from severe depression, the last thing you want is advice from people with mild mood swings who have diagnosed themselves as bipolar and tell you to avoid therapy and medication and just think more positive thoughts.

Even if you don't have the condition and you're just reading or listening for curiosity's sake, there's not really anything to be learned from people who are certain they have ADHD or Asperger's no matter what those lying doctors say, unless you want to learn what they imagine life is like for an ADHD or Asperger's sufferer.

Well-meaning websites like WebMD sometimes make things worse by printing bullet-point lists of symptoms for various conditions. The intent is for you to see if you have a bunch of symptoms, and if so, go to a professional and get officially diagnosed and then treated. But I guess there's a bit of human nature that makes many of us want to treat it like a Seventeen magazine quiz where we add up points (1 point for A, 2 points for B, 3 points for C ...), and if we score 15 or more, we're schizophrenic!

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"Oooh, looks like Susie has PTSD!"

Sure, sometimes it may be helpful for individuals to get coping tips from others with similar problems without going through intimidating medical professionals, but most people who like to speak at length about their self-diagnosis to strangers aren't just looking for help, they're looking to give it, including explaining authoritatively what the condition does or doesn't involve, saying what everyone in the same condition should do and even prescribing drugs sometimes.

Even if you believe in the helpfulness of Internet psychological self-diagnosis, I'm sure we can at least agree that someone self-diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma should be immediately sent to a doctor where they can hopefully find out it's just a cold. And that you should know just from the title that this one is going to be weird:

OK, yes, hair loss can be one of the symptoms, but usually a person's primary concern is the unimaginable pain.

Most of the time when you see/hear this phrase, it's in response to a question that isn't being asked. It appears in people's signatures, taglines, profiles and other places where it's theoretically the first introduction you have to a person. It's like being introduced to someone at a social function and having them shout, "Damn right I'm female! No need to adjust your glasses!" before you have even said hi.

It can be a little insulting that they assume everyone they run into is going to have that question in their heads -- "Can it really be a woman I am seeing?" -- but OK, let's say they're in a particularly sheltered environment full of males and that question actually comes up a lot. The trouble is that they rarely stop at answering this first unasked question and usually come up with an entire imaginary interview you are giving them, which they are happy to provide anticipated answers for.

Sure, maybe some people have asked them some of these questions, but I find it hard to imagine someone asking, "Will you put up with my pervertedness?"

Also, I don't know if this applies to other games, but in my time in World of Warcraft, I noticed that anyone who goes out of their way to introduce themselves with "Yeah, I'm a girl, believe it or not!" is a terrible player. I'm not saying girls are terrible players, I'm saying girls whose first statement upon meeting anyone is "I'm a girl! Hold on to your monocle!" is terrible. And if someone brings it up as their first statement, it is inevitable they will bring it up many, many times in the future, including sometimes as an excuse when they get everyone killed ("lol I guess my boobs got in the way!").

Here's a good example of someone who appears to be terrible at Skyrim, somehow.

And the response:

There's nothing more deflating to one of these types than a female in the same field who is actually good at it.

Email forwards once were the hot way of spreading things around virally but are now pretty much obsolete among anyone under age 40. Now Twitter and Facebook and message boards are the way most Internet users get linked to funny pictures of cats and shocking news stories, leaving email forwards with precious little to do. An email forward is almost guaranteed to contain (1) A hoax, (2) a virus or (3) a trite inspirational story with a lot of capital letters, probably.

A scan of email-forward hoaxes reveals a bunch of subjects that mostly moms would be interested in, like how lemons can cure cancer, fake Amber Alerts and fake charities for sick children.

That last one sounds exciting, but actually links to this slightly creepy personalized tampon ad thing, after several lines of talking about how amazing it is. Basically, the more excited moms are about passing this along (the number of "FW:"s), the less worthwhile to you it is going to be.

On the other hand, I guess you could read them to get some insight into the mom mind and craft some strategic emails your mom is certain to take seriously.