Like you, my instant reaction to these kinds of spiky social behaviors is to try to use sarcasm or wit to “win” the interaction and make the other person look ridiculous or feel awkward or off balance. I think this works on two levels—firstly, if I do “win”, the other guy is not likely to keep trying this sort of thing on me. Secondly, it focuses my psychology in such a way that there’s no chance I will actually be taking their “frame” seriously. I’m too busy trying to figure out how I can make it sound stupid.
I guess the obvious failure mode here is if they were actually saying something that I would benefit from taking seriously.
Like you, my instant reaction to these kinds of spiky social behaviors is to try to use sarcasm or wit to “win” the interaction and make the other person look ridiculous or feel awkward or off balance. I think this works on two levels—firstly, if I do “win”, the other guy is not likely to keep trying this sort of thing on me. Secondly, it focuses my psychology in such a way that there’s no chance I will actually be taking their “frame” seriously. I’m too busy trying to figure out how I can make it sound stupid.
I guess the obvious failure mode here is if they were actually saying something that I would benefit from taking seriously.