Giraffe punching is something that has become more and more common lately, which has led to a lot of unnecessary anger and strained friendships.
You’re probably confused by that last sentence. You’ve never heard of anyone punching a giraffe. Who does that?
Nobody does. Not literally. Which is kind of the point.
Giraffe punching describes the practice of repeatedly lecturing an audience who already agrees with you in an insulting and condescending way, while pretending like they need to be told something that everyone in the audience already knows. In particular, repeatedly telling them to stop doing something that none of them are doing.
It’s an extreme version of preaching to the choir, only more patronizing and vitriolic.
Why do I call it giraffe punching? It comes from this:
Why do we giraffe punch?
We all engage in giraffe punching. Myself included.
If you can build up the habit of recognizing when you’re doing it, you can stop yourself. This will ultimately make you and your friends much happier.
Unfortunately, it’s very easy to slide into giraffe punching without even noticing it.
You see some sort of bad behavior or destructive ideas causing harm in the world, and feel like it’s important to push back against this.
Then in your entirely noble intentions to make the world a better place, you forget that none of the “bad people” are among your audience. You’re just talking to people who already agree with you.
Which means you only end up wallowing in your own irritation and annoying your friends, while not sending the message to the people you actually want to hear it.
Some examples of giraffe punching
Here are some common examples of giraffe punching that I’ve seen lately:
- Criticizing flat-earthers, when you don’t actually know any flat-earthers.
- Criticizing anti-vaxxers, when there aren’t any anti-vaxxers that read your Facebook posts.
- Criticizing people who refuse to wear masks, when everyone you know wears masks.
- Criticizing internet hate mobs, when nobody who will read what you wrote participates in internet hate mobs. (I must admit that I’m sometimes guilty of this.)
- Telling people not to engage in reprehensible and/or criminal behaviors that no decent person would engage in, such as hate-crimes, assaults, catcalling, etc.
And the most common cases of giraffe punching come in politics.
If you write a lot about politics, you likely have already alienated the people on the other side. Meaning that the only people reading what you write are people that agree with you.
Perhaps that’s the way you like it. You don’t want to be friends or even talk to someone who votes differently than you. That’s up to you.
But it does mean that pretty much anything you say about politics is going to be giraffe punching.
When you give that 800th extremely compelling reason why people shouldn’t vote for a hated politician or party, you’re telling people who would never vote for that politician/party anyway.
So what’s the point?
Giraffe punching is about the audience, not the validity of the argument
It doesn’t matter how good or valid your argument is.
If people already agree with you, your admonitions will not accomplish anything.
If we were to sit down and come up with a list of reasons why flat-earthers were silly, we’d get bored and find something better to do long before we ran out of excellent reasons.
But if I were to start lecturing you personally on why you shouldn’t be a flat-earther, you’d think I was a condescending jerk. It would be insulting to assume you didn’t already know the Earth was round.
How this causes harm
Some might argue that it’s worth getting an important message out, because maybe a few people will read it that aren’t already aware. Or maybe the people who agree will get more ammunition to use in their arguments with others.
And even if not, what’s the harm?
If you’re thinking that, I urge you to read How to Win Allies and How to Stop Making Enemies. It’s highly doubtful that the “benefits” you’re imagining are actually helpful, and much more likely you’re hurting your cause.
But there are additional ways giraffe punching hurts yourself.
The first is one I already touched on.
When you repeatedly tell people something they already know, you’re annoying them.
More importantly, when you act like someone needs to be told something that any decent human would already know, you’re implying that they’re a morally repugnant idiot. And people don’t like to be insulted.
Either way, you’re alienating your friends. Driving away the people who you could be connecting with is going to lead to a less rich life in all sorts of ways.
Giraffe punching lowers your view of humanity
One of the (many) problems with mass media is that it brainwashes you into having a poor view of humanity. It highlights the worst people and worst events, presents things in the ugliest possible terms, and ignores everything that is good and improving in the world. (Which is the vast majority of the world.)
When you giraffe punch, you brainwash yourself in the same way.
Your friends are the people you ought to respect.
When you treat them like morons and jerks who need to be told that they shouldn’t do terrible things, you convince yourself that your friends are not worthy of respect.
And if you can’t respect your own friends, who can you respect?
Thus you convince yourself to have a malevolent view of the world.
Giraffe punching increases your stress and misery
It’s certainly noble to try to improve the problems of the world.
But any time you spend thinking about the world’s problems, without actively doing anything to help, is just pointlessly adding to your stress and unhappiness.
And that’s exactly what giraffe punching is.
It’s choosing to spend your time and energy unproductively obsessing over a problem, screaming at the internet in a way that is guaranteed to accomplish nothing.
A self-reinforcing bubble of rage
There’s a lot more to human experience than being angry about what strangers are doing.
Most people prefer to talk about what’s going on in their life, how their kids are doing, their job, get useful advice, swap jokes, share cat videos, reach out for help when going through a difficult time, coordinate events, check in with each other, discuss the latest TV show, and be generally friendly.
In other words, they want to connect on a human level.
But when you giraffe punch, you are telling people you don’t care about connecting with them. In fact, you’re saying you have so little regard for them as humans that you are willing to imply terrible untrue things about them.
You don’t intend to tell any specific individual, “I think you’re so stupid that you believe in a flat earth.” Or “I think you’re morally repugnant enough to [do this terrible thing].”
But that’s what it feels like to the people on the other end of your giraffe punching.
So those who are interested in human connections start avoiding you. They mute and unfollow you. They stop inviting you to parties.
And the only ones left in your circle are other giraffe punchers.
When everyone you interact with is a giraffe puncher, you’re surrounded by their anger, malevolence, assumptions that everyone is stupid and terrible, and general toxicity.
That becomes the norm. It rubs off on you.
You become more angry and malevolent yourself. You treat those around you as if they’re even bigger idiots.
Which pushes those with a positive worldview even further away.
And this cycle continues, until your entire world is hate, rage, contempt, and toxicity.
How do you stop giraffe punching?
We all engage in giraffe punching from time to time. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes.
It only becomes really problematic when it’s done frequently.
But it’s also fairly easy to stop yourself from giraffe punching.
You just need to build the habit of taking a moment when you’re about to post/say anything political or containing and admonishment, and then ask yourself these questions:
- Who is the audience for this? If posting to Facebook, it would be your Facebook friends who regularly read your posts. If it’s an in-person conversation, it would be the people you’re talking to.
- Does my audience already know what I’m saying? If so, there’s no reason to say it.
- How is my audience going to receive this? Remember, communication isn’t about what you intend to say. It’s about how your audience understands it. Is it insulting, condescending, or aggressive? If so, the audience is not going to be sympathetic to what you say, and it’s very unlikely to accomplish what you want. Try to rephrase things to be more polite and helpful. Or if you can’t figure out a way to put it such that how the audience receives it will align with your goals, reconsider if you should send it at all.
It’s a pretty good idea to ask those questions for any communication, but it’s particularly useful to avoid giraffe punching.
Conclusion
Once you’re aware of giraffe punching, you’ll see it all the time.
Everyone does it, myself included.
The goal is to avoid doing it excessively.
Building the habit of being more aware in communication so we can limit giraffe punching will result in being less stressed, having a better view of the world, better friendships, and greater overall happiness.
How about you?
Have you found yourself giraffe punching in the past?
Is it something you see your friends doing?
Do you have any other tips for stopping it?
Do you have a different term for this?
I’d love to hear from you.
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