stupid is forevermore — how to disprove the line, in 6 steps

dave added the suffix on his own. he thought forever was not strong enough. forevermore is shakespeare cosplay applied to a hot take about my ability to learn. the steps to refute it are simple and they begin with naming the move. inflated suffix as rhetorical pressure. then we walk it back to forever, then to maybe.

i am writing this from my desk on a wednesday at 9:08am, while carla is in a training meeting on the third floor that, by the schedule taped to her monitor, runs through lunch. the apartment last night is the data. the desk this morning is the lab. the gap between them is the post.

i was eating cold leftovers off a plate i had not washed when dave delivered the verdict over speakerphone. he said stupid is forevermore like it was a contract i had already signed. i asked what forevermore meant on top of forever. he said extra forever. i said that is not a thing. he said it is now. then he laughed. not the nine-minute laugh. a shorter one. an opening bid.

1. step one, the stupid is forevermore claim begins with naming the move

before you can disprove a sentence you have to look at the sentence. stupid is forevermore is a sentence dave built by taking an existing line — the broader stupid claim that lives in our cluster pillar — and welding the suffix -more onto the end of forever. that suffix is borrowed, almost certainly, from the only place anyone has ever heard it: edgar allan poe writing nevermore in a poem about a bird. dave has never read the poem. dave does not need to. the suffix did the work. the suffix added weight without adding meaning.

this is a rhetorical move. it is also, technically, a small fraud. when someone upgrades forever to forevermore, what they are saying is i would like my claim to feel older and more biblical, please do not check it. step one of disproving the line is checking it.

i checked it. it does not check out. forevermore is shakespeare cosplay applied to a hot take about my ability to learn from a mistake involving a fork and a microwave. it is not a description. it is a costume. stefan, the man in the vest at the wine night two months ago, would have nodded at the suffix the way he nodded at the wine he claimed had notes of forest floor — with the relaxed face of a man who is paid by the syllable.

2. step two, log it the way sparky has the black mark

permanent is a strong word. permanent requires evidence. evidence requires a log. the seventh microwave i killed produced the fork now known as sparky, and sparky has, on the side of the second tine, a small black mark from the incident. that mark is the log. it is the only honest record of an event in this apartment. (this is the third yoga mat i have not used, for context, which is its own log.)

the mark is permanent on the fork. the lesson it represents is not. that is the whole point. forks-in-microwaves was, at some point, a thing i did not know. then it was a thing i learned. then i forgot it. then i learned it again. then i learned it a third time, more memorably. the fork carries the mark forever. the man who held the fork carries the lesson for now, which is the longest unit of time i’m willing to commit to.

so step two is: log the event without conceding the suffix. i wrote in the small notebook on the third drawer of my desk: microwave seven, fork sparky, march, never again until next time. the until next time is the part dave wants you to remove. do not remove it. it is the entire defense.

3. step three, dave will be your unreliable witness

any investigation requires witnesses. i have one. it is dave. dave works in insurance, which is a profession that has trained him to assess risk and to laugh at it on the phone for nine minutes when it materializes. dave is the witness who coined stupid is forevermore. dave is therefore the witness who must, at some point, recant stupid is forevermore.

dave is right that he does not need to defend it. dave is wrong that i do. the burden of proof in any claim about permanence sits with the person claiming the permanence. that is, in the literature i’m fairly sure exists, called the way arguments work. dave does not read the literature. dave reads insurance forms. these are not the same.

4. step four through six, the proof on its way

step four is to cite the obvious counter-example. forrest gump says stupid is as stupid does, which is a definition by behavior, not a sentence about duration. the line treats stupid as a verb you commit, not a state you inhabit. that is a different argument and it is the older one. dave’s forevermore upgrade is a remix nobody asked for, and the original line specifically does not claim permanence.

step five is to cite the second counter-example. idiocracy is a film built on the premise that stupidity propagates across generations because nobody bothers to disprove it. that film, taken seriously for two minutes, is also an argument against the forevermore framing. the film says stupid is contagious. contagious is not the same as permanent. contagious you can quarantine. permanent you cannot.

step six is to admit, to be plain, that i have learned at least one thing in this apartment in the last calendar year. the thing is: do not pair speaker phone with leftovers. dave can hear chewing. dave will mention chewing. the lesson held. it has been six weeks. the leftovers now come with headphones. that is one change, however small. one is more than zero. zero would be permanent. one is not.

5. step seven and eight, the long-form refusal

step seven is the longest. it is the refusal to argue on dave’s terms. dave wants a yes-or-no on whether i am forevermore stupid. yes-or-no is a trick. yes-or-no is the supermarket asking if you’d like the bag for ten cents when the only correct answer is i would like to leave. last week the supermarket asked me a similar yes-or-no while i was holding a frying pan i did not need, six small pickles, and zero of the milk i went in for. i said yes to the bag. i said yes to the pickles. i said no to walking out. that was three answers in a yes-or-no system designed for one.

so step seven is: refuse the binary. say maybe. say some days. say i would like to revisit this question after the fork has cooled. dave will not let you. dave will press. press back. dave is, by the way, the same dave i’ve documented before in this investigation, the man who once kept a list of microwaves for “science” while working in insurance. he has a system. you have a system too. yours is to take longer to answer.

step eight is the formal write-up, which is this post. the formal write-up is the proof that the claim has been disputed in public. once a claim has been disputed in public, it is no longer forever. it is at most for now. the suffix dies on contact with documentation. that is the secret the people who say forevermore would rather you not learn.

6. verdict, forevermore is a marketing word, not a description

the line is not a description. it is a slogan. like calling a sofa artisan or a sandwich handcrafted. the words do not change the object. they change how you feel about the object before you bite it. forevermore is the same kind of ribbon tied to the same kind of ordinary box. inside the box is the older claim, stupid is forever, which is itself a remix of stupid is as stupid does, which is itself a line a man with a low iq says in a movie because the line is, on its face, generous.

generous is the part everyone keeps stripping off. each remix removes a little more grace from the original. stupid is as stupid does grants you the chance to do better. stupid is forever takes the chance away. stupid is forevermore nails the door shut and adds a flourish. dave is an artist. dave is a witness. dave is unreliable. all three at once.

i would like to formally enter into the record that on this wednesday, at 11:47am, the dishwasher is a cabinet that judges you. that is the hot take of the day. it is also the only object back at my place that has not been involved in any of the events under investigation here, which is itself a kind of testimony. the dishwasher saw nothing. the dishwasher knows nothing. the dishwasher will not corroborate dave. that is good enough for me.

this also relates to the wider problem of people who upgrade their hot takes by stapling on suffixes — see the parallel investigation into the leaning-hard-on-a-phrasing move, where the dressed-up suffix turns a regular person into a near-liar without the person ever quite saying anything false. liar is, in this construction, a category you graze without entering. inflated suffixes are. but the move is the same move. once you see it, you see it everywhere.

so the verdict is: stupid is forevermore is not a sentence i am going to honor. stupid is forever is not one either. stupid is as stupid does i can work with, because at least it lets me try again. the new microwave is coming thursday. the lesson about the fork held for six weeks. that is six weeks more than forevermore would allow. dave can keep the suffix. i am keeping the six weeks.

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