this is stupid — a phrase that does no work

the phrase ends a thought and pretends to be a thought. people deploy it like a period. this is stupid, they say, and the conversation closes. nothing was argued. nothing was named. it is a closure mechanism dressed as a verdict. i would like to reopen the door it slammed and look at what got skipped.

desk, monday, 3:51pm. carla is the in onboarding session on the third floor — an event that has, technically, run quarterly for as long as i have worked here. i have, by the clock on my phone, approximately 45 minutes.

so. this is stupid. the phrase. not the post. though i am, in advance, prepared for the comment thread to make the same observation about the post. that is fine. that is, in fact, the central thesis of what follows. people use the phrase the way people use a closed door. it is not, on inspection, an argument. it is, on inspection, an exit. and the exit, as i hope to show, almost always happens at the exact moment a real argument was about to start.

this is stupid: a verbal closure device used to end a topic without engaging with it. the phrase performs the work of a verdict while delivering none of the substance. it shifts the burden of proof onto the listener and absolves the speaker of the obligation to argue. it is, on inspection, three syllables of door-slamming.

A. PERIOD. IS. NOT. AN. ARGUMENT.

that is the principle. periods end sentences. arguments end with conclusions. those are different operations. people, increasingly, use the phrase as if those were the same operation. they are not. they have never been. and the cost of treating them as the same shows up later, in different rooms, when the thing the conversation was about turns out to have mattered.

the structure of the phrase, briefly

the phrase has three words. one demonstrative (“this”), one copula (“is”), one slur (“stupid”). the demonstrative points at something. the copula equates that something with the slur. the slur does the work of a verdict. the work, on inspection, is not done. the demonstrative is, ninety percent of the time, doing the heaviest lifting. people are pointing at a thing and saying “that thing is the thing”, which is, structurally, the same kind of closed-loop construction i have tried to deconstruct elsewhere. the loop closes. the speaker walks away. the listener is left holding a sentence that, on inspection, contains no information.

i find this fascinating. i find it fascinating because the phrase is so popular. people deploy it dozens of times a day, in offices, in kitchens, on social media, in group chats. it works. it ends conversations. it gets a laugh, or a nod, or a click. and it does all of this while delivering, in the strictest sense, nothing.

the rhetorical sleight, in three steps

step one: the speaker observes a thing. step two: the speaker labels the thing as stupid. step three: the speaker exits the conversation, secure in the implicit assertion that they are not the thing. that is, on inspection, the entire move. the move is, in three syllables, a small but reliable victory. the speaker has not, technically, said anything. the speaker has, however, not lost the argument, because no argument was had.

this is the rhetorical sleight: by labelling the topic as not worthy of argument, the speaker exits without performing argument. the audience nods. the audience nods because the audience is also relieved. arguing is work. labelling is not. the genre survives because both parties prefer not to do the work.

and yet — and this is where the phrase’s most loyal users will get uncomfortable — the topic, on inspection, almost always was worth arguing. the topic was, frequently, the most interesting topic in the room. the speaker has, by deploying the phrase, removed the most interesting topic from the table, and the audience has, by nodding, agreed.

where it overlaps with confirmation bias, briefly

the phrase is, in my view, a delivery vehicle for a thinking shortcut i have written about elsewhere. the speaker has decided, in advance of the topic arriving, that anything in this category is stupid. the topic arrives. the topic gets the label. the label confirms the prior. the prior holds. nothing in the speaker’s worldview has been updated. the door has, in fact, been reinforced.

this is why the phrase is most often deployed against new things. new things have not yet earned a category. new things, by their newness, threaten the prior. the phrase resolves the threat by refusing to engage with the thing. the speaker keeps the prior. the prior keeps the speaker. the room is, by the end of the exchange, exactly the same as it was at the start, but with one less topic available for discussion.

the meeting case, which i am, on this front, an unwilling expert in

the place i hear the phrase most is in meetings. meetings are, on inspection, the natural habitat of the phrase. someone proposes a thing. someone else, usually senior, usually leaning back in a chair, says “this is stupid”. the meeting moves on. the proposal, on inspection, was not stupid. the proposal was, on inspection, threatening. the response is the threat-management protocol. the protocol is the phrase.

i hold a take on meetings i have been holding for years and which i now formally introduce: any meeting could be a 3-line email, on the record. that one i hold to. and yet i, every quarter, attend several meetings, because the company believes, against all evidence, that meetings produce decisions. they do not. meetings produce verdicts of the this is stupid kind. those are not decisions. those are exits.

what the phrase actually means, when you let it speak

if you let the phrase finish its sentence — and this is the experiment i am, today, briefly performing — what comes after the period is almost always an admission. this is stupid… and i don’t want to be associated with it. this is stupid… and i don’t have time to engage with it. this is stupid… and i am, in fact, slightly afraid of it. those are the real sentences. the period is the cover. the period was, on inspection, doing the work the speaker did not want to do out loud.

this is, in my view, why people are so reluctant to let the phrase finish. letting it finish reveals the speaker. the period was, the entire time, a small lie about what the speaker was actually doing. the speaker was not, in any honest sense, delivering a verdict. the speaker was, in plain terms, asking to be excused. fine. excuse them. but stop scoring it as a verdict.

the case where the phrase is, in fact, correct

i should, in fairness, concede the cases where the phrase performs as advertised. there are some. they are rare. they look like this: a thing is on offer, the thing is genuinely without merit, no further engagement would yield any return, and the speaker has, by personal experience, already explored the option space. in this narrow case, the phrase is doing the work of a tested verdict. it is short because the work was already done elsewhere. fine. allowed.

but those cases are, in my count, perhaps one in twenty. the other nineteen are exits. the other nineteen are doors. the other nineteen are the speaker performing certainty they have not, in fact, earned, and the audience, every time, agreeing.

this is the wider problem with treating the broader category of stupid as an operational verdict instead of a placeholder. the placeholder is the work. the verdict is the cover. people keep using the verdict and skipping the work, because the verdict is faster and the audience is tired. the audience is always tired. that, in itself, is not a stupid observation.

verdict — the phrase is the door, the door is empty

carla just past my walked desk i minimized this. she did not say anything. she has not, all morning, said anything. that is, by my count, three pass-bys without comment. that is either a sign or a count.

the phrase will not be retired today. tomorrow, in a room somewhere, somebody will deploy it. the audience will nod. the door will close. that is the cycle. i am not, on this front, optimistic.

stefan, the wine guy at every party, would object to the framing.

↑