Mailvox: the art of bitchslapping


How exactly do you go about shredding these wenches? I mean, do you just point out the behavior and say it’s annoying? Or do you really rip into them, calling them out and lacing the invective with obscenities?

My favorite method is to simply describe exactly what they’re doing in a slightly disbelieving tone of voice, and ask a few pertinent questions. For example, if a woman starts talking about how her husband can’t change the diapers, I might ask her to define precisely how incompetent she is saying he is, to confirm that he literally has no idea how to scoop out the detritus, swab off the child’s behind, fold over the diaper and attach the two sticky tabs, and to explain to me which step in the process is beyond him. I might then ask if she really believes that a man who graduated with honors from a top university with a degree in computer science is truly baffled by this exercise in radical complexity. If I’m feeling particularly cruel, I might start asking her questions about her husband’s work and expose her almost total ignorance of what he actually does – not to mention the very low probability that she could perform any such tasks herself.

This is all said with a smile and in a friendly tone of voice. Judging by the helpless fury it provokes, it’s far more effective than any overt insult could be, as it deprives the woman of the high road escape. The key is that they can’t stand to get called on what they’re doing, simply pointing that out to everyone usually suffices to shut it down.

In general, the Socratic method is easily the most effective way to demolish someone in public. There’s nothing you can ever say about someone that will tear them down as effectively as their own words will. If you can lose them with your vocabulary, so much the better, as women’s verbal skill often leads them to believe that they are more intelligent than they are so they find this further humiliating.

For example, I once said someone’s argument had reached its nadir, and the woman didn’t know what “nadir” meant. She said something about how I might use a lot of big words, but… at which point I cut in and pointed out that if she thought a word with five letters and two syllables was big, perhaps she would be more comfortable arguing with elementary school children. Everyone started laughing and she ran away crying.

This is why you don’t want to mess with the White Buffalo in public. He’s adept at making people laugh, and he’ll soon have them laughing at you.