Cry-Bullies

Famed British essayist Julie Burchill is especially proud that she invented the term-- cry-bully. If I had invented it, I would be proud too.

How do you get to be a cry-bully? You begin with emotional incontinence, as you choose to advertise your emotions, preferably as a sign of superior spiritual and mental health. 

And then,you will insist that your emotional incontinence is a constructive contribution to the ambient conversation. At times, not just constructive, but definitive. 

After all, if you feel it that deeply, it must be the truth. Don’t we believe, as an article of our new secular faith, that an individual who believes that he is really a she is really a she?

Rather than argue the point or to present a rational argument, the cry-bully harasses and abuses other people, forcing them to believe what he wants them to believe.

Deliberative democracy does not support cry-bullies.

Now, Burchill suggests that people become cry-bullies when reality thwarts their expectations. They were sure that a certain candidate could not win an election and then, when he won, they went fully cry-bully and tried to ensure that he could not govern. All in the name of democracy.

Burchill wrote:

But just as fame is a mask that eats the face, emotional incontinence is a poison that eats the brain. It’s possible that these people are suffering from an actual thing called ‘disconfirmed expectancy’, a type of cognitive dissonance produced when new information directly contradicts an individual’s existing beliefs. This causes disciples to double down on the trounced worldview, much as followers of apocalyptic religious cults, disappointed when the aliens fail to land, say it’s going to happen next year instead.

One must also note that bullying is sadistic. It feels like it came to us from the world of therapy. People feel permitted to diminish and demean someone for failing to have the right opinions or even the right feelings because they think that it represents a higher stage of consciousness. 

Cry-bullying is not designed to persuade, but to force an opinion on someone else. In a strange sense the tactic seems indigenous to people who define themselves as victims. 

‘This is the age of the cry-bully, a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper.

You cannot earn your way, so you explain it away by saying that you have been subjected to abuse and prejudice. Surely, it is better than taking personal responsibility.

Thus, the world owes you a living. It owes you payment to make you stop the whining and leave the rest of us alone. It is not excessive to call it moral extortion.

Think of it this way. When you are emotionally incontinent you lose face. In the most literal sense of the term. When your face is contorted to express an emotion it becomes less recognizable and you become less identifiable. 

In normal circumstances anyone who witnesses your dereliction, your failure to exercise the minimum of self-control, will immediately attempt to cover your face, to cover for you.

If you cannot save face someone will surely try to take up the slack.