This one is fun. I think of it as self-caricaturing. Not trying to come up with a “straw man” exactly, but rather a comical/cynical oversimplification that still kinda fits. The goal is to compress it as much as possible while still having it be as accurate as possible. The more you can compress without losing much/the less nuances you lose, the more this self caricature tells you about yourself.
For example, I sometimes joke that I’m a redneck that doesn’t want to believe he’s a closeted hippie. It’s a quite lossy caricature, obviously, but every time I do something consistent with that caricature it gives me an opportunity to examine whether I’m merely doing the cached self thing or whether I can find the underlying heuristic (and notice whether it’s any good).
Another neat use is to signal that you’re self aware. People will try to fit you into their caricatures, and if you can lampshade this, they’ll perk up and listen for how you don’t fit this caricature. After all, if that’s exactly what you were, how could you be aware of how it looks and laughing about it?
This one is fun. I think of it as self-caricaturing. Not trying to come up with a “straw man” exactly, but rather a comical/cynical oversimplification that still kinda fits. The goal is to compress it as much as possible while still having it be as accurate as possible. The more you can compress without losing much/the less nuances you lose, the more this self caricature tells you about yourself.
For example, I sometimes joke that I’m a redneck that doesn’t want to believe he’s a closeted hippie. It’s a quite lossy caricature, obviously, but every time I do something consistent with that caricature it gives me an opportunity to examine whether I’m merely doing the cached self thing or whether I can find the underlying heuristic (and notice whether it’s any good).
Another neat use is to signal that you’re self aware. People will try to fit you into their caricatures, and if you can lampshade this, they’ll perk up and listen for how you don’t fit this caricature. After all, if that’s exactly what you were, how could you be aware of how it looks and laughing about it?