Great post. I agree with your analysis. I especially like the part about how it often doesn’t help to try to judge the frame controller’s intent.
FWIW, in the “Looks like I’m boring Aella” scenario, assuming I perceive the speaker to be overly aggressive in their frame control attempt, my move would be to politely disagree, except with a noticeable attitude of not buying into the frame that there’s anything wrong with me looking at my phone. I would reply with a tongue-in-cheek “No, this is all interesting stuff. Please continue.” where my voice is cheerful and encouraging but I’m still just looking at my phone.
The other move, I think, is something like “my cat’s not doing well”, which is pretty fucked up to say if false, but does put the frame back on “you don’t know what’s going on with me and you don’t get to assume”.
Lol interesting, that definitely undermines the person’s frame. The difference is that my version builds status/respect for me as a capable frame battler while the other builds compassion for you as a victim of the person’s aggression (and a sufferer of the cat situation).
I’d additionally frame this as a friendly interaction by politely (second-order condescendingly) adding, “You should continue though, I’ll try to get into it.” (Then you can keep using your phone without necessarily trying to listen.)
The other person was attempting to put you in the frame of “impolite listener”. Your reply is a good way of blocking the attempt to frame you as consciously antagonistic. I would go further and frame myself as someone who is a polite listener and friend to everyone there, but also perfectly within my right to follow where my attention takes me.
Regardless, I think the key to both of our approaches is that we can sound first-order chill so that nothing about our first-order words or tone of voice sounds antagonistic. It obeys the highest standard of polite behavior (ideally out-politing the other person), while the logical implication of our behavior is to assert our own frame against the frame control attempt.
Like you, my instant reaction to these kinds of spiky social behaviors is to try to use sarcasm or wit to “win” the interaction and make the other person look ridiculous or feel awkward or off balance. I think this works on two levels—firstly, if I do “win”, the other guy is not likely to keep trying this sort of thing on me. Secondly, it focuses my psychology in such a way that there’s no chance I will actually be taking their “frame” seriously. I’m too busy trying to figure out how I can make it sound stupid.
I guess the obvious failure mode here is if they were actually saying something that I would benefit from taking seriously.
In 95% of these situations, I don’t have any kind of witty response to make. I just have a way of looking up at them with a flat expression, long enough that they can see I’ve heard and understood what they told me, and then I go back to what I was doing before.
For me, the point isn’t so much to get a certain response or perception out of the other person. It’s mainly to communicate a simple message: “it’s going to take you more energy to provoke me than it’s worth.” And then to communicate to myself the message: “You’re in control of your actions and attention, not them.”
That might serve your purposes, and is at least better than simply giving into the speaker’s frame. But responding in a way that’s purely defensive, even if you do it in a disaffected way, means you can’t frame yourself as a polite socially-savvy party guest who’s in open communication with the whole group. The speaker may be intending to battle you away from that frame and monopolize it for themselves.
There are trade offs in everything! This is just a personal strategy that works for me. Fortunately, social interactions of this kind are rare enough, and predictable enough, that I haven’t noticed myself suffering from the effects you describe :)
Talking about frame control, the implicit message of looking at your phone while someone is talking to you is “I’m bored and I don’t respect you enough to fake it”. The frame OP was imposing consciously or unconsciously was that the speaker was low status enough that she could publicly ignore them with impunity, and they were right to call her out on it.
More generally, I have a pretty poor view of the post’s argument in general. Frame control is just another word for value and status alignment, aka most of normal human interaction. This is only a danger to someone if they do not have a strong enough sense of self to hold independent opinions and sense of worth. This vulnerability is going to leave someone open and susceptible no matter if a high status person uses generally assertive (top portion) or receptive (bottom section) techniques, which I see as two sides of the same coin. Maybe labeling this as OP has is useful to help people stuck in this trap grow a stronger sense of self.
But for most people frame control between two people i believe is better described as frame negotiation. Negotiations have a wide range of strategies and outcomes, but decrying assertive strategies as dangerous because some people crumble to them when the default option is to simply hold your ground, seems misguided.
Where managing frame control becomes interesting is in group setting, but now we’ve just rediscovered politics/status games/group dynamics/multi agent games by another name. I think the post would have been a lot stronger if it focused on that.
Great post. I agree with your analysis. I especially like the part about how it often doesn’t help to try to judge the frame controller’s intent.
FWIW, in the “Looks like I’m boring Aella” scenario, assuming I perceive the speaker to be overly aggressive in their frame control attempt, my move would be to politely disagree, except with a noticeable attitude of not buying into the frame that there’s anything wrong with me looking at my phone. I would reply with a tongue-in-cheek “No, this is all interesting stuff. Please continue.” where my voice is cheerful and encouraging but I’m still just looking at my phone.
The other move, I think, is something like “my cat’s not doing well”, which is pretty fucked up to say if false, but does put the frame back on “you don’t know what’s going on with me and you don’t get to assume”.
Even simpler but getting many of the benefits is “was that a question?”
Lol interesting, that definitely undermines the person’s frame. The difference is that my version builds status/respect for me as a capable frame battler while the other builds compassion for you as a victim of the person’s aggression (and a sufferer of the cat situation).
A reply that came to mind for me: “oh yeah. I guess I’m bored. I didn’t realize until you just pointed it out.”
Oh nice, I think that’s good.
I’d additionally frame this as a friendly interaction by politely (second-order condescendingly) adding, “You should continue though, I’ll try to get into it.” (Then you can keep using your phone without necessarily trying to listen.)
The other person was attempting to put you in the frame of “impolite listener”. Your reply is a good way of blocking the attempt to frame you as consciously antagonistic. I would go further and frame myself as someone who is a polite listener and friend to everyone there, but also perfectly within my right to follow where my attention takes me.
Regardless, I think the key to both of our approaches is that we can sound first-order chill so that nothing about our first-order words or tone of voice sounds antagonistic. It obeys the highest standard of polite behavior (ideally out-politing the other person), while the logical implication of our behavior is to assert our own frame against the frame control attempt.
Like you, my instant reaction to these kinds of spiky social behaviors is to try to use sarcasm or wit to “win” the interaction and make the other person look ridiculous or feel awkward or off balance. I think this works on two levels—firstly, if I do “win”, the other guy is not likely to keep trying this sort of thing on me. Secondly, it focuses my psychology in such a way that there’s no chance I will actually be taking their “frame” seriously. I’m too busy trying to figure out how I can make it sound stupid.
I guess the obvious failure mode here is if they were actually saying something that I would benefit from taking seriously.
In 95% of these situations, I don’t have any kind of witty response to make. I just have a way of looking up at them with a flat expression, long enough that they can see I’ve heard and understood what they told me, and then I go back to what I was doing before.
For me, the point isn’t so much to get a certain response or perception out of the other person. It’s mainly to communicate a simple message: “it’s going to take you more energy to provoke me than it’s worth.” And then to communicate to myself the message: “You’re in control of your actions and attention, not them.”
That might serve your purposes, and is at least better than simply giving into the speaker’s frame. But responding in a way that’s purely defensive, even if you do it in a disaffected way, means you can’t frame yourself as a polite socially-savvy party guest who’s in open communication with the whole group. The speaker may be intending to battle you away from that frame and monopolize it for themselves.
There are trade offs in everything! This is just a personal strategy that works for me. Fortunately, social interactions of this kind are rare enough, and predictable enough, that I haven’t noticed myself suffering from the effects you describe :)
Talking about frame control, the implicit message of looking at your phone while someone is talking to you is “I’m bored and I don’t respect you enough to fake it”. The frame OP was imposing consciously or unconsciously was that the speaker was low status enough that she could publicly ignore them with impunity, and they were right to call her out on it.
More generally, I have a pretty poor view of the post’s argument in general. Frame control is just another word for value and status alignment, aka most of normal human interaction. This is only a danger to someone if they do not have a strong enough sense of self to hold independent opinions and sense of worth. This vulnerability is going to leave someone open and susceptible no matter if a high status person uses generally assertive (top portion) or receptive (bottom section) techniques, which I see as two sides of the same coin. Maybe labeling this as OP has is useful to help people stuck in this trap grow a stronger sense of self.
But for most people frame control between two people i believe is better described as frame negotiation. Negotiations have a wide range of strategies and outcomes, but decrying assertive strategies as dangerous because some people crumble to them when the default option is to simply hold your ground, seems misguided.
Where managing frame control becomes interesting is in group setting, but now we’ve just rediscovered politics/status games/group dynamics/multi agent games by another name. I think the post would have been a lot stronger if it focused on that.