On The Construction Of Creepiness
As a guy who grew up with solid “nerdy loner” credentials, it’s no surprise that I often don’t comprehend some of the finer social nuances that swirl around me. I’m old enough to remember when being “cool” was of supreme importance to the young (if indeed it isn’t still), but I never could identify coolness in the wild — I was completely blind to whatever it was that made some people cool and others (including me) not. So too with “creepy” — my sisters and their friends had a whole taxonomy of creepiness and would discuss at length who’s a creep and who’s not a creep, but the criterion they were using was not public and it didn’t yield its mysteries to casual observational decryption. I never worried about it too much; I had enough social troubles of my own without worrying about mysterious social judgments that were being levied against other people. Nobody ever called me a creep except when they were desperately rummaging a sharply-limited vocabulary for additional insult-words, so it didn’t become an essential mystery that I felt the need to comprehend.
If any of that sounds familiar, you might find this (and the expounding links) useful:
Thanks to @ceciliatan for retweeting this into my attention stream.
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Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=8389
The label ‘creepy’ I only heard spook maybe once each ten years as reference to someone not actually from a horror flick. Now the past 2 or 3 years it has been popping up more and more frequently and rarely is the term being correctly applied. It’s as if the word is simply evolving into popular culture usage without those weilding it realizing what they are saying. I can’t call out similar words off the top of my head, but every few years its identified that some common word has begun to be used more frequently than it had been. Some of these words have always been around and others were regularly used 30 or 40 years ago and are now making a comeback.
There may be big media influence here too. There is a generation or two coming of age that have very much grown up with movies, tv and internet teaching them about the world. These media outlets can’t usually be trusted to paint clear/clean pictures of what is real and how people really should be acting in the real word. That wouldn’t sell and it wouldn’t fit the bill for most media scripts. Actors like acting (in part) because its fake. Acting out the real world is boring.
Last aspect I perceive, from listening to a friend who uses the word to easily. When a women calls a guy creepy it immediately puts the guy down several notches in the general social hierarchy. It’s easy to do and it makes them feel better about themselves. Simple self-promotion with little or no risk attached.
Now for those who think I don’t get what the article linked above was talking about. I do get it. There are true creeps out there. I’ve seen them and met them too. I’m just saying to give guys a little more chance and not use such damaging words too freely.
I really don’t think the first commenter understood the article. Try again please.
For guys who want to learn how to be cool, I’d recommend renting “Casino Royale” or “Quantum of Solace”, featuring Daniel Craig or “Papillon”, “The Getaway”, “The Thomas Crown Affair”, or “Bullitt”, featuring Steve McQueen.
For guys who want to know what a creep is, I’d rent almost any movie featuring Crispin Glover or perhaps “Water For Elephants” and “Inglourious Basterds”, featuring Christoph Waltz…
Nobody will ever be as cool as Arthur Fonzerelli.
As for creepy I think it’s a fine line between being creepy and being a pervert. I think the main difference is age. If you are under a certain age your labeled as a pervert but once you are considered old, I think people will sooner call you creepy.