The Devil Doesn't Need More Fucking Advocates

And you're really just being a dick, Steve.

How many times have you heard someone proudly puff their chest and tell you that they “tell it like it is?”

You know the type. Pretending to be really fucking edgy, proud of their bluntness, wielding their oh-so-fucking-erudite opinions from the back of the highest fucking high horse in all the land. Because they have anointed themselves the Tellers Of The Truthiest Truths, saving all of us fucking plebeians from our own misguided needs for people to not be total slagwagons to us when they say things.

I run into these fuckmuppets all the time in the professional world.

They think they’re doing us a fucking service by making sure that they come scampering to our rescue, that cocky smirk giving away the fact that they weren’t actually listening, just waiting for their turn to speak. They want us to believe they’re saving us from ourselves with their casual fucking cruelty when really it’s dead simple: they’re wildly insecure little shitlords whose entire personality is simply built upon picking on others so that they never have to come up with original thoughts of their own let alone subject it to the critique of the people they’re so fucking afraid of.

Which is…everybody.

When did we become proud to attach brutality to honesty as if it’s some kind of fucking virtue to inflict pain with our personal ideas of “truth”? And when did we get so arrogant as to assume that our version of what’s true and necessary is the one that should be staked through someone else with intellectual violence?

Over the years, I’ve learned that the “tell it like it is” people, the habitual “devil’s advocates” are so fucking afraid of being questioned or criticized themselves that they don’t just wear armor, they wear weapons as a wardrobe.

And if you don’t trip all over yourself to be grateful for their unkindness, that makes you naïve or overly fucking sensitive or unable to take criticism yourself.

Women, especially. We have been there a lot. How dare we reject the “feedback” from the men in our midst because they only have our best fucking interests at heart, darling, and why don’t we want to improve ourselves under their vast fucking swaths of wisdom that they read in the latest Tim Ferris bible of mental masturbation?

And if you’re lucky enough to spend time on the internet, you get the Reply Guys who I swear practically fucking salivate in the dark corners, lurking, just waiting for the opportunity to offer some witty repost, some oh-so-clever and biting point of view that they read on Reddit…and then who act as though you towel-snapped them in the balls when you reject their enlightened snark for the peevish, sniveling, shitty behavior that it is.

Want to impress me? Show me that you know how to have a conversation that’s dripping with emotional intelligence, with compassion, with empathy and self-awareness. Show me that you can hotly debate ideas without tearing down people as you do it. Show me that your honesty isn’t thinly-veiled meanness masquerading as wisdom. And more importantly, show me that sometimes you know it’s okay to just shut the ever-loving fuck up and realize that saying nothing is fucking free.

So many of us are walking around, backs striped with the lash marks of life hidden under our shirts and trying desperately to pretend that we’re f.i.n.e. Our resilience is held together with grade-school paste and tape that has long lost its stick. We are tired. We are wounded. We are fucking fragile.

I hope this week you care about the emotional aftertaste you leave with people after you’ve touched them.

Make someone feel seen. Make someone feel like you care to hear them. Allow moments to be not even a little bit about you. Realize that honesty can be kind. Gentle, even. Believe that softness is not weakness and that when we are granted the privilege of sharing our thoughts, we can do so in ways that aren’t hurtful or harmful or deliberately punitive and cruel.

The devil doesn’t need more fucking advocates. What he needs is more people to refuse to do that work in the name of something more beautiful, more hopeful, and more humane.

Let that be you this week. Heaven knows we need you out there.

With love and angst,

Amber