[pavement]

Interesting tidbit: Sweethearts also seem clueless to the presence of jerks, offering concessions to, and excuses for jerk behavior.

Question: what's with jerks teaming up? How does jerk signaling work, such that it attracts jerks-of-a-feather, when jerks in the wild are found joining forces?

[tbabb]

A theory of Jerkodynamics: The only people who will hang around jerks tend to either be other jerks with the same problem, or people too insanely nice to set boundaries and tell the jerks to get bent.

[Nav_Panel]

This "theory of jerkodynamics" as you call it was actually fleshed out in this great post: http://siderea.livejournal.com/1230660.html

> ...If you unwittingly have been repelling non-assholes, you will get the impression that everyone is an asshole, because you're still surrounded by plenty of people, but everyone left – that is everyone you come into contact with – is, in fact, an asshole.

> ...An asshole filter is a situation one creates that causes non-assholes to reduce contact with you at a disproportionate rate (like at all) than assholes...

> ...An asshole filter happens when you publicly promulgate a straitened contact boundary and then don't enforce it; or worse, reward the people who transgress it...

It goes on to frame "jerk-ness" in terms of "transgressiveness":

> The concept of transgressiveness is one of the most powerful lenses I know with which to look at people's behavior – possibly because it is is a perspective so absent from our culture. It is a phenomenon that is real, but for which we have no words – except "asshole". When we call someone an asshole, pragmatically speaking what we're usually trying to express is that that person transgresses others' boundaries. We might also say, if asked to explain, that the person so described is selfish, in that they want to get their way even (or especially) at the expense of others; we might describe them as rude or disrespectful, meaning that their conduct shows contempt for others' boundaries.

[staticautomatic]

Jerks of a feather stalk together.