Speaking Slowly is Selfish & Condescending
This blog is directed at a specific type of person. This is not aimed at the person who is nervous talking in front of people, or is speaking in their second language, or is truly thinking about what they want to say.
This is about that person that just loves to hear their own voice. Loves to hear themselves speak because they think they’re the most important person in the world. Like making your own Book Club podcast just so you can hear yourself talk… Yes, I understand the irony of me writing this blog when we have recorded 130+ episodes here at the Buddy Book Club. But we speak quickly and aren’t forcing you to listen (maybe if we did we’d have more followers…) Nonetheless the point remains!
People that talk slow are selfishly wasting your time because they think their time and what they have to say is so profound and important that they need to slow down so you’ll understand it. It’s both selfish and condescending.
The Biggest Slow Talking Culprits
- Politicians in Front of a Camera– this is an easy one. But no one hams it up more than a politician when the camera is on. They think everything they say is the most profound statement in the world. Like they’re JFK or MLK. But instead of actually backing up their words with actions, the cameras turn off and they go back to fucking us all over. They watched a few speeches from great leaders and thought, the learning was the speed at which they spoke, not the actual content. Plus, we used to have politicians that were dedicated civil servants that were well educated, served in the armed forces, traveled, invented things, wrote something other than a biography about how great they are. They used to actually have some substance and life experiences to draw from when they spoke, now look at what we have. Pathetic. All they want is a good soundbite that can help spurn more donations, and help get them re-elected. If you’re going to be ass blasting us, can you at least have the decency to speak a bit quicker?.
- Anyone talking about ‘Company Values’ – This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Every company I’ve worked for has at some point released new ‘company values’ and gone over them with excruciating slowness. All of these are exactly the same, but they somehow think they’re Alan Turing cracking the enigma code. It’ll be some dumb flywheel/compass/acronym/pie chart/cult pamphlet that spells out the ‘core values’. The leaders of the company, that spent 100 hours on this new set of values, will get up in front of everyone and hand down these divine values like they’re Moses carving the 10 Commandments into the burning bush (is that how that passage went?) They’ll make up some stupid acronym like ‘PRIDE’ and talk about how the ‘I’ stands for Integrity whilst taking million dollar bonuses and paying their assistants, who likely came up with this whole presentation, minimum wage. If that’s not enough patronizing for you, they’ll spend the whole time talking down to you pronouncing each syllable of each word like they’re Maynard James Keenan singing Vicarious (shouts to Tool the greatest US Rock band). If a company just came out and said “Our values are to make more money for our shareholders by any mean necessary”, I’d honestly respect them more than all this fake PR bullshit that is dripping in condescension.
- Insecure Smart Dudes/Billionaires – This drives me crazy. When ‘geniuses’ get lauded for taking the time to think about a difficult question. Oh really Elon has never thought about the impacts of tweets? He needed to pause for effect in order to think of the right response? GTFOH. Steve Jobs needs 18 seconds to think of the most important thing he learned at Apple? These are like the most basic interview questions. If you went to an interview and they asked you what your strengths are and you took 18 seconds to respond, they wouldn’t say ‘wow, this guy/gal is so smart’, they’d probably think you were having a full on stroke. This is just another form of self gratification. Look at me, look how smart I am. It’s insane, why is no one calling them out on it?! Where is Bill Burr when you need him!
Alright those are the top 3 for now, I’m sure I’ll come back and add some.
To tie this into books a bit more. This is what I like about Audiobooks, we can increase speeds in order to listen at your preferred tempo. I would love the ability to do the same to the people above. And yes listening to audiobooks is still considered reading, don’t make me go on another rant!
Did we miss any other people that talk slow? Want to sound off? Reach out to us!
