So, while reading the wikipedia article, an old saw of mine re-emerges.  They 
talk about these sorts of things as "fluid" or context dependent.  Yet they 
never (given my dilettante attention) talk about transients, transition times, 
half-life, periodicity, etc.  How long does it take to self-stereotype?  How 
many smacks does it take to snap out of it?

The reason I ask is because, recognizing my (OK, fine!) asociality, I almost 
always adopt a role in any given social context.  It's a purposeful adoption 
and I've gotten quite good at it, I think.  Either there is no "me" to 
deindividuate *or* theories like self-categorization are brain farts of the 
imagination and have no real bearing on actual life.  (And there can be no in 
between! .... just kidding, of course.  I'm drawing the distinction for 
rhetorical purposes.)

The interesting thing is that I can don and doff these roles almost 
instantaneously.  Talk to one guy at the party and play the role of Programmer. 
 He goes off for a beer and talk to another person and play the role of Occult 
Scholar. (My favorite story is when Jon Parsons ejaculated into a velvet box to 
summon his red-headed homunculus that was later stolen from him by L. Ron 
Hubbard.)  Then she goes off when the host announces margaritas and launch into 
Cancer Survivor mode with someone else.  It's truly a breath of fresh air when 
I run across someone else who is willing to swap roles several times through a 
single conversation.

I sincerely pity the person who finds themselves playing one or a small cluster 
of roles for all or most of their contexts, assuming such people exist.


On 1/15/19 9:50 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I witness otherwise intelligent people act that way when they don’t need to.  
>  I’d like to think that if enough people smacked them in the head they would 
> stop it.
> 
> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson 
> <nickthomp...@earthlink.net>
> Date: Tuesday, January 15, 2019 at 10:15 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Few of you ...
> 
> Interesting article.  Referenced within it is a long Wikipedia article on 
> self-categorization 
> theory<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-categorization_theory>, which is, 
> by the way, just a stunning example of abduction.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

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