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Comment by 6chars | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the author really understands the characterization of Michael Scott. I can't imagine the hypothetical scene of Michael Scott taking pride in knowing how to use chopsticks. That sounds way more out of character to me than having him not know how to use them. Hard for me to take the article seriously when it has to make up character traits for Michael Scott to make its point.

I believe that the type of person the author thinks Michael Scott is exists and sucks (and I'm probably one of them), but I don't think Michael Scott is one of them.

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I agree, this bit in particular seems wrong to me:

> Posturetalk is everything said by Michael, Dwight and Andy, to anyone: the staff, the execs, or each other. Everything they say is some form or another of meaningless, performative babbling.

I only really remember the first four seasons of The Office, but I remember Michael as being a very skilled salesman and a very unskilled manager. But Michael's skill as a salesman comes from a genuine desire to connect with people and form relationships --- recall the episode where he takes a second job as a telemarketer and keeps deviating from the call scripts to ask people about their lives. In that sense, a big chunk of what Michael says is pretty close to the opposite of performative?

You just wrote it yourself - he has an enormous desire to be praised, so much so that he completely fails to notice just how much he lacks a connection with literally anyone or anything (Michael is of course a comically over-emphasized example). This is the key to understanding the "clueless" or the "educated gentry" ladder, they are unhappy with being in "labor" but lack the balls/intelligence/true desire/luck/whatever else to be the "elite", so they come up with alternative scoring rules. Why do you think writing an op-ed in the NYT is so highly desired in that ladder? The other ladders don't dabble in praise, they either want their jobs to satisfy basic life needs (labour) or want ever-growing power with minimal regard to others opinion (elite), more specifically others opinion is only relevant insofar as it is a stepping stone on the path to more power.

Maybe your (and sibling's) comment along with mine illustrate two sides of the same coin. I think Michael is interested in status mostly as a path to connection. The dreams he talks about, if I remember correctly, center around having a family and a nice life, not prestige or power or winning. That's part of why I think the "Michael Scott" analogy is such an awkward fit for the middle ladder proposed in the article. My recollection of the series is that Michael is actually pretty satisfied with his status in society, but not his status relative to the people around him. If Michael dreams of writing an op-ed in the New York Times, it's because he hopes it will make Oscar like him or something.

michael's desire for connection does make him a lot more genuine than most of the other characters on the show, although this might be because he just isn't capable of the subterfuge and even the casual sarcasm employed by the others.

a lot of michael's behaviors are pretty naked attempts at gaining status. the irony is that he latches onto things that no one else actually respects. a good example is when he bought the sebring. michael did not buy that car because he liked it; he bought it because he wanted other people to see him in it, purely a flex. as is often the case, the joke was on him. no one thought the sebring was a cool car. just continuing on the car theme, look at what pre-breakdown jan was driving: a volvo, a nice vehicle befitting someone of her stature but not flashy.

I agree that his desire to connect on a personal level isn't posturing and is very much a huge piece of who he is- as such, it's wrong of the author to say that everything he says to everyone is posturetalk. At the same time, I'm not sure it's fair to dismiss the author's point entirely. One of Michael's other defining features (which goes hand in hand with his desire to connect personally) is his absolute need to be liked. His desire to connect on a personal level often feeds into this need to be liked, and attempting to satisfy this need is where a lot of his posturetalk comes from. He sees traits in others that he admires and he will do whatever he can to convince other people he has those same traits. Example: during performance review time, Pam mentions that she doesn't know what to expect from hers because her previous review began with Michael asking her where she sees herself in five years and ended with him telling her how much he can bench press. Heck, there was a whole episode about him trying to prove to the office that he was the toughest fighter around. Not to mention the paper conference where he pretended his $100 per diem was just what he would tip normally; or the time he said that anyone who could do more push ups than him could go home early; or like when he takes Jim to Hooters and says to the waitress that he's doing it because he's the boss and he can afford it but then we see when he gets back to the office that he's trying to get it expensed as a business cost because he can't pay for it; or when he tells Oscar to tell Jan that he's a financial guru who cut their debt in half; or when he buys his condo and brags about having two microwaves; or any interaction he has with a woman he finds attractive. These are just a couple easy ones off the top of my head.

My point is that it's not one or the other- Michael is a great salesman because he wants to connect on a personal level, but man alive he sure spouts off a whole lot of posturetalk.

Right, Michael Scott would tell someone he of course knows how to use them and then end up in a Japanese restaurant with that person and be found out to be the fool once again.

That I can see. Or he would fixate on the fact that someone else does know how to use them and get competitive about it, trying and failing hard to show that he's also worldly.

Michael Scott would make fun of the chopsticks, use them to play drums etc. say something racist, and then search for a fork or spoon.

The other part is that Micheal doesn't posturetalk to his employees. He desperately wants them to be his friends, because he has none. It's one of his defining characteristics.

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