Oh, Really? (aka, why it’s smart to not talk trash about people with strangers.)
As I have written about before, I’ve been lucky in my life to have had the freedom to meet thousands of people over coffee and beer meetings.
In that time I’ve tried to learn devices for figuring out if someone is genuine or if they are lying to me. I’ve come up with ways to test if they really know the people they claim to know (my guess is the average business person claims to know at least three times the number of people they actually do). Who is really their “friend” or if they are using that term way too loosely (aka. they met them once at an event for five minutes and connected on Linkedin.)
I’m not always accurate in my assessments, so I still default to giving people the benefit of the doubt, but their comments stick with me. I never quite shake the feeling of “shadiness” from them after that point.
For me, one of the worst offenses is when on a first meeting with someone, that person starts talking trash about someone else. Especially if it’s someone I know or don’t know but respect. Before you think, “Well, of course Seth, you always defend your friends.”
No, that’s not what bothers me the most. What angers me in that situation is when I tell them I know that person or I don’t know them but still like that person, they get uncomfortable and apologize normally. That’s the part that bothers me the most. The admission that if they had known it was a friend of mine, they wouldn’t have talked trash and would have been more positive. What they are saying in that moment is that if they had known, they would have tip toed around my back as well with their trash talk about my friend and saved it for someone else. In that moment I have a pretty clear idea of what I can expect out of associating with this person.
When someone makes unfounded* negative remarks about a person (who SO many times they don’t even know very well at all..), what they are doing is trying to make them less human. They are saying, I’m a better person, more valuable, more noble, more trusted, more respected, and so on. Trash talking comes across as desperate, petty, sad, and reflects terribly directly back onto the talker. Since it’s so common to project onto others the things we hate about ourselves, when a trash talker spouts about something like: “That guy is such a liar.” I wonder, “Are you actually the liar?”
*I want to point out that if your remarks are founded, such as they conned you, stole a fortune from you, assaulted you, etc… then be my guest and talk trash. But this is a rare form of trash talking. Normally it’s much more of “That guy is an asshole” or “I heard their startup is doing terrible and his investors hate him.” or “I heard she went bankrupt, what an idiot.” Stuff like that.
You never know who knows who. The world of startups (or any industry for that matter) is so much smaller than you think it is when you have been in it long enough. It’s shocking how connected the networks of all of us are now. Meaning, trash talk is a dangerous sport to play. With each word you are potentially cutting yourself out of future networks, costing yourself business, and blowing up bridges you didn’t even know were there. Plus, you’re not always right, which makes it so much worse when you get caught spreading a lie. People will avoid you like the plague.
The safest bet is to never talk trash with strangers. It’s also the easiest choice. It takes effort to talk trash. The feelings that typically drive it are anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, and the like. These types of feelings are not only draining, but take a lot of mental and emotional capacity to maintain. So, make your life easier, take a load off your brain, and for the sake of your personal and professional well being… stop talking trash. Especially with people you just met.
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This article was written from scratch and published the same day as part of a 31 day writing challenge. To follow me on Medium through this writing challenge, go here:https://medium.com/the-writing-challenge
