Just encountered my first HKer in the wild recently, and its extremely interesting to observe the pathology of their mental weakness.
This is a work colleague, so I had to do my best to keep things civil and maintain the relationship as otherwise I would not have given her the time of day.
At first she was all smiles and asking about my background. She went slightly frosty when said I was born in mainland China, then hopeful when I said I spent the majority of my life outside China.
What followed was an interrogation in all but name as she asked probing and loaded questions about all the western standard-issue talking points from HK to Xinjiang. Throughout I was just being non-committal as I can tell straight away that our views were diametrically opposed, and I just didn’t want the drama at work, and so focused most of my responses at poking holes in her arguments.
But that seemed to only frustrate her as she was clearly desperate to fit me in a pre-existing box so she could then use her stock answers and accusations against me; and seems to take it as some sort of personal slight that I would dare to question her sources and methods. She especially did not like it when I asked for really basic evidence for her claims and used really elementary deductive reasoning to demolish her conclusions, and I could almost her a vein pop when I used her own poor analogy to prove my point. At which point she went on and on about how stupid that analogy was, completely ignoring the fact that it was she who first made it to try to prove her point.
At no point did I make any comments or implications about her character, but nonetheless she was getting more and more offended and kept trying (and failing) to set traps for me. When that failed, she just gave up and went straight to the accusation stage of her playbook trying to put words in my mouth about what I believed or felt.
When I easily demolished those strawmen arguments, she played the woman card and was saying how she wasn’t enjoying this conversation, never mind that it was her who initiated contact and went straight to politics with indecent haste.
Anyways, to sum up, the key take-aways From this experience for me were:
- just how shallow their arguments were, which basically boils down to ‘I spent hours and hours researching this on the web so I am THE authority on this matter’
- how twisted their reasoning was that I was able to so easily demolish argument after argument by just pointing out all the blatantly obvious holes and logical fallacies
- how fragile their egos were that some basic gentle debate can upset them so much, which is a hallmark of brainwashing and mental conditioning
- how quickly and easily they play the victim card when they don’t get their way
Basically, it’s exactly like trying to have a reasonable discussion with a cult member.
I think the original reason for her making contact was to try to gauge me for potential recruitment.
No doubt I am now on some sort of HK/FLG black list. But I covered myself in case they try to pull any HR BS so I am not worried.
