Bonus DVD material:
All the business-card warriors would do themselves a lot more good in the long run by focusing on getting good at their jobs, and helping other people when they can just because it's nice to be able to help.
Oh, god, stop it, it's too funny. "Focus on getting good at your job." It's hysterical.
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That post is a perfect illustration of exactly what the British mean when they say Americans don't get irony.
Heh. I'm still laughing.
"focus on getting good at your job"
hahahaha!
I can't stop!
Her next post is about bad copy editing.
She's trying to kill me here, isn't she? Kill me dead with the Irony Anvil?
Not only does she make editing and spelling mistakes damn near every day, she never bothers to correct them, despite having them routinely pointed out to her in her comments. The complete and utter lack of self-awareness coupled with her typical condescension is more like horror than comedy.
Helping other people...hmm.
She's trying to kill me here, isn't she? Kill me dead with the Irony Anvil?
She must be posting at least some of this stuff on purpose, as a way of baiting her detractors. No one can really be that self unaware, can they?
This is some of McArdle's worst prose ever. It's got it all: superfluous commas, a misused dash, an improper apostrophe ("Other peoples' lives"), singular/plural confusion ("A good networker is someone who starts out...Along the way, they naturally find out..."), imprecise slang ("starts out" for begins; "find out" for discover), pompous word choice ("what a decent chap ought to do," "three months hence"), and redundant words ("they themselves"). I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I'm missing--but I'm not going to read that nightmare of a post again.
But beyond the prose, what's her point? She starts out, as she'd say, agreeing with someone called Cliff Mason that networking doesn't matter ("Amen") then scolds all the disingenuous glad-handlers and raconteurs who are always passing out their business cards to no avail, because they're phonies, and networking never works for them. These people should just concentrate on getting better at their jobs and stop being phonies, Holden Caulfield, I'm mean, Megan McArdle, lectures.
But there are some genuinely good, decent people in this world, McArdle reminds us, who take genuine interest in others and are always looking for ways to help the decent chaps they encounter in the future--even if that help won't be forthcoming until five years hence. For these people, according to McArdle, networking
is boon. I think her point is that networking is good for some people but bad for others. Anyone else know? In any event, this is high school-level work at best.
It's self explanatory as long as you divide the world into superior people and inferior people. If you have lots of money and success it proves that you are better than others. Here in Texas they credit God, but up North they are more likely to credit genetics. When superior people develop a network it is because they are inherently smart, kind and good. Others notice that and are grateful later, and the network develops.
But inferior people, the boring losers (can you believe the juvenile snobbery of Cliff Mason?), are jerks and nitwits. They don't have the network of family and friends and business acquaintances which the superior people already have, which proves that they're just desperate glad-handers.
Megan, of course, agrees completely. The fact that her parents were connected had absolutely nothing to do with her rise. Her networking just "happened" naturally because of her superior personality.
And don't forget Megan's oh-so-superior genuine and sincere motivations for connecting with other people simply in order to help them, as opposed to the losers who network out of self-interest. She would never do that because she's so much better than everyone else.
That Mason post certainly struck a chord in McArdle.
Ah, Megan, you unfold like a flower. Every day we see new facets of you, such as your knee-jerk response to the voicing chanting in your head. "It's not you....It's them! And this juvenile, self-satisfied, sneering post proves it!"
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