Framing

Not carpentry

I have been thinking a lot about how people process information or even if they even do at all. I have talked about reading comprehension, and i have also talked extensively about biases and fallacies. All of these concepts tie in to a process I call framing. Framing is something a person does to make a situation, conversation, past or current event confirm their beliefs or affirm their memories.

Its a lot like the outrage farming that grifters use online: take everything out of context intentionally or unconsciously, and then present the information in a way that persuades people to believe what they believe to be true. Ill give an example, try to see if you can spot how I frame things here in this story:

My girlfriend has a friend named Sam. Sam used to be an alcoholic with young children, she was a real party animal. Now, if you let her tell it, she used to get so drunk that she would have to lock her kids in her bedroom to sleep off a wet-spell so that they didn’t kill themselves while she was incapacitated. I know this because she told this story in the context that she wasn’t as bad as other parents who suffer from alcoholism. Claiming a sort of moral superiority over other people. It was truly fascinating.

This is just what she is willing to reveal about her alcoholism, and she used it in a way to frame herself as a moderate compared to other bad parents. A way to convince herself she isn’t that bad of a parent, you know, like reassurance. Framing.

I prefer to look at the evidence, however. One of her children grew up to be transgender, and im pretty sure that Sam was all aboard with permanently mutilating her child’s genitals and putting them on hormone therapy. Her husband is in prison for shooting a mail thief in the head which happened recently. Its almost as if hed rather be in prison than be around her. Id say there is more going on, you know?