The implicit diss is when you are talking about your own life, your own preferences, thoughts, opinions, etc, but under the surface you’re actually trying to make a point about another person’s life, thoughts, opinions, etc.  Usually in a harsh, diss-like, manner.

I’ve been trying to pinpoint what exactly annoys me about this particular style of conversation for a while. And I haven’t been able to pinpoint it because I didn’t have a word for it.

The implicit diss is annoying because the person being judged can’t necessarily call out the dissing that is happening. It’s cloaked. To call it out would appear to be being perhaps too sensitive or navel-gazing for thinking that a person is talking about them when they’re really supposedly about something entirely different.

The implicit diss lives in the sub-narrative of a conversation.  It’s supposed to go mostly unnoticed and unacknowledged, merely a light tap of criticism that may or may not have even been intended.

The implicit diss betrays a (possibly subconscious, possibly not) malicious intent, or insecurity, on the part of the disser.

Rather than calling out implicit disses, the key is to not interpret them as under-handed criticism, but rather interpret them as a potential insecurity being made apparent.  When people reveal insecurities, it’s helpful to think about what that person is afraid of, or unsure about.

If it’s something that has anything to do with you, it might reveal that you have been implicitly dissing them or otherwise making them feel inadequate, and the solution to the problem could be in changing your own behavior.  On the other hand, if it’s something that doesn’t have anything to do with you, then it’s nothing to take personally, and perhaps there’s a way to step out of the criticism’s way, mentally.

For now, I’m just going to try to pay more attention to this particular behavior and sense when I’m implicitly dissing others, and when it’s happening between others.

This entry was posted by Buster on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 12:52 am. It is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.