Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Weapons of the Weak and the Peeved

I'm not sure that this is the most groundbreaking journalism (or pop social-science), but it is interesting: ways people strike back at the death-by-a-thousand-cuts annoyances of modern life, such as always ordering by S-M-L at Starbucks, mailing blank flycards back to the magazines that tuck them into their pages, and so forth. I'd love to hear about others' techniques. Does always saying "please" and "thank you" - even to the most surly clerks - count? That's mine.

(And props for meaningfully quoting James C. Scott, a great anthropologist.)