Most people think of conversations as cooperative endeavors where two people are working together to exchange information. But Deborah Tannen has spent her career documenting how conversations are also performances — rituals laden with hidden rules about status, connection, and identity. When those hidden rules collide, we don't just miscommunicate; we wound each other without ever knowing why.
By stabbing himself, he's proven how brave he is and yet has uh not gone to the extreme of hurting somebody, which would have lead to trouble because he's the weakest member. He's the poor one. They are rich and if he had hurt them, there would have been severe repercussions. It's a very smart move.
The day of the IPO, they went into a conference room, this, you know, nice, fairly unattractive guy who had no sexual currency their whole life, and they come out and they're the sexiest man alive.