After getting trolled hard to his face by a couple of young huwhite shitlords and smarting from it so badly he took to Twatter to express his indifference to it all, Silicon Valley actor Thomas Middleditch attempted the Agree & Amplify game maneuver to save face. It didn’t work.
If you say so, Tommy.
Agree & Amplify is a powerful Game rhetorical tactic, but it has a limit on its usefulness as a verbal reframing tool. Two hard ceilings on the wide-ranging applicability of A&A are
- its inability to neuter thermonuclear insults
- sloppy execution
Tommy Boy ran into both of these limits. “CUCK” is an insult so powerful, aimed straight at a manlet’s sexual worth, that even advanced level evasive sophistry won’t redirect its devastating payload to the sender. It’s like calling a man a loser, or a woman a fatty….it’s next to impossible to formulate an effective (read: crowd-pleasing) comeback from those shivs if the insult is based on readily apparent characteristics of the person getting insulted.
Second, execution matters. If there is a way to A&A a charge of cuckery, Tommy didn’t do it here. Coming back from “cuck” requires a much nimbler tongue than the butthurt try-hard reply, “I’m totally cuck. Proud of it.” If someone called you a fag, would it help your cause to retort, “I’m totally faggy. Proud of it. Wouldn’t want it any other way”?
The tightest Game means being ready for any exigency of the field, and since I’m feeling magnanimous I’ll offer Tommy a better reply to someone calling him a cuck (which will happen again for him soon, I’m sure). “Your wife didn’t think so. Neither did your mom.”