Gaslighting as lying against someone's direct experience

gaslighting is lying in a context where other people have direct sensory experience that contradicts your lie (and persisting until they go mad) if you ask why I'm late and I lie, I'm not gaslighting if you ask why I'm late and I say "I'm not late", I am

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias · Jul 24, 2024

I support free speech and the first amendment but there should be a law against using the term “gaslight” or “gaslighting” as a synonym for “lying.”

Jul 25, 2024

there's not a hard-and-fast line between these in the movie Gaslight that the term comes from, it's a basic physical fact what's happening to the gas lamps—not the sort of thing that would come under dispute in ordinary circumstances. "the sort of thing a camera would see"

but suppose that someone's answer to why they're late just like... doesn't quite check out. they say "it's nothing to worry about" but they're vibing worried. their explanation for why they didn't text you is inconsistent with their previous behavior. = semi-gaslighting, imo

"I can tell for myself" is the antidote to gaslighting. as I wrote in my post on the power of this phrase, I can often tell for myself that someone is hiding something even if I can't tell what or why:

gaslighting is topical today from a tweet where org claims "X was never Y", but 3y ago they reported it was my conclusion is this is close to gaslighting, but only about whether people said stuff. most citizens have little clue about Kamala's actual role

Malcolm Ocean 🏴‍☠️ @Malcolm_Ocean · Jul 25, 2024

is"Harris never had the 'border czar' title" gaslighting? by my definition—that gaslighting involves contradicting someone's direct sensory experience—what sense would be being denied here? seems to me there are 2 questions: 1. did people call her that? 2. did she have such a role, title aside? 1. did people call her that? yep. literally same organization (@axios) used the phrase "border czar" in 2021 when she was appointed to a new role! and many other orgs at the time too. so this WOULD DEFINITELY be gaslighting—IF they literally said "nobody called her that". but instead they're saying…

read the whole tweet →

so contradicting yourself can be gaslighting "we are at war with Eurasia" "we have never been at war with Eurasia" even if the 1984 citizens don't directly know if Eurasia exists, let alone war, they still know this asks them to deny their experience of the previous utterance

note though how the guy is partially "got". improperly sandboxed against the memes: > "He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with [...] but where did that knowledge exist?" No! He knows that's what people *said* 4y ago. He has no actual knowledge of any war!

anyway, something important to note is that we easily mishear and misquote each other, and so in a relatively high-trust relationship, if someone seems to be contradicting something they said earlier, it's probably that. but if so, should be easy to sort it out. if not... gtfo.