I’m familiar with one-uppers - like if you say I only got 6 hours of sleep last night and someone has to chime in and say “that’s nothing! I got only 3 hours”
So something similar to that but not one-upping.
Like if you said "I worked in a warehouse once, my boss was cool, and the work wasn’t bad. " And then someone replied with, “I don’t know what gravy-ass, non-real-job place you worked at, but every warehouse I have worked in sucks!”
So, the person is kind of one-upping but that the same time trying to claim that your lived experience isn’t true and their experience is the way things actually are.
Is there a word for that?
Why do we need to nounify it? It doesn’t need to be a special concept. Find the words for what they’re doing and describe it.
It sounds like they’re invalidating your experiences and struggling to recognize perspectives outside their own.
I guess if you really want to nominalize it, call it “hand-waving”. oh that doesn’t count. just anything but “anecdotal evidence” because I beg you please do not try to communicate your own subjective emotional experiences by using haughty, dry logic 101 vocabulary.
why? because it’s the fastest way to get lost in the bullshit of “is it or isnt it?!” and completely lose the conversation from focusing on how this person is treating you.
Using anecdotal evidence is not inherently abusive… this shitty behavior is