Bored and Privileged White Housewife Post #3: Meet a Dunning-Kruger Dominant
Meet a Dunning-Kruger Dom. He's been practicing BDSM for fifty (50) years even though he's only thirty-one (31) years old. He writes books on kink, so he doesn't need all those stupid virtual workshops the next generation (TNG) are attending these days. His last (and only) book was titled How to Use Your Mega-Hypnotic Gaze to Emphasise Your Dominationalism Like Christian Grey. Dunning-Kruger Dom is arrogant, brash, boastful and genuinely believes in his own superiority. As we'll soon see, this is a problem.
For those who don't know: The Dunning-Kruger effect is a psychological effect wherein those in possession of a great deal of knowledge/capability underestimate that knowledge/capability, whereas those who lack it overestimate how much of it they have. David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that all of us are prone to this cognitive bias. Yes, even you and I. I've been a writer (albeit unpublished) for nearly twenty (20) years, and it's taken that long for me to recognise my incompetencies. When I first began writing, I was utterly sure of them, just as Dunning-Kruger Dom is sure about his. (He can't tie a reef knot and he thinks butt plugs are a kind of daisy, but a vanity publisher "approved his book for publication", so of course the kink scene really should pay heed to his expertise.) However, regarding my own writing, I pressed on to the point where I had doubts and looked back on my earlier writings, wondering what happened. While I still have a long way to go before I'm at Hemingway's level (if ever), I have certainly improved since I was a teenager picking up a pen and scribbling my musings in journals. I digress from the matter at hand, though.
One does not gain a complex ability right out of the gate. At the starting line, you have no idea how tough this race is or how fast your rivals are. Your abject confidence in your own capacity to win is built from ignorance. Only when you see the finishing line can you declare your uncertainty. Now you've met the fastest runners in the race, and you've learned that, holy f@@k, you're one of the slowest people in it!
As with other walks of life, this plays out in the kink scene all the time. You've seen the profiles: "I've been a master for twenty years and have written five books on the subject. I can fulfill every fantasy you could possibly have. Join my next class, "The Advanced Guide to Bondage, Depositions, Sister Sledge, and Masseuses."
This is a person who doesn't know enough to understand his own incompetence. He's too far from the finishing line to have met the gold medal players, but he certainly gets a prize for the size of his ego and unsubstantiated claims.
Humility and expertise go together like green eggs and ham. I don't know what green eggs are, but I have it on good authority that ham is the best thing with which to eat them, Mr. Fox. The experienced folks, the quiet masters, simply don't brag about their considerable knowledge, even though they are some of the most knowledgeable kinksters in the global scene. They don't need you to think highly of their abilities, since their competence is obvious right out of the gate. They're too busy practicing and enhancing their kinky talents to brag, anyway. They do have one more thing in common, though. They share their knowledge as widely as possible. This is how the scene stays healthy. Our elders pass it on to those who follow.
Dunning-Kruger Dom, who joined Fartloaf two hours ago, doesn't have any knowledge to share, so the only words he puts out are assurances that he knows it all. What does he know? Not enough to teach, I'm afraid, but his overconfidence is the catalyst for a thousand dangerous and destructive scenes past or to come. If you're an impressionable newbie who plays with him, you will be injured and you will end up hurt. Hopefully, you'll also learn to stay far away from boastful BDSM "experts".