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caseuoiseau · 2 months ago

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In my youth, I was involved with several theater groups, which is an extremely Know A Guy hobby (and, it seems, profession), and there were several circumstances that made me believe I understood the power of Knowing A Guy: The season it turned out half of our new members in our college group were art majors and our sets looked incredible. The seasonal list of clothes and props for cast & crew to see if they own and will let us borrow. The season that same group let me direct a show with a fencing scene and I legitimately Knew A Guy (the brother of one of my high school best friends) who fenced competitively and did SCA and was in all sorts of ways itching to have the opportunity to choreograph a fight scene.

But I was a child. I was a fool. I didn't know shit about the power of Knowing A Guy. Not until I went to watch my mom's tennis team one Friday night.

One of my mom's teammates (I don't remember her name, let's call her Chris) showed up around a half hour in to the match just to watch. Mom had given me a heads-up that Chris might also shiw up, and told me she hadn't been in the lineup for a while, so everyone was hoping to see her. Naturally, being the more socially awkward half of this conversation, and thrilled to have something to say, I mentioned this to Chris, who offered that she hadn't been able to play because her husband had been in the hospital. Now, me being me, I didn't pry any further than that--we barely know each other, and I'm sure she just wanted to eat some wings and cheer for her team. But you'd better believe I blocked anyone else from taking up my Mom's time when she came off the court. Because my mother will always assume that if I know something, I will blurt it out in a conversation at the least opportune time (whoch...okay, fair, but it's closer to 60/40) so if Mom hadn't told me that Chris's husband had been in the hospital, it's because she--improbably--didn't know. She made an immediate beeline to Chris, and about two minutes in to talking to my mom, Chris was near tears.

Her husband had been riding his motorcycle back home from a couple states over and made it as far as a neighboring state when pickup truck knocked him clear off his bike on the highway. He had been recuperating in a hospital 4 hours away, he'd broken an absurd amount of bones and fucked up an absurd amount of organs, and the hospital was out of market and the bills were piling up and she needed to figure out some way to get him to a hospital closer to home and she was considering taking the back rows out of the mini van, putting down a mattress, and driving VERY CAREFULLY and although his employer was being very reasonable now, who knew how long that would last.

Now, a few important things to know about my mother: she has two graduate degrees and several certifications relating to business, public administration, and/or human resources, and had been working in HR for about 20 years. And at the time of this story, she'd been captaining tennis teams at her local club for a good six years. So she:

was incredibly accustomed to talking to people who are trying to hold their shit together when their personal life is in absolute shambles,

had an extensive network of professional acquaintances,

often used that network to help fill in her teams, and

knew about 85% of the people on any given opposing team.

So that Shortcut? That Guy Who Knows Other Guys? That's my mom.

So the first person she called over was one of her teammates. A nursing professor at a nearby university and former managing nurse at the world-class hospital up the street. Then another teammate, an ER nurse at a well-known Boston hospital, overheard the conversation and joined in. Then Mom waved over the female half of the line three mixed doubles, who worked for Harvard-Pilgrim and had some ridiculous number of decades working on the business side of health insurance. And then she gently herded this group to the club bar where we ordered about eight appetizers while this impromptu team spent the next hour of their lives creating a plan forward for this woman. These are his rights as an employee, this is the paperwork you need to fill out with his office. By the way, you know that you have your own rights with your own employer, yeah? Here's what you need to fill out there to protect your own job whole you're managing this. Please wait until he's less broken to schlep him 4 hours, unmoored, on a mattress in your minivan. This is what you need to do with the insurance to get them to cover this even tho its out of state, here's how you request it, here's my number in case that doesn't work. No kidding: an hour of this, and she left at 11pm full of wings she didn't buy, a bullet-ppinted list, and the phone numbers of four people she could talk to if anything came up. I've never seen anything like it since.

So, yeah. Network professionally and personally. Find out what your professional contacts do for fun (because the State Central League might need a couple of substitute players to cover holidays) and what your hobby friends do professionally. Generally? Just let people talk about themselves. It comes in very handy.

Networking/Knowing A Guy: A Guide

This is the autism website. Now, as an extension of the power of love and friendship, there are few things more useful than Knowing A Guy. Knowing A Guy means you have a support network. Knowing a plumber, or a tax accountant, or just that one dude that's really fucking good at finding the information you need when you're really overwhelmed, can be the difference between being able to pay rent and having a fun party with friends to fix your shit.

How does one end up Knowing A Guy? It's a skill you can develop called Networking and it is one of the foundations of society. Unfortunately making those connections with people is fucking hard and nobody makes a tutorial for it. So, here you go:

The golden rule is you scratch my back and I scratch yours

It is necessary for survival to seek out useful people

Great news! Everyone is useful in some form or fashion - including you! When given the opportunity to learn about someone, do it! Extroversion does not come naturally to some people and that's okay. Just take whatever falls in your lap.

Types of usefulness: trade skills, connections of their own, personality you jive with, pleasant to talk to, niche interest in shared hobby, security - the list is pretty much endless. I know a guy that lives in the metro area - no job, no major hobbies, inoffensively annoying to me personally, kinda ignorant, not attractive to me, but you know what? He knows how the fuck to get around the city by foot. My rural-raised ass APPRECIATES the guide.

Remember important information: general personality, background, skillset, likes and dislikes. You can find this information by making smalltalk about their life. There is no such thing as pointless conversation. (Yes, even the annoying smalltalk)

The more people you know, the higher the likelihood that one of them will be useful in a given situation - or will know someone who is.

It is overwhelming. In a given clique/community/workspace/whatever, there is A Guy Who Knows The Other Guys. This Guy is a shortcut. Find them. They're often elderly, extroverted, a little bit annoying, a secretary or in some otherwise forward-facing position. Look for people that are gossipy/talk about other people a lot but not in negative ways. If they constantly talk shit, they'll talk shit about you too. They're still useful but be careful with the information you share

You do not have to like someone for them to be useful.

You do not have to like someone for them to be useful.*

If you have low self esteem, you're going to feel like you're using people. You're not. That's the devil talking. People like feeling valued and the connections you are making are the threads holding community together. Recognize people for their talents. It's only a problem when you're taking advantage of people

So: don't feel scummy about it. You're an animal. You have to claw out your right to survive and people will respect you more for it.

Luckily mutualism is the name of the game in the animal kingdom. Offer something back. The foundation of a Know A Guy relationship is Mutual Benefit

Sometimes that Mutual Benefit is just spreading news of the The Guy far and wide. My plumber friend is my actual friend and I love her to death, but I'm maintaining our backscratch relationship by pimping out her plumbing business to anyone that'll listen

Food is a good Mutual Benefit. People across cultures for all of human history have bonded over food. I have good success asking people for a favor and then offering to buy them lunch in return **

General compensation is also good. Offer a service in return and always do your best to offer financial compensation as appropriate. Having your plumber friend take a look at your drain: doable with a case of beer. Having your plumber friend redo the pipes in your entire house? You need to pay for that.

Being transactional is not necessarily a bad thing. I would advise against keeping an itemized list of things owed, but fish don't seek out cleaner shrimp just because they enjoy their company. Everyone gets something

Unfortunately being extroverted and generally personable is a huge benefit here, but that's the value of the Guy That Knows A Guy. There's someone out there that has consolidated All The Guys so you don't have to be the local expert. Always remember nobody can do everything and you don't need to master every skill

* This is the foundation of a functioning community. I have many acquaintances that I find incredibly annoying. They include doctors, welders, artists, social workers, lawyers, construction crew and random fuckers at the grocery store. I do not hang out with them. I do not have to in order to maintain a civil Know A Guy relationship. I can drop them useful tidbits and fuck right off so I don't have to spend any more time than necessary with them

** People may assume romantic intent. Be prepared for that. I generally denote that it's a friendly/work lunch by calling them bro at some point if they're my age. Otherwise my general demeanor is sufficient to show that I do this with everyone

Source: personal experience, mother's teachings of crime, booth vending and poverty

#during the pandemic we were:#the people woth family that has a 4d printer #the people who have an absurd number of boxes of pasta in the pantry on the garage and will happily give you a couple #(look the grocery store around the corner has regulat 10 for $10 sales and my mom is helpless to resist them)#the people with quilting fabric and sewing machines (good lord i made so many masks)#anyway #oh and i think one of my mom's teammates iwns the businesz that renovated their guest room after a pipe burst in the ceiling #the alternative term is “I Got A Guy”

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slayfk · 4 months ago

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posting here because this just doesn’t feel right to talk about in the horseimagebarn voice but this is extremely important to talk about.

my partner and i have returned to our hometown to stay with her family and my own has gotten a hotel here too (they moved to the town we currently live in after we did) so we are all safe and out of the thick of it

however there are tens of thousands of people who are not both in my own town and in the many surrounding it. appalachia will take an extremely long time to recover from this and there are more storms on the way. all i see on social media right now is people asking for shelter because their homes have been destroyed, or people asking for help searching for family members who are missing. hundreds of trees have fallen. hundreds of homes have flooded. roads are literally falling apart. preexisting sinkholes due to shitty pipes are opening up and consuming land. dams are on the verge of bursting and the only way to stop it is to release water so quickly it floods whole towns. all but one of our cell towers are down, so only people with at&t have service and the rest can’t contact anyone. over half the town still doesn’t have power. a major water supply issue occurred and the entire town is on a water boil order with no electricity to boil with. people are trapped in their homes and workplaces or out on the street because they have nowhere to go. law enforcement is blocking off roads but trapping people in the process. people have to be rescued by helicopter. our animal shelter has no water or power and boarding facilities have been flooded. entire villages like chimney rock nc are gone, and entire cities like asheville are cut off from the rest of the state and are completely inaccessible. ALL OF THE ROADS IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA ARE CLOSED. 400+ roads are closed because they are unsafe . that is INSANE!!!

when people say that climate change isn’t real, they don’t know what they’re talking about. climate change and its father capitalism are only going to continue to worsen lives in every way possible. i live in the mountains and our infrastructure is completely unprepared to handle hurricanes and it’s only going to get worse. it’s such a strange and eye-opening experience to live something like this when you think that it could never happen to you because that type of weather shouldn’t reach you in your environment. climate change doesn’t care where you live. it’s real.

western north carolina and the rest of the southeast that has been hit by helene need help. more people need to be talking about this so that the government DOES SOMETHING because the government historically fucking hates appalachia and it still does!!! the major state institution near me took DAYS to respond despite being the only place in town with power and wifi connection because they had to wait for the state to approve their response—they could have allowed thousands of people to evacuate days prior to the hurricane hitting us but they didn’t do anything before or after until it was too late!!! it’s bullshit!!! PLEASE get talking about this because something has to be done. climate change is going to continue happening and our mountains and the people in them are going to suffer immensely. hundreds if not thousands are now homeless. please talk about this look at the footage online of the wreckage and look how quickly our infrastructure crumbled. we need better. the people of appalachia deserve better.

i’ll get back to posting horses soon. but for now this is a lot. my friends are homeless and my family had to get off the mountain or be trapped there without power and water for days. we’re all safe but exhausted. i hope everyone who has been affected by this is staying safe. if you are in western nc, dm me. when i come back, if you’re in my area, im happy to bring supplies. stay safe everyone

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