What is the Silent-but-Violent Shut-the-F*ck-Up Technique? More importantly: why the hell couldn’t I come up with something that was easier to type? Stupid hyphens and stars…ruining my flow. I was initially going to call this the Ninja Silencer, but that would make it sound really cool when in reality it’s a steaming pile of sh*t.

Anyway, the Silent-but-Violent Shut-the-F*ck-Up Technique is what you use when you are having a group conversation and someone starts talking about something that he should have kept to himself for some reason. It is the universal method (i.e., everyone on Earth knows about it) for inconspicuously getting someone to stop talking by inflicting pain upon him. Yes, pain. It could be in the form of a pinch on the arm, stomp on a foot, kick to the back of the knee, etc. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as it’s done silently but violently…oh, and in case I haven’t mentioned this enough already, it has to cause pain or else it won’t work. You cannot simply tap the person lightly because he’d probably think you just accidentally bumped him or something. The element of pain, however, lets your target know that you are getting Silent-but-Violent for a reason…and ideally, the reason is to let that person know he needs to shut the f*ck up.

That’s a pretty sad description, so I’ll just use a real-life example of when the technique was used on me. It happened a few years ago while I was still in law school. Friend B and I, along with a group of friends, had been invited to Friend A’s birthday party…

I didn’t think there was anything wrong my response, but Friend B was all horrified that I was telling Friend C about the birthday party because unbeknownst to me, Friend C wasn’t invited. Friend B therefore didn’t want me to mention anything because he (1) didn’t want Friend C to feel left out, and (2) didn’t want Friend A to look bad. But of course, he couldn’t just outright say, “Stop talking about A’s party! She wasn’t invited!” because Friend C was, like, sitting right there. This left Friend B in a difficult position of figuring out a way to give me a heads-up without Friend C noticing.

But wait! Friend B lives on Earth and therefore knew about the Silent-but-Violent Shut-the-F*ck-Up Technique! And this was the perfect time to use it!

In theory, silent-but-violent shut-the-f*ck-upping should always work. I mean, it’s got like a 100% success rate on scripted comedy shows because the person getting silently-but-violently shut-the-f*ck-upped knows immediately that the infliction of pain is a hint that he is saying more than he should. The victim usually lets out a yelp of surprise and then pretends like nothing happened, while the pincher/stomper/kicker smoothly transitions to a different topic. So if this whole scene between Friends B, C, and me played out on television…

…I would know right away that Friend B’s awfully aggressive pinching is his way of telling me to refrain from saying anything more about Friend A’s birthday party. Friend B then quickly moves on to something else while I bite my tongue and nod enthusiastically at the nonsense words coming out of his mouth.

That sh*t would never, ever happen in real life, people. For one thing, unless you’ve got that disease that makes people unable to feel pain, the first thing you think of when someone suddenly starts going silent-but-violent on you is not going to be, “He’s trying to tell me something!” No, your immediate reaction will instead be, “What the f*ck is this douchebag doing?!” And you’re not going to be thinking it; you’re going to be saying it out loud because who the f*ck does random sh*t like that?!

So when Friend B began pinching me for telling Friend C about the birthday party, it totally pissed me off. This guy wasn’t my friend. He was a douchebag with serious boundary issues!

If Step One is to confuse Silent-but-Violent violence for douchebaggery, get really mad and then call the person out, Step Two would be the realization phase. This when your friend makes a face–usually by giving you “Hint! Hint!” Eyes–to let you know that he wasn’t being a douche. He was just trying to get you to shut the f*ck up. Aww…forgiven and forgotten!

In my case, once I saw Friend B’s facial expression I realized he was trying to tell me, “Don’t tell Friend C about Friend A’s party!”

The third and final step is to act like you weren’t just doing Silent-but-Violent Shut-the-F*ck-Uppery and failing miserably. Yes, if this was an instruction sheet, Step Three would literally be “Fail miserably.”

I hate to brag, but I think Friend B and I completed Step Three perfectly…

Remember how I said that the Silent-but-Violent Shut-the-F*ck-Up Technique was a universal methodology? Well, it’s that universal awareness that makes this technique completely useless. Everyone knows how this works–and that includes all the Friend Cs in this world. The only person who doesn’t know this technique exists is the person getting the Silent-but-Violent treatment because he’s too busy thinking that he’d just been attacked by a douchebag.

The part where this goes awry is somewhere between Steps Two and Three. If I were to reenact those steps in slow motion, it would look like this:

Okay, so I’ve turned around to verbally assault Friend B for pinching me, but he’s giving me serious “Hint! Hint!” Eyes and I realize what he was really trying to tell me.

You know who else got the message from Friend B’s “Hint! Hint!” Eyes? Friend C because unlike me, she wasn’t so mad that she momentarily forgot about something called the Silent-but-Violent Shut-the-F*ck-Up Technique. In fact, she was already kind of catching on when I yelled at Friend B for pinching me, but Friend B’s facial expression totally confirmed her suspicions that she wasn’t supposed to know about Friend A’s birthday party. And it really isn’t that hard for her to figure out the rest.

And then comes Step Three: Fail miserably.

As I have been saying, the Silent-but-Violent Shut-the-F*ck-Up Technique is just awful and should not be used by anyone. Just outright saying, “Shut the f*ck up” is way more inconspicuous than pinching the sh*t out of them.

As a replacement tool, I suggest using a safe word. Mine is “Voldemort.”