LA Green
When you have a rival you compete. with that said, you normally try to manipulate the situation when one is against a competitor. Manipulation is cheating....
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Cheating and competiton are the same
19 Replies
Natasha ∙ 19 weeks ago
Ahhhh. . . .true. My husband and I were having a similar discussion earlier. Only we were discussing a different topic with the same idea fueling it. If you manipulate someone into believing a lie for the greater good does that negate the fact that you were being manipulative and lying?
LA Green ∙ 19 weeks ago
It's tricky.....manipulation can be used in many ways. If you use to your advantage as in prying on the weakness of another, it's a little low; it depends on the situation also. In sports, if I keep picking on your weakness, that's sports your just showing me what I need to improve on. Now take that same concept, and apply it to...lets say a relationship. If two guys are after the same girl, and one guy decided to manipulate the situation by picking out the weakness, that's shallow. Another way manipulation can be used is by sabotage. Let's say you work in sales. At work, a new hire begins. The new hire is getting sales left and right, just blowing your numbers out the water; they become competition. Instead of bettering yourself, you set it up to were you manipulate the other people around you to screw up the new hire sales; in the meanwhile, your sales do not increase BUT the new hire "competition" loses sales. In that situation, no good can come out of this. Because even if the person changed the approach, and the psychopath realizes this, there going to manipulate every situation. Manipulation can be good but int the right context...not screwing a life over.
LA Green ∙ 19 weeks ago
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Natasha ∙ 19 weeks ago
Ok, so when I worked at Domino's as a manager they set these ridiculous numbers that we had to reach. No manager could do it. We tried. So we had to manipulate the numbers. The computer system was VERY detailed. You would input the order when you took it and then send it to the computer in the back. We had a certain amount of time to make the pizza and clear it from the screen. Then we had a certain amount of time for it to get through the oven and be logged out under a drivers name to be delivered. Then we had to have the driver back from the delivery and logged back in at a certain amount of time. When we were slow it was easy to reach those numbers. When we were slammed - not so easy. So we would sometimes clear it from the screen while we were still making it. Then we would log the driver out before he left with it. And, when the delivery was pretty far out (we had a HUGE delivery area with few short cuts) we would log the driver back in before he returned. Manipulation. We had to do it or we would lose our jobs. The guy who owned this domino's franchise was a former hockey "star" who was flippin' insane. It was also unethical. I was glad to leave that nightmare behind.
Also, I have bipolar disorder and PTSD. My husband has a difficult time talking to me because I have so many "buttons" that will set my mood into a tornado of emotions. So, sometimes, to get his point across, he will manipulate me into seeing things his way. Still manipulation and I see it for what it is, but that also keeps me from blowing up at him. So, is that manipulation for the greater good?
Natasha ∙ 19 weeks ago
On the sports side of things - a pitcher will exploit the weaknesses of a batter to decide which pitch to throw. . .
Rob Staalduinen ∙ 19 weeks ago
To me, its really not the same. Cheating seems to be defined as stepping outside the specified rules, regulations and guidelines of the competition in question. Attempting to tip the scales in your favour, while remaining firmly within those rules, is competition wtihout cheating.
Natasha gave a good example when it comes to sports. A pitcher will exploit the weaknesses of the batter, or attempt to disguise his pitch so the batter can't tell what is coming. That is a method to manipulate the results, but it isn't cheating.
If you're competing in something less defined than a sport or game, things get a little more grey. But I still believe that no matter what you do within the rules of a contest, it can't be cheating. It may be manipulating, lying, bluffing, faking or anything else, but you aren't cheating the contest.
LA Green ∙ 19 weeks ago
@ Rob so where do morals and ethics come into play? Because in competition, you can tip the scales but in some sense, doesn't that count as cheating? I will say this, everyone uses manipulation to some extent but how many cheap shots can one take before it classified as cheating? I think that, manipulation has many different levels. You have the fair manipulation, which would be poking at a weakness such as the example that Tasha gave; then you have a fixed manipulation, when you fix a situation were the competition doesn't even have a fair chance, then you have the low and dirty manipulation, something a lawyer would do. Ask a tricky or vague question that they know will put them in the right position for winning a case. All of these technically can be with in the guide lines; but were should the line be drawn?
Rob Staalduinen ∙ 19 weeks ago
@ LA Green Morals and ethics are difficult to look at objectively, since everyone has their own moral compass. But I think if someone is to cheat, it implies that there are rules in place. To me, cheating is attempting to slip something past the 'authority' involved in whatever you're doing, something that goes in the face of the rules.
In things like sports, it would be trying to slip an illegal move past the referee. And like you said, fixing the competition would often be considered cheating, since manipulation of that level is against the rules in most any competition.
As for the last one, vague and tricky questions by lawyers, I don't think it's cheating. Its up to the judge to determine that, but if a question is vague but doesn't go against any rules within the court, its still allowed. Morally reprehensible? Perhaps. But still not cheating.
Natasha ∙ 19 weeks ago
So let's say my favorite author is having a book giveaway. A competition. There are no real rules. Just a way to enter. Let's say I enter and then proceed to coerce him into picking me over the others (who all are much better contestants than I) by using my breasts as leverage. This is manipulation, immoral, and unethical. But, I win the competition. Would you, the other competitors, find this to be cheating even though there were no clear rules stating that you could not use your breasts to win said competition?
FTR - this would never happen, My breasts are rather small and would probably cause me to lose a competition if I decided to do it, which I wouldn't. Lol.
LA Green ∙ 19 weeks ago
@ Natasha LOL I'm not laughing because you have small breast and I'm laughing at the situation. The first thing to come to most women's mind would be, "What a slut" she won only because her breast were exposed. In a sense, w/o any real rules its not cheating; yet it is? =/ I mean this can go as far to say you had what it takes to win and or even catch the attention but does it make it right? What if there was another girl with big breast who was qualified but didn't do the same thing? You would have cheated but w/o any rules you won; but how would feel about that?
@Vintage cobweb I've played basketball for about 16 years of my life and I'm 28. In sports, I know there are guidelines. I agree with you when you say it's getting the edge on the opposition; yet having played bball for so long, I've lost games that were fair and I've lost games that were obvious in favor. In sports it's harder to tell because this is were you see the real animal come out of us; that raw aggression and natural selection so to speak. So of course manipulation rears it's head in sports because it's tough; you have to have an edge. In sports, there's a lot of tricky situations that happen.
Ok so what I'm gathering is that, Bush won the 2004 elections fair and square? =) This is probably one of the biggest competitions besides sports.
Natasha ∙ 19 weeks ago
2004 election, wow, I still get a migraine if I think too much about that one.
LA Green ∙ 19 weeks ago
A lot of us do but it's the truth...There's a lot of people out there who believe that Bush won that election fair...but in that competition he won...hmm...
Princess Blog ∙ 19 weeks ago
not exactly manipulation is cheating.
It can be called modification sometimes. I think acts like back stabbing, lie, etc are more to be called cheating.
LA Green ∙ 19 weeks ago
@ Princess you make a good point. I think that back stabbing lies and all of these things fall under the category of cheating; yet at the same time, I think that manipulation falls somewhere between lying and truth. If information is withheld, is that lying? If you withhold information, it would have to be for a reason. In order to manipulate, depending on the situation, this means fixing a situation in order to advance in competition would be a form of cheating? lol or is it just classified as unfair? If so, when we do something that's not fair the first thing we yell out is _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _! feeling cr8tive... =) lol
What would you like to say?
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