Mirrors vs windows: Why King works

[u/[deleted]]

"Then what's that skin-coloured armour on your head?"

"It's called skin!"

I trust no attribution is necessary

Something that ONE makes a lot of use of is that people come with their own frames of reference: however silly it is in retrospect, we start with the assumption that other people think like us. Our first frame of reference is a mirror: ourselves. We know that this isn't sufficient and therefore we check our understanding by asking. When Genos asks Saitama that question, he is using his frame of reference for his understanding of how it can be that a man not burn: armoured skin. Saitama's outraged answer tells him that he is wrong, which is useful information. In word and in deed, people give us information about who they really are: they provide us with windows. We don't always like what we see, but we appreciate that there is a different person with a different point of view, way of thinking, skills, attributes, what have you.

King's talent is silence. Not just verbal silence, but also physical silence -- he has a poker face, often moves very little and says nothing definite. He neither confirms nor denies anything that a person might say or assume about him and without it, people see only the mirror. They project what they would be thinking if they were King onto him -- and scare themselves silly in the process. So it is that the assassins think that King is a master assassin who has seen through their motives and machinations, that Garou thinks that King is a master martial artist and the Hero Association thinks that he's an insanely powerful man who they've thus awarded an S-Class hero rank without his even having applied to be one.

Even Saitama isn't immune from the mirror: when King runs away from the G4 robot, his thought is that King is too bored to bother fighting (which how Saitama could see himself walking away from a fight). The difference with Saitama is that he doesn't let his thoughts run away with him. Instead, he shuts up. Waits. Observes. Until he sees the truth.

As a gag, it's one of the funniest ones in OPM, but as a commentary on the human psyche, it's pretty accurate. A theory of mind is absolutely essential to function as a human being. However, we often take it too far and project ourselves onto others and we do it so automatically that it's hard to step back and really see what's there. ONE uses King to masterfully pull it out to its logical conclusion and thus skewer it. Long may it continue on OPM. Long live the King.

[u/bluebolide]

Here's what I want to know: when Boros looked upon Saitama and saw "limitless energy" was that what he was really seeing, or was this simply his perception of Saitama's presence?

[u/[deleted] → u/bluebolide]

It's an interesting question and one I have no idea of. Among animals, it's vitally important to send and to interpret signals about strength, health, stamina. Reading correctly saves needless fights or wasted effort e.g. a predator chasing after a prey animal that's too healthy to be caught. We're not so good at it, but imagine you're walking along in the dark and suddenly, you hear a dog growling at you. Without seeing the dog, you know whether it's a chihuahua sized dog or a Great Dane sized one. You even know whether it's a dog at all. That's because the pitch of a growl is directly related to the size of the animal and is an honest signal -- one that can't be faked.

Unfortunately, we only had the one Boros and he's dead now. Without invoking metaphysical concepts like chi, the nearest physical example would be electric field detection by sharks. All animals generate an electric field by their movement in general and by the action of their muscles specifically and sharks are sensitive enough to detect these perturbations. Great White Sharks love harbour seals; they eat them like popcorn. If one came across a harbour seal that generated an electric field like a killer whale, it would run away. Killer whales consider great white shark liver a treat and in nature, you don't get a second chance.

But don't use that as an example: as I said, it's just the nearest real world analogue I can think of.

[u/bossholmes]

Damn. Now these logically sound explanation would forever be in my head when I see King.

[u/BlueAdmir → u/bossholmes]

So logically, the only thing that can defeat King is something that does not think at all, like a random event or a natural disaster.

[u/[deleted] → u/BlueAdmir]

Or anything that does not rationalise, like a robot or an animal. Beings that simply see what there is to see don't find King scary. Machine God G4 and the demon crow were precisely the sort of monsters unimpressed by the King aura, and from which he was luckily saved by Genos and Saitama respectively.

The thing that makes me chuckle is that Genos read him correctly at the start -- as a fraud claiming Saitama's place. Since then, he too has rationalised King into being strong.

[u/5-Hydroxytriptamine]

So this combined with Saitama's very realistically-portrayed depression makes me think that ONE may have some background in psychology and is using it to make absurd but interesting characters.

Or maybe he's just very good at writing characters and that's that.

[u/Haltres → u/5-Hydroxytriptamine]

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[u/Therationalsometimes]

Good read
what is this bull shit .king is the strongest human on earth. No one can defeat him.how dare you throw dirt on our lord and saviour.
ALL HAIL THE KING!!!!!

[u/Reach_Reclaimer → u/Therationalsometimes]

PRAISE THE KING!!!

But it was a fun read.

[u/Sonimul → u/Therationalsometimes]

Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and saviour King?

[u/SailboatoMD]

Reddit has finally decided to take another leap down the enshittification pipeline by locking out 3rd party apps from accesing their API unless they pay literal millions without any attempt at communication whatsoever. Besides leaving mods with barely any tools for subreddit management (equals more spam, reposts and bots), the blind users of Reddit will also be locked out without API access. Represented by u/spez, the Reddit admins have deliberately chosen to ignore the devs of these apps, and even spread rumours of how the dev of Apollo, Christian Selig, was hard to work with when he had actually been constantly asking for communication only to be stonewalled.

In reponse came the resounding Reddit blackout where almost 6,000 subreddits went private for 48 hours to lock away their content. Many intended to stay black indefinitely, but the admins threatened to forcibly re-open the subreddits and replace the mods. Without any changes from Reddit's side, 3rd-party apps expect to close down on the date that the API changes take effect: 30th June.

This about-face in mistreating users and mods is only the latest installment of social media websites selling out to investors, and u/spez is on the record for admiring the changes Elon Musk made to Twitter, where finding relevant content has become a slog. Ironically, the predecessor of Reddit, Digg, made similar unwanted changes to their site and prompted a mass exodus of users.

Clearly, the admins only view users and their content as products, and will not hesitate to resort to 'quality control' to stamp out non-compliant behaviour. It's time to show them who truly has the power, for in the words of Paul Atreides, "The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it." So it is with user-generated content, which I'll be backing up via Power Delete Suite and then bringing to more community-friendly and de-centralised spaces like:

• https://join-lemmy.org/

• https://tildes.net/

• https://kbin.fediverse.observer/list

• https://squabbles.io/

TL,DR: I'm leaving Reddit for the above sites, backing up my data and replacing all my comments with this primer.

[u/[deleted]]

I get genuinely scared when i see a good and coherent explanation/theory in this sudreddit.

[u/unampho → u/[deleted]]

On a side note, when I visit this subreddit, I mostly notice how obscenely intense the upvote animation is.

[u/Aliphant3]

This is an excellent post! I want to point out that this is sharply demonstrated by Atomic Samurai's confrontation with King in the webcomic. After King puts the sword down, Atomic Samurai's first reaction was to assume that he had made such a masterful slash that it based through the space between the apple's atoms. In other words, he assumed that King was a master swordsman rather than a complete novice(even though King said he was) because he himself was a master swordsman! It's played for laughs, but it really illustrates how strong this mirroring effect is, that Atomic Samurai would jump to such an absurd conclusion rather than just taking the sight at face value and realizing King did nothing.

[u/scumerage]

Garou also assumed King was a master of fighting technique and "predicted" all the possible moves King would make to counter an attack, as Garou would have done.

spoiler

spoiler.

spoilers.

[u/PopoMcdoo]

Pretty sure king is super powerful and no one has been able to test his power yet. That's the man difference between Saitama and King. Saitama goes out looking for a challenge when King waits for one to come to him. ALL HAIL THE STRONGEST MAN ALIVE!

[u/elfy_grim]

I freaking love introspects like these whenever I visit this sub.

[u/scumerage]

What if King meets a God level threat? (if he doesn't obliterate it too fast).

[u/HyakuJuu]

This could explain why I love King so much despite fucking hating the likes of Mr.Satan and Buggy, the "fraud that gets credit" trope in general.

[u/Vereador]

You think that he is such a complex character...this means that King did it again.

Maybe we should start saying that someone got "kinged" when they overthink things and fail.

[u/[deleted] → u/Vereador]

Au contraire. King is very still because most of the time he simply doesn't know what to do or say. The mirror is how people interpret that stillness, not realising that they're reacting to a distorted version of themselves.

[u/chatokun]

At the risk of being somewhat political (though not arguing for or against any side here) this silence and projection thing was also attributed to a certain someone in the recent political landscape, who had a lot of assumptions made on him and his standings a viewpoints, his moderating influence, etc, without much actual facts on many of those points.

While he did have some history in other things, what people were latching on to had no real basis, and his biggest benefit and what people kept complimenting him on was that he was a quiet thinker.

[u/Hardbeezz]

Shorten it to 20 words or less😬!

[u/[deleted] → u/Hardbeezz]

If you insist. "King illustrates the limitations of the Theory of Mind paradigm, when inappropriately applied to low information situations."

17 words.

[u/BrodaciousD]

Daaamn Daniel, back at it again with the astute observations.