An indispensable guide to avoiding accountability, managing your reputation, and making absolutely everything someone else’s fault.
Are you tired of being held accountable for your own behavior?
Do people insist on bringing up things you actually said? Things you actually did? Are they forever demanding explanations, apologies, or—God forbid—changes in your behavior?
How exhausting.
Fortunately, accountability is largely a matter of p r e s e n t a t i o n. With the right techniques, you can transform almost any confrontation into an opportunity to demonstrate your patience, generosity, and extraordinary tolerance for the shortcomings of others.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the time-honored arts of blame-shifting, deflection, emotional manipulation, and the occasional wholesale renovation of reality.
By the end, you’ll know how to emerge from almost any disagreement looking fabulous. If you’re reading this because someone in your life already seems remarkably proficient at these techniques, congratulations.
You’re the actual intended audience.
Let’s get to work.
Lesson One: The Straw Man
Imagine someone approaches you with a perfectly reasonable complaint.
“When you made that joke about me at dinner, I felt embarrassed.”
A lesser person might acknowledge the embarrassment, consider the joke, and perhaps apologize. Amateur. Instead, transform their specific complaint into an outrageous general accusation.
“Oh, so I’m not allowed to joke anymore? I suppose you want me to walk on eggshells for the rest of my life.”
Beautiful. Notice what happened? You were accused of making one hurtful joke. Now you’re defending your fundamental right to possess a sense of humor. Your opponent must either reassure you that you’re allowed to joke or risk looking like a humorless tyrant.
Either way, the original complaint has left the building.
How to ruin this maneuver:
Refuse to defend an argument you never made. Keep returning to the original issue.
Lesson Two: DARVO
The victim is you. Obviously. DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
It’s a particularly elegant technique because it doesn’t merely get you out of trouble. It can turn the person confronting you into the person who owes you an apology.
Suppose someone discovers that you’ve been dishonest. “You told me you were at work, but you weren’t.”
First, deny. “That’s not what I said.”
Next, attack. “Why are you interrogating me? Don’t you trust me?”
Finally, reverse the roles. “I can’t believe someone I love would treat me this way. Do you have any idea how hurtful these accusations are?”
If executed with sufficient conviction, your accuser may soon be comforting you. And the original question? What original question?
How to ruin this maneuver:
Someone’s distress about being confronted does not automatically resolve the underlying concern.
A word of caution for our aspiring villains: DARVO describes a recognizable response pattern, not a diagnosis. Being upset or denying an accusation does not, by itself, establish dishonesty.
Lesson Three: Whataboutism
Never let your behavior be the only behavior under discussion.
Someone says: “You promised to take care of this, and you didn’t.”
Dangerous territory. A factual claim with an identifiable responsibility. Quickly introduce an entirely different offense.
Excellent. Now you have two grievances competing for attention, and the original one no longer enjoys the luxury of being examined independently. With practice, you can introduce offenses dating back years. Holidays are especially fertile territory.
Remember: the goal is not to establish whether the other person has ever made a mistake. Of course they have. The goal is to make their mistakes so relevant that yours can never be discussed.
How to ruin this maneuver:
Two people can both be accountable. Just not necessarily in the same conversation.
Lesson Four: Blame-Shifting
Your behavior is actually a fascinating consequence of someone else’s behavior.
This technique is indispensable for anyone who wants to enjoy the full range of human emotions without accepting responsibility for expressing them.
Suppose you lose your temper and scream at someone. Ordinarily, this might require an apology. Instead, explain the causal relationship. Watch This.
Notice the elegance of made me. You have transformed yourself from a person who chose to yell into a helpless instrument of another person’s conduct. You weren’t acting. You were reacting. Practically a law of physics.
For advanced practitioners, add a touch of regret…
Now you’re not merely innocent. You’re tragic.
How to ruin this maneuver:
Provocation may explain a reaction without excusing it.
And yes, sometimes both parties have legitimate grievances. Accountability isn’t a competition in which only one person gets to be wrong.
Lesson Five: Gaslighting
Reality is negotiable. Confidence is everything.
This is the advanced course, and the terminology deserves some care.
Gaslighting is not simply lying, disagreeing, or remembering something differently. It involves a pattern of undermining another person’s confidence in their perceptions, memories, or judgment. The truly ambitious manipulator doesn’t merely want to win today’s argument. They want tomorrow’s argument to begin with the other person already doubting themselves.
Consider: “I never said that.”
When confronted with evidence: “You’re taking it out of context.”
When the context is explained: “You always twist things.”
When the other person becomes frustrated: “See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. You’re impossible to reason with.”
Splendid.
The subject has quietly changed from what happened to whether the other person can be trusted to understand what happened. Eventually, they may spend more energy examining their own memory than examining your conduct.
How to ruin this maneuver:
You don’t have to prove that your memory is infallible. It isn’t. Nobody’s is. Keep records when appropriate. Seek independent perspectives. Distinguish genuine uncertainty from pressure to surrender your judgment.
And remember: sometimes people really do remember events differently. That alone isn’t gaslighting.
Lesson Six: Minimization
Nothing is ever as serious as someone else thinks it is.
Sometimes the evidence is simply overwhelming. You said it. You did it. Everyone knows.
Not to worry. The question is no longer whether it happened. The question is whether it matters.
“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“It was just a joke.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Nobody else would be upset about this.”
Particularly useful is the phrase …
It accomplishes two important things simultaneously: it minimizes the behavior and identifies the injured party as defective. Efficiency is the hallmark of excellence.
How to ruin this maneuver:
You don’t need unanimous agreement about the severity of an experience before you can discuss its impact.
Lesson Seven: Tone Policing
When you can’t dispute the message, critique the delivery.
Suppose someone has an excellent point. Worse, suppose they have evidence. As luck would have it, they’re irritated! Perhaps they’re even raising their voice. What a gift.
Now you can occupy the moral high ground of civility without engaging with the substance of their complaint. For extra polish: “I’m trying to have an adult conversation here.”
Delivered quietly, of course. Ideally with a sigh.
How to ruin this maneuver:
Now, an important distinction: nobody is obligated to tolerate screaming, threats, or abuse. Taking a break from an escalating argument can be entirely appropriate.
The manipulation occurs when someone’s imperfect delivery becomes a permanent excuse to avoid a legitimate issue.
Lesson Eight: Moving the Goalposts
Never allow a satisfactory answer to remain satisfactory.
Someone asks you for evidence. You provide it. They ask for more. You provide that, too. They change the standard. This is an excellent technique for maintaining the appearance of intellectual rigor while making resolution functionally impossible.
For example: “You never help around the house.”
“I did the laundry, cleaned the kitchen, and took the kids to practice.”
Ah. So the question wasn’t whether you helped. It was whether you helped for sufficiently noble reasons. Conveniently, those reasons are invisible and therefore infinitely debatable.
How to ruin this maneuver:
Standards can legitimately change when new information emerges. But repeatedly changing them to avoid acknowledging an answer is another matter.
Lesson Nine: The Non-Apology
Eventually, even the finest practitioner may find that an apology is unavoidable. Fear not! An apology needn’t include an admission of wrongdoing.
Consider these classics:
“I’m sorry you feel that way.”
“I’m sorry if you were offended.”
“I’m sorry you misunderstood me.”
Each conveys a pleasing impression of contrition while leaving the actual behavior untouched.
For a more sophisticated approach, combine apology with accusation:
Wonderful. You’ve apologized and assigned responsibility elsewhere in a single sentence.
How to ruin this maneuver:
A meaningful apology generally identifies the behavior, accepts appropriate responsibility, acknowledges its impact, and leaves room for change.
Forgiveness, incidentally, is not a contractual obligation triggered by the words I’m sorry.
Lesson Ten: The Martyrdom Maneuver
When all else fails, become the most wounded person in the room.
You’ve tried denial. You’ve tried deflection. You’ve tried arguing. Unfortunately, your opponent remains focused on the original problem. Time for the Grand Finale!
“Nothing I do is ever good enough.”
“Maybe everyone would be happier if I just stopped trying.”
Observe the transformation. The conversation began with something you did. It now concerns your devastating sense of inadequacy. The other person may rush to reassure you.
“No, that’s not what I meant! You do lots of things right!”
And there it is. They are now defending your character instead of discussing your behavior. A magnificent reversal.
How to ruin this maneuver:
Of course, expressions of shame and inadequacy can be entirely genuine. The point is not to punish vulnerability or treat tears as evidence of manipulation.
The question is whether the original concern can still be addressed after the feelings have been acknowledged.
Bonus Lesson: The Public Relations Department
Because being good is difficult, but looking good is surprisingly manageable.
Why limit yourself to controlling individual conversations when you can cultivate an entire reputation?
Be generous in public.
Be charming at parties.
Volunteer.
Remember birthdays.
Offer to help neighbors move furniture.
Then, when someone complains about your behavior in private, your reputation can do some of the defending for you.
“Really? That doesn’t sound like them.”
“They’ve always been wonderful to me.”
“I’m sure there’s another side to the story.”
Naturally, there may be another side to the story.
But that’s the beauty of a sterling public image. People can mistake their positive experiences with you for evidence that someone else’s negative experiences are impossible.
How to ruin this maneuver:
“Someone can behave wonderfully toward you and differently toward someone else. Both experiences deserve to be considered on their own evidence.”
A person’s kindness in one setting neither proves nor disproves an accusation about another.
And an accusation, however serious, still deserves fair examination.
A Brief Word About Your Own Reflection
Well. That was fun.
Perhaps you recognized a spouse, a parent, a colleague, a politician, or that one person at the homeowners’ association meeting who can turn a discussion about parking into a constitutional crisis. But before we congratulate ourselves on our extraordinary powers of observation, there’s one final exercise.
Let’s jog our memories:
Have you ever exaggerated someone’s position because their actual criticism made you uncomfortable?
Have you ever said, “I was just joking,” when you knew perfectly well that your joke had landed badly?
Have you ever become so consumed by your own shame that the person you hurt ended up comforting you?
I have some unfortunate news. You may occasionally shift blame, yourself. Not necessarily a gaslighter. Not necessarily an abuser. Not necessarily even consciously manipulative. Just a human being with an ego, a nervous system, and an occasionally spectacular ability to rationalize.
Which brings us to the important distinction.
A defensive response is not automatically a calculated campaign of psychological manipulation. People misunderstand one another. Memories fail. Shame makes us defensive. Fear makes us evasive. And sometimes an accusation really is unfair. What matters is whether we’re willing to examine what happened, consider another perspective, and accept responsibility where it belongs.
The goal isn’t to become impossible to manipulate by becoming impossible to question. It’s to develop enough confidence in our own judgment that we can question ourselves without surrendering ourselves.
We can be wrong without being worthless. We can be hurt without being innocent. We can be accountable without being condemned. And we can recognize someone else’s deflection without needing to win an argument about their character.
Graduation Day
Congratulations. You now possess a working knowledge of some of the most effective ways to avoid accountability while maintaining an impeccable appearance. Use this information wisely. Or don’t. After all, if someone catches you using one of these techniques, you now know at least nine others you can try.
Admittedly, none of those options sounds particularly fabulous. But imagine the freedom of no longer needing a public relations department to manage your own conscience.
How terribly unfashionable. So much easier to connect in relationships this way.
Amy Dinaburg,
Philosopher
MS (Molecular Biology)
MS (Clinical Nurse Leadership)
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