The Specialized Clothing Issue Always Seems To Crop Up.

[FNFAN]

It's sad that that would need 'splaining. Then again, maybe some of the, er, chunkier folks out there thought it was to get the holster below their midriff bulge.

Well, there's that. And the there's us right handed guys who, um... dress on the right and would have to drop it to almost knee level. Don' get me wrong bro... ain't braggin'... sometimes it's a curse!

sometimes.

[blues]

Well, there's that. And the there's us right handed guys who, um... dress on the right and would have to drop it to almost knee level. Don' get me wrong bro... ain't braggin'... sometimes it's a curse!

sometimes.

Jeez, and I thought the biggest dick on this site quit some months back.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Man, today was bench press day at the gym, so I ran this whole thing by my wife a couple of hours ago while we were warming up on the elliptical. I totally married up, especially on the people wisdom thing.

Her off-the-cuff response to my question about how she thinks people perceive me relative to tactical/non-tactical/attitude/whatever dress/bearing was: "Irrelevant. How people perceive anyone else has everything to do with them, their past experiences with other people, and their own perception biases, and not much at all to do with the people in front of them. You are correct that most won't recognize that stuff and keep their heads in their phones, because that's where their interest lies. You see all that warrior stuff because of your life experience, upbringing, and the fact that you're actually interested in looking for it. Everything to do with you, and not much to do with what clothes people are wearing. You've pointed out concealed weapons to me and the guy was just wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a plain t-shirt. So how people see you is going to be how they want to see you."

Roughly. I was torn between her response, the sound-muted martial arts vampire scene on Sci-Fi on the closest big screen, and not barfing up a lung. But I think she's right. In general, people only see what they look for and, especially, what they want to see. If you're all "grey man" and someone is specifically looking for that, they will see you. If someone has less than zero interest in *anything* tactical, then you can walk by them with a ranger up t and OC, and they probably won't notice. People in between will fall along some sort of continuum of awareness. I had it all backwards, IMHO.

I think her observations are bang on and they're basically an application of Anais Nin's observation about not seeing things as they are, but as we are...

If you're sorting the world into "might have to fight" vs "probably won't have to fight" on the fly, you'll read all kinds of things differently than if you're sorting the world into "might have to compete against for a job interview" or "might have to date" or "might have to treat as potential customer". You will focus on different identifiers and "tactical pants" might end up being something you really care about seeing.

I occasionally take the train into downtown Vancouver, and I'm looking at carloads of people who have probably gone their entire lives without seeing a fistfight of any kind. They're not sorting people into "potential threat" and "potential ally" boxes...why would they? They're sorting people into "probably getting off at Commercial" and "probably going all the way downtown" boxes because that's a more relevant classification system for someone whose strategy revolves around getting a seat. Spending every day on threat analysis would, for these people, be the equivalent of spending every trip outdoors scanning the forest for a tree about to fall and crush them, and putting everything into "lethal deadfall" and "normal tree" boxes. Is that a realistic way to use your mind while hiking? Personally I don't think so, and so I limit that kind of thinking unless I'm in certain types of forests in the immediate aftermath of a huge wind storm, say. Then I'll devote processor cycles to that stuff. Otherwise, I just want to hike.


I have pretty much only seen threads on tactical clothing reveals on gun forums. Once in a while some general interest forum will have enough gun guys to support a very small thread on vests or something but in general this is just a thing gun people fixate on because it's a direct product of what I call the "weaponization" of a person's mind. Don't get me wrong, I favour that. I like being part of the cult of fighting that hides surprise obstacles to outside force within the general population. I am a huge believer in the value of maintaining a hardened core of people with martial skills even in extremely cushy, first-world environments because I think that cushy environments aren't guaranteed to be permanent and I have noticed, in my life as a guy who has to cut a lot of wood, that when I come to wood that is mostly easy to split with nice straight grain, I'll preferentially target that wood for cutting, until a certain threshold of difficult knots buried in the wood makes it difficult to cut, at which point I'm going to avoid it.

I highly recommend burying those knots in the wood of a first world country, for reasons I assume are obvious, and I think the weaponization of the mind is a critical phase of becoming one of the knots that potentially stops an outside force from being driven into the wood and splitting it up. But I think there's also a level of unconscious competence even with processes like the weaponization of the mind, which I personally believe include the ability to dial one's sorting instincts up and down according to context.

Of course, since I dial my own tac-think up and down a lot, it's also very easy for me to conclude that this is an advanced skill, because that gives me a flattering self image. So I can't guarantee that my theories about any of this are accurate or true. But I know I run into people every day who are sorting me into boxes like "wears hiking boots not stylish shoes" and "tradesman not office staff" and "white guy, won't speak hindi" and those are all useful boxes for those people, much more useful than "specific brand of cargo pants could indicate armed".

[MistWolf]

I have no idea what that means.

Slow moving submarine groping its way along blindly until it bumps into something.

I really don't have a very good fashion sense. The summer my youngest son graduated from high school, I took a job in Moab working for a river tour company as a driver/mechanic/helper and wore a Hawaiian shirt, old frayed woodland cammie pants and red Crocs. Money was really tight as I'd lost my job as an aviation technician, but needed to stay in the area until my son finished school. I chose these items to wear because they were comfortable even when wet, long wearing and quick drying. I didn't think anything about how it looked until one of the guides told me "That has got to be the oddest outfit I've ever seen, but somehow you make it work. I like it!" It was saying something because we were a ragtag, scruffy group of misfits. All the other tour companies had nice company shirts an shorts, freshly scrubbed and smiling faces while we looked like extras for a low budget pirate movie.

[Totem Polar]

Leave it to pro writer @misanthropist to both explain the predatory world perfectly using firewood, while also bringing Anais Nin into a gun forum context.

[Cypher]

I have no idea what that means.

It means waaaaaaay under the radar

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Leave it to pro writer @misanthropist to both explain the predatory world perfectly using firewood, while also bringing Anais Nin into a gun forum context.

Well, I spend a lot of time on firewood these days

[Robinson]

One of the things I've come to like about AIWB carry is how easy it makes it to conceal while wearing clothes I would normally wear anyway. Relaxed fit jeans or shorts and a t-shirt or polo most of the time. Simple.

As for "sorting the world", for me it's similar to back when I rode motorcycles a lot. I try to always be aware of what is going on around me -- alert and attentive the entire time while still being relaxed enough to enjoy the ride. I do pay attention to some folks more than others in public depending on what are probably a large number of factors some of which are subconscious and some not.

[Sal Picante]

Lansky Brothers in Memphis, TN. You can buy it online, fits true to size.

I go away for a week and come back to this? The only thing I can say is: "SOLD!"

[Stephanie B]

I really don't have a very good fashion sense. The summer my youngest son graduated from high school, I took a job in Moab working for a river tour company as a driver/mechanic/helper and wore a Hawaiian shirt, old frayed woodland cammie pants and red Crocs. Money was really tight as I'd lost my job as an aviation technician, but needed to stay in the area until my son finished school. I chose these items to wear because they were comfortable even when wet, long wearing and quick drying. I didn't think anything about how it looked until one of the guides told me "That has got to be the oddest outfit I've ever seen, but somehow you make it work. I like it!" It was saying something because we were a ragtag, scruffy group of misfits. All the other tour companies had nice company shirts an shorts, freshly scrubbed and smiling faces while we looked like extras for a low budget pirate movie.

At least they weren't orange Crocs.

When I see somebody wearing orange Crocs, I know that they recently got out of the county jail and that they probably weren't wearing shoes when they got arrested.