Midwits and The Office

Or how the dimwit-midwit-topwit spectrum relates to company hierarchy

Dimwit—Midwit—Topwit relating to IQ distribution

First, the midwit

The idea of the midwit and its two neighbours, the dimwit and the topwit, isn’t new (Virginia Woolf preferred “lowbrow-middlebrow-topbrow” instead and I’m sure there are much older examples)—it saw some resurgence in the past year or so (not to a small extent thanks to @BPD_GOD on twitter dot com (a lesser known fun little fact: the BPD in BPD_GOD stands for B. P. D.—few know this)), but is such a poignant idea that once you’ve been introduced to it you start to observe it everywhere.

The midwit is an individual of above average intelligence, yet not too far from average.

Generally found in the 105-120 IQ range. These are the people who are considered "gifted" in primary school and perhaps "honors" in high school. In the same vein, they either think of themselves as "smart but lazy" or perform well in school yet do poorly/mediocre on standardized testing. May attend a low-tier university or none at all. Almost always very online, with strong opinions that lack nuance.

Midwits are truly cursed to be neither blissfully dumb nor reap the benefit of being of superior intelligence or a genius. They can grasp general concepts, but are less capable of digging deeper, understanding nuance, or adapting quickly to complex problems, leading to an entire middle class of perpetually unhappy, often vaguely angry people.

And 30 tenets of the midwit:

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Second, The Office

Over at ribbonfarm.com there’s a set of articles in which the author looks at how and why the TV show “The Office” actually is an accurate representation of corporate dynamics. I’ll summarize only as much as needed for this post; for the full picture you should read the article(s).

In every company there’s a hierarchy (despite attempts at “flat” hierarchies) and it more or less looks like this:

Most companies look like this.

What does this pyramid signify? Paraphrasing from part 1 of the article series:

The Sociopaths are the machiavellian will-to-power types who drive an organization to function despite itself. The Clueless are the incompetent but loyal over-performers who, unlike the other layers, truly believe in the organization and think of themselves as winners when in fact they are nothing but useful idiots. The Losers are not social losers (as in the opposite of “cool”), but people who have struck bad bargains economically – giving up capitalist striving for steady paychecks.

And then we have the dynamics of the company hierarchy, coined as The Gervais Principle:

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

Catching on?

Third, both

What I’m getting at should be pretty obvious: the Loser-Clueless-Sociopath hierarchy is analogous to the dimwit-midwit-topwit spectrum. Think about it…

• Losers — Dimwits

• Clueless — Midwits

• Sociopaths — Topwits

The Gervais Principle, introduced in the previous section, has an analogy in this framework too:

Topwits, in their own best interests, knowingly distribute work that would be a waste of their own time and that dimwits can’t/won’t do to over-performing idiots (midwits), and they find lazy unrealized topwits (who come across as dimwits) who they befriend and groom into their true topwit state for mutual profit, and leave the average actual dimwit to fend for themselves (which they can), interacting with them for fun (having drinks with your car mechanic friend) or utility (getting car help from your car mechanic).

Consider the below diagram, which is directly related to the Gervais Principle but applies equally well to dimwit-midwit-topwit principle just outlined. Some “dimwits” are actually just untested topwits—and they can stay in this region for quite some time, unlike midwits who quickly tend to reveal their true character as it is impossible to hide (they are nothing but their character and proudly display it).

Communication between layers

Some dynamics present in the company hierarchy apply to Midwit Corp as well. In particular, the way the three divisions communicate within and between their own is interesting and especially worthy of notice are two modes of communication:

• Posturetalk: how Clueless/Midwits talk to Losers/Dimwits and Sociopaths/Topwits, and between themselves

• Babytalk: how Losers/Dimwits and Sociopaths/Topwits talk to Clueless/Midwits

How the middle layer communicates. Other layers omitted for clarity.

Midwits are the Twitter bluechecks, the Reddit atheists, the politically active non-politicians, the forever-children millennial women who peaked as the teacher’s pet in fifth grade… the ones with zero original thought whose entire rhetoric consists of performative babbling, empty platitudes———everyone except them are able to see through the charade they put up for themselves and others, but as it is much more gainful to stroke their egos in a machiavellian way instead of posturing back, the non-middlers choose to babytalk the middlers instead to extract favour and make use of their idiocy; the middlers become useful idiots.

What else?

There’s probably a lot more that could be said here… post your thoughts in the comments!