Recursive Green Flag Theory
when you click, double click (The Waluigi Effect but for People)
This post is not a list of personal red and green flags. (Skip to the end for that I guess?)
We all judge each other on first impression, yet our conscious selves unfortunately don’t have much control over this process. Many of my recent posts have been about how to turn our unconscious processes into conscious ones, and judging people is just another unconscious instinctual thing which begs conscious-ization. How can we be active rather than passive when searching for future friends?
Today marks my 20th day of college, the first time in years I’ve been in a scenario where the majority of those around me are total strangers. It’s been interesting to notice who I instinctively gravitate towards, and I’ve formulated a sort-of-theory about how I should evaluate these instincts and act on them. Note that this post is mostly a joke.
Principles of Gravity
The theory goes that whenever you meet someone, you instinctively sort them into one of three categories: red, beige, or green (edit: it’s the RGB friend scale!). (Maybe it’s more of a gradient, but you get the point.) In my experience the vast majority of people are flagged as either green or beige—obvious red flags are rare. Beige flags are “probably nice people but I don’t have any particular urge to get to know them more,” whereas green flags are “I want them to play a role in my future life.” What role that is varies widely.
The more people you’ve met, the more likely the next person you meet is going to remind you of someone you’ve met before. Judgement becomes about comparing each new person to people we’ve met before and finding similarities/differences, and this typically is what informs the ‘role’ we instinctually assign to them.
Is this to say that we only gravitate towards those who remind us of people from our pasts? Kind of…
To be honest, the only solid gravitational factor I could find which wasn’t in some way encompassed by the principle of Resemblance was the principle of Attraction. Even for those we will just consider friends, physical and intellectual attraction dictates who we’re instinctively drawn towards, for better or worse.
When you make unconscious things conscious, sometimes you want to change them—you want to override your instincts because they’re harming you in some way. Other times, it’s just enough to witness your instincts in real time and marvel at how beautiful they are.
In this case, I don’t actually think judging people based on Resemblance is harmful. Based on Attraction, maybe a little bit (see Liking What You See: A Documentary for a thought-provoking short story on this). But I don’t feel that much pressure to change these innate behaviors. Only to audit them a bit.
One of my favorite parts about the principle of Resemblance is its inner sociocultural mystery…
Coincidences as a Source of Green Flags
If you know me well, you know I don’t believe in coincidences.
So when I look back on my own life and see that my past love interests disproportionally shared my favorite color, my past friends disproportionally ran cross country, and my past unofficial mentees disproportionally played ultimate frisbee?
None of these things are coincidences. Some of them are more obviously explained than others (I played ultimate frisbee in high school), but even then no explanation is that surface-level (I suspect it has more to do with ultimate frisbee’s stereotype as a nerd sport than anything else—and why didn’t more of my friends of the same age play ultimate instead of running XC?). And there are many factors which I struggle to explain at all.
But what makes these coincidences fun is that they make up the raw material for RECURSIVE GREEN FLAG THEORY. Sorting people based on outward resemblance to past friends or based on attractiveness is boring and unconscious. Sorting people based on tiny random coincidences you find disproportionately common among past friends seems like a more fun method. So I’ve developed a pretty random list of green flags in the past few weeks using this strategy. Here are a few personal green flags which I’ve only discovered in the past month (I’m not gonna out my whole list; that’d be like handing over the key to my soul! I guess most of my readers already have that though…).
has allergies
laughs authentically
sits on floor
likes instrumentals
is direct and interrogative with others so I get to sit back, say nothing, and ask piercing questions at the end—I’ve realized this is one of my favorite feelings
is good with silence (another one of my favorite feelings)
and many more
So those are some green flags. What about tiny funny random red flags? The problem is that these don’t really exist. If something’s a red flag, it’ll be more than tiny and funny and random. The Waluigi Effect But For People explains why this means we need beige flags to help us sort people.
The Waluigi Effect But For People
(Why is there a red flag emoji 🚩 but no green flag emoji? Why does everyone post lists of red flags but never lists of green ones? Why are people so obsessed with the bad things?)
The Waluigi Effect But For People states that If someone seems good, they are either good or bad. If someone seems bad, they are obviously bad. This is where beige flags come in. Beige flags tell you that this person is not someone you want playing a large role in your life, even though they seem ok at first, because there are many more seeming-good people than you know what to do with, and you have to sort them somehow. Beige flags might include “Percy Jackson fangirl” or “likes orange too much” (note that I’ve never met anyone satisfying either of these descriptions and yet somehow I still know they’re beige flags). Beige flags play a very important role in how we sort and gravitate towards/away from others.
Conclusionish
So we’ve unearthed the principles of Resemblance and Attraction, and we’ve discovered the need for tiny funny random green flags which arbitrarily tell you whether to be friends with someone. We’ve also discovered the need for beige flags (due to The Waluigi Effect But For People). I think this is enough for today.
This isn’t my most well-written post but it was fun, and it’s hard to write in college so… take it easy on me for skipping these past few weeks :) I’ll get back on the blogging grind soon enough.
PS: Actions as a Source of Green Flags
When I surveyed others about green flags, I came to the conclusion that for most people, a “green flag” is really better defined as a “small action someone does which signals to you that they’re someone you want to be friends with.” Like, noticing things, or remembering things, or helping others in some seemingly trivial way.
This is really sweet and heartwarming and beautiful… but too serious for what this post was originally meant to be. Also, I don’t think you need to think about most of those things consciously—hopefully our brains are good enough at perception-tracking that we can tell who has what innate personality traits. (Hopefully.)