the dead-infant speaker: forgetting to blink
they have to consciously try to remember even to blink as they watch her, listening. I.D.ing without effort. There’s no judgment.
Context
Sincerity's effect measured physiologically, and it's the exact inverse of 076's punishment. Where the room killed the polished ironist by getting embarrassed for him, here "the ultimate Boston AA compliment" is a hall of ravaged people forgetting to blink — rapt, effortlessly Identifying, no judgment. The same audience that is a lie-detector for performance becomes, for the genuinely burnt-clean speaker, a single held breath. The register war's rare peace, and it registers not as applause but as an involuntary stillness in two hundred bodies.