(1) Yona's at-the-movies scenario....
Yona is at the movies and finds herself involved in an altercation over getting butter for popcorn. The dialogue goes like this:
Y: "Could I just scoot in and get some butter, please?"
X: "No, I'm busy, go use another."
Y:"I'd like to, but this is the only one open."
X: "Then you can wait."
Y: "Sometimes it seems like you're the only person in the world...."
X: "Sometimes fat people shouldn't put butter on their popcorn; then they wouldn't have to wait."
As always with written language, there's a problem here because the intonation -- the tune the words are set to -- is missing. If Yona's opening line -- "Could I just scoot in and get some butter, please?" -- was in Placater Mode, then the fight was pretty well guaranteed; if her additional lines were also Placating, that strengthens the guarantee. X's body language -- monopolizing the butter station, ignoring other people obviously waiting, and so on -- was almost certainly Blamer Mode. [Making other people wait, without apologizing or explaining or even acknowledging their existence, is blatant power-tripping, which is a kind of nonverbal Blaming.] Any combination of Blaming and Placating creates a hostility loop and escalates toward a fight.
For sake of discussion, let's assume that Yona's lines were _not_ Placating but simply neutral Leveling or Computing utterances, and that all of the additional lines from Person X were in Blamer Mode. In that case Person X added a verbal attack to the nonverbal one, for one of two reasons. The most likely reason is that X really wants and enjoys the attention she gets with this behavior; it's also possible (though far less likely) that she is a sadist and enjoys causing pain. Either way, when she threw the "fat people" line at Yona, she achieved exactly what she was after -- it worked. Yona says that the line "stopped me dead in my tracks and I was completely silent." After which Person X -- satisfied after having gotten what she wanted -- left.
Someone behaving the way Person X was behaving, in public, is sending out an invitation. The metamessage is "Look at ME, using all the butter so nobody else can get any! Come on over here and give me a chance to show you that there's no way you can keep me from doing this! Come on over and play this game with me, so I can fill my need for human attention and feed on your emotional reactions! Victim wanted here! Step right up!"
In such a situation, there are only two plausible strategies.
One: Ignore Person X. Refuse the invitation. Person X should be treated as if invisible, inaudible, and nonexistent, until it becomes clear to her that what she's doing is not going to work.
Two [for EXPERTS only]: Go _smother_ Person X with attention -- neutrally, and without any emotional goodies attached. Like this:
You: "Boy, it's hard to make that butter thing work! Here you are, trying to enjoy a movie, and you have to spend half your time out here in the lobby struggling with a stupid machine! There are days when it seems like the whole world is against you, right? If that machine worked the way it's supposed to work, you wouldn't have to stand there and coat every single grain of popcorn individually the way you're doing it -- you'd be in your seat watching the movie you paid good money for! You know, watching you do that reminds me of something that happened to me when I was just a little kid. We were living in Tulsa at the time, and..... No! Wait a minute, it couldn't have been Tulsa, it must have been after we moved to Kansas City, because......." And so on, endlessly, and inexorably.
The metamessage that goes with this move is: "I see you there, asking for someone to come pay attention to you and play games with you. I'll be more than glad to help you out. Be aware that it's going to be no fun for you at all -- just excruciatingly boring."
Note: Ordinarily, when a verbal attack comes from a stranger or from somebody you're not likely to have to deal with again, the most sensible reaction is to think to yourself what a sorry spectacle the attacker is and let it pass. Breaking verbal abusers of their habits is work; when they're someone you have to deal with all the time, it's worth your investment of time and energy to do that work. Doing it with other people makes sense only as a kind of public service, for which you are of course free to volunteer if that's your inclination.
Final Note: I know one or two very skilled VSD artists who could have walked over to Person X and Leveled -- firmly but neutrally -- saying: "What you're doing is unacceptable. Cut it out." And Person X would have instantly yielded. You're the only one capable of knowing whether you're that skilled or not; if the move doesn't work, the consequences will be extremely unpleasant.