Being needlessly blunt is like throwing a grenade with a message attached. You can tell it's delivered when you hear the KABOOM, but you can't guarantee anything else.
In my experience, being kind has the advantage of reducing the probability of side-effects. There are typically no bonus points awarded for causing someone to get defensive, when your only goal was to correct their mistake.
KABOOM, blunt and mean messages sacrifice honesty too. They intentionally downplay positives and exaggerate wrongs for effect. Like, most of what is expressed as kaboom is not straightforward telling truth at all.
Extremely common way to be dishonest are jokes/mockery that imply things that are not entirely true, the expletives that imply more bad that actually is and such.
These are as dishonest as sugarcoating if not more.
I totally agree. I actually find this whole discussion encouraging because it indicates to me that people are trying to find that middle ground by talking the whole thing out.
In my experience, being kind has the advantage of reducing the probability of side-effects. There are typically no bonus points awarded for causing someone to get defensive, when your only goal was to correct their mistake.