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Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

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Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#111

Post by pessimizer »

vf10a wrote: post #61
unpopularopp wrote: post #21

>As a straight white guy, I recognised from the outset that my interactions with strangers can be less fraught than they are for people who aren't straight white guys. Classic BBC, everything is race and gender nowadays. Do people really live like that? Sexuality would be the last thing I think about when I talk to a stranger that I never see again in my life for 30 seconds > Additionally, I strongly suggest men in m…

> Do people really live like that? A good way to answer this question is to ask the women in your life. It never fails to surprise me the number and variety of stories every one of my female friends/family/co-workers have. Just last week one of my friends was telling a story about a guy in a car slowly following and harassing her on her way home. That kicked off a round of 'being scared by guys in cars' stories from…

I've started to think of the "True Crime" genre as "Male Horror." Most of its audience is female, and the stories are largely about normal women who walk into normal situations and end up tortured, raped, and murdered; extra points if it was by a man no one would suspect. There's also Male Horror directed at an audience of men, but it's usually disguised as a prison story, or even more directly class-coded like Deliverance.

There's just this male sort of terror where a man doesn't want to hurt you for any practical reason, they're not trying to steal from you or stop you, they're doing it simply because physically torturing you directly arouses them. Men only feel that terror and that fear in prison, boarding school, the military, sports teams, surrounded by ethnic minorities or ethnic majorities, etc., whereas women simply need to evaluate every place that they enter that also contains a man, even if they know that man very well.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#112

Post by trashface »

boomerango wrote: post #20

As a transplant from the Midwest to the North East, anecdotally, this matches my experience. Even after many years and friends, I still feel an outsider here. My wife and I often lament it. There is no sense of community to speak of, just thousands of ships passing in the dark.

Agree. I'm lived in PA most of my life and it's a cold, cold place. It's some kind of micro tribalism and has gotten worse over the years. When I was a kid, the adults in my neighborhood at least knew and talked to each other sometimes, now as an adult in a similar suburban neighborhood no one talks to me and as far as I can tell they don't talk to each other either.

I complain about it to my brother who lives in NJ and he says it's worse there. So it's a regional thing.

I lived out west for 10 years and people were much friendlier, even in SF and Seattle. I have heard of the "Seattle freeze" but NE US is far worse in my experience

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#113

Post by pessimizer »

mellosouls wrote: post #101
vf10a wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people really live like that? A good way to answer this question is to ask the women in your life. It never fails to surprise me the number and variety of stories every one of my female friends/family/co-workers have. Just last week one of my friends was telling a story about a guy in a car slowly following and harassing her on her way home. That kicked off a round of 'being scared by guys in cars' stories from…

Yes, this is true and a sad fact of life - but let us not forget the majority of stranger-assault victims are men and - generally speaking - these (righteous) discussions about individual safety are rarely extended to them.

It's more important to remember that the perpetrators are almost all men, whether the violence is from a stranger or someone well known, or whether the victims are male, female, or even one's self - suicide is far higher and more effective among men.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#114

Post by pessimizer »

brigandish wrote: post #104
AlecSchueler wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The daily luxury of speaking with strangers shit fear of sexual assault. I thought that was clear from the context Many of your other points are valid issues which are good points for discussion in other threads. Being called out for reinforcing patriarchal social norms, however, is fair enough. Don't take it as a personal attack but rather a little reminder to consider the effect your speech can have on others. If y…

> The daily luxury of speaking with strangers shit fear of sexual assault. Assuming that is a typo where "without" is supposed to sit, which men have that luxury? I know a man who was raped by a group of strangers at knifepoint, so he doesn't have that luxury. Or does he? Do I, now that I know the reality beyond a mere statistic or a rumour? I just don't know what you're proposing so I'd like to hear about how it wor…

Are you honestly saying that the man you know is statistically typical of stranger rape? Because you can't be saying that the fact that it has ever happened means that it rational for men and women to have equal levels of fear about it.

Because we all know that men rape men. Here's a question, though. Have you ever sat in a group of women fearing that you would be raped?

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#115

Post by a9h74j »

Perhaps to highlight efforts in some threads here, I'm reading The Managed Heart by Arlie Hochschild. Besides considering emotional work, she speaks of feeling rules. The latter provides a term for rules of engagement, so to speak, we bring to incidental, causal and serious interactions. Based upon the view that emotions are socially-resolved, not merely interally-resolved, we never escape either emotional work or related rules of engagement.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#116

Post by AussieWog93 »

photochemsyn wrote: post #73

Some of this is a bit presumptuous... > "The authors concluded, "the next time you need a little-pick-me-up, you might consider interacting with the Starbucks barista...thereby mining this readily available source of happiness"." Baristas, waiters, etc. are paid to provide services, not necessarily to be conversational partners. From their point of view, their choices are "be nice to this person who is chatting you u…

As someone who does customer service/support (mostly online retail but occasionally get in-person pickups), friendly conversation is honestly a perk of the job.

I think advising people to avoid it because the staff can't escape or ask you to leave just sucks that little bit of joy out of life for not only the customer, but the server too.

Of course, "friendly conversation" is the keyword here. Nobody wants to be emotionally unloaded on, but at the same time chatting with regulars always makes your day.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#117

Post by pessimizer »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #33
annyeonghada wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can something not be gendered, for once?

Why? There is a natural power imbalance between men and women. If you find it tiresome then you're getting a sense of how tiring it can be to be a woman in public.

It's important to pretend that's not true, because it makes men feel bad about themselves.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#119

Post by SoftTalker »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #87
booleandilemma wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What luxury do men have in 2022? The luxury of not being able to express feelings? The luxury of having a smaller chance of getting hired? The luxury of having a higher suicide rate? The luxury of getting constantly called out on social media? The luxury of being told to stop whining when we point these things out?

The daily luxury of speaking with strangers shit fear of sexual assault. I thought that was clear from the context Many of your other points are valid issues which are good points for discussion in other threads. Being called out for reinforcing patriarchal social norms, however, is fair enough. Don't take it as a personal attack but rather a little reminder to consider the effect your speech can have on others. If y…

Sexual assault by a true stranger is rare, for either men or women. Of course it happens, but it's much more likely to be someone you already know or see regularly than it is to be a random person you happened to talk to on the street or in a shop.

Re: Talking to strangers can make us smarter?

#120

Post by LightG »

booleandilemma wrote: post #78
AlecSchueler wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

What luxury do men have in 2022? The luxury of not being able to express feelings? The luxury of having a smaller chance of getting hired? The luxury of having a higher suicide rate? The luxury of getting constantly called out on social media? The luxury of being told to stop whining when we point these things out?

Wow ... I think you've gone over to the other side with that list ... with the exception of the suicide rate.

Honestly. I'm a bloke, by the way.

Either you're in a bad place and I wish you well.

Or you have a very skewed view of current reality, and ... I wish you self- and social- awareness.

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