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How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

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Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#181

Post by derangedHorse »

slowmover wrote: post #154

"dig in your heels when confronted with overwhelming dissent" Sorry, sticking to this one. Call me anti-social if you want, but facing overwhelming dissent may indicate you're the lone free-thinker in an echo chamber. Being that one guy who's always prodding the hivemind with a pokey stick has value in my opinion (though you will end up getting stung on occasion).

Sometimes it's not about being the "free-thinker," but just fitting in. If you're in a setting where there can be 'overwhelming dissent,' I would say it's prudent to pause and consider what your goal is with pushing a certain idea. It's almost certainly not going to get the consideration it deserves to be accepted if a mass of people have a negative knee-jerk reaction to hearing it.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#182

Post by reedf1 »

ge96 wrote: post #179
reedf1 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hey not to give unsolicited advice but to share my experience - it took me a long time to realize that I'm not anti-social, but just anti-party and anti-work social. I flourish in most other spaces - especially hobby spaces.

yeah the thing is I'm good talking to dudes, like cars this guy shows me his Porsche/I sit in it, has laser jammers built in, crazy. Like yeah when you're both into something you just connect my problem with women is I only interact with them when I'm physically interested in them otherwise I leave them alone so yeah I'm on edge like "I gotta land her" kind of thing, which I'm not saying is good, as proof of this I h…

Sounds like you understand the problem. My read is that you have a likeable frenetic personality; it won't be for everyone but some people will be really attracted to it, best not to question it and just be yourself.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#183

Post by poemxo »

foo12bar wrote: post #33

How about the old fashioned freezing with a face contorted in fear like your being held at knife point unable to think of anything to say and just waiting to be able to leave? When you get asked a question, fumble over your words and say something stupid. Later on, you can reflexively watch the memory played over and over again so you're even worse the next time. If you see anyone you met during the encounter afterwa…

It's as if you know me, I can feel myself panic whenever anyone asks me anything, and I end up saying completely the wrong thing as if I wasn't fully in control of my thoughts.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#184

Post by SkyeCA »

justonceokay wrote: post #133
svnt wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panic -> response distribution shrinks -> freeze/be angry/make social mistake, but hey it’s fast You: wouldn’t it be more adaptive if you didn’t do this? Millions of years of mammalian evolution, unevenly distributed in homo sapiens: No

You can blame million years of evolution for your bad life or you can change it right now living in the present moment. It’s fine if you don’t do it right now because later at a future present moment you can still make the choice to be happy. It might take some work but it will never be because of something that happened in the past. It will be something that you do right now. There are no exceptions or escape hatche…

These cliches are just annoying to read at this point, everyone has heard this stuff a million times and yet...millions still suffer. If I'm being honest it just comes across as yet another form of bullying when socially well adjusted people say stuff like this to people worse off than them.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#185

Post by tamimio »

I never understood why “anti social” is seen as a negative trait, full of prejudice too (I mean, read that garbage article, passive aggressive BS too). Most people who built or achieved great or innovative things were anti social or at least didn’t waste their time bar hopping.. when people want to detox and disconnect, they go anti social, monks gurus you name it, also live in solitude, being alone will make you wiser and more creative if you are smart, and crazier if you are an average person, and covid lockdowns were a good example. From my observation, the more social a person is the more average they are, mediocre, wasting time in mostly useless interactions and sometimes even negative with all the peer pressure it brings, in fact, I would even argue the more social you are the more you become an outlier, a walking NPC who’s constantly under peer pressure, anxiety, and depression when not meeting impossible expectations. It’s a large scale gaslighting making a spectrum where an extrovert is good, introvert is bad, meanwhile the ones who are lifting the society and keeping it running are the introvert nerds.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#186

Post by derangedHorse »

ernesto905 wrote: post #29

> when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self This speaks to me quite a bit, particularly around unfalsifiable topics I'll have with friends/family, such as theology. If we define hope as the idea they'll change their mind and agree with me, seems not much one can do but retreat into themself, right? I suppose I can sympathize with their sentiment before I retreat into myself, but taking this bullet…

You might have better luck with your hope to be mutual understanding. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#187

Post by xg15 »

Drama!

It's an interesting list, and yeah, I'd say most are common sense and well put. But I'm still a bit very of those "negative lists".

(I actually just found a webcomic which tries a similar approach - gives their characters intentionally the worst possible ways of interaction, with the "quest" of the story essentially being if they manage to grow and learn the right ones.)

But in both, its easy to employ "persuasive game" strategies and have the reader "discover truths" that are really colored by the author's perception.

Essentially, I'd like to know the context in which this was developed, so the whole list isn't just an instance of item #7 of it. Basically it reads as if someone could have written it in rage after some particularly bad conversation that didn't go their way.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#189

Post by lunchbucket »

Nemi wrote: post #170
ge96 wrote: post #123

I'm bad at this, not that I want to be. Well I'm bad at it with women. I go to these workplace happy hours and I just sit there in silence. Hard to relate to people talking about the house they own or kids since I don't have either. I know to be a good conversationalist you just gotta ask them questions. It's not good to be alone, I was in a car crash one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride…

ok, so please don't take this wrong, but that last sentence was such a non-sequitur that I think I know what at least some of your problem is talking to other people. EDIT: wait, I am going to go out on a limb and say that you meant "I was in a car crash of a conversation one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride home."

Their meaning is very clear to me ("It's not good to be alone, for example one time I was in a lot of danger and a friend helped me").

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#190

Post by balamatom »

xg15 wrote: post #187

Drama! It's an interesting list, and yeah, I'd say most are common sense and well put. But I'm still a bit very of those "negative lists". (I actually just found a webcomic which tries a similar approach - gives their characters intentionally the worst possible ways of interaction, with the "quest" of the story essentially being if they manage to grow and learn the right ones.) But in both, its easy to employ "persua…

QC?
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