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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

#311

Post by swader999 »

scubbo wrote: post #248
poemxo wrote: post #194

I am guessing the author is either criticizing people who are anti-social (in the pop culture definition) or believes he was before and after some thinking arrived at the conclusion that antisociety was not the way. But I don't feel it describes my internal motivations, so I've translated them to my behaviors: - if someone is confusing or upsetting you, assume it is your fault - interpret others' actions in the conte…

> - if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead God, this one hurts. In the first couple months at my new role (which I intentionally chose to be one that would stretch and challenge me as I'm looking for some professional growth), a senior member of my team expressed the view that he'd rather someone spend three days researching than ask him a thirty-second question. When I…

My threshold is typically an hour. And this is after all the onboarding and pairing with them for a few features. I throw a month of just interrupt me whenever you need to at any new hire as a lead on a five or so team size on line of business apps. Three days sounds ridiculous for someone to spin and be stuck. That's a huge waste of money and a sign of deep problems imo.

In fact, I'd prefer to discuss sooner than let a new dev on their own for more than a day of work. Discussion brings alignment and saves me time with micro adjustments rather than massive corrections or debates and push back when someone goes off on their own for a long time.

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

#312

Post by em-bee »

justonceokay wrote: post #128
em-bee wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i am not autistic, but i hate smalltalk too. i can't bear it. it takes all the fun out of talking to people and i feel like it's a waste of time. not sure where i am going with this argument other than maybe saying that it's ok not to like smalltalk. maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels mean…

As someone who used to feel like they were bad at small talk, maybe this resonates with you. I wasn’t bad at small talk. I was bad at sharing my thoughts and feelings because it didn’t feel safe. As a result the only things that felt like safe small talk topics were the weather and sports. Overtime I’ve become better at sharing my feelings, even if they are “embarrassing“. I ended up talking for three hours on a plan…

my experience was different. yes, i get that sharing my thoughts sometimes doesn't feel safe, and when i was younger i did have that experience too. but i had and have no interest in popular sports, so that topic is poison for me. i have absolutely nothing to contribute. if someone wants to talk about sports i am thinking, why are they wasting their life? any other topic would be better than that. and talking about weather? well, got a window? open it!

but those topics you shared on the plane, well that's not small talk to me. i totally would have enjoyed being part of that conversation. as i get older, i can speak from experience. i can talk about my feelings that i have and had, because now i understand them. and, as a bonus effect, as you get older people treat you with more respect, which makes talking about any topic easier.

so i am bad at talking about banal, to me meaningless topics, and while it is getting easier, i don't actually have any interest in engaging in those topics because they not only feel like a waste of time, they are a waste of my time that i want to spend more meaningfully, like reading a book.

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

#313

Post by bluecheese452 »

legacynl wrote: post #159
svnt wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response assumes a lot about the homogeneity of subjective human experience that the data don’t seem to support. There is a diversity of physical attractiveness, innate and learned social grace, social environment, and phenotypic variability in psychosocial capacity that makes your comment sound extremely out of touch to some people. I can do what you describe because I am fortunate that many of my social intera…

The point is that a fully grown person (i.e. adult) should be able to regulate their emotions to the point of being able to have a conversation with 3 strangers. You might not like it, it might stress you out a bunch, you can cry afterwards, or have a stiff drink after, but you should be able to set those emotions aside for 30 minutes, especially for something important like a job interview. If someone cannot do that…

What is this obsession with therapy? There is no solid evidence it works yet it is relentlessly recommended.

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

#314

Post by aforwardslash »

scubbo wrote: post #248
poemxo wrote: post #194

I am guessing the author is either criticizing people who are anti-social (in the pop culture definition) or believes he was before and after some thinking arrived at the conclusion that antisociety was not the way. But I don't feel it describes my internal motivations, so I've translated them to my behaviors: - if someone is confusing or upsetting you, assume it is your fault - interpret others' actions in the conte…

> - if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead God, this one hurts. In the first couple months at my new role (which I intentionally chose to be one that would stretch and challenge me as I'm looking for some professional growth), a senior member of my team expressed the view that he'd rather someone spend three days researching than ask him a thirty-second question. When I…

> a senior member of my team expressed the view that he'd rather someone spend three days researching than ask him a thirty-second question

I have never met a senior that would dare to take such a stance; he may be willing to learn, but we will not both cover his knowledge gap and improve his own cv at the company expense. I have no idea if you are competent or not, but it doesnt really matter if you are the one deciding. Its not a democracy, and sure as hell its not amateur day. He will do as he is told, or he will find a more suitable team elsewhere. Have no tolerance for divas, they bring zero value.

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

#315

Post by aforwardslash »

bena wrote: post #9
manmal wrote: post #2

> dig in your heels when confronted with overwhelming dissent Of course, the majority is always right and we should yield to it right away /s

You don’t have to accept their conclusions, but they don’t have to accept yours either. You can walk away

Sometimes you just have to implement them :)

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

#316

Post by aforwardslash »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #16
manmal wrote: post #2

> dig in your heels when confronted with overwhelming dissent Of course, the majority is always right and we should yield to it right away /s

One heuristic for spotting when you might be wrong is that you hold a very uncommon belief. It COULD be that you are correct and the world is crazy, but its far more likely that you are the one who is missing something. It's always worth stopping to double check when this happens. Perhaps more importantly, if you do happen to be right when everyone else is wrong its important to determine your goals. Is it more impor…

> Is it more important to be right, or to be happy?

Im going out on a limb here, but I'd say intelligent people will tell you - without a doubt - being right. Because being happy is a perception and always a transitive state. There's nothing holding you from being both right and happy.

> Nobody likes to be told they're wrong

Thats actually a southern european way of looking at things; Its a cultural trace that varies a lot by region. Pointing flaws in plans is actually something I saw as worthy of an appraisal in Germany.

Also, I always tell people when I think they are wrong. I no longer insist or argue, just point out what lead me to the conclusion; you don't want to be in the blast radius of a deaf manager, an incompetent colleague or a delusional partner. Win-win.

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

#317

Post by rnxrx »

- when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self

I get a bunch of the others, but this one kind of confuses me. What's the opposite (better?) move? Logorrhea? Forcing a confrontation? Reciting bad poetry?

I suppose there's debate to be had about whether leaving a dead conversation is a retreat, but leaving the situation and pulling back a bit to think about the circumstances, one's mood, the people involved, etc seems like a good thing on balance.

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

#318

Post by analog8374 »

nnowack wrote: post #297
analog8374 wrote: post #110

This is satire. He is describing the attitude generally demonstrated on social media.

yea haha it was meant almost entirely satirically, and yea in part about online behavior. i also wrote it off hand in a couple minutes and didn't think a lot about it. the breadth of different interpretations has been very surprising to witness

It's got pop

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

#320

Post by vanderZwan »

notthemessiah wrote: post #241

the author wrote this in the Leaflet comments sections: """ through some upsetting turn of events, someone put this on hackernews and started a piranha feeding frenzy of speculation about what / who im referring to here. so just to be clear: i wrote this bulleted list in a couple minutes as a way to rant about the lack of charity i was noticing in 2 places - my family, where 2 members aren't speaking to each other fo…

Yeah that pretty much lines up with my expectations - I've seen the type of behavior described both in real life and in various online spaces. Luckily never ticking all of the boxes at once, but they don't need to to cause a lot of needless suffering to themselves and collateral damage to the people around them.

The worst situations usually were if someone with this kind of self-sabotaging coping mechanism for some kind of trauma (because that's what it usually seems to be in my experience) ended up in some kind of moderator position in some on-line community, which they tended to seek out to get more control to cope with their fears.

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