I've only skimmed it but your answers in that thread were great. Like that, not "someone who isn't cool enough for me".
Vegans, republicans, religious or mystical people all would not enjoy being with me.
Now let's talk about what kind of people shouldn't date Ogged.
Yes, these shouldn't be ways that other people wouldn't be cool enough for you, but things that they would see as problems with you.
Anyone who didn't think I was funny would, honestly, not work at all for me.
(Fortunately, this has never been a problem, since I'm freaking hilarious.)
Yes, this is different from our "People I won't date" thread. This is more "people who would find me annoying really fast".
People who get up early in the morning to run.
Well, all those people would find me to be annoying, but I see what you mean.
One man's "I'm so awesome" can be another's genuine insecurity, though. Ogged's thing about "people don't like to be teased and joked with a lot of the time, they should stay away" could easily be seen as "people who aren't cool enough to appreciate my sense of humor should stay away."
People who value nice, calm women shouldn't date me. Also people who have traditional ideas about gender roles, who believe that kids should be well-behaved, and who are offended by swearing or for whom sports or sportiness are really important.
And yeah, like Ogged, people who can't handle teasing and compliments disguised as insults would hate me. I call both Mr. B. and PK "ugly" all the time, which they take in the proper spirit.
Early to bed, early to rise types would hate me, but I'd hate them even more.
People who like ice cream and hate lies should avoid me!!!
Oh, where to start? People who can't handle declining book recommendations shouldn't date me. People who decline all book recommendations shouldn't date me. People who detest puns shouldn't date me. People who are super-sensitive about appropriate topics of humor shouldn't date me. It goes on.
People who care about style or fashion; or rather displays thereof on my part. People looking for validation. People who take themselves (rather than what they do) very seriously. People who think that overthinking, or excessive pickiness on their part, are virtues, and expect a partner to agree.
There's a lot of people with no use for such as me.
11: Ha! I answer to "Ug" in my family, because that's what my mother calls me!
OK, here we go:
--I'm kind of lazy and hedonistic. I like to lie around and do nothing, sometimes while drinking. Even if the house gets messy. I tend toward those easy chair husbands you see on TV.
--I can and will get up and do chores under proper gentle encouragement, but I may do a sort of half-assed job.
--in spite of all this, I do not like to be nagged.
--I tend to catch other peoples moods. If they are cheerful, I will be. If they are gloomy, I will be too. I prefer the other person to be the mood leader in the relationship. Preferably a cheerful one.
--I tend to fuss and stress and bitch about minor everyday worries. This doesn't mean I really worry, it's just a means of blowing off steam and can safely be ignored. But I could see it being annoying.
--I need lots of physical closeness and sex. I may grope at inopportune times.
--I feel old since I turned 40. My hair is thinning slightly compared to what it used to be. (I hope only I can notice this, since I'm intimately familiar with what it used to be).
Damn, I sound fucking annoying.
If you dislike it when someone says, 'I think I'll probably be leaving in about 15 minutes,' and then they spend another 45 minutes doing whatever, when nothing is pressing, I am a bad person to date.
If you yell when you are angry, I am a bad person to date.
When I feel like being alone, I play video games. And I'm an introvert, so I like to be alone a lot. If you are prone to seeing this as rejection or a preference for World of Warcraft over your company, I am a bad, bad person to date.
If you absolutely can't stand baseball, I'm a bad person to date. But I'm not obsessive, nor do I foist it on my intimates, so it could be worse.
If pet names irritate you, don't date me.
If sarcasm irritates you, don't date me.
If you don't like kissing, please don't date me.
If picky eaters vex you, I am to be avoided as an intimate.
I'm really terrified of being murdered, for perhaps obvious but also personal-historical reasons, so people who demand lots of physical trust are pre-emptively barred.
I keep fearing there might be a loophole here, and thinking of ways to close it.
Am I the ONLY person who is going to admit to being fucking annoying?
OK, OK. I'll get in the spirit of things. Women who can't handle an enormous cock shouldn't date me.
Also: the closer I feel to you, the more irritating I am to argue with, because I just don't understand how you of all people cannot see how right I am.
What are you up to these days, PGD? *wink*
oh, fun.
I'm terrible to be with in some ways; sometimes I wonder how the hell my girl puts up with me.
I can be stubborn as hell. I may walk all over you with a stupid/clever idea if you provide no resistance to it. I can fall into projects so deeply they eat my life. This latter can include shifting or even inverting my sleep/wake schedule, or skipping days. I have trouble not showing frustration if we are doing something together, but you are slow or incompetent at it and I'm not (as opposed to teaching, which is different). I'm stormy in some weird indirect way. I'm a perfectionist about some things, and will dedicate time to doing them --- even if it shoves other things out. I try to juggle too many things; this combined with the last can be bad.
... I'm sure there is a ton of stuff.
Someone once told me I was a combination of amazing and horrible to date: too perfect until you got close enough to see what a pain in the ass I was.
Oh, I'm irritatingly calm and decisive in all arguments! If I get worked up, I do it alone! Because I'm emotionally withholding!
Katherine sounds amusing, actually. I can enjoy along with other stressballs, because I understand them and they entertain me. As long as they have a sense of humor about it.
If you dislike it when someone says, 'I think I'll probably be leaving in about 15 minutes,' and then they spend another 45 minutes doing whatever, when nothing is pressing, I am a bad person to date.
This is me. I also say I'm going to the store for 15 minutes and disappear for an hour.
I'm lazy, touchy-feely, whiny, needy, messy, drink too much, know-it-all, correcter, all around pain in the ass.
I spend entirely too much time reading the internet. That can (and sometimes—let's be honest—does) annoy.
I enjoy not showering sometimes for a couple days, which might bother some (though no complaints so far!).
Other than that, I'm a real catch.
I am going to tease you. I can not help myself.
I am going to need some time to myself to recharge now and then. It is not you, it is me.
I am going to want to go out and socialize with lots of other people. I will not be able to spend all my time in a private little world with you. A big happy public world, yes.
I am going to need some time to myself to recharge now and then. It is not you, it is me.
Oh, yeah: "me" time. There's that, too.
I refuse to be supervised, monitored, second-guessed, or daddied in any way w/r/t how I spend my time.
25: oh, I've got that one in spades.
I think I've got better over time, but `untouchable' was used more than once to describe that about me.
In general, I like equitable relationships but every now and again I'll have a meltdown where I'm completely overwhelmed and unable to make a decision. When that happens, I need someone who can step up and take control of the situation and tell me what we're going to do. If someone doesn't have the type of personality where they can take charge and boss me around occasionally, we're both going to end up a total mess.
Thin-skinned, going to worry that I hate you when I inevitably say something vicious and scathing (either completely accidentally or due to mild irritation on my part)? Don't waste my time, because I will be nasty one day and it won't mean anything.
Also, like PGD, keep your distance if the big cock is a problem.
I will talk about anything after sex except sex. In fact, I don't like talking about sex at all with the person I'm sleeping with. I will just sit there and listen, smiling and nodding. Ditto relationship-analysis conversation.
Is this now a list of inobvious personal flaws? I am liable to be insane for a few days out of every six months. I am an insufferable food snob. Once every couple years I'll fuck off out of the country for a few months. I am alternately insecure and assertive at random. I can't cry.I drink lots and lots of water, and can't be without it for more than half an hour. I have no form of ID.
21: Hey, I admitted that I enjoy watching baseball and playing World of Warcraft. I'm less fuckable than Ogged, for Goddess' sake.
No ID, FM? How do you leave the country?
To go back to when I was last dating, add in: "and I've never so much as kissed anyone, & I'm really insecure about it, & I won't put out for over a year. At least."
I don't like talking about sex at all with the person I'm sleeping with. I will just sit there and listen, smiling and nodding. Ditto relationship-analysis conversation.
I am the opposite. I want to talk about these things. But I also want the right answers. i want to resolve things quickly. I want our relationship-talks to have agendas.
Agendas that we accomplish ahead of schedule.
Is this now a list of inobvious personal flaws?
Meh. One persons flaw is anothers character trait, or something. Besides, only if they are the sort that will drive someone you are dating crazy.
Someone once told me I was a combination of amazing and horrible to date: too perfect until you got close enough to see what a pain in the ass I was.
Isn't this true of everybody?
What are you up to these days, PGD? *wink*
I'll be in the orgy room at DCon, surrounded by admiring women (and perhaps a few men).
Actually, a true story about my dick (is there a blog with this title?):
I was recently making out with a highly educated, accomplished, impressive woman. She told me at the beginning we weren't doing anything below the waist because she didn't feel close enough emotionally as yet. However, she then proceeded to feel me up very explicitly above my clothing. When I pointed out that she was being somewhat hypocritical, she explained that she had to check out any new man to see if he was large enough, since it was a terrible thing to become emotionally attached to someone who was really small. She explained that she had bonded deeply with a very underendowed man, and it had been very trying for her. She really got a little wrought up describing it. Apparently I passed, because she wants to see me again.
Based on previous feedback tho, I believe myself to have a completely average size endowment.
OMG, AWB is my boyfriend.
PGD has all of Mr. B.'s most annoying traits.
NBarnes and I could never, ever date. Or Ham-Love. One of the very few things I find unforgivable is when someone crosses the nasty line when they're angry.
... Agendas that we accomplish ahead of schedule.
Where I come from, this is grounds for public beheading.
Haven't for a couple years now, I'm due. My mom helpfully stole my passport, which has been my primary ID since I was 18, when I was visiting last Christmas. "It was just sitting in the bathroom so I stuck in your file," she said, and it hasn't been seen since.
Actually, maybe FM is my boyfriend. Hard to tell.
Isn't this true of everybody?
Not the way it was meant, no. This was not in the first-blush of dating sense.
If you have hangups about me being already married and not available for dates, you shouldn't date me.
I'm objectively annoying. Voluble, assertive, and hyperbolic in my opinions. Trust me, you shouldn't date me.
Ummm, 42 was me, but I'm not sure I should admit it.
Mainly I feel bad that I broke gentlemanly confidence that woman. But the story was just too good. She really is quite nice in her way, she just has almost no capacity to edit herself once she gets close to you. Which is fine with me, I enjoy people with that trait quite a bit.
My favorite kind of humor is compulsively over-thinking things out loud until they appear absurd. I eat an extremely limited number of things (I really need to resolve this one). I write poetry and post it on my blog.
If you have hangups about me being already married and not available for dates, you shouldn't date me.
One of the very few things I find unforgivable is when someone crosses the nasty line when they're angry.
I find it a lot more disturbing for people to cross the nasty line when they're not angry at all and are just being playful, as you take pride in doing.
We all think bad things about each other from time to time. I think saying them can be forgiven. A lot of us have elderly relatives who constantly say mean things because some part of the brain that represses that is no longer functioning. My great-aunt who does this made me realize that everyone does think bad things about me from time to time, and I just have to find people who also think lots of nice things.
Also, if you can't value and respect my blog-commenting, let's call the whole thing off.
It's pretty clear that I should never, ever date Ned.
So, on the principle of "don't be a pussy," I just went to an open mic that the bass player mc's every week near my place. I think I got there too late (but before the stated end time) and there was no open mic, but she was at the bar talking to who I *think* is her ex. In any case, I can mention that I stopped in when I see her next, which is in fact better than trying to chat her up when I'm as friggin tired as I am tonight.
50: ??? Nonsense.
Clearly, you haven't met me.
If you have hangups about me being already married and not available for dates, you shouldn't date me.
I'm objectively annoying. Voluble, assertive, and hyperbolic in my opinions.
You know, I used to be like this, and then I had an epiphany and realized we're all pretty much full of shit.
Just don't support the Iraq war or argue for invading Iran and we'll be fine.
who I *think* is her ex
Could you beat him up?
60: But your comments are so urbane!
Based on previous feedback tho, ....
Having two or more people compare notes about you this way publicly in a group is an odd conversation.
So, on the principle of "don't be a pussy," I just went to an open mic that the bass player mc's every week near my place.
Nice, if only for nutting up.
-I have frequent nightmares.
- Philosophers argue. I don't mean it nastily. It's like all the flipping of switches and straightening of shelves that OCD people do? I'm like that with arguments, especially if they're based on incorrect conventional wisdom assumptions. I don't date philosophers either, so it's a fair cop.
-I deal with the world through caustic sarcasm. A few men have mentioned they understood me better once they met my dad.
-I can go to pieces over the stupidest worries, but I will be the one calm in the middle of the car crash. If this confuses you, so will I.
-I do not like to be asked to repeat myself. This one I work on.
I wonder if the nasty in fun vs. nasty in anger thing breaks along lines of how you get angry.
I also have nightmares, Cala. I feel you.
I don't sleep and cuddle at the same time. I'll hold a dude until he goes to sleep, if he wants, but the instant he's out, I'm in "Siberia" (as Max called it), sometimes to the point of getting up and sleeping on the couch.
My job has an unattractive reputation.
I've liked extroverts, but eventually they find me dull.
I dated someone who liked me to dress very well, unfortunately I am not naturally good at this. Unless I'm stopped, I'll wear the same things every day until they're worn out.
When I was dating, I learned to get these things out on the table as soon as possible.
46: I'm touched, Ms. Bitch, but AWB is definitely your man. You couldn't handle it if I started to work blue: "So a housewife, an Eskimo genius, and an underdressed man go in to an opera, etc..."
-I do not like to be asked to repeat myself. This one I work on.
Many people have this trait, which makes it unfortunate to have mine: saying "What?" and then realizing I actually heard you.
Apparently so am I, except for the nightmares.
I need someone who can step up and take control of the situation and tell me what we're going to do. If someone doesn't have the type of personality where they can take charge and boss me around occasionally, we're both going to end up a total mess.
It's very nice to deal with someone who knows this about themselves and is clear about the need for you to take charge and when they want it to happen.
I think pretty much everybody needs to be in control of certain things, and wants decisions made for them in other areas. It's very helpful in relationships when both people know which areas are which.
76 to 71.
74: You vastly underestimate me.
I don't like being asked to repeat myself either. This is a clear flaw in my personality. When I do repeat myself I try to repeat the exact phrasing, speed and intonation of the thing I just said, out of spite.
stay away is hopefully not a message for me
A. i don't know
i have no flaws
for Teofilo, hope you'll like
Isn't this true of everybody?
Not the way it was meant, no. This was not in the first-blush of dating sense.
I think I gave a lousy answer here. What she meant, I think, was that if you choose to exclusively interact with people in contexts where you are very comfortable or involving activities you are pretty good at, you can come across as `too perfect', (too controlled?).
I'm sure this turns people off and isn't the same as the way you gloss over things about a person you are crushing on.
Oh, another one: if you don't have patience for someone who makes decisions very slowly and out-loud, you will strangle me. I guess everyone who's been reading the blog the past few days already knows this. But I will hem and haw and do "but what ifs" for a long damn time before I make a decision. This is genuinely not charming, but can be exhausting for the person who is listening and feels compelled to offer input, but finds the input is almost never decisive.
Ogged, stop being like me. You hate me.
I eat an extremely limited number of things is kind of an interesting one.
Oh, this wasn't the question, but if you're a picky eater, stay the hell away from me. For some reason that kind of thing just annoys the crap out of me.
opinionated to a fault.
but you lot knew that already.
I can go to pieces over the stupidest worries, but I will be the one calm in the middle of the car crash. If this confuses you, so will I.
This is me. I bandaged my own damn 36 stitch wound once, while all about me were freaking the fuck out, but I myself freak out over any deadline, however minor.
77 was me.
How could I forget my other annoying quality...I'm hard to hearing in one ear and will constantly bend around so my good ear is close to you and then ask you to repeat whatever it is you said. If you're the sort of person who likes to say everything twice, then I'm definitely your man.
I am really starting to suspect that PGD is Mr. B. Mr. B., are you commenting on Unfogged over there while pretending to watch MST3K?
I'm not a picky eater in terms of taste, but I am lactose intolerant and avoid acidic foods, etc., so the effect is the same. And I need to eat every few hours, no exceptions. These are a surprisingly (or not so surprisingly) important and annoying in a relationship, especially if the other person isn't a voracious eater, or wants to eat whatever, whenever. I need a routine and am generally not spontaneous.
83: Oh dear, I'm going to grow up to be ogged.
This is probably a "People not as cool as me may not be worthy of me" sort of statement, but people who are intentionally closed-minded in some area of life, with no guilt, will find that I can't resist trying, in an annoying way, to persuade them to not be closed-minded.
I just can't believe that someone can say things like "I don't go to plays", or "I don't like subtitles", or "I don't eat seafood", and have a tone of voice that implies that this is a matter of principle, rather than something they're vaguely ashamed of or don't do because they don't have enough time to be educated about it.
God knows there are aspects of human existence that I never take any opportunity to get involved in, but if you ask me why not there'll always be some sort of guilt on my face as I say "I guess I grew up in a house where we didn't go hunting, and when I've had friends who hunted I never took any initiative to find out what it was like, and now I sort of feel like it's too late to become the kind of person who hunts."
I will be the one calm in the middle of the car crash.
That's me, too. And if you are going to pieces, I'll take over. Absent a genuinly obvious (to me) emergency though, I'll become judgemental about it. And perhaps resentful.
I can't tell if this is an exercise in collective auto-cockblockery, or if you're all just clearing the air so you can hook up at UnfoggeDCon with clear consciences.
91: You're just trying to tell us that Mr. B has a huge cock, aren't you.
I think this is about who shouldn't date us, not necessarily who shouldn't fuck us. That too, probably, but most of these are auto-relationship-blockage, it looks to me.
96: no, no, this is fun! The longer we keep at this, the more insufferable I become.
If this goes on, I may have to wake up X and ask how the hell she puts up with me.
Nobody likes a picky eater. Nobody.
People who aren't or don't like to be persistent, particularly about suggesting things to do together. This may include starting to date (or "date") in the first place.
97: There was a retraction in 42, so that can't be it.
96: A professional will later examine this thread and assign UnfoggeDCon hookups based on Science.
98: Right, many of these things would take a while to kick in, really.
92: On DVD. Also VHS. Yes, my husband is an incredible geek.
97: As a matter of fact, he does.
93: You've always been pretty tolerant of my flakiness about scheduling meals, though. And you're low-key about your food issues in person. At least from what I've seen.
I need to eat every few hours, no exceptions
God, that's annoying. How can anyone travel with you?
I think this is about who shouldn't date us, not necessarily who shouldn't fuck us.
A crucial distinction, and one that so many fail to make. Praise you, AWB.
Well, the people who fuck me are a subset of the people who date me, historically.
I do take steps about the food. When I saw you, B, I had just eaten a snack in the car on the way up. Same response to slol: a portion of my carry-on is food, I always have some snack bars in the car, in my jacket pocket, etc.
108: I'm the other way around.
People who want to date me without fucking me.
109: See, taking care of yourself isn't being picky. Being picky is going oh, I don't like Chinese, oh, I hate avocados, oh, I can't eat anything that has onions in it, oh, that's too spicy, etc.
Unfogged on picky eating: surprisingly like my mother.
Glad you're not recommending my girlfriend and I try the rhythm method, at least.
109: I guess food issues like that are pretty easy for others to deal with so long as you are willing to carry stuff and not force detours etc. to eat. I knew a diabetic guy who always had bread and peanut butter with him, and would make sandwiches pretty much on the fly most days.
People who don't like walking shouldn't date me. I walk for hours. Probably the most common single non-sex date activity I've engaged in is interminable, exhausting, completely impractical walks. And I will begin them without notifying my date that I've passed many, many train stations that would take me home. Tricksy! I'll get my walk on whether you like it or not!
Well, the people who fuck me are a subset of the people who date me, historically.
I'm the other way around.
It'd be more of a Venn diagram for me, I think.
Detours to eat are fine. *Refusing* to eat is annoying.
112: Yeah, it's a long way from `ffs, it's just a bit of green onion in your salad' to `ffs, just eat it, we don't know that you'll go into alaphylactic shock for certain'
117: detours that throw everything else off? regularly?
118: anaphylactic.
oh, I don't like Chinese, oh, I hate avocados, oh, I can't eat anything that has onions in it, oh, that's too spicy, etc.
This was fun to read aloud in a grating little whine.
One of the weirdest ongoing relationship problems I had was with a guy who could not tolerate hot food or drink. We'd get coffee or tea, or we'd order a meal, and he'd just sit and blow on it for fifteen or twenty minutes. I'd be done before he started. Readers, I mocked him in my heart.
If you llike the heat turned way up (or, like, on) in winter or like to live without air conditioning in summer, you shouldn't date me.
Ogged and I disputed over this just a little over two years ago?
119: Well, look, if someone has a health condition, then it shouldn't throw everything off regularly, since you should build it into the schedule.
Wow, I just realized that this thread has turned into spelling out just how much we loathe/tolerate these qualities in one another. How fun!
AWB is starting to sound eerily like me most ways. I don't walk enough these days. This city sucks for it (but I do anyway).
I've noticed that my fiancee, at almost every restaurant we go to, finds something on the menu that sounds good, worries that some sauce on it is too spicy, asks the waitorix if it's spicy, is told that it's spicy, and then asks for the sauce on the side or orders something else. I feel bad for her, always having to worry about that.
Me, spicy things give me the hiccups which is annoying, but I can eat them, all the way up to a 3 out of 10 at local Thai and Indian places.
121: Oh man, Becks, I'm sorry, it's over between us.
121.2 was supposed to be a declarative.
I blow on hot drinks forever.
122: Yeah, should. Except if they refuse to be organized about it, or tell you, or anything. Not speaking from personal experience or anything.
I said I'm not picky, just that in practice there's little difference between me and a picky eater. I save you the moral condemnation at least. Thought of something else: if you don't have patience for nuisance health issues and occasionally taking care of someone with them, you shouldn't date me. I have to be careful about my heart, which means, mostly, consuming x amount of potassium each day and also, uh, being able to use the loo when I need to use the loo (even gas can make my heart go hinky; that truly sucks). And every few years we'll have to go to the hospital to get it shocked back into rhythm. Don't date me if that freaks you out. And some days I'm basically laid up in bed with stomach pain, although that's usually only in the day or two after I travel/upset my routine and then I adjust. So, you gotta be willing to deal with that. I'm not always going to be game for whatever, no matter how much I'm game.
Well, basically I'm going to declare myself tolerant of people who need/like to eat, and intolerant of people who refuse perfectly good food. I'll skip meals myself all the time, but that's just laziness, not assholishness.
People who don't like lots of walking, but also people who aren't able to just sit around aimlessly occasionally as well. People who tend to visit museums quickly.
I confess to being impatient with people who are often ill, especially if they whine about it or expect to be fussed over.
Re. potassium, PK amused the parent-who's-a-biologist on a school field trip recently by saying, "I'm crampy and tired, I need some water and a banana! Tell my mama to get me some water and a banana!" I had to explain that the banana was specifically because he knows potassium is good for muscle cramps, which impressed the botanist. Also when, in answer to the question "what do plants use to make energy?" (the botanist expecting little kids to say, hopefully "sun and water," PK said, "chlorophyll."
This thread reminds me that I need to buy some more pills for lactose intolerance; I forgot to take my supply with me.
Obviously if you don't like my child, I want nothing to do with you.
Are you hypoglycemic, ogged? I'm supposed to eat every few hours as a result, but I'm bad about it. So I should add: people who don't like occasionally, temporarily grumpy people.
I'm a little hyper tonight, aren't I? It must be the adrenalin from the swimming pool trip.
131: Ok, really I don't have a general complaint. I'm frustrated with picky eaters, but very tolerant of health issues etc.
It was just one person who was diabetic (not the same one), bad about taking care of themselves, and would get shitty with everyone if they asked (don't nag me, you're like my mom) ... so regularly had crisis where everyone had to drop everything and find food *now*, or whatever. Frustrating.
Are you hypoglycemic, ogged?
I don't think so. I researched this a while back, and I do turn into a monster or feel weak when I don't eat, but I didn't have any of the other symptoms.
139: Oh, okay, yeah. That would piss me off too, on the "sick people who expect to be fussed over" grounds.
134: I carry a small stash in folded paper packet in my wallet (I buy the big bottle of loose pills rather than the individually wrapped foil ones because I am cheap), which means that by the time it's near empty I'm spilling white powder all over the table at lunch.
What are the other sympoms? I've wondered if I might be, because if I don't eat (which I do, often, like an idiot), I sort of just fall apart.
144: What's the idea behind those? Eat these pills and don't worry about your food at all? The lactose intolerent people I know seem to just avoid it....
They gots the lactase enzyme you're missing. I eat them, no symptoms. Like magic.
145
may be you could get isthmus ablation for AF
- one problem less :)
The lactose intolerent people I know seem to just avoid it....
But cheese is delicious.
144: I used to have a small plastic container that came with a big pill bottle that I'd keep full or near full either in my bag or in a pocket. In the winter I could count on having it with me because it would be in the pocket of a coat I almost always wore*; in the summer I wouldn't always remember it. But I've lost the plastic container and the last time I bought pills in bulk, they didn't sell the bottle and instead packaged a bunch of strips in foil wrap. Very inconvenient.
*People who expect me to wear or own a variety of coats should not date me (although persistence might pay off in the long run and lead me to get more coats).
Huh, I did just score a 35 on this hypoglycemia test. Over 20 is supposedly "at risk."
This is dumb, but people who do drugs shouldn't date me. I seriously don't reject or judge people who do drugs, but I'm not fun on drugs or around people who are on drugs. I don't at all mind people who have done drugs or who plan to do drugs in the future, but people who want someone to hang out with while they're really fucked up--I'm a bad person for that. I don't trust myself not to take emotional or sexual advantage of them.
153: I'm very mildly hypoglycemic. But enough to show up on a blood test. Probably worth asking your doc about, if only to get some advice and make sure prescriptions don't exacerbate it. Otherwise, it sounds like you might be already managing it well.
I eat them, no symptoms.
There are certain drinks - regular milk (obviously) or things with heavy amounts of milk - where no amount of pills seems to work for me. Pretty much any food works, though, except cheesecake.
147: I can't be bothered. Don't be a dick, just tell me.
151: I guess the people I'm thinking of can eat a bit of cheese at one sitting, but wouldn't drink milk or whatever. Maybe just milder symptoms.
152: film container?
Wow, you people are still up and this post has 157 comments? I love this blog.
152: film container?
That might be too bulky; the container I had was like a tic-tac container but smaller. Come to think of it, when I buy pills next I should buy some tic-tacs, have extremely fresh breath for a while, and put the pills in the container.
But now I think that test is designed to get you to think that you're hypoglycemic. In any case, I already eat according to their recommendations, so whatevs.
153: On the other hand, ogged, I scored a 69. So.
People who don't like to argue should stay away. I grew up arguing with the rest of my family -- not fighting, but arguing (fighting happened too but was technically verboten) -- in a way that formed a pretty basic part of personality. I've since discovered that there are substantial numbers of people who are terrified by this habit and freeze up, perhaps because they don't differentiate between arguing and fighting. That must suck.
People who are ungregarious should stay away. We should be able to go to a party or a bar and not have to spend every moment together. They should be able to meet my friends without constantly calculating whether it's a test and how they're doing. They should... and this is tougher... be secure enough not to be threatened by female friends. (It happens that a lot of my friends are women.)
People who are going to deeply resent time spent on writing or creative projects should stay away. (Within reason; I don't seriously expect someone to date me if I'm spending virtually every waking moment on something else.)
Those are the biggies, I guess. Also, I don't expect to have an exact match on issues of faith and politics with whomever I'm dating but there are certain dealbreakers, like racism or excessive religiosity.
Ooh, my score is 58! I'm gonna die!
Lactase pills are pretty great; the trick is to take way more than it recommends on the bottle. Says two, take six. But I generally just avoid lactose, except at very fancy meals.
But now I think that test is designed to get you to think that you're hypoglycemic
Probably right. If you are concerned (B.) get the blood test. It's science and shit.
What, no caffeine or fruit? Puhleeze.
And I'm entirely on board with 154. No more dating people who do drugs for me.
115: If you're trying to avoid seducing me you're fucking it up big time. I walk almost everywhere. I'll walk in 5 degree icy shit. Which reminds me of another flaw of mine:
I won't drive. I detest cars. The car has no function outside of the road trip. I will not take a job that requires me to drive, and I will not rent an unwalkable apartment.
Okay, I'll put "get blood test for hypoglycemia" on the list of shit I should do at some point.
113: I can top that--I had a gynecologist suggest we switch from condoms to "withdrawal" as birth control. At university health services! In college!
Whoops, I had an old window of Unfogged up, so I missed this thread when I posted this in the old one:
The more I think about it, the more it seems that the women who would be best off not dating me are pretty much the same as people who would be best off not knowing me.
So long as they can stand my bouts of pretentiousness and occasional stubborness, my brief flashes of pugnacity and my bizarre tastes in music, my motley crew of friends that I pick up at concerts, bars, schools, parks, beaches and sometimes on the internet, and my desire to eat meat regularly... Well, so long as they have tolerance for all these things and my skinny-boy looks and my callow youth, they'd probably be ok with dating me.
I'm sure I've got other dealbreakers, but the sort of people who'd never date me for reasons of personality aren't the sort of people I ever really run into and end up talking to, for seemingly obvious reasons.
No more dating people who do drugs for me.
I don't want you to do drugs, I want you to want to do drugs.
A lot of people have mentioned not wanting to date someone who takes themselves too seriously, but I'd like to add that I can't date people who take me too seriously. I don't mean, like, not listening to me or something, but overvaluing my input, taking my judgment on everything for granted. I speak my mind pretty clearly, but I also change my mind a lot and I like being convinced that I'm wrong.
This should come as no surprise to this community, which I obviously come to because no one is shy about telling me they think I'm mean or full of shit.
I detest cars.
Now we're legally obligated to get married, FM. Just promise you won't make me review your performance in bed.
43: One of the very few things I find unforgivable is when someone crosses the nasty line when they're angry.
Oh, it's rarely me being nasty at person X when person X is making me angry. It's more like me being nasty about everything and everyone, including person X, because person/situation/computer Y has made me angry.
But more often it's using too sharp a verbal knife when teasing, or just misspeaking completely, and hurting feelings.
177.1 was basically what I meant about walking over people with stupid/clever ideas. I need resistance sometimes.
women who dislike verbal bluntness and sexual peccadilloes should not date me.
Oh, here's another one. I can be really bad about overspending sometimes. If you find that intolerable, then I'm not your girl.
this is going to be a fun thread to refer back to.
183: You can buy me drinks any time, B.
Lazy, unambitious, boring, possibly unpleasant mixture of reserve and neediness, too bourgeois for the alternative and too standoffish and cynical for the bourgeois, etc. But I'm adaptable.
172: !!!
180: Hrm. Are you nasty in a just-general-bitching-assholery kind of way, or in a I-know-what-your-sore-spots-are-and-I'm-gonna-press-them kind of way? Because the former is just crankiness; the latter is what I'm talking about.
182. women who dislike verbal bluntness and sexual peccadilloes armadillos should not date me.
But I generally just avoid lactose, except at very fancy meals.
I do this when I don't have the pills, but I don't like missing out. On the other hand, I was out with some friends once and they wanted to get that Pearl Milk Tea that I guess was becoming popular then. I'd never tried it and I mentioned I didn't have my pills with me; a friend said she had some of her own. So I took some pills - more than the directions said - had some tea, and ended up having a horrible night anyway. I liked the tea, but I've avoided it ever since.
But on another hand, I forgot to bring pills with me to Taiwan. I missed out on some sweets, but I also had a polite reason to decline some foods and drinks that my relatives offered that I didn't particularly want anyway.
Here's one that's not "I'm so awesome": punctual people. I'm not particularly un-punctual; I usually show up on time if there's a specific time, but if anyone complains about my being late, I am like "what, you can't sit in a restaurant/coffeeshop/bar for yourself for fifteen minutes?" and berate them. Also because I like to do stuff like "ok I am heading over there sometime soon, see you there." People who don't like to sit alone in places HATE THIS. I have several friends who have taken up the practice of telling me "call me when you get there," so they'll be sure I'm already there. I resist this as much as possible, because I am an asshole.
187: Possibly I'm unable to answer this objectively and accurately. Mostly the former, I think.
182: Of my many, that is not one.
I make hideous faces when I'm thinking hard, which is a lot of the time. I'll keep the ol' brainpan empty for most of a date and during sex to make sure this doesn't happen, but man, I really screw up my mug when I'm pondering stuff. One of my friends in my PhD program confessed that it took her a year to figure out whether I was making those faces just to crack her up during class or not. Alas! They are real!
Luckily, I haven't yet devolved into the Twitchy Lady-Academic who constantly nibbles the inside of her mouth and hunches her eyes around an unwieldy pair of spectacles yet. When I feel it coming on while I'm lecturing, I stave it off by yanking really hard on my earlobe. Which is sorta freaky, too. Hott!
I like to do stuff like "ok I am heading over there sometime soon, see you there."
Me too. Also, though Ogged and Ben won't believe me, I actually can get quite uptight about being late myself, but want to smack people who get uptight about other folks being late.
Oh! If you think it's unseemly for a guy pushing forty to wear jeans and tee shirts day in and day out, take a hike. But on Fridays I clean up damn good.
193: I doubt many people actually have blanket problem with this -- you'd probably have to provide a list.
194: are you familiar with the term `guitar face' and variants? I knew a bass player who had this in a bad way. Gig photographs were sometimes hilarious.
If you're a romantic (like my poor husband), I'm going to hurt your feelings a lot by forgetting anniversaries and birthdays and generally disdaining or being mortified by conventionally romantic gestures.
Also: you must love my sisters. You must put up with the rest of my families' tsuris in the right spirit. (Mockery & kvetching is encouraged for those in the Circle of Trust, but you must earn it & it must be done with affection). Oh, and you should probably think of them as your potential in-laws--historically speaking, if one of us dates someone for three months or more, there's a 50% shot we'll eventually marry him. Gosh, did I say we'll marry him?
"See you when I see you" and being late are different issues. If there's no appointed time, then the only people who will object are ones who need a fixed schedule. Being late is disrespectful, whether the person minds sitting alone or not. And if you disrespect me, I'll pop a cap in your ass.
If you like piña coladas…you should probably fuck off.
191: Oooh, I hate, hate, hate waiting. I don't at all mind sitting by myself, etc., but I hate waiting. Although it's gotten better since I've been putting more effort into making sure I always have something to read with me.
191: I get this. This is why I bring at least one book everywhere. If should happen to be late, it's not my fault you didn't bring a book is it?
"Call me when you get there"? No I fucking will not, because that is a forcible thrust of the waiting onto me. Not that I mind all that much, but that's just rude.
I am always at least five minutes early to everything, barring subway disasters. This seems to irritate people as much or more than if I'd been late.
I'll pop a cap in your ass.
I usually save anal sex for the third date.
"what, you can't sit in a restaurant/coffeeshop/bar for yourself for fifteen minutes?"
Fifteen minutes is fine, if I know it's not going to be ninety minutes. This is why I always try to agree on a rough estimate of time, like "10 to 10:30" with people, so they know if they're there at 10:10 that they don't have a right to get mad unless I show up more than twenty minutes after that.
197: I'm avoiding that. Let's just say if you like it vanilla, stay away.
It's over, B. If you can't remember one lousy anniversary and one lousy birthday, we're through. (But I don't care if you don't get me a sappy present for those occasions.)
Okay, I cheated by getting married two days after my birthday, so can't possibly forget it. But I also have a halfaversary to remember so that makes up for it.
205: I was slightly late to the recent NYC unfogged meetup and on-purpose, too. (I had been right around the corner having coffee with a friend.) I figured it be easier to spot a group of people looking around, plus I was worried everyone else would be late.
191 is me too, except I'm much worse with the whole actual punctuality thing. I try, I really really do.
199: Putting up with The Family with good grace is just manners, no? Is there anyone who would date someone who didn't do this, or at least make a show of doing it?
198: Actually, this is an example of the kind of mean I can be: If you and I were together, I'd buy myself a present and say "hey, I went ahead and ordered this thing, since it's not like you were going to remember my birthday anyway."
But I can understand the family thing. It does remind me, though: people who expect me to love their pets shouldn't date me. I'm good with and I like animals, but I can't guarantee that I will be over the moon for your cat. Or dog. Or iguana. Or whatever.
I always remember everyone's birthday. Heebie's is August 4th, AWB's 9/11, and Cyrus is 8/6. See?
"hey, I went ahead and ordered this thing, since it's not like you were going to remember my birthday anyway."
Mean!
43: Eh? I don't get mean when I get angry (did I say that I did?). I get quiet and withdrawn.
I am a picky eater in exactly the mode that drives you crazy, so the judgment that we shouldn't date stands.
I always remember everyone's birthday.
When's mine?
I try, I really really do.
Ditto. I can't be on time to save my life, mostly. Sorry.
Putting up with The Family with good grace is just manners, no?
I will be the first to admit that my family is intimidating, but if you're intimidated, buh-bye.
214: I'd just laugh. Plus that makes the overspending thing kind of a non-issue, doesn't it?
I still think Ogged is exaggerating his flaws. I've been at least an hour late both times I was going to have a meal with you, Ogged, and I'm not dead yet.
I'm starting to suspect that this thread is an attempt by Becks to thin the ranks at UnfoggeDCon (so many RSVPs!) by making us all seem unappealing.
You never told me. Give up the info and then ask me again in six months
Oh yeah! Bitch and I will be un-soul-mated after I reveal this. People with pets. I do not like sharing the bed with a cat or dog or bird or being responsible for them. I like animals a lot. But I don't like pets.
People try to convince me that this makes me a horrible person or something. I really do love animals. Actually, I feel empathy for them so strong that it makes it painful to be responsible for them. Because the cat is meowing and it seems sad and what does it want! I can't help it! I am totally neurotic about this.
I'm pretty punctual; I'm often a few minutes late to things, but I hate that. Unless it's someplace I've never been before or I'm meeting people I haven't met before, in which case I'll be a little late on purpose.
220.1: For me, I have bad habits formed by a circle of friends who are always fashionably late for things, so that any set arrival time becomes a constant game of Punctuality Chicken. It's annoying.
220.2 is exactly right.
I do not like sharing the bed with a cat or dog or bird
Heh.
I've been at least an hour late both times I was going to have a meal with you, Ogged, and I'm not dead yet.
Oh, I'm kidding about that. I have a friend who's hours late constantly, and I haven't killed him yet. I do think it's disrespectful, but I'm a pushover. Until I'm not!
You never told me. Give up the info and then ask me again in six months
I've actually mentioned it more than once here.
My family are awful, but you're not allowed to bitch about them more than I do.
Here's a trait of mine that's truly mortifying: I not infrequently make some sweeping statement about "I hate X" only to find that X is the best friend/secret crush/favorite hobby/home town of someone I like, or at least don't want to offend. If you can't believe me when I backpedal or don't get the difference between sweeping opinionated generalizations and actual animosity (Ned), then you're going to think I'm an awful person.
I'm always 15 minutes late to everything.
No more dating people who do drugs for me.
I rather enjoy doing drugs. Especially psychedelics, which I think everyone should do once every few years. Also, regular moderate / social drinking is nice.
I don't know if I've successfully differentiated myself from Mr. B yet.
Teo and Bostoniangirl have the same birthday, I believe. But I don't remember the day.
225: Well, yeah; the cat sleeps on my head, and I get annoyed at Mr. B. when he closes the bedroom door. But your not wanting them b/c you feel too responsible is completely endearing and makes up for it. Almost.
230: Huh. Okay, I'll try not to do that again.
233: There's drugs and Drugs. I mostly mean Drugs.
233: Yep. Mr. B. is a pretty straight arrow, drug-wise.
232: I was riding home from teaching with my best girlfriend, who, for some reason, has never come to the same conclusions as I do about anyone we know. Sometimes I end up being right, sometimes she does, but usually it's a draw. For four and a half years, we've been nearly able to take for granted that the person one of us hates more than death will turn out to be the other's best new buddy. But tonight, we discovered we both like the same girl at school, and it was really weird. We had no argument. This girl is earnest, brilliant, forthcoming, warm, generous, thoughtful--and both of us think so!
We lapsed into silence for the rest of the way home.
Of course, you could be lying to throw me off the track, honey.
Teo and Bostoniangirl have the same birthday, I believe. But I don't remember the day.
It's an obscure Anglican holiday, if that helps.
or in a I-know-what-your-sore-spots-are-and-I'm-gonna-press-them kind of way
That's sort of interesting, and reminds me that I think it's extremely important in a relationship that your fighting styles match up somehow. They don't have to be equivalent, I suppose. Otherwise, it can be just pure hell, where you end up ramping each other up the awfulness scale.
That might be my biggest dealbreaker/you shouldn't date me thing. I don't know how you go about doing such matchups without first dating though.
I saw this cat on the bus once, in a carrier, sitting on the little platform near the front where people sometimes put their bags. I was looking around and no one seemed to be paying attention, so I thought it had been abandoned there, and it was meowing and I fucking lost my shit. Cried like an idiot. People were staring at me.
The owners were sitting in the back of the bus, but I still think they were too cavalier.
For some reason, I don't feel this way about babies, thank Allah.
thin the ranks at UnfoggeDCon (so many RSVPs!) by making us all seem unappealing
If you can't handle the fact that most of my friends touch inappropriately, smoke crack constantly, are kleptomaniacs and/or smell like a restaurant dumpster in August, you might want to think twice before coming to my party.
238: Maybe new(?) girl likes one of you and hates one of you.
Bear in mind that things like lying around on the couch, not liking to be nagged yet fussing too much yourself, being hard of hearing, and being worried about thinning hair are common middle-aged guy traits.
Mr. B. is a pretty straight arrow, drug-wise.
He should try some psychedelics.
242: The owners sucked, and you are adorable. Re. babies? Neither do I, but just wait: you have your own and you become all solicitous and shit. So annoying.
He should try some psychedelics.
He'd probably love them, but he actually is too principled to lie on security clearance forms.
It's an obscure Anglican holiday, if that helps.
Huh, I even know your birthday, but I don't know this. Perhaps, guessing from the timing of my old term with this name, is it Michaelmas?
10-15 minutes late is a reasonable tolerance for something with one person or a small group that's going to take an hour or two. Larger groups or longer durations increase the tolerance. But it's rude to be too cavalier about someone else's time.
245 to 239.
Funny B and I should be hitting it off under my new pseud, as she couldn't stand me under the old one. But that's the glory of a new pseud! A fresh start! I recommend it to all!
OK, off to bed. Good night, all you impossibly annoying people.
Now I want to know who you are, PGD. Also, don't get cocky, I might hate you yet.
Plus, our "hitting it off" seems to mean you have all my husband's most irritating traits, so.
That's sort of interesting, and reminds me that I think it's extremely important in a relationship that your fighting styles match up somehow. They don't have to be equivalent, I suppose. Otherwise, it can be just pure hell, where you end up ramping each other up the awfulness scale.
This is probably the thing that's important for the largest number of people.
I've never been in a fight or argument with someone I cared about, and I never have with my fiancee either.
She says that she gets angry and short-tempered at people, and her mom agrees, but I've never seen it in four years, whereas I've seen her mom do it repeatedly in what seemed like unnecessary escalations of force. I keep wondering why my fiancee says she's prone to these outbursts too, when I've never seen it. When will it happen?
240: Oh, we're on to riddles now. It's not that I don't give enough of a shit to remember your birthday, it just never entered my memory. I still remember the birthday of the girl my roommate was dating when I was 21-23, if only because he asked me to remember it for him. All the same, it's Candlemas, isn't it? Whitsunday?
244: That would make me feel the world was right again.
Re: fighting styles. I guess I don't fight. This doesn't come up. I don't think I've fought with a boyfriend since I was dating a dangerous psychotic in college, and that was, like, physical fighting. Boyfriends previous to that, no fighting either.
I think if I were willing to fight I'd have had more relationships, but nothing really ever seems worth fighting about except, you know, potential death. You should see my face when I've been cheated on (twice? three times?). I roll my eyes, because I have no soul.
Maybe I have no soul, or maybe it's a product of having been in really shitty, screaming, violent fights with my mom when I was a kid. Nothing really ever seems worth hurling invective over, when, unlike when I was a kid, I'm free to walk out.
My birthday is two months after Apo's minus one day. I expect you all to mark it on your calendars.
According to various Pick-Up Artists, when a woman finds you mysteriously annoying and cocky it means she really likes you. This also works in elementary school.
I'm not revealing my old pseud, since the problem was an anonymity breakdown and I'm *really* enjoying the freedom to be myself with this new one. But I'm sure we'll all meet at DCon.
Oh, that's another one! If eyeball-rolling pisses you off? Honey, please.
"I've never been in a fight or argument with someone I cared about, and I never have with my fiancee either."
Do you have siblings?
I save eye-rolling for when I want it to hurt, which is really rarely.
Since I figured out that I only fight when I'm hungry, and told anyone I spend much time with "If I start to get mean, refuse to talk to me until I eat," I haven't had any fights. This has been particularly helpful with my mom.
Ok, since you're beind demure and all teo, I went ahead and googled it. What the hell kind of Anglican holiday is that?
253: I've never been in a fight or argument with someone I cared about,
That's impressive. But man, is that ever going to suck when it finally happens. Not to jinx you or anything.
The only relationship I've had in which I actually fought a lot with the other person was a textbook example of just what Tim is talking about. I tended to try to de-escalate things by reasoning them out step-by-step; she invariably interpreted this as an attempt to patronize or belittle her, and "retaliated" by getting increasingly loud and vicious. Ill-matched styles = no fun.
That's sort of interesting, and reminds me that I think it's extremely important in a relationship that your fighting styles match up somehow. They don't have to be equivalent, I suppose. Otherwise, it can be just pure hell, where you end up ramping each other up the awfulness scale.
My wife's and my fighting styles don't match up at all, and it does occasionally get ugly. The good news is that we're also both stubborn as hell, so sometimes an ugly fight is what it takes to get something through our heads.
The new phenomenon of people adopting new pseuds heartens me, because it turns out that I don't care about this place quite enough to wonder and seek out who this new person used to be. Hopefully you will all do me the same courtesy if I change pseuds. I certainly couldn't reveal to my fiancee that I use this name on this site, and sometimes I feel bad about that, so maybe I'll switch and become someone who doesn't post personally humiliating anecdotes.
258: If eyeball-rolling pisses you off?
Bingo. Super-hostile gesture.
Maybe I have no soul, or maybe it's a product of having been in really shitty, screaming, violent fights with my mom when I was a kid. Nothing really ever seems worth hurling invective over, when, unlike when I was a kid, I'm free to walk out.
OMG. I am AWB.
A complete enumeration of all counterindications would be too saddening, so I'll just mention something that will no doubt be a surprise to y'all: while I can turn off the automatic nitpicking and pedantry for stretches at a time, it would be nice not to have to do so for the majority of my interactions with someone whom I regard as a free and equal partner in a shared coöperative sexual and romantic scheme, so someone who doesn't like constantly being hassled about extremely minor issues of usage or terminological infelicities or whatnot—chimerical as such a person probably is—probably shouldn't date me.
The last paragraph of 264 is more or less what we do.
267: Yeah, but a lot more poignant than screeching damning insults or punching someone in the face. Being cheated on is pretty hostile, too.
Super-hostile gesture.
Bah, it is not. I"m rolling my eyes as I write this.
255: How do you have a relationship and not fight? What do you do? Fuck, make dinner, watch a movie, cheat, eye roll, and then done? Bizarre.
271: If the situation calls for actual hostility that's different. But for me, there had better be a really good reason or it's conversation over. I'd almost rather have a drink thrown at me.
Super-hostile gesture.
Bah, it is not.
And this is basically what we do. Guess who's who.
Super-hostile gesture.
Bah, it is not.
And this is basically what we do. Guess who's who.
272: Subtleties of execution matter. I've no doubt the Dr. B eye-roll is a whole different species from the norm.
You're a freak, DS. If the situation is *actually hostile,* then actual hostility is what you get. Eyeball rolling is just an involuntary reaction to something ridiculous.
What is the deal with people hating on eye-rolling? I got sent to the principal's office for rolling my eyes at a teacher in the 5th grade. Only time, too.
277: She rolls them IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS.
Do you have siblings?
Yes, a sister. What would we fight about? I don't know. Maybe when I was about 10 we would hit each other for no reason, but we wouldn't get into real angry arguments, just faux-arguments characterized by trying to be annoying and repetitive.
I yelled at my parents a couple times as a teenager, but just out of frustration. If they yelled back I just shut up becuase I thought the point (I am more emotional than you think I am, old man, so stop being mean to me) was made.
That's impressive. But man, is that ever going to suck when it finally happens. Not to jinx you or anything.
Yes, I know.
I've had reasoned discussions about things I've done that hurt my girlfriends, and every time I just felt bad about it. Hard as it may be for some people here to believe, I don't get defensive with people I know in real life, just with people who don't know me making generalizations about me.
Even when I confronted my flatmate who had told us he was paying the rent when he wasn't, I just tried to make it clear to him by my tone of voice that I had lost all respect for him. If that had been harsh enough maybe we would have had an actual fight, but I don't think he actually figured out that I had intentional malice in my voice.
Eye-rolling at friends/partners when they're being ridiculous is different from the hostile kind. You smile when you do it.
You're a freak, DS.
Freakier than Shock G and Money B put together.
It's a totally rude involuntary reaction, yes. Which I'm sure you pull off with grace and charm.
Oh, by the way. I fight. A lot. Like everything is part of a larger narrative of injustice with me. I'd like to think that this is remediable, but most of my relationships have involved like, marathon, fights. Emotionally satisfying when they're over, sure, but it's always sturm und drang with me.
Eye-rolling is pretty damn annoying. But only prissy teenage girls do it, so no worries.
Being cheated on is pretty hostile, too.
HOW DARE YOU BE CHEATED ON BY ME
YOU'RE JUST LASHING OUT BY DOING SELF-DESTRUCTIVE THINGS LIKE THAT
People react badly to being treated with scorn? Who knew?
I never claimed to be incapable of being totally rude.
286: Okay, FM is not my boyfriend. My boyfriend can be a complete asshole to everyone else, but he refuses to fight with me.
What is the deal with people hating on eye-rolling?
Bunch of super touchy boys, imho.
293: I am still B's boyfriend. Any others out there?
284: But it's not so simple, unfortunately. I mean, eye-rolling is an essential part of my physical vocabulary, but my wife interprets it as awful hostility, sort of like when some foreigners get all upset at the thumbs-up gesture. So I've learned to suppress it around her in the same way that I refrain from dropping the f-bomb around the kids.
he refuses to fight with me
You need to stab him here...in the liver. Stab! PONCH! to the head.
Eye-rolling is a sign of contempt, which is a form of lack of respect. That's a terrible sign for the health of a long-term relationship. But not all relationships are long-term.
See URL for Malcolm Gladwell's summary of an expert psychologist's view on this which you've already read anyway.
Jesus is married to a super-touchy boy? Excellent tidbit.
But seriously, how do you mediate conflict in the bitch/AWB style of relationship? You don't sit down at a table Oslo style, and enumerate your differences, and then shake hands in front of a camera. There must be conflict, so how do you deal with it?
Of course, eye-rolling arises in some people in situations which don't approach actual contempt. I wouldn't respond to it as violently as DS would, because I do it all the time when confronted with inanimate frustrating objects.
Yes, thank you Ned. You do realize that Mr. B. and I have been together for 21 years, right?
In light of 301, please ignore 303.
303: My god, your marriage can drink.
300: Oh, Mr. B. and I fight. But I've learned to walk away from the fight when it starts getting to the ridiculous point, and give him time to calm down and realize he was wrong.
I think I overlap nontrivially with him.
(Relationship, not marriage; we've only been married for 15 years.)
I wouldn't respond to it as violently as DS would
Well, it's not like I'm talking about getting up and storming out of the room or something. It's just a great way to get me to write off any further prospect of serious interaction.
OT: If you have cookies, prepare to toss them now. (Although naming the lobbyist son Chet is an awfully nice touch.)
300: Yeah, what B. said. Walk away for a bit. Let things cool off. Then re-adjourn. Works wonders.
It's just a great way to get me to write off any further prospect of serious interaction.
So you move on to the tickling, then?
"Tickling" is a positively capital euphemism, yes.
I am slightly defensive about the right to use "feminized" forms of disrespectful communication when they are necessary. I remember once when the songwriter I was kvetching about in the other thread got really rough with me while drunk at a party (we were playfighting, but he was too strong and really started hurting me, not to mention humiliating me--bending me over a chair and whacking me, etc.). I seriously needed him to stop, and he wouldn't listen, and I freaked out and reached up and tapped him on the face.
For months, I heard repeatedly how horrible and degrading and insulting it was to be slapped like a child. I know it was the wrong thing to do, and I apologized, but I did it to stop actual, not-merely-symbolic violence to my body. I did it out of fear. But he acted like, because I resorted to a sort of "girly"-defensive gesture, I'd committed the unforgivable crime for which I had to be eternally sorry.
I'm not saying anyone here has ever "deserved" the eye-roll or a slap to the face, but I do fear that these small acts are vilified in ways that the much more harmful things that occasioned those responses aren't.
The guy described in 317 sounds completely insane and is obviously wrong in whatever he's described as saying there.
Amen, AWB. I mean, if you can't stand it when people roll their eyes at you, that's one thing, but to claim that this is because eyeball-rolling is some kind of unforgivable rudeness is a bit much.
Also, it's not unknown for people to get really, really angry when some part of them knows they're in the wrong but they can't admit it.
Sorry, AWB, I'm not aware of vilifying the eye-roll more than infidelity or physically abusing people under the guise of "play" at a party. Others will have to answer for themselves. And I don't know to what extent it's gendered, since I actually don't know many people who do it as a matter of course. I just know I find it irritating and disrespectful.
so violence against your body isn't as big of a sin as giggling at your insults??
318: Seriously. What the fuck? Didn't he have friends that would come over and give him shit if not a shiner for pulling that kind of shit? A slap is getting off easy.
The anti-eyerolling fraktion would have a hard time of it in the middle east, is all I have to say.
I know it was the wrong thing to do, and I apologized
???
There must be some context I'm not getting here.
Yeah, I'm not seeing how the slap was the wrong thing to do there. I'd say the circumstances merited a truncheon, or a taser, or even an eye-roll.
Of course if AWB were a real man she'd just tap out.
i don't really ever get angry at anyone. it seems really useless. occasionally i pretend to be angry, because its whats expected and otherwise people would assume i'm acquiescing. i'm just acting then though.
the 'horseplay' crowd is pretty obnoxious. i've lost a few shirts to them, and spilled drinks on people's apartments. i wish they would learn to play conversation games.
I don't really know how to describe why I feel the way I did about the situation in 317, because it's the sort of friendship that made sense for seven years and then, around that time, suddenly looked incredibly fucked-up and ended.
i often read threads in reverse. i'm regretting it this time.
the 'horseplay' crowd is pretty obnoxious.
There always seems to be that one dude -- I call him the Martial Arts Dick, they seem to have a guild that ensures they're represented at 80% of house parties continent-wide -- who picks out either a petite woman or the scrawniest guy he can find to help him demonstrate really painful holds and throws. "See, and if I do [i]this[/i], that hurts like hell, right? ... Hey, where are you going, I'm trying to help you!"
I don't know anything about lovers' quarrels. Though I once lived with a prostitute who threatened at various times either to kill herself, to kill me, or to pay someone to kill me. That was the progression, IIRC. I think I threatened her once, too. At some point she promised to slit her wrists, or something, and since I knew she was bluffing I told her to go ahead and do it. Although she actually had cut her face once, when I insisted on going to a restaurant alone, and she had a row of deep scars along her forearm.
Later on I had to take a big knife away from her (which she was pretending she would use on either me or herself, I couldn't tell which) and drag her out the door of my apartment. I ended up letting her stay another night, but by then I'd had enough.
232: B do you want to be taken seriously? I think make brash arrogant statments, but i really don't intend for anyone to think 98% of what i say i have any attachment to.
man, pscyhadelics are great.
i really can't get angry, because i'm so amused by other's anger, that as soon as they get perturbed, i have and intense desire to egg them while i eventually break into a huge shit eatin ggrin.
man, pscyhadelics are great.
Is that reminiscence or reportage?
No matter how brutish or hypersensitive your partner's fighting style may be, their understanding your own is really, really important if you have to fight (and in some relationships, you really don't have to). I was a smaller-than-average kid raised in a big family that thrived on sarcastic repartee, and it took me a long time to realize that I can be verbally extremely vicious in a fight when I feel my back against the wall. I've since learned to keep that in check.
334: Nice one. I had a knife dispute once, but it was mostly symbolic, because I grabbed all the big knives and stashed them, and grabbed my leather jacket, but she insisted on coming at me with a paring knife. I kind of doubt she would have attacked me with anything bigger, but she had pressed her point quite effectively..
Knife fights are teh suxx0rs. I'm going to bed, glad those days are behind me.
338: Yeah this is true. I'm a mix of my parents' arguing styles, and my 286 is only half true. When I'm with a passive/nonconfrontational girl I tend to fall into my dad's role: supportive and considerate, if a bit passive/aggressive. When I've been involved with assertive/active girls it tends to be like a good day in Anbar province. I remember the latter more clearly than the former, but that doesn't mean I like it better.
Shorter and slightly more on topic me:
You don't have to be crazy to date me, but the two are suspiciously correlated.
Re Initial blog query:
Anyone who doesn't like asking questions (or being asked questions, i.e.:when did the byzantine empire fall again?) should not date me.
Also. Anyone who does not like independant women. I've dated way too many that initially agreed with my scorn of emotional dependency, and neediness, but who later accused me of being too independent. I think they may be right, owing to the fact that my greatest fear is being overly emotionally dependant on a lover.
finally, anyone who has a low sex drive. I've been told I'm much too demanding sexually. (gender norms reversed?)
339: This knife thing was the same, just an empty threat, but it scared me. She had beaten herself about the head with a Coke bottle before, and had first gotten me to let her stay by lying down on the floor, while the landlord was showing me around the place, and then flailing her head and arms against the door jamb when I tried to drag her out.
Depressing and sordid business. I ran into a Dutchman on the internet years later who had lived with her for some nine months, and from whom I learned that the infected uterine she had been treating when I knew her had since required a serious, no doubt very crude, surgery that left her infertile. Not that she should have had children, but what a waste of a life.
I've had to much to drink.
had since required a serious, no doubt very crude, surgery that left her infertile. Not that she should have had children, but what a waste of a life.
Are you serious? NOT having a child when you are obviously deranged is a waste of life Look, honey, having come from deranged parents, I sometimes wish that they hadn't had children. I'm not even being self depricating here, either. It's just the truth.
Yeah, this tends to be the sentimental hour of unfogged.
The waste of a life is that she has nothing really to look forward to, after having been sold to a mama-san by her grandmother at the age of 12.
Do try to read him as charitably as possible, Cyzter. He's lamenting the shit state the woman is in. She could get out of it I suppose, but it would be damn hard, and she's obviously almost terminally unhappy. Let the man bitch about it.
It seems I am a combination of Cala and PerfectlyGoddamDelightful, since the following are also true of me:
PGD: I'm kind of lazy and hedonistic. I like to lie around and do nothing, sometimes while drinking. Even if the house gets [somewhat] messy. I tend toward those easy chair husbands you see on TV.
Cala: Philosophers argue. I don't mean it nastily. It's like all the flipping of switches and straightening of shelves that OCD people do?
This isn't just philosophy specific: my dad is like that too and I think I 'caught' it from him.
I'm a mild hypochondriac so there's usually some minor niggle [sports injury, etc] bothering me. On the other hand, when genuinely sick or in real pain, I'm a stoic fucker.
This ties in to Cala's: I can go to pieces over the stupidest worries, but I will be the one calm in the middle of the car crash. If this confuses you, so will I.
I will be the guy moaning annoyingly about a tiny blister on his foot, but who would walk 2 miles with a broken limb to get help.
I'm really self-confident about the things I do well. So, if you're the sort of person who thinks that's unconscionable arrogance, then I'm not for you.
This self-confidence has several corrolaries that could annoy people.
I like a lot of stuff. I have a lot of interests, so, if you want to be the sole focus in my life, I'm not for you.
I like people, I like socialising. But, I'm kind of lazy about actually going out and making stuff happen, so, if you need to be part of a giddy whirl of social events, I'm not for you.
christ you read this thread and you see why horoscopes and cold-readings work.
Cold-reading is great. Piss easy to do as well.
My contribution to this thread writes itself. Sorry I missed it at the time, though.
All of you are completely unique individuals instantiating the universal rule that no one should ever date anyone. In case you wondered what I would say.
Sundry things:
Not only do I not sleep and cuddle (per AWB), I don't sleepy-cuddle either. Past a certain point of tiredness I can't bear physical contact with another person. (I'm told that if I'm say, patted or otherwise touched while actually sleeping I will also be very grouchy about it, although I usually won't wake up).
I speak loudly when excited or reaching a conclusion. Unacceptably loudly. I tend to be overly embarrassed and hurt when this is pointed out.
When I get either hungry or tired, I crash very very quickly. As in when I say "I want to eat" or "I want to go home and sleep" this needs to take effect within about fifteen minutes or there's the risk of a crying jag or tantrum. I've gotten slightly better at making this explicit as in "if we/I don't leave, within half an hour I will lose it", but it's still hard for people to believe that it's a firm deadline.
If I am already tired or hungry, I need someone else to take over and make decisions (per Becks) about whether we get the taxi or bus, whether we eat expensive or cheap. I will get really upset about even polite requests for my input.
I wake with the sun. In summer this means that I don't get enough sleep until it gets close to the solstice and I admit to myself that I need to start going to bed not long after the sun sets. I don't particularly like being a mostly-morning person, but that doesn't seem to change things.
I wake with the sun even if I was up until 4am. Therefore I don't often stay up after midnight. This isn't really something I'd choose for myself either.
I like to embark on lengthy analyses of the behaviour and relationships of various acquaintances. I much prefer it if you join in.
I'm not a picky eater, in fact I'm reasonably adventurous (although like a lot of people I've never really ever started liking some things I disliked as a child, notably lamb's brains, and liver) but I usually have a sort of a food fascination, usually with something junky but occasionally with a particular fruit, and will eat it often enough that just looking at it will make people around me a bit nuts.
I really like having joint hobbies or pursuits with partners and will tend to attempt to rope you into mine and become involved in yours. It's not universal and I think I'm still well within the bounds of letting partners live their own life, but if you mostly want a relationship behind closed doors and don't want company in at least some of your existing activities, I'm not your person.
I really like my family and we're really close (per Katherine). They will tend to assume that after a year or so you're ready to come on short holidays with them and want to talk on the phone if you happen to pick up when they call. I do not discourage this.
I will talk about our relationship with my mother. I won't talk about our sex life with anyone.
I don't drink very much alcohol. It's because I drink to quench thirst and most alcoholic drinks don't seem to do that. Once every two or three years I will decide one night, or sometimes as much as a week in advance, that I want to drink quite a lot. There doesn't seem to be a lot anyone can do to influence the timing of this. I'm very sympathetic about hangovers... about twice a year.
I sort of understand why you might present differently to your friends or colleagues than you do to me, and I'm sure I do too, but all the same I tend to regard it as deceitful.
I want root on the household servers.
It would probably be more interesting and revealing to let Fleur write this for me, but here's what I can come up with...
I am a know-it-all. I like to be right, and I like to show off my knowledge of trivia.
Concomitantly, I like to argue for the sake of arguing. I think of it as "debating", others tend to see it as being obnoxious.
I am emotionally distant and don't like to let my loved ones see my vulnerabilities.
When I get absorbed in a project (like cooking a big meal), I like to completely tune out the rest of the world.
If I don't feel like socializing in a given moment, I can be brusque and distant, even to friends.
I am preternaturally capable of maintaining my composure in the midst of a heated argument; the more the other person loses their temper, the more I can remain calm. This can come across as mocking or arrogant.
I am hyper-responsible 90% of the time, and I tend to be judgemental about people who do things I find irresponsible, but I can be shockingly irresponsible the other 10% of the time.
I like to drink, but I am a serious drunk as opposed to a fun or silly drunk--so much so that it's hard to recognize when I'm drunk.
Everyone in this thread is off my dating list.
Handy!
Everyone in this thread is off my dating list.
Careful readers will note that Blume has not posted on this thread.
Sometimes, I think I am the queen of all recognizing people. I don't read nearly the whole blog anymore, and do believe I have never interacted with him, yet it's totally transparent to me who PGD is. Just dropping in to lord that over everyone.
358 -- I have a theory on PGD, but am waiting for a little more evidence.* I'm pretty impressed, though, with how transparent we all turn out to be. Nothing written above is remotely surprising. I switched names thinking it would be very easy for anyone who cared to figure it out, and sure enough it was even easier than I thought it would be.
* Waiting for it to drop in my lap -- I'm not going to go looking.
Eye-rolling is a sign of contempt, which is a form of lack of respect. That's a terrible sign for the health of a long-term relationship. But not all relationships are long-term.
See URL for Malcolm Gladwell's summary of an expert psychologist's view on this which you've already read anyway.
I hate to break it to you, but Gladwell is often very full of shit indeed.
People who warn others that if they like or dislike x, y, or z they shouldn't date them, shouldn't date me.
I am rather messy and love to do things spur of the moment. Vacations should not be planned other than the flight and the first two nights lodging.
Those things drive my gf crazy, but she has adjusted. (I've tried to be less messy bc she is fabulous and worth it.)
Also, I get up early. If you like to sleep late, you and I are probably not a great mix bc I will unintentionally wake you up when I get up at 515am during the week or 630 am on weekends.
If you are easily embarassed or not patient, you should not be part of my life. My 15 1/2 yr old daughter often screams in public, sticks her hands down her pants, or tries to take her clothes off in public. If you cannot handle this, my family will drive you nuts.
Affection. If you cannot deal with affection, we are not a great mix. In my family, when we meet you, we hug and kiss. I understand that this can be annoying, but it is deeply ingrained in me and the rest of my family.
So, please warn me before DC Unfogged if you do not want me to hug you.
Further to 359: It's not a theory. I'm all the way in agreement with 358. (This is not based on any further reading, but rather on thinking while washing hair.)
Most of the things I can think of in respnose to this question* are, on reflection, qualities of my wife. I don't know whether this says something very bad about my marriage or if I've just completely forgotten how very much more annoying everyone else in the world can be.
*Well, not the question in the post, exactly, but the question in the post as interpreted by most of the respnoses in this thread.
I'll go ahead and say it. It is clear that PGD is that Carp a-hole.
i shouldn't go to that DC meetup thing
seems i won't like any of these people anyway
ok, decided
I've got the Cala/Slol/ttaM arguing thing, which I'm sure stuns everyone, and while I'm perfectly happy to walk away from an argument agreeing to disagree, I'll generally refuse to back down unless genuinely convinced. (Like, given the option between admitting the other person's right, if I don't really think so, and having a limb removed? I'd be thinking about it hard.) Someone who needs disagreement papered over will have problems with me. I'm not physically affectionate with friends, but family and anyone I'm involved with I'm draped all over like a cheap suit -- that's never been a problem, but I could see it as being one.
Other than that, reasons not to be involved with me aren't so much about things that are important to me as lacks or flaws in my personality. I'm lazy and slovenly, both about personal grooming and housekeeping. I'm kind of intolerant about people I perceive as fussy or wimpy about minor personal discomfort, health, or food issues -- like, this might be a reason among many that I shouldn't date Ogged, although interpersonal details of how he manages all the food/health stuff would determine whether it didn't bother me or would set off my intolerance. (For example, traveling with a smoker friend once had me wanting to slaughter her because once an hour or so we had to stop whatever we were doing so she could smoke a cigarette. Apparently if you're from the South it isn't ladylike to walk while you smoke.)
I'm sort of insanely avoidant about minor bureaucratic tasks, which can turn into real problems, and being pressed about it makes it even more difficult to do whatever it is. (I am my father. This is one of the things my parents broke up over -- Mom thought it was about hostility directed at making her life more difficult, rather than random insanity.)
And then there's the total insensitivity about the meaning of music thing, which has been a real problem in prior relationships. Someone gives you some music chosen as a heartfelt expression of their feelings, and you don't get around to listening to it, they inexplicably get hurt. (Yes, I am an inexcusable shithead, who no one should date.)
359: I'm actually surprised (again, after no-name day) by how untransparent writing styles are. I had you spotted in a day or two, but on vocational details ("Huh, he's a senior lawyer talking like he's familiar with everyone... oh.") rather than your writing. Once I knew who it was, it started 'sounding' like you again, but what I perceive as 'voice' is much more like 'everything I think I know about the writer from past interactions' than anything about the writing.
People should not date me if they find the following traits to be dealbreakers:
1. Being very opinionated and kind of judgemental
2. You solve your own problems unless you specifically enlist my help. (Corollary: don't solve my problems unless I ask you to help. But that should be on a different list.)
3. What I'm wearing is very important to me. How the inside of my house and my office are decorated is very important to me. And I'm super particular.
4. I love my cats vewy, vewy much. Izzoo cute, yesshoo is, etc.
5. I think I'm hilarious, etc, which can grate on others. (Those in some severely ramrod parallel universe, but whatev.)
6. etc, etc.
367: "Good thing we got that one married off, honey."
370: Yeah, no one was expecting it much. The plan was multiple cats.
I'm kind of intolerant about people I perceive as fussy or wimpy about minor personal discomfort, health, or food issues
OH HELL YES. I want this on my list too.
"senior lawyer"????
Wow, Napi, Lizardbreath just called you OLD!!!!!!!
My niece has about 20 animals: a dog, cats, reptiles, birds, fish, rodents. Oddly, she keeps running boyfriends through, but they don't seem to stick.
The disagreement part is often prevalent in lawyers. We are always arguing and people are always telling us we are wrong. So typically, it doesnt bother us.
But, our loved ones are not as used to being told that they are wrong combined with a list of reasons why we are correct. No big deal to us. Normal interaction. They feel evicerated.
You're just mad at that guy cuz he didn't want you flirting with his sister.
I recently began to hallucinate that several of my imaginary internet friends are real people I have met.
369.3: Cats are extremely tolerant.
Oh, and I'm kind of vicious in what I think is friendly kidding around. I'm generally pretty kind and polite to people I'm not close with, but if I really like you and start feeling comfortable, the gloves come off. I don't mean to be mean, but the style of familial banter I was raised with is cutting. This has led to the same conversation with a number of new friends where I relaxed and started kidding around with them before they realized what they were in for -- about six months into the friendship I get an "You know, for awhile there I thought you were really mean. I'm still kind of scared of you."
And as a result of this, I'm nervous about relaxing around new people, which enhances my natural prickly standoffishness.
But, our loved ones are not as used to being told that they are wrong combined with a list of reasons why we are correct. No big deal to us. Normal interaction. They feel evicerated.
But it's OK because even as they lie on the floor, stunned by the list of reasons they have been hit with, they can say "You may have won this time, Mr Lawyerpants, but 'eviscerated' is spelled with an 's'."
I am an adult woman. I dont need my brother patronizing me to "protect me." He probably doesnt let me go outside at night without a man protecting me.
Apparently, I am Lizardbreath with a more feminine haircut.
I recently began to hallucinate that several of my imaginary internet friends are real people I have met.
What makes you think you're hallucinating?
Cue the ominous music...
I'm kind of intolerant about people I perceive as fussy or wimpy about minor personal discomfort, health, or food issues
I'm sort of insanely avoidant about minor bureaucratic tasks, which can turn into real problems, and being pressed about it makes it even more difficult to do whatever it is.
Once again, I can't avoid the conclusion that LB and I share some common recent ancestry.
The latter point falls under the 10% shocking irresponsibility rubric.
Also: I drive like I'm 80 years old. Sometimes people get mad.
And by 80 years old I mean "real slow and totally out to lunch" not "super cautious".
OK, here's a piece of evidence from some years ago. A woman and I are sitting eating lunch in a restaurant near Big Ivy, home of a Great Law School and a Great Philosophy Department. The woman is a philosopher. A group of people at the other table are having an loud argument about some philosophical issue. They are providing reasons, they are eviscerating each other, etc. After a little bit of this, my lunch date, who can hear but not see this group, becomes incapable of enjoying her meal, so appalled is she at the quality of the discussion. She becomes increasingly irritated and we leave earlier than we might have. On the street outside she finally vents. "Those people were so fucking annoying! And stupid! Were they high-school students?" There is a pause. I say, "Uh, actually they were law school students."
And thus, lawyers vs philosophers: no contest.
Heebie, do you wear a hat? Old men with hats are supposed to be the worst drivers of all.
I am KR in 359 and LB in 382, apparently. When we lived in Ohio, there was a running joke that there were only 6 distinct faces in the place. Here, there are apparently only 3 distinct personalities, with superficial embellishments.
-I can handle challenging tasks, but not simple ones. E.g., preparing shivbunny's immigration process from visa to (recently approved!) greencard? No problem! Just read a lot of legal code and instructions! Call the phone company and cancel service? Can't manage to do it without getting very frustrated.
Apparently if you're from the South it isn't ladylike to walk while you smoke.
I heard this for the first time 5 or 6 years ago when I had a coworker whose mother had drilled it into her and consequently she couldn't walk and smoke without feeling completely self-conscious (and so, didn't). I find it pretty baffling myself, but maybe I just grew up around a bunch of unladylike vulgarians or something.
Heebie, do you wear a hat? Old men with hats are supposed to be the worst drivers of all.
There's two kinds of fairies and two kinds of cherries and two kinds of babies to hold.
I drive like I'm 80 years old.
This would drive me completely insane.
I'm kind of intolerant about people I perceive as fussy or wimpy about minor personal discomfort, health, or food issues
Yeah, I have that one. Which is a bit hypocritical since I myself can be a bit wimpy about health issues -- that said, I'd never reveal it to someone I wasn't really close to [by which I mean, my wife and a couple of members of my close family].
So, those people who bitch and whine about food and not feeling well and who generally spoil everyone else's life when you're trying to do something social together: I still feel justified in despising them.
Ditto on the avoidance of minor bureaucratic tasks. However, when I finally get round to them, I rattle through them in super-quick time. Most people I've worked with think I'm super efficient. I'm not. I'm just really good at doing everything in a mad panic in about 10% of the time it's supposed to take. This feeds into Cala's 393. Really difficult or difficult and interesting tasks, I like handling.
Like, given the option between admitting the other person's right, if I don't really think so, and having a limb removed? I'd be thinking about it hard.
Heh. Me too.
This would drive me completely insane.
I CAN CHANGE! I swear! Please, baby, give me one more chance.
What's been challenging to me in this exercise is coming up with character traits that are always there and continuous through my life. Everything I come up with has been true sometimes and in some situations and not in others.
To the extent character is built up from collections of habits and quirks, it's as if I've been several different people. Yet I think of myself as always very much the same person, and so does everybody else, even when my habits and peccadilloes have changed, sometimes beyond recognition.
I think I must be very "situational," so that the parts of me that come out, good and bad, can be radically shuffled. A corollary to this is that I find it easiest to remember and relate to periods in my past where my mood/situation resembles the current one; just now that's the period from the end of college through grad school. Other periods are as it were "grayed-out."
Cats are not judgmental about bad drivers either. They're just amazingly accepting, and they love you if you feed them and are warm.
401: I know! But it's true, cats are great.
this is so hilarious
http://www.basicinstructions.net/2007/11/how-to-talk-to-sick-person.html
the style of familial banter I was raised with is cutting.
This is true of my family too. I hadn't realized how far I'd drifted from that style until my sister came to visit me, and by the third time she'd spoken after getting off the plane I was really irritated. I asked to to lay off the sarcasm and she said "but what will we talk about?" Then I remembered. It's pretty easy to snap back into it.
I drive like I'm 80 years old. Sometimes people get mad.
This is not really true of me, but Fleur used to think it was, and it drove her crazy. When we first started dating, I came to visit her and rented a small, absurdly underpowered car (Dodge Neon). It turns out that she was living several thousand feet up a mountain, and to drive up there in that car with any weight in the vehicle meant that you would never top 45mph.
She kept urging me to speed up, and I kept insisting that the car wouldn't go any faster, and she didn't believe me. At one point, she looked behind us and said, "You're about to get passed by a minivan". Sure enough, a beat up minivan was pulling around us. As it went past, she looked over at the minivan and gasped "And it's full of nuns!" Sure enough, it was. We both laughed our asses off. This was an early bonding experience.
For her part, I have video evidence of Fleur driving 200+kph on the Autobahn, with two kids in the back.
I am relieved that I missed most of the action on this thread, but I might as well weigh in with respect to the original query:
Women who aren't sympathetic to the ascetic should not date me.
Women who enjoy going out and drinking and attending shows of one kind or another will find me unpleasant.
Women who disapprove of extreme and expensive sports shouldn't date me.
Women who are married should leave me alone, thanks.
Women who want me to pretend to be interested in how independent they are should keep back at least 200 feet.
Women who like people who are funloving and hip shouldn't date me.
Women who demand anything in the case of politics but the rankest cynicism will find me disappointing.
Women who wear perfume with too much vanilla shouldn't date me.
Cats are not judgmental about bad drivers either.
Well, they shouldn't be, because that would be hypocritical, wouldn't it?
377: I've wondered how the causation goes. You find this trait in scientists too. If you can't get behind a position and push, you'll be completely flattened when you are junior enough it might do you in. The methodology isn't fixed (i.e. florid faced rapid arm-waving won't neccessarily work better than going away quietly, then coming back a bit later with `Look, I've proved you are wrong').
So like with lawyers, I've wondered if certain careers just appeal to people who like to argue & pick things apart.
This morning over breakfast I came up with a whole additional list of bad things about me, but I'll spare you the details.
Yeah, this is a curiously seductive topic. I could natter on about reasons why no sane person would consent to occupy the same room with me for days.
408: I'm not sure it's always the evisceration, etc., that's irritating. There are a set of people who use argument to make sense of what they think they think. (I'd bet most people here fall into that group.) Often that means strong arguments in favor of positions you don't hold. When you then turn around and take the exact opposite position three days later, it can feel like bad faith to someone you're involved with.
Maybe this matches up with figuring out that your significant other can't and won't meet all or most of your needs.
I could natter on about reasons why no sane person would consent to occupy the same room with me for days
Another one!
This morning over breakfast I came up with a whole additional list of bad things about me, but I'll spare you the details.
Let me guess:
1. compulsive list writing
2. annoying perfectionism; unwillingness to do a job once and let it be
3. reluctance to share personal insights with friends
4. habitual overeating because of eating while distracted
We're all joking, but at one point I really did sit down and tot up the things about someone else that would be dealbreakers for me, and then the things about me that might be dealbreakers for someone else, and I realized that only a saint could stand to be with me. But I don't like saints.
411: Yes, that's a good point. Some of us use `arguing' as a way to think. Or to generate new thoughts we can take back to a cave somewhere and gnaw on.
I definitely have the thing where I won't back down on something I believe is correct. On the other hand, it's possible to change my mind about basically anything (I may just take a lot of convincing)
only a saint could stand to be with me. But I don't like saints
Great, great line.
I could natter on about reasons why no sane person would consent to occupy the same room with me for days.
Gee, LB, that's setting bar pretty high. I mean, I think I wouldn't mind occuping the same room as you, but doing so for days on end would probably be too much for any of us.
414: Nah, I wasn't joking about the cats either. I turned out to be wrong, but I had very similar thoughts.
412: Your people don't come from Clare, do they? Any MacNamaras or Egans?
Hmm, I'm not getting much "this is me" to people here. I am apparently a special annoying snowflake.
Your people don't come from Clare, do they? Any MacNamaras or Egans?
Is Unfogged being revealed as the West Virginia* of the Internets?
*3 million people, 25 surnames.
419: I checked back and I'm feeling your 22. The more I care about you, and the more important an issue is, the more I'm frustrated and confused that you can't see I'm right about it. The James Carville-Mary Matalin type of relationship? While I could see falling in love across a political barrier, under those circumstances I'd be in constant, heated arguments that I wouldn't be able to let go of.
420: Nah, Gonerill just sounded like a cousin there for a bit.
354: I will talk about our relationship with my mother. I won't talk about our sex life with anyone.
Wow. Had to read this one a couple of times.
I checked back and I'm feeling your 22.
Actually, I'm just happy to see you.
The more I care about you, and the more important an issue is, the more I'm frustrated and confused that you can't see I'm right about it
A major issue, such as the war, I'm with you. But people reach compatible conclusions by separate paths.
Is Unfogged being revealed as the West Virginia* of the Internets? *3 million people, 25 surnames.
I'm not sure what claim you are making here. West Virginia has never had anywhere close to 3 million inhabitants. The highest decennial census total was just over 2 million, in 1950.
I checked back and I'm feeling your 22.
Speaking for myself, mine's more a thirty-aught-six.
oh, except this:
"Like everything is part of a larger narrative of injustice with me".
This is totally me. But my close relationships AREN'T part of a narrative of injustice (& I only yell at people I'm really, really close to--immediate relatives & husband. Not friends, stepparents, in-laws, coworkers, or anyone for whom I feel I ought to be on good behavior). We have certain recurring arguments but my fighting kung-fu includes the ability to be the first one to apologize & mean it. I can go very quickly & fully from fighting back to the default "I love you, you're so awesome, I love you" mode without holding grudges. It's more that you have to be willing to listen to my ongoing narrative about the injustices inflicted by the world at large, in detail & at great length, repeatedly.
377: No big deal to us. Normal interaction. They feel evicerated.
This hits home. My big-law brother has started treating our mother like she's a very annoying client just about at the point of being more trouble than she's worth. Or at least, that's what it sounds like. It's not at all a normal interaction for her.
I started my list and gave up. Any behavioral or emotional characteristic of mine can switch to its opposite almost instantly.
Any behavioral or emotional characteristic of mine can switch to its opposite almost instantly
I wouldn't say instantly, but in a long life you often find yourself with opposing characteristics, and realize they're both you.
my fighting kung-fu includes the ability to be the first one to apologize & mean it. I can go very quickly & fully from fighting back to the default "I love you, you're so awesome, I love you" mode without holding grudges.
I do this too. I don't do the 'injustice' thing, though.
421: yeah, the Carville-Matalin relationship really weirds me out. Not only could I not do it (I could really like someone across a political divide but if it got serious I'd try to change them to the point where I'd just be too annoying & would get hostile if it didn't work.), but it makes me suspicious: "is this all a game to you, Carville?"
Late, but if I cheat on you and you roll your eyes at me, I'm just going to start laughing.
"is this all a game to you, Carville?"
Only way I've been able to make sense of it.
there's the total insensitivity about the meaning of music thing
This is totally me, along with many other things like religious beliefs.
I'm kind of intolerant about people I perceive as fussy or wimpy about minor personal discomfort, health, or food issues
is also me, and my intolerance usually includes some speculation about the benefits of a beating.
but it makes me suspicious: "is this all a game to you, Carville?"
Totally. Except I don't really have the decency to admit I can't know; I just assume it as fact.
I detest cars. The car has no function outside of the road trip. I will not take a job that requires me to drive, and I will not rent an unwalkable apartment.
This is pretty much me as well.
It's one of my quirks that I most frequently feel defensive about. Not because I think it's bad, but because it borders on non-functional.
I can be very primitive.
I live my life through my five senses. This can be distracting.
I am very touchy-feely.
I roll my eyes.
Like Pineapple (we must come from the same field), I suffer terribly from "Food Coma."
God help me and everyone around me when I am hungry.
I am very sensitive and sometimes cry when criticized by Knecht no matter how legitimate the criticism.
I have an over active fight or flight response.
It is impossible for me to argue about something that I care deeply about in an articulate manner. I am insecure about my vocabulary. I get angry and storm off, mentally castrated.
I can't spell. At ell.
I become claustrophobic in Home Depot and other super stores. I have to leave the building very quickly. This results in my shopping in smaller, cuter, boutique stores.
I have dog-like loyalty to those I love. Unfortunately, my expectations are that it be returned in kind, and will feel hurt if I sense otherwise.
I love to drive. For me it is a game of skill and calculation. If you don't like to go fast, don't get in the car with me.
I cannot walk away from a good bottle of wine.
"is this all a game to you, Carville?"
Yeah, kind of. "Those can't be your real reasons for believing what you say you believe, because I've refuted those, and yet you still claim to be unconvinced! You're hiding something!" I realize this is insane, but nonetheless feel it sometimes.
I've always wanted to have Carville's mouth tested for second-hand Cheney semen.
You're a foul, foul man, Emerson.
As I was reading this, it seemed at first like I could date everyone around here relatively easily. I mean, I saw few or no deal-breakers, and people mentioned few or no complaints about themselves that I shared. But that made me think of something about me that could be a deal-breaker: I can do almost anything, but I usually don't.
I'm not a picky eater, I can get by fine with little sleep and unpredictable schedules, I'm professionally curious about lots of different topics and I have a good memory for a wide variety of trivia, I get along great with animals, I can at the very least get by in pretty much any social group I've encountered and I've tried half a dozen different sports. But left to my own devices, my life winds up being pretty boring. I rarely seek out variety in what I eat, I keep a very regular schedule most of the time, my trivia collection is a mile wide but an inch deep, and I don't actually own any pets or practice any sports these days.
So the point is, don't date me if you're a really passionate person who's always doing something or needs to share their chosen interest with someone; you'll get bored and make me feel inadequate and insecure. On the other hand, don't date me if you've found a routine and you're happy with it and you don't like change, because you won't like most of my friends, you'll share few or none of my interests, and when I do try something new or do something with a different group of people you'll be left out.
On reflection, maybe that could be summarized as "only date me if you're independent but lazy."
223: Agreed. Wow.
359: I'm pretty impressed, though, with how transparent we all turn out to be. Nothing written above is remotely surprising.
Indeed. Well, I don't know about everyone here, but I'm amused how I've been able to recognize almost every AWB comment without seeing the name, even if it's not for an obvious clue like a tic or a previously-mentioned bit of personal history. Maybe it's just a young teacher's writing style.
OK, that's another reason not to date me, if you can't handle someone who talks pretentiously. I'm not actually pretentious -- at least, I don't think so, see the above stuff about my knowledge being a mile wide but an inch deep -- but I actually do say stuff like "indeed" sometimes.
If you get annoyed at me watching football and basketball, you're going to be annoyed a lot.
Do we all just assume it's only a game to Matalin?
loyalty to those I love... expectations
My mom is like this. It clouds her judgement, as she forms a strong mental image of what people are really like, and is slow to perceive actions inconsistent with the image. I have her stubbornness, but am unfortunately never wrong about anything.
444: I assumed it's only a game to both of them.
440: Unspeakably vile and sheer genius
446: By now I do. In the '90s I was bemused.
446: A very profitable game, with lots of "We're in with the in crowd" social reinforcement.
I'm sort of insanely avoidant about minor bureaucratic tasks, which can turn into real problems
Wow, I'm also so terrible about this. Thankfully, it's the sort of thing that will only annoy significant others once you're living together or otherwise relying on each other for bill paying, various renewals, etc.
At the moment, I just annoy myself because I let bills pile up that I could easily pay, just because I'm too lazy to open them individually and write the checks as they come in. My passport renewal is still sitting around unfinished a couple months later, and if I wait much longer, my passport will be too long expired and I'll have to track down exhaustive amounts of paperwork like my grandparents' marriage certificate and my dad's birth certificate that supports my standing as one of Her Majesty's citizens. *sigh*
A high-paying game. They're cynical mercenaries. I think that Matalin does a better job for her people than Carville does for his, partly because all of her people are completely cynical themselves, whereas not all of Carville's are.
Come to think it, Matalin cheats the little government Republicans and the conservative Christians about as badly as Carville cheats the liberal Democrats. It's just that that doesn't bother me much.
i bite my nails. some people are truly disturbed by this. i'm beyond anal about punctuality, in that i almost always have to show up 5-10 minutes early to things, and if we're going to a movie or concert or something, i'll insist we leave probably a good 20 minutes before we need to, then apologize profusely when we get there way too early. i'm obsessed with blogs and don't get people who don't get that. i put a lot of myself online, so much so that i could see it freaking some people out. i can be very harsh on other people and hold them to difficult standards. i'm a loner a lot of the time. i really like shoes and purses. my laugh has often been described as evil-sounding.
this is a fun thread. i hope i have time to read all the responses today.
I'm sort of insanely avoidant about minor bureaucratic tasks, which can turn into real problems.
Honey, I seem to have forgotten to pay the taxes for the last twenty years, and we may have to move.
432: "is this all a game to you, Carville?"
The antecedent of "this" is unclear. Do you mean the marriage, or his stated political beliefs?
438: I become claustrophobic in Home Depot and other super stores. I have to leave the building very quickly. This results in my shopping in smaller, cuter, boutique stores.
Are you sure you don't mean "agoraphobic?"
Off-topic, and absolutely true:
I always heard that a good way to get frozen things thawed quickly was to tuck them under one's genitals. So I decided to do that, because I want to thaw this as quickly as possible and putting it in the oven would destroy it.
It seems to be working, but it's a very odd sensation, and it's given me a headache.
And sad sad news from the Republican debates last night, courtesy of The Economist:
"But the first half-hour of the debate, the longest dedicated to any single issue, focused on immigration. The subject is one of the most potent topics for Republicans. CNN asked a panel of undecided voters to turn up a dial when they heard things that pleased them: the broadcaster noted spikes of approval when the candidates talked tough on borders."
I'm sort of insanely avoidant about minor bureaucratic tasks, which can turn into real problems.
On the upside, think of all the money you save on things like never transfering title on cars you've bought.
It would warm up even faster if you had sex with it, Millard.
On the cynicism thing I said in the other thread--it's not that I only like starry-eyed do-gooder types. First of all, the people I like best of all are those who despite their cynical, funny exterior actually care deeply. Second: think of a secular type's attitude towards strong religious belief. It's possible to respect forms of religious faith, take them seriously, think they can real do good as well as harm, & just not believe any of it yourself. It's also possible to think it's a complete waste of time: "how can a smart person like you believe that stupid crap?" If your attitude towards do-goody political stuff is: "this is your thing, not mine, & it's probably doomed, but good for you," that might be okay. If it's: "why are you so worked up about this? It doesn't matter. Stop wasting your time. And lighten up!" then stay far away.
Fillmore, power output of post-1999 microwaves can be adjusted. Set power output to 20-30% of normal and thaw in three minute increments. Those near and dear to you will then be able to stop throwing up in their mouths a little. Failing that, consider warm running water, heat transfer properties similar to those of blood.
432 is unclear--it was refering to the stated political beliefs. And it's what *I* think of Carville, not what Matalin does. However, I am glad I was unclear because 439 is great.
Yes, and the running water would be continuously warm, rather than getting colder and colder. Who told me this was a good idea?
I've always wanted to have Carville's mouth tested for second-hand Cheney semen.
Why just second-hand?
Warm running water is my preferred thawing tactic as well.
One of my big compulsions: When I'm reading things (interesting facts, well-written passages, humor, etc.), I like to turn to an SO or friend and read/rephrase it to them. I find this extremely enjoyable, and it's a good spur to conversation. (There is a bit of knowitallitude in there.) I could see it getting on the nerves of a lot of people, though maybe not people here so much.
Most of my male relatives do this regularly to their wives/children/relatives, and are uniformly blessed to have found partners who put up with it.
I always heard that a good way to get frozen things thawed quickly was to tuck them under one's genitals.
Fleur and I were recently treated to a story (over Thanksgiving dinner, no less) about an artificial insemination procedure. Apparently the recipient had to go pick up the stuff at the sperm bank on the appropriate day, then bring it to the doctor's office for the procedure. She was instructed to tuck the vial under her breasts to keep the sperm warm during the intervening period. Unfortunately, she also had to teach a class during that period. Must have been some awkward feeling.
possible to respect forms of religious faith
I would like very much to be able to have faith, in anything, including human decency. I'm grateful that there are people who do. Knowitallitude, and trust of reason (one's own, of course, potentially extended to those working from similar methodological premises) are real obstacles to being likeable.
468 --- In the spirit of unfogged, I hope one of you jumped all over the low-hanging turkey baster jokes.
I have an over active fight or flight response.
This reminds me of of one my more annoying traits. When I'm in pain (physicially or emotionally) I have a strong impulse to go somewhere else and be alone and check the damage.
I've been like that since I was a child. I have distinct memories of doing things like falling out of a tree and immediately going and hiding in a corner of the yard so I could make sure I was okay.
Unfortunately, there's a point in arguments when this kicks in. Up until that point I can argue without, usually, getting mad, but at some point if it's too personal or too intense I have a strong reaction of "I need to physically leave this situation right now."
Huh. Lw, also on the list of people unlikely to date my kind.
438:
I have an over active fight or flight response.
This sounds familiar. I've learned to do a lot of gritting my teeth to try to maintain reasoned, well-paced discourse when angry (as opposed to the impulse to offer a from-the-gut "Fuck you" and either fight or walk away). I've gotten better at this, thankfully, since I actually hate fighting and being angry.
On the other hand, those who want/need to avoid or silence discussion should stay away. Inevitably I'll insist on dragging things into the open, even if difficult.
455 no, it is not the fear of the market place itself, but the narrow isles packed 50 feet high with large boxes that distresses me. I feel the same way on airplanes.
In the spirit of unfogged, I hope one of you jumped all over the low-hanging turkey baster jokes.
Inasmuch as it was the grandmother of the to-be-born baby telling the story, I didn't dare. But I'm sure we were all thinking it.
The grandmother belongs to that distinctive, earnest NPR-listening liberal demographic that can talk about artificial insemination at the dinner table with near strangers without a trace of self-consciousness, and yet would be scandalized and/or offended by a turkey baster joke. I'm quite fond of her, though.
I like know-it-alls OK, good for funny talk. I'm here after all, and am one myself. But it's not an endearing personality trait, as it doesn't go away when the laptop closes.
One part of why knowitalls or people who trust their own reasoning are pains-in-the-ass is that people are an integrated package, and these streaks of personality can play the same way sanctimoniousness does morally, even if they are not so intended. Only saints get to be sanctimonious. Being the one who always knows better, or points out "well, only in some cases, defined at tedious length" can inspire a response of "If you're all that, what about prominent weakness (takes at least a value of procrastination for every single person here)?"
wait, you're saying procrastination is bad? crazy talk.
people who trust their own reasoning are pains-in-the-ass
Yeah. No offense, we don't have to be involved with each other and so on, but this identifies a major incompatibility, and one that I have with lots of people. The phrasing of it I'm more familiar with is "You think you're right about everything," which always leaves me thinking "Well, sure. So do you. If you don't think you're right about something, you don't think it at all." But I haven't figured out how to say that one politely.
re: 476
can inspire a response of "If you're all that, what about prominent weakness (takes at least a value of procrastination for every single person here)?"
Which is a response roughly on the same level as, 'well, nuh-uh, you smell'.
479: We weren't going to say anything, ttaM, but now that you mention it...
pains-in-the-ass ... Yeah. No offense,
I was talking about myself. I get exactly the response you mention with some frequency. I do not see this as a personal virtue, but a weakness. Being right is rarely useful interpersonally in all but the most practical matters, IME.
One procrastinates the things other people want. They see this, and also see that you're alphabetizing something with the computer again, or dickering about a fucking clause that's not even material to the contract for two hours, and with that obnoxious schmuck who wears shiny socks yet. Only irrational love or fear off solitude would make anyone put up with that.
This really is great, but I need to alphabetize something properly.
After considering the question, I've concluded that I would never, ever want to date me, and nor would anyone else:
1. I am not a tidy person, but your untidiness will enrage me. Pick up after yourself, and don't complain about my mess. In fact, pick up my mess.
2. You must agree with me. About every fucking thing. The more I love you, the longer we've been together, the more important this is. If your ballot differs from mine in any respect, I will probably break up with you. If you do not hate that girl at the party last night with the high laugh and the stupid hat as much as I hated her, I will probably kill you.
3. You must be a willing and eager participant in stupid Fun Activities that will use up your entire weekends and evenings.
4. You must tolerate and even enjoy my need for constant physical touch, unless you are not a person I want to constantly touch, in which case I'll probably break up with you. If you touch me when I don't want to be touched, prepare for a fight.
Incredibly, I am not single.
jms sounds like someone I've gone out with.
if you don't think you're right about something, you don't think it at all.
Not true. But I'm not going to argue with you. Nyah.
478 is right too.
'If you can't argue me round to your point of view, you're fucking wrong, and I don't see why I ought to respect your point of view. It's wrong, after all.'
The phrasing of it I'm more familiar with is "You think you're right about everything," which always leaves me thinking "Well, sure. So do you. If you don't think you're right about something, you don't think it at all." But I haven't figured out how to say that one politely.
There is a large category of things that I believe, that I wouldn't act on without double checking them.
I remember taking one of those online personality tests, and the part of the description of INTJ that really resonated with me was making a strong distinction between situations in which I have expert knowledge (or knowledge that I strongly trust) and ones in which I have a prejudice, but it is more or less unsupported.
This is the difference between, "oh, you should be able to do X, why don't you try it?" and "You can do X, here is how, and here are the cases that will get you in trouble."
something that has been a dealbreaker for others in the past:
when I am dating & sleeping with someone, I usually fall asleep at least partially *on top* of them. A head pillowed on their chest, or at least a leg or arm thrown over them. But I am not that big, and I am just as happy if their arm or leg is thrown over me instead. I can be a little flexible about this and roll away after a while if the person is really not getting enough sleep, but in the long run I do want to sleep entwined, & will find people too emotionally cold if they can't do that.
Sleeping nose to nose is also nice, as compromises go.
There is a large category of things that I believe, that I wouldn't act on without double checking them.
Oh sure. I still think I'm right on those, I just have them filed under "Ready to change my mind instantly if I actually learn something useful about the situation."
I understand those four-letter tests are nonsense, but they are seductive, aren't they. INTP here.
There is a large category of things that I believe, that I wouldn't act on without double checking them.
I presume we're all like that.
However, generally the only times someone pulls out the 'you think you're right about everything' line is precisely when you are discussing something you do have a firm opinion about.
Wow...488 is a bigger dealbreaker than even the people who enjoy arguing and fighting with their loved ones. I couldn't be with someone for even one day if she insisted on preventing me from sleeping.
INFP in high school. Haven't taken one lately.
You must tolerate and even enjoy my need for constant physical touch, unless you are not a person I want to constantly touch, in which case I'll probably break up with you.
This, yeah.
Along with having similar fighting styles, a roughly equivalent sex-and-touching style is one of the central requirements for long-term stability, I'd say. I didn't even realize this until I found myself with someone who shrugged off my affectionate arm around his waist as we were seeing off friends who'd come for dinner. Wow, I thought even then, this is probably not going to work.
482: Have you met AWB? You two ought to get married, unless you are already.
Oh sure. I still think I'm right on those.
Absolutely. The less certainty I have about something, the easier it is to convince me otherwise, but you have convince me with a real argument. Hell, I might convince myself otherwise if we're talking about it. But if you say `I don't think so', I'm going to ask why. If you can't articulate why, I'll blow your position off --- even if my `why' is pretty weak.
I find people who hold onto recieved knowledge unquestioningly maddening.
'If you can't argue me round to your point of view, you're fucking wrong, and I don't see why I ought to respect your point of view. It's wrong, after all.'
This seems so wrong to me. Maybe it's an analytic/continental divide, or a progressive/conservative one, or maybe I'm really right and you're really wrong, but what you're saying could be rephrased as "More articulate and/or more aggressive people are always right," which seems self-evidently incorrect.
However, generally the only times someone pulls out the 'you think you're right about everything' line is precisely when you are discussing something you do have a firm opinion about.
Oddly, I get the opposite.
I sometimes have the expeience of being asked for an opionion, answering "I believe X, but I have no data to substantiate that," and then, when they press me to take a firmer position than that, saying, essentially, "I have nothing more to say. We could look this up, but asking me more questionions is not going to get me to take a postion that I feel committed to defending."
However, generally the only times someone pulls out the 'you think you're right about everything' line is precisely when you are discussing something you do have a firm opinion about.
That's maddening too.
Re: 489, 492, etc.
Is there anyone in the unfogged community who has tested EXXX on a Meyers-Briggs?
Admittedly, the dynamic described in 497 generally occurs with one specific person.
someone who shrugged off my affectionate arm around his waist as we were seeing off friends who'd come for dinner
Some people who don't like affectionate touching in front of other people can be affectionately touch-y in private.
496: There are things that are fundamentally a matter of opinion, and if you can convince me your opinion is internally consistent, etc. (all opinions are not equal), I'm perfectly happy to accept you and I have different views on something and it's ok. Otherwise, you're just wrong.
501: And what's their problem with affectionate touching around other people, anyway? Are they ashamed to be seen touching me? Why?
Are they ashamed to be seen touching me? Why?
Racists.
Oh sure. I still think I'm right on those, I just have them filed under "Ready to change my mind instantly if I actually learn something useful about the situation."
Really?
I am the person who will find out something new, realize that a previously held belief was incorrect, and then feel obligated to contact people to whom I expressed the previous belief and correct it, so that I would not be the one responsible for them believing something that was incorrect.
So I don't like to tell people that I have a definite belief about something unless I actually do.
I also overuse qualifiers.
what you're saying could be rephrased as "More articulate and/or more aggressive people are always right," which seems self-evidently incorrect.
This is my sense of the problem, too.* Often enough, I think the other side of if you don't think you're right about something, you don't think it at all is "it's easy to think you're right if you haven't spent much time thinking about it," and, for issues people care a lot about, it strikes them as disrespectful. This might be related to "learn through argument."
* I think it's broader than that: often, there isn't a way to settle an issue, so people end up using unacknowledged measures to determine "rightness" like race, gender, height, general educational level, etc. It's hard to prove that, though.
tested EXXX
I didn't know M-B had an `xxx' catergory, but given taht -- one of the presidents, presumeably (too lazy to google)
499: Maybe Sifu, heebie? But people socializing online are obviously going to be mostly introverts.
496: You know, I sympathize with what ttaM said, but I agree that it's not right -- there were, for example, some clever, articulate people who thought the Iraq war was a good idea, and some nitwits who thought it was a bad one. Just because in an argument the nitwit would have lost, doesn't make them wrong. But from within any given argument, it makes sense, if you rephrase it as "I've given my reasons for thinking what I think. Unless you've got better, more convincing reasons for your position, you're not going to change my mind, and I'm going to think you're unreasonable for being unconvinced yourself."
re: 496
Yeah, I can see how that might work out that way some of the time -- particularly with people who are timid about expressing their views. However, I am (genuinely) quite open to being persuaded and am not a 'win at all costs' person, so I generally stick to the 'I'm right unless persuaded otherwise' line except in areas where I genuinely don't have a view.
That may make me seem like a dick, some of the time.
495 is fairly right, too, I think.
Maybe it's an analytic/continental divide, or a progressive/conservative one, or maybe I'm really right and you're really wrong, but what you're saying could be rephrased as "More articulate and/or more aggressive people are always right," which seems self-evidently incorrect.
Please, ogged. The analytic/continental divide is not actually the asshole/thoughtful person divide (since, obviously, some assholes can be thoughtful persons).
It is transparently false that the truth of a view does not depend on the ability of any particular exponent of the view to defend it. If no one can defend it well, you might be better justified in dismissing it, but even then it might still be right.
510 is of course a more reasonable way of expressing what I meant -- I was being deliberately hyperbolic above.
'If you can't argue me round to your point of view, you're fucking wrong, and I don't see why I ought to respect your point of view. It's wrong, after all.'
Hmm. I think 496 is correct, and I can be a bit of an asshole in this way. But I'm still right.
One Christmas when I was in college, my mom, who was taking management classes, put copies of the Myers-Briggs questionnaire in all of our stockings (this reveals a lot about my mom). An odd Christmas. INTP, BTW.
But from within any given argument, it makes sense, if you rephrase it as "I've given my reasons for thinking what I think. Unless you've got better, more convincing reasons for your position, you're not going to change my mind, and I'm going to think you're unreasonable for being unconvinced yourself."
It's the latter clause which is objectionable.
511.1 is basically what I meant about walking over people with stupid/clever ideas. By which I mean something superficially convincing, but flawed in some way. If it's something I don't know much about, I may have a position based on that --- I need resistence to show up the flaw and am very happy to be persuaded this way. If you are timid with your views, this may not happen. Like you said, this may make me seem like a dick, some of the time.
There are areas that I don't have any view, and I'll say that too.
511: I am (genuinely) quite open to being persuaded and am not a 'win at all costs' person
Us "win at all costs" people often tell ourselves this.
I actually think it's a sign of genuine wit for people who are verbally glib to realize, and at some level consciously acknowledge, that there's a difference between arguing for sport and really working to convince someone. I'm very much an "I'd like to have an argument, please" sort of person most of the time, and I do have fun with trying to "win." But of course I'm aware someone who can't call all their debating tools to tongue in the moment is at some point going to humour me. Doesn't mean anything.
The analytic/continental divide is not actually the asshole/thoughtful person divide
You've failed to convince me, Ben.
It's the latter clause which is objectionable.
Not if you are countering a reasonable (even if flawed) argument with `i just don't think so, but can't support it'.
Some people who don't like affectionate touching in front of other people can be affectionately touch-y in private.
Absolutely. There's also a middle space: dinner with good friends in your own home, seeing them off at the door. It's mere inches away from being touch-y in private.
There's really no argument here, though.
I think I actually got a borderline E/I score, but that's because I cheat on personality tests.
Some of the most tireless practitioners of argument by wearing out the opposition that I've ever met have been philosophers of the continental stripe.
my mom, who was taking management classes, put copies of the Myers-Briggs questionnaire in all of our stockings
Alas, the MBTI will doubtless persist in the management curriculum long after the last psychology department has consigned it to the dustbin of pseudoscience alongside alchemy and physiognomy.
Yeah, I think I was just about in the middle on all 4 measures. But I'm not a cheater like Katherine.
Us "win at all costs" people often tell ourselves this.
Except, I'm really not a win at all costs person.
I can have fun with arguments and trying to win in some circumstances, but most of the time, if I'm really pursuing some point of view rather than just having some fun with it, it's because I really think it's right. There is a difference between the 'throwing ideas around for fun and discovering what you believe' kind of arguments and the more serious kind, of course.
525: Just wait 'til I tell you about the phrenology Christmas.
It is transparently false that the truth of a view does not depend on the ability of any particular exponent of the view to defend it.
Wait, what?
I should add that I used to be a "debate for sport" type of person and that's shifted as I've gotten older / been out of school longer.
I still like a really good "argument for the purpose of testing/extending our understanding" (I am a fan of unfogged, after all) but I feel less interested in starting/jumping on arguments just to see if they will turn out to be a fun argument.
* I think it's broader than that: often, there isn't a way to settle an issue, so people end up using unacknowledged measures to determine "rightness" like race, gender, height, general educational level, etc.
Ooh, I think I'm onto an explanation for the 'You think you're right about everything' people.
People like me (Cala, slol, ttaM, most people at Unfogged) think of argument as a way of arriving at true beliefs. If you start with true premises, and construct a valid claim of reasoning, then your conclusions should be true. (Mostly, kind of, usually, we live in a fallen world, but you know what I mean.) And so you set up and defend your own arguments, and pick holes in other people's, and partially you're doing it for fun, but you figure that an argument that stands up under serious investigation is one that will bring you to a set of true conclusions -- it's a practically useful device for arriving at truth.
Someone who isn't an argument kind of person, maybe, sees constructing an argument as an irrelevant demonstration of intellectual skill: "I can make a convincing argument, which means I'm a smart person, which means that you should listen to me because I'm smart and you're stupid." They're not perceiving the argument itself as having intellectual value, it's just a status claim, like saying "You should listen to me because I'm rich and you're not" or "I'm cool and you're not." And so expecting them to be convinced by argument seems irrelevant and obnoxious to them.
Maybe? Does this sound like what's going on?
Yeah, I think I was just about in the middle on all 4 measures.
That's not unusual. M-B scores actually tend to cluster in the middle, rather than forming the bimodal distribution you would expect if the dimensions corresponded to "types" with any real world meaning. This is one of the many flaws of M-B.
527 describes me as well. I'm really not win at all costs, although I can see how in certain circumstances, it may seem that way.
I should add that I used to be a "debate for sport" type of person and that's shifted as I've gotten older / been out of school longer.
I should revise that.
It might be an age issue, or it might be related to shifting from the humanities in school to programming.
Spending so much of my days working in an area in which beliefs are testable and in which there are clear standards for the success and failure of a belief, has caused me to raise my bar for "this is a belief that I think is worth defending" in the rest of my life.
531: I definitely feel that having someone throw darts at my argument will usually (if they are good darts) make me abandon it or believe it more than I did before we started. It's a useful process.
531 seems to be capturing something.
We need a label for these two types of people. Perhaps 'Enlightened' for the people described first, and 'Primitives' for the latter.
Jesus, if your mom ever offers to dissect an interesting part of your body for you for Christmas, that's when to draw the line.
If you start with true premises, and construct a valid claim of reasoning, then your conclusions should be true. (Mostly, kind of, usually, we live in a fallen world, but you know what I mean.)
I think LB is onto something there. The gap between the type of person LB describes and all others is particularly unbridgeable because they both represent something fundamentally true about humanity: in the first case, that we are cognitively capable of of rational deduction (as the Greeks first taught us and the scientific revolution refined); and in the second case, that rational deduction doesn't correspond to the "natural" or "normal" pattern of cognition.
Put another way, the LB/slol/et al. type is a product of a particular type of training in particular habits of mind that seems weird and unnatural to those who have not acquired them, or who have acquired them and compartmentalized them for very specific purposes.
538 succinctly pwned by 536.
"More articulate and/or more aggressive people are always right," which seems
like the sort of thing articulate, aggressive people are inclined to believe.
I'm basically with NickS on this issue. I actually have very few strong opinions, and while I will defend those vehemently, on pretty much everything else I either have an opinion that's sufficiently weak that I'm willing to be provisionally convinced by anyone with a reasonable argument or I literally have no opinion at all.
I don't know about the validity of Meyers-Briggs, but the reliability is amazing. I took it three times in middle and high school and got ISTJ each time. The third time I was even deliberately trying to game it.
'you think you're right about everything'
I tease my wife that she never acts more certain than when she has no idea. This used to come up the most when we were lost (sigh, we just don't have enough occasion to get lost together anymore). She'd say left with such force that I'd drop let go of three tenuous reasons it might be right because she seemed so certain. I finally figured out that taking charge was her way of dealing with the uncertainty, but it didn't always indicate any additional info.
531 is interesting. I do tend to believe that "arguments," (premises, inferences, conclusions) are basically irrelevant to the correctness of a position. But I don't know if I read arguing as a status claim; I used to love arguing, but now I feel like someone who kicked a bad habit.
Yes, I like needling you.
Continuing my own train of thought . . .
One of the other experiences that had a significant impact on my argumentation style came from old housemate of mine.
He was a friend from HS who was always into computers, but who had a somewhat unhealthy relationship with the love of precision that computers reward (he's since stopped working with computer, I believe, because of the effects on his mental state).
He said to me, at one point, "Why would you ever chose to do something in a way that you know is inefficient?"
Hearing that from someone else, I recognized what an insane statement that is. There are lots of times when I would rather do something in a consciously haphazard way than go to the trouble of deciding what the most precise method is.
Again, this is a lesson that I've taken to heart in my life -- I don't want to try to act as if everything I do is an expression of belief. So if I know that my actions are sometimes only explicable as random neurons firing, why should I treat my beliefs differently? Sometimes it's worth the effort of internally testing my beliefs, other times the most accurate way to treat them is as a muddle of sorts.
Yes, I like needling you.
Aw, I like you too. Doesn't mean I won't try to feed you cheese when you're not paying attention at the DC party.
My son's relationship broke up because in part because he didn't like to talk in the morning when he got up. I'm the same way -- for me the first hour or two is quiet time. Not everyone likes that.
... arguments," (premises, inferences, conclusions) are basically irrelevant to the correctness of a position
Of course. Arguments are merely a way of testing the correctness of a position. People in general believe a lot of stupid things. You either root out the ones you are holding onto, or live with the consequences.
I do tend to believe that "arguments," (premises, inferences, conclusions) are basically irrelevant to the correctness of a position.
The problem as I see it is that everything ultimately depends on the strength of the premises. If they're false, as they often are, then the conclusion is going to be false no matter how good the inferences are.
Wow...488 is a bigger dealbreaker than even the people who enjoy arguing and fighting with their loved ones. I couldn't be with someone for even one day if she insisted on preventing me from sleeping.
"insisting on preventing me from sleeping" - wow!
this would be a perfect example of smaller differences in opinion indicating a very big difference in point of view on the world!
luckily there are plenty of men who like this too.
[besides the obvious puppydog aspect of it: I can sleep by myself very happily without anyone there at all; if I am going to trust someone else enough to sleep in my bed, would like to genuinely share it. It makes me tense to have someone I'm dating there but far away - all the not-fun parts of sharing a bed without the good parts.]
Oddly enough, NickS, one of the things I like about computers is the the relative imprecision.
re: 545
I'm OK in the morning, but I really love quiet time late at night; with a book or some music when everyone else is asleep. I can get quite grumpy if I have to go without it for a long period.
547: Right. When I was talking about arguing to get to clarity back in the Unfogged: What Does It All MeanFest, I meant something like identifying the conflicting premises, because then you can drop the argument satisfied that you're not goting to get anywhere.
547: but one of the things a good discussion/argument should do is poke at the premises.
I haven't read the whole thread, but enough to deduce that LB is St/even d/en B/est/e.
553: now we're getting back to the nasty in jest, or nasty in anger thing.
People like me (Cala, slol, ttaM, most people at Unfogged) think of argument as a way of arriving at true beliefs.
I don't think this is really the issue. When people argue, they silently import all sorts of background information that makes sense of the argument. Often enough, that background information is decisive in the scoring of the arguments by third parties. So people with "privileged" background information tend to win arguments, and people who lose arguments on the basis of such information feel doubly harmed: they've lost the argument and they've been reminded that they are likely to lose most such arguments because of that sort of background information.
In some ways, your concerns with Econ 101 arguments are a mirror of this sort of problem. At the moment, for reasons that don't much matter, Econ seems to be widely considered the queen of the social sciences by the well-educated lay audience. There are problems with Econ 101 approaches, but someone who starts with it starts with an advantage. Which is what infuriates you. For every problem you point out, someone will have a defense--that's the nature of the construction of the intellectual infrastructures. Unless you're willing to become an expert in economics--and perhaps even then--you start at a disadvantage, except among your own.
This sort of problem extends to all sorts of arguments and all sorts of imported information, many of which are more problematic.
This is taking longer than I thought, so procrastination.
Seeking truth v. seeking status exactly captures the imagined motivations of argumentophiles (we could call them sophists to use a neutral term) and argument-phobes. Taking either side seems to fail to acknowledge the varieties of truth-- much of social reality does not lend itself to syllogism, and the knowledge necessary for useful Bayesian reasoning is unclear, so reason is sometimes useful, sometimes not. There's no clear method for finding the boundaries.
Also, many sophists are inclined to bullshit, or to bluff because they like winning, a dynamic which exactly supports the claim that people argue for status sometimes, a point not lost on their unsympathetic interlocutors.
I don't know about the validity of Meyers-Briggs, but the reliability is amazing.
Not actually true. The weak reliability is one of the key flaws in the instrument. This is unsurprising, given that the test is making a dichotomous judgement based on a variable that is distributed around a central mode: the vast majority of people judged to be X will be pretty close to the majority of people judged to be Y, and a little bit of random variation can send anyone close to the mean over to the other side depending on the day.
Elaborating on 557, it's perhaps unsurprising that Teo's personal experience with the MBTI should be consistent, because he is probably way over on the tail of the distribution on at least one dimension.
to use a neutral term
Ha ha ha.
I think there's two types of stubborn you can be in an argument: do you need to win the argument? Or do you need to be right?
It's not especially hard to convince me about many things, especially if you clearly know more than me (in a way you can demonstrate--not just pulling credential rank, which won't work if I know someone equally credentialed who disagrees with you). But if I know at least as much or more than you, & I think you're trying to score points rather than seriously engaging what I'm saying, I get extremely frustrated.
Not actually true. The weak reliability is one of the key flaws in the instrument.
Fair enough.
Meyers-Briggs has nothing on the richness of Enneagrams.
Some people want to have their opinions without being able to argue them. We're all a little like that, but some people are almost always like that, and they feel that arguing is bullying.
Sometime you do get to an impasse where you can't justify your opinion. I get to that point very quickly with libertarians of the various kinds. Some of the libertarians' factual supporting arguments can be dealt with, but you very quickly get to fundamental normative differences that are hard to prove one way or another.
Meyers-Briggs has nothing on the richness of Enneagrams.
I was just telling someone this the other day. Just as much bullshit, but more fun. Maybe we should import it into management curricula, eh Knecht?
Some people want to have their opinions without being able to argue them.
Especially people with indefensible opinions.
554 - Teach me to read the thread backwards. Engaging in the exact behavior that makes me undateable on a thread about what what makes you undateable must surely count as ironic in the Alanis Morissette sense. (They should add that to the official list of types of irony: dramatic, comic, Alanisic.)
We had to take the Myers-Briggs at the start of the school year. EN(F/T)J.
Oddly enough, NickS, one of the things I like about computers is the the relative imprecision.
Not odd, there's almost always ten ways to do anything you want done, any of which can work.
I just mean that "I finally figured out that taking charge was her way of dealing with the uncertainty, but it didn't always indicate any additional info." doesn't work with computers.
Especially people with indefensible opinions.
I don't think so. A lot of racists can argue for hours on end, and some nice moderate people are completely inarticulate.
From the Enneagrams site at the top of google:
Sixes are reliable, hard-working, responsible, and trustworthy.
Is Unfogged being revealed as the West Virginia* of the Internets?
*3 million people, 25 surnames.
I really, really wanted to let this go, but I went to the gym for an hour and I'm still irritated, so oh well.
Jokes which depend for their humor on stereotypes of people who have been systematically exploited and economically disenfranchised are not funny. And what is far, far worse, they're boring.
Having done what I (perhaps mistakenly) conceived to be my duty, I will now go to work.
555: This has something to it, but I don't think it's incompatible with what I was saying. What bothers me about the Econ 101 thing is that, as you say, the perceived prestige of Econ makes someone who's making a bad or flawed argument likely to get away with it -- that is, claiming that your bad argument is determined by the laws of economics is a very effective shade of lipstick to put on a pig. But that's not a problem with good arguments, whether concerned with economics or not. Someone who's globally concerned with argument because of the background information problem is someone who doesn't see distinguishing good from bad arguments as possible or relevant.
I'm inclined to agree with ogged on the efficacy of argument, and I think SCMT picked an illuminating example: economics. Economics is illuminating precisely because if you are not inculcated in the tradition it is an uncongenial world-view, which gives enough distance so that you can see the inner workings of how an argument culture plays out (and economics is very much of an argument culture).
Determining which objections can be waved away and which are devastating generally becomes an ideological question. In economics, for example, pointing out that a certain argument implies that people make systematic mistakes is a killer objection. Pointing out the real world does not feature perfect competition is a minor caveat.
I am quite sensitive and introspective in a generally stoic sort of way, which means I tend to conceal the things I am sensitive about (usually with self-deprecating humor, I've learned) longer than I should. Someone who likes to tease alot, but isn't willing to make an effort to tune in to whether I'm unamused or hurt by the teasing should probably steer clear. Also, along the same lines, I have a propensity for overthinking/overanalyzing things.
Also, tend to agree with Ned that 488 is a gigantic dealbreaker -- don't fuck with my sleep. (I get a little extra-sensitive and introspective when I'm overtired, so this is actually a safety warning.)
574: I think we should really seperate the idea of argument within a technical discipline (without getting into credentialism) and generic discussion. Most discussions between most people are not technical, and not expert.
To return to the Econ 101 stuff, the only reason you run into it so much in the wild is that it touches on some areas that affect everyone. However, outside the discipline most economics comes up in the form of argument from authority, which is in itself a problem. If you are easily convinced by argument weak argument from authority, you are going to fall for all sorts of nonsense.
We should also differentiate an argument put forth on an op-ed page, say, compared to discussing things with your friends and drinking beer.
Determining which objections can be waved away and which are devastating generally becomes an ideological question.
That might be a good way of getting at my objection to #573. And the schedule of killer/minor objections varies by field. Which means that, absent the trivial case, there is no such thing as "a good argument," only a good argument given a certain context, tradition, etc. If yours is a privileged tradition, context, etc., you're golden. But not usually because of some objective and absolute measure of the force of your argument.
I'm sure I've harped on this before around here, but I feel frustrated when the MBTI is misrepresented as a) a test, which it isn't, or b) some sort of scientific tool that gives ambiguous results and therefore is faulty.
The MBTI, if properly administered and interpreted, ultimately leaves the final decision about personality type completely in the hands of the subject, so there can be no cheating or gaming. It's an indicator, and it can give a precise vocabulary to traits that are hard to describe, or hard to describe neutrally without a lot of one's own prejudice and criticism coming in. It was partly designed as a way for people to understand people who are not very much like them, to assist compassion and appreciation for different human gifts.
It's a very well thought out and useful vocabulary, and I'm sorry to see it used as pop pychology or a fad of management types who administer it sloppily and dismiss it when it doesn't do what it's not meant to do.
Which means that, absent the trivial case, there is no such thing as "a good argument," only a good argument given a certain context, tradition, etc.
Huh. This seems to me, while not entirely offbase, to be wildly overstated. There is reality out there, and arguments can correspond to it -- those that do are good arguments.
I don't have time for your wishy-washy caveats, Penny, we have work to do! Hop to it!
580: I'd respond to you Cactus, but I'm not done preparing the groundwork to researching the background to my reply.
There is reality out there, and arguments can correspond to it -- those that do are good arguments.
I'd say that cases where the correspondence is easy to see and is widely accepted represent the trivial cases. That's a lot of life, but it's not usually where the arguments lie.
There is reality out there, and arguments can correspond to it -- those that do are good arguments.
No. Arguments are completely abstract; they can't correspond to reality at all. What can (and should) correspond to reality are the premises and conclusions of arguments, and good arguments are those that have correct premises (which correspond to reality) and valid conclusions (which also correspond to reality, because that's how logic works). The important thing, then, is not developing a strong, logical argument, but making sure your premises are correct and shared by your interlocutor, because that's the only way you can be sure that your conclusions will be convincing.
Sure, but the correspondence doesn't have to be easy to see or widely accepted to exist and be valuable.
re: 577 and 579
We're going to end up in epistemological and or philosophy of science waters here. I'm willing to bet the Unfoggedariat probably contains a couple of people who are genuine experts [relatively speaking].
FWIW, SCMT, you don't have to believe in objective and absolute standards in order to think that there are good and bad arguments.
580, 581: I can see the validity in both Penny's and your comments. Let's gather some data and talk about what that means in a larger context.
I'm thrilled that Enneagram is coming up --- I found it to be very useful bullshit, really much less bullshit than others of its ilk.
I'm a seven, which means I'm definitely M-B extroverted (ENTJ if memory serves). It also points to the things that will drive you crazy when you date me: If I have five invitations on Saturday night, I want to try to go to them all, even though that will be inevitably frustrating for both of us (though more you).
A year ago or so I conducted a scavenger hunt staff social for my office. The boss's wife was into enneagrams at the time, and we pretended that everyone had to do the test so we could sort them into enneagram-appropriate groups. We didn't actually do that, we just wanted everyone's score.
While people were out scavengering, we came up with epithets for each of the points.
1: Prig
2: Manipulative bitch
3: Show-off
4: Drama queen
5: Bore
6: Paranoid
7: Flake
8: Tyrant
9: Catatonic
Count me in also for the "utterly stymied by small executive action." Makes work life unbearable, although I always fantasized that with an executive assistant, I'd be unstoppable.
Sure, but the correspondence doesn't have to be easy to see or widely accepted to exist and be valuable.
In most cases in life, I'm at a loss to see how you're validating the correspondence.
or philosophy of science waters here. I'm willing to bet the Unfoggedariat probably contains a couple of people who are genuine experts [relatively speaking].
That's mostly where this is coming from, I think. (I'm not a genuine expert or even a fake one. Nothing close. Rather, it's the very little I've read in this area that (I think) motivates my position.)
My father in law's an ENTJ, (I'm pretty sure) and I love being able not to drive him crazy when he's visiting. I actually do like him very much, so I tend to play to our similarities.
Arguments are completely abstract; they can't correspond to reality at all.
Come on. I have a set of the first five natural numbers: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}. Completely abstract. I have a stapler, a tape dispenser, an in box, an out box, and a binder clip on my desk. Reality. You're going to tell me that saying that there's a correspondence between the elements in the set and the objects on my desk is just false? Because I think it's a perfectly valid way of describing the number of items on my desk.
Everything else you say is reasonable, I'm just using 'argument' to include the premises as well as the logic. And if the logic fails, you'll get to a false conclusion just as fast as you will with bad premises.
In economics, for example, pointing out that a certain argument implies that people make systematic mistakes is a killer objection.
Not really, a Nobel Prize has been won for precisely such an argument, and many people think another one is coming.
Also, arguments tend to annoy and tire me, because the sort of people I'd ever argue with have always either been slippery, hand-wavey sophists willing to switch sides as subtley as possible should their back hit a wall, or they've been incredibly logical people who've thought through their beliefs and just had different foundational assumptions and beliefs than I did. Either way, they've been damn clever and the fruits of such discussion were bitter at best.
I will acknowledge that such arguments have sharpened my logic on certain issues and helped identify areas for clarification, but at what cost?! Oy!
a Nobel Prize has been won for precisely such an argument, and many people think another one is coming.
Well, that's the discipline for you.
I have a set of the first five natural numbers: {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}. Completely abstract. I have a stapler, a tape dispenser, an in box, an out box, and a binder clip on my desk. Reality. You're going to tell me that saying that there's a correspondence between the elements in the set and the objects on my desk is just false?
Well, okay, I don't mean to say that nothing abstract can possibly correspond to anything in reality. But a syllogism can't.
"insisting on preventing me from sleeping" - wow!
That's what it would amount to for the first couple months, my sleep would be severely disrupted. One can get used to anything, though, so it might be acceptable from the most wonderful woman on earth.
You're going to tell me that saying that there's a correspondence between the elements in the set and the objects on my desk is just false?
I'm not sure I understand this. It's doesn't seem false; just empty. You could have a similar correspondence between {apple, chair, mouseover text, happy, yellow}.
If anybody wants to try, the 10-minute/36-question Enneagram test by Riso and Hudson is here.
Also, arguments tend to annoy and tire me, because the sort of people I'd ever argue with have always either been slippery, hand-wavey sophists willing to switch sides as subtley as possible should their back hit a wall, or they've been incredibly logical people who've thought through their beliefs and just had different foundational assumptions and beliefs than I did. Either way, they've been damn clever and the fruits of such discussion were bitter at best.
This is pretty much how I feel as well.
I will acknowledge that such arguments have sharpened my logic on certain issues and helped identify areas for clarification, but at what cost?! Oy!
Yep.
593: Then you're using 'correspond' to mean something more specific than I am that I don't understand. All I'm saying is that an argument from true premises, using valid logic, will produce "valid conclusions (which also correspond to reality, because that's how logic works)." Saying that valid logic 'corresponds to reality' is just another way of saying that it's valid.
re: 589
That's mostly where this is coming from, I think.
Yeah, I can sort of see that. However, I don't tend to think that that sort of thing -- debates about the nature of truth, for example, or what counts as a good scientific theory -- actually leads to that sort of skeptical perspective on arguments in general. That is, a perspective in which there's no such thing as a good argument. Rather, they just lead to different perspectives on what counts as a good or bad argument.
595: We're just engaged in a verbal quibble about what 'correspond' means. I'm not sure how Teo's using it, so I'm picking at him.
the sort of people I'd ever argue with have always either been slippery, hand-wavey sophists willing to switch sides as subtley as possible
If the purpose of discussion is reaching comity as opposed to winning, then switching sides is a good thing and not a sneaky technique to avoid "losing".
they've been incredibly logical people who've thought through their beliefs and just had different foundational assumptions and beliefs than I did
I love arguing with people like this. You get down to the roots so quickly! But then, I'm a priggish bore.
re: 598
Actually, I'm willing to bet that a lot of philosophers and logicians would dispute just about every word you've written there. I don't really want to get into it, though!
598: By "valid logic," do you mean formal logic? Also, it feels tautological to talk about true premises + valid set of operations = true conclusion. Sure, but the problem is that people reasonably disagree at almost every step along the way, and--at some point--you run into a time resource problem, but have to make a decision nonetheless. At which point, it's not clear to me what's doing the deciding.
603: Yeah, I kind of knew I was handwaving my way through the example. But the problem isn't that the English word 'correspondence' can't be used to describe a relationship between something abstract and something concrete, which was what I was trying to get at.
604: The problem isn't that people could reasonobly disagree at almost every step along the way, it's how often people unreasonably disagree.
It's nice to boil something down to the point you understand why both (or more) positions are reasonable. I wouldn't say this is such a majority of cases that you can assume it, though.
Besides, you can learn a lot disagreeing with someone, not always about the imediate topic.
Further to 605: Whoops, missed which comment you were referencing. Yeah, this sort of thing is in the category of "Arguments I'll make because they're the best I can do at my current state of knowledge, but I'm interested in being educated further."
All I'm saying is that an argument from true premises, using valid logic, will produce "valid conclusions (which also correspond to reality, because that's how logic works)."
And what I'm saying is that the fact that the premises are true is doing all the work there, and if you're arguing with someone who doesn't accept your premises there's no point in trying to lead them down the logical path you're developing. I think the word we're defining differently may actually be "argument" rather than "correspond."
That is, a perspective in which there's no such thing as a good argument. Rather, they just lead to different perspectives on what counts as a good or bad argument.
I don't think I'm uncomfortable with, or somehow opposed to, that; I'm just suspicious of the existence of a general case of a good argument.
608: I'm surprised how often people don't know what their premises are, or understand them.
If the purpose of discussion is reaching comity as opposed to winning, then switching sides is a good thing and not a sneaky technique to avoid "losing".
Perhaps "switch sides" was the wrong phrasing. I mean something closer to "change positions", as in when people will suddenly change the terms of the argument and the seeming purpose of the argument on you, so that they can avoid a losing or nitpicking battle in one direction. This will usually be followed by constant insistance that the new direction is entirely pertinant and necessary to explore before we can have any final word on the original argument.
Bleh. Bad memories.
52: I like the poem that's up on your blog right now, destroyer. I was going to say that I thought your use of first person was maybe inadvisable, but then I saw this
The conception of authenticity requires--Were you upset?--
an untenable belief in a given, stable self--No, why?--
which, after materialism--You seemed it.--You always say that.
"I write poetry", even coupled with "and post it on my blog" is scads better than "I am a poet."
re: 609
In that sense, I think we probably agree.
that the premises are true is doing all the work there,
No, they're doing half the work there. "People who immigrate into the US illegally have broken US law" is a true premise. "People who break the law on one occasion are more likely that people who are consistently lawabiding to break the law again." Also a true premise. "Illegal immigrants are the reason for all our crime problems." A false conclusion. You can't get anywhere with false premises, regardless of how well you argue, but an illogical argument can get you a wrong answer even if your premises are true.
I meant to add, in previous comment, that I tend to think that what counts as 'good' for arguments is highly context-dependent. However, I wouldn't want to give up the notion that some arguments are better than others [relative to context].
614: Ah, but most people who arrive at that conclusion are not actually starting from those premises. I think this is soup's point.
and 610: Yeah, this. Normally when you're arguing about stuff, you start from conflicting conclusions, and spend the time figuring out how the other person got to theirs. Identifying conflicting premises tends to be the end of a long argument, not an easy way to identify that argument will be unproductive.
Holding fast to a hard distinction between logic on the one hand and facts on the other pretty quickly gets you to the point where you get pwned by Quine.
Normally when you're arguing about stuff, you start from conflicting conclusions, and spend the time figuring out how the other person got to theirs. Identifying conflicting premises tends to be the end of a long argument, not an easy way to identify that argument will be unproductive.
See, I tend to take conflicting conclusions as a strong piece of evidence for conflicting premises, and therefore a clue that argument is unlikely to be productive.
426,572: Mea culpa.
Points taken.
426: 2 million not 3 million.
572: Yes, pretty lame.
617 is correct, & why even arguing with someone can be productive even if they don't even come close to persuading you of their position: even if they're completely wrong, explaining in detail how you got to your conclusion can clarify your own thinking.
How many complex, real-world arguments can be reduced to simple syllogisms? It's almost impossible with respect to any meaningful argument. Or, put another way, to reduce a meaningful argument to a series of syllogisms (or comparable simple logical deductions) one generally needs not to agree with one's counterpart on one or two or five basic premises, but probably more like hundreds or thousands, many of which will inevitably be controversial. And trying to take a step back to "prove" something about the controversial premises before moving forward--even assuming you had time to conduct this grand exercise, which you certainly don't--you inevitably run into the same problem, until you've backed yourself all the way into a mixture of tautologies and epistemolic problems about really knowing anything at all. I think this is more or less what Tim's getting at.
Identifying conflicting premises tends to be the end of a long argument, not an easy way to identify that argument will be unproductive.
I am not sure how you got to this point.
But the reason people hate immigrants is not reasoned from the premise. The premise is chosen to support the conclusion. (Also, second premise is not clear if you include tax cheats in the population of lawbreakers).
Pointing out the flawed reasoning makes you a prig or a tyrant or something, because it is generally understood that the real problem is a loss of security and fear of a less prosperous future for all Americans except argumentative types. To get people to stop hating immigrants, addressing the underlying fears or gently pointing out that catholic-hating WASPs of the 19th century had the same fears is better than attacking their sophistry.
6
"... This is more "people who would find me annoying really fast"."
This is a valid topic but not what baa asked. Baa was not asking about what traits your dates would have to be willing to put up with but about what traits are so important to your self-image and/or self-esteem that you would require your dates to admire them. A somewhat different question.
622: This is true, as is ttaM's 618, and Tim does have a point. I'm just (heh) arguing from a factual premise that he doesn't appear to accept -- that while reducing any real-world argument to formal logic, as you say, practically impossible, that the sort of half-assed approximation we do in conversation has practical value; arguments from premises that I believe to be factually accurate, whose informal logical structure stands up well, in my experience produce conclusions that also describe the world well.
even if they're completely wrong, explaining in detail how you got to your conclusion can clarify your own thinking.
One of the many reasons why argument, ummm, I mean conversation, can be lots of fun. Teaching does the same thing, only much more so.
I have the best time in argument when the other person genuinely changes my mind about something.
627:
Krispie Kreme donuts?
No, I am getting fat!
mmmmmm hot donuts.
Ok bastard.
626: "Describe the world well"? Is that what we're arguing about? Because if so, I'm willing to throw aside philosophical uncertainties and join you wholeheartedly. I thougth we were talking about reaching judgments, not ascertaining basic facts.
the sort of half-assed approximation we do in conversation has practical value
It makes us lovable, like I said way back when.
arguments from premises that I believe to be factually accurate, whose informal logical structure stands up well, in my experience produce conclusions that also describe the world well.
The persistent thing there is you: premises you believe, logic that (you think) stands up well, and good conclusions in your experience. It doesn't seem surprising to me that you find the result of such a series of operations to be coherent and consistent, insofar as you think the same about yourself, generally.
To be clear, I think we agree that this sort of process is often valuable and useful. I think we disagree--in part, only--about why it is valuable and useful.
Some arguments are over facts and definitions. Others, however, are over questions such as what value to place on something, or what action should be taken. I don't think that the success of these other kinds of argumentative conclusions is well captured by "describe the world well."
I think we are somewhat talking past one another. There is nothing contradictory between the statements:
a) very few real world problems can be `solved' in the sense alluded to in 622. Particularly by a couple of people who don't deeply know what they are talking about. Which is most people, on most topics.
and
b) discussion/argument can be a useful way to think, and to test & modify your ideas. If you're used to this, you tend to assert a position and ask the other person to knock it down if they can. You also try to do this to what they claim. If they don't realize this is a process, it doesn't work (plus they may think you're being an arrogant prick)
631: Well, sure. I could be a brain in a vat -- my only access to reality is through my own perceptions. I take as a premise I don't examine too closely that those perceptions are going to correspond with those of my interlocutors, that India exists even though I haven't been there, and so on. And a really rigorous argument that insisted on examining all of those premises wouldn't get anywhere at all. Nonetheless, I still think it's possible to distinguish a reasonably valid informal argument from one that makes no sense in a manner that can be fairly broadly agreed upon.
I still think it's possible to distinguish a reasonably valid informal argument from one that makes no sense in a manner that can be fairly broadly agreed upon.
Is anyone arguing that this isn't possible? I thought we were arguing over whether it's a reasonable use of one's time (on which tastes differ).
This is a bad place to argue about a reasonable use of one's time. Discuss.
635: I thought Tim was in 555 and 577; that is, he picked up my distinction between people who like to argue partially because they see it as a way to arrive at practically reliable conclusions about the world, and people who are kind of offended by it (possibly, I'm theorizing here) because they see it as an irrelevant status claim: "See, I can perform this impressive but empty intellectual feat, which means I'm better than you and you have to agree with me." And then I understood him to be saying that he agreed that a 'good argument' was actually more of a matter of social status than anything of practical use.
And then I understood him to be saying that he agreed that a 'good argument' was actually more of a matter of social status than anything of practical use.
He didn't deny the possibility of good arguments, though, he just said that they are context-dependent and unlikely to be generally useful.
Baa asked who should pre-emptively rule us out, even if we wouldn't pre-emptively rule them out. I thought we'd already had the thread about "Things I require others to appreciate about me"?
So many arguments really hinge on fundamental disagreements on priors, or disagreements about factors left out of the argument actually on the table, that it's often more economical just to switch immediately to abuse. To choose contemporary examples, I've never been able to figure out much of anything to say to fundamentalist Christians, Social Darwinists, or militarist imperialists.
People who describe the world well turn me on. It's very hard to do convincingly.
I'm not sure that I'm arguing for anything except a different emphasis. I agree that argument is useful, I just think not all discussions are best understood as arguments.
Yet, several quotes on this page are relevent. In particular
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov
"Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise." -- John Tukey
639: Yeah, part of what's going on is that I responded to that without fully understanding it. I'm not clear what it would mean for an argument to be generally useful, or for it to not be context dependent.
I take as a premise I don't examine too closely that those perceptions are going to correspond with those of my interlocutors, that India exists even though I haven't been there, and so on.
Right, but my claim is that conclusions driven by consensus premises--India exists--and consensus operations are going to be largely trivial.
and people who are kind of offended by it (possibly, I'm theorizing here) because they see it as an irrelevant status claim: "See, I can perform this impressive but empty intellectual feat, which means I'm better than you and you have to agree with me."
It's not a status claim made by the person. It's that, often enough, the status of the person (or the method of argument) making the argument is going to determine the "winner." It's not that the winner says "See, I'm smarter than you," etc. It's that, whatever the person says, in truth, they won because the other person is inarticulate, or fat, or female, or not white, etc. An example might be the workings of "enwhitlement" in argument, though I normally think I'm seeing this in gender-related contexts.*
It's that, whatever the person says, in truth, they won because the other person is inarticulate, or fat, or female, or not white, etc.
Right. And again, we've got conflicting premises here. What you're identifying is something that makes (halfass, non-rigorous) argument a less good tool for identifying practically useful conclusions about the world, and it's a real problem. I find that IME, despite the problem you identify, while it's a flawed tool it's better than nothing.
Now maybe I'm less sure I know what tim's talking about. In 645 he seems less to be talking about differing priors and more to be saying something like "If a valid argument is constructed in the woods and no one else is around to hear it, does it really exist?" As if an argument's truth and its ability persuade others were one and the same.
640
Maybe, but I don't think this thread is answering baa's question.
didn't LB, Tim & I argue about this once before? Something about a magical epistimeological truth machine?
478
"Yeah. No offense, we don't have to be involved with each other and so on, but this identifies a major incompatibility, and one that I have with lots of people. The phrasing of it I'm more familiar with is "You think you're right about everything," which always leaves me thinking "Well, sure. So do you. If you don't think you're right about something, you don't think it at all." But I haven't figured out how to say that one politely."
Well this would be better phrased as "you are overly confident that you are right about everything".
648: You're right about baa's question, or at least I'm reading it the same way you are. The problem with it, though, is that there aren't a lot of people willing to say: "A prospective partner must be enthusiastic about these five things about me! Because they're great, and I demand recognition that they're great!" It's an interesting question, but answering it honestly requires too much bragging for most people to be comfortable with.
648: Do you mean because we're not being superficial enough? Most of the comments here are sort of deep-behavioral. No one would actually avoid dating me because I don't cuddle and sleep at the same time. But lots of people would avoid dating me because I'm not pretty enough and listen to weird music. I guess I posted all the superficial stuff in the other thread.
620: I didn't get that you were trying to make a joke. I understood it as a reference to the Galton-Watson process and surname extinction, not a facile incest joke. On those terms, it was pretty lame, but not especially offensive by the standards of this blog.
Huh. I'm not remembering the other thread. Or maybe I am -- come to think of it I remember saying that I probably couldn't be involved with anyone who didn't think I was funny.
I find that IME, despite the problem you identify, while it's a flawed tool it's better than nothing.
I don't think we disagree about that. I think we disagree about "halfass, nonrigorous." Think of disagreements within a discipline: economics, heterodox vs. standard, or more narrowly within standard. These are often disagreements between people who are smart and well-trained, making rigorous arguments, who come to very different conclusions. Yet--using, funding decisions, for example, as a proxy--someone has to win the argument. I'm hard pressed to see that as a function of one argument being half-assed. And I'm not sure pointing to "differing premises" in a very technical field gets us very far.
I think we also disagree why--again, in part, only--it's a useful exercise. I think it's sometimes useful because it forces consensus.
649: I think it's the same argument, though I only just remember the discussion.
655: Yeah, I'm thinking one area in which we're talking past each other a little is the idea of 'winning' an argument. Winning doesn't happen much. Losing happens more -- you can reveal an argument as nonsense, but just because the rival argument hasn't been successfully picked apart doesn't make it right.
When you've got a persistent disagreement between people who can't sucessfully demolish each other's arguments, you've either got differing premises, bad faith (that is, one argument is nonsense, but its adherents won't admit it), or not enough information, and the point of arguing about stuff is to figure out what else you'd need to know to decide who's right.
People like me (Cala, slol, ttaM, most people at Unfogged) think of argument as a way of arriving at true beliefs. If you start with true premises, and construct a valid claim of reasoning, then your conclusions should be true.
I see this very differently. In my view, it's people who don't really like argument who are much more likely to adhere to notions like "true beliefs" and "true premises," which is one reason why they're not interested in argument as a form of conversation.
Also, and as has no doubt already been mentioned above (sorry, haven't yet read the whole thread), much of what people argue about is not reducible to true or false belief.
531
"People like me (Cala, slol, ttaM, most people at Unfogged) think of argument as a way of arriving at true beliefs. If you start with true premises, and construct a valid claim of reasoning, then your conclusions should be true. (Mostly, kind of, usually, we live in a fallen world, but you know what I mean.) And so you set up and defend your own arguments, and pick holes in other people's, and partially you're doing it for fun, but you figure that an argument that stands up under serious investigation is one that will bring you to a set of true conclusions -- it's a practically useful device for arriving at truth."
Argument is also a way of advancing your interests. It is normal for people to suspect you are arguing from self-interest rather than in a search for the truth. It is what lawyers are trained to do after all. And of course many people find it extremely difficult to objectively examine arguments against their self-interest.
"Someone who isn't an argument kind of person, maybe, sees constructing an argument as an irrelevant demonstration of intellectual skill: "I can make a convincing argument, which means I'm a smart person, which means that you should listen to me because I'm smart and you're stupid." They're not perceiving the argument itself as having intellectual value, it's just a status claim, like saying "You should listen to me because I'm rich and you're not" or "I'm cool and you're not." And so expecting them to be convinced by argument seems irrelevant and obnoxious to them."
There is something to this. A variant is that they know they are not intellectually capable of finding the fallacies in an argument which is arriving at conclusions that seem absurd to them. In which case they may be justified in being unconvinced. If I recall correctly Orwell said something like "You have to be an intellectual to believe something like that, an ordinary man couldn't be so dumb".
much of what people argue about is not reducible to true or false belief.
This has been said above, and while I can think of some things it would mean that I agree with, I'm not sure how it's being used. Are we talking about the Is-Ought distinction: disagreements not about facts, but about right action or good policy goals given those facts?
If I am already tired or hungry, I need someone else to take over and make decisions (per Becks) about whether we get the taxi or bus, whether we eat expensive or cheap. I will get really upset about even polite requests for my input.
Oh dear god yes.
1. I am not a tidy person, but your untidiness will enrage me. Pick up after yourself, and don't complain about my mess. In fact, pick up my mess.
Hahahahahahaha yes me too. But don't pick up my mess and put it where I can't find it, you idiot!
I'm so tempted to go through and give an amen to all the comments that I identify with (most of Heebie's, a lot of ttaM's, several good random comments here and there) but I've lost track.
Argument is a useful and enjoyable way of getting at truth when engaged in with someone whose mind works more or less like one's own does, but IME the vast majority of decent arguments end up being a matter of finding and evaluating the unstated premises, and once you do that it often turns out that you're mostly differing on emphasis rather than fundamentals.
disagreements not about facts
I think fixing "true facts" is pretty hard, and often enough we take reasonable ideological readings--which are often enough accurate readings--from those things which people. Look at the IQ debate, for example. At the end of the day, the most accurate answer seems to be "we don't know enough to give an answer." That sort of answer doesn't drive a whole lot of policy, though.
659: Disagreement, in the first instance, on what constitutes the facts. Or about how best to interpret the facts, assuming some agreement on what constitutes the facts. And this is even before we get to right action of good policy.
I'm not sure that I even believe that it's a flawed tool, but better than nothing. It's better than nothing in that we have to make decisions on some basis, and we don't have random number generators in their heads, but the vast majority of intellectuals throughout the history of the world have thought they had completely convincing arguments for whatever they decided to do. (By all reports, for example, Milton Friedman was a devastating arguer.)
Po-Mo Polymath: You must travel in better circles than I do. I hear people invoke rational expectations all the time. And by my count, for the one Nobel given for behavioral econ (I assume you mean Kahneman), there have been four given for theoretical arguments that certain phenomena must/can't happen because of rational expectations: Lucas, Friedman, Phelps, and Kydland/Prescott. One of which (Kydland/Prescott) is even completely contradicted by all empirical evidence. Kahneman had to perform actual experments -- if he had posited prospect theory he would have gotten nowhere -- and they were still careful to pair him with another experimentalist whose research supports conventional economic wisdom.
It's OK B, we all have our own catalogues of why you're undateable.
665: No doubt. But what makes me happy about all the comments I identify with is that they mostly confirm why I like so many of y'all.
I listened to these Teaching Company tapes on argumentation. There is apparently an entire field devoted to Argumentation Theory including contributions by Emerson Favorite, Stephen Toulmin.
According to the tapes, syllogistic logic is a very bad model for argumentation because real arguments always have some level of uncertainty.
The rules of argumentation as the tape describes them have a medieval origin and are pretty arcane. The tapes seemed real comfortable with the use of argumentation for decision making, but even they admit that argument winners have only a probabilistic relationship to the truth.
In which case they may be justified in being unconvinced.
Sure. There's no obligation at all to be convinced by an argument you can't follow. Wasn't there a story about Descarte debating Pascal about the existence of God? Pascal reeled off ten minutes of math incomprehensible to everyone else in the room and finished up with "Therefore, God exists"? Obviously, you can't do that.
I think because what comes through is a sense of humor about our own foibles, and a kind of tolerance that I think in a lot of cases speaks very well of people.
651
Well in my case I have a lot of potentially irritating traits that I would expect partners to put up with but not a lot of must admire traits (although obviously it would not make too much sense to be involved with someone who didn't like anything about you). I suppose high IQ might be one.
666: We are a weird and prickly lot, though. But we're also a lot more adaptable than we think we are, which is why even the strangest of us somehow end up coupled off.
Wouldn't you expect Descartes to be arguing for the existence of god?
Tolerance, B? Really? In a thread about what monsters we all are?
That said, I think my tolerance toward other people's foibles is almost always itself a deal-breaker. It seems that when people get into relationships, they like thinking you have opinions about the way they live their lives, and I usually don't. (Cf. "emotionally withholding" comments above.) Or they want to piss you off to see that they've created a reaction in you, or they enjoy fighting because it's the only way they can get blood pumping into their genitals.
But I really don't care. I show up at your apartment and there are dirty clothes on the floor? Fine! You don't have any food in the house? Who cares? You ordered something I specifically told you I don't like for dinner for us? Whatever, you're a bad listener, but it doesn't make you a bad person.
I have been broken up with quite a lot by people who really wanted me to judge them or be harsh with them about stuff, and it's just not my scene.
672: No, I don't think we're weird or prickly. I think most of us are the salt of the earth, with a few traits that are pretty common among highly intelligent people, and that tend to irritate folks who are arrogant or lack a secure sense of humor.
Tolerance, B? Really? In a thread about what monsters we all are?
Yeah. I think there's a kind of tolerance of humanity in people who are able to sincerely acknowledge, and yet be amused by, their own obnoxious behaviors.
It was Euler versus Diderot. Euler was debating in favor of the existence of God, and Diderot was debating against. The subtext of the story is that Euler was sucked into the argument against his will (he was asked by a monarch to defend the existence of God), and he was no match for Diderot as a debater, so he cheated.
675: If this blog represents the salt of the earth, the earth must be suffering a sodium shortage. Possibly as a result of global warming.
I've also come to the conclusion that people who bitch about everyone they date being the same kind of annoying ("All the girls I meet are psycho and jealous!" or "All the men I date are hypercritical and superficial!") need to start asking themselves whether there's a part of themselves that really does seek those qualities, even subconsciously, in partners.
Lots of guys bitch about all their girlfriends getting on them about everything--their clothes, their work habits, their housekeeping, etc.--but that doesn't mean that they'd actually enjoy being with someone who doesn't get onto them. It means there might be a part of them that gets off on being nagged.
In the end, I think the demise of my relationship with Max is related to the fact that I'm not a psycho bitch. For a while, he was grateful for the change of pace, but in the end, it's boring to be with someone who likes you as you are.
Last night, one of my girlfriends was smilingly kvetching that she and her husband are really tolerant of each other's foibles, as they've both gained a lot of weight while married (no one pressuring them about eating right) and gone into debt (no one bitching about their spending). A tolerant relationship, I guess, can be seen as sort of unhealthy.
Deluded optimist. Pessimists are always right. How do I know? Science says.
It may be easier to be blithely amused by how undateable you are when you're happily coupled-up. (At least, I find it easier--others may be a bit more secure.)
Hrm. Telling the story as applying to 'someone French' rather than straining to recall (and apparently inventing) who it applied to would have been the better part of valor.
I guess I think it's not so much that we're salt of the earth as that most people are weird and prickly in one way or another. But I'm not sure I'd defend that very hard.
Some of us have had to recognize what assholes we are as an answer to the shocked question, "Why is it that people don't find me awesome when I am clearly awesome?" I'm not sure it's totally out of tolerance or a sense of humor that we confront these things. Sometimes it's massive egotism.
The salt of the earth invent details as needed.
682 could be in reply to 680, but I'm not prepared to commit to that thesis without further empirical evidence.
683: Sure, but I think most of us are, if not happily coupled up, dat*ing*, and I think most of the chronically unhappy singles on Unfogged haven't commented in this thread.
AWB really is a bitch, isn't she. Refusal to nag would certainly be a deal-breaker for me.
Speaking of arguments, Dsquared is busting some heads in this thread:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/11/a-plea-for-ideo.html
In the end, I think the demise of my relationship with Max is related to the fact that I'm not a psycho bitch. For a while, he was grateful for the change of pace, but in the end, it's boring to be with someone who likes you as you are.
Some of us have had to recognize what assholes we are as an answer to the shocked question, "Why is it that people don't find me awesome when I am clearly awesome?"
Seems like an unwarranted use of the past perfect.
Recognizing one's own good characteristics isn't egotism, it's honesty. I'm completely serious. Just like with women who are all, "oh, I could never eat that, look at how fat I am!" people who don't realize what their good traits are are annoying as hell. Plus a healthy appreciate of oneself makes it a lot easier, I think, to appreciate others.
690: It really wasn't a comment like "Oh I'm so great no one will date me." I refuse to date super-solicitous, kind, thoughtful people myself, recognizing that those qualities have never, historically, had anything in common with people I'm attracted to. And I think, at least subconsciously, the guys I've dated have rejected me along similar grounds. I feel like I'm being kind and tolerant, but it's read as an unwillingness to engage, which maybe it is.
Refusal to nag would certainly be a deal-breaker for me.
Oh, I think what AWB means is that a lot of people see "eh, I don't care" as a sign that the person saying it is indifferent to them. I can see how after a while that would get frustrating.
Whenever a date does something I don't like, I say "My mother wouldn't like that."
692: Gimme a break, Flip. You seriously don't know misogynistic guys who repeatedly date mean women and then complain about how mean they are?
696 is hilarious. Is your real-life name Norman Bates?
I have a shitload of dealbreaking qualities, but they make me ashamed, so I'm not going to talk about them.
Come to think about it, that hiding-away-shame impulse is probably one of my more problematic aspects.
By the way, you people who say "I'll be ready in 15 minutes" and then take 45 actually to leave drive me barny. But then everyone I've ever dated has done this. I think those of us who are "ready, go!" are a small, small minority.
697: I was struck more by the fact that all your relationship anecdotes end the same way: confirming your perfection. I think I've mentioned before how they remind me of the job interview on The Simpsons, where the candidate before Homer gives the right answers: "I'm a perfectionist. I work too hard. Sometimes I work too much." I love too well, too steadfastly, too truly. I am a super-evolved paragon. Some guys can't handle that, you know?
I'm trying to read through all of the comments on the nature and value of arguing, and I just can't keep up. I reloaded the page, and there were at least 30 new ones.
I remember teo's birthday, because, as eb said above, it is the same as mine. Po-mo, you're right that the holiday is Michaelmas. I do not remember Tia's birthday exactly, but I know that it is around mine, and I have it written down in an e-mail.
Here are my flaws (potential dealbreakers)
1.) I'm quite non-functional if I get less than an average of 7-7.5 hours of sleep per night. If I get only 5 hours of sleep one night, I need to make up a good chunk of it the next night. This is also a reason why certain types fo employers shouldn't hire me.
2.) I am disorganized and a slob. If I ever live with someone in a situation where we share a bedroom and a bathroom, I will need to have enough money to hire a cleaning person. It might even need to be twice a week. My filing is a mess. The only reason that I've managed to succeed at all is that I have a very good memory.
3.) If I respect you or take something seriously, I can be very precise and argumentative unless I am somewhat sad.
4.) I am pretty good about admitting when I am wrong which is not, in itself, a flaw, but it means that I expect other people to admit when they are wrong when they are presented with good evidence to the contrary and am very intolerant when they won't.
Someone I know is an economist who's been writing a paper about why Steven Leavitt's argument about crime and abortion is wrong, and Leavitt has been totally intellectually dishonest. He's fudged his numbers and refused to respond to specific criticisms. Leavitt got a major book deal and is celebrated for his "rogue" theories, so he's not likely to back down. I find this infuriating, because I would be much more likely to say (after quiet reflection and a little bit of time to nurse my wounds), "Yes, I see that I was wrong." On an intellectual level I understand that people lie and make disingenuous arguments, but on an emotional level I can't understand it.
Oh! And I agree with those who find the eye-rolling off-putting. My honey had a very unpleasant habit of saying "whatever" in a tone of voice that is precisely equivalent to eye-rolling. I think that the fourth or fifth time I explained why it drove me nuts he finally stopped doing it.
Related question to all of this: how much of the time do you keep your conversational style dialed back to avoid offending, angering, or annoying the people you're talking to? I'd assume that most of us do most of the time or we wouldn't spend so much time here, but maybe I'm wrong about that.
700: Are you serious? AWB has referred to herself as "emotionally withholding" like 4 times in this thread. Give the woman a little credit for honest introspection for cripes sake.
I think that's a misreading, Flip, though I know it's one that a lot of people here make about me. What I'm trying to say is that all of us think we want people who are nice, tolerant, attractive, thoughtful, and all of that, but very few of us regularly choose those people to date. And a lot of us get rejected for the things we like about ourselves just as much as we're rejected for the things we don't like about ourselves. It just means that compatibility is not about some kind of objective goodness. A lot of growing up for me wrt relationships has been trying to accept that, though I would like to be the kind of person who dates people with objectively positive qualities, I am not really happy when I've got them any more than I am when I'm dating people who don't have them.
700: I think AWB's subsequent comment, "I feel like I'm being kind and tolerant, but it's read as an unwillingness to engage, which maybe it is" is a perfectly honest and adequate answer to 692.
700 bears very little relation to my reading of AWB's comments here.
AWB:
I can no longer be your imaginary friend unless you bitch at me more.
shit, sorry Flippanter ... I didn't mean to pile on and missed the previous 2 replies.
NPH in 704: how much of the time do you keep your conversational style dialed back to avoid offending, angering, or annoying the people you're talking to?
Not enough.
705: Yes, we demonstrate the perfect amount of self-effacement.
And I've never claimed to "love well." I believe I have claimed about a thousand times to be disturbingly indifferent, which is not a major trait of "loving well" as I understand it.
702: BG, your friend may be a few years late with that paper.
What I'm trying to say is that all of us think we want people who are nice, tolerant, attractive, thoughtful, and all of that, but very few of us regularly choose those people to date.
This is worth thinking about. I went out with a guy recently who I kept thinking was not really my type because I found him unbearably hot and typically I've dated guys who are cute in a sort of geeky, weird way. And it struck me that even as I was telling myself that this hot studly thing was not the type I usually go for, it occured to me that there would never have been a moment that I wouldn't have found this guy unbearably hot and that what I really meant was that this guy wasn't the type that I would usually be able to believe would go for me. In other words, not choosing what we might otherwise describe as our ideal type could mean that it's not really our ideal type or that we are self-sabotaging because we don't feel worthy of our ideal type.
And a lot of us get rejected for the things we like about ourselves just as much as we're rejected for the things we don't like about ourselves.
I think this is, in fact, more painful. If someone rejects me for my shoddy fashion sense, my general sloppiness, my shyness/social timidity, it doesn't hit me as hard, because, hey, I hate those things, too. But when I've been rejected for being too sensitive, for overthinking things, that really hurts. Because my vulnerability and analytical nature are things that I put effort into and are things that I think people should appreciate about me. Being rejected for those things is a more real rejection.
716: That's my friend. In Economics, everyone's already read your paper by the time it gets officially published.
716: Are you seriously linking to Steve Sailer?
I went out with a guy recently
I don't remember hearing about this. Withholding real-life activities from the blog is a punishable offense.
I think that I misspelled Levitt, because there's a tobacconist in Harvard Square called Leavitt & Pierce.
I think I can take it, soup, but thank you.
I don't think it's a misreading, AWB, though I don't mean it in an unfriendly way. You've told enough stories about the dreary, tiresome men around you to make clear that you think pretty well of your funloving self and the fun you love and pretty poorly of people who can't get with your program.
720: Did you catch the part that he's unbearably hot? Because that's important.
I did vaguely allude to him in another thread...
722:you think pretty well of your funloving self
God forbid. Burn the witch!
721: Do they still sell really nice chess and backgammon sets and similar paraphernalia?
717: I agree, Di, there are definitely big shifts in my dating past where I thought, "Why is it I only date guys who have X negative quality?" and then realized I could change, and could ask more for myself. Did I really like dating guys who were super-controlling? No, I really didn't, and I stopped letting that happen, and started using that as a reason to not date someone. But there are other "negative" qualities that it turns out I can't seem to abandon as necessary for stimulating my interest, to the point that I don't think of them as negative anymore.
Flippanter in 725: Do they still sell really nice chess and backgammon sets and similar paraphernalia?.
Yes, they do.
722: Another way of phrasing that would be that I value eagerness and openness in myself and others, to the point that I don't tend to make friends with or date people who aren't "game." It's not that I think those are bad people or that I judge them; I just know somewhat where my compatibility patterns lie.
A lot of people in this and the other thread have said they don't like doing a wide range of activities, and that they're not particularly "fun." That's fine! I'd hardly expect that every person on Unfogged is someone I'd be compatible with as a date, or who would enjoy dating me. Doesn't mean they're bad people or that I disrespect them. That's an interpretive leap that I think gets made pretty often about me, and one that I, perhaps, need to guard against in the future. Should I append notes to all my comments that say "But if any negative perception I've ever had about any real-life acquaintance of mine applies to anyone here, know that it's OKAY because you're my INTERNET FRIEND"?
That is, I have a hard time understanding why people who don't even know me IRL feel so personally hurt when I say I'm incompatible with someone from my own life.
That is, I have a hard time understanding why people who don't even know me IRL feel so personally hurt when I say I'm incompatible with someone from my own life.
I don't feel hurt. I just think the way you toot your own gates of polished horn is funny.
Flippanter, 730 is pretty obnoxious.
722: see 9. There are qualities that I basically like about myself, but which also have their potential downsides, & I can be seriously insecure about the potential downsides. If you have a very different set of neuroses, it can come off all: "my flaw? I'm just too much woman for a lot of guys," or "I just give too much," or similar, but that doesn't mean it's accurate....AWB triggers some weird residual "yikes, she's way too cool, she'd hate me if she knew me in real life" paranoia sometimes, but in fact I don't have much basis for thinking that & it's neither nice nor justified to hold her personally responsible for my leftover neuroses from high school.
As were 692, 700, and 722. Look, Flip, if you're making a friendly joke you drop it if someone sounds like they're taking it seriously. Going on repeatedly about how comic you find someone's vanity is really hostile and unpleasant.
If you want to be hostile and unpleasant, that's your prerogative, but own up to it.
Am I supposed to read 730 as if you "don't mean it in an unfriendly way," too? I think it's pretty clear you have no friendly feelings toward me, which is fine, but don't expect me to interpret kindly the comments of someone who takes so much pleasure in mocking the very things I'm trying to figure out about myself.
AWB triggers some weird residual "yikes, she's way too cool, she'd hate me if she knew me in real life" paranoia sometimes
This is kind of funny, because I get more of a vibe of: "Wow, AWB is so cool, and she'd probably be really nice to me in person even though we all know I'm not one of the cool kids." And actually that applies to alot of people commenting and posting on this blog, which is probably why I waste so much time here.
Walt Someguy: No doubt rational expectations is still the solid core of a lot of economics. Same with the intuitively-related efficient markets hypothesis. But my genuine belief is that those beliefs dominate because they are still reasonable approximations of the truth in most circumstances (people are risk-averse, they like more stuff, rich people care less about a given marginal amount of money than poor people, etc.) but especially that they make all the math a lot easier than actually trying to solve macro situations with Prospect Theory without resorting to modelling (always seen as a cheap way out in theory discussions, unfortunately). Economists were/are just very reluctant to change to a different model with much more complicated calculations without some emperical evidence of its predictive superiority, which seems sensible enough.
But I think the behavioral field is getting much more respected, especially as it successfully predicts more results at the micro level. We have this lecturer, who seems to have specialized in identifying market pricing anomalies driven by incomplete information, poor inference, or prospect theory implications. And of course Thaler, who pretty much created prospect theory based on Kahnmann and Tversky's work.
I've got high hopes for the field, and might even join it should I decide to go for a PhD after finishing my current degree. But I can understand why most finance and econ people prefer to avoid vague behavioral explanations for phenomena, since down that road lies the "on the veldt..." laughingstock. Better to have firm quantitative models that can be supported or disconfirmed with good enough data and clever enough statisticians.
"Wow, AWB is so cool, and she'd probably be really nice to me in person even though we all know I'm not one of the cool kids."
I feel this way about the whole blog. People who can't stand insecurity definitely shouldn't date me.
That's 'cause the cool kids haven't really existed since high school, and I kind of doubt any of us were among them then. After that, you should've had the realization that interesting people come in all sortsa crazy packages, so you might as well be nice to everyone.
Plus, mean people suck. AWB knows this, as do we all.
On track for 1,000 comments, and no one has said "A person shouldn't date me if he/she is hung up on physical appearance". Hmmmm. (Actually, I give PGD partial credit on this one for his comment about thinning hair.)
I suspect Labs might be cool. I'm not coming up with much of anyone else around here. Certainly not me.
729: my guess is that because many of us are introverted nerds & you don't sound like one. That's not quite right, but something along those lines, some charismatic quality that comes through in your writing that I think I lack & thus find intimidating...I've thought about my sister-in-law: my God, if you were my freshman year college roommate I would have been absolutely terrified of you & convinced you thought I wasn't cool enough for you. In fact, this would've been sheer paranoia on my part--she's a sweetheart & I was her maid of honor when she got married.
741: "cool" is a slippery word, but there are some widely accepted values of it for which no professional philosopher could qualify.
740: I said that in the other thread! I'm good-enough looking to be not-embarrassing as a friend, but not pretty enough for most people to date or be physically attracted to.
742: I'm not terribly cool IRL. I like some cool things, but I'm not as genuinely hip or witty as, uh, any of my friends. (I don't even think I'm in the top 75% of witty commenters here.) I write clearly, but that's misleading.
743--
well, no; not qua philosopher, of course.
but perhaps if you didn't know their profession?
740.1 is laughable. I've seen pictures.
Or maybe AWB is being entirely sincere, and is in fact someone who
1. has intimacy issues
2. is trying to figure out why she is attracted to certain kinds of men, most of whom are not great relationship material
3. is trying to figure out what she has to offer
4. is honestly thinking, "huh, i like to have fun. people say that fun-having is a good relationship skill, so that can't be it. i like sex. sex-liking is supposed to be admirable, so that's not it" etc.
In other words, maybe she is who she says she is: someone who isn't good at relationships, who is thinking consciously about why, and who is inevitably (like most people who are honest about their good qualities as well as their bad) going to sound conceited/arrogant/vain. Both because we're not accustomed to people being forthright about their attractive qualities, and because she *really is bad at relationships* and part of that includes the very same offputting (to some) thinking-out-loud kind of parsing that she's using to try to figure out why.
If 746 is to 744.1, then I guess it's possible that it's my repulsive personality that's the problem. Flip wins!
745: yes, it's true that some--perhaps Labs, even--could probably fake cool fairly effectively, especially among those who knew not their trade. But they could never really be cool. Again, I'm using "cool" in what I view as an an unhelpful way, but a way in which it is not-uncommonly used. Especially among the high-school set, which I think is what was under discussion.
I presume that 746 is referring to 744. It is indeed laughable, as is the proposition that AWB habitually presents herself here as perfection by any measure.
We're discussing this again?
I personally am made uncomfortable by people who admit their faults right up-front, because it happens so rarely, and it seems like it's a "Okay, now your turn, you have an obligation to deprecate yourself now" situation. But I have to try not to respond in that way.
Yes, 744.1, sorry. It must be your repulsive personality.
Although she really is quite pretty, and her personality is not repulsive. Just (imho) eager and exroverted, but a little skittish.
749: What's weird is I wasn't cool in h.s. or college, but now college students (usually) think I'm cool. So bizarre.
I write clearly, but that's misleading
How so?
I see I've messed with the wrong fan club. My sincerest self-criticisms.
747 seems exactly accurate to me.
Also, AWB comes off as charismatic here because she's constantly talking about how she goes to bars and parties, meets new people, and makes out with them. That seems to be a great attribute, especially if you're a somewhat geeky sort who has longed for the ability to do this easily. But someone (especially a woman) who is forthright, direct, and loves to make out could pull this off without necessarily being all that charismatic.
Also, my hair is thinning less in an absolute sense than relative to its former luxurious state. I haven't reached physical decrepitude, but it's becoming a whole lot easier to project the road that will lead me there. SCA-RY. I'm past a lot of my earlier fears in life, but the aging and eventual death one is still going strong.
My college students think I'm an unbearable loser. It's cute. They tease me about my clothes, my musical tastes, my slang, my hobbies. It's a reminder of how different all those things signify among different communities. (Like the vintage clothing thing--I have a weird sweater I got at a used-clothes place that all my friends think is really cute, and my students who asked where I got it were like, "You're wearing something someone else wore on their body? You know that's wayyyy out of fashion, too, right?")
704: You have to ask?
You, not so much.
(Damn telephone calls--lost the flow of the conversation yet again.)
756: Oh, honestly. You say something nasty, people are going to say, "Hey, that was nasty." Be happy! You successfully communicated!
"cool" is a slippery word, but there are some widely accepted values of it for which no professional philosopher could qualify.
I've known a few pretty cool philosophers, but it's true that it's rare.
those beliefs dominate because they are still reasonable approximations of the truth in most circumstances
I think a reasonable first approximation to human behavior would be: follow the habits engrained in me from my upbringing or social training unless reality practically forces me to change them. Then comes maybe, chase shiny pretty things regardless of their effects on my long-term happiness, although laziness competes with that.
Better to have firm quantitative models that can be supported or disconfirmed with good enough data and clever enough statisticians.
Ah, youth...
760: I don't think I was nasty at all. Maybe a little sharp.
That's fine! I'd hardly expect that every person on Unfogged is someone I'd be compatible with as a date, or who would enjoy dating me. Doesn't mean they're bad people or that I disrespect them. That's an interpretive leap that I think gets made pretty often about me, and one that I, perhaps, need to guard against in the future.
No, it's an interpretive leap that people need to stop making already. I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't enjoy dating me and I wouldn't enjoy dating you, which means absolutely nothing about either of our merits as human beings or about our ability to happily interact on-line or, should the opportunity ever arise, other non-dating contexts. I really don't get the hostility at all.
755: I just mean that, given the opportunity to think out what I'm going to say, in writing, I might give off an air of being with-it and articulate in ways that I'm often not in speech. I'm a very good lecturer, and can talk well about my work, but I can be painfully awkward/weird/unfunny in conversation at times, especially if I'm nervous, which is a lot of the time.
763: How do you distinguish between nasty and sharp? Anyway, when lots of people are reading what you wrote as kind of mean, if you dind't mean anything mean, it might be worthwhile to go back and try to figure out where the problem is.
763: I also read those comments as way over-the-top hostile.
766: What is sharp cuts; what is nasty corrupts.
763: I agree with you, actually (even though I disagreed with your actual contentions). People vary a lot on the sharp/nasty distinction though.
But I think people should be free to bruise each other's feelings just a bit, even if they are sort of unfair about it. Comity all the time is boring.
763 -- As a response to being called out on an unfair reading, "fan club" is assholery.
What you said made me cry, Flip, which you'll probably take as evidence of your excellent and necessary insightfulness into the failures of my character. But in the end, I like being reminded that I'm not among friends. Single-blind day did that for me, too. Feeling comfortable and liked is a recipe for honesty and introspection that doesn't belong here.
Again, there's no rule that no one's allowed to be mean, or sharp, or anything like that. I'd certainly be in trouble if there were.
But I think people should be free to bruise each other's feelings just a bit, even if they are sort of unfair about it. Comity all the time is boring.
Please tell me you're kidding. Let's be intentionally hurtful to spice things up?
I find the hostility to AWB here rather puzzling. Earlier I speculated that she's confessional, in the sense of too much information. She also seems to be seriously talking about things important to her, the way Teo also does, when most of us are more attuned to chatting and razzing. From time to time the razzing can get overserious, whichmakes things touchy.
763: I also read those comments as way over-the-top hostile.
I as well.
Please tell me you're kidding. Let's be intentionally hurtful to spice things up?
Get back in the kitchen and make me a pie, woman.
772 to 769. Flip, you sound like you've got some screwy idea that being hostile to AWB is speaking truth to power or something. This is an E-list blog, where a bunch of people hang out and chat. If you want to be unpleasant, you're doing it to amuse yourself: it doesn't have any larger benefits. If that's (and the ensuing irritation you'll get in return) what amuses you, then great, but that's all that's going on.
I don't agree that we should be hurtful just to spice things up, Di, but I think people should be clear about whose comments they're second-guessing as the products of vanity/stupidity/whatever. I usually don't make negative comments here about people, and I think I should start. I'm not good at fighting and don't like to do it, but what's there to talk about if everyone argues solely through assent?
I want pie, but I'm too sick to get up and make it. Thanks a lot, Ned; now I'm going to go all unsatiated.
This is an E-list blog
Speaking of gratuitous nastiness!
771: No, quite the opposite. Confirmation of my excellent and necessary insight would have taken the form of a reply saying something like "You're right, Flippanter, I do...." Crying is not a result that I seek in any case, and indicates that I made my points badly or made bad points.
I apologize.
Yeah, AWB doesn't even have her own blog.
Whatever happened to the Anne Althouse bashing? If FLab can start that up again, we'll be reminded once again of how lucky we are to not have an egomaniac around here trying to get us to worship her.
Surely in New York you can have delicious pie delivered to your door?
Tiny American flags for everyone else!
776: Yes, and more broadly, I have a poorly-worked-out theory that a largish chunk of the personal unpleasantness that comes up around here has to do with weird perceptions of power relationships within the commentariat and differences between people's self-perceptions of status (which are mostly based on their real lives) and perceptions that others hold based on interactions here. But I have to take my kid to the doctor now so I can't stick around to argue about it enough to figure out whether I really believe it or not.
What is sharp cuts; what is nasty corrupts.
Nasty is putting someone down on a personal level, especially by poking at something they've said straight up is something that bothers them.
And I'm not trying to bitch at you, Flip, or "defend" AWB, who is perfectly capable of self-defense. I'm trying to point out that there is a distinction between giving someone shit, arguing with them (both okay) and personally putting them down. Which isn't okay.
783.--I now live in one of more, um, slowly gentrifying areas of Brooklyn (hint: it rhymes with "do or die"). I rather doubt that the halal bakery around the corner delivers.
Oops, in light of 780 I shouldn't have said anything. Please ignore my previous comment.
779: Oh, you're right, we're C list, I was being hyperbolically blog-deprecating.
785: Yeah, I think this touches on something.
I'm not sure I buy 785. I think some people just don't like some other people, feel like no one else sees what's so annoying about the other person, and eventually it all boils over into some nasty comments. That's mostly fine and to be expected, but B is right that attacking other commenters personally is to be avoided.
I think y'all should start beating up on me again. AWB's a nice girl, who cries when people are mean to them. I don't.
789, 790: You're both wrong. The problem is uppity women. But there is no salve for that.
B will do anything to be the center of attention.
But in the end, I like being reminded that I'm not among friends...Feeling comfortable and liked is a recipe for honesty and introspection that doesn't belong here.
That makes me sad, AWB. I'm sorry that you feel that way.
790: Not in light of the 'messed with the wrong fan club' comment? That seems to explicitly frame the interaction in terms of social capital. (Flip, sorry to keep talking about it given that you've apologized -- I'm just using your comment as an illustration in a general discussion.)
And that seems to be related to what you were concerned a while back -- people wanting to express opinions that they thought would get frozen out by a perceived cabal of insiders? I never got all that clear on it, but it did seem to be also kind of about social capital.
776: I would rather eat beets than use the phrase "speaking truth to power."
Everybody be nice, or I'll shoot you in the face.
794: No, I will! I'm uppity, honest I am!
i don't buy the status-mismatch thing either. i think it's more a matter of some (most?) people coming here to idly chat or maybe argue with each other, and others coming here to reveal intimate personal details. in the first case, community standards say that someone who thinks "wow, that's really screwy" should say so, preferably in a humorous manner; in the second case standards say they should keep their mouth shut.
Someone here told me about beets with goat cheese rather than vinegar, which was how I'd always had them before. Mmmm.
Not in light of the 'messed with the wrong fan club' comment?
Maybe we're getting hung up on the definitions of "social capital" and "power." Maybe thinking that no one else sees what you see, or no one else agrees, is also a way of feeling like you have little social capital.
797: No, I think the fan club thing is more about people not understanding why someone is being defended, rather than disliking them in the first place.
I think the not-liking has to do with the not-understanding, of course, but it isn't about the popularity issue; it's more about the not "getting" someone's tone. That and, to be honest, I think people get weird about girls who are frank about sex and think they're bragging. Which maybe they are a little bit, but so?
There is nothing wrong with beets and goat cheese AND vinegar (say, in a vinaigrette). Nothing wrong at all.
"Wow, that's really screwy" is different from "your personal failings amuse me and inspire my scorn."
804: I don't think so -- I can't see a set of community standards under which Flip's series of comments on how full of herself AWB is wouldn't have looked unusually hostile. Friendly, chatty jokes you drop if people are taking them the wrong way.
803: Aww, John, still mad at me about whatever it was we were fighting about the other day? (I honestly don't even remember.)
Which maybe they are [bragging] a little bit, but so?
As the world's most excellently moral person ever, I can can state with some authority that bragging is the single worst thing a person can do.
"Wow, that's really screwy" is different from "your personal failings amuse me and inspire my scorn."
Amen.
FWIW, I truly do not think AWB brags about her sex life. I do sometimes, because I'm an attention whore and I think it's funny.
807: I think the term you're looking for is "player hater."
Maybe thinking that no one else sees what you see, or no one else agrees, is also a way of feeling like you have little social capital.
I guess, but it doesn't seem to explain the behavior. "Everyone seems to like person X. But I don't, I see flaws that other people are blind to. No one agrees with me about this," doesn't get me to "So pointing them out will be fun and entertaining!" You'd expect exactly the response that happened, along the lines of "Huh? What are you being unpleasant about?"
Friendly, chatty jokes you drop if people are takig them the wrong way.
What? That's crazy. If someone's taking your jokes too seriously, that's when you know it's time to turn the knife and really dig. Inflicting pain is half the point of humor. The more painful the better.
I've never thought AWB was bragging. She's been frank, and she hasn't always been happy with how things were going.
814: Actually I had another, specific term in mind and avoided it on purpose.
The more painful the better.
Speaking of which, how's the tapeworm?
I hope I didn't contribute to the hostility, because I really & truly don't think my or anyone else's high school "I'm not cool enough" paranoia ought to be AWB's problem. I just meant that people who are insecure about totally different things often have a hard time really fully getting each other's insecurities--but that's exactly why it's totally hostile & uncool to tell people: "you're being insincere, here's what you REALLY mean". Especially to someone who actually seems unusually sincere & honest & self-revealing.
Fun and entertaining doesn't seem to be the desired end, it's protesting the arrangement of social capital.
816: You've always been willing to go that extra mile for a little additional awkwardness, true.
821: Well, yeah, I kind of agree with you (see 785, 789), but Ogged seems to disagree.
This is one of those moments where, if there were fewer commenters, we could all just take turns saying one nice thing about everyone.
I, for example, have very nice ears.
785: You're on to something. I don't know if it can be made formal but I've seen it in action often enough going back to the early 80's on Compuserve. There's often a great deal of cognitive dissonance (and then hostility) generated by differences in meat-status and cyber-status.
Brock's tapeworm is very healthy.
(Does that count, if the tapeworm doesn't itself comment?)
There's often a great deal of cognitive dissonance (and then hostility) generated by differences in meat-status and cyber-status
Have you seen it running both ways? do the high status irls feel they're owed more respect?
did anyone else ever have to play the "ungame" in their family?
830: wasn't 785 about high-status irls?
809 (stale, i know): the series was hostile. the first two didn't seem that personally hostile to me.
Nobody here would kill a bum for sport.
832: I don't think I ever had to play it, but I saw it in at least one therapist's office. Even as a kid it seemed way too touchy-feely for me. (Besides, what's the point of a game you can't win?)
Further to 839,
The Ungame: Christian Version. (First google hit.)
830: I've seen it run in all directions. A high-cyber-status kid can be attacked for not having any real life experience, anyone with lots of real experience can be attacked for being out of touch with "now", and so on ad nauseam.
[(light bulb!) That's why the primary campaigns and debates are giving me flashbacks to forum moderation days.]
TBH it's a somewhat insidious thing, I sometimes find myself tempted to dismiss some arguments or observations from here simply because I'm older (and therefore much, much wiser) instead of actually thinking about them.
820: For what it's worth, I'm not sure why insecurity, paranoia or lack of social capital would be at bottom in such things. It may motivate some speakers (commenters), but surely shouldn't be the default assumption in understanding someone's dissenting comments.
804 is right: It's about community standards and when you keep your mouth shut, when you don't, not about protesting social capital. Many people here are self-confident enough that they aren't operating from an aggrieved sense of power imbalance.
I'm just trying to picture a set of community standards under which the series of comments in question wouldn't look oddly hostile. Saying 'community standards' sounds like it's something peculiar to this blog, and I'm not seeing that.
I sometimes find myself tempted to dismiss some arguments or observations from here simply because ...
This is pretty insidious regardless of how you finish the sentence. Assuming you are by choice conversing with people you have reason to believe aren't idiots, I guess.
Teo has an XLMOP.
I do? That'll come in handy for cleaning the floors.
I'm trying to figure out a set of standards in which having social capital at Unfogged isn't like being taller than the average six-year-old. It might be true, but who cares?
I just read the last 400 comments, and realized that Flippanter's 494 was not a compliment. And I had been so pleased! AWB, I hope you'll marry me anyway!
It means I'm extremely tall, thank you very much.
I'm trying to figure out a set of standards in which having social capital at Unfogged isn't like being taller than the average six-year-old.
I'm valedictorian of summer school!
I came in third at the All-County Masters Turkey Trot in my age group!
I'm taller than PK. And he's seven!
I'm just trying to picture a set of community standards under which the series of comments in question wouldn't look oddly hostile.
Well, bang bang bang. That happens here.
Saying 'community standards' sounds like it's something peculiar to this blog, and I'm not seeing that.
Probably not peculiar to this blog that one should keep one's mouth shut sometimes. What's specific to this blog is when one should do so. That's not terribly unusual for any community.
I don't comment competitively. I'm strictly house league.
I only comment on weekends, and by community standards, I really should train more.
When I comment, I don't think about the numbers, but about how good it makes me feel.
I've backed off my peak capacity, but I still know I got it when it counts.
Parsimon, I'm sending you an email. If the address is real.
I see I've messed with the wrong fan club. My sincerest self-criticisms.
Jeez. As was mentioned earlier today, I am often mocking of the people that I like. If I do not feel some affection for you, I typically ignore you.
But, being nasty is just not cool. Tease all you want, but jeeez. Of all people, why does AWB get so much grief. I really don't understand it.
I am certain that I can be insufferable with my spelling mistakes and constant talk about my kids. I just do not understand why some people seem so bothered by AWB.
Per 846: it sucks to be the shortest kid in fifth grade, and it feels good to be the smartest kid in summer school. And most americans would rather be richer than their neighbor at $50,000/yr than trying to keep up at $70,000.
As much as we all joke about how lame we are for spending all this time here (and we do -- and we are), this is a social place with all that that entails.
People who comment here more are more central, and seem more popular. There's a steep curve from even being a semi-regular (like me) to being someone at the center of most of the conversations; I imagine even for people who comment much more than I do, there's the feeling of "jeez, this has been going on forever, I'm going to spend half the time I have just catching up." Yet that feels better than turning it off and going away; it is a cool comments section; the rat likes the lever.
So you get social capital by commenting a lot. You get more by having people respond to your comments.
It can often feel like a party to which you're always invited, but most of the action is in a central room with walls of glass into which you can always look but which you can only infrequently enter.
Add all the caveats about how if this is feeling particularly true, you should go play outside, but it's still real.
I'm trying to figure out a set of standards in which having social capital at Unfogged isn't like being taller than the average six-year-old. It might be true, but who cares?
Not so much that anyone cares about social capital at Unfogged as that perceived social capital at Unfogged shapes interactions in weird ways. If I set out to argue with B about some topic related to feminism, I'd see that interaction as little ol' me taking on an authority figure. Meanwhile B's self-perception is presumably shaped less by what goes on here than what goes on in the rest of her life, and I imagine that there are days when she doesn't exactly feel like much of an authority figure. So if I see myself as scrappy underdog trying to overcome a presumption that she's the authority, and she sees herself as just another commenter kicking ideas around, we may end up in a dynamic where she's finding me abrasive and uncharitable in my readings of her comments and I'm finding her smug and condescending, or something like that.
Sorry to pick on you, B, but it's only for purposes of illustration, and you did ask....
Wrongshore:
You mean I just have to comment more? I dont need to get fake breasts?
I just want to be the richest commenter.
I dont need to get fake breasts?
Past 40 you can always just grow your own. Natural being better and all that.
heebie, it's the internet. tell us you're the richest and it shall be so! for example, I am the commenter with the largest breasts -- even larger than will's fake ones. Don't believe me? Have you ever seen any proof to the contrary?
Does AWB get a lot of grief outside this thread? I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't noticed. To be entirely frank, since AWB always seemed really cool to me(blogcrush!), I assumed that she seemed really cool to everybody else, too .
860: Not picked on. I totally *am* an authority figure, and don't you forget it.
740: On track for 1,000 comments, and no one has said "A person shouldn't date me if he/she is hung up on physical appearance".
Well, I think I said something along these lines a month or so ago. But isn't that some kind of tautology or something? (Mr. w-lfs-n, come here, I need you!) If someone is hung-up on physical appearance, they're not going to let me past the first cut. So if I were answering baa's question, I guess I'd figure that this was sort of a given.
So, let's assume that someone interested in me is not hung up on physical appearance (see! there's the tautology!) People should not date me if:
1. Their political views are far enough right (which isn't really very far) and nekulturny enough that they think I'm some kind of Joe Stalin Jr.
2. They have a problem with bibliophilia.
3. They read movie reviews and ask "Why can't the reviewer just say whether it was good or not?"
4. They do not enjoy regular physical contact.
5. They are adamantly in favor of Tia-style kissing to the exclusion of other forms of kissing.
6. They think I am going to change. Because I'm not. And that's just the way I am.
But some of us are pure honey.
869: Whoops, "bibliophilia" s/b "dipsomania"
Some of can only sting once and then we die?
Tia-style kissing:
http://notickling.typepad.com/blog/2007/09/kisskiss.html
874 -- That's from a thread on Tia's blog. You're never going to have enough social capital to go head to head with the queen bees if you don't read the archives, and the private blogs of former front-pagers. And the private blogs of commenters. And the myspace pages of random people various of us meet along the way. There's always another level to aspire to, like one of those marketing cults.
I think most of the chronically unhappy singles on Unfogged haven't commented in this thread.
No, I've just been otherwise occupied tonight. Speaking of Enneagrams, I am a Type Seven. Myers-Briggs stylee, I'm a ISFP. What's funny is that those designations are at least as accurate a description of me as my astrological sign. People shouldn't (haven't) date(d) me because I (am) can be such a selfish twat. I hate driving, firstly. I do not own a car; I am not going to get one; and I will not drive if you ask me to. Trust me--it's for your own good. Still, "Let's go on a date. Pick me up at 8" does tend to weed out the unwilling. I am amazingly bad with money. I don't know how it happens--it just runs through my fingers. I like buying shit. So, yeah, I'm as likely to be totally broke the next time you want to do something (or I want to ask you to do something). There are almost no topics or activities I haven't or won't take an interest in, but the flip side there is that I tend to flit from interest to interest. If I become bored, I may have difficulty hiding it. Likewise, argument for its own sake doesn't entertain me.
I'm actually pretty affectionate physically, I like to touch and be touched and I think sex is fun, but feeling the obligation to be physically intimate with someone over longer stretches of time tends to exhaust me and make me anxious. I've never met anyone I wanted to sleep with, every night, indefinitely. That's hell on relationships, I've learned.
I'm lazy and moody. I lack focus. I can avoid conflict for months, even years, then suddenly have a total fucking raving meltdown.
I'm sure there's more, but I'm (I confess) not sober enough to think of more right now. That's right: teetotalers shouldn't date me, either.
Shit. I wasted my one sting. Farewell Unfog....
Just to clarify: Nothing against Tia, her kisses, kissees or kissers, but it's totally not my scene.
A good kiss makes such a difference.
881:
Agreed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gproa6vzgws
I guess I'm in the anti-Tia-kissing camp, in that it's kind of a turn-off if it feels like the kiss is merely a modeling of fucking style or something. It seems like they're trying too hard to "tell" me something rather than just, you know, doing and enjoying the actual kissing. Then again, I've been very lucky and haven't run into more than a couple of bad kissers in my life.
Of course, fucking style can vary widely, too, and a kiss modeled after bad sex is just insult added to injury...
884 should end, "Or maybe I'm just not picky."
trying too hard to "tell" me something
What if you're being stalked by assassins, and your kisser is trying to spell out a warning on your tongue?
I love how we're starting a discussion of this (likely highly contentious) issue almost 900 comments in.
Bad kissing/sex is all alike; good kissing/sex are good in lots of different ways.
Let me see if I can say this without offending anyone.
Regarding AWB, I had the feeling for a long time that some percentage of AWB comments caused me to grind my teeth slightly when I read them.
I've come around to the position of Emerson in 774, that not only is AWB entertaining, a good writer, and is willing to talk serious about personal concerns which is to be commended, but I can understand how people are rubbed the wrong way by her, because I've had that experience.
In my case the irritation was caused by a specific combination of three elements.
(1) Differing temperments. I'm very much a "universe in a grain of sand" type of person, and AWB is "hard gemlike flame" type of person.
(2) AWB is very engaging and, when she's on a roll can take up a lot of the oxygen on the blog.
(3) More than most of the regular commenters AWB can seem like she's posting comments or questions that demand a very specific reply and, because of (1), that reply is so different from my instincts that I end up metaphorically muttering to myself "I disagree with the premises of the question."
It seems like it's the combination of all of those elemtents that was irritating, so anyone who perceive any one of the three probably had no reason for complaint and, after I thought about it, I have no reason for complain. But I had to think about it.
AWB, abologies for talking about you in third person.
I'm not trying to re-open the argument, but that's my perspective.
How contentious could it be, Teo? (She naively asked... ) No one's going to come out in favor of bad sex, are they?
Well, good sex might lead to a relationship, which could be controversial in some quarters.
No one's going to come out in favor of bad sex, are they?
Didn't we just have that thread?
Is there anyone here who's in favor of exclusively Tia-style kissing? I get what's attractive about it, but all the time?
I think I need more field research to answer that question. I'll report back.
I'm pretty sure the only kissing I've ever done was Tia-style, but it was a long time ago.
How contentious could it be, Teo? (She naively asked... ) No one's going to come out in favor of bad sex, are they?
You must be new here.
What is kissing Tia-style?
I haven't really been following this thread since somewhere in the 300s, I think.
My mystification: done away with!
This thread is much larger than it should be. Somebody should certainly be embarrassed.
AWB is "hard gemlike flame" type of person.
Nonsense. She's more of a "Marius the Epicurean" type of person.
(Actually, she's probably more of a On the Sublime type of person.)
(Actually, she's probably more of a On the Sublime type of person.)
Mathematical or dynamic?
I think I may be the anti-Tia. My favorite form is kissing is teasing with the lips. I especially like it in the winter, when my lips are dry and extra-sensitive to every touch.
I will add this to my list of reasons why I am undateable.
Guys, there was once a time when I felt like it was sort of tacitly understood that people wouldn't link to my blog from Unfogged. (I know Ezra and Scott Lemieux linked a couple times.) It was an understanding not perfectly observed, I guess, but I went back to my personal blog in part because I felt like I got so upset at Unfogged I could have a space to express whatever I wanted to there that wouldn't be a part of the conversation here. This was both for my sake and for the sake of Unfogged, since my negative emotions would create conflict if I were tempted to express them here, not that y'all can't generate it your own selves, but once it got to the point when I wasn't engaged in relationship-maintaining comity seeking, I wasn't going to help the blog by saying my piece, and it wasn't really fair to just show up on occasion and be hostile. But the temptation was so strong it had to be exercised somewhere.
The other thing is that I talk about my sex-and-emotional life in personal, vulnerable ways there, and it's not that I mind lots of people reading it, but if everything I wrote there became incorporated into the narrative thread here, I couldn't write about it there, because people might be mean and I have no control over the discourse here, whereas on my blog I do.
Since I'm not maintaining the blog at the moment it doesn't really matter, and whatever, my blog isn't a big seekrit, and it's not a huge deal, but if I do start posting again, I'd prefer that the boundary weren't quite so porous.
Anyway, I enjoy on the lips tongue-stingy kissing, if that isn't clear. But in a 45 minute makeout session when I don't get some serious tongue, I will feel deprived.
My only cluster of traits I think is genuinely obnoxious is the following (it's a lot of traits that are really all one big trait): I am really scarily messy if no one sees my space, much better in shared space (not saying much), but my exbf still described me as a little Tasmanian Devil leaving a trail of chaos in her wake, I'm unpunctual, I'm easily overwhelmed, I have serious trouble managing my life, and I not-so-secretly fantasize about having someone to just take care of all my shit for me, or at least be really hands on about helping me manage it. I would be a bad partner who lists "independent" as one of the first things he desires in a mate. It's not that I'm incapable of being independent; I have to be, but someone who highly values competence and self-possession in a mate should not date me.
I'm also a toothbrush-and towel-sharing not-many-boundaries sort and I'm the type to like a ton of engagement in relationships, but I think that's a compatibility thing, not something obnoxious. I would seriously freak the squares, but again, that's a compatibility thing.
Oh, wait, I thought of something. This is something where I don't acknowledge that the trait of mine is annoying; I think other people are uptight, but: people who are made nervous or uncomfortable by the possibility that my behavior (singing or dancing in public, making myself a turban out of a Tinker Bell sheet, etc.) might draw attention shouldn't date me. Except they should, because people like that have dated me and liked it, and I make up for it in lots of ways.
For the set of people for whom the above is not a problem, well, it's just a tragedy there's only one of me. I'm sexy, warm, sweet, funny, adorable, lively, smart, and very easy to get along with. I love sex in a kazillion different forms and when happy I commit myself to making all my partner's dreams come true in that department. I have my own opinion about things but I'm not overbearing, I know how to have a fight, I can have fun going out or staying in, and did I mention I'm as comfortable at a dive bar as at a fancy restaurant? I am honestly mystified sometimes by people's lack of desire to date me, because I am awesome.
I could not date Hamilton-Lovecraft.
Tia, considering that you link to or talk about without linking to threads on unfogged on your blog, that there should be no links to your blog here—from people in the comments, no less, who for all I know are not party to the whole history involved—seems an odd request to make. (I, who can be presumed to be somewhat familiar with the history than others, wasn't even aware that this was tacitly understood, which is after all the problem with tacit understandings.)
Tia, I don't think the implicit ban on linking to your blog from here makes any sense, especially when you have made posts out of pulling comments from threads here and tearing them apart, out of context, on your blog. Doesn't that assume that the blogosphere is porous in your mind, too?
It was in part for the sake of this blog that I asked it, Ben. But whatever. Perhaps I'll go take the blog down now. I'm not keeping it, anyway.
Besides, Tia, you're basically a regular commenter here.
It's a non-issue; I just took it down. Feel free not to discuss it further if you don't care to.
Is this awkward tense conversation day on Unfogged? I'm wondering if this is an opportune time to mention that I'm carrying teo's baby. And I'm keeping it, teo! And I'm raising it to think that Jerry Lee Lewis is the father!
913: you forgot to tell John Emerson not to preach, but to send regular child support payments.
On a hot dog!
Tia, I'm sorry to see your blog go, although I realize you haven't been writing it lately and it probably is a good idea to take it down if it's not serving its purpose anymore.
Fuck. That was a can of worms that I had not even realized existed (except to the extent that I knew you, Tia, had decided to go to quasi-lurker status here awhile ago), to say nothing of wanting to actually open it. I'm sorry, I really did not mean to transgress that boundary, regardless of whether it was explicit or not. I realize that it is probably not reasonable for me to feel like such a heel right now, but I do. I apologize.
Don't feel bad, minneapolitan. Again, I was around for all the precipitating events, and while I would have figured that Tia wouldn't be happy to be linked to from here, it's not like that was obvious even to someone who was following from all the way through. While I can't speak for Tia, clearly, I'd assume that 906 was meant to make her desires explicit, given that they weren't, rather than to chastise you for not knowing what she was thinking.
And Tia, I'm sorry to see your blog go; I've been hoping you'd wake it up again sometime.
minn, there's no need to apologize whatsoever. LB is right that I only meant to make my desires explicit, not that I thought anyone had done anything wrong.
Perhaps at some point I'll waken the blog again and observe a strict no talking about Unfogged policy so it will be fair to ask that people don't talk about my blog here.
meanwhile, I realize I really need to turn to all the way lurker status, so, like, no one needs to worry about anything or feel bad and I'm sorry for the disruption, regularly scheduled programming, etc. it was not maintaining my blog that made it tempting to comment, because without having that little daily outlet for affiliative impulses, I look for another, but in the words of the Russian proverb, just because a man's arms are too short does not mean he should use a toothbrush to masturbate, and I'm going to exercise some self-control starting now.
I enjoy your comments here Tia. I'm sorry that you want to become a lurker.
I am always surprised when people get upset or too freaked out when they discover that other people are different from them.
Isn't that part of the beauty of the internet? There are a lot of people with whom I disagree or whose actions I might not follow, but why on earth should they get me upset?*
*Except those anti-choice a-holes who want to harm abortion providers. They really piss me off!!
Teo has an XLMOP.
I think the abbreviation for "Member of Parliament" is just MP.
I disappeared (to see the girl in 42 again, actually), so I missed the chance to clarify 769. Sorry. I certainly didn't mean people should be deliberately cruel in any way, just that the level of self-censorship necessary to completely avoid bruising others feelings can conflict with relaxed conversation. Related to this is my general sense that Flip is the sort of person who genuinely does not have a very good grasp of the emotional effect of her statements on others.
Not only do I like Tia-style kissing, but 906 made Tia in general sound really hawt. Sometimes I think the world divides into loose, sloppy, lets-blur- boundaries-and-roll-around-together people vs. brisk, competent, let's-live-life-in-efficient-parallel people. I'm at heart the former, and need the same in a partner.
Like all divisions of the world into two types, that is clearly hogwash. But still.
Related to this is my general sense that Flip is the sort of person who genuinely does not have a very good grasp of the emotional effect of her statements on others.
His. And I like to think that I'm slightly more sensitive than that, though it seems that online especially I could rein myself in a bit better.
Eh, it's the internet. Without tone of voice and so on, everyone clangs sometimes. I wouldn't sweat it too much.
On the other hand, I'd recommend you think seriously about killing yourself. So those are two different perspectives.
Yeah, but no one listens to a man with a tapeworm.
Synthesis: Kill Brock Landers' tapeworm without breaking a sweat.
Sorry, Flip. I probably hurt your feelings. I can never predict when I'm going to do that.
I don't have feelings. That's why it doesn't hurt to, say, write off as a loss the woman to whom I was introduced back in October after a month without further contact.
Flip is female? No, I didn't think so.
Dignity is as dignity does, hey.