Category: How To People

Posted on

Blocking is not real life

Short opinion.

I think that the reason people treat blocking (on social media) as this Horrible Unforgivable Crime is that to them, social media feels like real life; and in real life, Shunning and Ostracism are genuinely punishments for horrible crimes.

But the Internet is not real life.

My half-baked hypothesis is that people think this way because young adults right now had their formative years during COVID, when things forced us online much more than even the most dysfunctional people, and it exacerbated and accelerated a lot of already-bad social trends.

Posted on

A generalizable word of advice

As I told someone earlier today:

This is not an “others have walked so that you can run” kind of situation. This is more like, an “others have run straight into the electric fence, so you should strongly consider walking” kind of thing.

This can apply to many things.

Go slowly. Make careful, measured decisions.

Posted on

Being wrong is a skill

Being wrong is a skill that can be practiced. It takes a lot of effort and awareness to be able to just shut up and step off.

Practicing “Oh, I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective” or “I’m going to step back and think about this for a while, thank you” is a really useful thing to have in your social skills backpack.

Posted on

Lunch Invitations

In a work context, “We’re all going to lunch” usually carries the implication of “Would you like to join us?”

If you’re still not sure if the implication is present, you can ask “Mind if I come along?” Or “Do you have space for one more?” Or something similar.

Here is an Instagram video about this!

Posted on

How to Human: Conversation and taking turns

The CA Reddit forum reposted this one from 2019:

#1168 and #1169: Friendship, Conversation, and TAKING TURNS

Learning how to take turns in conversation was one of the really important things for me, growing up. I don’t think anyone explicitly taught it to me, but especially after I got over my childhood “just never talk to strangers, ever” dealie, it helped to realize that other people like to talk about themselves, too! Even if you yourself don’t care about the other person (like if they’re a store clerk or whatever) it’s still a kind and pro-social thing to ask them about themselves.

But not to excess. And not everyone appreciates it.

But it’s as good a starting place as any. Refine your technique from there.

Posted on

Time types

Several years ago, a friend introduced me to the concept of “Social Time vs Normative Time.”

“Normative Time” is the idea that things happen at certain times: dinner is at 6, the meetup officially starts at 5, things like that. It’s generally considered to be the default time system in America.

“Social Time” is something that I’ve more often seen in the context of specific places: Moroccan Time, Island Time, Greek Time. Time is more fluid; you get there when you get there; you don’t stress if you’re late or your friend is late.

I, myself, am a Normative Time person who is very bad at it.

Today I was reminded of the Captain Awkward column on Perpetual Time Optimism because Reddit shared it with me. It gets a bit spicy in there (in both).

In general, in my life, I try to strike a balance between both types of time. I’m sympathetic to the time blind people; I’m often late to things, and it takes me a LOT of effort to do all the things to get to something early, especially if it’s already early in the morning. But I also want to be able to do things like “see a movie” and “eat at a restaurant” and so forth! So in general I try not to invite the very time blind person to things where “being late” would put a cramp in someone ELSE’S day.

Posted on

Making plans when your friends are anxious

I just saw a life tip on Reddit that I thought I’d share here!

When you’re confirming plans with someone, don’t say “Are we still on for tomorrow?” This can sometimes send them into a spiral thinking that you would actually rather they cancel.

Instead, say “I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow!” This lets them know that you aren’t secretly hoping they’ll cancel.

Is this a bit silly? Yes. But brains are dumb; and cell phones have made it so easy to flake out on plans that I think it’s worth changing our speaking structure to account for it.

Posted on

How do you know what you want?

One of my friends recently wrote on Facebook “how do you know what you want?” and I ended up writing a fairly long response. Posting it here, too.

You know, one of my friends just asked me this too, and I don’t know the answer for sure.

I think part of it was after a young lifetime of being a perfectionist and also a people-pleaser, I had to get good at satisficing or I was going to burn out. Going to progressively more difficult environments (high school to college to a job) meant that I was surrounded by an increasing concentration of people smarter than me, and that was something my ego had to adjust to. But learning that I actually *wasn’t* always the smartest person in the room also freed me from having to always Be The Very Best. I could just be Good Enough, and that was okay too.

So I was able to apply that to my own decisions as well. Is this thing the Absolute Best Option I Could Possibly Choose? Well, maybe, maybe not. But the marginal benefit of obsessing over Relentless Optimization is so stressful to me that I had to Just Pick Something.

And now that I think more about this: I think I cut my teeth on this skill with choosing restaurants with friends as a young adult. I get hangry when I don’t eat (it doesn’t seem to be a disorder, I just have/had a fast metabolism), so when people started dithering about where to go, it meant that I was risking a fainting+nausea spell. So I started doing Executive Decision Making for the whole group, and for the most part it turned out fine. Some people don’t like me telling them what to do, but Oh Well Their Loss.

Like a lot of skills, practicing in small ways helps build up the muscle (literal or metaphorical) for bigger tasks.

Anyway, IDK if this is what you were asking about, but I hope it helps! ❤