Category: How To People

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Splaining

Today at the Sakura Matsuri, I had an extremely amusing moment. Well, amusing to me, anyway.

We were at a booth that sold toy swords (either plastic or wall hangers – not sure which), and two young men (I would estimate early 20s) were there looking at the swords. I overheard one of them telling the other “This is called a katana. It’s what they used…” (I don’t remember the rest of the sentence). The second young man said “So is that what you would use in martial arts, then? Like to practice?”

The first young man floundered a bit, so naturally I decided to insert myself into their conversation and info dump a bit.

“Well, that depends on the martial art. For kendo, they use a sword made of bamboo slats, so you can hit each other without hurting too much. For iaido, they use a sword made of an aluminum zinc alloy, so it’s lightweight but not sharp. For batto-do or other cutting arts, they use a real sword made of steel. There are probably demos of that today or tomorrow!”

Young man #2 said “wow, you really know your stuff!” And I said “Yep!” and wandered off.

This is an example of how Not To Human. In general, this kind of behavior is not considered polite or appropriate. But I think in the specific context I was in, it was okay.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

Previously on this subject

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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.