5 ms·

Well, for example, if 11 members of the 20 person track team are going somewhere after practice, you have to invite everyone you meet even if you don't want the

by rljy 9y ago

Well, for example, if 11 members of the 20 person track team are going somewhere after practice, you have to invite everyone you meet even if you don't want them there. Even if its totally impractical to invite them there. If you're at a park throwing a Frisbee with some people you know, and you happen to be going somewhere with one friend afterwards, it's almost mandatory to invite the others who are there, even if you don't want to. I don't understand the rules, honestly. I was from a family who hardly ever invited anyone. But I've been frequently exposed to conversations about "who we've invited and hope doesn't come". As well as found myself in circumstances where I later realized that I was invited somewhere out of politeness rather than any desire that I be there. Both situations are really weird to me and it's just an extra complication that I don't need in my already tenuous understanding of social interaction. In the Czech republic people don't talk as much and generally these situations occur rarely. And the example that I gave of the people in the park just doesn't happen in the Czech republic. There is no requirement to invite someone someplace just because you are going there yourself.

derefr 9y ago
> There is no requirement to invite someone someplace just because you are going there yourself. That wasn’t the effect you were demonstrating above. It was more “you have to invite [friend A] if you invite [friend B] from the same social group, unless you want [friend A] to think that you value them less than [friend B].” Which is sometimes obviously what you want them to think—if you have known [friend B] for years and you’ve just joined the group that introduces you to [friend A], then hanging out solely with [friend B] (in a way that [friend A] will find out about, like by inviting them in front of them) is a way to assert that you’d like [friend A] to get to know you better, because you’re still not at the level where you feel comfortable adding them to your more close-knit friend group yet. The problem comes when you’ve just joined a group and so only know everyone equally well (i.e. not that well), and yet only invite some of the group members somewhere anyway. This reads like the signal above, but without a justification: the people you chose to invite out did nothing to “deserve” the choice, and there’s no obvious thing (like more shared conversation) that you’re signalling that you’d like out of the people you didn’t invite. It can seem like you’re just sociopathically playing members of the group against each-other to win your favour. But that’s really the only scenario where this applies: when picking a subset of acquaintances, from a shared group, to do something with that is usually reserved for friends. (It does come up a lot, because a “pool of shared acquaintances” describes a school pretty well. But it’s not nearly as much of a “thing” outside of that.)
- triplesec 9y ago
  I find that in the US, friend and acquaintance is hard to tell apart, because people are friendly and open in some ways. So I often can't tell who actually likes me well enough to figure out on deeper friendships.

by rljy 9y ago

derefr 9y ago

> There is no requirement to invite someone someplace just because you are going there yourself. That wasn’t the effect you were demonstrating above. It was more “you have to invite [friend A] if you invite [friend B] from the same social group, unless you want [friend A] to think that you value them less than [friend B].” Which is sometimes obviously what you want them to think—if you have known [friend B] for years and you’ve just joined the group that introduces you to [friend A], then hanging out solely with [friend B] (in a way that [friend A] will find out about, like by inviting them in front of them) is a way to assert that you’d like [friend A] to get to know you better, because you’re still not at the level where you feel comfortable adding them to your more close-knit friend group yet. The problem comes when you’ve just joined a group and so only know everyone equally well (i.e. not that well), and yet only invite some of the group members somewhere anyway. This reads like the signal above, but without a justification: the people you chose to invite out did nothing to “deserve” the choice, and there’s no obvious thing (like more shared conversation) that you’re signalling that you’d like out of the people you didn’t invite. It can seem like you’re just sociopathically playing members of the group against each-other to win your favour. But that’s really the only scenario where this applies: when picking a subset of acquaintances, from a shared group, to do something with that is usually reserved for friends. (It does come up a lot, because a “pool of shared acquaintances” describes a school pretty well. But it’s not nearly as much of a “thing” outside of that.)

triplesec 9y ago
I find that in the US, friend and acquaintance is hard to tell apart, because people are friendly and open in some ways. So I often can't tell who actually likes me well enough to figure out on deeper friendships.