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People that think you’re an asshole
- Shugarl 6y agoIsn't this state of mind kind of dangerous ? Like a self fulfilling prophecy?
- liotier 6y agoIt might be dangerous, but it is useful to feel righteously self-justified when about to do something that will lead people to logically deduce that you're an asshole !
- tsujp 6y agoNot caring what others think of you isn't the same as actively trying to screw others over or just being rude if that's what you're alluding at (I'm guessing). For example, "not caring what others think" and just cutting in-front of a queue is an objectively dick move. So in that sense, yes it's self fulfilling (but this is not what "not caring what others think" means). Perhaps a good example of a positive "not caring what others think" might be dancing however you want; you don't feel embarrassed because you're not a good dancer you just do whatever. Perhaps another good example is Bob is a vegan and hates that you aren't; now you don't really care anymore and can focus on eating the food you want to. Flip the roles, Bob eats whatever he wants and hates that you're a vegan; you again don't care.
- jhare 6y agoActions are different from thoughts. We're judged/arrested when we do that. What people think, on the other hand, is immaterial to whether one should be happy or not. If one is required to be concerned with not "being an asshole", how are risky ventures ever undertaken?
- Tepix 6y agoSometimes the people who think you're an asshole are your friends. You turned into an asshole after they became your friends. It's time to change.
- dasyatidprime 6y agoAnd sometimes you were one all along, and you didn't know, and they also didn't know enough to recognize the warning signs until they'd already gotten entangled with you. Now you're about to gradually lose everyone as they realize how much of a drain you're being and quietly shut you out.
- Kaze404 6y agoI don't know how common this sentiment is but I definitely felt it with a previous group of friends. The behaviors you internalize just to be able to fit in with what seems like the only people that will ever like you really have no limit at all, and can lead you to do things you never thought you would. Specifically, I strictly remember bullying this poor kid relentlessly during middle school because he (I kid you not) had lips so red he looked like he wore lipstick. You can imagine my shock when I later found out I was bisexual and that wearing lipstick is awesome actually.
- BayAreaEscapee 6y agoWhen you're twenty, you worry about what people think. When you're forty, you don't care what people think. And when you're sixty, you realize that nobody was thinking about you in the first place.
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoI really do not find that a man starts to care less about what others think of him as he ages at all. Rather, I find it is that adults rule the conformance games that adolescents and teenagers play are “silly” all the while partaking in their own, which are of course not silly, but rather how one should conform and teenagers are wrong for not conforming to those ideals. Consider that the parent who berates his child for smoking marihuana to be part of his clique will the next day consume alcohol at his office party, as to not be left out.
- dasyatidprime 6y agoWhich connects up, in the sense that you stereotypically care less in a way that you consciously notice because you gradually internalize the culture strongly enough for it to just feel like “the way things are”, and then in old age you impute upon yourself (and/or society imputes upon you) a position of sufficient immunity that you can keep saying “the kids are wrong” even as they're about to displace you.
- watwut 6y ago> Consider that the parent who berates his child for smoking marihuana to be part of his clique will the next day consume alcohol at his office party, as to not be left out. I don't think this is good example. I dont want my kids to drink alcohol yet. When I do drink alcohol, it is really not so that "I am not left out". Pretty much all office parties I have been at had bunch of people who were not drinking in them. And marihuana has added effect of being illegal in many places. And if your kid is smoking it so that the kid fits, it absolutely makes sense to treat it as issue. Regardless of whether you sometimes drink alcohol at office party.
- watwut 6y ago
- wombatmobile 6y agoIt is good to not care what people think about you. And bad to act like an asshole. If you act nice, and don't care what people think about you, you can't lose, and most people will like to have you around. Assholes might still annoy you, but when that happens, your friends will help you to feel better.
- pashsdk27 6y agoIt's hard to be nice when you feel that the others are exploiting you in some way. Even if you can empathize with their situation, sometimes you cannot sympathize enough to put their well being over your own (mainly in cases where the absolute difference between the relative importance of their needs to your own, in your opinion as per your beliefs, is small). Well, I'm an antisocial shut-in so maybe this is a fringe opinion to have for our techno-monkey tribes. :))
- neom 6y agoMy solution to that is to not be around people who make me feel like I'm being exploited.
- jjj123 6y agoBeing nice doesn’t mean putting their well being over yours. You can still set boundaries around what you’re willing to do for someone without being an ass about it.
- wombatmobile 6y agoGive Marisa Peer a try, my friend How to avoid rejection and get connection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeDt9dgFXFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeDt9dgFXFk
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- paulpauper 6y agothere is no content here. I wish she had said more Being an asshole is not the worst thing you can be. A lot of famous, successful people who are well liked have somewhat asshole qualities. The thing you really do not want to be is an ignoramus--someone who is an asshole but with no redeeming qualities.
- DFHippie 6y agoI like the picture at the top. It's a beautiful image of freedom and living in the moment. It's not Leo, though. I'm pretty sure Leo is a he. There's a picture of him at the bottom of the page.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- iambateman 6y agoI think about this a lot. I try to be kind to everyone, but there are at least a handful of people in the world who cringe when they think about me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Happy Sunday.
- ungamedplayer 6y agoThe cringer are the weak ones. I think we should make MORE people cringe.
- toyg 6y agoAh yes, “many enemies, much honor!” Who said that, I wonder? /s
- Bakary 6y agoOne key insight about social relationships that took me a while to understand is that people respond mainly to whether you are life-affirming in your behavior or not. If you have things going on in your life and aren't afraid to exist as a person, they will naturally gravitate to you and give you a lot of leeway. Being a nice person or an asshole is orthogonal to the issue: they are just facets that may help or hinder this depending on the situation. In fact, they are defined entirely in relation to people's general impression of you so they have no real meaning on their own. People then end up frustrated because they often confuse being weak and hollow as being nice and being assertive and self-directed with being an asshole. In a way, we are Veblen goods: it's all about status and perceived scarcity in the end, whether it's conscious or not. That is not necessarily a negative or depressing thing as it also is the engine behind great things happening.
- ambivalents 6y agoI'd love to know more what you mean by 'life-affirming.' Based on context, sounds like you mean, be an authentic person, don't sugar coat things, be imperfect, show vulnerabilities. Is that right? I find myself drawn to these types--they may have asshole-ish moments or nice moments. That doesn't matter as much as my personal connection to them, the sense of whether I am rooting for them or not.
- waheoo 6y agoAdjective; having an emotionally or spiritually uplifting effect.
- Bakary 6y agoI would define it as a positive feedback loop that is a mix of authenticity, energy, personality, desire, boldness, desire and will. There is perhaps a better word for it, but generally a person that exemplifies some of the strongest characteristics of human life as instinctively recognized by humans themselves. As a corollary, such people tend to be naturally charismatic, but I would venture that this is a direct consequence of their other traits. One arresting definition of charisma I have heard is that it is a measure of how much you can delineate yourself as an entity in the world and how you can use that to affect reality. Life-affirmation and a zest for living draw directly into that. Note that I don't necessarily include intellectual brilliance in the equation, though it obviously helps.
- sunjester 6y agowhy do you care about what other people think about other people. youre the asshole.
- civilized 6y agoI'm tired of people using the word "asshole" as if it were a coherent concept in serious discussion of social behavior. "Asshole" is just an immature term of abuse. It doesn't mean anything specific enough to construct a theory around.
- zuzuleinen 6y agoI think awareness helps alot with these kind of issues. It's not about people not liking you. It's about the implication of this fact which is that you might be a bad person. Are you a bad person? Or are you a good person which happened to have a behavior which turned others against you? Second, is good to meditate on this idea of the image you are trying to keep consistent with everyone. It's almost like slaving away to make all people like you. But that's impossible because whatever you do someone might think you're an asshole anyway. So just focus on being a good person in your eyes and the rest will follow. And be kind to yourself, we all make mistakes.
- iuguy 6y agoIt doesn't matter what you do, if it experiences some success, no matter how fleeting someone somewhere will get really upset about it. I believe that part of this is connected to the inversion of small-scale private conversations into large-scale text-driven public ones without us really being fully aware of the difference. Without the context of non-verbal communication or the closeness towards people we've never met we react differently online to offline. I think it's important not to lose sight of the idea that people can blow up online, call you every name under the sun and still be perfectly good people. I found Innuendo Studios' Why Are You So Angry[1] and SSC's varieties of Argumentative Experience[2] really helpful in coming to terms with my own online behaviour. There's also a pg essay[3] that's fairly relevant. I particularly enjoyed Rationality.org's double-cruxing approach[4]. Right now I'm focusing on avoiding continuing discussions at the point they stop adding overall. Nobody's perfect but it's definitely keeping my internal Angry Jack at bay. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ&list=PLJA_jUddXvY62dhVThbeegLPpvQlR4CjF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ&list=PLJA_jUddXv... [2] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/08/varieties-of-argumentative-experience/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/08/varieties-of-argumenta... [3] - http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html [4] - https://www.rationality.org/resources/updates/2016/double-crux https://www.rationality.org/resources/updates/2016/double-cr...
- ykevinator 6y agoWhat an ego
- mkl95 6y agoDuring my life (especially school years but also early in my career) I have found that people who come across as thinking I am an asshole don't really think I am an asshole. In each and every case these people were relatively underprivileged and could be described as underachievers. In some cases these people had more money than me, or they had more academic achievements, etc., so their feelings can't just be described as "envy" or "jealousy". I think it's a more complex emotion that has to do with knowing both your status in society and what your future looks like - none of these people went on to achieve much in their career, and in a couple of cases they weren't even able to land a job in the industry in the first place, while I was already working on exciting projects when I was a student. Some people are allergic to the success and hard work of others, but when it comes to working hard themselves they just "can't be arsed" for whatever reason.
- sirsinsalot 6y agoYou somehow managed to turn other people's dislike of you in to dismissal and insult. It isn't an observation, it is a protection mechanism you have to avoid introspection because maybe ... just maybe ... you are an arsehole.
- mkl95 6y agoI might as well do what I want anyway :-)
- beervirus 6y agoWhat shitty advice. “Just go ahead and do whatever horrible things you want, don’t worry about whether people will hate you for them.”
- draw_down 6y agoYeah, and I seriously doubt this person would appreciate being on the other side of “radical honesty” and all that junk. When people don’t appreciate me acting like an asshole it’s because I’m misunderstood and they’re being haters. When others do it they’re just being assholes.
- Sapph 6y agoI feel the issue with a lot of this advice like "don't care about what other people think about you", "be yourself" is, it tries to free people from one extreme (caring too much about what other people think for example) by talking about the opposite extreme. It is helpful to have awareness about how your behaivor and actions may affect others, depending on the situation and your relationship with them, and how they may perceive or react to it. I find the key is to have and develop values you consistently act and live by so even if someone reacts negatively or different from what you expected, you don't feel this means you did something wrong or need to change something about yourself.
- sirsinsalot 6y agoI agree. I think many of the extremes, like "be yourself [despite all others]" comes from a lack of self confidence. Hearing what others feel about you, empathising and deciding what _you_ feel about it takes a lot of self confidence.
- yboris 6y agoAn excellent essay on the topic: A theory of jerks by Eric Schwitzgebel https://aeon.co/essays/so-you-re-surrounded-by-idiots-guess-who-the-real-jerk-is https://aeon.co/essays/so-you-re-surrounded-by-idiots-guess-...
- mehagar 6y agoI feel a strong need to be accepted by other people, and one of the ways that I meet that need is by considering how my actions ("taking the leap") might affect others. Sometimes, though, I place more value on others' needs than my own. This can lead to sadness that I'm not able to do what I want. This author seems like he wants to overcome this fear of how others may respond, and do the thing anyway. I'm reminded of the stages of emotional liberation: First stage: Emotional slavery: we see ourselves responsible for others’ feelings. Second stage: “Obnoxious”: we feel angry; we no longer want to be responsible for others’ feelings. Third stage: Emotional liberation: we take responsibility for our intentions and actions. [1] - https://about-nvc.tumblr.com/post/98642157391/from-emotional-slavery-to-emotional-liberation-the https://about-nvc.tumblr.com/post/98642157391/from-emotional...