5 ms·
> Better to leave it to people who do such things professionally. I empathize, esp if you're of the generation (like me) where we've grown accustom to distance
by patcon 6y ago
> Better to leave it to people who do such things professionally.
I empathize, esp if you're of the generation (like me) where we've grown accustom to distance in time and space via async messaging.
Having said that, I would respectfully push back: negotiating everyday conflicts of life with others (who are most often strangers) is NOT something we should allow to be overly professionalized. Yes, it's true that some extroverts find this easier, and that's a privilege we don't all have. But we can't pass this to landlords and tenant associations and governments to do, while we stay at a fully-intermediated distance. We need to learn and grow in how we relate to one another, ESPECIALLY now that the distance of the internet is working against us and causing our social muscles to atrophe.
Anyhow, I'm not trying to be argumentative -- I almost feel like I'm pleading here. It will be really bad if we "specialize" in this way. Losing our ability to navigate everyday conflicts with one another, and deferring it to higher powers, that's the worst sort of "vendor lock-in" I could ever imagine for a society.
Fwiw, I am a collectivist who values institutions, so I don't share this from a hyper-individualist perspective that distrusts these actors <3
- failwhaleshark 6y agoI agree. I think it's good to ask a neighbor if they seem the type to be amenable to it, otherwise better ask them if they've seen a cat wandering around. I had a neighbor who was an out-of-work hot-head who shouted at everyone and had his own posse of low-lifes. The guy BBQed right next to the wooden fence (in violation of fire codes) using absurd amounts of lighter fluid and charcoal that seeped into my unit directly above. I tried asking them to move it but they just ignored me. I tried a second time and then him and his posse surrounded me, mean mugged me, and tried to start a fight. I asked the property management to do something, they tried, and they took out their bad experiences on me passive-aggressively. I finally got out of there because it was a horrible situation.
- patcon 6y agoAh shit, that sounds like a fuckin rotten experience. Sorry you had to go through it. i always wonder, when I have fantastically social failures like that: how could i tune the knobs to make this go better with this specific type of person, who sees me in this way... like if I did this 10 more times with 10 more hot-heads, I wonder what I'd learn about what he responds better to. I'm sure there are parts of who I am that I can't talk around, but still. And not that I have the nerve to keep putting myself in that situation...! Anyhow, makes me curious from a distance, but to be clear, I'm not judging that there's anything else you could've done :)
- failwhaleshark 6y agoThe only way I think would've been to be another village tough or a low-life posse supplicant. The dude was out-of-work, drinking, smoking, and not doing anything and taking out his angsty frustrations in life on everyone else, including his kid, his wife, the mailman, the apt manager, and anyone else that walked by who wasn't a part of their gang.