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This thread seems like a good place to vent anonymously about something that's been eating me. I want to see if anyone can relate or will even have any idea wha

by benched 13y ago

This thread seems like a good place to vent anonymously about something that's been eating me. I want to see if anyone can relate or will even have any idea what I'm trying to say. I have this friend. We've been friends for a long time. I think we must have had a lot in common some time ago, but it's hard to remember for sure. Around 1.5 years ago, I began to notice a change in this person's way of speaking. They became perfectly inane, as if in a studied, practiced way. They never say anything the tiniest bit controversial or opinionated, or revealing they slightest bit of personality. It's as if they became a P.R. department for themselves. They utter many trite well-wishes, a lot of overt gratitude for very simple things, simply phrased banal questions, and absolutely nothing else. Nothing that any civil person could disagree with ... and to my ears, nothing worth spending the breath to say. A continuous stream of equivalents to "nice weather!" I don't understand it. As a somewhat eccentric person, my reaction to hearing this kind of talk over any length of time is like I'm quaking with frustration bordering on rage inside. I don't say anything about it, because I feel like that could only be hurtful. Explanations I've come up with include the fact that this person has adopted Facebook very heavily, seemingly getting a significant amount of social interaction through it. So perhaps they've adopted the voice that you have to when you're constantly speaking in front of an audience full of all your friends, family, co-workers, and even bosses. But it's like this person carried that voice into their offline life, and never, ever breaks out of that bland, trite, soul-less mode. It's all, "Happy about this nice weather!" and "This pie is yummy." forever and ever.... Ah well. I just thought I'd drop this here and see if anyone has ever encountered something like this. I feel like I lost a friend.

allochthon 13y ago
So perhaps they've adopted the voice that you have to when you're constantly speaking in front of an audience full of all your friends, family, co-workers, and even bosses. Interesting insight. Would not be surprising if message boards like this and some mailing lists socialize us in a way to say things that are relatively anodyne, given the strong bias against trolling and off-topic, ill-considered remarks. Also, we come to learn that we're writing for an audience composed of anyone who might be on the Internet (!). About this second point, I actually think that's a great thing. Because of it we're motivated to avoid writing to a select audience, saying things that would be hurtful to others if they were listening in on the conversation. It helps us to consider our comments within a larger context. The part about anodyne comments can't be overgeneralized -- think of the types of threads on reddit and 4chan. It might have something to do with being exposed to venues that are moderated or in which there is a reputation system.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > socialize us in a way to say things that are relatively anodyne, I freaking wish. Have you read some of the vile nonsense spewed out on HN every day? More seriously, people have a variety of fora, and so here they might be professional but they keep a different name for Reddit to post to the trolling subredits.
fragsworth 13y ago
I noticed you made a very conscious effort not to identify the gender of this person. I sense some amount of obsessive-compulsiveness. I don't mean to offend you, but perhaps the problem is within you, and that your own over-analysis of your friend's behavior is what is ruining the relationship? Lots of people engage in small talk, very often. You may be focusing on it too much. And perhaps you're holding your friend to a higher standard of deep conversation than others - so you don't notice the small talk of other people.
- benched 13y ago
  I didn't identify the gender, because I didn't want that to affect anyone's evaluation. It was a choice. Relation to OCD, zero. And really, small talk is well understood, and it's something everyone does sometimes. I feel like it takes a special kind of ... something ... to literally avoid saying anything of substance, ever.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - fragsworth 13y ago
    Have you considered the possibility that your friend may have a brain tumor?
wonnage 13y ago
I would suggest from a mental health and happiness perspective to avoid dwelling on why you believe your friend is acting the way they are. Their reasons are often less dramatic than what your brain might come up with. But if you do feel like knowing their psychology would be important then I think talking to them would be the right thing to do. People rationalize passivity by telling themselves they don't want to be pushy/hurtful/creepy etc. You can always be nice about it or ease into the topic ("have you read this article about conversation I saw on HN?").
prostoalex 13y ago
Yeah, this is weird, I also know somebody with similar patterns, mentally healthy otherwise. I think some people are just uncomfortable with periods of silence that follow any conversation, view it as awkward and try to fill it in with some verbal minutiae.
mercer 13y ago
I find this very interesting. Could you maybe give some more context? What age is this friend, and how long have you been friends? What has changed besides the increase facebook usage? On the one hand I tend to believe (as others have remarked) that usually the explanation for such a change is simpler than we're inclined to think. It could just be that over time your interests diverged, for example. Or that your friend is just growing older and valuing conversation in itself over conversation as a way of exchanging ideas (similar perhaps to my observation that many people around me grow less ideologically-driven as they get older). I've seen this happen with some of my friends, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time observing people around me talk and interact with computers/social media, trying to see patterns emerge, and my observations fit your experience. An example: for a few years I was a reddit-addict, and would spend hours just clicking on gifs, short videos, reading funny comments, and generally consuming that kind of short-attention-span content. So did my younger brother. And I noticed that many of our conversations would turn into 'did you read this', 'haha, yes', 'oh and look at this' type of stuff. It reached a point where we weren't just sharing trivial content, but mostly just comparing what trivial content we were both aware of (which created a sense of togetherness, I suppose). Since then, I moved on to slightly more 'heavy' content (partly through HN), and my brother curbed his reddit use. Our conversations now our much more meaningful and we often have multi-part conversations that span months on a single topic. My youngest brother, on the other hand, is firmly in the reddit/9gag area, and I often notice a discrepancy in conversation between the three of us. For me and my other brother, even a silly meme can be the starting point of some kind of analysis, however inane, and we linger on the issue, whereas my younger brother has a tendency to move straight on to the next inane-but-entertaining thing. This sometimes causes a bit of awkwardness in the conversation as we seem to have different purposes. While part of my is, as said earlier, inclined to believe that the explanation might be different or simpler (personality, for example, or age), the fact that I've seen our individual behavior correlate strongly to our media use, at different ages, and regardless of our rather distinct personalities, leads me to think that perhaps media use is a huge factor.

by benched 13y ago

allochthon 13y ago

So perhaps they've adopted the voice that you have to when you're constantly speaking in front of an audience full of all your friends, family, co-workers, and even bosses. Interesting insight. Would not be surprising if message boards like this and some mailing lists socialize us in a way to say things that are relatively anodyne, given the strong bias against trolling and off-topic, ill-considered remarks. Also, we come to learn that we're writing for an audience composed of anyone who might be on the Internet (!). About this second point, I actually think that's a great thing. Because of it we're motivated to avoid writing to a select audience, saying things that would be hurtful to others if they were listening in on the conversation. It helps us to consider our comments within a larger context. The part about anodyne comments can't be overgeneralized -- think of the types of threads on reddit and 4chan. It might have something to do with being exposed to venues that are moderated or in which there is a reputation system.

DanBC 13y ago
> socialize us in a way to say things that are relatively anodyne, I freaking wish. Have you read some of the vile nonsense spewed out on HN every day? More seriously, people have a variety of fora, and so here they might be professional but they keep a different name for Reddit to post to the trolling subredits.

fragsworth 13y ago

I noticed you made a very conscious effort not to identify the gender of this person. I sense some amount of obsessive-compulsiveness. I don't mean to offend you, but perhaps the problem is within you, and that your own over-analysis of your friend's behavior is what is ruining the relationship? Lots of people engage in small talk, very often. You may be focusing on it too much. And perhaps you're holding your friend to a higher standard of deep conversation than others - so you don't notice the small talk of other people.

benched 13y ago
I didn't identify the gender, because I didn't want that to affect anyone's evaluation. It was a choice. Relation to OCD, zero. And really, small talk is well understood, and it's something everyone does sometimes. I feel like it takes a special kind of ... something ... to literally avoid saying anything of substance, ever.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- fragsworth 13y ago
  Have you considered the possibility that your friend may have a brain tumor?

wonnage 13y ago

I would suggest from a mental health and happiness perspective to avoid dwelling on why you believe your friend is acting the way they are. Their reasons are often less dramatic than what your brain might come up with. But if you do feel like knowing their psychology would be important then I think talking to them would be the right thing to do. People rationalize passivity by telling themselves they don't want to be pushy/hurtful/creepy etc. You can always be nice about it or ease into the topic ("have you read this article about conversation I saw on HN?").

prostoalex 13y ago

Yeah, this is weird, I also know somebody with similar patterns, mentally healthy otherwise. I think some people are just uncomfortable with periods of silence that follow any conversation, view it as awkward and try to fill it in with some verbal minutiae.

mercer 13y ago

I find this very interesting. Could you maybe give some more context? What age is this friend, and how long have you been friends? What has changed besides the increase facebook usage? On the one hand I tend to believe (as others have remarked) that usually the explanation for such a change is simpler than we're inclined to think. It could just be that over time your interests diverged, for example. Or that your friend is just growing older and valuing conversation in itself over conversation as a way of exchanging ideas (similar perhaps to my observation that many people around me grow less ideologically-driven as they get older). I've seen this happen with some of my friends, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time observing people around me talk and interact with computers/social media, trying to see patterns emerge, and my observations fit your experience. An example: for a few years I was a reddit-addict, and would spend hours just clicking on gifs, short videos, reading funny comments, and generally consuming that kind of short-attention-span content. So did my younger brother. And I noticed that many of our conversations would turn into 'did you read this', 'haha, yes', 'oh and look at this' type of stuff. It reached a point where we weren't just sharing trivial content, but mostly just comparing what trivial content we were both aware of (which created a sense of togetherness, I suppose). Since then, I moved on to slightly more 'heavy' content (partly through HN), and my brother curbed his reddit use. Our conversations now our much more meaningful and we often have multi-part conversations that span months on a single topic. My youngest brother, on the other hand, is firmly in the reddit/9gag area, and I often notice a discrepancy in conversation between the three of us. For me and my other brother, even a silly meme can be the starting point of some kind of analysis, however inane, and we linger on the issue, whereas my younger brother has a tendency to move straight on to the next inane-but-entertaining thing. This sometimes causes a bit of awkwardness in the conversation as we seem to have different purposes. While part of my is, as said earlier, inclined to believe that the explanation might be different or simpler (personality, for example, or age), the fact that I've seen our individual behavior correlate strongly to our media use, at different ages, and regardless of our rather distinct personalities, leads me to think that perhaps media use is a huge factor.