brain-pleasedont:

 

sinesalvatorem:

robustcornhusk:

sinesalvatorem:

I feel like this is the kind of conversation that would make @wayward-sidekick go “no no no wrong wrong WRONG”

Because saying “I’m fine” in response to being asked how you’re doing is only supposed to happen if you’re trying to avoid a conversation. That’s how polite answers work! You use them to make the other person stop trying to speak to you, basically.

If you’re asked how you’re doing by someone you’re trying to start a conversation with, you never say just “fine”. You give a descriptive sentence or two. You try to optimise that sentence for containing as many potential things to talk about as possible, in the hopes that the other person will find one of them interesting enough to ask about.

If I were asked how I was doing by a stranger right now, I’d say “I’m doing pretty good! I recently got back from a trip to [visa country redacted] with an American friend of mine because I was interviewing for a visa.”

With the obvious potential follow up questions being:

• When did you get back?
• How was your stay in [visa country]?
• Have you been to [visa country] before / do you like it there?
• Who’s your friend / why did they go with you?
• How did the interview go / did you get approved?
• Which country are you travelling to?
• What kind of visa did you get?
• etc etc etc

There is no question you can ask someone who says they’re fine. “fine” kills a conversation. That’s its job. Like, you can’t even ask someone “why are you fine?” the way you can ask “why are you happy/sad/angry?”

There is just… Literally no worse way to attempt a conversation. But people do this all the time. I don’t get it at all. But, like, if you actually want to talk to your mutuals more, consider… Not choosing literally the worst response to a question that you can.

This has been Moderate Social Competence with Alison.

I just realized I answer that question like that, all the time, even when I want to talk to he person, because… somehow I internalized the idea that talking about good things in my life is bragging and talking about bad things is complaining; I’m supposed to talk to the other person about their life.

This runs into problems when both people in the conversation have this idea.

Oh, wow, yes. That would definitely run into a problem.

The ideal is for both of you to talk about your lives. The Social Optimum is something like 50/50, but it can depend a lot on who’s the better storyteller and who’s the better listener in a given situation.

(Though, like, it’s important to note that being the better listener isn’t the Important Virtuous Role to take. People like listening to good storytellers. Ideally you want to be good at both of these things so you can swap roles a lot.)

If you aren’t sure who should do what and the other person isn’t going first, you probably want to start by giving the other person opportunities to ask about your life. Then you talk a bit about what they asked about before asking them if they have any related experiences.

Examples:

You: […] and that’s why I don’t like coffee.
Person: Yeah, me neither.
You: What drinks do you like, then?

or

You: […] and I really don’t understand why someone would like golf in the first place.
Person: I like golf!
You: You do? What do you like about it?

or

You: […] and I can’t believe he’d just leave like that!
Person: Yeah, that sucks.
You: Has anything like that happened to you before?

So, like, things in that general vein. You always want to be able to get the other person to talk sometimes, and this is a great way to lead into it. Especially because most people are more comfortable talking about their own lives if you’ve opened up first (especially if it’s a similar topic).

And, if someone has just finished telling you about something in their life, it’s usually nice to respond by talking about similar things in your own life so it seems like you’re ~relating~. The major exception to this is situations where it might seem like you’re one-upping the other person by talking about your own thing.

sinesalvatorem’s tags from her first post in the chain: #there are probably so many people who feel called out right now  #i love you anyway  #even though you don’t know how this ‘talking’ thing works

Actually, I feel the opposite of called out right now.

See, I internalised much the same idea as robustcornhusk, but not “somehow”: I was actually explicitly told to always respond to “How are you?” with “Fine.” I’ve seen multiple socialisation PSAs to the effect of:

“Nobody actually cares how you’re doing, or if they do it’s only by pure coincidence. ‘How are you’/’Fine’ is a ritualised call-and-response greeting, not a literal question/answer pair. Only ignorant autistics or pedantic assholes treat ‘How are you?’ as an actual question to be given an actual answer, and someone who acts like a pedantic asshole–intentionally or unintentionally–is not someone other people want to be around.”

(Of course, the sort of people who think this is rude are also the sort of people who won’t tell you that to your face. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard such PSAs from anyone who knew me personally, just in general broadcasts.)

I usually do still give informative answers to “How are you?” when I’m looking to start a conversation, and (to bring in another branch) I do use recent interesting events from my life as conversation starters. But I do it because, of the options available to someone at my level of social competence, it’s the least of all evils. (Hell if I know how the PSA-writers start their conversations. Probably something too subtle for me to pull off.) I generally have a lingering awareness that this is the Wrong Thing To Do.

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Tags:

#reply via reblog #infohazards #autism