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4 months agoUsing Science! to figure out exactly how much of small talk is just lying [IRONIC]
SterlingPooper [none/use name]
User makes bad posts, bad comments, is idiot
- 6 Posts
- 101 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
Cake day: July 27th, 2020
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I said this in my other reply, maybe I’m wrong about small talk, but that doesn’t change that it feels, like passively manipulative. Like, “then I’ll mention hiking and the 36 year old park ranger with a nose ring will have no choice but to converse with me about a mutual topic! mwahahaha” I feel like I’m plotting to finally catch the Batman, idk
Rejection rewires you a bit. If I didn’t have a strong history of going up to people and having it be awkward, them being intimidated, me not knowing what to say, I’d probably be more comfortable with small talk. Have you ever had someone fail at answering the question “what are you watching?” Not like, “he didn’t really answer the question”, like “I think this large child is drowning on solid land!” Because that’s how conversations tend to go.
Frankly I spent a long time prioritizing being convenient to others and always being there for them, what I eventually realized was that that doesn’t work either. I’m great if people want something, but I don’t really need to ask for stuff, again, do I be potentially manipulative and ask for help when I don’t need it?
I am only responding to how I have seen people interact and how others have interacted with me. People have dumped their issues on me before and even though I wasn’t in a place to hear it, I was there for them in the moment. I didn’t make it about me, or about the topic being too weighty. I have the feeling I’m somehow off the mark but idk
Maybe you’re right. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being manipulative with small talk, that I’m a charlatan trying to entice passersby on the street for just long enough. I have to put on my Human costume and perform Human for the normal healthy humans.
I’ve been in a few friend groups and I guess to me things felt established? To me we set our pace and went. There probably was small talk but I didn’t perceive a “figuring out” phase with the guys i hung out with in undergrad, beyond just orientation stuff. I didn’t get the sense that everyone knew all my hobbies, and five cis guys in 2014 did not really open up about their emotional landscapes, if you can believe that. I’m not trying to be brave, people here just didn’t respond how I thought. If anything there’s maybe a false dichotomy about making people feel comfortable sharing these things, and then saying “what a different thing you’re doing from everything everyone else is doing!” but I could be wrong. I just don’t think creating a false expectation of meaningful dialogue is helpful.
what’s confusing is that i did used to really ask others questions and check in on them and be very reassuring about caring about them, and those people didn’t reciprocate. How was I supposed to know not to blame myself? Idk how to undo those years of feeling awful and invisible. Is there a Third Way for talking to normals?
I’ve gotten feedback both being too vague and being too detailed, being too involved and being too aloof, expressing too many feelings and not expressing enough feelings. Chat, is this Gender Centrism?
feeling awful continues (0 replies)
I’m sad because I don’t think I’ll have a coming out anniversary, or anniversaries of those things. And I feel like all these firsts are just gonna happen and nobody knows me. I don’t know how much any of it matters if there isn’t anyone to share it with. I’m alone no matter what. I can go to every fucking meet-up but that doesn’t mean I know what the fuck to say.
To me, the conversation is the messy stuff, the not feeling like a guy, the how to appear more feminine so people don’t subconsciously treat you as male before you even notice them, the how do you walk and what do you wear and how do you shop and what do you do in your free time. To me the conversation isn’t just one reply or one sentence one time, it’s reciprocal and back and forth, we message , we talk.
And like, I don’t want the small talk, the one-offs, etc, until the Deep Down is addressed. To me a sign that someone cares and is invested is that they want to talk about the messy stuff, they aren’t scared. There’s care, like, the act of helping, and I could use that.
I’m just floored at how different my mindset is from everyone else’s. It’s hard not to start to see this as an indictment on my own social skills. You’re probably all normal and I’m the weirdo. Maybe I should start a blog or something where I can just not have comments, so that I’m not disappointed when nobody says anything.
If people are sick of me, please just tell me to leave
ex
every time my ex posts an accomplishment I start to want to experience the second to last episode of each season of Bojack Horseman (complete and utter crashout, existential hallucinations, often a musical number, etc)
she won the breakup. all my exes won by virtue of leaving i guess
idk everyone is prettier than me so it doesn’t matter. I keep forgetting to eat lunch and dinner so it’s laaaaaaate and I need to eat. Maybe I’ll be prettier if I don’t eat though. I won’t feel less sick tho idk
anyway, the point of this is that my ex is prettier than me and it makes me feel like I don’t exist or shouldn’t or whatever. she’s probably among the last people I had,like, a one on one conversation with outside of my family. This was 2023 maybe? even then I had stopped talking to people really around 2021
she’s also probably the only person I’ve ever talked in person about sexuality with. not even since starting to come out, honestly. I don’t know when or where people are talking about these things.
Sometimes I wish she wanted to talk to me. I feel like I could at least try to explain things right. At least explain things right. Then she can kick me to the curb like everyone else.
Idk, might not keep this one up. Then again, I delete all my crashout posts. If you get annoyed by that, try leaving a response. I tend to assume nobody reads. I no longer understand this website. That is all.
this became a tangent actually
When i mean people talk about things i mean like, “oh I know that’s her color” or “well she always does this so it must mean that” sorry but just the sphere of connectivity where you’re always talking to someone who’s always talking to someone and you know this and that about them and you all do this for that oerson because it’stheir favorite or you all know this insids joke, it fascinates me and, like, I want to be an equal participant. I want to be in a network where I consider and am considered.
Am I making the neurotypicals uncomfortable with this one? Like, I’m hyperaware of the frequency we talk and the depth of our conversations, it’s a bit like a sound wave. It’s possible that I don’t perceive a conversation to be particularly negative or stressful because these topics weigh heavily on me and therefore are pretty commonplace, but idk. I’m often just grateful that anyone said anything at all. It’s that bad.
and i can go rot in the corner to make space for the pretty girls
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3·4 months agospoiler
I assume that they see me as old and because I’m awkward and neurodivergent, socially inferior as a result. I want to fit in, I want to have things in common, age is an immediate visual differentiator. I assume that people look at me and instantly clock me as a guy who is in college but on older end. I don’t think I look 20. I assume that 20 year olds know the difference between them and myself. So before I’ve even talked to anyone, I already feel that I’m going to be older than everyone. The college demographic is 18-24, while there are older people, most of the students aren’t even 25. I don’t get a set of 100 kids my age to just flock to.
I mean my concern is being friends with someone and then catching feelings and then I find out how young they are, or they find out how old I am, and then we have to decide if we can mind the gap.
Idk, I guess the normal brain can just like, let things slide off it. I remember things. I’d love if I could magically forget everything, but I can’t.
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Certified Bad Post by SterlingPooper
how normal is it to feel rejection dysphoria when people don’t reply to your comments? because it can be frustrating when i’m posting with the intent of conversing and i get a couple of upvotes, and it’s like, did you really read this? i think you think you read it. i type most comments with the idea that someone might have something to say. but i like, want to delete every comment i make that doesn’t get a reply within say, 24 hours. i think it’s unfair that power users are like, loved and regarded, and the rest of us are just peasants hoping our shame and dysphoria is interesting enough to get some stranger to send an emote.
i just want to cope better as a neurodivergent person, as a queer person, but the site is unreceptive to those goals. don’t prop yourself up as a place for people who face these sorts of struggles and then have an attitude of “heh idk read a book, go outside, bother someone else” when people take that up in earnest.
but every comment i type, i’m like "nobody is going to read this. they think i’m faking, they think i’m a man in a dress, they think i’m playing dumb for sympathy, they think this and that and this" and every time nobody says anything those thoughts are all I have.
I said this in the trans mega, but I know how I would respond if I saw me, if I read my comments from an outside perspective.
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more venting, I wrote a fragment of an 19th century speech on accident
despite my best efforts, I am indulging in food and drinks
I actually haven’t eaten since breakfast, I’m too frustrated and can’t get myself to move. It’s been like this all day, probably all week.
I keep hoping that maybe someone will step in, say something, but I’ve been fighting the call to the void for six years now. I wonder if it would come as relief to some in this community to not have to reckon with my poor writing anymore. We’re not in the business of giving people reasons to live, you know. It’s far more important that we pat ourselves on the back as we sink to the depths in our watery graves, lest anyone face the tantalizing thought that they ought have done more or said more to help their fellow human being. I affirm your misery, you affirm mine, and we do jack shit to improve the conditions upon which we have so sanctimoniously staked our lives, and our all too early deaths.
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age, dysphoria
Preemptively bumming myself out because I’m gonna be way older than everyone else at school. I’m not a freshman girl. I’m gonna turn 30. I’ll never have those formative experiences of being feminine.
It would have been cool to learn feminine things from a feminine person. As it stands I feel like I’m teaching myself rune magic, or alchemy or some shit.
doom
Part of me is like, what if we just wild out? It’s not like anybody is going to say anything either way. I think I’ve given people a lot of time and space to step up, notice, hold space in the ways that make sense to me. I think I’ve been very quiet so others can speak comfortably. I think I’ve waited for people to turn to me and say “you’re acting different. what’s up?” or “is everything okay?” and they didn’t.
All of this was me being accommodating. Presenting myself in a way that people could help but I wasn’t forcing them to by weaponizing my mental illness or something shitty like that. I wanted people to want to help.
But maybe everyone had their chance to ask, you know? Maybe any behavior that makes you wonder is just not up for discussion in the way it once was. Maybe there was a time that my habits were more malleable, but oh, you just missed it. Maybe.
Every injury/medical happening has me convinced that it’s the end of the world until I get a second opinion. Spent all weekend freaking myself out over something that I’ve actually been managing properly. Lol
I saw Superman and Fantastic Four. I liked Superman more, but I thought both were like, good.
venting
I don’t think it’s normal to get stuck at the same point every day in my routine, but I also don’t know how to address it. I’d rather sit around than take a shower and get dressed, and even though I’d really rather be doing stuff, days like today happen where I don’t do anything because I spent all day wondering why I couldn’t just get dressed. I’d rather atrophy than like, fight my brain.
It’s just kind of what happens now. Time to stretch? Time to wash up? Time to get dressed? No, it’s time to lay around until 7pm in leggings and a tank top with unwashed hair constantly in my face. Can’t commit to watching anything, going anywhere, doing anything. I just had lunch. I’m gonna pass out in my bed in an hour so that I can be wide awake at 4am. Christ.
There are times it feels like it takes 150% brainpower to function, and people, whether they realize it or not, are expecting 150% from me by treating me like I’m normal. It’s a lot.
Fine. I will change.
I am sorry for misreading things and messing up everyone’s vibe. I have wasted your time and the efforts of the community. I won’t say more for fear of being accused of self-flagellation, even though I did this to myself.
I am deeply sorry.