I had a huge breakthrough when I realized that there exist people that don’t mean what they say.
I know exactly what you mean, and can add a point: The people who don’t mean what they say assume that you don’t mean it, either. It is a personal policy of mine to say exactly what I mean, and only what I mean, whenever possible. Yet I routinely run into people who will take something I said, extrapolate or delete from it until it resembles what they “thought I meant,” and then answer that. Then judge me on it.
Needless to say, the mismatch is both harmful to communication and incredibly frustrating. I have a suspicion they’re making heuristic guesses that are acceptably correct when dealing with other verbally-inaccurate people, but fail when dealing with someone going out of their way to be precise.
I admit I don’t really have evidence for that hypothesis.
When I’m feeling snarky, I will sometimes respond to this sort of thing with some variant of “That response only makes sense to me if I assume what I actually said was something more like X. Is that what you heard?” The sorts of people who skew my output on input frequently respond to that in entertaining ways.
I’ve occasionally done that in text, now that you mention it. My in-person verbal comprehension has such a high latency that I can’t really do it there. (by the time I’ve worked it out the conversation has moved on) Pre-caching expected misinterpretations may help, if I can anticipate them accurately enough.
The people who don’t mean what they say assume that you don’t mean it, either.
When it isn’t incredibly frustrating like you described, this works to my advantage because I generally mean it whenever I say something awful. And they assume I was just venting or whatever. =P
I know exactly what you mean, and can add a point: The people who don’t mean what they say assume that you don’t mean it, either. It is a personal policy of mine to say exactly what I mean, and only what I mean, whenever possible. Yet I routinely run into people who will take something I said, extrapolate or delete from it until it resembles what they “thought I meant,” and then answer that. Then judge me on it.
Needless to say, the mismatch is both harmful to communication and incredibly frustrating. I have a suspicion they’re making heuristic guesses that are acceptably correct when dealing with other verbally-inaccurate people, but fail when dealing with someone going out of their way to be precise.
I admit I don’t really have evidence for that hypothesis.
When I’m feeling snarky, I will sometimes respond to this sort of thing with some variant of “That response only makes sense to me if I assume what I actually said was something more like X. Is that what you heard?” The sorts of people who skew my output on input frequently respond to that in entertaining ways.
I’ve occasionally done that in text, now that you mention it. My in-person verbal comprehension has such a high latency that I can’t really do it there. (by the time I’ve worked it out the conversation has moved on) Pre-caching expected misinterpretations may help, if I can anticipate them accurately enough.
When it isn’t incredibly frustrating like you described, this works to my advantage because I generally mean it whenever I say something awful. And they assume I was just venting or whatever. =P
I am reminded of the following exchange between two housemates in my youth:
X (to Y): “Don’t take this the wrong way, but: fuck you.”
Y: (laughs)
X: “No, y’see, you’re taking it the wrong way.”