Your friends are talking about anime, they ask you if you watch anime, you say “I don’t like anime,” they say “well you just haven’t watched the right shows, have you tried...”
Sure, but it remains unclear what response the friend wanted from the other person. What better options are there? Should they just go away? Change topic? I’m looking for specific answers here.
My response in this case would be to say something like “Well, I’ve got some shows that might change you’re mind if you’re ever interested. “Then leave it to them to continue that thread if interested. This goes with my general policy to try to avoid giving unsolicited advice.
And then the other person says “no thanks”, and you both stand in awkward silence? My point is that offering recommendations is a natural thing to say, even if not perfect, and it’s nice to have something to say. If you want to discourage unsolicited recommendations, then you need to propose a different trajectory for the conversation. Changing topic is hard, and simply going away is rude. People give unsolicited recommendations because it seems to be the best option available.
And then the other person says “no thanks”, and you both stand in awkward silence?
I think I would probably change the subject in a case like this. Good “vibing” conversation skill here is to “fractionate” the conversation, frequently cut topics before they reach their natural conclusion so that when you reach a conversation dead end like this, you have somewhere to go back to. Ditto with being able to make situational observations to restart a conversation, and having in your back pocket a list of topics and questions to go to.
I don’t think the proper thing to do here is to make someone else feel awkward or annoyed so that you feel less awkward, the proper thing to do is to learn the conversational skills to make people not feel awkward.
That sounds reasonable, but the proper thing is not usually the easy thing, and you’re not going to make people do the proper thing just by saying that it is proper.
If we want to talk about this as a problem in rationality, we should probably talk about social incentives, and possible alternative strategies for the anime-hater (you’re now talking about a better strategy for the anime-fan, but it’s not good to ask other people to solve your problems). Although I’m not sure to what extent this is a problem that needs solving.
It sounds like you two are currently talking about two different problems: mr-hire is asking “how do avoid being That Guy Who Pressures People about Anime” and you’re asking the question “If I want to avoid people pestering me with anime questions, or people in general to stop this behavior, what would have to change?”
Yes. The latter seems to be what OP is asking about: “If one wanted it to not happen, how would one go about that?”. I assume OP is taking the perspective of his friends, who are annoyed by this behavior, rather than the perspective of the anime-fans, who don’t necessarily see anything wrong with the situation.
I assume OP is taking the perspective of his friends, who are annoyed by this behavior, rather than the perspective of the anime-fans, who don’t necessarily see anything wrong with the situation.
In the literal world, I’m an anime fan, but the situation seems basically futile: the people recommending anime seem like they’re accomplishing nothing but generating frustration. More metaphorically, I’m mostly interested in how to prevent the behaviour either as somebody complaining about anime or as a third party, and secondarily interested in how to restrain myself from recommending anime.
Yes, and you answered that question well. But the reason I asked for alternative responses, was so that I could compare them to unsolicited recommendations from the anime-fan’s point of view (and find that unsolicited recommendations have lower effort or higher reward).
Also, I’m not asking “How did your friend want the world to be different”, I’m asking “What action could your friend have taken to avoid that particular response?”. The friend is a rational agent, he is able to consider alternative strategies, but he shouldn’t expect that other people will change their behavior when they have no personal incentive to do so.
At this juncture, it seems important to note that all examples I can think of took place on Facebook, where you can just end interactions like this without it being awkward.
Ok, that makes the real incentives quite different. Then, I suspect that these people are navigating facebook using the intuitions and strategies from the real world, without much consideration for the new digital environment.
Possible scenario where this comes up:
Your friends are talking about anime, they ask you if you watch anime, you say “I don’t like anime,” they say “well you just haven’t watched the right shows, have you tried...”
Sure, but it remains unclear what response the friend wanted from the other person. What better options are there? Should they just go away? Change topic? I’m looking for specific answers here.
My response in this case would be to say something like “Well, I’ve got some shows that might change you’re mind if you’re ever interested. “Then leave it to them to continue that thread if interested. This goes with my general policy to try to avoid giving unsolicited advice.
And then the other person says “no thanks”, and you both stand in awkward silence? My point is that offering recommendations is a natural thing to say, even if not perfect, and it’s nice to have something to say. If you want to discourage unsolicited recommendations, then you need to propose a different trajectory for the conversation. Changing topic is hard, and simply going away is rude. People give unsolicited recommendations because it seems to be the best option available.
I think I would probably change the subject in a case like this. Good “vibing” conversation skill here is to “fractionate” the conversation, frequently cut topics before they reach their natural conclusion so that when you reach a conversation dead end like this, you have somewhere to go back to. Ditto with being able to make situational observations to restart a conversation, and having in your back pocket a list of topics and questions to go to.
I don’t think the proper thing to do here is to make someone else feel awkward or annoyed so that you feel less awkward, the proper thing to do is to learn the conversational skills to make people not feel awkward.
That sounds reasonable, but the proper thing is not usually the easy thing, and you’re not going to make people do the proper thing just by saying that it is proper.
If we want to talk about this as a problem in rationality, we should probably talk about social incentives, and possible alternative strategies for the anime-hater (you’re now talking about a better strategy for the anime-fan, but it’s not good to ask other people to solve your problems). Although I’m not sure to what extent this is a problem that needs solving.
It sounds like you two are currently talking about two different problems: mr-hire is asking “how do avoid being That Guy Who Pressures People about Anime” and you’re asking the question “If I want to avoid people pestering me with anime questions, or people in general to stop this behavior, what would have to change?”
Yes. The latter seems to be what OP is asking about: “If one wanted it to not happen, how would one go about that?”. I assume OP is taking the perspective of his friends, who are annoyed by this behavior, rather than the perspective of the anime-fans, who don’t necessarily see anything wrong with the situation.
In the literal world, I’m an anime fan, but the situation seems basically futile: the people recommending anime seem like they’re accomplishing nothing but generating frustration. More metaphorically, I’m mostly interested in how to prevent the behaviour either as somebody complaining about anime or as a third party, and secondarily interested in how to restrain myself from recommending anime.
Note that my response was responding to this original question:
It want obvious to me that this was asking “How did your friend want the world to be different such that the incentives were to respond differently?”
Yes, and you answered that question well. But the reason I asked for alternative responses, was so that I could compare them to unsolicited recommendations from the anime-fan’s point of view (and find that unsolicited recommendations have lower effort or higher reward).
Also, I’m not asking “How did your friend want the world to be different”, I’m asking “What action could your friend have taken to avoid that particular response?”. The friend is a rational agent, he is able to consider alternative strategies, but he shouldn’t expect that other people will change their behavior when they have no personal incentive to do so.
At this juncture, it seems important to note that all examples I can think of took place on Facebook, where you can just end interactions like this without it being awkward.
Ok, that makes the real incentives quite different. Then, I suspect that these people are navigating facebook using the intuitions and strategies from the real world, without much consideration for the new digital environment.