It probably goes without saying that you need a pretty high status to make use of the advice in this post. A predictable failure mode for naturally status-blind people not very successful in life is to keep forgetting how low-status you are, and how little others can be bothered to listen to three words from you before they start talking over you or walk away mid-sentence to ask someone else. Only when you consciously learn status is a thing and its implications do you realize how hopeless all those communication attempts were to begin with, how powerless you are to stop people from ascribing to you any ideas or motives they like, how well-advised you’d be to shut up most of the time, and how screwed you are when shutting up won’t do.
It also takes some time to learn that, in written communication, people who would interrupt you will instead skim your text for isolated keywords, hold you responsible for the message they make up from those, and give you an accordingly useless or hostile reply.
This comment makes me sad, but I upvote it for the reminder (I’m sad at how it’s probably true, at least for some people, not sad because it’s inaccurate). Something something affordance widths.
It probably goes without saying that you need a pretty high status to make use of the advice in this post. A predictable failure mode for naturally status-blind people not very successful in life is to keep forgetting how low-status you are, and how little others can be bothered to listen to three words from you before they start talking over you or walk away mid-sentence to ask someone else. Only when you consciously learn status is a thing and its implications do you realize how hopeless all those communication attempts were to begin with, how powerless you are to stop people from ascribing to you any ideas or motives they like, how well-advised you’d be to shut up most of the time, and how screwed you are when shutting up won’t do.
It also takes some time to learn that, in written communication, people who would interrupt you will instead skim your text for isolated keywords, hold you responsible for the message they make up from those, and give you an accordingly useless or hostile reply.
This comment makes me sad, but I upvote it for the reminder (I’m sad at how it’s probably true, at least for some people, not sad because it’s inaccurate). Something something affordance widths.