It’s nonspecific on purpose; a general factor of causes of “this conversation is making me mad”. This could be caused by tone: concretely, an occasion where someone is trying to explain something, any topic, and using negatively charged words to describe people who hold my position, or just any other position, making my interlocutor sound smug. It can also be caused by a sense that the interlocutor isn’t really engaging with my arguments, making me feel like I should be giving up on the conversation. Concretely, an occasion where I make a very extensive explanation of what I mean on some point, and the interlocutor completely denies acknowledging it, giving me no feedback on whether they even read it, or whether it addresses their concerns, choosing to instead focus on some tangential point. Bad, annoying discursive practice in general.
Both of these things can be “merely perceived” in some sense, but they almost always point to some kind of rhetorical dysfunction; either on the part of the speaker or listener. And one shouldn’t assume their interlocutor is at fault; a thing that both the perceived asshole and the perceiver should understand.
If I had to dilute my point into a sentence, here, it’s that being easy to talk to is a virtue, though only one among many, and this kind expression is often a sign that you aren’t easy to talk to. This is of course very complicated, and has a ton of different factors going into it, but we ought to try.
It’s nonspecific on purpose; a general factor of causes of “this conversation is making me mad”. This could be caused by tone: concretely, an occasion where someone is trying to explain something, any topic, and using negatively charged words to describe people who hold my position, or just any other position, making my interlocutor sound smug. It can also be caused by a sense that the interlocutor isn’t really engaging with my arguments, making me feel like I should be giving up on the conversation. Concretely, an occasion where I make a very extensive explanation of what I mean on some point, and the interlocutor completely denies acknowledging it, giving me no feedback on whether they even read it, or whether it addresses their concerns, choosing to instead focus on some tangential point. Bad, annoying discursive practice in general.
Both of these things can be “merely perceived” in some sense, but they almost always point to some kind of rhetorical dysfunction; either on the part of the speaker or listener. And one shouldn’t assume their interlocutor is at fault; a thing that both the perceived asshole and the perceiver should understand.
If I had to dilute my point into a sentence, here, it’s that being easy to talk to is a virtue, though only one among many, and this kind expression is often a sign that you aren’t easy to talk to. This is of course very complicated, and has a ton of different factors going into it, but we ought to try.