To the grandparent poster: Please do not delete your comments. Even if you’ve changed your mind about everything that you said, just add a bolded edit tag at the bottom and say so. Deleting your comments makes the children comments less useful.
It might be nice if there were some completely neutral social interaction method. Imagine a species of aliens whose emotions and body language are radically different from ours. How would they signal to people that they don’t like you or dislike you, they don’t fit into your primate dominance hierarchies, and they mean only what they say?
I think the closest thing to completely neutral tone and body language is to put a wicker basket over your head and speak in a monotone chant. This is probably infeasible, though it would be pretty entertaining for everyone involved. A milder version would be to watch Star Trek until you can imitate Spock.
Is it any wonder that so many people prefer to communicate via text?
Text is nice, but missing subtext can leave people with very different impressions of what you meant than you think. The amount that tone, volume, emphasis, gestures, posture, speed of speech and body language matter is hard to understate.
If you can’t provide those cues, then other environmental cues may overwrite the feel of your text.
I just use what I call the Ultimate Golden Rule: avoid social interaction.
This really doesn’t sound feasible. At a minimum you want to be able to not offend others in social situations.
To the grandparent poster: Please do not delete your comments. Even if you’ve changed your mind about everything that you said, just add a bolded edit tag at the bottom and say so. Deleting your comments makes the children comments less useful.
It might be nice if there were some completely neutral social interaction method. Imagine a species of aliens whose emotions and body language are radically different from ours. How would they signal to people that they don’t like you or dislike you, they don’t fit into your primate dominance hierarchies, and they mean only what they say?
I think the closest thing to completely neutral tone and body language is to put a wicker basket over your head and speak in a monotone chant. This is probably infeasible, though it would be pretty entertaining for everyone involved. A milder version would be to watch Star Trek until you can imitate Spock.
Is it any wonder that so many people prefer to communicate via text?
This just sets your average lower. How much could Spock say with an eyebrow twitch?
Text is nice, but missing subtext can leave people with very different impressions of what you meant than you think. The amount that tone, volume, emphasis, gestures, posture, speed of speech and body language matter is hard to understate.
If you can’t provide those cues, then other environmental cues may overwrite the feel of your text.
Rules such as that lead “you” (of course I really mean “me”) into terminal failure and despair from which suicide is the only escape.
I’ve been following rules like this for years, but they’re inexorably leading me to the Superultimate Golden Rule: kill yourself.