As best I can tell, “people who sometimes ask questions they might not want to hear the answer to” are a large majority of the population. “Does this dress make me look fat” is a cliche put-you-on-the-spot question for a reason.
You’re misunderstanding the message.
“Does this dress make me look fat?” is not really a question. It’s a request for a compliment.
If I may engage in gender generalization for a moment, men usually understand words literally. This annoys women to no end as they often prefer to communicate on the implication level and the actual words uttered don’t matter much.
You’re misunderstanding the message.
“Does this dress make me look fat?” is not really a question. It’s a request for a compliment.
If I may engage in gender generalization for a moment, men usually understand words literally. This annoys women to no end as they often prefer to communicate on the implication level and the actual words uttered don’t matter much.
In a sense, yes. But less-cliche questions sometimes get used the same way, and you have to be on guard with that.
(You can argue that giving the expected responses to such questions isn’t technically lying, but that seems like semantic hair-splitting to me.)