I do still feel flinchy about that because it does come across less friendly / overly commanding to me. (For the past few weeks I’ve been often just deciding the take the hit of being less friendly, but am on the lookout for phrases that feel reasonable on all dimensions)
It basically is a command. So maybe it’s a feature that the phrase feels commanding. Though it is a sort of ‘soft command’ in that you would accept a good excuse to not answer (like ‘I am too busy, I will explain later’).
I think it’s not the case that I really want it to be a command, I want it to be “reveal culture”, where, it is a fact that I want to know this thing, and that I think it’d be useful if you told me. But, it’s also the case that we are friends and if you didn’t want to tell me for whatever reason I’d find a way to work with that.
(the line is blurry sometimes, there’s a range of modes I’m in when I make this sort of phrase, some more commandlike than others. But, I definitely frequently want to issue a non-command. The main thing I want to fix is that “I’m curious” in particular is basically a lie, or at least has misleading connotes)
The direct approach: “I’m curious [if/why …]” → “Tell me [if/why …]”
I do still feel flinchy about that because it does come across less friendly / overly commanding to me. (For the past few weeks I’ve been often just deciding the take the hit of being less friendly, but am on the lookout for phrases that feel reasonable on all dimensions)
“Can you tell me [if/why]...”?
It basically is a command. So maybe it’s a feature that the phrase feels commanding. Though it is a sort of ‘soft command’ in that you would accept a good excuse to not answer (like ‘I am too busy, I will explain later’).
I think it’s not the case that I really want it to be a command, I want it to be “reveal culture”, where, it is a fact that I want to know this thing, and that I think it’d be useful if you told me. But, it’s also the case that we are friends and if you didn’t want to tell me for whatever reason I’d find a way to work with that.
(the line is blurry sometimes, there’s a range of modes I’m in when I make this sort of phrase, some more commandlike than others. But, I definitely frequently want to issue a non-command. The main thing I want to fix is that “I’m curious” in particular is basically a lie, or at least has misleading connotes)