• Activity
  • Votes
  • Comments
  • New
  • All activity
  • Showing only topics in ~talk with the tag "communication". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. The limits of our digital social connections

      I don’t think it’s just social media that is making us so unhappy these days. Even texting has lost its power to communicate and connect us. My parents lost one of their best friends to old age...

      I don’t think it’s just social media that is making us so unhappy these days. Even texting has lost its power to communicate and connect us.

      My parents lost one of their best friends to old age yesterday and none of us can seem to find the right thing to say. It’s all just near misses and misinterpretation of intentions.

      When texting first started a generation ago, it seemed a miraculous way to share all kinds of details we never could before. But now it only seems to emphasize what we won’t ever understand about each other.

      The bloom is off the rose and our screens no longer seem to make us happy the way they used to.

      17 votes
    2. The problem with mind-reading

      I have been wanting to write about this for some time. This happens, in some shape or form, whenever someone reads others on the internet. Especially on sensitive subjects. Many readers are...

      I have been wanting to write about this for some time. This happens, in some shape or form, whenever someone reads others on the internet. Especially on sensitive subjects. Many readers are linguistic sleuths. Every fraction of language will be forcefully interpreted and analyzed in order to reveal some hidden truth (which is always assumed to be negative), the user's actual position, his or her sinister agenda. On the one hand, that is a consequence of the very real fact that many individuals do have sinister agendas, and many organizations do employ backhanded tactics to manipulate public opinion. I get that. At the same time, this makes it very hard to communicate sometimes.

      This affects the neurodiverse disproportionally and is a common complaint in places like /r/aspergers and /r/autism, among others. Some of us are not highly efficient machines of context evaluation and reproduction of linguistic patterns. Some of us actually do mean precisely what we say. No subtext, no irony, no desire to influence through excuse means.

      There are also people for whom English is not the first language, as well as those of varying age, cultures, and circumstances. While it is understandable that English-speaking communities naturally center on the US, the assumption that everyone lives within that context produces all kinds of misunderstandings. This makes me less likely to truly engage with some communities because every once in a while I'm hit in the crossfire. Sometimes I inadvertently use words, expressions, or phrasing patterns which North Americans associate with a certain position they disapprove of, and their "mind-reading" is led askew.

      This is not specific to any linguistic community. It happens everywhere. We're all kinda messed up. But it would be nice to be able to comment on complicated issues without feeling like Edward Norton in his first day at the Fight Club.

      I don't mean to imply that everyone should just abstain from hermeneutics in regular discourse. But maybe be a little more charitable, give it another chance when someone strikes you the wrong way.

      Sometimes people mean exactly what they write.

      (A lot of the above is directly transferable to offline interactions)

      11 votes
    3. Does anyone else feel like they don’t know how to talk to people anymore?

      I never considered myself an introvert or shy. I’ve always been comfortable talking with strangers, whether that was in my college class or just sparking up a conversation with someone next to me...

      I never considered myself an introvert or shy. I’ve always been comfortable talking with strangers, whether that was in my college class or just sparking up a conversation with someone next to me in line.

      I haven’t talked to a stranger irl since the pandemic started and I’m running scenarios in my brain about how I would talk to someone when I just met them. And every situation I’m going through I’m being awkward and uncomfortable.

      I can talk to my family and my cousins, who are essentially my only friends, just fine but that’s different since there’s already an established way of communication there.

      I just feel like I’m gonna be so rusty at talking to people, which is a shame because I’ve spent years learning how to talk to strangers in a certain way to make them comfortable and to very easily have a conversation. And I feel like I lost all of that now.

      25 votes
    4. Mentorship networks/software for Leftists?

      Reading HackerNews and saw that some mentorship software launched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20656223 and someone mentioned another software as a service that does mentorship:...

      Reading HackerNews and saw that some mentorship software launched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20656223 and someone mentioned another software as a service that does mentorship: https://mentorloop.com/

      Now I'm wondering where the mentorship for leftists and leftist organizing is.

      And I'm wondering if anyone else feels like most of the good ideas that leftists have slowly trickle into businesses but in ways that can be controlled by executives/managers. Their "features" include these slogans:

      Tools to Turn Human Resources into Superheroes

      Don't let employees slip through the cracks
      Stay on top of hundreds to thousands of mentoring interactions in a way that still feels personal. Check in on employee relationships, give them the right nudges they need.

      What's your take? Is there a need for more mentorship and peer to peer training/collaboration amongst anarchists and communists? Is that realistic? Or is this something that we just need to be on the defense against and form our own networks outside these systems of control?

      16 votes
    5. I find that actively trying to not sound rude is much better than saying "I don't want to sound rude", even if you get it wrong and end up sounding rude anyway

      Rhetorically speaking, "I don't want to sound rude" can have the opposite effect as the one intended by the writer (when I'm on the receiving end that's almost 100% of the time). It basically...

      Rhetorically speaking, "I don't want to sound rude" can have the opposite effect as the one intended by the writer (when I'm on the receiving end that's almost 100% of the time). It basically states, from the get-go, that the opposing argument is so deeply flawed, requiring such a strong, ruthless counter-argument, that there's a good possibility that you might offend your interlocutor's sensibilities. Even if you're so fucking right that your answer erupts from the depths of your logical mind with the power of a thousand volcanoes, that's not a good way to create rapport. At this point, no one knows your reasoning yet. You may sound like a douche bag. You may be right, but not as right as you think. You may also be very wrong, and in that case you not only promised something you couldn't deliver, but you also made it hard to take the conversation forward. Because, by belittling your interlocutor, you created an environment where getting it wrong is not admissible, and he/she will apply the same rule to yourself. Even in the case that you're right, your behavior discouraged further questions. All because you wanted to be nice! Communication is hard.

      16 votes
    6. How can I do better?

      The other day, I made a comment regarding our political climate that a number of people reacted to with anger. It is ironic because it is the very thing i was commenting on, that I wanted to avoid...

      The other day, I made a comment regarding our political climate that a number of people reacted to with anger. It is ironic because it is the very thing i was commenting on, that I wanted to avoid causing more emotional distress in that segment of the populace in my country which is right now very upset. I made my comment without taking into consideration that the very environment on tildes was no different than the environment I was commenting on.

      It is something that has caught me off-guard in the past on this site as well, where I said something that I thought of as innocuous, which some people reacted to with extreme emotions. When I was told to police myself more, I felt indignant and infuriated. I thought I was already trying to walk on eggshells enough!

      I don't think anything I've said or done on Tildes is objectively offensive or inappropriate - and I recognize that sometimes people see things from a completely different reality than I experience. I want to make a solid effort to get along with people here, and that appears to mean that I need to learn how to communicate in a way that doesn't provoke discord.

      So how do I do it? What can I do to make sure that I'm not pissing people off here just by conversing and expressing my thoughts or feelings? What specific strategies can I employ to filter my self so that it is safe? Cfabbro and Deimos both have told me that I'm doing it wrong, but i want to know how to do it right. Please teach me.

      25 votes
    7. How often do you go to write a comment or a post online, and after a bit of time spent writing you decide that it is crap and just delete it? Is this a good thing?

      I do this a lot. I did it just now. I wrote about five paragraphs on a topic, deleted it and started over, wrote about five more and did the same thing. Got frustrated. Some thoughts that went...

      I do this a lot. I did it just now. I wrote about five paragraphs on a topic, deleted it and started over, wrote about five more and did the same thing. Got frustrated. Some thoughts that went through my mind:

      • "this is not concise at all. It's disorganized and needs to be re-done"

      • "this is going to trigger an emotional response and that will filter how they read it, so I'll be less likely to get interesting responses"

      • "maybe I should just do this as a journal entry and keep it private"

      • "these thoughts are worth something, and even if they aren't super cogent, maybe they can be a starting point for a collaborative thinking process"

      • "that's dumb, nobody cares about my ramblings anyway. everyone has thoughts like this, mine aren't more important"

      • etc.

      So what usually ends up happening in instances like this is I just don't post. Other times, I get wrapped up in trying to make a post super-high quality and it comes across as over-produced... and if I've somehow triggered an emotional response then that aspect becomes an avenue for attack.

      Does anyone else experience something comparable to this? Is it a good thing for helping to maintain quality content and discussions? If not, what are strategies to improve situations like these?

      25 votes
    8. Any language learners/enthusiasts around here?

      Now that a community is starting to build here, I'm curious if anyone else is interested in languages. Personally, I realized that I enjoy learning languages when I took a Spanish class in high...

      Now that a community is starting to build here, I'm curious if anyone else is interested in languages.

      Personally, I realized that I enjoy learning languages when I took a Spanish class in high school. The only languages I've studied seriously are Spanish and Russian, and unfortunately these days my Spanish is pretty rusty, but I still enjoy the process of learning about different languages, how they relate to each other, and learning how to communicate at least a little.

      Anyone here share my interest? What language(s) are you learning/have you studied, and what do you like or dislike about it? What has struck you as the most interesting or weirdest thing about it?

      28 votes