Even less sure where to put this

I guess. I'm just kinda used to strawman macros, it's a style of annoying-internet-slapfight-argument I guess I'll have to unlearn.

 

My point was more about the overarching dialog, but you do behave in ways consistent with someone who views their social capital, as tied to skills like reasoned argument and mental health things, as important. You give the impression of wanting come off best in an argument - I've met a lot of people that argue the way you do that tie their self-esteem into being The Best Arguer, Right Forever. You hold on to points past the point more casual debaters would let go, giving the impression that you are very invested in winning an argument. That's often a basis for status in an online community - being on the perceived right or winning side of arguments often. Also, your continued insistence on not seeing status or saying that people are wrong for perceiving things this way comes off very disingenuously to a forum full of people who are familiar with gaslighting. (this is not me claiming you are any of this, just that the behavior gives a certain impression)

fake edit: apparently something happened while I was typing this but I feel it's relevant to the question at hand so I'm gonna still post it.

 

Oh, okay! Yeah, that was about Seebs, specifically, about a comment by someone else about how they tend to dismiss any arguments that come across as angry. But I somehow can't find said comment anymore?

 

Thank you for relocating this thread, Seebs, but in the future please take someone at their word when they say they don't want to talk to you. It took a lot of people voicing discomfort for you to move your comments.

 

It's not a matter of obsession with status.

It's one of using your status without adjusting for how others will respond to it. You seem confident. You pursue answers to questions with an almost Terminator patience, even past when people say they're not interested. And when you've got status, or just the impression of it due to confidence and friends, it's frightening to refuse. I rarely think in terms of the individual minds of other people, I think in generalities that work well enough most of the time. It's annoying to be treated like others' misplaced assumptions, but I get it when people default to their assumptions; it's easy and untaxing in spoons whenever the assumption is close enough. I'm pretty sure most people, especially annoyed and/or frightened people, are not thinking in terms of what you know is true. That you are ready and interested in getting the answers to questions doesn't mean they are. You stop later than is comfortable. Most people fear consequences for that, you don't, so it looks like you consider yourself immune to consequences.

 

And I am willing to answer questions and try to give better explanations. But I may need to call a raincheck on it.

 

@swirlingflight
This sounds to me like people feeling like they're not equal to seebs in their own eyes bc of his self-assurance, and then bc of that thinking he believes the same thing.

Isn't that more a them problem than a him problem? Can someone really change their communication style enough to make someone who sees themself that way believe the are equal? (I can't think oftthe word I want to use, not lowself esteem, not self loathing, ugh...can't think)

(but then Im kinda of the opinion status [as related to this forum] is a self percieved thing, not an actual thing, so I might be biased)

 

Sure, it's a them problem. I bring it up not because it's seebs' obligation to fix, but bevause it's an obstacle to seebs' stated goal of getting understandable answers.

I suspect that (a) stopping sooner, and (b) adding some comforting platitude about being willing to stop, would reassure a lot of the people who are presently unable to converse with The Seebs. Not sure yet.

 

+1, one of my biggest concerns about engaging seebs is being able to disengage. The only reason I posted tonight is because I have to be asleep soon so I have a ready excuse to dip out when it gets to be too much for me. (Speaking of which, I will check on this tomorrow and will respond with clarification if asked but I'm gone until at least 8:30 eastern.)

 

What is that. Does not compute.

 

<wheezes> Hello I had to make a sub account to get past my self-imposed bans to read all of this stuff

so i have thoughts on underlying problems that keep turning up in disagreements with seebs, particularly about status things, and im very tired but i hope this makes sense >.> i have been thinking about this for months now. this is meant as much for seebs as everyone else. interested in if other peeps follow my thoughts?



seebs structures the majority of his replies to things like mini essays - thesis statement, body paragraphs with mini conclusions which relate to thesis statement, conclusion that wraps it up and restates thesis statement in some way.

this is a method of communication inherently associated with academia, which is notoriously dense as fuck

academic lingo is inherently associated with higher status and authority because of the typical pop culture correlation between academia, upper class people, and people in academic jobs

there's also an association between dense academic writing and people who use it as a bludgeon to overwhelm people they are talking too

seebs' position as forum founder and main mod carries inherent status association because it's a position of authority. this is compounded by the style of communication which carries the previously mentioned inherent associations for a lot of people

add onto this observations that are meant purely as observations but often are written in a way that seems v passive aggressive when the common association with dense academic writing is that of a conversational cudgel


thoughts on if that covers most of the underlying issues that keep cropping up?

ETA: FINALLY I CAN HAVE SHITTY SHADES ON MY AVATAR

 

(this response is late because one of my friends started messaging me with fart jokes and that took priority to this debate)

i think that clout is the correct word choice in this case, because it really does feel like certain people have more influence with you

but presenting arguments are hard. your arguments usually come in the form of large walls of text, the intimidating nature of which is not helped by the fact that of the people on this forum, no one has the same level of social influence as you. the problem isn't that you can't be convinced, it's that for a lot of people who would find issue with you, arguing with you is an overwhelming gauntlet of a task. you don't intimidate me, but that's only because i am instinctively oblivious to your staggering social presence and find your massive text dumps accessible for some reason. even still, i would hardly be surprised if i faced social repercussions from other people for disagreeing with you.

the problem you observe isn't the problem we're talking about, and it doesn't particularly matter who you think the people who have clout with you are: the point is that right or wrong, arguing with you generally isn't something viable for a lot of kintsugijin, which leads to you mostly only listening to those who have influence with you.

you're operating on a different definition than us, then. the reality is that people here do not need complete agreement to be able to shout down other people.

i mean, i can, but that would be pretty time and spoon-consuming. and things are rough enough right now that my already meager spoon supply is even sparser than usual.

that you aren't capable of understanding the criticisms doesn't mean that they do not fit. and if you think that the criticism you talk about here is anything close to the objections we have with you, then you are really not understanding at all

 

in this case, clout refers to the personal favor some people have gained with you. in the past, you are much more likely to listen to what someone is saying without textwall'ing at them if they have gained this personal favor with you. i don't think i'm the only one who doubts that being able to argue in a logical and coherent manner is the sole trait that allows someone to acquire your personal favor. as impartial as you try to be, you are not immune to bias, and you are not capable of recognizing all your biases. you will come to like people over others for reasons aside from their capabilities for argumentation, and you will still be much more inclined to listen to these people than others. everyone is susceptible to doing this, and you are no exception.

like i said, arguing with you in particular is a daunting spoondrain that a lot of people are really not going to want to do. it's no surprise that many people will also consider it futile. this probably does involve an overestimation of the amount of time and effort it would take to convince you to a certain degree, but this does not mean that the actual amount of time and effort it would take to convince you is even remotely close to being small. if this method of getting you to listen to them is unviable, then it is not incorrect for someone to say that they haven't garnered sufficient favor with you for you to listen to them, because you listening to them is dependent on whether or not you like them enough to not make them run The Gauntlet.

running The Gaunlet is a task that people most commonly seem to be not up to doing. you can choose to sit there thinking that this is not a you problem that you should feel inclined to do anything about. you can also recognize that maybe expecting the forum full of people who have significant struggles with brainweird and trauma to be up to engaging with you on your level to be more than a bit unreasonable, and that maybe you should find a different way to engage with certain people in a way they are actually capable of

the problem will continue to grow if you pick the first option, and it will continue to make things difficult for you no matter how much you don't consider it to be your problem

i don't have an easy solution for you here if you'd like to make a genuine attempt at the second option, but i've got some starting points you might want to consider

• if someone isn't able to engage you the way you are used to, you might want to consider asking for clarification more often instead of running with your assumptions
• the people who especially have trouble engaging with you are different people with different gripes with you, gripes that you shouldn't wave off as all being unimportant or part of the same pattern just because you can't understand where they're coming from.
• if the same approach to these situations is consistently met with conflict and misunderstanding, try to find a different approach to these situations instead of dismissing the people you are developing problems with as causing conflict and misunderstanding.

and now i'm out of spoons and will continue later

 

This is a thing that makes a lot of sense to me, because I have recently noticed a thing with the way that I read seebs' stuff sometimes

So, as probably anyone who's spent any length of time talking to me knows, when I'm confronted by math thinking, my brain just sort of shuts down. I blank out, switch gears entirely into the low-self esteem panic mode that I did basically every math class after geometry in.

(It sucks a lot, especially because I used to be really good about working out math problems, and I realized how much it sucks kind of recently, when I realized that I have a lot of fun doing math-adjacent problems [designing stairs, messing about with digital electronics, coming at gravity from a strictly story-telling mode] but the second I remind myself that "this is math!", I shut down again)

this has a point, honest

seebs' writing sometimes hits me the same way. The block of text combined with the fact that it seems like I only ever see those blocks of text in a. drama or b. shutting down arguments really hecks me over, and I'm pretty sure when I'm in that state, I tend to see that there is a block of text, pick up enough words to sort of see what it's talking about, and pretend that I understand what's happening enough to agree and go on my way.

this is super hecka unhealthy! It's also a personal thing, so please, this is an open appeal for y'all to wander over to my PMs or Vent Thread and tell me how to work around that (but only if it's suggestions to work around it - my shittalking queue is full at the moment)

However, within the way that I respond, it makes sense that when I see those text walls, I just nope out, because - well, you can see it in this thread. There's a big block of text, and then suddenly a bunch of other users showed up who hadn't previously been involved, and a bunch of mini-dramas started up that had nothing to do with the original issue. (ok, I'm very biased against derails)

Fuck, if someone can dredge up my original point, they're welcome to it, I have to go to bed

(apparently sherman alexie is coming to our school tomorrow, and i have to print off timesheets, and our schedule in history is like 2 days behind thanks to seattle's hilarious overreaction to cold weather)

 

This makes sense to me. I find @seebs writing style useful at understanding her points, probably because it's the way I learned to communicate. (Non verbal people are taught VERY formal methods of writing - I had to take classes in speech and creative writing to unlearn the bad habits.)