With all the talk on the site about muting, I thought I'd ask what you do in your day-to-day life with people who are hard to listen to. I feel like the way people interact in life to annoying people probably influences the discussion here and now. Maybe it'll give a better perspective on the conversations, maybe it'll let you vent about that jackass the other day, maybe it's just a funny story. Regardless, let's hear about people you've "muted" in real life.
There's someone who muted me IRL because I was a terrible addict ruining my life and theirs. It's been a frustrating experience and it took way too long for me to accept the situation but honestly it's what I needed. I'm more thankful than anything else but they'll probably never know because I have no way of telling them. Another person muted me IRL because they felt like they should be a hopeless addict ruining their own life and my attempts to stop them were frustrating. They felt I was being presumptuous and controlling and yeah that's true but the alternative was just watching them deliberately dismantle every good thing they had. I have no idea where they are or what's happened to them and I'm kind of afraid to find out, so it's sort of mutual. Everyone else I've stopped talking to isn't worth talking about. Edit: maybe that's not true. I guess only selfishly care about those two instances because I lost something I wanted to keep. Notice they're about me being muted in a situation I found particularly stressful. Other instances that I've dismissed are more analogous to the situation you want to investigate. Other people I've stopped talking to have been more like acquaintances that held contemptuous ideas, failed to be interesting, outright hated me, or just fell victim to the constraints of time, effort, and social anxiety. The latter probably don't really fit into the "muted" category and the first three generally have a lot of overlap. In most cases those have been easier and less problematic than hubski mutes because they generally don't want to talk to me either. Hubski, by design, attracts people that want to talk about things so when I reject exactly that interaction it causes more friction.
this situation reminds me of this (or a later version here, done in 2000 ) An article I found while looking up these videos said the following, which I found very personally poignant: I hope one day you can tell the first person "Thank you", even through someone else.There's someone who muted me IRL because I was a terrible addict ruining my life and theirs.
muted me IRL because they felt like they should be a hopeless addict ruining their own life
Mitchell, her voice notched down to alto, was a different person – an interpreter, now, not a confessor, of her own words.
It might not be desirable to have a consistent identity across all platforms, an identity you are proud of putting in front of others, an identity that resembles your best self. Identity can be a moving target. It is easier to build trust though, when someone's persona is more or less consistent.I don't interact with people online in the same manner that I do offline, and I feel like that may be a part of the issue.
Why would you do that? If you are a pleasant, polite, thoughtful person on line, wouldn't you be the same IRL? Or vice versa. or do you try on different personas in places like Hubski, the way you might in Second Life?I also don't act the same at home as I do when dining in a restaurant
When I first read that statement, I thought you meant that at home you'd yell at the cook and criticize the server, but that you wouldn't do that in a restaurant (or vice versa). Then I wondered if you meant that at home you'd eat with your fingers, lick the plate, and chew with your mouth open.
I'm curious about what you meant by this line: I don't interact with people online in the same manner that I do offline, and I feel like that may be a part of the issue.
I'm interested, if you care to explain. I don't think you were talking about lovers and children, but I'm sure you had something in mind.
Oh I see. You were talking about a phenomenon in which all kinds of people behave differently in different environments. I took your comment to mean something more personal, conscious, and intentional. Hence my question. On hubski, commentators prefer to try to understand misunderstandings rather than accuse one another of being insincere, pretentious, and manipulative.
Someone should let Kleinb00 know...commentators prefer to try to understand misunderstandings rather than accuse one another of being insincere, pretentious, and manipulative.
Not cool dude. What's with the hostility? I m pretty sure she was not looking to attack your statement but for you to explain how exactly do you act different in different circumstances. It might have been something interesting. I never gave much thought to the differences in my behavior in different environments. I ll try to pay attention in the future, I m actually curious about what exactly do I do differently.
No, i just though you had something specific in mind when you said you acted different around other people. Of course I won't talk drugs with my parents but other stuff is more unconscious. As an example, I noticed that when I speak french with my french friends, I have a French accent. When I speak with people from Quebec I have more of a Quebecois accent. They were always very separate areas of my life and i never noticed until I hung out in a more mixed group and started talking very weird. I think you should give people the benefit of the doubt or account for misunderstandings (which I think is what happened here) before jumping to the conclusion we are either all idiots or attacking you.
elizabeth I had this guy muted the day he made his account, don't take it personally. He's angry, confused and alone. If that wasn't clear enough the way he spoke to lil then you know for sure now. Here's me wishing there was something more powerful than a mute button.
... dude, you're coming off as the "bad guy" here. lil is being completely legit and honest here. Attempting to understand one another and communicate IS how we like things to run here on Hubski. Frankly, the "backhanded insult" (which was more of an observation of fact than an accusation) was more than a little deserved considering how you've acted - rather like someone who's been poked with a stick than someone whose reasoning has been questioned. If you can't justify the way you act in a cohesive way that others can understand, then maybe you should rethink why you act the way you do.
you're only the bad guy if you choose to be. no title is foisted upon you without reason, and no stereotype can stick without reinforcement.
Muting is not an analog to what you're describing here. That is, unless you start demanding that random people on the street not converse with the person you don't like.
If you're at a party and you demand that no-one speak to the person you don't like, that's not exactly reasonable.
It's much more accurate to say "If you're at a party standing at a table and you demand that no-one at your table speak to the person you don't like if they come to your table" than what you have here. Assuming Hubski is the party - threads are tables - otherwise we're saying each individual thread is a party in which case there are shit-tons of parties going on constantly and missing out on one shouldn't be (for the average person) a very big deal, as it's very easy to hop to all the other parties going on around you. I guess we can get more elaborate and talk about theme parties. Like maybe a user is throwing a party that focuses on zebras and you really want to go, but you can't because you're not invited. There are lots of other parties going on but there are no other zebra parties. That is kind of sad. But there remain options. Maybe you can find a horse party or a giraffe party where you're invited.
I listen to them. Not just because I'm polite but I'm always intrigued by what they have to say. I enjoy their perspectives no matter how averse to my own because we're only human, right or wrong. I hate people. They're bastards. But I'd never "mute" someone in my life. I'm always up for a laugh. I'm always ready to learn.
There are two people in my life I've cut out entirely. They don't exist to me. If I see them, I do not acknowledge them. One of them has taken the hint on this and leaves me alone. The other one does not, and she insists on talking to me when she sees me. When that happens, I grit my teeth, respond shortly but mostly civilly, and work to end the conversation as soon as possible. If we are at a bar and she tries to buy me a drink I give the money to the bartender or I tell him to put my drink on my tab. I have unfriended and blocked her from Facebook because of her drama and because I do not want this person to have any insight into my life. In case anyone thinks I am being drastic about this girl, she has shown up at my house uninvited and unannounced, knowing I did not want to see her, in an attempt to make me talk to her. She insists on talking to me if she sees me knowing I have no desire to talk to her. She talks to mutual friends about how she doesn't understand why I don't talk to her and even, if she sees members of my family, says things like "I'm going to talk to you all the time so hopefully _refugee_ will be my friend again!" She sent me 28 facebook messages in one day before I unfriended and blocked her. The many things she did to cause me to take these actions to cut her out of my life cannot be fully extolled her, but the final straw was when she slept with the guy I was in love with, knowing full well how I felt about him, while he and I were still involved. She then lied to my face about it. Later, she claimed she was drunk and taken advantage of, didn't know what was going on. I find that hard to believe when I know for a fact she said "I've just heard so much about how good it is I have to try it for myself" to him before they slept together, and "You should go back to fucking my friend" after they slept together. The other person I've cut out of my life is that guy. I'll be civil if I have to; I won't start a fight. But I will not allow that girl back into my life. That is probably more extreme than you meant for this conversation but frankly I only mute people in extreme situations as well. You have to really, really piss me off before I will even hush or ignore you. The one user on here who's not a spambot who I have muted? I muted that person because every time I read one of their comments I became angry. In the interest of avoiding drama I felt it was better I mute them (and not lose my temper and embarrass myself in front of the community) than feed into being continually enraged by their posts.
Yeah, I kicked them both out. Honestly her betrayal was worse than his; she and I had been friends for nearly 20 years whereas he and I had known each other for months. He didn't know the depth of my relationship with her either. Unfortunately, because this woman is mentally unbalanced, she doesn't understand why I refuse to talk to both of them. She thinks I should talk to her since I no longer talk to him. That because I "hate him" now, I should be okay with her - as if only one person is to blame for that situation, or as if I shouldn't be mad any more because I'm no longer seeing him. I really hate to moderate unless I have to. I may not like users but worst case I end up hushing them usually. (Hush count: 4) I think it's justified in the case where I know a user pushes my buttons so bad that I don't feel I can interact with them positively in any way, and for me to reach that kind of conclusion it has to be an extended negative pattern. I try for civility. We have gone round about. That's fine. I believe strongly in my own views but I also recognize that I can't expect everyone to agree with them. I don't think that everyone values my opinion.
I, too, have exactly two people that I refuse to ever speak to again. One is an ex that I entirely cut out of my life that way. She deserved it every little bit as well, and to this day I wouldn't be civil if I saw her, which is saying something because someone could kill a family member of mine and I'd still retain civility towards them. The only other one, whom I remained civil towards and spoke to for years longer than I should have, was my father.
I used to work with a guy who was ideologically very dissimilar from me. He was (probably still is, I'd imagine) very conservative, christian, Pax-Americana neoconservative foreign policy, Glenn Beck, the whole nine-yards, and always eminently distrustful of anything liberal, left or democratic. We were on a two-person team, as product photographers for a small company, which meant that we often spent long periods of time in close proximity. I think some people probably would have loved a real life mute button for him, but to be honest I really didn't mind. Granted, sometimes when one of us wasn't really edging for a discussion, what the other person was saying would kind of go in one ear and out the other, but on the whole, I generally grew to enjoy talking with him. As the more issues we discussed, sometimes heatedly, we were able to identify points of common ground, albeit few and far between, and even times when we were unable to find agreement, sometimes his perspective would offer new ways of looking at things. It was difficult at times, because I would often find his ideas offensive at first blush, but being able to get past that is an important life skill. Having thin skin or a hard head can really hurt your ability to grow intellectually.
With the fact that there are people out there (in this site) who feel it's their job to make you feel unwelcome, I'd point out people here, but frankly I know when to pick my battles, you can't have discussions like this with someone. Unless you sent them a pm, and like I read TNG say somewhere, if it's a discussion that can transisition from PM to open posting somewhere, go for it. (OK OK I paraphrased him a bit but still).
I guess I'm not familiar with the specifics of what transpired so I can't really say if I think your justified in that, but I agree, there are plenty of trolls and assholes who deserve to be marginalized in an online discussion forum. However, with as much as the mute tool can help improve the quality of discussion, it can also hurt just as much if it's misused. I suppose if you have an opinion that the (currently) small insular group of power users here find unwelcoming, you're essentially shunned on most posts. I'm sure if/when the site grows, other groups of power users will develop, probably of different ideological persuasions, and I don't know how people will use or abuse the mute feature, but I suspect more drama pimples will occur from it.With the fact that there are people out there (in this site) who feel it's their job to make you feel unwelcome, I'd point out people here, but frankly I know when to pick my battles, you can't have discussions like this with someone.