I think you and Miss Manners have it…
She is paying attention and is not mortified.
These are her peers, they don’t know her well enough to point it out.
And finally, she is deliberately insulting them.
This thread was about if rich people behave more passive aggressively than poor people. I never asked why I was ignored. The question in the OP was answered a long time ago.
Then someone decided to tell me that I was ignored because my conversation style was immature. And since then that was the focus of the thread.
Do you understand what circular logic is? Let me spell it out for you: People are ignoring Lakai’s conversation style is because it is immature. Why is it immature? Because people are ignoring him. So people have ignored me because I was immature and I was immature because people ignored me.
I am well aware that I was ignored. That still doesn’t prove that I was being immature. Repeating the fact that I was ignored won’t make your argument any stronger.
Now we have something different. Too bad you’re completely ignoring what I said earlier:
“And I can see how pressing people who only want to play two-hand touch to play contact football can be immature. Yet it’s not like I could have asked people before the conversation started if they would like this conversation to have non-sequiturs. In a conversation I just talk the way I like to talk until I’m told otherwise.”
If you want to engage in a discussion then you should at least have the courtesy to respond to what I write. If you can’t do that then please don’t post anything.
The key here is that I did not know it would be unacceptable. I said I knew it wouldn’t be acceptable in some circles, but I had no way of knowing which circles. Not all rich kids talk the same way.
I don’t expect them to play a game they don’t want to. The problem with conversations is that they are different from games. In a game you can set the rules in advance. In a conversation you find out the rules after you start talking. That is what happened with me. I started talking with law students the way I usually talk and soon realized that they like to talk differently.
Again, the rules of conversation are unknown until you start having a conversation. It’s different from playing a two-hand touch game where everyone knows it’s two-hand touch. If I knew that the law students did not like my conversation style in advance, but I still went on to use it, then I could agree to call that immature.
It was? Where?
Their response is to ignore you because they are too embarrassed, by your overt need to draw attention to yourself, to point it out how inappropriate it is. They won’t acknowledge it because that will only encourage you to behave in this embarrassing fashion.
“In a conversation I just talk the way I like to talk until I’m told otherwise.” They are clearly trying to tell you otherwise - by ignoring and refusing to acknowledge, your witty efforts, you’re just not seeing it.
Here’s a newsflash, while this ‘look how clever I am’ repartee seemed witty back home, it doesn’t really fly with people out of highschool. You’ll discover that not only law school, but boardrooms, business meetings and, actually, most social encounters won’t mix well with your “high contact verbal game”. Why not just give regular conversation a try for a while and see how it works out?
What’s funny is that they aren’t being at all passive aggressive - you are. These abrupt changes of topic, non sequiturs, and other weird and wonderful input are just ways of drawing attention to yourself and attempts to show off how witty and weird you are. And, from the sounds of what you’ve detailed here, they aren’t impressing anyone. See, it appears like something passive, just being weird Lakai, when really it’s an aggressive attempt to draw attention to yourself and control the course of the conversation. So read the signs and stop already.
“If you want to engage in a discussion then you should at least have the courtesy to respond to what I write. If you can’t do that then please don’t post anything.” Hey, nice try, but you don’t get to say how we discuss what you’ve written.
What you really wanted was for us to confirm your skewed view, that they were somehow being passive aggressive.
Sorry that’s not how it worked out for you. I’m sorrier still that you aren’t be able to hear what’s being offered.
Is it too much to ask for you to be logical?
Repeating your arguments over and over again without addressing my responses isn’t going to convince me of anything.
Once again you spent a post arguing that I’m being immature because a couple of law students ignored me. Why my actions were immature you apparently can’t explain without using circular logic or making up scenarios that never took place.
I’m sorry you have to keep ending your posts by telling me how I should just accept that I’m wrong. I’m sorry you feel you need to rely on this rather than the strength of your reasoning.
The higher up the social ladder you go,
a) the more likely you are to run into smart people who don’t feel the need to employ physical intimidation and threats to get their way
b) the more “uncouth” it is to call out others’ social faux pas and minute social slights
neither of which has anything to do with “passive aggressiveness”
Dude, the fact that you even have a ‘trademark’ tells me all I need to know about whether or not you are crying for attention.
Why am I reminded of the guy who wants to dip his balls in everything?
Wow, what a floppy thread this turned in to.
Kind of like the floppy weather we’ve been having lately.
Lakai, are you saying it’s circular logic just because you don’t understand it? It doesn’t seem that hard. You are immature because you insist on injecting non sequiturs into other people’s conversation, interrupting their flow. They ignore you because they had the audacity to assume that anyone over the age of 10 gets that if you babble on about nothing, no one is going to pay attention. There seems to be a breakdown in your understanding of why they ignore you. Let me boil it down for you: it’s because the things you say are irrelevant and they’re not your mothers; it’s not their job to teach you how to behave socially.
They may or may not dislike you because of your “quirk”, but if they are ignoring you, they definitely aren’t interested in what you have to say when you interrupt them.
Using a different conversational style is not necessarily immature. Social conventions are nothing but what everyone agrees on. It does show lack of self-awareness if you do it over and over, receiving the same reaction, and then wonder what’s wrong with everyone else. However, I must admire the pluck and scientific curiosity it must require to willfully piss people off in order to find out why some punch you in the face and others don’t.
Dude, if everybody is responding to you in a less than positive way…
MAYBE IT’S YOU.
I’m not sure this is true, as your classmates seem to know the rules of conversing with one another. You’re the one who seems to want to make up new rules as you go. Most polite people do follow basic rules of conversation: you don’t interrupt, you listen politely to what someone has to say unless you have something relevant to add, and if you want to change the topic you wait until there’s a natural pause in the flow, then say something that relates it to what you were previously talking about. You don’t just make nonsensical statements, because part of your “job” in a conversation is to keep it pleasant for everyone.
They know the rules going in, and they’ve agreed to them. You’re breaking rules, and they’re ignoring you because it’s the polite thing to do.
I’m going to apologize to Lakai. It was not my intention to derail your thread or create a pile on.
I found your OP amusing as you expressed a desire to be ‘called on it’, so I thought I would do you the service of ‘calling you out’ on the slagging of ‘higher social classes’ because they don’t ‘get’ your weird Lakai vibe. And the juxtaposition of your conversational ‘style’ actually being passive aggressive and their response just good manners, of course.
I promise I was only making observations based on what you posted, not attempting to call you rude or side track your discussion.
Your reaction leads me to believe that I struck a nerve, which was not my intent. I only wanted to give you pause, and maybe get you to look at things a little differently. I’m sorry if I offended you in anyway.
More educated yes, higher social class? No, not really a safe assumption. First, it depends where you are, second I don’t think law students are upper crust more than any other graduate school environment. Probably less so in certain ways, as it is a vocational degree and not a purely intellectual one.
Actually, my law school has a lot of 1st generation immigrants. I don’t think that’s unusual at urban law schools. As well as mids & upper-mids of the send-their-kids-to-public-school sort. Many of the more obviously well off students are from Orthodox Jewish families, and also would be considered of moderate social class by most people.
Maybe at Yale or other elite, private law schools every other person is Poshy McPosherson III, but I doubt it.
I don’t see how it’s circular logic to assume that injecting non-sequitors into conversations is immature. For one thing, why on earth do you need a “hallmark” in conversation? In my opinion, the best hallmark would be excellent wit and relevant conversation. Being known as that guy who blurts out random crap while you’re trying to talk to someone is NOT something you’d (general) want to aspire to.
For another, a conversational style that involves interruping a conversation with random shit shows poor impulse control (something associated with immaturity) at best and a severe disinterest in the conversants at worst. Instead, you’re (general) thinking about what you’re going to say and how the respondents will react to you.
Presumably, the people having the conversation are talking about what they’re discussing because they’re interested in it or at least interested in maintaining a relationship with the person they’re talking to. Conversation, even small talk, facilitates that. Interjecting something completely off the wall makes it difficult for someone to continue an enjoyable conversation and directs attention from the subject to whatever crap you throw in. Or you force the conversants to ignore you, which is socially uncomfortable.
Completely wrong. The fact you are ignored is not what makes your behavior immature, nor did anybody claim such a thing.
The fact that your behavior is immature is the reason you are ignored, yes, and you should take the fact that you are ignored as an indication that others think your behavior is immature. That’s not circular at all.
I don’t really want to get into the whole immature vs. passive aggressive thing, but it’s true that different social networks have different conversational styles, and that using the appropriate style is a mark of belonging.
Different group have different rules about interruptions, pauses, volume, changes of subject, turn-taking as well as rules about acceptable grammar, pronunciation, topic choice, how to address others, and a million other things. Some rules may be linked to cultural values such as directness or harmony; some of them are just arbitrary. Even arbitrary rules serve as identity markers. By following them you show that you know and accept the rules of the group and that you are/wish to be a member.
Then explain why my behavior was immature without tell me that it was immature because I was ignored.
I never disagreed with the fact that others thought my behavior was immature. I disagreed with the fact that their definition of immature is controlling.
I think that the level at which attention seeking behavior becomes immature is really a subjective level. Defined differently from group to group. Where as the social group that I grew up with wouldn’t find a segue to floppy cats as inappropriate, a group of law students would find it inappropriate.
Grapefruit has actually suggested a reason why my behavior might have been immature for reasons other than the fact that law students disapproval of it. Mainly the fact that it was irrelevant to the conversation. However, it did not have to be relevant because I was changing topics. So we’re back to the issue of whether the way I changed topics was immature. I still don’t believe it was.
Overlyverbose came up with another reason:
Why would anyone want to listen to someone who is boring the crap out of them? Because it’s polite? It might be polite in one social group, but another social group might work differently. There are two people to a conversation. If one gets bored, why does he have to suffer? Why not change the topic? That sends a signal to the other guy that he’s boring you with his topic. If the two people both agree in advance that they can switch topics whenever either one of them feels bored, then neither one will be offended when this happens. They either find something good to talk about or they both shut up. No one is tolerating boredom out of some arbitrary notion of politeness.
So what if one social group values letting someone talk without interruption? Another social group might not have the same value. That doesn’t mean that one group is more mature than the other.
It clear to me now (after I typed the two previous sentences) that professionals are more likely to value talking without interruption. I can see how debates on topics like Res Judicata would become difficult if the listener could change topics once he gets bored. But because that is valued by one social group doesn’t make it immature if another social group doesn’t care for it. Even if one social group happens to be a group of well educated lawyers.
I guess my problem is that the social group I grew up with wouldn’t consider my behavior immature. That would be a group of people who I respect a lot more than the current social group I have to put up it. They grew up in a much more dangerous society than most middle-class kids, and their conversation style probably helped them live through it. And now people appear to be claiming that this style is immature because some random group of kids decided to ignore it.
Is that what you think I’m doing? Using non-sequiturs over and over again, getting the same reaction, and wondering what’s wrong with everyone else? I can assure you that I’ve realized that this behavior was inappropriate. I keep saying I have, yet no one will believe me because I insist that the few times I’ve used it wasn’t immature. It’s not immature to use behavior you learned in one social group with another social group before you know that the new group disapproves of it.
Part of life is dealing with boring people. If you don’t understand that or don’t have the patience to deal that then practicing law is not for you. That said, there are ways to deal with what you’re describing, however, abruptly changing topics with one of your witty trademarks isn’t one of them.
[QUOTE=Lakai]
If the two people both agree in advance that they can switch topics whenever either one of them feels bored, then neither one will be offended when this happens. They either find something good to talk about or they both shut up. No one is tolerating boredom out of some arbitrary notion of politeness.
[/QUOTE]
Who the hell does this? You’re telling me before you embark on a conversation, you and your conversee agree to rules of conduct? Really?
What do you do if, Heaven forbid, you don’t have time to come to a mutual agreement on how a conversation is to be conducted? What happens if you bump into someone just as you come out of the men’s room? Do you whip out a xerox of “Lakai’s Rules of Order” and have them sign it before any chatting occurs?
[QUOTE=Lakai]
I guess my problem is that the social group I grew up with wouldn’t consider my behavior immature. That would be a group of people who I respect a lot more than the current social group I have to put up it. They grew up in a much more dangerous society than most middle-class kids, and their conversation style probably helped them live through it. And now people appear to be claiming that this style is immature because some random group of kids decided to ignore it.
[/QUOTE]
How do you know they wouldn’t consider your behavior immature? Have you ever stopped to ask them if your “trademark” is annoying? You obviously don’t listen well so maybe they’ve politely given you hints over the years and you’ve ignored them. Not to mention, stop using “social groups” as some excuse for your behavior. From my own experience, I’ve known people who are on food stamps, others who could buy small countries and all sorts of people in between. None of them is going to find your behavior acceptable. It is rude to interrupt people. It is rude to arbitrarily decide you want to change a topic and it is extraordinarily immature of you not to understand that consensus builidng is part of life.