From one of the psycho-threads:
I’m quite a passive man, but I prefer not to have much to do with people anyway.
How do you people deal with that scenario?
I’m glad you made this thread. That quote also gave me pause for thought in the way I react with people.
If you prefer things that way, no need to change. If you want to be more interactive with people you have to practice a lot to develop some technique. I spent the first 25 years of my life introverted and shy, and mildly irritated that other people did not approach me (creepy people on the bus or in doorways excepted, of course.). Eventually I just started pretending that I was more outgoing than I really felt. It seriously took a couple decades of deliberate practice to get to the point where I can interact pretty well in small groups and it helped my career and personal relationships to learn it. I still frequently get in social situations where I feel like a pig on skates, but like learning to play an instrument when you have no musical talent, eventually you can get good enough at it to not only fake your way through a party but even start to enjoy it.
I still need a lot of alone time, however. Long periods of enforced socialization can still be exhausting. If I envy anybody, it is the person who can be effortlessly social and likable.
Social extroverted people aren’t uber-confident. They just don’t over emphasize situations. They don’t make them bigger than they are. With the exception of extremely introverted loners that really have no desire of interacting with other people, I have found that shy people, that say they lack the confidence to open up or interact with others primarily for fear of rejection, are that way because they build up the situations they are in into greater situations than they really are.
Speaking up in a social setting isn’t speaking on national television. Asking a girl on a date isn’t asking her to marry you or have your babies. Introducing yourself to a stranger at a bar isn’t interviewing for your dream job. But most shy socially awkward people I know, treat those situations like they are the latter on an emotional level.
Saying something stupid at a party isn’t the end of the world. Lots of people do it, even extroverts. Being turned down for a date happens all the time. Keep asking. If a stranger in a bar isn’t interested in talking to you, turn to your other side, odds are that person will be.
There’s a world of difference between social introversion due to shyness, and thinking that women should bow down at your feet because you were raised to believe that you’re God’s greatest gift to the world.
Wow, I’m surprised that my throwaway comment spawned a spinoff thread.
I don’t think there’s anything profound to this, but maybe I’m missing something? People who are willing to take chances in any endeavor–whether it be making friends, learning new skills, or trying new foods–are also taking on the chance of things going bad. But they are also increasing the likelihood that they will experience positive rewards. When the fear of bad consequences outweighs the desire for rewards, you tend to get passivity and stasis.
I think the CA shooter created an excuse (“they are supposed to come to ME”) so he wouldn’t feel like he was letting himself down by being passive, and also to protect himself from the sting of “no”. And also, he wanted to hate people. It helped him cope somehow. What better way to justify hating someone than to find fault in their behavior every time they failed to follow proper protocol?
I’ve seen similar attitudes and motivations in other men and women with respect to dating. Maybe not so much with “hate” per se, but general antipathy towards the opposite sex.
Here’s the difference that I see:
Saying “I have all the social interaction I need, and I can put in the effort to get more if I feel like it I need it” is a pretty healthy thing to say. Not everyone needs a giant circle of friends and your need for friends might vary at different times in your life, especially if social contact might get settled through school, work, family, etc. If you aren’t satisfied at some time, then you at least know you can fix the problem by putting out the effort to nurture relationships.
Saying “I need more social interaction. The world owes me a favor and I can’t believe they’re not begging for the honor of being my friend” is a very unhealthy attitude. You’ve falsely externalized the problem and denied yourself the power to fix it because you can’t control what other people do. At that point, all that’s left is to be miserable and/or go on a killing spree.
I’m just curious as to why no-one did go to him. Rich, attractive, several room-mates, it seems like he ought to have had lots of passing social interactions. Getting asked to places, getting asked out by people, that sort of thing. But that doesn’t seem to have happened.
It may be that he gave off an angry, creepy vibe.
With apologies to Gertrude Stein, when I saw his video my first thought was, There is no there there." Even his creepy anger seemed like bad acting.
Certainly creates a good argument for having interests and hobbies that make you someone with something to offer even if you choose not to share it with anyone.
Maybe his body language scared them off. Someone with the kinds of thoughts brewing in his head probably radiated hostility, arrogance, or extreme emotional detachment. Usually you need to look at least somewhat approachable to be approached by others. Smiling, eye contact, relaxed posture…
First off, let’s do a gender analysis here, since gender has been brought up.
[QUOTE=Inverting the Gender]
She never approached men or attempted to make friends. Superficially, she expected them to initiate
[/quote]
I stripped off the interpretive bit at the end about this person’s alleged self-designated awesomeness, since we’re talking about the behavior and not the person’s reason for the behavior.
While it is not a universal behavioral rule to the point that departing from it is an unprecedented act of sexual revolution or anything, there do still exist gendered expectations of who is expected to initiate. When the phrase is gender-reversed so that it refers to a woman refraining from approaching men and expecting them to initiate, it’s pretty clearly not unusual behavior.
Saying or implying in any shape way or form that it is pathological when the behavior is a male behavior is sexist.
Not that I mean to imply that anyone did say it was pathological.
Anyway, moving along, let’s say we have this guy behaving this way, which isn’t pathological but it also isn’t the conventional male approach to these matters and issues. Like anyone who dons the other sex’s assigned sexual conduct, this guy is going to encounter some confusion and difficulties.
He ends up, apparently, very bitter and holding a lot of anger towards women, blaming women for the resulting confusion and difficulties. That also is a not-entirely-uncommon reaction from people who, for one reason or another, don the other sex’s assigned sexual behaviors. This is less often the case when the individual in question sees and understands that the sex-specific expectations and roles are part of a social system, a social structure.
Example: women who discard sexual initiative passivity because it doesn’t fit them and tend to approach men and initiate may have a lot of anger about the attitudes they encounter and the difficulties they experience trying to make that approach yield the desired results (especially if they want more out of it than a quickie) and they may vent a lot of that anger as contempt and frustration with men, but if they are familiar with feminism they understand that it’s a system that they’re up against, not just the individual behaviors of individual men, and that the men are likewise channeled into the behaviors defined as appropriate for their sex, which don’t dovetail very nicely with women behaving as they are behaving (because the sex role behaviors complement each other like matching puzzle pieces).
I’m wary of claiming this particular individual or guys like him as kin or comrades-in-common, but just from this much of the raw description, yeah, this is us, this set of behaviors and the anger that tends to be associated with it as well.
But men and women aren’t interchangable robots. You can’t just switch roles then get butthurt when you don’t get treated accordingly. Men and women do think and operate differently, and the expectation that the man is going to take the initiative in some form or another isn’t going away anytime soon. It might not be as blatant, but there will be some subtle form of it. When I met my wife, I didn’t act like a timid little shrew of a man waiting for her to show interest in me; I asked her out and told her I was interested in her. I didn’t wait for her to hint about marraige or asking me if I wanted to marry her, I proposed to her. My wife loves me because I am a man who takes initiative rather than being a passive bystander in life.
Gender aside, being proactive in life is a good thing. It means you aren’t just sitting on your ass waiting for what you want to happen. Generally people that are passive are much more likely to complain and whine (particularly on the internet) about how they aren’t getting what they want. People don’t like to change, not so much because they are so satisfied with who they are, but because change requires effort. If you are boring and uninteresting, and wished you were more interesting, you have to put genuine effort into it.
I also agree with others that crazy shooter guy must have given off a really creepy vibe to people, which drove them away. Its also really easy to look at what you think people want in friendships/relationships and emulate it poorly because you have it all backwards. The guy probably thought being in college and having a nice car was a plus. But I’m betting he was insufferable to be around, ignoring any woman who wasn’t a “HB10” then complaining women aren’t interested in him. Acting clingy and showing poor respect for other people’s boundaries. Complaining to aquantances/classmates he never gets invited to parties, that sort of stuff. People like him are an absolute fun-suck, even when around other somewhat immature guys.
I’m always being called cold and callous and suchlike, but I’ve still got friends. One of whom went out with a rapist, and he didn’t have any troubles, and even though he’s a small, weak, unattractive, poor and unpleasant person he doesn’t have any trouble with women even now, despite his history of alleged sexual assault and also fraud on the benefits system.
So I still don’t quite believe it. He just must have been in a better position than seems.
It is critical to learn to accept rejection. The key to is to have purpose in your social interactions. Do you want to sleep with that hot girl? Well, force yourself to interact with her but do so with clear intentions. Study your prey to best capture it, so to speak. Introverts tend to be goal-oriented in their social workings. Extroverts just enjoy babbling on and on. Extroverts only “win” more often because by law of numbers they have more opportunities. With knowledge anyone can succeed in the mires of social scenery.
Unfortunately, sitting back and waiting for the world to come to you just don’t work. I think the CA shooter was locked into the mentality that was he was “misunderstood” and that if people only saw who he really was they would all love him. That’s a load of crap of course, but his only obstacle was his mindset.
What if he was a woman?
AHunter3, just because men are traditionally seen as the one who initiate doesn’t mean that women can get away with passivity. Men look for signals of receptiveness. Eye contact. A friendly smile. The sound of engagement when she responds to a greeting. Reciprocation when asked how they are doing. These are active, deliberate actions. The opposite of passive.
If a woman told me she just sits around and waits for men to make contact, the first thing I would think is that she has social deficits she’s trying to cover up with old-fashioned notions. If guys aren’t coming to you, you likely aren’t sending off “come hither” vibes. Which means your ass needs to do something besides “sit around”.
Not saying that men don’t face more pressure than women, because they do. But if Elliot had been a woman, he would have still needed to do something, especially since he would have been just an average-looking woman. Maybe super hot girls can get away with being a lump on a log. But the vast majority of women aren’t super hot. They have to get on the dance floor and shake that thing (or at least look like they want to) if they want someone to holla.
I should also add that there are plenty of women who do initiate. They just don’t “initiate” with a cheesy pick-up line. They ask if you can help them with their stats homework or if you wouldn’t mind helping them with a couple of heavy boxes. They aren’t going to say, “I WANT YOU TO HAVE SEX WITH ME NOW!” But they will initiate in other ways. You just have to know how to read the signals.
I’ve never seen a woman rant about being an unloved 22-year-old virgin.
I agree with Stringbean about introverts tending to have a goal whereas extroverts are just enjoying the social exchange. Maybe creepy guy got some invitations along the way but wouldn’t go because he didn’t see the situation ending with getting laid by uber-chick. He had a friend, at least for awhile, but may have rejected any interactions that didn’t seem to have the big pay-off. And of course he blamed everybody else but himself for his loneliness. All of it does make him the “fun-suck” mentioned earlier. Was he in therapy and/or on medication? If not, his family was in major denial, too.