Generally, I’m a very likeable person. “Charismatic” generally shows up in the three adjectives someone would use to describe me. Nonetheless, there is one very specific group of people that I seem to consistently rub the wrong way.
People who are smart but not very intelligent with lacking social skills. Generally this group of people I would assign the qualities of having to stake themselves out in any social setting as “the smart one” in the group and are perhaps more cliquish than normal, in that they will only be friends with someone who who meets very specific criteria.
This is a problem for me because they’ll often be quite knowledgeable in one or two areas but won’t talk to me because I can’t relate in those areas.
Come on, guys. There has to be one subset of people who just consistently don’t like you.
American girls within +/- 3 years of my age. That only applies if we’re going for the romantic usage of the word like. Even though I dress and groom well, apparently I give off a “creepy” vibe T_T;
Ummm… quiet people dont like me very much, because I’m a loud and fast talker. Humorless people might not hate me from the getgo but they quickly begin to.
Are we asking about people who don’t give a whit about me (lots of them, and I’m happy to not give a whit about them), or who actively dislike me?
The second group, at least irl, is formed mostly by those who think I’m a threat. Definitely not in the physical sense.
I’m sure there’s more than a Doper who would occasionally like to smack me upside the head for being a smartass, but that’s not dislike, that’s a good smack upside the head. I’ve got friends that I consider should be up-smacked periodically.
The girlfriends of my male friends tend more often than not to dislike me on sight; literally, I mean, before I have a chance to say anything to them. Some, but not all, come around when they realize I have only platonic interest in their guys. I was puzzled as to why I so often get the cold shoulder from these girls until one came out and told me that she and other women apparently believe the redhead stereotypes :rolleyes:
I am a teacher, and the one demographic I never get along with are sullen rich boys: I do fine with sullen poor boys, with sullen rich girls, and with non-sullen boys and girls of whatever income level, but there is a specific type: well-off, sneering, too-cool-for-this-world boy that tends to actively dislike me and my class.
The nice interpretation of this would be that they realize they aren’t getting away with any shit in my class and that I am not impressed by their worldly riches: the negative interpretation is that snot-nosed bastards like that irritate the shit out of me so I give them more crap than I should and they react to my obvious disdain with dislike. I really hope it’s all the former, but it’d be hubris for me to deny that some of it may be the later.
People who think my behaviour/manner of speech/manner of dress are a put on to attract attention tend to dislike me, and I don’t really blame them. The thing is, I’ve tried behaving in non-attention getting ways and that just makes people uneasy too, as it’s clearly not the real me they’re getting. So… to hell with it, I guess? Oh, and in the wider social group around me I seem to piss off the people with whom I refuse to play ‘greener than thou’. But they piss me off too, so we’re even.
Women with low self confidence. Oh man, can I drive them up the wall. And I usually don’t even know I’m doing it. I just wake up one day to find so-and-so doing everything she can to make my life hell.
Before I became a SAHM I did a lot of temporary office work and held a variety of part- and full-time jobs for brief periods of time. Kept looking for the right niche, but never found it.
And it always cracked me up, because in one setting I could be the least liked person in the group - and then, the next week, be Miss Popularity somewhere else. One place didn’t trust me to do more than file, and in others I filled in for highly paid bosses by generating the reports they were unable to do. It gave me an appreciation for the effects of bigotry because we are limited, at times, by other people’s beliefs about us.
People with a highly defined sense of decorum (or really rigid thinking in general) are sometimes put off by me and my slapdash ways, but usually my sense of humor (or, in a work setting, ability to deliver the goods) wins them over.
I’m finding a lot of this is changing as I’m getting older. It used to be that a lot of what a certain type of man found irritating in my behavior has to do with whether he found me sexually attractive. Also I find that I’m more “invisible” to a lot more groups of people than I used to be. It’s weird.
The extremely self-reliant kind, who prides themselves on internal consistency. I don’t know why it is. Maybe they’re just generally sour and don’t like people (indeed, they are usually extremely judgmental–I guess that comes from being such a superior human being :rolleyes: ), but it seems like they specifically don’t like me. Maybe it bugs them that I swear and don’t go to church and make fun of myself, and I’m still doing awfully well in life.
Is it a standard experience? You’re talking to a new person and suddenly they break in with criticism of some kind of inconsistency or wrong-headedness that you’ve managed to display in the last three minutes of inane, content-free chatter?
I’ve never gotten on with the “Cool Clique.” It doesn’t matter what age. I’m either too smart, a little too dorky (for example, during high school I actually read the newspaper and could competently discuss current events - as opposed to what Julie said about Sally and Frank together and now THEIR LIVES ARE OVER) or not quite manly enough. Luckily that’s a very small minority of people.
Otherwise there are some folks to whom my humor isn’t very amusing. Sometimes I’m perceived as inappropriate because I loathe the PC culture. Sometimes I encounter people who just don’t think I’m funny. That’s a problem sometimes because I generally relate to people through humor.
People I’ve come across who believe in alien abductions, psychics, ghosts, and other supersticious stuff can’t stand me. I’m usually very tolerant of other people’s beliefs, religions, life-styles however I am just too quick to jump in and call B.S. on people who believe in paranormal stuff. And I usually end up doing it in a very condescending way.
On the other end of the spectrum are black females. As a white guy going through my 20s and 30s I’m not sure what it was but every black female I gained acquaintance with treated me like a long lost friend. I asked a lot of my other white guy friends if this happens to them and apparently it does not.
I grew up in a college town and so I have a pretty good idea of what schools of people don’t like me.
Engineers love me. I’ve always gotten along well with engineering types. Mechanical, electrical, aeronautical, chemical. Computer geeks too.
Accountants hate me. Anal retentive types exist for my type to annoy. I am not rigid. I do not line shit up just so. I’m chatty. I pretty much drive those types insane. (FYI, if you stack your poker chips up all just so in front of you, my innate desire is to “accidently” knock them over with the dealer button)
Guys who think they are gods gift who think women are idiots and are all standing around waiting to screw them. Egotistical males typically do not like me at all.
Interestingly, it has been my experience in life that you either hate me with the white hot passion of a thousand suns or you love me to death. I don’t think anyone has ever said “Eh, she’s ok.” My demographics at work show that. You either think I’m the sweetest thing ever or a royal bitch.
The quiet judgmental types don’t like me. Quiet people like me, just not the “if you don’t have exactly the same composure as I do, you suck” types.
Mouthy broads. The most distinguishing feature of all my girlfriends is that they all speak their minds. Not a shy, delicate flower among them.