The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
AFU
Smileys
 zielinski and spider




From: szielins@us.oracle.com (Stephan Zielinski)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Head & Shoulders & Good Humor
Date: 10 May 1996 23:01:56 GMT

Well, folks, here's another one of my interminable rambles. Sorry. I spent a week in splendid isolation, and I really missed droning on and on about something I only marginally understand. But this is a good one, once you get past the requisite you-said-he-said cruft. Persevere.

> In article <4mqa0t$1lh@panix.com>, iayork@panix.com (Ian A. York) wrote:
[If you can't find the full text from the article reference number, let me know and I'll email it to you. --Stephan]

And eylerjs@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu wrote: > Oh goody. Another diatribe about why Ian York's personal preferences
> and idiosyncracies should control everyone else's behavior.

Have a look at the text of the article again. Dave Blake asked which of "Cites?" or "Cites? :-)" folks preferred. Ian, speaking solely for himself and his invisible friend Bob, stated the latter usage induced an extraordinarily negative personal response.

I defy you to find a sentence literally interpretable as a command. Ian merely states an opinion.

I will now state my opinion. I speak solely for myself and the Crane Fly Control Officer living between my desk and wall.

Given: the FAQ, the archive at www.urbanlegends.com, and a respected hat have all stated that the use of a smiley on AFU makes a poster look like a knucklehead. I can only conclude that folks who use smileys on AFU either (A) believe that the laws of cause and effect do not apply to them, or (B) WANT to look like knuckleheads.

The spider says (A), but she feeds daily on critters that think "only other insects get caught in webs." Me, I say (B). Humanity is diverse. I don't know why people like durian, either.

Incidently, the spider just finished Tannen's _You Just Don't Understand_, and presents the following (somewhat far-fetched, but what do you expect from an arachnid?) hypothesis to account for the tone of eylerjs' reply (if not its content.)

Ian's post is written as the statement of a preference. Now, eylerjs took it as a command, and angrily refused to change behavior.

The spider has had similar problems herself. Last week, when she stated a preference-- "I really want to produce a brood of eggs someday"-- her significant other took it as a command-- "Come mate with me right now, and then hold still while I eat you alive." She found herself in a knock-down drag-out fight. (Her SO wasn't ready for that degree of committment, and didn't believe her when she assured him she'd never eat him unless he forgot to approach in a non-prey manner.) She couldn't understand his vehement reaction to what struck her as a perfectly noncontroversial, wistful statement. It became quite a rift between them. I eventually had to squash him.

Tannen observed this miscommunication more frequently when men interacted with women. However, there is no sex-linked gene that codes for this behavior. As men adopt women's styles of conversation and vice versa, we can expect even more misinterpretations.

So we are exchanging one form of confusion for another. Used to be there were two genderlects, each strongly correlated with gender per se. An Enlightened Man would learn that "Do you want to go to the party?" meant "I'd like to go to the party," and an Enlightened Woman would learn that "Mmm, a little dizzy in the mornings sometimes" meant "I vomit blood all day, but I'm in denial and I especially don't want *you* worrying about me," and we'd be OK.

Nowadays, not only are the genderlect-clueless folks unable to communicate with EACH OTHER, they get terminally confused when a modern shows up and uses every conversational style there is, interchangably. I refer to the people who not only know "Do you want to go out?" can be interpreted as a suggestion, but also know when and with whom to use it as such. And us Californians are in the van; my cow orkers and I seldom give each other direct orders, even when the difference in ranks is tremendous. A Vice President will have me out of my chair and running for his office with a simple, "Does the net seem slow to you today?" It's phrased as an innocuous question, but I know damn well that it means "Get over here and fix this, right now."

[Amusingly enough, this means that the relationship between us pond-scum and upper management is just as formal and strained as it was before we stopped addressing uprankers with honorifics. My CIO's name is Jerry, and I've ADDRESSED him as Jerry in the halls, with my own tongue. I didn't turn to stone. But he doesn't dare say anything of substance to me, lest I take it as an order, and I won't say anything of substance to him, lest he take it as an emergency problem escalation. This is why God gave men sports; otherwise we'd never say anything to say to each other at all.]

So. Remove physical gender cues as well, as occurs on the net, and truly bizarre seeming things happen. The people you address not only might not understand you, they might fail to understand in ways you have NEVER SEEN somebody fail to understand you before.

Well, that's the spider's take on it, and since she's not heavy enough to press *any* of the keys, I've obliged her.

> What line of work are you in Ian? And why is your life so unsatisfying
> that you have to dictate how others communicate?

I respect my Pest Control That's Fun To Be With's hypothesis. But in the end, her point is moot. Analyzing how, exactly, this particular failure to communicate occurred is rather like describing a drunk-driving train wreck to ten decimal places. While interesting ("The bulk of the fatalities occurred as the passenger compartments accordioned,") it doesn't necessarily lead to better communications per se. In the train wreck, naive analysis of the crash can lead to useless suggestions-- "If you must take a train, be sure to ride in the caboose." Analyzing a conversational wreck can lead to a similarly useless suggestion: "Be aware people on the net may react to you based on a projected gender that might not even match the implied gender of your name."

Well, Amtrak won't let you ride in the caboose, and morons will ever find new and better ways to totally misunderstand what you say. The solution to drunk train wrecks is no tequila in the locomotive, but you can't buy a no-tequila round-trip ticket; the solution to conversational misinterpretations is to not discourse with dolts, and no desert island is isolated enough for that.

> :) j

Honey, where'd I leave my flyswatter?

-- 

Stephan "|                                            " Zielinski
         |  Well, where was the last place you saw it?
         | /
         *



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