[meta third-removed]

[reenka]

Another day, another semi-wank in the HP fandom, and-- thinking about what bothers me in the type of discourse here (well, not just fandom, it's really predominant in public discourse), I finally come to some sort of empathy & understanding of the Cult of Nice. Except... what I want isn't niceness-- that's a misnomer & wouldn't be helpful in the long run; what I'd want is to have a Cult of Understanding ('empathy' just sounds silly).

See, people are almost never 'too mean' or too blunt or too harsh for me; what they are, I'd realized, is too aggressive. Instead of stating things softly, like between friends discussing issues and having a two-way conversation, many people claim things, disclaim things, make spurious exaggerations and mocking arguments and generally act like this is All So Important Omg (or alternatively, so unimportant as to be laughable). I mean, who wants to be told to go to hell, but politely (in theory)? What I'd like is some attempt to understand without laying blame and picking sides: that's the truly civilized thing to be doing, isn't it?

The idea is obviously hopeless; you're never going to get people (esp. strangers) to 'just talk' in a heated discussion anymore than you're going to teach pigs to tap-dance; all I've realized is that 'niceness' is a veil for people needing something deeper and harder to fake with an act. You can't fake understanding, patience and subtlety the way you can 'act' nice, so of course most people don't demand it. Of course, my problem is that once I understand, I accept unless I think the person's saying something truly heinous and wrong instead of just... not right enough or deluded, and then people accuse me of siding with the person I accept. *sigh*

To come back to the idea of 'too aggressive': I think it's just that people tend to put things too firmly for my liking, whether they're polite or not, and -that's- what annoys me. It's like, they don't tend to question themselves, and if they do, they question themselves so much they can't tell their front from their back. It's the difference between wondering (open-ended) and claiming (definitive). When people 'wonder' in practice, generally, that means they just ask questions and -other- people get to be definitive, but that's not what I mean at all; I mean for people to question the presumptions that lead them to question-- and to think for themselves as far as possible solutions go, so that the ensuing conversation has some natural balance to it.

I was also thinking that I'm often accused of being 'too certain' and of saying 'this is just how the world is', and in a way I'm saying that right now. I think it's more like I'm always confused & unresolved, but keep myself trapped by constantly seeing other possibilities. Is there such a thing as seeing too much context??

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think what bugs me the most is just when people change what other people say--and that often comes with the mocking or the being too aggressive or certain. Not because it's bad to be certain, but because you're usually talking about something that isn't certain. And then if somebody argues with it it gets "you're being too serious!" It's just so tranparent--there was a woman I went to college with...it's a dumb story but I swear it relates. Remember there used to be that commercial for Sara Lee cakes that said, "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee?"

Everytime it came on she's say, "That's such bad grammar!" So after a while I started really thinking about it and...it's not bad grammar. It's awkward, but it's not a double negative, as she claimed. So after that whenever she'd make this big pronouncement I'd challenge it and explain why it wasn't, and then she'd act like I was all anal about a TV commercial. And then I got annoyed and said, "Oh, so needing to make this pronouncement every time the bad commercial comes on isn't anal but pointing out you're WRONG is anal?" It just was so annoying not because I had to be right but because what she was doing was so annoyingly dishonest.

So so many fandom discussions come down to Nobody like Sara Lee.:-)

I can honestly get into almost any discussion, but I hate it when somebody isn't really discussing.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, trust you to tell me what I think except clearer :D :D :D Yes, it's the 'being certain but about things that aren't certain', and therefore wilfully misinterpreting. This happens to me all the time, and half the time I blame myself 'cause I'm confusing and evasive and circular, right? But how often can I do that before I just shut up completely out of hopelessness? I dunno. I seem to make sense to certain people but not others; it's like, some people can fill in the blanks (that I didn't mean to put there), like you(!! hee), and some tear pieces out of what I said and then slap them together wrong & argue with me about things that I never said(!!)

I mean, I think my #1 Most Common Response in meta is '...but I wasn't saying that'. And most people's response is '...but so what?' -.- It's more important to fight one's little battle than to have a normal conversation. I wonder what is it about fandom that makes everyone a crusader, y'know? I mean, it does that to me too. It's like we're all fighting for something, but what is it?? And who really cares??

In the end, people don't seem to care about 'the truth' anyway, so much as being able to put their personal stamp on something. It's like the argument between the writer of the DaVinci Code & all the priests who write books about how wrong he is-- and in the end, people keep on believing what they want to believe. It really makes me wonder about the real use of 'the truth', if basically, there's no evidence people care to know if it doesn't fit in with their pre-existing emotional investments (and that girl sounds like her biggest investment isn't in Sara Lee one way or the other but in the sound of her own voice). That's really it: it's not about JKR or the DaVinci Code or any of it; it's about people & their egos.