You must log in or register to comment.
I’ve always felt it like “I can’t contextualize what this person may or may not already know about this topic, so I assume they know nothing to make sure I am explaining myself using a good foundation”. Not because I think I know more or am smarter, but because I can’t guess their life experience and so it seems better than talking about something and they go “What’s X?”. It definitely makes me seek condescending though, so if anyone else does that, its best to ask questions first. Saying " Have you seen The Matrix?" and having them go “Duh I’ve seen the highly popular film The Matrix” is better than assuming they haven’t seen it while going on to explain what it is before you tell your anecdote or whatever. You just have not take that kind of reaction personally.
This is what the case is 9 times out of 10.
Mansplaining is a thing, sure. lit happens. But I think a key aspect of it is talking down to someone. Its explaining things like how to turn on a computer or telling an engineer how to do addition.
My head is filled with mostly useless facts. I’ve learned that if im talking to someone about something I’m interested in chances are they’ll have never heard of it or no nothing about it. So I make sure to ask things like: do you know much about x? Or have you heard of you before?
It gives me an idea of how much I’ll need to explain. Ive had a few instances where someone has gotten indignant to the question. To which I normally reply by jumping right past first principles and into to the heart of it. Cue confused look.
I’m right there with you, but I can’t ever seem to thread the needle. Like in your Matrix example I have had people get offended by a question like that.
More generally speaking, I think it’s so difficult because a lot of people aren’t actually all that interested in learning or communicating in a way where a mutual understanding of each other’s base reality/knowledge are understood. They prefer to operate on their innate or learned social cues and prefer making assumptions or reading between the lines of what the other person is saying. Or in modern parlance, they just go by the vibes.
I have watched two people completely talk past each other and misunderstand the other person and yet they both seemed to come out of the conversation pleased with the interaction so many times. It’s baffling to me.
In theory, asking them first makes sense, but when you’re me, and your nerdy interest is in stuff like nuclear reactors and linux. You don’t bother asking because 90% of the time, you either know who you’re talking to, and can assume that they have a similar level of knowledge, or you assume they don’t because you’re pretty certain they don’t and it works well 99% of the time.
I always assume nobody cares so just summarize in a sentence
One great habit to get into is when you have something like this that can be mistaken for something rude you can just preemptively apologize for it. “I’m neurodivergent and have a tendency to overexplain” doesn’t make it not frustrating but it does make me not think you’re assuming I know fuck all. I also like using “I don’t know how much you know about x” it makes it very clear I understand you may be more knowledgeable than me on this
Although if you do this to people who already know you, it seems to gather less sympathy and more “oh great, time for 10 minutes of vaguely related facts”
Tangents! Tangents everywhere!
So which one is this post?
I understand that but what if they actually donu understand me and I have done a terrible job of expressing myself
You can’t control how people react to you, unfortunately. This has been my mantra for about a year now and it’s incredible how much I’ve caught myself attempting the Sisyphean task of taking control over how people perceive me and react to that perception. There’s no point in wrestling people into communicating with you properly. It usually just results in anxiety or in you accidentally communicating extra information that you didn’t intend.
For me it’s not how people react to me, it’s more that I find it absurdly important to get point I’m trying to make across perfectly and try to prevent any possible miscommunication
Hm, I think it is probably a bit more nuanced than that. Sure, insecurity with rejection plays a huge role. So does having having a brain that orders information in a neurodivergent way, be it more jumbled up, associative or more structured.
I often need to know everything about a certain topic until I feel like I understand it. And it has to follow logic. If you only give me single bits, I will be confused. So when explaining stuff to other people, I try to convey as much information as I can because that’s what I would need as well. This might easily be confused with mansplaining or with being pedantic. I point out logical fallacies when I spot them because my brain gets confused otherwise. Some people might also misread this as power play. But usually my insecurity speaks for itself I guess because if you are outwardly insecure it will fail as power play (e.g. mansplaining).
Another aspect of neurodivergent oversharing is getting obsessed with a special interest that then everything revolves around and you want to only talk about this topic. I guess it is a state where the brain is so focused on this one thing that the outside world just isn’t as relevant. This might also be confused with mansplaining, but is probably more likely to be read as socially awkward? Although both have in common that the other person is seen as somewhat irrelevant and unknowing.
Option 3: I work in IT. I see on a daily basis people with bachelor’s and PHDs doing some of the stupidest shit. I assume no one knows fuck all.
Them: “My camera for teams isn’t working please help!”
Me: Flicks open the webcam cover and smiles trying not to make them feel too bad😅
The older I get the more I kick myself for “knowing” I’m too stupid for a PhD or master’s in anything.
I’ve always had an interest in science, I love watching something like PBS spacetime or fermilab videos (because I’m obviously a layman and won’t understand anything actually detailed), but I’ve always held this belief that I’m “wayyyy too stupid to actually do the work.” and then I hear story after story of “very smart people” simply not understanding the simplest of concepts.
Oh well lol
then I hear story after story of “very smart people” simply not understanding the simplest of concepts.
Usually this is because their knowledge and skills go very deep, but not very wide. There is also a big divide between the practical side of things and the theoretical. Another thing I’ve noticed is that if you spend a lot of time working on very complicated problems you tend to forget that most things have simple solutions. So when confronted with a simple issue your mind kind of ‘skips over’ all the simple stuff and immediately assumes it must be something complicated.
i like to classify this problem as an optimization problem more than anything.
The simplest possible solution is an impossible feat, and varies depending on the requirements and shenanigans willing to be committed. The approximate simplest possible solution is very achievable, but requires a lot of thought, a very specific use case, and an established ecosystem. The most functional solution is whatever you manage to cobble together quickly enough to prove that it’s possible, only for it to be used for about 3 years, because it works finetm
Anything else is a nightmare abomination and should never be classified, exposed to the light of day, or shown to other people. Except as a cautionary tale.
Yet more evidence that intelligence and wisdom are separate things.
Not really. Technical knowledge is still a form of knowledge not wisdom.
Having received a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet, embedded into a Word document, I always go option 3.
I’m also old enough to have had to explain why a 27MB Publisher file could not fit on a floppy disk to be sent to the printers.
Gosh these are great examples, holy hell they’re wild
Isn’t mansplaining just being condescending?
IMO, it’s just being overly confident and stubborn in your explanation of something. specifically in relation to the two sexes (or genders, depending on the scenario)
Anything else just doesn’t apply. But i also have a pretty strict definition of anything like this tbh.
Poor communication often by men. Assuming the other is uninformed and then not picking up on cues from them, taking the explanation way too far.
That’s rather broad i think. Like are we including people who don’t socially communicate very well? Like autistic people for example. I like to define things specifically enough that they have an explicit category. I don’t interact with people physically very often, i’m not good on picking up cues, and often just completely ignore their physical state, because i’m in the middle of doing something else.
Forgive me if i’m rather brazen here, but like, just fucking tell me i’m being a dumbass and explaining something i don’t need to. It’s fine.
In theory yes, in practice some people use the term very broadly.
that’s a thing, sure, but at least personally most of the time it’s neither of these, it’s “i have so much knowledge of this topic lodged inside my brain that it’s fighting to escape and i have a profound need to talk about it to others, and there is no greater joy in life than having a person ask follow-up questions”
That sounds like you may too few people in your life to talk a lot and deeply to? Or you simply have a way higher urge to talk than the average person
And it would be so much better if that something was something others actually find interesting. Instead its something esoteric like energy storage solutions, or the difference between b550 and x570. I was once asked, “what’s the difference between m-ATX and mini-ITX?” And I knew way to much about it to be socially healthy…
m-ATX is if you need a computer without excessive IO, mini-ITX is when you have to choose between proper VRM and a second DIMM slot. Oh, and pay double for less than half the real estate.
This is what I like about the makerspace community. We get a lot of new members who almost reflectively react to the perceived “WTF are they talking about, why won’t they shut up?” vibe that most people give off. It’s an amazing trainwreck when they realise that they are not only not annoying people with it, but that people have an active interest!
you will fucking love sociology and philosophy then.
the cycle goes something like this:
- You write a shitty book about philosophy.
- Someone else reads your shitty book. Decides they have a lot of thoughts on your shitty book, and then write their own shitty book about it.
- You then read that book, because now reading is the only thing you do in your time ever (on account of the philosophy) and now you have more thoughts on the topic, and so you write another shitty book.
And this is how we get shit like “incars” philosophy is truly incredible.
usually when i’m getting into some really nerdy shit, i tend to explain the ever living hell out of it, because shits complicated as fuck.
I could ask whether the other party knows it, but let’s be real, i’m enjoying myself too much to ask lmao. Just tell me to stop and i will.
I’m autistic and I feel this.
So you’re either autistic or mansplaining? This is sexist as fuck lmao. Some SJW pulled this out of her ass and you’re all gullible for believing it.
So you’re either autistic or mansplaining? This is sexist as fuck lmao. Some SJW pulled this out of her ass and you’re all gullible for believing it.
Repost because mods are bastards.
I just got into a huge argument with my friend while fixing her car. When I met her she was swapping the motor out and I thought I could be some help. I wasn’t much help but I’m still putting effort in. What I’m saying is this argument we had, I still think I was right, but she’s dealt with soo many assholes that she just wasn’t gonna hear it from me and my poor communication skills.
I ask what people know about a topic before I start. Most people don’t like being put on the spot to prove their knowledge about a random topic, but it seems to work better and be more engaging than just assuming they do or don’t know and dumping accordingly.
No I mansplain because too many dumb fucks in my life will tell me they understand what I mean and then why I explain it anyway they have no idea what I mean.
Sucks to suck stupid people ruined it for everyone now y’all have to listen to explanations regardless.
So, everyone suffers because you surround yourself with people that you think are beneath you?
I don’t think anyone is beneath me but the amount of times I’ve gone through the aforementioned scenario.
"Hey do you understand how to do x?
“Yeah sure!”
Proceeds to not even slightly understand how to do x
“Hey this is how you do x”
“STOP EXPLAINING I ALREADY KNOW”
In reality it’s more of a 50/50 whether I actually explain it after they’ve fucked it up because I just can’t be bothered but a lot of the time if someone fucks it up it falls on me.
I should also say this is mainly a work thing. I don’t generally do it to random people.
The thing is that there are almost an infinite number of things you can learn and you only have enough time to learn a few of them. So if I talk to someone else, there is a very small chance that person spent their limited time learning the exact same things I did. Of course, this depends on context. At work I assume that the people who also work in the quite specific niche I’m in have a large overlap in knowledge, but a random person I meet anywhere else probably won’t even be aware that this thing I know a lot about is even a thing. Not because they are stupid but because they spent their time learning other stuff I know fuck all about.
I can always tell between when thoughts are (bonus thoughts) or when they’re condescending. Most the time it’s neither, but there are some assholes.
