fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3132 ]

[ SECRET POST #3132 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3132 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 068 secrets from Secret Submission Post #448.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't know why you're being hateful... is it supposed to be ironic? Are you saying that's how I talk? 'Cause I don't.

AYRT

I'm saying if you go in with the mindset that everyone is dumb and doing it wrong, you're probably coming across that way, and that's why people think you're trolling.

AYRT

But that, and the thinking they're not "real fans" thing, can come across in what's being written, and make people feel condescended to. And people really, really don't like that.

It's not like I enter the fandom and take a look around and immediately assess everyone's intelligence. I just read comments and see people thinking this or confused by that, and I can't help but think, "How can you not understand this?!"

For my part OP, I feel secure enough in my own intelligence to acknowledge that you may just genuinely be more intelligent than the majority of the people in fandom. That doesn't mean you're "better" then others, or course, or that you're going to be more capable then they are in every way - just that there may be certain areas where things seem obvious to you that don't seem obvious to most.

In particular, fandom tends to be a very emotionally driven environment (feels, feels, FEELS!!1!), so if your intelligence is strongly rational then there may be a lot of stuff that just seems absurd to you.

Of course the post where I say I'm confident in my intelligence is the one with a dozen typos.

*takes a bow*

Oh, right, of course. Anyone who's put off by someone being a dick is just insecure.

And if OP was being a dick, you might have an actual point.

They could very well be. I mean, people seem to think they are, or at least that they're abrasive enough to be a troll.

AYRT

Fair enough. It just seems kind of hasty not to give them the benefit of the doubt when we have no reason not to.

Besides, sometimes it's a little of both, dickishness and intelligence. In my experience, people who are smarter than most can often be rather arrogant or insensitive, because they're sick of trying to explain the obvious to people and having people just not get it. This seems to be especially true for smart people who are still fairly young (maybe mid-twenties and below?) because they sometimes haven't figured out about using their intellectual intelligence to inform their emotional intelligence.

Real intelligence, in the end, means being able to appreciate the learning experiences that are present in interactions with everyone, no matter how smart they are or at what level. This can definitely take some time to develop.

When I was in my childhood and teens I felt frustrated at how slow everyone else was and how they missed even the most obvious things. People cut me a lot of slack because I was supposed to be this weird smart kid, but really I was just a superior jerk. Nowadays other people are constantly surprising me and I keep learning from them. They didn't change, but I did.

Emotional intelligence is a good way of putting it, although it's more like a skillset. It takes longer to develop than the other kind of intelligence.

I still haven't learned how to do this with my parents, unfortunately. I'm still a jerk to them. How can they be so slow and ignorant of basic facts? Why do they make their minds up constantly before looking at the data? How can we be at all related? I just avoid interactions with them, mostly, as I can't help being rude even when I try not to be. It's not that they're stupid, it's that they're so irrational and proud of drawing conclusions that fly in the face of the facts.

Luckily I've found a very few number of people in real life whom I get on with (mostly engineers) and married one of them, so now I'm happy.

Hope you eventually find the same in fandom, OP.

On the way, try to be as polite and diplomatic as you can. You're never going to change the opinion of some stranger on the internet just because you show them the facts, so why not spend that energy finding sympathetic fellow fans instead?

Since you're so very intelligent, maybe you'd care to explain how a person can only count people as "real fans" if they agree with them, and if they don't agree, then clearly they're not "real fans" who understand the source material. Like... how is that a nice, non-dickish thing to do?

The place where you're going wrong is in mistaking what OP thinks for what OP does. OP has outright informed us that she(?) keeps her judgment of other fans to herself. If she were going around informing others that they aren't "real fans," that would be rude and provocative, but in keeping it to herself she shows herself to be polite.

DA

You can be polite and still be an asshole.

Yes, and it's fun, too.

That's all well and good, but a lot of times, when we think we're keeping our true opinions to ourselves, they're actually affecting how we interact with other people. I'm sure OP really does think they're being polite, but people might still be picking up on how they feel.

That's very possible. But I'm going to keep on giving OP the benefit of the doubt.

I feel for you, really I do. But the fact that you do not see that this attitude is a major obstacle to interacting well with other people IS the problem. Until you realize that it's really hard to sneer at other peoples' wrongness inside your head and interact with them politely, you will continue to fail at making good connections with others in your fandom.

The OP didn't come across as sneering, more like astonished.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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