Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
case) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets2012-05-06 03:28 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2012-05-06 03:28 pm
[ SECRET POST #1951 ]
⌈ Secret Post #1951 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
__________________________________________________
02.
__________________________________________________
03.
__________________________________________________
04.
__________________________________________________
05.
__________________________________________________
06.
__________________________________________________
07.
__________________________________________________
08.
__________________________________________________
09.
__________________________________________________
10.
__________________________________________________
11.
__________________________________________________
12.
__________________________________________________
13.
__________________________________________________
14.
__________________________________________________
15.
__________________________________________________
16.
__________________________________________________
17.
__________________________________________________
18.
__________________________________________________
19.
__________________________________________________
20.
__________________________________________________
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 102 secrets from Secret Submission Post #279.
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.
no subject
I admit you don't provide a lot of context, but given my experiences and the BNF's reaction, I'm guessing the problem is that it came across really obviously that you were just using the subject as an excuse to talk to the BNF. The thing is, that's not actually treating them like a normal person, and it's likely to just make them feel cornered. Odds are you don't generally go around asking random people you don't actually know in a personal capacity their opinion on the latest episode of whatever - you might ask it as an open question in a discussion, or you might ask a friend whose particular opinion you have reason to care about, but you'd probably never normally go asking a non-BNF this one-on-one (if you didn't know them well), and the BNF can most likely tell... which means it's going to be awkward for them.
Try really thinking about when you might talk to any other random person who wasn't a BNF, and just do that to start with. Try just responding directly to things they say publicly when you have something relevant to add or ask, for instance. If they post their thoughts on something, you could ask if they have thoughts on something related to it (provided you're actually interested in their thoughts on that and are not just popping up repeatedly asking them things you don't actually care about). Comment on individual pieces of fanart they post, or the awesome icon they just used, or whatever. And from those kinds of "stranger-appropriate" interactions, friendship may (or may not) start to emerge. If you do start to connect with them on a friendly level, that's when it stops being awkward for you to just start talking about an episode with them out of the blue. If not, well, not everybody is going to be your friend; that's a fact of life.
tl;dr: While these particular BNFs may have been a bit rude about it and I'm sure you didn't mean to cause them any kind of distress, I suspect you were going about this the wrong way and they legitimately felt cornered. I hope some of this ramble might help you not come off that way.
no subject
I am curious, though. Why does the second encounter make you feel cornered? If you know someone only through a fandom, what makes the topic of recent canon an awkward thing instead of cause for a squeefest? What makes "I want to talk to you so I'm talking about this thing I know you're interested in," problematic from your point of view?
Or did I just go from fluttery worship to trying to have a conversation with a stranger...
;D
no subject
(Anonymous) 2012-05-07 05:38 pm (UTC)(link)You don't jump immediately to "friends" with normal people. People forget that. You need to be an acquaintance first then develop a friendship. And if someone you're barely acquainted with is trying desperately hard to get your attention or have a conversation with you, it creeps people out.
no subject
The thing about "I want to talk to you so I'm talking about this thing I know you're interested in" is that that's not how interactions between strangers work. Normally you have no reason to want to talk to some one particular stranger, because they're a stranger and you don't know what they're interested in or why they're more interesting to talk to than any other stranger. If you run into somebody reading a book you like, you might try to strike up a conversation, but you'd still approach them as a stranger: the only thing you know about them is that they're reading this book, and the only thing they know about you is that you like the book that they're reading, and from there things can proceed on normal stranger terms: two people equally finding out about one another with the common interest as a prompt.
"I want to talk to you so I'm talking about this thing I know you're interested in" does this backwards. You're not talking to them because you noticed they have a common interest with you; there are thousands of other people you could just as easily talk to who are just as interested in that subject. You're talking to them for the sake of talking to them, and you use the interest as a go-to topic to raise. That's how you interact with friends - people you already know enjoy talking to you, who already know who you are and what kinds of things you'll enjoy talking about.
Randomly starting to talk fandom with a stranger they way you'd talk fandom with a friend is awkward, first of all, because of exactly that: you're a perfect stranger to them, but you're talking to them as if you were their friend. It feels strange and overly intimate, even vaguely invasive - hence the creep factor. Again, it's probably completely unintentional, but that doesn't really make it less uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of it, especially since there really are creeps out there.
As a corollary, this means you're not treating them like a normal person, so if that's what they wanted, you're doing the opposite; this conversation wouldn't happen if they weren't well-known.
Finally, additional awkwardness may ensue because they have no idea how to talk to you. People play different roles depending on who they're talking to; they expose those sides of themselves that resonate best with the personalities of the people they're currently with. Some people are really good at talking to strangers, having a side can smoothly handle small talk without any prior idea about the person they're talking to; other people are just uncomfortable talking to strangers in any kind of depth. For me (one of the latter), the conversations become really awkwardly one-sided because I have no idea what to even say to somebody I don't know in the slightest.
There are plenty of ways to get to know people who are well known without bumping into these problems - I mentioned some of them in the comment you replied to - but this one particular way isn't a good way to go about it. There may be some people it works on, but others are going to be really uncomfortable with it and that means you should probably avoid it in general.