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.
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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 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.