Honesty in communication

Seeing some of the misunderstanings we’ve had on this forum, I just want to say this – PLEASE if I ever do something that you find offensive, tell me. If you think I’m gloating, or being rude, or insulting you, or ANYTHING you find upsetting, tell me! And I get the feeling that I’m not the only one who would appreciate being told when they’ve upset somebody. Saying “somebody on this forum really gets my goat” serves NO purpose but to make everybody paranoid. The person who actually gets your goat is probably going to have no clue you mean them, and everybody else who’s trying to be nice is suddenly going to feel uncomfortable, because they’re worried that they’re the ones being offensive, and yet since they don’t know for sure they don’t know how to fix it.

I’ve seen this here, I’ve seen this over and over in other places too. Somebody says something that to them is completely innocent. Harmless. A cheerful joke or a bit of excess enthusiasm. Then they go on their way happy and carefree. Somebody else, though, reads it, and thinks it’s meant meanly. And they go on their way too, grumbling and unhappy and feeling like the first person hates them, or feels that they’re better than them, or… whatever.

And then a few weeks later the first person says something else, and suddenly gets all the past times they said something offensive thrown in their face, and the first person is just sitting there floored, because they never intended any offence at all.

Or, alternately, nothing ever gets said, and the second person just spends the rest of their life thinking the first person hates them, when they actually never did.

It happens all the time. And I’ll admit, my social skills are pretty bad. I spent my formative years reading books, not talking to people, so I have a really hard time knowing what people really mean, I tend to take things at literal face value a lot, and I have a really hard time knowing how people are going to take what I say. So I just… say what I think, and hope that if I offend somebody, they’d let me know so I can correct this. (And since I say what I think, be assured that if I think you’re an idiot, I’ll say so, so if I haven’t said you’re an idiot,I don’t think you are!) And it looks like I’m not the only one here who has a similar problem.

So this is just an appeal. PLEASE, if I ever offend you, don’t hesitate to PM or otherwise contact me and let me know. Otherwise I’m going to just keep on doing whatever it is, because I don’t know it’s hurting anybody. You may think it’s more polite to not say anything, but I think that honesty is more important than politeness, 99% percent of the time. I mean… be polite when you can. “Hey, just so you know this thing you said upset me, did you really mean it like that?” is much nicer to her than “Augh you moron, I hate it when you say that, shut up.” But I’d rather hear “Augh you moron” than nothing at all.

I hope that makes sense, and that I’m not upsetting anybody with this. I just really, really, really want to know if I’ve offended anybody lately.

(And to not be hypocritical, I’ll go ahead and be honest myself. I read something Frozen said, and was a bit worried he meant me. Frozen, have I offended you? If I have, I’m sorry.)

TL,DR versionif you don’t want to read all that – I want to know if I upset you, so if you’re mad at me, please PM or otherwise say something so I can apologize.

Bwa ha ha! I have a Drama Llama picture. Maybe we should label that one a Gloat Goat?

http://bladespark.topcities.com/dramallama.jpg

(I didn’t make the drama llama costume, that belongs to Diadexxus.)

Thank you for commenting, frozen. I’m just paranoid because this has happened to me before several times, and I had no idea, so I didn’t want it to happen again.