Thinking about a commenter on another blog I read, a fellow so aggressively obtuse he could piss off Mother Teresa. Rather than post this there, where he can whine that I’m being unfair to poor, poor him, I’m putting it here:
I think all of us know intuitively that every conversation (or relationship) contains an unstated agreement something like “Allow me some of your time and attention, and I’ll deal with you fairly.”
It doesn’t take long to get tired of those who break that agreement. People too arrogant to allow you a fair share of the conversational time, for instance. People who get offended so easily it looks deliberate. People with closed minds. People with a cold demeanor and no sense of humor. People who only get involved in conversations so they can disagree. People for whom every interaction is a dominance fight/pissing contest, which they must win. People who constantly demand more and more and more of you, but who are unwilling to give anything but crumbs of themselves.
And for me, people who play bait-and-switch with questions. Someone who says “Explain this to me” or “Show me the evidence” and then breaks the unstated agreement by refusing to listen. They pretty much use up my patience in a few minutes – first because they bait you in, asking you to go to some trouble for them, the trouble of explaining, and second because they show you they’re not interested in the explanation … essentially telling you that you’ve wasted your effort.
It’s like dealing with a 2-year-old playing the “But why?” game, drawing an initial question out into an infinite series of answers … except these people are adults instead of 2-year-olds.
It’s a way to take something from you without payment, a sort of conversational or relationship theft. You feel cheated … because you’re supposed to feel cheated.
I’ve known a few of these abrasive people, both online and in person. And I’ve often thought that there’s something turned around in their heads – the common human “attraction” thingie in their heads gets turned around so that they only experience pleasure when other people dislike them or fight with them.
It’s like when they were kids, they lived in a family environment where they never got positive feedback, but discovered they could gain attention – negative attention – by being contrary and difficult. They carry the pattern forward with them into their adult lives.
The ones I’ve known were never happy people, but they seemed to find some sort of dark contentment in negative feedback, which they worked tirelessly to create.
Know anybody like that? Why do YOU think they’re that way?