Edit: A few people have interpreted the title as serious, so I wanna clarify that it was meant as a sarcastic joke about how little sense the neurotypical world makes to me, but it is still legitimately me asking for help understanding said neurotypical world.
Was having a conversation with a friend today about why I seem unapproachable to people online. Apparently it’s for 2 reasons.
One is that I say “K.” all the time, as a short way of saying okay. She pointed out that most people find this rude and offensive. This kinda baffled me, because like why? She explained that like, if somebody were to give a long emotional speech and I just responded “K.” that would be offensive. That confounds me. So it’s rude in one context, and neurotypicals have decided to be offended by it in all contexts? But the reason it’s rude is what confuses me more. Apparently it’s considered lazy because you could have just typed out the word, but like, that applies to all text speech and nobody’s mad about people shortening those words.
But it got more confusing when she explained the second reason, which is that I end all of my sentences with proper punctuation, which she said “makes people feel like I’m done with the conversation and not interested.” But just a second ago improper grammar was rude, and now proper grammar is rude instead.
It baffles me. You can’t just use proper or improper grammar. Use too much improper grammar and you’re lazy and rude. Use too little and you’re also rude. But you can’t just use any improper grammar, you have to use the very specific subset of improper grammar that’s been deemed acceptable and not lazy (even though it’s exactly as lazy as what they do consider lazy.)
To be clear, I’m not bitter, and I’m definitely gonna adjust my behavior to hopefully seem a little less rude to people. I think that’s just a nice thing to do. I just find the neurotypical mind utterly fascinating. I don’t think they even realize how many contradictions exist in the social rules they all so easily accept.
Communication is a two way street. It’s both about the message the sender is trying to convey, but also the way the receiver interprets it. As a (mostly) neurotypical thinker, this is even hard for many of us to get right.
An example for clarity is the response your getting in the comments to your friends comments. Various people are disagreeing and agreeing to different levels. Conversation is navigating the complicated dynamics to as the sender, sending your message in a way the receiver will get the impression you are trying to give, and as a receiver, trying to understand the intent of the message the sender is trying to show.
There aren’t many hard or fast rules. In different online communities, different styles and patterns can conotate different things. There are patterns and styles I use here on Lemmy for example, I would never use in a sports online community because they would be interpreted differently there.
My advice is don’t beat yourself up about it. If you’re not getting the type of interactions you’re expecting in a particular community, that might be the time to ask for feedback or see if your communication style is different than the local group there. But the ephemeral nature of these online conversations make it the perfect place to experiment and find a communication style that works for you and gets the response from others you are looking for.