Same goes for having no record, aka the famous gap in a resume. It’s not really about being perceived as a dick, but the same applies nonetheless.

This is almost always just being an asshole. You can be honest and be an asshole all at the same time. There is a reason that people train in conflict de-escalation and how to talk to people in a tactful way.

If your trait as the word brutal in it, you’re probably an asshole.

I’m gonna be straight with you, apart from the music the Rocky films were not the peak of cinema. I’m sorry, but it had to be said.

Honesty? Yes. Brutal honesty? Hell no.
If you don’t want to be a twat, you should take at effort at considering how your words will impact a person, and try to take brutality our of it. Not lying, not hiding anything, but being considerate, that’s, like, bare minimum

People using “honesty” as a veneer to be brutal aren’t the same as people that are genuinely honest.

Agreed, and along the same lines, pointing out bad logic or factual errors used to support a point you actually agree with.

I’m interested in the thought process of both upvoting and downvoting people to SmokeInFog’s comment 👀

Eh, if it’s coming from an adult who should know better, I wouldn’t say it’s being misinterpreted as a sign of being an asshole.

Could be someone who’s genuinely trying to understand someone’s viewpoint, but it reveals inconsistencies in the other person’s logic, so they get irritated.

I think the big deciding factor is how they’re approaching the questions and what the questions are. Like, if someone is “just asking questions” where the questions just so happen to be a common bad faith talking point, yeah, I’m gonna assume they’re also acting in bad faith.

Eg, leading questions are a particularly common example here. The amount of lean towards their already-decided viewpoint can vary. They might word their question to be convinced away from their viewpoint as the default (“why isn’t the moon landing fake?”), or maybe they’ll provide a statement that obviously gives more weight to their side (“the government is so untrustworthy, so how can we trust the moon landing was real?”).

But often, they even do word the questions in a perfectly valid way, because they’re not trying to get an answer. They’re not gonna be convinced and they’re trying to get an answer. What they want to do is make someone else mistake being stumped for “this person might be right”. Eg, if someone asks you “is the moon landing real?” and you don’t actually know how to prove that it’s real, that can make you think that perhaps it wasn’t real. After all, you can’t explain how it is. But that’s a fallacy. You not being able to explain it has nothing to do with whether or not it’s real. Asking questions is cheap and easy. It takes no time investment compared to answering or understanding an answer. That makes it effective for planting seeds of doubt. And of course, people should think critically, but many folks aren’t going to or aren’t don’t have the time. So they’ll retain this low effort seed of doubt and that’s it.

Plus of course, searching for these questions, especially leading ones, can get you to fall into conspiracy theory or alt right echo chambers, which will have the leading question included in multiple times and technically is a better match from a pure SEO point of view. Search engines do try and train themselves against the common leading questions, but they often have to do that explicitly. This is actually an area where search engines like DuckDuckGo do worse at. You’re more likely to have a leading question in the top results because, again, it really is the most accurate match for that question. Should search engines direct you to the correct results or should they direct you to the results that are most accurate for what you searched for? Nobody really agrees and it’ll be criticized either way (personally, I think that correctness is far more important because otherwise the search engines propagates misinformation).

It took me way too long to realize when someone asks how my weekend was it’s because they want to talk about their weekend

As an autistic person I love interacting with people like you.

I think we are the same person

You’d like Northern Europe.

listen, as someone who needs to be social but isnt, it is ok to let there be awkward silences. it is ok.

it isn’t your job to be entertaining. conversation is a 2 way road.

contribute, motherfucker

My trick is earbuds. Even if I’m not listening to anything. Also helps to be living in a country where you’re not generally supposed to go talk to strangers

Oh, like Mr. Darcy!

Yes

Honestly I’m an extrovert that gets lost in thought sometimes. I have the meanest looking resting removed face when I am. But I’m as gentle as a butterfly and always up for a good conversation if anyone approaches.

Closely related is someone who’s just a bit to the point with their responses. I don’t mean the “I’m just saying” people; those people are assholes. I mean stuff like when someone skips the pleasantries and dives right into their question or comment. Instead of saying “hi”, they’ll dive right into saying “I have an issue with X”. Or when they see something wrong when reviewing your work, they’ll just outright say “this isn’t right” without trying to sugarcoat it.

Personally, I like when people do that, particularly from people I know have good intentions. I don’t want to waste time doing some “hi, how are you / I’m good, yourself?” sort of handshake when someone has a question for me. And reviews are a constant, daily thing in my job (software dev), so I don’t want time wasting flowery language in review comments, nor do I want to waste time typing such up myself.

Why not both

It’s worse after you vent to someone and they give you it. Especially when it was unwanted.

Unrequested advice is always taken for criticism. Don’t do it. Ask first. “May I give you fome advice?”

And some people genuinely want to help, without implying the other person is stupid, weak, incompetent either.

I tell people this all the time. But I have to. It’s like… If I don’t, I won’t know if I’m still real.

I was on the train once headed into the city. A dude getting off the train looks me dead in the eye and says “never trust unsolicited advice” and then stepped through the door.

That was it. That was the entire interaction. Completely blew my mind. I did ultimately decide it was legitimate advice. But still, it was wild being told not to trust the advice I was receiving.