- if someone is confusing or upsetting you, assume it is your fault
- interpret others' actions in the context of your fears (this one is spot on)
- assume your assumptions are wrong and that you shouldn't even bother
- pivot conversations when someone asks you about something you actually know or are good at, it might be a trick, tell them you're dumb instead
- if you must ask questions, convince yourself you must not, just figure it out instead
- dig in your heels at no point in time whatsoever and just tell people the minimum they need to hear so they leave
- do not develop narratives or it means you will have an immediate network
- do not research the acumen or credentials of anyone
- do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, they might actually be wrong and you're not a judge
- when all hope is lost in conversation, pretend to take their side to end the conversation
- do not seek to understand anyone at all
That's a lot easier and comes off more natural IMO.
I could observe myself and knew what I looked like, but couldn't break it. The CTO stopped me as I was speaking and said "this isn't going to work". As soon as he said that, I ended the call. I had some major imposter syndrome during that time, I think that played a huge role in my fumble. Still massively cringe when I think about that, though.
I have memories of experiences freezing up and losing the physical control required to speak as well, so I have empathy.
(Having such experiences as a child are what led to me joining the high school speech team doing extemporaneous and impromptu events to get over them. I eventually went on to be a regional champion and a state competitor, but I still sometimes have to fight the physical tension when speaking in certain situations).
we all have imposter syndrome when we start out. as long as you didn’t outright obviously lie or something then you probably didn’t do anything particularly wrong that’s worthy of the cringe.
(i’ve done the exact same thing in interviews, most of us probably have some story like that).
Put less kindly: there’s nothing so special about you that being yourself around a new person should cause such a panic. Even if they take an instant dislike to you, that should be something you can take in stride
There is a diversity of physical attractiveness, innate and learned social grace, social environment, and phenotypic variability in psychosocial capacity that makes your comment sound extremely out of touch to some people.
I can do what you describe because I am fortunate that many of my social interactions are positive. For people I work with this is not the case and they are extremely socially isolated, and the tragedy is that every mistake they make compounds this. They are more sensitive interpersonally than I am and more socially aware in the moment, while less equipped to deal with social conventions and unattractive, becoming dramatically moreso in social situations due to their intrinsic reactions.
The points in the article can help all of us.
You might not like it, it might stress you out a bunch, you can cry afterwards, or have a stiff drink after, but you should be able to set those emotions aside for 30 minutes, especially for something important like a job interview.
If someone cannot do that, they should definitely go into therapy for that. No matter if it was 'done to them', it's still a problem that person carries around, and the only way around that is fixing it.
None of the many many reasons someone may act this way mean they are broken, and therapy is not about 'fixing' someone to be the member of society you deem appropriate.
Love the quote marks. Next time try a Marx quote. I mean the brothers.
To fellow humans reading: the point is that the ones who did this to you are extremely unlikely to repent. Or even to comprehend that what they did to you is wrong.
Even if you were to explicitly hurt yourself - or place yourself in a position where you get hurt very badly - with the intent to communicate "do you still not see what you did to me?"... it's just no sweat off their, you know? "Yeah that person was all wrong, had it coming anyway".
The social contract protects them better than it protects you, so an "eye for an eye" solution is also unlikely to work - or even be possible: we don't hit, do we?
Therapy is... some person's job. That they trained for, you know? To put some food on the table, you know?
That means you can "go to therapy" in good faith (assuming you can access it in the first place) and not heal at all. The therapist might be a talented and intrinsically motivated person - or might just go "mmhmm" as you try to get through to them that they are doing exactly nothing to help you heal from some very particular, and perhaps not even unclearly defined at all, mental wound (that PP has had the gall to put in 'scare quotes'.)
Point is, the therapist will get paid either way. There is no shortage of people being told to get therapy by their fellows (who are too fucked up themselves to exhibit basic human fellowship). The systemic incentive to heal people's minds is next to nonexistent in comparison with the systemic incentive to drive hurt people mad, and then destroy them for being mad.
My suggestion: read some fucking books, and I don't mean books about fucking, I mean fucking books. Then, you might begin to get a clue how to get in touch with your spite, and how to become the undoing of all that ever wronged you without turning into that thing in the process.
TL;DR: You can start with those people who taught you that "feeling sorry for yourself" is a thing, and that it's what you need to do to make those who wronged you to regret their actions. You take those people and unlearn everything that they ever taught you. If there was anything true at all in what they wanted you to understand, you'll relearn it on your own, unencumbered by association with their other insidious lies. Then you can go tell two priestly kings that the balamatom sez hi ;-)
This is correct and I'm convinced there comes a point where there's no way out. The vast majority of social experiences in my life have been negative and it gets worse every time I have another, making it less likely the next will be positive.
Rather than continue to get hurt I have nearly 100% socially isolated myself, save for the internet. I work remote in a rural area and I only leave the house for essentials. There's no place for me socially and I've accepted that.
My friend, things can always improve. Having mental health problems is hard, because you're ultimately using your own 'impaired' brain to analyze your own situation. Talking to a therapist is effective in breaking this, because it forces you to organize your thoughts into something coherent to explain it to your therapist. Only at this point will flaws in this reasoning become apparent.
If you cannot talk to a therapist (or otherwise a neutral person who doesn't judge you for what you say), you can try writing it down. Try to write down why you feel what you feel, what you feel when you talk to another person, what you think that others think and feel about you, how those feelings developed, how other people have been influential in your feelings, everything. Read it as if someone else wrote it down. What would you do in their situation? Do you agree with what you wrote down. If you come across holes in what you've written, try to revise that part, rewrite it to incoorporate for the criticisms.
> making it less likely the next will be positive.
Why do you think that's the case? If you throw a dice and it comes up on 1 three times in a row, that doesn't make it more likely that the next time it will be a 1 again. There's so many different people, it's as good as random what kind of interaction you will have.
what if (a) I hate leading questions, (b) by default only smile when bad/tragic things happen (eg "train crash leaves 100 dead and maimed"), (c) I'm quite bad at listening bc if you don't say interesting things often/densely enough my mind adhd-s away, and (d) interrupting is second-nature to me?
...advice may be good, but for some of us it's like 99% of ourselves that we need to dial down in order to carry on a successful interaction - it works, but takes a hell lot of energy
You’re allowed to be weird. Weird people make the best conversation because you don’t know where they’re gonna go
There are lots of things people can’t just talk themselves out of.
I had to do a hell of a lot of accepting myself before I could actually hang with people in the moment. Realistically it took six years to be “normal “in my own eyes
> not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.
Yes, it is exactly that, but instead of focusing on "acting intuitively", focus on that "without overthinking". Overthinking is the problem to be solved. "thinking just enough" is the optimal target.
It is possible for someone to have a goal of changing themselves into a person who can fit in socially, and be effortlessly comfortable while doing so. After building the underlying skills, they know how to navigate social situations well enough to intuit how much honesty and revealing is appropriate for a given situation, and can roll back "fake it until you make it". They can accept surmountable social penalties for the comfort of less self-filtering and chance to have more meaningful connections.
"Be yourself" means to change yourself, and then stick the landing.
I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the situation is panic that you brought with you from the past and is not relevant to the current scenario
For whatever reason your body believes that the stakes are very high. They might be, but even if they were, wouldn’t it be more adaptive to face the situation with the level head? Most people can do this 100% of the time and I bet that you could get there too
I think most people over the age of 25 can do this maybe 80% of the time. And most of them can keep it under control enough that they only look a little dysfunctional, the other 20% of the time. (although I definitely know a few extroverts who don’t look dysfunctional, they look like the life of the party – but that’s them being dysfunctional and stressing out and trying to make everyone love them. That’s their 20%.)
You: wouldn’t it be more adaptive if you didn’t do this?
Millions of years of mammalian evolution, unevenly distributed in homo sapiens: No
It wasn't my intention to advocate for 'compromising on values' rather, I think the best way to do any discussion is being honest, and that starts with being honest about your values.
I think the whole point of my method is to identify who is the person that's compromising their values, i.e. someone who agrees with "it's good to help people" but then disagree with social healthcare shows that somewhere on the imaginary line between helping people and social healthcare that person flips their opinion, which is incredibly helpful information in debating.
Then step one is to cast the other fellow as the enemy, and then you create a case against him, leading the conversation in the appropriate direction.
It's a popular way to do it. See all of social media for examples.
That's something the OP could add to his guide: approach every interaction as a contest you must win.
It's an interesting list, and yeah, I'd say most are common sense and well put. But I'm still a bit very of those "negative lists".
(I actually just found a webcomic which tries a similar approach - gives their characters intentionally the worst possible ways of interaction, with the "quest" of the story essentially being if they manage to grow and learn the right ones.)
But in both, its easy to employ "persuasive game" strategies and have the reader "discover truths" that are really colored by the author's perception.
Essentially, I'd like to know the context in which this was developed, so the whole list isn't just an instance of item #7 of it. Basically it reads as if someone could have written it in rage after some particularly bad conversation that didn't go their way.
It's not good to be alone, I was in a car crash one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride home.
EDIT: wait, I am going to go out on a limb and say that you meant "I was in a car crash of a conversation one time and my buddies pulled up on the scene and gave me a ride home."
my problem with women is I only interact with them when I'm physically interested in them otherwise I leave them alone so yeah I'm on edge like "I gotta land her" kind of thing, which I'm not saying is good, as proof of this I haven't been in a relationship with a girl for 12 years, not that I haven't had the opportunity but I'm also picky which, I need to be impressive myself to match it but yeah
Some people have ultimate confidence in their social judgements and the true sign of empathy is a kind of meta-empathy that allows you to consider truly alternative understandings of the world i.e. empathy for empathy.
One explanation I have for this is that precisely because empathy is a more rare experience for them, it becomes a more remarkable one, perhaps even overwhelming at times. This leads them to believe that they experience it more than or more intensely than others, when on the contrary the rest of the world is simply more habituated to it and integrate it more gracefully in their ordinary experience.
The other interpretation is that it requires certain level of narcissism or egotism to describe oneself in such flattering terms.
Or ultimately, as the Spanish proverb says: dime de que presumes y te diré de que careces.
Probably some degree of all of this is true in most cases.
An introspective, empathetic, thoughtful person might still accidentally say something that an external observer might perceive as having been said without thought or consideration to the feelings of others.
The above is not meant to be contradictory to your point, just a consideration to the general faults all humans hold.
Asocial = avoids people, quiet, misses social cues. i.e. doesn’t attract people
Antisocial = cruel, obnoxious, remorseless. i.e. actively repels people
nothing personnel, kid
(a) I felt speed was far more important than readability (reasonable for rapid-fire short messages or constrained typing ability such as a flip phone, also a common way to imply "fuck you, my time is more important than yours" in longer forms such as email), or
(b) i'm 14 and e e cummings is so deep (blogs)
if i want people to read my stuff, then what kind of manipulation would writing all lower case accomplish? seems counterproductive. and if it is counterproductive then it can't really be manipulative in my favor. so why do it then? this is even more significant in german where all nouns are capitalized. there writing nouns in lowercase is not only an aesthetic difference, but a grammar violation. (and yet i do it anyways)
which status would i be seeking? (i am actually asking myself this question. depending on the answer i find, it might even get me to change my behavior).
writing all lower case has become a habit for me, that i stopped thinking about it. it's time to revisit that. interestingly at some point i decided to use capitals in blog posts. technically everything else is actually messaging, including email and HN.
lastly, the article is a list. it is not clear to me that lists have to start with capitals, since list items are not always complete sentences. they don't end with a period either. so even when capitalizing properly, i am unsure whether they should be capitalized.
The article is a bullet point, yes, but some items have multiple sentences with no caps
so if you feel that my lowercase writing is like i am not greeting you then that's the feeling i probably induce in others frequently. welcome to my world :-)
(multiple sentences appear only twice, btw, it's proof that the writer intended to write all lower case, but not strongly noticeable (to me at least))
You just answered your own question there. Being perceived as different, as beyond social conventions, as too cool for silly language rules. Or as they put in your parent comment - nonchalant
that has been the mantra for my whole life. (that doesn't mean i don't learn or wouldn't listen to reason, but it means that the changing something had to have a good reason. (and in the context of writing, for example, readability is a good reason, being perceived as different is not))
social conventions is something i have always struggled with. they often make no sense to me. why do i have to shake hands, for example? yes, there is a social and historical explanation, but the rituals are often so detailed, and so variable that i never know what is the right form in which situation.
so yeah, i am cool, even if i don't want to, and nonchalant describes to to a T.
i don't really want to change my behavior (i don't mean writing specifically) for the sake of becoming more accepted, because it also works as a filter. someone who can accept me despite my quirkiness is likely to be more open minded. it's a form of protection.
nothing personal kid
Sorry, sticking to this one.
Call me anti-social if you want, but facing overwhelming dissent may indicate you're the lone free-thinker in an echo chamber. Being that one guy who's always prodding the hivemind with a pokey stick has value in my opinion (though you will end up getting stung on occasion).
You just better be right. If you're wrong then no one will ask for your input ever again.
This speaks to me quite a bit, particularly around unfalsifiable topics I'll have with friends/family, such as theology. If we define hope as the idea they'll change their mind and agree with me, seems not much one can do but retreat into themself, right? I suppose I can sympathize with their sentiment before I retreat into myself, but taking this bullet point at face value I'm unsure how to make this a pro-social experience :/
In my experience the only way to really connect across those divides is to first have a long history, months or years, of productive and positive social interaction. But you don’t get control how others think and feel, even if by some theoretical measure, your position is “right”. So even under the best of circumstances you just have to accept and resist that others think differently.
edit: also the article is sarcastic. You shouldn't retreat into yourself just because you cannot agree on something. Talk about something else.
I bet if you observe your own mind for long enough, you'll find some part of your life which requires you to have faith too. Use that to understand your friends and family better. The next time you find yourself in a conversation with them about religion, ask them about their faith (not their religion). You will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how they navigate the world.
If you can have that conversation, go ahead and ask them about their religious beliefs, withholding judgement unless/until they say something morally objectionable. You can think of their religion like any other mythology, and you get to play sociologist for a while. There's a fascinating variety of responses people give to even fundamental questions - e.g. "what is god?".
This open approach is not only much easier for everyone, it's also more useful in the long term. My neighbor has an interesting mashup of beliefs that includes a decent chunk of Christianity. She sometimes has bad anxiety, and unfortunately she can't afford treatment for it. I've helped her out of panic attacks using two methods: 1 - I've given her a clonazepam tablet and 2 - I've quoted scripture to her (e.g. "behold the lilies of the field"). Both methods work, and the latter tends to work faster.
It's different if the person is using their religion as a cover for engaging in or supporting something morally evil. That's a trickier conversation and often one not really worth having, depending on your relationship and how comfortable/willing you are to attempt to correct them.
Calling theology "unfalsiable" is ignorant. Like saying math is unfalsiable, because there are multiple geometries and nobody understands it anyway.
Many of these biases are common in humans, and humans can exchange ideas.
It can be enlightening to test your biases against real human being to see which ones are valid and which ones are things you've picked up along the way and might not be fruitful to you now.
Because you only see life through your own eyes, you definitionally can't examine yourself in isolation, and you can't know how you are affected by yourself.
I've found exchanging with others fruitful, even when I don't want to and find it repellant.
Have a good one
Agreed. It's almost like taking bitter medicine for me- I loathe the idea of going to outings and meeting new people, but however tired I am afterwards from masking, some part of me comes away better off for it (assuming I'm not being forced to do it all the time).
In general, I am skeptical when anybody says, "I am a ______." We vastly overstate what aspects of our condition are innate and which are merely habitual. I have seen many people with misanthropic tendencies find balance, and many others sink into the mire.
Which is the same reason everyone else seeks relationships with other people. That is the value social interaction brings. Now that you've cracked the code, so to speak, do you find this behaviour grating because you don't normally like to have your thoughts and ideas challenged/enlightened?
It seems that the models that dominate are ones which sort people into categories that emphasize positive traits and explain away negative ones as, "Society demands X but I just need Y." This is an important corrective to the medicalized model, but sometimes I feel it obscures the degree to which people are malleable. A lot of our behavior is habitual, and if you change your habits, you can change your "personality" without rewriting your own temperaments.
The other problem is one of causation. A group of people could all describe themselves as asocial, but what drives them to that label is entirely different. One legitimately needs less social interaction, one is riddled with social anxiety and has developed a deeply avoidant response, and one just hates people. They may be unified in feeling out of place in some social interactions, but what they need (or even don't need) is entirely different.
I don't know. I couldn't sleep last night and this is all I could think about. What does that make me?
It’s easy to use a diagnosis as an excuse not to connect. But it’s a lame excuse. It is much more interesting to understand what tools we need to gain to connect with the world. Sometimes I need to be an anthropologist. Sometimes I need to be a crime scene investigator. Usually I just need to listen better.
When I was in a wheelchair I had to use ramps instead of the stairs. But that didn’t stop me from going to the movies
I can't talk most of the time, that does stop me from having a conversation yes.
Processing Sensory information takes priority over social circuits in my brain, physically.
So I am unapologetically autistic and no I don't have to break my brain to try to fit in.
If people find my disabilities upsetting thats stereotype ableism and yes it happens often
maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels meaningless.
i "solved" the problem by moving to a country with a different native language and culture. this raises the barrier to communicate and it seems to have an effect of curbing smalltalk.
while in a wheelchair, how comfortable were you asking for help? that would be the biggest challenge for me.
I wasn’t bad at small talk. I was bad at sharing my thoughts and feelings because it didn’t feel safe. As a result the only things that felt like safe small talk topics were the weather and sports.
Overtime I’ve become better at sharing my feelings, even if they are “embarrassing“. I ended up talking for three hours on a plane ride last weekend with an absolute stranger. We talked about the differences in our family dynamics, what cities we find it easier and harder to make friends in, the current state of our relationships and what we wanted out of them. All of that was “small talk” because we were just passing the time with someone we will never meet again. But the subjects were not small.
A side effect of feeling comfortable talking about things that matter to you is that it gives you a lot more motivation to be curious and interested in things that matter to other people as well. Even better, if you share with people more deeply about how you are feeling, they will be able to help you in ways that you didn’t even realize were possible
Sorry, networks, in this context, are too social for me, as they involve other people.
Me: I'm da king of da highway
1. Not every social interaction can (or should) be an objective weighing of ideas. It's not the other person's responsibility to enter into a formal debate with you at your local dive bar or whatever.
2. For their opinions to be valid, the other person doesn't need to conform to your idea of an acceptable conversation style (see 1). Also, in my experience, "anti-social" responses are detected more readily in the other person than in yourself, you're not as cool and collected as you think you are.
3. Feelings aren't forbidden. You may be a bit repressed yourself, meaning you feel shame or disgust when confronted with other people's feelings. Guess what... that's also a feeling!
4. If you repeatedly encounter these "anti-social" people in your life (which I guess OP does since he wrote a post about it) there's one common denominator: you. Can you honestly measure up to your own rules, OP? It takes two to tango.
5. There's a good chance you're sandbagging your conversation, meaning you're talking about some topic that you've thought about a lot, to a completely unprepared party. In my experience with people making complaints like OP, this is often combined with a controversial opinion about said topic. Instead of truly testing your idea against someone, you provoke an emotional reaction and celebrate your superiority because you staid calm and the other person exploded. Charlie Kirk was good at this unless he encountered actual experts.
6. Related to the above: come on, it's perfectly normal to get defensive and upset when you find you're losing an argument, don't act like you don't do it.
E.g. “ when ambiguous, assume intent is malicious, ignorant, or amoral”
Most immoral actors cloak deliberately cloak themselves in ambiguity.
IDK if I agree with that. If you could dissuade a nazi by biting your tongue and keeping the conversation going, wouldn't that be the morally right thing to do?
> Most immoral actors cloak deliberately cloak themselves in ambiguity.
Yes, but that still doesn't mean you should assume everybody to be one of those 'immoral' actors. Assume that somebody is normal, if they do something that proofs they're an 'immoral actor', only then assume that they're being dishonest.
With respect to all; there is an incredible amount of subtle communications that go into standard conversations
That said, if I may be so hypocritical to add to the list, the heavy reliance on pointing out fallacies is a pretty big one. A lot of the times it simply degenerates conversations into logical golf, with no semblance of trying to actually understand the other person remaining. Though in those cases, that intent was usually never really present to begin with.
However, I would suggest considering if the ‘making fun’ is in casual conversation or truly adversary.
In casual conversation of someone making jest about your lack of speaking, just smile and say you are having a good time listening and hanging out.
If they are actually making fun of you, never associate with those people again, they suck
It's not all puppies and rainbows of course, because some people can't hold a conversation without being led through it by the hand, which is exhausting. And others think everyone else is always so fascinated with what they have to say that they never stop for you to get a word in edgewise.
But, active listening accounts for the majority of my social skills, for better or worse.
Sigh
And I'm probably less autistic than the average HNer.
But people mostly don't have it all worked out.
There are specific demographics who do.
Some are naturally gifted at social interactions and/or grew up in environments which taught them how to socialise effectively.
Others are charming narcissists - likeable, high status, attractive on the outside, monsters on the inside. They can appear effortless because they don't care about anything except presenting an image, so they get get very skilled at it.
Most everyone else has some social anxiety or frustration and makes more or less obvious social mistakes at least occasionally.
For younger introverts, none of this behavior is necessarily anti-social if the group all shares these same traits. The moment a member of that group has any higher self-esteem than the rest, they will either see that individual as "cool" or as a threat (or both).
To be truly anti-social is to either completely isolate yourself, or be unrelentingly and unreasonably hostile in all interactions. This list is neither. It's just passive aggressive and a lot of ego.
Do every thing on this list under the hood while presenting the exact opposite as a facade for public consumption.
So I find this post incredibly condescending, and it seems clearly directed at a few specific people this author had some sort of moral or political disagreement with. Which means the author is committing the exact sins he's inveighing against!
I will be a little more specific:
assume they have no sane reason for doing or saying what they are doing or saying
assume intent is malicious, ignorant, or amoral.
interpret others' actions in the context of your fears
exploit your immediate network; when the obvious merits of your narrative are exhausted, present like-minded people with tastefully curated details of your interactions with detractors, to provide a more appropriate account that your supporters can rally around to crush any lingering threats to your narrative
do not grant grace to those who make mistakes, especially those that you have never met or otherwise spoken to
do not seek to understand those you do not already understand
They always find a way to get what they seek.
Well, at a minimum, I do agree that the author seems to have intended this post for people like you.
Of course, the majority is always right and we should yield to it right away /s
It COULD be that you are correct and the world is crazy, but its far more likely that you are the one who is missing something. It's always worth stopping to double check when this happens.
Perhaps more importantly, if you do happen to be right when everyone else is wrong its important to determine your goals.
Is it more important to be right, or to be happy? If the answer is the latter then its sometimes best to just let people continue being wrong for the sake of being social. Nobody likes to be told they're wrong, so is "correctness" worth more than that person's feelings? Very oten it is not.
I like to be told I'm wrong. While it is true that I am a nobody it means I'm about to learn something.
I believe you, but in my own experience I've met more people who say this than who mean this.
Usually it's situational. People might genuinely like to be wrong when the novelty is fun or useful, for example in lab work or in low stakes classwork. However, they despise it with politics, their job, or anything else that might have actual consequences in their lives.
There's almost no time when it's better to try to convince somebody they're wrong. It won't help you, and it won't work anyway, so it won't help them either.
Sure if you're somebody's doctor, and even then you have to pick your battles.
so your suggested response is the right approach, but it doesn't end there. you can try find a common belief and build up your argument from there. peoples opinions can be changed if you take the time to learn how their opinions are formed and present them with the opportunity to consider alternative ideas. ideally in such a way that they discover the truth on their own.
a key component is that unity enables change. it is better to be wrong but united, than right and divided. if we are united (and thus stay friends) then we can learn from being wrong and change direction. if we are divided then changing direction is difficult.
What most people do is just whine and repeat themselves because they don't understand all the ways they're being misunderstood. They lack self-awareness because they lack sufficient experience hearing and digesting the arguments from the other sides. This is a missed opportunity.
What people should do instead is leverage their self-awareness once they have the spotlight and "magically know" which concerns to address when they are given that brief window of rebuttal. It's hard to get attention, so they must strike when the iron is hot. It takes a lot of experience, and most never get to that level. Repetition signals to everyone else they don't really know what they're talking about.
The majority of the audience may actually be on your side agreeing with you, but they won't stick their neck out for the truth if they know they're less informed and less experienced than you, yet even you still failed. They have no chance to do any better, so they just shut the fuck up. Everyone languishes. Your point is noted, but not winning. All you did was paint a target on your back for the next time you say anything. People would rather be winning than right. Agreeing with you once doesn't mean they side with you.
Also this document is basically just how I act, or how I would still act if I was less self-aware; some combination of the two.
I suspect the author may have written this partly as a self-critique.