Posted by Drunken Uncle Hal at 216.150.136.249 on December 03, 2001 at 01:30:30:
In Reply to: Uhm. Hal. posted by Smalls on December 03, 2001 at 01:16:05:
: There's no "courtesy" in telling someone to fuck off.
Right, but there's courtesy in acknowledging a person's existence, and discourtesy in not. That's why telling someone to fuck off is more courteous than simply pretending that the person doesn't exist.
: Saying "I hate you" would be childish... and saying "go away" would be rude.
I agree. I do feel that either of these would be more mature than pretending that a person does not exist.
: Come down to it, for the situation, Ben was doing the most adult thing he could.
Ben did something similar to the old "lalalalalala I can't hear you!" trick. He left out the lalas, but pretended that he couldn't hear me. I felt genuinely offended that he literally ignored me. I told him explicitly that if he said ANYTHING to me, even just "I hate you, go away", I'd leave him alone... but that if he went on refusing to acknowledge that I was even in the room, I'd keep asking him why he wasn't speaking to me.
I just wanted an answer. Didn't care what it was.
: A four-year old with a behavioral problem would... keep pestering someone til they talked.
I didn't know how else to deal with someone who literally pretended that I didn't exist. I was in shock; I hadn't seen anyone my own age do anything like that since elementary school. I didn't know HOW to react. Ben ignored me... so I asked why he was ignoring me, and he ignored me... so I asked if I'd done something to anger him, since he'd always been cordial to me in the past, and he ignored me... and man oh man, I just couldn't let this go. I had to get to the bottom of this. So, I decided to keep the one-way conversation with Ben on until he finally told me why he didn't like me, even if it was as simple as "I just don't". I couldn't believe his immaturity, and I felt like I had to get to the bottom of it.
: Have you considered scrapping a lot of your value system and starting again, man? More and more, it sounds like your social skills are some bizzaro-world version of social skills.
And yet, if someone hears me speaking, but looks away and carries on with his business as though I were invisible and had made no noise, and continues to do so even when he knows that a single word will vanquish me, you call that "mature".
Mike... you weren't there, and I've never talked to you about it, so you're obviously operating on one side of the story. Please, consider that any one-sided version of a story is incomplete. Ben and his friends all hate me, and they often frame that incident as some sort of major harrassment. It wasn't. Ben wouldn't speak to me, so I kept asking him questions to see if he'd eventually speak to me. That's all it was. I wouldn't even have cared, if not for the fact that this seemingly came out of nowhere.
: I'm honest-to-God serious on that last point, man. Maybe everything you know is wrong... and you've got to correct that.
Teach me, then. Explain to me what is wrong about my views, and what would be right. If I really am so off-base, then I request that you help me realise this and solve the problem.