Edit: My own solution: when it happens, get off the computer and pet the dog.

So let’s say I make a point on a post. I put forward my argument and I support it with evidence.

Now let’s say the first comment is from someone who disagrees with me, but seems to fundamentally misunderstand what I am saying, probably because they read the title of the post and immediately posted the first thing that came to mind.

But my fear, acquired from Reddit, is that people are going to read this guy’s totally inaccurate presentation of my argument and then every comment in the rest of the discussion will proceed as if that’s what I said.

And since, as we all know, fear leads to hate, my first instinct is just to berate this person for being a stupid moron.

This is a bad strategy. Not only is probably against Lemmy rules, it automatically makes me the bad guy.

So: question: how do I handle this person without tediously restating my position again, which is extremely irritating because I already wrote it once and they didn’t read it the first time. What I want is to say something that quickly quarantines the misreading comment in people’s minds so the misreading doesn’t infect the entire thread.

  • Strider@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 hours ago

    Hey, thanks for continuing. I have to say, you’re possibly right with overthinking. That’s what we do. And hence, we often jump around to the point of getting lost in our own line of thinking - the latter being exactly what happened.

    I am now trying to read through the fragments and have a very hard time following myself. If we were sitting together it might be easier, doing this asynchronous is hard work. So thanks for putting up with that and your effort.

    Let me do some jumping around mobile and desktop and see of I can follow up.

    Follow up edit:

    OK I found where we disconnected. So I answered your op question basically and included autism and thought of that as self contained answer as if it was clear.

    So it’s kind of meta and apologies for that, it is convoluted. Having deep(er) knowledge of something one tends to miss out explanation of these things, which adds to the issue.

    So the connection to autism with misunderstandings lies in autism itself, this literally are the social difficulties which are documented in medical papers.

    Now, what might throw you off is the expected ‘that happens to everyone’…and while that is true it’s one of the discussions we have regularly. It’s just on a totally different level.

    Its complicated. But it is there, and I didn’t want to hijack your topic or cause bother.

    And while this explanation might likely be ‘eh’ for you, don’t worry, hopefully you’ll never have to worry much about it in your life and that’s perfectly fine.

    • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      1 hour ago

      No worries. I discovered the autism lemmy and think I have broad phenotype autism, so I’m always interested in learning more.

      I worked at a tech place and got along with everyone there. I thought it meant I was likable and it just different places are going to have different vibes, but someone pointed out tech people tend towards autism, so maybe all that was happening was that I find myself with a group of people who naturally shared my communication style… and that, basically still, I’m unlikable.