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How to avoid encouraging others to jump to conclusions.

Last posted Nov 13, 2015 at 09:28AM EST. Added Nov 12, 2015 at 03:53PM EST
3 posts from 3 users

If you are one of the lucky few who hasn't yet been annoyed to death by all the times I bring up my insufficient social skills, well, then I apologize for inducting you into this club against your will.

But in all seriousness, I do have a question for the more socially astute members of KYM.
I've noticed that one in a blue moon, when I write a comment, it leads to an unexpectedly large number of responses that involve jumping to a conclusion. Specifically, about something that I allegedly implied. Here are two examples.

I can tell there's a pattern, but I can't quite piece it together. It generally involves a context in which people "want to fight" (i.e. are actively looking out for ideas that contradict their own and are likely to confront them). They also seem to have to do with "assumptions" that I am allegedly projecting (even though I'm not.)

My intuition says that in these situations, with people already on the defensive, if they are inclined to not write rather literal like me, they may presume that I may not be either. The problem is, since I tend to be very literal (i.e. if I want to claim something, I'll explicitly write it out, not choose to imply it by omitting a piece of information) I'm unaware what I need to clarify so that people aren't inclined to believe that I mean anything more than what I write. And it's not like I can write out every single one of my beliefs and opinions in every post I write, since that would be the only sure-fire way to not "accidentally omit" information that I find irrelevant that may in fact not be.

As you can see, I already have trouble with writing too much as it is, so is there any rule of thumb that anyone can give me that won't make my walls of text even more gigantic but will still reliably keep myself from accidentally "leading people on" due to the existence of something I write that isn't attached to an apparently necessarily clarification as an addendum?

Thanks for any (helpful and/or amicable) suggestions, and sorry for all this writing. (Believe it or not, I spent a while re-writing it so it would just be long instead of really super long.)

This first post size is alright. People have different styles. If you want to see long posts, go look at Lisa's on the Million Student March thread.
I'm not "socially astute", but I have similar issues. The best I can tell is speak only what you need, speak plainly (I have an issue with inefficient phrasing myself), and re-read what you typed at least once before you post it, if not two or three times.
Sometimes people will be looking for a fight, sometimes you'll make a mistake, and sometimes both will happen. It's just a risk of commenting on the Internet.

People jump to conclusions on here because they're young, in college, know they can get away with it, don't want to do the research, don't care if someone gets hurt, want to just occupy their time, will whore out for karma and upvotes even if they subtly think they may be wrong, and in general they're all complete meme trash so they naturally have the mental capacity of rodents.

Skeletor-sm

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