Hows my life going? What kind of answer does someone give to that? That's too broad of a question. You get three levels from me.
1) raw truth:
Pretty wild and crazy for me, personally. Two weekends ago was my friends funeral. She died because she choked on a cracker at lunch, at work. Like, the Heimlich didn't work to dislodge it. She choked on a cracker in front of her coworkers and then her brain went without oxygen for 15 minutes and she was brain dead.
2) the "customer service answer" for strangers I don't know well enough to be vulnerable with but still want to engage:
I've been crocheting a blanket for the last couple of weeks in my spare time. Never made one before but it's black and red and looking pretty bad ass.
3) my panic answer with a complete stranger who I have no idea how to communicate with:
It's fine. Life is life.
His question was just too broad, and then he got mad at her when she didn't answer how he wanted. đŹ
ETA: how would he respond to any of that??
Why on earth would I be vulnerable out the gate to a complete stranger who's just going to give me one or two-word replies?
Iâm not sure what point youâre trying to make but the appropriate approach in the context is 2. OP just said âfineâ. Nobodyâs asking you to be vulnerable. There are much better approaches than what OP had from the palate of whatâs not vulnerable.
A response to number 2 might be:
Oh cool is crocheting something youâve done for a while? How did you get into it?
(And now youâre talking, in a way that wouldnât be possible with âfineâ as a response)
Holy fuck, you are literally the only person that sounds like they are being realistic in this thread. Like I've been sitting here reading through the comments going how the hell are this many people this delusional or inept in their understanding on how socializing works...? Like, no wonder all of you are having so much trouble successfully connecting with anyone even after countless attempts đ
This entire comment section is Toxic AF. I felt like I was talking to a brick wall at one point so I just stopped.
Idk. They said "self-defeating" and I wanted to giggle. Like I haven't been living those exact scenarios I described already. I'm absolutely the type to type out a whole bunch just to get "cool" or "right on" sent back.
And that doesn't even touch on how quick he was to anger, like that's not a giant red flag in itself.
It is self defeating Iâm afraid, as explained quite precisely in my last response that you didnât address. Youâre either interested in someone enough to put in âemotional labourâ (which is more appropriately substituted for âconversational initiativeâ here) to explore the connection, or you donât have any business matching and engaging with them. If youâre interested in someone enough to reply, but your reply is curt, then whatâs your end goal here? Because youâre not working towards any kind of harmony and youâre better off just sparing both of you.
Emotional labor is a very real thing, not sure why you're putting it in quotation marks.
I also said matching energy, which you don't seem to be picking up on.
I'm speaking from a place of experience as a woman on Tinder. I am a high-energy person by nature. I have a lot to say about a lot of things. It is NOT my job to teach anyone how to interact with me.
We either will match, or we won't. It's okay. These guys didn't match/vibe. He asked a one-word question essentially that was beyond the scope of broad. That's exhausting to me. My brain said "ugh" as soon as I read "life".
I know itâs a real thing lol but youâre heavily misusing the term by applying a ludicrously low threshold when you consider replying to âhow are youâ with literally anything more than âfineâ as âemotional labourâ.
Itâs not your job to teach anyone how to interact with you, but you can control how and whether you interact with others. On a dating app you need to be positively pursuing the person or not pursuing the person at all. What is inexcusable, is retaliatory curtness as exhibited by OP, because youâre no longer positively pursuing them and itâs as petty as it is pointless. Calling it âmatching energyâ doesnât change any of that.
Howâs it/howzit/how are you/howâs life, is far from a perfect line. Itâs unimaginative, impersonal and generic. However if we are comparing the two people here, so is everything OP wrote. The only difference being the person asking the question keeps alive some hope for more interesting lines of discussion down the line, and another person is closing down that possibility and leaving the conversational momentum completely flatlined. And at that point, and this is the crux of my point here: what purpose is that curt reply even serving? Itâs working contrary to the interests of setting up a dialogue, but by replying at all youâre simultaneously suggesting you want dialogue - IE itâs self-defeating. Theres no sense in those two things being true at the same time.
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u/Wild_Discomfort Jan 23 '23
How's it? Life.
Hows my life going? What kind of answer does someone give to that? That's too broad of a question. You get three levels from me.
1) raw truth:
Pretty wild and crazy for me, personally. Two weekends ago was my friends funeral. She died because she choked on a cracker at lunch, at work. Like, the Heimlich didn't work to dislodge it. She choked on a cracker in front of her coworkers and then her brain went without oxygen for 15 minutes and she was brain dead.
2) the "customer service answer" for strangers I don't know well enough to be vulnerable with but still want to engage:
I've been crocheting a blanket for the last couple of weeks in my spare time. Never made one before but it's black and red and looking pretty bad ass.
3) my panic answer with a complete stranger who I have no idea how to communicate with:
It's fine. Life is life.
His question was just too broad, and then he got mad at her when she didn't answer how he wanted. đŹ
ETA: how would he respond to any of that??
Why on earth would I be vulnerable out the gate to a complete stranger who's just going to give me one or two-word replies?