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Originally Posted by Angela What do you think you'd have to be for people to listen to you? |
Older, richer, more successful, prettier, more popular
Many people who speak to me won't listen to a word I say. I have sooo many one-sided conversations, where it's just me listening to them and them not listening to a word I say.
If I'm talking to an older person, they usually dismiss me as being a "typical 20-something" or will say something like, "I used to be like you."
I also often get just outright personal attacks from old people such as, "Do you have kids? No? Then you're wrong." or "How long have you worked at your job? Oh? Then you're wrong."
From people my own age, the style of dismissal they use depends on what segment of society they identify with. So if it's an uneducated blue-collar type, he'll dismiss me as being some kind of know-it-all intellectual with no real world experience.
If it's a college-smart type, he'll dismiss me as being some kind of brutish blue-collar guy not worthy of a university education.
If it's a punk/hippie/party type, I'm dismissed as being a nerd.
If it's a nerd, I'm dismissed as being a hippie tree-hugger.
Before I finish my sentences, people have decided what I was going to say and will respond to me like I'm not a real person and am rather just a cardboard cutout of whatever particular group they have me pegged as.
Sometimes I'll be pegged as being in the same group as someone I meet. So maybe I meet some hippie and at first he thinks I'm also a hippie and is very nice to me. Then I relate some new fact that doesn't fit in with the hippie archetype and now he feels betrayed - I'm not actually a hippie, just a hippie in disguise. Now he changes to be hostile.
So what is my solution? Nothing, really. When someone stops speaking to me like a human being and starts assuming they know everything I'm going to say before I say it, I basically just stop trying to talk.