Responding to comments

[jack]

When someone responds to something you said (online or IRL) but not to what you think you said, but rather something vaguely related to it (because you wrote too quickly or they were reading too quickly), how do you respond constructively?

It always FEELS as if they're rejecting what what you were trying to say, and I have to try hard to suppress the urge to argue them down. When I know that that would actually be meaningless to them, and they're thinking "why did you say [thoguhtless thing]".

In some ways I find it easier IRL because the conversation moves on, I can make a bid to miss out the long digression of people arguing past each other, and say what I said a different way, or ask them for clarification, and the conversation can proceed from there. Whereas, if it's an online comment, it can itch at me, wanting to rebut an apparently nonsensical comment on what I was trying to say, but it's harder to channel into a constructive conversation, because I don't know how to say "what do you think about [better phrasing of what I was trying to say]" without sounding critical or patronising to them; and without feeling forced to take a side on what they actually said, even if I feel it's a red herring.

Comments

[commodorified]

I generally start out with "I clearly phrased that badly; I was in a hurry, (optional: ugh, sorry, I'm sorry for that, I'm truly sorry for the implication, Oh Crap I'm Sorry That Sounded Horrible I am So Sorry as appropriate). What I MEANT to say was..."

[seryn]

I like purple herring. Or whatever color of herring doesn't actually exist, maybe that's red, but it's been referred to so often that the collective unconscious has probably created it.

Do people there say, "Your kilometerage may vary."?

No one *I* know responds to comments I leave on your posts. You don't respond to comments I leave on your posts. If I'm talking to myself anyway, I'd rather have the 4% chance of getting someone to talk back that holding my own conversation will do.

[wild_irises]

This comment just made me want to reply to you.

[rmc28]

One of my colleagues at work accidentally said "dead herring" one day, and it's become part of our vocabulary.

[jack]

:)

[jack]

:)

Also, in England, we mostly use miles for driving distance, I've never heard "kilometerage" but now I want to :)

[wild_irises]

I say something like what commodorified said above, and then I rephrase, but in a perfect world I don't ask if that's better for them, and I don't try to respond to what they did say. I let them take the lead on my corrected language.

[jack]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, that you

[ptc24]

Ooooh, another way in which IRL conversation is better because it is worse - as in, it has technical limitations that have beneficial effects.

Or is this just a special case of "IRL conversation is more ephemeral than online, it's easier just to let something drop" which was sort-of on my list already?

[jack]

I'm not sure. I think it's related but not quite the same, that part of the benefit is being able to let it go in the medium term. But part of the benefit is not being able to conduct multiple threads of conversation simultaneously, so the tempting-but-futile ones can be drowned out if there's a clearly-more-useful one.

But I think it's also a beneficial effect of technical benefits -- I think that I can respond immediately and use nonverbal cues to tell me "do I need to calm emotions first before backtracking to what I meant" and "how much explanation do I need before it clicks", I think...

[spaceoperadiva]

I feel that I am the queen of vaguely related asides and codicils. I try to stay on subject, really I do, but sometimes there's this shiny side point sparkling at me and I can't resist.

[jack]

FWIW, I positively encourage tangents, whimsy, "oh, that makes me think of something, I was going to ask you", etc, etc. If someone says "here's this new thing" that's fine. What I sometimes find difficult is not reacting defensively when someone says "that's all wrong because..." and it's not immediately obvious they thought I said something much worse or different than what I thought I said...

[spaceoperadiva]

I totally understand the frustration of "That's all wrong because. . ." and then this is followed by me at least, with the re-reading the thing I wrote 15 times trying to figure out how they got there.