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jdinkum comments on LW Women: LW Online - Less Wrong
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I'm sorry, that sucks. I think you're right and hope this changes. I don't post very often, but when I do in the future, I'll be more aware of this.
I tried to read this comment in various tones of voice, but I could only get "patronising", "ironic" or "really creepy". Was that the intention?
How are you coding "I'm sorry, that sucks"? To me, it comes off as supportive, if somewhat impersonal.
I generally use the phrase in the following circumstance:
Bob comes to me with a complaint about his life ("I lost my job."). Rather than tell a parallel story that deflects attention to me ("I once lost my job, and that was terrible"), I use that phrase to acknowledge the emotion Bob is feeling.
The key point is that redirecting the conversation away from the complainer onto oneself is not generally supportive of the person talking.
In short, I see more possible tones in the comment than you identified, and am uncertain of the thought processes that led you to conclude differently.
This is probably caused by differences in how "I'm sorry, that sucks" is used in Sarokrae's vs, your RL social circles.
Fair enough. I think the "I'm sorry" part of the phrase makes me hear it as not-at-all impersonal; I would leave it at "Oh, that really sucks" for anyone except very close friends.
Even with that replacement though, I think I struggle to hear the comment as sincere, because it's a weird juxtaposition of personal and impersonal: "I'm sorry, that sucks" is highly personal and fairly colloquial; the rest of the statement was more distant and formal. So even though it is coherent in meaning, it doesn't feel coherent in tone, which makes me struggle to hear it as sincere. (And when I do manage to get it sincere, it sounds "creepy" since that's what "doing social conventions wrong" sounds like)
Oh! I think that's where a lot of my confusion comes from. I read "creepy" as not-trying-to-comply with social convention (aka entitled), while you meant it as trying-but-failing to comply.
I can totally see how one could read the post we are discussing as trying-but-failing. In person, it would be quite a bit awkward. But the interpretive conventions are a little different for an online comment - and it read as supportive on the conventions I apply to interpret online comments.
Imagining people speaking aloud in order to guess their intent in written communication seems risky unless you've heard them speak before. Your references could be giving you too much confidence in some random direction.
If it helps, I got "sincerely, as if for the very first time, empathetic" (like Johnny 5 realizing that things can die). :-)
Thanks for the other data points.
I always hear comments sort-of-out-loud though, the same way reading happens sort-of-out-loud-in-my-head. I don't think it's something I can switch off. I always hear tone and it would confuse me not to, even though I do sometimes get it wrong. In fact, I get confused if people I'm close to type without punctuation, since an absence of tone just registers as "the tone of being distant and brusque".
Perhaps you could write filmable dialogue, then. A friend of mine impresses me with his. He's also prone to brooding over ambiguous social interactions where it's not feasible to directly inquire (imagining their tone, fleshing out their character in his imagination).