“Frog boiling” is standing in for “responding skillfully to women expressing subtle interest, and managing to turn it into clear cut interest so that asking her out is no longer a leap of faith”… right?
Am I reading this correctly that you’re patting yourself on the back for successfully avoiding this experience? Is accidentally intentionally getting women too obviously interested in them the problem that you think most men have in dating?
Don’t get me wrong, I know that’s a real problem that can be had. It just seems like a weird flex, since most men would be more interested in knowing how to cultivate those experiences intentionally than how to avoid them. The latter is fairly self evident.
“Frog boiling” is standing in for “responding skillfully to women expressing subtle interest, and managing to turn it into clear cut interest so that asking her out is no longer a leap of faith”… right?
No, I read your vignette as describing a process of things snowballing all on their own, rather than by any such skilful response on either side. Hence my sceptical reply to it.
Am I reading this correctly that you’re patting yourself on the back
No.
Is accidentally intentionally getting women too obviously interested in them the problem that you think most men have in dating?
No, I read your vignette as describing a process of things snowballing all on their own, rather than by any such skilful response on either side. Hence my sceptical reply to it.
This is a very strange read, for two reasons.
First, “happens on its own” is a bizarre way to frame things that are entirely composed of human behavior. If a ball is placed on an incline, it will roll down hill on its own with no further human input. If a woman smiles at you, nothing happens unless you do something. If you’re smiling and talking to a woman, it seems really strange to say “Yeah, but I am not the one doing it. It’s happening on its own!”. I obviously see the temptation to define away that which you’re not aware of as “not really me” so that you can say “I am fully self aware of everything I do” and mumble the “I don’t take responsibility for anything my body does on its own” part, but at some point when this linguistic trick is sufficiently exposed, you’d think you’d say “Shit. I guess ‘self awareness’ isn’t that great if we define the term so as to not include awareness of what’s driving my actual behavior’”. And it seems obvious enough for that, by now? I apologize if I’m misestimating what’s obvious.
Second, I would have thought “Forming mutually fulfilling relationships by navigating ambiguous social cues” was just obviously something that took actual social skills. Like, you can’t do it if you’re raised by wolves—or otherwise failing to accurately track and appropriately respond to thing after thing after thing in the ways needed to coordinate a relationship with another human. If nothing else, I would have thought “guys who feel frustrated with their perceived inability to read women’s cues” would be obviously suffering from a lack of specific social skills relative to the guys who find themselves effortlessly interpreting and eliciting those signals with the cute girl at the checkout counter—at least, if we’re holding constant other factors like good looks. What even is your model here? That human interaction is fake, and really once you account for height/looks/etc the outcome is predetermined regardless of what the people do or say, so long as someone asks the question?
No.
Speaking of awareness, are you aware of how it comes off this way?
No, that strikes me as so far fetched a scenario as to only occur in the fiction of another era.
Then I guess we’re on the same page that “I’ve never been frog boiled like that” isn’t a demonstration of high self awareness? I’m not sure what purpose you had in sharing that if not to use it as an example of the rewards from your deliberate work on attention.
I’m having a bit of trouble reading you. I was originally reading you as “Not understanding what I was saying, but interested to learn if it turns out I’m pointing at something real”, so I tried to explain more clearly. Your last comment struck me much more of a “I already AM skilled at this, thank you very much” sort of “I don’t have anything to learn from you, I’m just trying to point out where you’re wrong”, so I poked some fun at it. But you seem to be disclaiming that now.
Can you help me understand where you’re coming from? Specifically, to what extent are you convinced that you’re succeeding in self awareness and don’t have anything big to learn here, and to what extent are you trying to grasp what I’m conveying because you can sense that there might be something big hiding beneath your conceptual floorboards? I’m fairly generous with my time if it’s the latter, but if it’s the former then I’m happy to just agree to disagree.
FWIW though, that “accidentally intentionally attracting women” problem does happen.
No, I read your vignette as describing a process of things snowballing all on their own, rather than by any such skilful response on either side. Hence my sceptical reply to it.
This is a very strange read, for two reasons.
The story began (emphasis added) (ETA: more emphasis added):
When the cashier smiles at you 1% more than usual, you probably don’t stop and wonder whether it’s a sign or not. You won’t think anything of it because it’s well within the noise—but you might smile 1% more in return without noticing that you do.
And I took that to be the pattern of the subsequent mutual 1%-ing, neither of the participants noticing what they are doing until you envisage some outside witness waking them up:
Before you know it people might be saying “Get a room, you two!”.
Of course there are skills. But they all begin with noticing.
I am claiming no particular social skills for myself, only perhaps a general skill of noticing.
“Frog boiling” is standing in for “responding skillfully to women expressing subtle interest, and managing to turn it into clear cut interest so that asking her out is no longer a leap of faith”… right?
Am I reading this correctly that you’re patting yourself on the back for successfully avoiding this experience? Is accidentally intentionally getting women too obviously interested in them the problem that you think most men have in dating?
Don’t get me wrong, I know that’s a real problem that can be had. It just seems like a weird flex, since most men would be more interested in knowing how to cultivate those experiences intentionally than how to avoid them. The latter is fairly self evident.
No, I read your vignette as describing a process of things snowballing all on their own, rather than by any such skilful response on either side. Hence my sceptical reply to it.
No.
No, that strikes me as so far fetched a scenario as to only occur in the fiction of another era.
This is a very strange read, for two reasons.
First, “happens on its own” is a bizarre way to frame things that are entirely composed of human behavior. If a ball is placed on an incline, it will roll down hill on its own with no further human input. If a woman smiles at you, nothing happens unless you do something. If you’re smiling and talking to a woman, it seems really strange to say “Yeah, but I am not the one doing it. It’s happening on its own!”. I obviously see the temptation to define away that which you’re not aware of as “not really me” so that you can say “I am fully self aware of everything I do” and mumble the “I don’t take responsibility for anything my body does on its own” part, but at some point when this linguistic trick is sufficiently exposed, you’d think you’d say “Shit. I guess ‘self awareness’ isn’t that great if we define the term so as to not include awareness of what’s driving my actual behavior’”. And it seems obvious enough for that, by now? I apologize if I’m misestimating what’s obvious.
Second, I would have thought “Forming mutually fulfilling relationships by navigating ambiguous social cues” was just obviously something that took actual social skills. Like, you can’t do it if you’re raised by wolves—or otherwise failing to accurately track and appropriately respond to thing after thing after thing in the ways needed to coordinate a relationship with another human. If nothing else, I would have thought “guys who feel frustrated with their perceived inability to read women’s cues” would be obviously suffering from a lack of specific social skills relative to the guys who find themselves effortlessly interpreting and eliciting those signals with the cute girl at the checkout counter—at least, if we’re holding constant other factors like good looks. What even is your model here? That human interaction is fake, and really once you account for height/looks/etc the outcome is predetermined regardless of what the people do or say, so long as someone asks the question?
Speaking of awareness, are you aware of how it comes off this way?
Then I guess we’re on the same page that “I’ve never been frog boiled like that” isn’t a demonstration of high self awareness? I’m not sure what purpose you had in sharing that if not to use it as an example of the rewards from your deliberate work on attention.
I’m having a bit of trouble reading you. I was originally reading you as “Not understanding what I was saying, but interested to learn if it turns out I’m pointing at something real”, so I tried to explain more clearly. Your last comment struck me much more of a “I already AM skilled at this, thank you very much” sort of “I don’t have anything to learn from you, I’m just trying to point out where you’re wrong”, so I poked some fun at it. But you seem to be disclaiming that now.
Can you help me understand where you’re coming from? Specifically, to what extent are you convinced that you’re succeeding in self awareness and don’t have anything big to learn here, and to what extent are you trying to grasp what I’m conveying because you can sense that there might be something big hiding beneath your conceptual floorboards? I’m fairly generous with my time if it’s the latter, but if it’s the former then I’m happy to just agree to disagree.
FWIW though, that “accidentally intentionally attracting women” problem does happen.
The story began (emphasis added) (ETA: more emphasis added):
And I took that to be the pattern of the subsequent mutual 1%-ing, neither of the participants noticing what they are doing until you envisage some outside witness waking them up:
Of course there are skills. But they all begin with noticing.
I am claiming no particular social skills for myself, only perhaps a general skill of noticing.