I know that this is more of "an NT thing", particularly among young males, but have YOU ever confronted someone who was giving you a negative look in a public place?
The thing is, maybe - unlike NTs - you wouldn't have noticed it in the first place, because we're not as ego or image-obsessed as they are, on the average - but it's a safe bet that we get these sorts of negative looks more often in public than the average Joe (or Jane) ! !
I can recall getting it a few times, but I just ignored it; I figured, what's the point?? They'd likely just deny it, and regardless they'd likely become more hostile, maybe some would shrink back and apologize. I'm a fairly big guy, no shrimp by any means, but I'm not The Rock. But the thing is, what the heck would it accomplish, let it go and move on.
Don't get me wrong, some times I have - as I'm sure you have -felt compelled to confront the negative reaction. But in some circumstances you can't, like if you were working in a service-sector job and you asked some customers if you could help them in some way and they say "no thanks", but as you're walking away you notice some look of derision, or a scowl, or contempt or something (provided you can readily discern) - what you're seeing is probably "the uncanny valley" effect. But confronting it would do you more harm than good. I learned to rehearse in the mirror off of movie scenes to some token dialogues and found that I was getting those "off" looks less and less. So it's really just a lesson learned, and in a way it's a good thing if you have the awareness to discern that somebody's giving you such looks when you feel they might be uncalled for (i.e. it wasn't due to a non-subtle interaction where the customer didn't get something they were promised, or you just made a more conspicuous blunder somewhere).
On a couple of occasions, I was in some public place with a friend or a date and he/she said to me "that guy over there keeps looking at you in a negative way" - my response would be something like "well, maybe he/she thinks I look like someone else they knew way back when, somebody they didn't like" - and one of those times it was a bully from grade 9 (I was like 80% sure) when I was in my later teens. So I just didn't even acknowledge his existence.
14 Mar 2021, 8:22 pm
