Ignoring social capital?

Post Reply New Topic

I've noticed that among my various aspie social sins one of the bigger ones might be rolling right over social capital in environments where it seems ambiguous or where there's no clearly definable clique.

Now mind you - in real 'face to face' life there's a sense that you don't say certain things around people in social leadership because it seems to suggest that you have no clue what the pecking order is or that there is a pecking order, a lot of that pecking order has a fair amount to do with who does what (the problem that a lot of people put a lot of work into various things and it doesn't show on the surface other than how people regard them), and if you're going to nerd out you have to do it in rather small groups and be sure you're not accidentally peacocking over the leader without providing anything of equal or greater value in terms of drudgery with respect to group involvement. I've also noticed that intellectual conversation and people who are into it often get frowned upon because they have a tendency to flood their banks and irritate people in this manner.

That makes me wonder, if I find myself online in various places - whether Facebook or other similar venues - and garnering the silent treatment simply by being even the slightest bit chatty or outgoing, it's like there's very much a 'That's great that you posted that, or that would otherwise be a good article or good piece of music but.... who the ___ are you again?'. I'm talking about big forums where people come in from all over the place and don't know each other (not WP, I haven't had that issue here, but I've noticed something like this about Facebook and Reddit chats - it's who you are, not what you post).

Any thoughts on the mechanics of that? For example are there philosophic mechanics that I'm missing in my observations above or is it really as simple as everyone being tepid about liking anything that certain other key people haven't 'like'd? It seems like powerfully uniform behavior, I do watch them exclude a lot of people routinely and it can be tough to spot the rhyme or reason. On one hand if it's just small-mindedness I can get over it, if I'm actually being a dick on some level though I'd rather know it and withhold that sort of thing for the odd times where it actually would be intended as received - otherwise it's a simple communication failure and not one I'd want to continue on with.

I'd put my money on the small-mindedness.

Ancillary thought: most are not as smart as you.

That one's particularly harsh because when it's collective vice of some kind your hands are tied, ie. little way to navigate it. Fair enough though.

You write very long and verbose posts here. Do you do the same in those other forums? It may be as simple as "Too Long; Didn't Read". People may not read your contributions at all because it makes their eyes glaze over. (I read your posts because we have shared preoccupations, but if we didn't they would be TL;DR to me.)

I feel like Tech indulges in what he likes to do.

And I feel his ideas take into account all sides of the story.

Just because I'm not as erudite as Tech----doesn't mean I don't have something to say, too.

This is just Tech's style. And other people with a similar way of debate/discussion enjoy him. And those other people and Tech gain sustenance from each other.

What's prominent is that he enjoys watching podcasts of his favorite philosophical thinkers---as well as some who oppose them. Every little point made is ripe for discussion by he and his buddies. And that makes for a very substantial discussion which takes away the mundane boredom.

Truthfully no, in this case they're usually a few sentences.

I've considered it could literally be a thinking pattern issue as well - ie. sometimes even putting things in third to fifth grade vocabulary just won't close the perspective gap (and a lot of people I know at work have had this sort of problem with client correspondence - it's a common issue).

I sometimes wonder, and I don't know if this can be helped, that having strengths in one area can practically cause weaknesses in other - like making proper 'small talk' just about impossible.

Making "small talk" is useful in some contexts----like going to a wedding or something. That's where you can't really "put your best foot forward," so to speak when it comes to talking with your table-mates. You have to talk about such mundane things as mortgages, family, and the virtues of the people getting married.

Apparently I survive that better IRL than online, maybe because I have three or four people helping me and there's some tangible link to grab and run with rather than it feeling like a broadcast conversation between me and possibly hundreds or thousands of people.

You are well within your niche here on WP. I wouldn't change.

You are the Erudite Guy.....whereas Aghoday (spelling?) is the Walt Whitman, Stream-of-Consciousness Guy.

Maybe people don't follow your non standard use of words? For instance I don't actually know what you mean by social capital in this post. I can formulate a few suppositions but by the time a few of those ambiguous phrases have been compounded by juxtaposition into a strange sounding array of ambiguous waffle it is hard to engage with.

The most interesting thing about it is that it provides a bit of an insight into why other people so consistently fail to understand me too. Just being intelligent isn't enough to be taken seriously. People have to be able to follow and interpret what you say into something they can understand. Words aren't enough, it is the angle of inclination that they impcact on the listener that is the determining factor for whether they get respected or not.

Sometimes when you write something, I don't know how to respond because your posts usually make me feel intellectually "taken aback" and I have to think about it quite a bit, and I'm too intimidated to respond. I'm sure many of us have this "issue" with your written expression. I don't think people are deliberately ignoring you mostly. I've never read a post written by you and thought you seemed like a know-it-all jerk. I really think you're just intimidating OR you post something so well-written and specific it's difficult for most of us to respond to without feeling like a dunce.

Social capital is basically being "popular." It's kind of like thinking of likeability and social savviness as a currency.

The way I understand it it's something to do with the accrual of social networks, good will, and other intangibles between people on a local level. To some degree it cements positive bonds, gives local structures and institutions their flavor, etc..

Where my thoughts were in the OP - it seems like a lot of it is built on favors people have done for each other, a lot of unspoken work put in in a lot of cases, and I can easily see how a yahoo no one knows and whose done nothing for anyone that they're aware of (ie. no displayed commitment to the group) starts talking like he's a self-appointed higher-up, or at a minimum that's how perceptions could read if I'm not extremely careful to balance things in the other direction. Typically when that happens it's about the time a group starts giving someone the silent treatment or a sense that they don't fit in or belong over no direct act of offense that they can think of or remember.

TBH I get it too, and it's not entirely an incorrect reaction - if the person talking like they're a major somebody hasn't proven that they wouldn't give the shirt off their back for someone else or hasn't shown any major display of actual competence or bravery in that group then they're an impostor even if everything they're saying is correct, so it's a signal that I could take, reflect on, and choose to do better with if I felt like that was the proper context of the problem. It's just that, it would be strange to go to a Facebook subgroup with tens of thousands of members, founded like five years ago, and think there's that much invisible social architecture or that there's tight social hierarchy and gate-keeping going on there.

The only thing I can think of is that people are abstracting off those assumptions - ie. that if a person comes in saying thoughtful or intelligent things in even the slightest self-reference (ie. starting posts rather than 'doing things' for other people for a long time first) that all of the grifter alarm bells go off. If that's the case, it perhaps would be a different version of the same problem and in a zone where it seems like everyone knows how to do it but no one exactly gets the context of why they're doing it in that particular venue or forum.

TBH I think the below might be it, ie. what's happening. It's interesting, when you chew on these things long enough, you eventually end up with some kind of sensible answer but it can clearly take a while.

Also TY for helping to keep my face to this - I really wanted to get under this one and it was helpful getting email reminders on this every day.

This is basically how I've heard advocates of social capital explain it. However, as you get into below, I think the advocates ignore the reality of prejudice and favoritism. Interesting that you used the word "yahoo," as Jonathan Swift illustrated the relationship between prejudice and self-image powerfully.