Ignoring PMs from people you contacted

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Yep, indeed, [those as popular as] you would get down and lonely every once in a while and then shoot a long, egocentric PM to good, old Greentea. Then when Greentea would take the time and make the effort to put together a thoughtful reply [those as popular as] you ignored her. Then Greentea got fed up with being used and started ignoring [those as popular as] you back, so [those as popular] as you PMed apologizing and filled a post with dumb excuses. I'm not angry at you, ManErg. I don't even take it personally from you, as I said it's been done to me many times by many people. And you're the most brilliant thinker I had the honor to read in years. So I say, since this is what [the populars as] you seem to want, let's ignore each other from now on forever, all in the name of popularity, of course.

I obsessed for many years, and recently observed that they always come back when they need something from me. So the reason they don't answer is not that they don't want to answer, but that they just don't see a reason to talk to me if they don't need anything from me. Seems Greentea is as good as the favors you need from her at any given moment.

I don't know about other people, but in my personal case, if I don't respond to someone's PM/email/post/phone message it can only mean one thing: the person hurt me deeply before, and in such a passive-aggressive way that they left me no way to discuss my pain openly and directly with them. (This is, however, a different topic from the one of this thread. This thread is not about people ignoring your PMs but about people ignoring your replies to THEIR PMs.)

Thank you for saying why you personally would not reply to a pm.

One last off-topic post, to say that in the situation that I described I am not aware of having done anything wrong, whether passively, actively, or passive-aggressively, and am completely in the dark about what it is I did that might have hurt someone.

I wonder whether it might be one of those famous AS misunderstandings, which could be cleared up if the person currently refusing to reply to pm's explained what the problem/"hurtful act" had been, in a pm. I wish they would.

.

The healthiest thing I can do, personally, is keep in mind that when someone sends me a pm, not to invest it with too much importance. I have either initiated or had initiated, an ongoing correspondence, only to have it die a swift and unnatural death. By not expecting anything to come of it, I can keep my sanity intact.

and you, you bad girl. You read my PM entitled " I suppose you are going to ignore THIS" and yet never answered me. Never.

I wrote you another to tease you about it but you never read it.

so. . .

Merle

Merle - it's against T&C to mention on the threads the contents of PMs. You realize I now have to report you to sinsboldly.

sinsboldly - Merle did a no-no. *tries to point Merle to sinsboldly and fails in the enterprise*

Anyway, I haven't read any of the PMs yet because I only do that in the weekends when I have leisure to read them thoroughly and respond. I did open a couple, just browsed them.

hartz, I've copy-pasted your post to my file of WP forums wise words. And the term "a swift and unnatural death" made me LOL because that's how all my relationships go.

Thats happened to me too, hate it

Greentea, while your reaction is completely understandable based on your past experiences with humans, I think it's entirely out of context.

Interactions with humans on wrongplanet isn't the same as interactions with humans on earth for one essential reason. By far the most debilitating feature of Asperger's is the inability to perceive or correctly transmit non-verbal communication.

The obsessions and special interests are less important than a lot of aspies think. I've known non-aspies with obsessive interests who got along with people just fine. It was just an eccentricity in somebody they liked. I've also had obsessive interests in topics that got to be popular. Nobody wanted to talk to me about them.

People always say that something like seventy percent of human communication is non-verbal. I don't know where this figure comes from, but I find it very easy to believe.

That means that being an aspie in a normal conversation or any other face to face interaction with a human is like trying to figure out what's going on in a book where seventy percent of the words have been blotted out.

We miss a lot and make a lot of mistakes and people find it hard to understand how we can be so dumb and inconsiderate.

But there's a critical difference here. Communicating in writing renders all our aspie disabilities irrelevant. There ain't no non-verbal communication possible, so you're not subject to judgment on that account.

It might feel the same, but it ain't the same.

This is a totally different environment. If you wouldn't wear a swimsuit in the arctic or go deer hunting in a tuxedo, don't assume responses on the internet mean the same as responses face to face.

Thanks for teaching me this. I indeed have to lighten up, as Hartz and you say. From now on, CanyonWind, I'll take the context into account and ignore your PMs as you ignore my replies to them and the questions in them. You may not like it, but you'll enjoy the fact that it's context-appropriate.

You're right. I don't like it. I don't like it because you're somebody I value.

Reviewing the events: I sent you a PM. You responded a few days later. I didn't respond to your response for quite a while, it isn't always easy for me to think of things to say in a one on one communication and as I mentioned, I recently got laid off from my job. I don't need to explain to you how unemployment affects confidence. When this thread appeared I did respond.

That was rude of me, I could have said something, and obviously it was a part of a set of events that hurt you deeply.

I guess it's up to you to decide whether it's appropriate to place me in the same trash can with all the other people who have mistreated you.

I didn't put anyone in any trash can! We're exchanging ideas and expressing feelings, that's all.

Having never had a PM correspondence with Greentea, not even sure if I belong in this discussion.

Seems there are at least 2 big issues here. One, as a group, we @ WP have been rejected probably much more than the average person. Two, as a group, we @ WP aren't terribly skilled at making and keeping friends, rather the opposite....we seem highly skilled at losing friends. Our past experience of being continually rejected almost requires us to be rejected in order to validate our experience..and utilize our skill of losing friends.

When I've been rejected in the past, it was perpetually chalked up to being my fault---no matter what has transpired. But here it's different. I've seen myself in so many others here. IRL I've made an attempt to share nothing of value with NTs, just inane pleasantries which they kind of enjoy. But with a few members, there have been worthwhile heart-felt exchanges [at least that's how I viewed it].

If it appears that a WP member, with whom I previously shared PMs, is ignoring or rejecting me, it is most likely not a one-sided thing. We need to be patient and forgiving with each other. I think that's the only way we're going to disabuse ourselves of the finely honed skill of losing friends...

Last edited by alba on 24 Apr 2009, 2:53 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Yep, everyone be patient and forgiving when I start being totally unreliable about replying to your PMs.

^^^
it could conceivably take months to get in the mood for replying to people who wouldn't reply to you before, and have now been prompted by this thread to send token apologies.....