People being rude when you ask questions

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Hello,

I have noticed that when I ask questions, there's always a chance that people will be rude to me, or someone else will tell me something like "you shouldn't have asked that".

Has it happened to you? How often? It's happened a lot through the years. Makes me afraid of asking anyone anything.

Unless someone explains why a question should not be asked how does one know not to ask that question?
Is better to ask and find out than not to ask and make mistakes.

This happens a lot to me, but it was much more frequent when I was a kid. NTs have a lot of social rules (many of which I learned through masking) and a lot of them seem to revolve around questions.

I saw a post that went along the lines of "NTs often take asking direct questions as a challenge or as a judgement of their character, especially if you're lower on the 'social hierarchy'". I have found that to be extremely accurate. It makes sense to me when it's an extremely personal question, but a lot of NTs get offended by basic questions such as "why?" and it's very frustrating.

There are still things I don't know that I was told to keep quiet or that people told me off for asking, where they assume "Everyone knows that" when I still don't know that.
When I was a teenager and as part of my schooling had to read loads of books, and yet my vocabularly was narrow as the words I did not know, even if I asked and I was told what they mean, I would have to do lots of repeat asking over a lengthy period of time to get the meanings of the words to stay in my mind, as I am not a words person like my Mum is. (I think in visual imagined pictures the best).
So what I would do is simply ignore the words I did not know and carry on reading the words I knew, and I have done this for many years. The only issue is when later in life people are surprized that I don't know what they mean.
I know all these words I am typing as I try and stick to using words I know what they mean. I do write words outside this as they tend to always be used in certain contexts and even though I only have a rough idea of what they mean I know the context so I use them. But if I was asked directly what they mean I would not know, so I try and avoid using them if I can. The funny thing is when I was challenged as I sometimes am if the word context of the words I don't know does not quite fit, and I have used the tactic of "Ok then. You tell me what it means!" innorder to try to find out what the word means, the funny thing is that the other person then goes quiet as they too don't know what it actually means and yet they criticize me for not knowing?

RPCarnell

When someone thinks I asked the wrong question they have the nerve to bark at me "none of your business!"

When someone asks me the wrong question I don't have the nerve to bark that at them

But "people being rude"?

Plenty of times, someone is "rude" to me and I didn't even ask questions?

Some "people" act so entitled, superior and innocent. They act like every time they ask me a question, they are doing me a personal favor by showing interest, and I should be grateful they deigned to talk to me at all

Then they act like I am bothering them by asking questions, or by existing altogether

Sometimes some "people" act with double standards

So for a long time I have been trying to avoid "people" unless there's a really good reason otherwise

Some "people" act like every time their expectations don't get fulfilled, or any time they are not happy, it proves someone violated their "rights"

Some "people" act like they have a moral "right" to do anything they want

In general, I ask a lot of questions. It is important to ask questions because that is how I learn. In general about 50 percent of the people will be rude and in a sense attack you for asking a question. But about 50 percent of the people will answer and many times they will share very detailed information. Sometimes these conversations can last for hours and hours and you can learn a lot of information.

So do not be concerned about asking questions. It is one of the best ways to learn.

(In reality, many times the people who attack you for asking questions, really do not know the answer. It is their way of hiding their own stupidity.)

Yes, it still surprises me that people can take so much offense at sincere questions. Maybe it's down to people being too polite, feeling it would be rude not to answer and so feeling they've been pushed into a corner. But if they're such polite people, why do they respond rudely? If they really don't want to answer, why can't they just say "I'm not going to tell you," or "I don't know" ? It's also apparently quite acceptable not to answer a question directly, but to just say a few sentences and leave it to the questioner to figure out whether the answer is in that somewhere or not. I don't mind that if I've come to trust them to actually deliver an answer in that way, but I dislike it when I get a load of woffle that makes me none the wiser.

But I suppose some questions can come over as an attempt to knock holes in their image. It happens a lot in politics, for example. I used to know a guy who would use questions as a kind of weapon when he was arguing. By asking his opponent a difficult question, he'd make them do all the work, while he just sat back and picked out the flaws in their response.

Personally I'm not very interested in one-upmanship, and it's frustrating when I ask a straight question and it's taken as a competitive move of some kind. I might well be exploring a possible flaw in an assertion they've made, but not as an attempt to make them look bad. Nobody's free of talking rubbish from time to time, so it's really no disgrace if somebody finds an error in what they've said. But some people hate to be shown up as wrong about anything.

Here's my favourite example of dodging a question, from "The Young Ones" :
Rick: Have you just farted, Mike?
Mike: Who knows, Rick? I'm a strange guy.

I think people are often rude because of how they perceive you. When I ask someone a question, whatever the question is, they will be rude to me, because I'm "weird". If someone else asks the same person the same question, there's no rudeness because they look "normal". Autistic people are outcasts, untouchable people that could contaminate the "normal" people. That's why people use rudeness to get rid of weirdos.

I agree with temp1234 , he summarized it all for ya in the most perfect way. He is definitely an alien soul ….

Example, please, of what kind of question would get a response of "you shouldn't have asked that."

I love unexpected questions for the most part.

I am annoyed at the usual sort of questions and have a bad habit of saying strange things in response, which sometimes makes people speak too me too much afterward. This is not because I don't know the "correct" thing to say. It's because I can no longer bear to say the correct thing and I am refusing to do it. If I say the correct thing, the person may misunderstand me to be a regular person and then keep expecting me to say normal things, which would be SUPER irritating for me.

Whenever someone does that to me, I tell them that the only stupid question is the one that's not asked.

Half the time I ask questions people don't even answer as if they didn't even hear me. Maybe they weren't listening, so I ask the question again. Still total silence. But if I raise my voice while repeating the question since they seem to have serious trouble with their hearing, they'll just think I'm a jerk or say I don't need to yell. Hilarious.