Empathic Failure

[andrewducker]

One of the strange attitudes on the spoilers post is that of people who seem insistent on telling me how I should enjoy movies.  That I pay too much attention to plot, or that I just shouldn't enjoy a movie less if I know how it's going to turn out.

This seems to be a common thread in discussion on the internet - one person says "I don't like X." and a bunch of people say that not enjoying X is immature, or that it's not that bad, or that they like X a lot, or that  they can't see X at all. 

And they don't seem to be providing this information for general cultural reasons, but in denial that the original person is "correct" to feel the way they do in the first place.

It's something I've seen repeatedly, that if unhappy people would just stop being unhappy then everything would be fine.  That they shouldn't complain about people doing things they don't like - because if they'd just learn to like people doing things they didn't like then nothing would have to change, and everyone would be happy.

You don't have to agree with people who complain - if you feel differently then you feel differently.  You don't have to stop doing the thing they feel unhappy about - that's your judgement to make.  But to hear people expressing their feelings on something and then express anger, disbelief or scorn because they have those feelings strikes me as a basic lack of empathy.

It's an attitude that completely baffles me.

Comments

Re: probably repeating things that have already been said, but can't be bothered transplanting my sa

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Yet you make a value judgement about others by describing them as unempathic when what they do doesn't fit with what you'd like them to do!

Re: probably repeating things that have already been said, but can't be bothered transplanting my sa

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

He's not describing people who don't do what he wants as unempathic. He's describing people who insist he doesn't or shouldn't feel the way he does as unempathic.

Re: probably repeating things that have already been said, but can't be bothered transplanting my sa

[andrewducker]

No, I didn't.

I described then as unempathic when their reaction to me saying "I don't enjoy X" was "You're doing it wrong, you emo wuss." - showing a lack of understanding that my emotions were different to theirs, and not because of some problem with me, but because people are different.

Responses of "You may not enjoy X, but I'm fine with it." didn't bother me at all.

At no point did I call people unempathic because they didn't do what I said. Particularly because I never told anyone what to do.

I'm wondering what I did to be quite so misunderstood by you. Can you point out which bits made you believe I was telling you what to do?

[simont]

Can't speak for nmg, but the comment in your original post "To me, spoilers are all about politeness" certainly made me think your aim was to ask people to behave in a particular way: the implication was that posting spoilers is impolite, and usually statements like "X is impolite" do carry an implicit "so please don't do X, on the basis of our presumably-shared assumption that being polite is generally a good thing".

In the next paragraph, "And I'd really appreciate you not telling me the details before I do!" also sounded very like a request, even an emphatic one.

[andrewducker]

I was telling people what I would appreciate. This is a statement about my projected emotional state, based on their actions.

And yes, I believe that if X makes someone unhappy, then it is polite to not do X. I do not believe that politeness is always the correct thing to do - I'm fine with people choosing to be impolite.