When People Don’t Notice You’ve Changed
New article is up:
When People Don’t Notice You’ve Changed
April 20, 2008
Bars And Clubs Aren’t All Bad
Added a new article (after being away from the site last month):
March 30, 2008
Eighth Social Skills Carnival
As I said at the beginning of year, I’ll still put up new editions of the Social Skills Carnival, just on a more random schedule. Here’s the latest one:
Adrian presents You Are a Social Actor Playing a Social Role
Lori Jewett presents Women Connecting/Relationships
Change Your Tree presents Newsflash: You Teach Others How To Treat You
A Journey of Dreams presents 12 Things You Can Do to Stop Being Self-Centered
Eve Turner presents Growing Conversation Skills
Clearly Envision presents Five actions you can take to gain the respect of others
Justin Duval presents The Essence of “US”
Be a Good Human presents How to make people think you care about them
That’s it. The next edition will be out whenever, probably in a month or two. Just submit your articles here and I’ll put up the ninth carnival at a good time.
February 27, 2008
Reflections on getting over poor self-esteem
New article:
Reflections On Getting Over Poor Self-Esteem
February 23, 2008
Life Factors That Can Boost Your Social Success Quite Quickly
New article:
Life Factors That Can Boost Your Social Success Quite Quickly
February 16, 2008
The Limits Of My Site’s Advice
New intro-ish article:
The Limits Of This Site’s Advice
January 30, 2008
The Philosophies And Assumptions Behind My Site
Well I was without access to a computer to work on for a few days, but now I’m back to the New Year’s reorganizing. This time I fleshed out the old article on the site’s philosophies:
The Philosophies and Assumptions Behind This Site
January 29, 2008
Social Skills And Self-Help Advice That Hasn’t Worked For Me
New article:
Social Skills And Self-Help Advice That Hasn’t Worked For Me
January 16, 2008
Revised a couple more articles
The tidying up continues. I revised/reorganized these two articles:
How to make friends and get a social life
The importance of getting your appearance in order (name is changed, used to be the one on looking better)
I’ve edited a couple more to a lesser degree, but I’m always doing that. One more revised article and one more new article coming.
January 15, 2008
Removed some vague, loaded phrases from the site
No new article in this update. What I did do is go through the site and remove certain vague, loaded terms from the articles. As far as I can tell, these terms are gone:
-Introvert/Extrovert
-Geek
-Nerd
They’re still there in the odd spot, mostly to describe a label other people might use. I’m not using them any more myself though. For one, no one can really agree on what these terms mean any more. The words all encompass a mix of traits, strengths, and weaknesses. But everyone has a different idea of what particular things should and shouldn’t be in their definitions. It’s way too vague and murky for me.
I can try using them as a succinct way to describe something, but other people may not interpret the term in the way I intended. I may as well write the three specific words I want to talk about, instead of using something like ‘introvert’ and hoping the reader knows what I meant to say.
Check out these urbandictionary.com definitions for geek and nerd. The entries are all over the place and the terms are almost effectively meaningless. And look how everyone wants to redefine the term in a way that doesn’t hurt their ego. The same with ‘introvert’. Pretty much every online discussion I’ve read that uses the word will digress into a debate of what the term “really” means before long.
Also, some people are defensive and sensitive about having these terms applied to them. They don’t want to be called something at all, or they get annoyed if you use the term in the “wrong” way (i.e., with a negative connotation). It’s just easier not to use these words any more and avoid all that.
It also forces me to be more precise with what I want to say myself. As I was editing out all my uses of the terms, I was surprised at how haphazardly I threw them around. One sentence I’d use ‘geek’ to mean one thing, the next I’d use it to imply something totally different.
One loaded word I kept in was “weird”. I’ve gotten emails saying, “There’s nothing wrong with being weird. Weird people have accomplished…” In my experience though, there’s a definite downside to being weird in a certain way. Being artsy and creative is one thing, but being strange, inappropriate, and out of touch with the world is another. I’m fine with the good stuff, but not with the bad. If someone can come up with a term that describes just the bad aspects of weirdness though, I’ll happily use that instead.
January 11, 2008
