We should take awkwardness less personally, and more seriously | Aeon Essays
Alexandra Plakiasaeon.co
We should take awkwardness less personally, and more seriously | Aeon Essays
the most intimate dilemmas are reflective of universal shifts
Awkwardness is essentially social: it emerges when the scripts we rely on to guide our social interactions fail us, either because they don’t exist or we’re unable to access or implement them.
Alexandra Plakias • Awkwardness: A Theory
Many of the problems with awkwardness arise not from its phenomenological qualities, but from our conception of it as attaching to individuals or specific issues rather than the interaction between individuals and social norms.
Alexandra Plakias • Awkwardness: A Theory
There isn‘t a clean way to get around the idea that personal expression is always at least in part performative. Expression is partly fun because it’s performative.
It’s also not like this type of behavior is a new thing. There has always been the type of person who is performative of their own interests or pursues their work because of the kind of ... See more
It’s also not like this type of behavior is a new thing. There has always been the type of person who is performative of their own interests or pursues their work because of the kind of ... See more
Here for the Wrong Reasons — Are.na
Moments of awkwardness can make us feel somehow “wrong” or “misfit,” and we can view our inability to enact a social script as a reflection on us—that we have failed, or fallen short, or are somehow socially inept or defective.