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
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
Awkwardness is a property that characterizes social situations or interactions when one or more participant(s) finds themselves lacking the guidance of a script and feels awkward as a result.
Alexandra Plakias • Awkwardness: A Theory
Awkwardness draws attention to what are usually automatic or unreflective behaviors; this, in turn, gives rise to increased self-monitoring.
Alexandra Plakias • Awkwardness: A Theory
an awkward silence is awkward in part because we don’t know what it signifies, and it leaves us without cues about where to go next.
Alexandra Plakias • Awkwardness: A Theory
I think it’s just that we don’t talk about this stuff out loud very much. I feel the same way describing the kind of social anxiety I get from performative parts of social media—to detail it out loud feels unhinged. But I think most people are feeling similar stuff. It’s bleeding into everyone’s behaviors.
The Atlantic • How to Leave an Internet That’s Always in Crisis
Keely Adler added
Some people, especially those who are autistic, dohave a flat emotional affect, do rely on scripts and do have a clear-cut sense of justice which leads them to cut off those who transgress it. When we talk about these traits as inhuman and robotic, what are we implying about the people who display them? The impulse to be unapologetic about emotiona... See more
how did you realise you were a bad person?
nico kokonas added
“We do have the capacity to step out of past conditioning, but as anyone who has consciously attempted it can attest, it’s a difficult project. One of the reasons for this is that doing something truly new—actually moving off those habitual tracks—feels like some combination of weird, unfamiliar and wrong.... See more
The trick is to learn to stay with the exp
Thomas Klaffke • How To Think About Change
Alex Dobrenko added