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Comment by MikeTheRocker | Hacker News Reader

Cynically I believe that person to be judgmental and self-absorbed in their motives for asking the question at the party. They didn't care about your answer, they wanted you to ask them the same in return so they could feel good about themself. It's all too typical in SF in my experience. That said, I love living in a city where people are genuinely passionate about making things better (at least in their estimation).

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How would you differentiate between those who are:

"genuinely passionate about making things better (at least in their estimation)"

and someone who is

"judgmental and self-absorbed in their motives"

Based on this three line exchange?

The context of the situation. If you're at a party you're there to meet people and have a good time. Plenty of deep conversations have been had at parties, but they rarely start out that personal.

Starting a conversation with a question like that means the other person will have to reflect it back to you, which means you get to answer however you like. If the person wasn't self-absorbed, they could have answered like "I want to be helpful to others" or something along those lines.

It's not the kind of thing you ask a stranger at most parties. It's a challenge and who goes to a party to be challenged, and who does not know that?

It's not like the idle "So what do you do?" which can be an intentional challenge but usually is idle and innocent.

It's rude and almost certainly caused by self-absorption and self-importance as they said.

Any conversation could randomly wander onto a topic where the question becomes topical, so it's not that the question can never be asked legitimately at a party, but it's not normal.

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