I only spoke when spoken to for a week and became a bulldozing bitch | Hacker News Reader

I only spoke when spoken to for a week and became a bulldozing bitch

hopesandfears.com

24 pointstormeh5 comments

I think it's interesting that many of the feelings she had when she had to be passive all the time are very similar to how I feel when I'm a little depressed. While her condition was consciously self-imposed, I fear my lack of social contact is a consequence of anxiety around others, but the outward and inward symptoms are similar.

While I'm not anxious around others, I don't relate to others easily, and I also feel that her actions and the effects on and reactions of others describe pretty well those times when I am a bit down or depressed myself. What's also interesting is the notion that one loses the ability to define oneself and is at the mercy of others' first impressions and moods, with very differing results depending on the situation and person... People seem to just reflect their own moods or insecurities off of you.

Kind of a weirdly link-baity title, really. If you're checking the comments to see if this is some sort of tedious lecture about some buzzword or other before clicking through, it's not; it's the results of a sort of weird/interesting social experiment, and it's at least modestly interesting. The "bulldozing" in question occurred only in one specific situation.

I'm still confused why that happened. I walk in lots of crowded places and am perfectly capable of not "trampling children" without a need to vocally warn them about my movement... Like, just if you're going to run into a kid... just Don't do that?

Why didn't she just.. not walk into people. I manage to walk through busy places without verbally announcing my every move..

The whole article seems as ridiculous as the above; just trying to squeeze a few paragraphs out of a boring experiment.

"This week I didn't speak until spoken to. I talked a bit less but otherwise it was pretty standard"

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