I discovered this year that there was an unspoken rule to get on the bus in the order you arrived at the bus stop at. I had never paid attention to this and just got on in order of proximity to the door when it stopped until I got yelled at. I thought the guy was just being weird but I’ve paid attention since and it is absolutely true, people will move away from the door to let people who have waited longer board first.
Not sure how universal this is, I’m in the UK.
I’m in the UK and tend to do this. I don’t notice it done by most people though.
We do seem to have a learned behaviour to queue here, so it makes sense to me that some people maintain a virtual queue in their head.
This has to be a UK thing. Elsewhere I’ve only ever seen people with accessibility needs prioritized.
It’s a courtesy thing that some people will do and some people won’t, in my city people tend to do ladies first then by arrival time.
It’s not a fear, it’s real. Rules like you aren’t allowed to do better than your paygrade.
Some stupid diploma is more important. If you try to learn and improve, people will DESPISE you.
One of the rules I find interesting is that when you ride an elevator you should turn around and face the door.
Not saying there is a wrong direction to face while riding an elevator (without further context), but it always just made sense to me to face the door you expect to open when the elevator gets to the floor you’re traveling to. Like, nothing stops you from facing sideways on a moving sidewalk, but facing the direction you intend to go when the ride is over is more convenient.
an elevator with two doors appears
If you don’t someone might rape you, duh.
I’ve had this for the most time, social fear with exactly that thinking. I did overcome it in the last years though. I can’t really explain how but I internalized that other people can be like that too, so you’re not alone, and that when there are no rules, you can behave how it’s comfortable to you and that’s 100% fine.
As a kid I didn’t know you need to press the stop button and just assumed the bus stops at all stops every time. Somehow I got through 2 years of regular use without missing a stop until I learned about the button.
Is that not just “trying to fit in”?
I found a secret. Normal people also feel like this, they are just better at reading the ambient rules.
It turns out, if you project your own mindset with enough confidence, they will sync to your rules. No need to figure out the rules, when you’ve already redefined them to suit yourself.
You say that but when I took my pants off on the airplane, they arrested me when we landed.
Agreed, it has its limits. Trying to get a library karaoke session going, to reduce exam stress also ends poorly.
This peaks when the police drives by.
Am I actually allowed to sit on this park bench?
Am I actually allowed to sit on this park bench?
Police are bad. Bouncers absolutely unhinged. I’ve been turned away for not having nice enough shoes. I’ve had them think I was intoxicated after one drink. I’ve gotten verbal warnings for standing on things, while they let the people around me literally dance on them. They’ve knocked back student admission because my student ID card expired months ago. I recently got told off for drinking a beer while standing up.
And they act like if you dismiss these ridiculous things, they will immediately resort to violence.
That is the normal human experience, I think.
Phew. Good. For a moment I thought I might be on the spectrum.
Please don’t make me tell you about the first time I had fondue…
Yep. You can find some research about it in sociology/psychology. I think sociology calls these unspoken rules mores, if you want to look it up. The most famous example is when an entire group of people is in a new setting, like the first class of the first day as freshmen in high school, 6th graders in middle school (or whenever your local school board decides middle school starts), and college freshmen. The entire group usually sits quietly and nervously until they start taking cues from the teacher. Once they learn the basics expectations and test the boundaries, behavior falls somewhere between how they used to act and what they think is expected from the entire group. We are hugely social animals, and there’s a reason that exile used to be a major punishment.
People don’t seem to really grasp how much of our behavior is ‘scripted’ like a movie or play, and, amusingly enough, how much we follow the scripts of said movies/plays/other-observed-scenes when we’re in a new or stressful situation. Remember your first time in an amorous situation with a date, say in a car or closet or back yard at a party? If you hadn’t been listening to your friends and what they did (or told you they did / what to do), you might find yourself awkwardly stumbling through the actions of some movie’s clip, whether that’s casablanca, sixteen candles, or easy a. Hopefully it won’t be anything from when harry met sally.
This. Almost everyone I know has said, “Fake it 'til you make it” and “When in Rome…”
Yeah but at what point is one supposed to have “made it”? I’ve been faking it for years, still waiting.
We’ll never be perfect. There’s always room for learning, which means emulating new behaviors to adapt to a changing environment. It’s probably a good idea to look back at how you’ve changed over time and appreciate the habits that work well for you that you don’t have to think about anymore. I’m probably a little over the line of assuming much about a stranger on the internet, if not past the point of starting to project aspects that are unique to my own experience. Still, I hope there’s enough commonality among us all for this comment to be encouraging if not technically helpful in some way.
Yes the hard part is when you either struggle too much to do that social mimicking.
Or In my case it’s anxiety, and it’s overwhelming dread about failing to mimick.
No, it is not normal, at all. From what I gathered reading hundreds of thousands of reddit and lemmy posts, it’s a young person thing.
We GenX kids had zero problems discussing our deepest fears among each other. Can’t think of a single instance of anyone worrying about how to act in simple public situations.
I’m probably biased as old reddit and lemmy aren’t representative of society in whole. I have several friends I’ve known since their late teens, early 20s now, and none of them talk about social anxiety.
Nah. I fear uncertainty. I am 100% certain there’s going to be some social norm I don’t know and that everyone around me just groks.
Worst case is when there are some written rules, but there’s a spoken agreement (which you don’t know about) to ignore some of those rules
And only some people are allowed to not follow those rules but you don’t know that they’re not following the rules when you copy them, and you eventually get iced out and get yelled at.
And it’s never explained why some people can not follow the rules and still be treated respectfully and some people can’t and get yelled at.
It always confused me as to why everyone else are allowed to behave badly and constantly scream, and I have to be mindful and respect them, but they never have to show even the smallest respect back and I can’t even raise my voice ones without being in trouble.
Yes. So very yes. I’m over 40 now and have most social situations set as templates or template variations, but as a teenager and young adult it was hard to get the unspokenly expected responses and reactions right.
These days I got it all covered so well that I have anyone and everyone so convinced that I am an extrovert that they actually laugh when I suggest I’m in truth an introvert and more.
I still am overly self conscious too much, especially AFTER any interactions, reflecting way too much on how I might have come over, seemed, what was too much, not enough, etc.
It’s a mask I can no longer turn off as it’s automated and its very exhausting.
But it works… Based on my observations.
This is me. I could have written every word of this (if not so succinctly). I often wonder how much of my fatigue is due to wearing the mask all the time.
Is this template thing not… Just how life works?
Like, I’ve taken enough sociology and anthropology classes to know that humans these systems of behavior into our societies. We go into church and there is a set of behaviors expected, we go to the grocery and there is a set of behaviors expected when speaking with the clerk, et cetera, et cetera.
But, like, is this a ND thing to need to memorize the templates for these interactions? Because that’s my whole life. Stand back, try to remain unseen, observe, memorize, then I can interact. Is that not just what everyone does?
Y’all, I’m having a little bit of a crisis here
I feel that for many people it simply comes more naturally.
It’s a seamless scale and I just presume I’m missing some receptors others have socially so I have to compensate with templates.
Yes, people all have to learn what is what in which society and what situation or environment. I think it’s a major difference in constant self reflection others dont have that much and how raw data arrives. For me its like I perceive things slighty differently than most and I have to first convert it to a alternative viewport to make it fit properly.
Small differences can have a big impact on if something is awkward or normal.
I use social templates too, to varying degrees of success. Older people at the supermarket are easy, younger people at work are hard. Useless on teens, useful on LEO. As far as reflecting too much, I used to too, until I got a kitten. I tell him my thoughts out loud and he listens…I think. Anyway it works, you’ll feel more at ease and less anxious discussing you existential crisis to a furry friend 😺
Ughhhhh, this drudged up a painful old memory.
When I was in elementary school, I went to a sleepover. One of the girls was Jewish and brought out a dreidel. I didn’t know much about dreidels, but I did know I have a tendency to miss important cues and could easily offend somebody by accident. She offered me to play, but all I could think about was “this is an important object to her and her religion. If I fuck up, I’ll definitely be offending her.”
I was terrified of doing something wrong, so I declined to play.
Turns out, that was the biggest fuck-up of all. She immediately started accusing me of being anti-Jewish. I was overwhelmed and confused, and no amount of explaining my reasoning could push away that accusation.
Anxiety strikes again.
When I was working at a day care decades ago I didn’t want to read a kid’s book that was partially in Spanish, because I didn’t want to fuck up the pronunciation in front of actual Spanish speaking kids.
I’ll never live that racist reputation down.
I’m sorry that happened to you, but it helps to know I’m not the only one that had such a misunderstanding.
Very relatable. Being afraid of doing anything new because I’m so sure I’ll mess it up and do it wrong or get asked something I’m not prepared for. Same reason I want to try and research things as much as possible beforehand. It’s not as bad as it used to be for me but I definitely still relate.
Holy shit. Went to a Japanese restaurant. In Japan. Despite close to a decade of martial arts training and dojo etiquette, I stuffed up and placed ONE foot on the tatami surface while wearing shoes for 2 seconds. The other patrons gasped.
My sensei would yell at everyone who ever did it.
I cannot overestimate how much you need to prepare for being in public.
To be fair, Japan has designed a whole culture around the exact fear that you and OP described (also, don’t do that. Shoes don’t go beyond the shoe area at the entrance.)
I know it’s autocorrect but I got a giggle out of ‘marital arts’
I manual-uncorrected it. Even though I’ve been practising marital arts even longer.
