Posted by lucidplot 10/27/2025
From my personal experience people who are angry about interruptions are typically arogant and non empathic.
I love heated debates. (Adhd, INTP, Central Europe)
First, let me describe myself. I'm not always great at explaining my thoughts to others in a meeting. The output peripheral bus has a lower clock speed than the CPU, if you catch my drift. If I'm not the one driving the meeting, I try to wait until I have a decent amount of context before offering my own thoughts. Most critically: I don't speak unless I have something important to say, because time is scarce and talking AT ALL is a very high effort activity for me.
I really don't mind the occasional interruption or clarifying question. But if someone is constantly interrupting me every other sentence, it seems obvious to me that they either think their opinion is more important than mine, or they just like to hear themselves talk. In either case, the constant interruptions mean they don't actually care what I have to say, so there's no value in me trying to say it, and I just stop talking until they are done and let the conversation end naturally.
Let be clear tho: I'm talking about positive mindset discussion and NOT shunning someone into silent submission. (That would be awful!)
I also see interruptions as going hand in hand with collaboration and engagement. I guess it’s a personality thing. I’m adhd, INTJ, family hails from a part of the US northeast that is known to be direct and blunt.
I think civilized people talk in turns. If you chose to violate the social contract anything goes.
I have a hard enough time remembering what I've already told people. I also have to account for half sentences? I'm supposed to remember where I was rudely interrupted and store their response where? Does it even relate to the topic?
I also fear turning my head into a ravioli of sound bites. Like an aquarium with little chunks of thought floating around. Tiny insignificant chunks. Like death!
Yes, the settings play a roll of course. The joke is best with other males of the same age. It's not funny with kids or woman.
Social contract, rule in my head? I don't know if there is a difference.
To see slightly diverging behaviors as uncivilized, to unilaterally demand that people change it to suit your preferences, and especially to threaten people with physical violence seems really deeply troubling to me. I don't think that's a good attitude to have at all.
People have different cultural and personal expectations, quirks, even medical conditions (e.g. ADHD) that affect how they handle communication. You can ask people - politely - to try their best not to interrupt you because it makes communication difficult for you, otherwise walk away.
I also have ADHD which makes me more prone to interrupting people and while I try my best not to, it happens. If I'm troubleshooting a problem for you and by the end of your second sentence I know what the immediate next step is but you keep talking about some irrelevant back-story, I will probably interrupt you - either that or my brain will completely miss what you're saying for the next 5 minutes, making sure that the thought in my head doesn't just - poof, disappear.
Yes some people think I'm rude for that. No, I don't really care because it's not something I can change. Rude are the people unilaterally imposing arbitrary personal preferences onto other people.
If you interrupt me to correct me I actually admire it. Extra points if you get to do it twice in a sentence.
I'm taking about repeatedly interrupting the next step with irrelevant back story or worse, a not even related topic.
The big question I suppose is if your thoughts continue to go poof if you try harder to hold onto them.
Maybe try using your words instead.
Sounds like they never agreed to your version of this "contract", so they're not violating anything, you're just making excuses.
(A social contract is not the same thing as a legal contract, but you seem to be treating it closer to the latter, which requires explicit agreement)
"i just resort to violence! it's funny!"
“I live in a world where I regularly threaten strangers with violence and don’t get my ass kicked and people still talk to me. I look exactly like Fabio but with a bigger penis. I drive the original Mustang from Bullitt around the race track on my mega yacht I won by beating Gabe Newell in every video game on Steam. I have eleven girlfriends and they are all Jessica Alba.”
Econ is (I’m guessing) ~12 years old, plus or minus a year or two. These sorts of fantasies are pretty common during puberty.
I asked, an outlier? No no you actually don't exist. I discovered this when I noticed the data made perfect sense if I removed you. People like you don't exist. Period
Just consider that physical intervention is not appropriate for most cases.
Do elaborate on that first paragraph though please, I'm bursting with curiosity about what makes you see it that way.
I see quite a few US TV shows where people make an effort to prevent others from talking.
The most interesting conversation to be had is with someone you disagree with. These people are completely missing out. In stead they are focused on shaping an uninformed narrative.
It's very obviously fake. Seriously you can't see that?
It can land as awkward, un-natural, yeah even 'fake' when it's being used by somebody who is just learning it and is practicing, though after time it will lose those qualities. If people you know are using this on you, they might need to own that they're trying something different to get you into a comfort zone before pressing on.
No kidding here.
No. It's a cheap trick to make me trust the interlocutor. Since it's not only cheap but effective, it's entirely my choice whether I submit to it and "open up".
In business the other side is anything but your therapist.
Hmmm. Different interlocutors can have different intentions. Some are going to have the intention to understand. Echoing what you believe the person said is not a 'cheap trick' when it comes to discussing ideas. I've been on both ends of conversations about singing, engineering and sailing, and one person says "what your saying is this" and the other person says: "No, that's not what I'm saying", with a correction that follows, and the chance for two-way understanding.
There are many roads to birthday parties from people you don't like who also don't like you. There will be many uninspired gifts.