Nice anti-apology, Owen. Since you are super-intelligent, you know the meaning of what people say even when they don’t know themselves, right? You still maintain that Dale implicated Jeff did something wrong. If that were the case then whenever anyone says to his friend, “Don’t let the haters you drag you to their level.” or “He ain’t worth it.” he is in fact insulting his friend by implicating he has done something wrong. The response I see to this advice is usually “Thanks, man. You’re a good friend.” Are all these people too stupid to know they are being insulted? Instead, the proper response to this common supportive advice should be “Stop insulting me by insinuating I did something wrong.” then?
You state that because Dale wrote a possible explanation for Jeff’s post without engaging the explicit statements Jeff made, he is showing his disapproval for Jeff’s post. That is not logical. If Dale wanted to make a point, he would have made it. Don’t put words in his mouth. If you told you’re girlfriend you wanted to eat and she said, “Don’t let yourself to hungry, now.” by your logic she is implicating that you did something wrong by allowing yourself to become hungry. Or if I told my friend, “I really want to go out tonight.” and he said, “I hear you. Not good to stay in all the time.”, he is implicating that I am doing something wrong by staying home too much? In both these example, as in Dale’s reply to Jeff, they are being sympathetic, not disapproving in any way. Don’t pass off your lack of understanding people as ignorance in someone else.
I was trying to draw a distinction between what Dale meant when writing it (which I don’t claim any problem with), and what people reading it might think was meant. Given that I wasn’t the only person who thought that the comment read problematically, it wasn’t just my failure to interpret: there was something suggestive in the wording. I was trying to explain what that feature of the wording was, as well as how it might be avoided by adding an extra statement that Dale agrees with.
Nice anti-apology, Owen. Since you are super-intelligent, you know the meaning of what people say even when they don’t know themselves, right? You still maintain that Dale implicated Jeff did something wrong. If that were the case then whenever anyone says to his friend, “Don’t let the haters you drag you to their level.” or “He ain’t worth it.” he is in fact insulting his friend by implicating he has done something wrong. The response I see to this advice is usually “Thanks, man. You’re a good friend.” Are all these people too stupid to know they are being insulted? Instead, the proper response to this common supportive advice should be “Stop insulting me by insinuating I did something wrong.” then?
You state that because Dale wrote a possible explanation for Jeff’s post without engaging the explicit statements Jeff made, he is showing his disapproval for Jeff’s post. That is not logical. If Dale wanted to make a point, he would have made it. Don’t put words in his mouth. If you told you’re girlfriend you wanted to eat and she said, “Don’t let yourself to hungry, now.” by your logic she is implicating that you did something wrong by allowing yourself to become hungry. Or if I told my friend, “I really want to go out tonight.” and he said, “I hear you. Not good to stay in all the time.”, he is implicating that I am doing something wrong by staying home too much? In both these example, as in Dale’s reply to Jeff, they are being sympathetic, not disapproving in any way. Don’t pass off your lack of understanding people as ignorance in someone else.
Hi Austen,
I was trying to draw a distinction between what Dale meant when writing it (which I don’t claim any problem with), and what people reading it might think was meant. Given that I wasn’t the only person who thought that the comment read problematically, it wasn’t just my failure to interpret: there was something suggestive in the wording. I was trying to explain what that feature of the wording was, as well as how it might be avoided by adding an extra statement that Dale agrees with.