Maybe you’re not rude after all
By: Jessica Wildfire
Tags: Humor, Relationships, Life Lessons, Culture, Self Improvement

Maybe you’re not rude after all

Most of our politeness rules are bullshit.

Photo by Carol Oliver on Unsplash

A teacher sent me home for showing my underwear in fifth grade. The same year, I also got in trouble for asking a classmate about their gender identity. Stuff like that was always happening. I always managed to break some invisible rule out of social blindness.

Most of my teachers couldn’t stand me. During class, I raised questions about “inappropriate” topics like suicide and sexual assault.

They ignored me. Called me out in the hallway for discussions about my behavior. Gave me demerits. Detention. Suspensions.

I was a real trouble maker. So rude. Why couldn’t I just be polite, like everyone else?

You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson. But I didn’t. In my 20s, I kept making the same mistakes. Voicing my opinion in the middle of polite conversation. I could never make small talk, just big talk.

At this one cookout, a bunch of us college freshmen were talking about religion. Some people said they were Catholic. Protestant. Presbyterian. Baptist. So I volunteered that I was an atheist. That pretty much killed the room. Oh, the daggers in their eyes. How rude of me.

Initiate Operation Ostracize.

And then linguistics happened. Halfway through college, I started taking courses in language theory.

That’s when I started to learn something important. Something that changed my life forever.

Most of our politeness rules are bullshit.

You see, sociolinguists study how people talk. The more I read into language theory, the more these elusive, hidden, and unspoken rules and expectations became clear. My problems came into focus.

For example, you can make pretty decent conversation if you just follow four principles laid out by Paul Grice in the 70s — quantity, quality, relevance, and manner. That was revolutionary.

Grice taught me that when someone you barely know says, “How are you?” they actually don’t give a shit. They’re just being polite. You’re supposed to observe the maxim of quantity and say, “I’m fine.”

If you tell most of your friends or coworkers how you actually feel, they’ll think you’re unhinged. All because you offered more information than they wanted. I could go on, but you get the point.

See, quantity.

Grice is entry-level stuff. Sociolinguists also study speech repair, accommodation, and turn taking. We also look at how people soften or hedge their words in certain situations.

And then there’s speech act theory — otherwise known as people expecting you to read their mind when they say something they don’t mean literally. Like when some of my coworkers mentioned to me that my office was chilly, and then one of them told me I was rude because I didn’t adjust the temperature for her.

You see, sometimes people say shit and expect you to know exactly what they mean. This is considered polite.

On the flip side, telling people exactly what you want is considered rude. Some of us fall into this trap all the time. If you visit my home, you’re supposed to keep saying, “I’m thirsty” and wait for me to offer you water. You can’t just ask me. And you definitely can’t help yourself to my faucet. Don’t be rude. Just pass out from dehydration.

This rule also sounds like bullshit. If you ever visit my house, just ask me for water. Or bourbon. I have both. I’m willing to share.

Most people learn these rules naturally. People like me, on the spectrum, have to learn them explicitly.

Small talk is one of the biggest loads of bullshit. It leads to a lot of fake behavior. We don’t need manners. We just need to be real with each other. Just because I don’t want to hear about your beach trip at length on a busy Monday morning, that doesn’t mean I hate you.

Look at how politeness works in the south. When someone says “bless your heart,” they actually mean “Go fuck yourself.”

Personally, I prefer the latter. If you’re pissed off with me, I’d rather you just come out and own it. Don’t waste my time with your passive aggressive politeness plays.

Some of the nastiest humans on Earth follow all the politeness principles. They practically talk with their pinky extended — which, by the way, I’ve been told is rude in Britain now.

Meanwhile, I’ve learned that people who break the rules might actually have a soul. People who say what they think actually might care about you. They want to make sure you hear them literally. And they expect you to return the favor. There’s always exceptions of course. The Donald has always succeeded at rudeness on top of outright cruelty.

Life’s not an audition for a Coca-Cola commercial. If you spill your groceries all over the street, I’ll help you pick them up. But we’re not going to bond over this experience. A party’s not going to suddenly break out. And I don’t expect you to say thanks. Just don’t hit me with your car when you’re backing out. That would be considerate.

The mainstream tries to force everyone into the same habits. Lots of people think if you’re quiet, you must be shy. They’ll tell you to break out of your comfort zone.

Here’s the truth. These pests don’t really care about you. They just can’t handle the fact that you might find them uninteresting. It bothers them that maybe you don’t care what they had for breakfast. Or where their kids go to school. Or how often they talk to their parents.

You can’t force small talk. It happens naturally. If you want, you can take seminars. Plenty of conversation coaches exist.

But maybe you don’t need one. I’m fine not forcing myself to interact with people. Most of my friends hail from work, conferences, and grad school. If I share interests with someone, then we can talk about those— politics, art, writing, religion.

There’s a huge difference between small talk and exchanging actual ideas. The world might be a better place if we could free ourselves to talk about big things right off the bat. If you’re like me, then you hate all the rules and small talk we have to wade through. Let’s stop being so polite with each other. Let’s say what we think. Emphasis on the word think, of course.