What are you like in awkward social situations?

I usually get everyone to hate me with a truly terrible pun.

I'm usually pretty good at getting a read on people and understanding how the conversation is going in person, so in a day to day sense I can avoid awkward situations. One thing that is weird though is that within the Pokemon Cards community I'm becoming a little bit recognisable, which means people approach me to talk about the things I write on the internet (twitter / articles / tournament results generally). Those conversations are hard to react to and I'm never sure how to navigate them lol.

Make it someone else's problem. Ask them a question and they need to talk it out.

Done 3 nights of guest entertaining this week. It's gotten me through.

Im not a fan of silence and will try my best to fill it. Sometimes though if you keep getting one word answers it makes it difficult.

Crying women is an easy one, pull them to one side and let them talk, let them hug you if your confident and pick up a tissue on your way to a secluded area

I normally just smile and nod in social situations and add a joke or two if the conversation is go in well. If things get awkward I start getting anxious and try to excuse myself to get away for a few minutes, then try to pick the conversation again when/if I get back.

Wrathy wrote:One thing that is weird though is that within the Pokemon Cards community I'm becoming a little bit recognisable, which means people approach me to talk about the things I write on the internet (twitter / articles / tournament results generally). Those conversations are hard to react to and I'm never sure how to navigate them lol.

I guess it's probably helpful to start to distinguish between Wrathy the person and Wrathy the Pokemon cards playing Internet persona. Obviously it's a super blurry line, but those people are approaching you as your Internet persona, a content creator within that community, and they probably want you to speak in the "voice" you use for those articles and analyses. (At least at first -- obviously if you befriend them you can relax and be a person again.) You may well soon have fans (if you don't already!) and it's probably healthy to put that degree of separation between you and them.

Karl wrote:
Wrathy wrote:One thing that is weird though is that within the Pokemon Cards community I'm becoming a little bit recognisable, which means people approach me to talk about the things I write on the internet (twitter / articles / tournament results generally). Those conversations are hard to react to and I'm never sure how to navigate them lol.

I guess it's probably helpful to start to distinguish between Wrathy the person and Wrathy the Pokemon cards playing Internet persona. Obviously it's a super blurry line, but those people are approaching you as your Internet persona, a content creator within that community, and they probably want you to speak in the "voice" you use for those articles and analyses. (At least at first -- obviously if you befriend them you can relax and be a person again.) You may well soon have fans (if you don't already!) and it's probably healthy to put that degree of separation between you and them.

Honestly I would hope it doesn't come to that; my brand as an internet person isn't really that strong. I have a Twitter account with around 260 followers, which is growing fairly steadily, and I wrote one article, but I'm not hugely putting myself out there in videos, podcasts, tournament results etc (at the moment, anyway). I also don't really play up to much of a 'character'; I try to be pretty consistent in how I feel and think with what I write and how I act. Though that can be pretty tough sometimes and I get super tilted in particular scenarios like a bad matchup of decks or absolutely gooseberry fool draws causing me to lose (which actually affected me so strongly I felt I had to apologise to one opponent in Nashville after the game...). Generally though I like to think I'm the same online and offline. I'm fairly sure if I was separating my personality like that, it would lose some of the authenticity and down to earth qualities which I've treated as essential from day 1.

But who knows. Maybe this all takes off and goes batshit insane this season. It'll be fun to find out.

I'm terrible for talking over people, but it's really because I have a bit of a processing delay before I can respond to what someones actually said. Sometimes it just doesn't register until long after I've finished the umpteenth clause in a sentence. So I struggle in groups because I don't know when to cut in. I can talk forever, usually someone is interested though because they don't try to get away from me. I'm better at not caring if nobody's listening. I mean I really don't care at all anymore. I just say stuff.

I do hate being interrupted with a totally irrelevant thing though.

More often I try to actively listen or say nothing at all.

I quite rarely see people so I try to share a lot but am totally exhausted after the event. I try to say less but find it really challenging because it's how I process thoughts.

I’m a don at it nowadays. Practice makes perfect, if you want to be good in all social situations you just need to get out there as often as possible.

What are you like in awkward social situations?

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