(no subject)

[sigmaleph]

When I was like 15 a teacher once had an exercise where we were supposed to pick a classmate and write down one positive and one negative quality about them. He emphasised that it should not be too generic, like saying "is a good friend" or whatever, which neatly implies that the mandated criticism had to be personal (one of my classmates got an insulting nickname out of it that followed them for years).

I didn't participate in this exercise. I'd like to say it was out of moral fibre or something, but honestly most likely it's just that I was paralysed by anxiety. It didn't matter; a few people read theirs out loud but I didn't and he didn't bother to check everyone submitted one. It's not like they were graded, this was just an asshole delighting over the fact that he had authority over teenagers and could make them uncomfortable and cause them to hurt each other

I did not realise that at the time, somehow. I guess I had an ingrained habit of assuming Teachers Knew Better. I mean, I was a teenager. I'd been a child most of my school life and throughout it teachers did, often enough, know better, it's not surprising I acquired that heuristic. But I wish I had overcome it by that point, because 15-year-old me would have figured out this was just an asshole being an asshole if she'd bothered to entertain the possibility.

I wonder if this, and stuff like it, is part of why I acquired such a visceral distrust of the idea of... "Let's go around a circle and say something nice about the person to the left", "let's say three things about ourselves", whatever. Reach inside yourself and make public your private thoughts, not as a response to context, not because you decided you trust the person in front of you, just because we said everyone's gotta.

Or maybe I'm just an anxious person and this would bother me anyway even absent the specific bad experiences I've had with that, and indeed my being anxious is what overwhelmingly makes such things bad experiences for me, when for some people they apparently aren't.

Regardless, the specific source of my feelings on this is not really relevant. I was just reminded that it's a thing people do and it's bad and I hope the next time someone tries to rope me into one I am in the right mental state to be able to say "no, not gonna do that".

Comments

[contrarianarchon]

Huh. Interesting insight. I didn't ever examine that kind of thing. I don't think the "asshole exerts power" explanation for that kind of thing is global, but also probably is in that case. I think that kind of thing, in less hostile formats might have seeped in from attempts to teach teenagers to do introspection and self-awareness? I've never really had a problem making public my private thoughts; or rather, the level at which I set my thoughts as "private" is so much lower than everyone else that I never have to share the stuff I actually would take issue with sharing in order to participate in that kind of thing.

(... wow phrase overuse. turns out I'm trying to talk about very vague shifting categories and hoping I don't confuse you too much. Sorry)

[sigmaleph]

I don't think every instance of something like that comes from assholes. I am very confident this particular one did (also based on information not related in this anecdote about the person in question)

(I did not find that confusing, don't worry!)

[contrarianarchon]

*nods* That seems very reasonable to suppose.

(Yay! I like not being confusing!)