Bit of a shower thought: Outside of limited circumstances, like interviews or therapy, nobody is really expected to give you honest feedback on how you come across.
This sucks. I’ve been told I come across as unfriendly once, but I have no idea if I was just nervous and tired at the time. I still cherish that one moment almost 10 years ago when someone told me I was funny in some corporate team building bs.
Now, I could ask friends and family, but I believe they would probably not tell me the full, honest truth. After all, they (hopefully) like me and I would probably avoid being too harsh to everyone but very close people in private.
At the same time, I know plenty of people who really should get some feedback, who probably believe they are funny while everyone is bored and annoyed and hopes they talk a little less and the like.
So, are there socially accepted ways to get feedback on how you come across?
I realize that people are strange, relationships are hard, P!=NP and anime is not real. Still, it would be nice to have.
I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but when I met Finnish people, they always made comments about how you come across. One I remember is “you’re not very likeable but at least you’re not creepy”. So… Go to Finland?
I guess I have to. On the other hand, I heard Finnish people don’t like human contact anyway, so… meh
I knew a guy who begged for honest feedback. Like kept complaining about how people would ghost him, and wasn’t able to get a date or anything. So when he asked me directly, I pointed it all out.
And here’s the thing: he didn’t really do much after learning that. He didn’t try to change anything for the better. He just took it in, got real defensive for a while then agreed and accepted that “this is who I am”.
And maybe that’s okay. But he seems dead set on attracting people who hate it.
Learning to read the room is a skill set.
Yeah, that’s on him.
There is, however, a big difference between (let’s say) “you smell and look at your feet too much” and “you command people around and treat people as inferior”, for example
he wanted to hear, his “behaviour” wasnt the problem and its everyone else. dint seem like he was willing to change his behaviour. without prying too much, was it like him using manosphere tactics/pickup artists tips.
alot of the tactis including subtle tactics like browbeating, saying things to gaslight people.
You sure you’re not neurodivergent? This is a very neurodivergent train of thought ngl.
Dawg every time I try to get honest feedback, people just butter me up and downplay my bad behaviors instead of just telling me. He’s a real one not neurodivergent.
Social anxiety is not neurodivergent. It’s more unusual to NOT think about how you are perceived. Asking the internet because you don’t trust people to be honest with you, though…
Me being whatever I am does not change the validity of the question. Many presumably neurotypical people could really do with some honest mirror of how they come across. Yet the presumably on-average-neurotypical peers don’t say anything out of politeness or other reasons.
And I ask here for the same reason I don’t ask IRL friends: we are all anonymous strangers here, nobody knows me enough to not tell me my idea is stupid, and I don’t know anyone enough to be offended by being told it is stupid.
Why asking the internet part is bad? With anonymity it’s oddly one of the safest places. Rather good risk to reward ratio.
If identifying details are avoided, it can’t really come back to haunt me in the real world, which does matter a little more and if someone starts to stalk me then i can block them or just purge the user and make a new one.
At the same time it’s completely possible to get some feedback. Kinda like gauging how people would react and refining the trail of taught before releasing it to real world.
Over the years, this sort of testing out has been rather useful in clearing my own garbled up mind. Maybe kinda like interactive journaling. If the trail of taught or thinking patterns get too negative, it generally gets pointed out and i can reassess those.
Yes it is
This is going to sound like a joke, but I try to be just cocky enough that people feel comfortable being perfectly honest with me. I used to be pretty agreeable, but people don’t really want to correct their nice friends, even when they’re wrong or acting uncouth, and I could tell that there were aspects of my behavior that might be off-putting but no one was telling me.
Now, threading that needle is a pretty advanced technique. It necessarily requires enough behavioral awareness to be confident enough that people correct you, but not so arrogant that they just write you off as an asshole.
But besides that, yeah it’s a tricky situation. Ironically the same consideration that keeps people from criticizing you prevents you from improving. I think the real problem is that most people don’t really actively change to improve themselves based on constructive criticism, so most people avoid rocking the boat with constructive criticism.
This feels especially hard because, broadly speaking, those who will be overly nice will be the more ‘normal’ people, which is the more useful group to get reviews from because their reactions would be more representative of the broader public, but the ones more likely to be brutally honest are more likely to be unusual people, who are less representative of the people you are most likely to meet on a day to day basis, so the reviews are less likely to be useful. The specific cross-section of willing to be honest and capable of providing useful insight seems somewhat limited.
Not sure if this applies to you but maybe you have heard a phrase about you that doesn’t make sense fully. In my case, it was “you’re intimidating” and that took me a long long time to understand because as a woman who has a lot of insecurities and can’t physically fight this is absolutely ridiculous. Then one day I was watching some relationship guru video clip and the guy said “if you’re told you’re intimidating and can’t make sense of it, it means you are hard to impress”. That clicked. At least, within dating contexts. I don’t know. I think most of the honest feedback I’ve gotten from potential dates, from boyfriends, from family members (though that required always a difficult argument beforehand and getting feedback was never the goal) and also from teachers who get fed up with your bullshit occasionally. It’s never going to come to you from a comfortable source, but you shouldn’t be asking your enemies either, because they’ll lie too.
I’m a guy. Do I have to start taking social manipulation lessons from the “easily impressed” girls?
“Wow! You do laundry all by yourself every…month? Oh, man. I’m so helpless; I have to ask a cleaning service to do it for me. Can you teach me? Pretty please?”
“Would you like to fill out a customer satisfaction survey to rate this dating experience?” :D
I try to avoid those relationship guru videos, it feels like a mix of half understood psychology and some one size fits all voodoo. Idk, do you know any good ones that don’t fall into that trap?
It’s been a while since I was in such an argument that someone questioned my character. Most honest feedback so far was relatives. But I behave very different with someone I have been knowing my whole life and someone I just met. Or worse, feel attracted to. Damn brain chemicals.
IMO ask people you know to tell you how you honestly come across. Yeah they like you and won’t want to hurt you but as long as they aren’t completely blowing smoke, you should get enough hint of anything glaring. The little things they sweep under the rug are probably nothing to really worry about.
This is actually a benefit of having a usable relationship with someone who doesn’t like you but is otherwise reasonable, they are more likely to answer these questions accurately. Even people who are willing to answer are biased by their relationship to you and won’t give you an outsider’s perspective.
The fact that you care at all tells me that you’re probably a decent person. Narcissists and sociopaths generally don’t give a shit about the opinions of others.
This may be foolish advice (like telling someone with clinical depression to “just cheer up”) but try not to overthink it.
I hope I am a decent person. But even a decent person can be annoying, intimidating, harsh, closed off etc, right? I’ve seen it often enough in others.
Public speaking and/or acting classes.
Agreed. Try Toastmasters. Also consider dance class
I forgot about dance class.
They made me go to dance classes when I was in 3rd Grade. Actually helpful
I feel you, perhaps check out the show “The Rehearsal” with Nathan Fielder which explores this a bit. And all his other shows while you’re at it. There should be stuff like that IRL.
I’ve wanted this forever!! Especially when i was younger, but still somewhat to today. It would be so great if there was some way to get honest feedback from people about what they think of me. There have been lots of times in my life when my social life wasn’t going as well as i would want, but how do you improve something when you don’t know what needs improvement?
Like do i frequently have a bad smell? Am i too loud? Are my jokes landing poorly? It would be so great if i knew what people honestly thought of me!
Yeah, right?! I catch myself debating if I should tell a friend of mine that he smells sweaty or if I shouldn’t, and I can only imagine other people have similar considerations.
As someone who sweats more than an average person and has a rather limited antiperspirant tolerance. Only roll ons are suitable and even then the smell must be specifically chosen by my wife.
Of course i shower religiously whenever possible and after every activity that makes me sweat. During summer up to twice a day.
Yes, i would be rather greatful if you’d let me know that I’m smelling bad.
What about an anonymous email?
I suggest a tutor for giving presentations, public relations or something along those lines. They’re used to giving gentle advice and want you to do better so you can refer more people to them.
Huh, interesting. To be fair, I seem to fall into a whole different “mode” when presenting. Once I stand up and the adrenaline kicks in, I basically run on autopilot. I’ve been told I’m quite good at bullshitting my way through, so at least that’s something.
This is for the training, letting them see you how you actually are. Not the actual presentation. If you tell them what you’re after, I bet they’d help out. This would be up to you to not present anything, but treat them like your buddy.
I do it all the time, even calling out my female friends on bad behaviour which is a big nono in public settings (I’m a married man, I know, lol), but it requires a soft approach (a “compliment sandwich”, for instance) or else everyone starts getting sensitive and feisty, and because of that many people would just rather stay quiet and avoid doing it. In my understanding that nobody wants to be a villain/annoying cunt, I try to tell those I care about so they don’t ruin their lives unnecessarily, and I’m not scared of the confrontation that might result from it as I see it as part of the process.
Right now, you’re coming across as a very reasonable guy with more than appropriate communication skills… If you’re asking for yourself, it would be hard to determine if there’s anything weird/off-putting about you just from this post, sadly. In my experience, some of my less savoury traits HAD been called out, numerous times, but without the right attitude, wording or in a setting that would make me dismiss it. It wasn’t until later when these traits showed up in shocking, scary ways, that I started putting 2 and 2 together and looking back at what people had told me about myself. Maybe I’ll start a call line or discord chat where we can all interact and call each other out when necessary, in brotherly love… sounds like a fun project. 😅
have you thought about videotaping yourself then watching the video of you interacting with others?
gotta admit, I thought about it but I’m scared I will hate how I come across
Interesting idea! I am not sure if I want to video-analyse me talking about the weather, and it kind of seems creepy to recod random interactions. But I’ll try to keep this in mind if I happen to be in a context that gets recorded anyway.
I think I’d rather know, if I don’t like how I behave, I can make steps to change it. If I don’t, I’ll be stuck telling the same three unfunny jokes to people :D
