[work, baffled]

[wispfox]

_Why_ would it confuse my co-workers that I have no interest in a baseball game? Or, really, most sports? Or beer, or any activity for which beer is supposed to be an incentive?

What, I've not made it sufficiently obvious that I'm a terrible American by this point? ;)

Comments

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

you don't like beer?

why do you hate america?

*ducks* :)

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

:P!

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Actually, I _have_ a userpic for that!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Ah, let me 'splain.

I learned back when I worked as a line mechanic that most of the people I worked with weren't really all that interested in sports either, but that sports provide a useful framework of conversation starters. Being able to say, "How 'bout them [local team]?" as a conversational gambit is much safer grounds than, "Nice dress," and a bit less banal than "How about this weather we're having?"

So just think of it as one of those social lubricants that makes interaction easier for people.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

No... see, they're trying to invite me to a local baseball game tonight. It's not just a social lubricant!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Oh, so they want you to go out with them for some group fun. Probably best to thank them for thinking of you and allow as how it's just not your thing.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

More or less what I did. It was less 'go with us' and more 'are you going', but close enough.

Still. Confused!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I think they just want your company in a social setting.

Or maybe they want to get you drunk and take advantage of you. Heck, I don't know. You're pretty enough that I'd bet a lot of people would at least entertain that passing fantasy.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it was actively wanting my company, so much as wondering if I'd be there. That is, I suppose, more active than not wondering. Huh. *shrug*

As for the latter thought, I am vaguely amused, simply because of the degree to which I _don't_ think that is why there was wondering. :)

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

I think it's a kind of groupthink than anything else. Many folks' minds flit straight from one concept to the next without any awareness of intermediate states. So, f'rinstance:

• "We're all going"
  
• "wispfox is a subset of {all of us}"
  
• "we can assume that wispfox is going"
  

This, of course, leaves out at least one intervening step: "Find out if wispfox is interested in going. By subsuming your identity in the group identity, it's less obvious to them that they have to take individual preferences into account. If you were to point out to them "What made you think I was interested?", either they'd skip a beat while they stopped and thought or they'd turn on you and go "What's wrong with you?" (i.e. "Why won't you get with the default program already?").

Although we may joke about "What, do you hate America?"-type responses, it is very much the same dynamic writ large that politicians are using to divide and polarize the nation...

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Well, the one who actually asked was amused and teasing at my confusion, and was not surprised by my not being interested. Another was... I _think_ joking about 'what's wrong with you?'.

[fraterrisus]

dude, if you don't drink teh b33r, the terrorists will HAVE ALREADY WON.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Then they won _so_ long ago, I don't even know why we bother. ;)

[szasz.livejournal.com]

I caught a vendor rep in the hall once to ask a question; she answered briefly but said she was in a hurry and couldn't go into depth, "but I'll see you at the golf outing this weekend and we'll talk then."

I said, um, no you won't, I'm not going to be there. And she looked positively dumbfounded and confused. "Oh, you're not... wait, you won't be there AT ALL? Well, um, wow. I guess you can call me in my office next week then. Wait, so you won't be at the golf outing???"

sheesh

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

At the large investment firm where I work, it's just assumed that all men and most women over the age of thirty or so are avid if not obsessive golfers. For someone like me who has zero interest, it's very... odd.

[fourgates.livejournal.com]

Here's a theory: Enthusiasm for sports is for many people, to varying degrees, a polite fiction. That is, (many) people act as if they are enthusiastic about paying athletes a bunch of money to play games, because that polite fiction enables people to do what they really want, which is to hang out with friends and feel accepted and part of a shared experience. Enthusiasm for alcohol is similarly (frequently but not always) a polite fiction. Now it is hard to maintain a polite fiction when other people aren't playing along. The internal self-talk would have to go something like this: "I'm not intrinsically motivated by this game or this alcohol, but I really like the big gestalt experience thing, so I'm playing this social game that has been played by me and most of my friends all my adult life, and here's this person I like, and I'd like her to be included in this social thing because, well, I bet she'd like to get out of it what I do, really, and since the threshold for acceptance of this polite fiction is pretty darn low, then I just can't see how someone wouldn't want to go along with it. Doesn't want to watch live sports and drink beer basically means doesn't like to hang out with us, or categorically doesn't subscribe to the polite fiction. And if the polite fiction is not validated, then we're all just silly, and we're not that silly, really; we just want to have some fun together. Does not compute. So it must be that wispfox isn't feeling well, or has something else she has to do. Yeah, that fits." It's dissonance reduction (http://www.tcw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Interpersonal%20Communication%20and%20Relations/Cognitive_Dissonance_theory.doc/).

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

...

I'm not very good at polite fictions. :) But fascinating explanation!

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

and it explains entirely too well how fundamentalists think...

[jasra]

My co-workers have "threatened" to send me to football and hockey (when there was professional hockey) camp so I would know about those sports. I always told them I'm quit first. At least they never persisted and it was ok when I wouldn't go over to someone's house for Super Bowl Sunday.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Heh! Indeed. Normally, people don't ask me about such things. This is, I'm sure, a large part of my surprise!