[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

[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?'.