So. Since talking to my brother about my ability to read people, I’ve been thinking more about it. For most of my life, I’ve thought of it as something to tamp down and block myself from to the best of my ability. It’s difficult to deal with that kind of input on a daily basis without it overwhelming me. Whether you call it highly-sensitive or empathetic, it’s not something I consider a boon most of the time.
There are a few exceptions to that. One, when I’m helping friends with problems. Then it helps to let a little bit of that feeling in so I can understand what they’re going through. Two, it’s a good way to screen people when I meet them. In addition to my general ability to read people’s emotions/feelings. I am exceedingly adept at sussing out narcissism. It’s from growing up with one and it’s saved my bacon more than once. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work 100% so when a narcissist slips past my filters, it turns out really bad. But in general, I can spot them miles away and flee in the opposite direction.
I’ve told this story several times, but once I spotted one on Twitter and was able to see that he was not what he was positioning himself to be. My group of friends on Twitter were enamored with him. I tried to drop a hint or two that he wasn’t what he seemed, but I was totally ignored (like Cassandra). I gave up and kept well away from him. A few months later, he showed his ass in a spectacular way and everyone realized what a charlatan he was. I tried not to be smug about it, but I was crowing a bit inside.
Most of the time, I don’t tell people about themselves. Again, I understand how weird/creepy/scary it can be if someone else knows you better than you know yourself. I could do it with my brother because he has thick skin and won’t take offense. Also, he forgets negative things fairly easily so it won’t stay with him long. But in general, people are not going to appreciate you giving them insight to themselves.
In a way, it’s one thing that is appreciated about my brother. He’s able to take in what I say about him and not get mad about it. What’s more, he’ll actually go away and meditate over it before coming back, wanting to talk about it with me.
That’s something we can both get on board with. Endless discussion of minutiae. I’m going to say something that sounds arrogant because it IS arrogant. I’m going to say it, anyway. We are both scary smart. Like, don’t know anyone else this smart smart. And it’s normal to us because we grew up with each other, naturally.
My mom said recently that she married my father, knowing he wasn’t nearly as smart as she was because he was a hard worker. That made me pause because I just assumed he was smart because she was and so were my brother and I. But, stripping away those assumptions made things make more sense to me. Pairing it with what I had mentioned in the last post about my therapist saying that most people literally could not understand what I was saying (not that they were being spiteful or malicious) helped me to realize something about my father.
Anyway, I’ve been musing over how I can use this ability for good rather than evil. Yes, there’s the traditional path of being a psychologist, but I’m also wondering if there are ways to use it with my other half-baked ideas.
Here’s the thing. I love advice columns. I call them my stories. But, lately, I’ve been having issues with some of the columnists for being not as insightful as I would prefer. And a bit more traditional than I am. It’s partly because two of the advice columns I read have changed the columnists to people I like less.
I will say that the best advice column is Ask A Manager with Alison Green. She’s thoughtful, practical, and aware of many social justice issues. She looks at things from several different angles and her answers are thorough. She’s also compassionate even while she’s pragmatic.
Anyway, I’ve thought about doing an advice column before. It would be a way of me combining my ability to read people, my love of psychology, and my desire to help people. Plus my love of writing as well. The thing is, I would have to find a way to do it so I could get into it in the responses. A paragraph isn’t going to do for most questions, but who’s going to read a thousand words per question?
I could be wrong about what people are and aren’t willing to read, however. One thing I know about myself is that I’m very charismatic. I’ve been tamping that down all my life as well because I’ve seen charisma being used for evil. Pair that with my ability to read people and cult leader comes immediately to mind. I really don’t want to be a cult leader, but that’s partly what makes a successful influencer. Having a charismatic personality is a key on social media. Let’s face it. There are millions of people who are on the social media clamoring for attention. No one is going to have a topic unique enough to draw in people specifically on its own AND get the numbers needed to make a living off their channel.
When the Try Guys were with BuzzFeed, I really enjoyed their content. They would try a bunch of different things and it was usually outside their comfort zone. Then, a few years ago, they left BuzzFeed and created their own company. And…I liked them a lot less. Why? Because they let loose with their total personalities and I was not vibing with that. They were way too extra and bringing in sexual jokes that were not appropriate. Hey. Look. I’m all about the sexual jokes, but they were doing it to people who were just trying to do their jobs. Like baristas in a coffee shop in Australia. The Try Guys went in to do the job for a day and made dick jokes while drawing dicks in the foam. Oh, ha ha. I will fully admit I don’t find that humor funny in general, but it’s especially irritating when they were doing it to people who were just trying to do their jobs. Yes, the coffee shop owner agreed to be in the episode, but the workers probably didn’t have much choice.
Anyway. My point is that their shtick is they’ll try anything–which is interesting, but a pretty broad thing. It’s their personalities that really sold them and made a difference. Plus, let’s face it, the fact that they are dudes. (Long rant about how women are treated on the internet.) I’ve sampled tons of content creators (ugh, I hate that term) and what I like is very different than what most people seem to like. I’m all about chill people who just do their shit with little fuss. What most people seem to want based on who is popular on YouTube and Twitch is someone who screams a lot and/or is unbearably perky.
That is not me. I don’t scream and I’m not perky. I’m pretty mellow in part because I embrace the Taiji philosophy of being lazy. I mostly chill on my couch with my cat on me or somewhere near me. I don’t like people constantly talking and I realize that streamers do need to talk most of the time, but some of them act as if they are afraid to take a breath.
Anyway. If I could do some kind of advice column/podcast/video series, I think that would be a very cool thing.