Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[Ceallach]

Not an exchange I had, but one I saw.    I am travelling to a specific city in my HomeCountry in the first weekend of October for a milestone event in my life.    My immediate family are all travelling to join me in Xcity for this milestone event.     I have extended family living in Xcity. Seeing we're all going to be there, my Dad suggested we also do an extended family event over the weekend as well, which I'm super happy about.   So my Aunt Rita and her family are travelling to Xcity as well to join us for that.   

My fairly new sister-in-law is travelling a fair distance (with my brother) to get to Xcity, and will also be visiting another nearby city where she used to live.  So she posted a status update on FB to let her friends know she'd be back in the area, saying "I'll be in Xcity the first weekend in October, and then down in Ycity for a week if anybody wants to catch up".

Aunt Rita posts a comment on it saying "I'm going to be in XCity on the first weekend in October so I'll finally get to meet you!"

I felt like saying "Why do you think she's going to be there???"     Now, I do understand that Aunt is excited to finally meet my SIL (Aunt wasn't invited to the wedding).   But I'm fairly certain she hasn't actually clicked that it's not some kind of convenient coincidence, and that SIL is actually going to be there for the exact same reason she is!!  Aunt Rita lives much closer to Xcity so travelling there isn't such a big deal for her.   But for SIL and bro i it's a long way, and they had to put a lot of thought into whether they could make this trip or not.  I'm stoked that they're coming to support me (and also that SIL gets to catchup with some of her old friends).  I guess perhaps Aunt Rita was just meaning "I'm excited I'll get to see you at <the event>", but knowing her as I do, I'm fairly certain it's just a "Oh you'll be in town too?  How convenient....".    (There's a reason Aunt Rita wasn't invited to the wedding. Several in fact, which I won't go into!  ). Some people do not make the brain connections!

[Twik]

I don't think that Twik is talking about life and death situation or how to intricately deal with a long drawn out procedure.

I think that Twik is talking about awareness training.

Basically, it's a "once you know the system, it's filll in the blanks for each specific product". The problem is knowing the system. If you don't practice each step, as Virg points out, you won't remember enough about them to recreate them when required. But practice (and enough repetition to sink in) takes time. It's not something you can run through in an hour.

[Virg]

Twik wrote:

"Basically, it's a "once you know the system, it's filll in the blanks for each specific product". The problem is knowing the system. If you don't practice each step, as Virg points out, you won't remember enough about them to recreate them when required. But practice (and enough repetition to sink in) takes time. It's not something you can run through in an hour."

My point is that learning something I won't do more than once every six months would require me to be able to replicate the task directly from a document because I'm not going to retain any in-head knowledge about something I do so seldom, so I thought that eight hours would be more time than I'd need to run through the reference to the point that would allow me to follow it.  Then you came back with the details, including a thousand page reference and the possibility of jail time for screwing up badly enough, and suddenly eight hours isn't nearly enough time to teach someone a task of that magnitude well enough to avoid mistakes.  I have a Chilton's book in my garage that covers entirely disassembling and reassembling an automobile (with pictures) in under 700 pages, so either the reference guide is woefully done or the task is apparently more complex than a day's training can cover.  My point is that in either case, the time frame you presented doesn't seem reasonable for the task.  I'll freely admit that I might be wrong, but going on what's been presented I'm left to wonder about it.

Virg

[Adelaide]

There's a boy at my school who is physically flawless. He's naturally dark blond, very fit, and his face is absolutely perfect. The weird thing is that girls aren't flocking to him. I've had several conversations with people and whenever he's mentioned girls inevitably end up saying "He's too good-looking. I don't trust him." I have literally never heard that said about anyone else. He's a nice enough guy, you'd think girls would be falling all over themselves. Maybe he's too intimidating or something.

[hobish]

Can you imagine how long the Presidential debates will be, repeating them for every single viewer? 

...That sounds like the most awesome version of 'Telephone' ever....

HAHAHAHAA!!  That made me giggle out loud. Nice.

[Cat-Fu]

There's a boy at my school who is physically flawless. He's naturally dark blond, very fit, and his face is absolutely perfect. The weird thing is that girls aren't flocking to him. I've had several conversations with people and whenever he's mentioned girls inevitably end up saying "He's too good-looking. I don't trust him." I have literally never heard that said about anyone else. He's a nice enough guy, you'd think girls would be falling all over themselves. Maybe he's too intimidating or something.

I think a lot of women have had bad experiences with overly good-looking men who have a matching over-inflated sense of self-importance. I can't entirely blame them for not wanting to risk it just for hotness.

[violinp]

There's a boy at my school who is physically flawless. He's naturally dark blond, very fit, and his face is absolutely perfect. The weird thing is that girls aren't flocking to him. I've had several conversations with people and whenever he's mentioned girls inevitably end up saying "He's too good-looking. I don't trust him." I have literally never heard that said about anyone else. He's a nice enough guy, you'd think girls would be falling all over themselves. Maybe he's too intimidating or something.

I think a lot of women have had bad experiences with overly good-looking men who have a matching over-inflated sense of self-importance. I can't entirely blame them for not wanting to risk it just for hotness.

Sadly, this is true. Lots of women I know would say about that guy, "There just has to be something wrong with him. He has to be a serial killer, or a cheater, or something."

[Adelaide]

There's a boy at my school who is physically flawless. He's naturally dark blond, very fit, and his face is absolutely perfect. The weird thing is that girls aren't flocking to him. I've had several conversations with people and whenever he's mentioned girls inevitably end up saying "He's too good-looking. I don't trust him." I have literally never heard that said about anyone else. He's a nice enough guy, you'd think girls would be falling all over themselves. Maybe he's too intimidating or something.

I think a lot of women have had bad experiences with overly good-looking men who have a matching over-inflated sense of self-importance. I can't entirely blame them for not wanting to risk it just for hotness.

Sadly, this is true. Lots of women I know would say about that guy, "There just has to be something wrong with him. He has to be a serial killer, or a cheater, or something."

I know guys like that who are very aware of how good they look and it shows. But this guy is just...mild-mannered. He doesn't radiate that "Let's all bask in the glory of me" vibe that some people have. Okay, I see what you mean. Ted Bundy comes to mind, although I think Ted was supposed to be pretty charismatic. This poor kid. It's not his fault he's so freakishly handsome. There is one girl who seems a little obsessed with him, but he doesn't pay her any mind. She's the only one who openly flirts with him though.

[Pippen]

There's a boy at my school who is physically flawless. He's naturally dark blond, very fit, and his face is absolutely perfect. The weird thing is that girls aren't flocking to him. I've had several conversations with people and whenever he's mentioned girls inevitably end up saying "He's too good-looking. I don't trust him." I have literally never heard that said about anyone else. He's a nice enough guy, you'd think girls would be falling all over themselves. Maybe he's too intimidating or something.

We had a girl at Uni who all the boys referred to as 'The Goddess' but they were all too intimidated to approach her. She actually became quite good friends with my flatmate Simon who was this crazy but very sweet Chinese Goth so all the lads were very impressed. She was a lovely person. Very kind and funny and she told me one night over a few drinks she was actually quite lonely and had never had a boyfriend and girls avoided her simply because of the way she looked.

[Jones]

I know guys like that who are very aware of how good they look and it shows. But this guy is just...mild-mannered. He doesn't radiate that "Let's all bask in the glory of me" vibe that some people have. Okay, I see what you mean. Ted Bundy comes to mind, although I think Ted was supposed to be pretty charismatic. This poor kid. It's not his fault he's so freakishly handsome. There is one girl who seems a little obsessed with him, but he doesn't pay her any mind. She's the only one who openly flirts with him though.

This sounds a little like the Penguin Maneuver. Penguins will gather at the edge of the ocean and push around until one falls in. The others all wait to see if he survives, or if a predator comes after him. If the waters are proved safe, they all jump in and start fishing.

In this case, it kinda sounds like everyone is concerned about this guy, not that they should judge by his looks but it is something people do; now they are waiting for him to react to the flirting of the one penguin who's splashing around in the water, to see if he's a "predator" or a decent guy.

[Iris]

There's a boy at my school who is physically flawless. He's naturally dark blond, very fit, and his face is absolutely perfect. The weird thing is that girls aren't flocking to him. I've had several conversations with people and whenever he's mentioned girls inevitably end up saying "He's too good-looking. I don't trust him." I have literally never heard that said about anyone else. He's a nice enough guy, you'd think girls would be falling all over themselves. Maybe he's too intimidating or something.

I can kind of see this because although I have met and/or seen very many very attractive men and women in my life, I have met VERY few truly 'flawless' people. I find that when someone has that 'Greek statue' look others tend to be wary or slightly uncomfortable around them. It's like they're waiting for them to take off their mask. The only really really flawless people that I have seen not affected by this have a *load* of personality and charisma. It's like the opposite of the unattractive person where you don't notice that they're unattractive because of their personality.

[Adelaide]

I know guys like that who are very aware of how good they look and it shows. But this guy is just...mild-mannered. He doesn't radiate that "Let's all bask in the glory of me" vibe that some people have. Okay, I see what you mean. Ted Bundy comes to mind, although I think Ted was supposed to be pretty charismatic. This poor kid. It's not his fault he's so freakishly handsome. There is one girl who seems a little obsessed with him, but he doesn't pay her any mind. She's the only one who openly flirts with him though.

This sounds a little like the Penguin Maneuver. Penguins will gather at the edge of the ocean and push around until one falls in. The others all wait to see if he survives, or if a predator comes after him. If the waters are proved safe, they all jump in and start fishing.

In this case, it kinda sounds like everyone is concerned about this guy, not that they should judge by his looks but it is something people do; now they are waiting for him to react to the flirting of the one penguin who's splashing around in the water, to see if he's a "predator" or a decent guy.

This may be what they're doing, and I suspect it might be because people have expressed distrust. Of course, this girl is also trying to mark her territory (and she's a little psycho so it might have actually worked even if the guy wasn't freakishly hot) in a really obvious way. I suppose this too counts as a brain hurty topic, because the other day before class we were sitting there and she loudly started saying how she was sorry but she wasn't sure if she was going to make it to some administrative thing they were going to do together. He shrugged and said that it was no big deal. When more people came in the room she said it again, and then gave some excuse why. Again, he said it was no big deal. She said "I'll text you about it!" at least three times while holding up her phone and after class she made it a point to tell all the girls that she and HotBoy were supposed to go do this school thing together and she felt badly for cancelling but she'd definitely be able to go later. And it was okay because they had each other's phone numbers. And also she knew where he lived. I wanted to say "Slow down, we get it. You're the only one with a horse in this race anyway, he's all yours" but I didn't. 

[Piratelvr1121]

There's a boy at my school who is physically flawless. He's naturally dark blond, very fit, and his face is absolutely perfect. The weird thing is that girls aren't flocking to him. I've had several conversations with people and whenever he's mentioned girls inevitably end up saying "He's too good-looking. I don't trust him." I have literally never heard that said about anyone else. He's a nice enough guy, you'd think girls would be falling all over themselves. Maybe he's too intimidating or something.

I can kind of see this because although I have met and/or seen very many very attractive men and women in my life, I have met VERY few truly 'flawless' people. I find that when someone has that 'Greek statue' look others tend to be wary or slightly uncomfortable around them. It's like they're waiting for them to take off their mask. The only really really flawless people that I have seen not affected by this have a *load* of personality and charisma. It's like the opposite of the unattractive person where you don't notice that they're unattractive because of their personality.

There was a time when I got annoyed at DH calling me "cute" cause I just saw "cute" as being a term for kids or childlike adults.   Then an article written by a guy explained it.  Women like Angelina Jolie are thought of as "Drop dead gorgeous" and "Beautiful", "hot", "Goddess", but men are intimidated by them.

A woman who is "cute", however, is a woman who is good looking, approachable, and someone you could see marrying.   In other words, the "cute" woman is Janeane Garafalo and the 'hot gorgeous one' is Uma Thurman.  Sure many guys might check out Uma, or Angelina but a lot of them would end up with a Sandra Bullock, Meg Ryan, etc. cause they're just as attractive, but fun to be around and not as threatening.

[jpcher]

Re: Hot Guy.

I knew a girl that was smokin! she was so hot. The perfect bod, the perfect personality. Most times, she was dateless. She kept asking me "What's wrong with me? Why can't I get a date?"

I was talking to a guy that she was interested in and asked him "Why don't you ask her out?"

He said "What? Me? Ask somebody like her out? She'll knock me down in a second. I don't have a chance."

He was so insecure with himself that he blew it. Yeah. He really did have a chance with her because she liked him.

One would think that all the (truely) beautiful (including personality) men and women in the world could pick and choose their mate-of-the-month.

While in reality the beautiful people aren't looking for someone that treats them like arm candy, they are looking for a soul mate just like anybody else.

[Ceallach]

There's a boy at my school who is physically flawless. He's naturally dark blond, very fit, and his face is absolutely perfect. The weird thing is that girls aren't flocking to him. I've had several conversations with people and whenever he's mentioned girls inevitably end up saying "He's too good-looking. I don't trust him." I have literally never heard that said about anyone else. He's a nice enough guy, you'd think girls would be falling all over themselves. Maybe he's too intimidating or something.

Well I'm not expert, but it seems fairly obvious to me that he is the real Edward Cullen.... natural human preservation instincts are creating the inexplicable aversion to an otherwise physically perfect specimen.     Either that or some of the girls have already tried and struck out. 

In all seriousness though, this isn't unusual.  People like to scoff at the suggestion that there are downsides to good looks, but there really are.   Unless they have the outgoing personality to match the looks - and therefore go get their own dates - people can make a lot of assumptions about them.