Edit: A few people have interpreted the title as serious, so I wanna clarify that it was meant as a sarcastic joke about how little sense the neurotypical world makes to me, but it is still legitimately me asking for help understanding said neurotypical world.
Was having a conversation with a friend today about why I seem unapproachable to people online. Apparently it’s for 2 reasons.
One is that I say “K.” all the time, as a short way of saying okay. She pointed out that most people find this rude and offensive. This kinda baffled me, because like why? She explained that like, if somebody were to give a long emotional speech and I just responded “K.” that would be offensive. That confounds me. So it’s rude in one context, and neurotypicals have decided to be offended by it in all contexts? But the reason it’s rude is what confuses me more. Apparently it’s considered lazy because you could have just typed out the word, but like, that applies to all text speech and nobody’s mad about people shortening those words.
But it got more confusing when she explained the second reason, which is that I end all of my sentences with proper punctuation, which she said “makes people feel like I’m done with the conversation and not interested.” But just a second ago improper grammar was rude, and now proper grammar is rude instead.
It baffles me. You can’t just use proper or improper grammar. Use too much improper grammar and you’re lazy and rude. Use too little and you’re also rude. But you can’t just use any improper grammar, you have to use the very specific subset of improper grammar that’s been deemed acceptable and not lazy (even though it’s exactly as lazy as what they do consider lazy.)
To be clear, I’m not bitter, and I’m definitely gonna adjust my behavior to hopefully seem a little less rude to people. I think that’s just a nice thing to do. I just find the neurotypical mind utterly fascinating. I don’t think they even realize how many contradictions exist in the social rules they all so easily accept.
I’m no expert on neurotypicals, but I’ve observed them for a long time as an ADHD neurodivergent. “K” seems to give them the impression of disinterest, like saying “K, can we move on?” Kind of thing, like what was said wasn’t interesting, or important; but context is important for them. If you’re taking direction eg: “hey, OP. Push that button, would you?”; in that case it’s fine to use “K” as a reply, just to confirm you heard the instruction, while you go to do the thing. In contexts where they’re telling you something that seems important to them, whether the information is actually important or it is important to the speaker, and you reply with “K” then that’s where they get offended by it.
It’s nuanced and neurotypicals don’t understand themselves well enough to adequately explain these nuances, because they go on feeling more than logic. There is a sort of logic to it, but they don’t understand what it is.
Yes and the instances where there is no logic to a rule it’s by convention instead, or referential in some way