In Which it may or may not be appropriate to care what people think of you

The idea in my last blog post (what is morality blah blah blah) sort of links in with another conversation I had last week. My Delightful Friend Belinda was singing quietly (and endearingly, naturally) to herself in a corridor or something, and so we struck up a discussion about Caring What Others Think Of You. She, she said, does not much care what anyone thinks of her, and therefore does not object to singing in a corridor. She reckoned that she thinks maybe even too little about what others will think, and that I probably thought too much of such things. (It may have been me who said that I was an overthinker, I do not wish to give the impression that she was being critical). This is something movies and such are always advising us: Be Yourself, and Who Cares what Anyone Else thinks? This strikes me as maybe being a bit of a trap, just like Dream Big and Follow Your Heart (regarding which, see previous posts). Well, not as much of a trap as those two, obviously, because those are either actively pathological or just meaningless, in my opinion, whereas “Don’t care what others think” is more just a matter of striking a delicate balance, rather than being just completely stupid to even think about in the first place.

Note: I am now engaging with the Moral of so many parts of our culture: “Don’t care what others think (of you)”, not with Belinda’s very sensible unselfconsciousness. So if you’re reading this, Belinda (and hi Dave), I am not arguing at you. I am arguing inspired by you. It’s totally different, honest (no, really!).

Because, right, you have to care a little what others think of you. Otherwise you’re a sociopath. Or something. You’d act without consideration for others all the time (unless maybe you didn’t care what others think of you, but did care what they thought/felt otherwise? This seems a trifle elaborate). And what would be the point of ever saying anything? I mean, why do you talk? To get your thoughts into other people's minds, essentially. It'd be silly if you didn't care what was in their minds, or if they didn't care about your thoughts.

On the average day at uni I talk in fairly predictable ways, we could go through them systematically if you don’t believe me. The first thing I say most days is “Good morning” (Or just “Morning”, often, because I’m a rebel that way, and variety is the spice of life, yeah? Also, my flatmate gets up at a different time to me most mornings, so it is totally not tragic that this is usually the first interaction of my day) and then about 45 minutes later “Thanks mate” to the bus driver. And if I didn’t care what he thought, then I wouldn’t bother saying that, because it’s not a conversation which does anything for me, I get nothing out of that, so what would be the point? So then the first thing would be greeting people at uni, and why do that if I don’t care what they think? (Actually, it’s almost completely pointless, since the sole function of the interaction is to say “I have seen you and acknowledge your presence/existence”, which could technically be achieved with eyecontact, and which is again pointless if you don’t care what they think. If it was just me not caring, then maybe their feelings would be hurt, but if neither of us cared what the other thought, then why would either bother? They don't care that I like that they eixst.) So we skip ahead to tutorial, where you might legitimately say things to further discussion, but again, why bother engaging if you don't care what your classmates think? You know what you know, you can learn from them, you don't need to contribute. (You know what, this is getting a little dull, but you see what I'm saying. Possibly I am wrong to conflate "not caring what people think of you" and "not caring what people think at all" and "not caring about anyone at all, who needs those jerks". But if I am, then so are thousands of teenagers across the globe even as we speak. Millions, maybe! Millions of grumpy hormonal little misanthropes). Plus, in a sense, you could read it as being madly arrogant to ever contribute to academic discussion, implying that everyone else is less knowledgeable than you are and so on. But I wouldn't recommend going too far down that line of inquiry, because that's one of those things where if everyone does it then it ends in tragedy. Like Living your Big Dreams, in that sense.

Anyway, what I'm saying is; it's pretty clearly possible to care too little what people think of you. People (not Dear Lovely Belinda, obviously, Other People) who claim not to care what people think of them usually fall into one of two categories. People who do not care what anyone at all thinks of them, and people who claim not to care about people whom they dislike or do not respect think of them.

The former are usually the people one does not meet, but does come across, in public spaces, like on buses or in art galleries (especially small artist-operated art galleries, somehow). Even though you do not know them, you know that they do not care what you think, because they are usually saying so loudly to someone. Which does rather beg the question, I've always thought, why they feel it so important that people know that they don't care. Like "I don't care what you think unless you erroneously think that I care about what you think. It's important to me that you do not think that". Anyway, this tends to manifest itself as just being rude and inconsiderate. You know, talking on the phone really loudly about personal things (usually the personal things of their interlocuter, people tend to especially not care what people think of them when it's someone else who is the one likely to be embarrassed), or smoking next to someone who is holding an asthma puffer in their hand, or loudly talking about how unattractive someone or something is. The explanation that they do not care what others think is often in response to the look of acute embarrassment on the face of their acquaintance when they say or do something which might be perceived as rude or thoughtless by others. Acquaintances and their sympathisers all think "you may not, but I do, and so I suspect does that woman who just heard you refer to her as 'painfully unattractive'".

The second type, who do not care about the opinions of those whom they actively dislike, are more likeable. Because usually the people whose opinions they "don't care about" would otherwise make them sad. Because 80% of the time, they're right to dislike people, or they have a good reason not to respect the thoughts of the person in question (like who cares what a girl wearing jeggings thinks of your sartorial choices? She is already wrong before she even says anything). Maybe that 1 in 5 leftover would surprise them, but really, once you try to get that ellusive last skerrick of niceness out of the opinions of the world, you get more of the negative too. Still, this sort of thing is difficult if for instance you're trying to introduce a new love to cantankerous parents in any movie ever, or more pressingly if you're a mutual friend of the two folks who do not care what the other thinks.

Plus this is the one that has any real relevance to me. You may have picked up in your time bein' aquainted with me, but I tend to sort of overanalyse things. (Don't feel bad if you missed it, it's totally subtle and hard to tell. But if you reread, for instance, the post in which I "considered" that innocently friendly comment in late May, or, I don't know, any other post ever, you might start to pick up the tiny telltale hints.) Which is fine. Because I genuinely just do it for kicks. I may sound like I'm angsting to death about the tone of someone's "hello", but really, I've got to think about something, so t may as well be that, and it's sort of a hobby. Also, it may have taken me more than a thousand words to say "here are my initial thoughts on hearing that someone said something nice about my blog", but I didn't spend hours on it. It took maybe 45 minutes to type out, but I thought all those things within 2 seconds tops. I'm systematic that way. Problem is that sometimes I forget myself and say these things out loud to people, or write them on my blog too obviously or whatever, and then people get all concerned about me. They worry that I care too much what others think, and they earnestly explain to me that they don't care what some Cool Kid or other thinks of me, and neither should I. Which I totally appreciate in that it shows that they care and all that, but which is often not where I was really going with my line of thought. (Although, fair's fair, sometimes I really am just having a moment of crazy).

I don't know, though. I can't possibly be that bad. I reckon I just articulate what a lot of people do all the time without realising it (or with realising it, but secretly). Also possibly most people haven't crafted it into an actual hobby of thought-experimentation. I mean, if I was really paranoid about what people thought about me, would I really post thousands and thousands of words of blog post about it? Wouldn't I be more likely to sit quaking quietly in the corner? Similarly, I have repeatedly dressed up foolishly for uni for no good reason. Either I don't mind when people look at me and go "that girl is totally odd", or I care what they think so deeply that I need to show them my inner pirate or whatever. I choose to believe that the former is more plausible. (Note: show-off attention whore is not one of the options, so tough bikkies.)

Mind you, I was talking to Easily Amused Matt a few weeks ago (you remember him, Dear Reader), about that thing from post a few weeks ago, about how the Cool Folks sometimes Look Through people a trifle, and he said that it would be worse for me because I have insight into it. Which seems strange; surely everyone notices these things, most of them just maintain the Code of Silence about it? Surely. Most people, at least, notice these things.

Which is not to say that I don't then go away and totally overthink things. Like it only occurred to me hours later, after the conversation I talked about in my last post, that there was a whole other thing to overanalyse. Dude claimed superiority because of being a Christian Virgin, fine. But only way later did I suddenly wonder what the heck made him so sure that I was neither of those things. The fact that he was right is esentially beside the point. Either he has exactly as much "insight" into the little things people say and do as I do, or else I've come up in conversation or he reads this blog. Any of which is odd, frankly. Unless, of course, I just have the look of an irreligious floozy, I suppose. I mean, I was wearing a corset at the time. Still. So, having waited until so much later to overabalyse that totally gives me not-overanalysing-things points, surely? Plus I was totally succinct.

Whoa, this has gotten really long, as usual. But one last paragraph, and then I swear I'll go to bed. One last little overanalysis. A little one:

This is the other half of the argument, essentially ("think less about what others think"), and I'm affording it way less space than the "think more" because all of popular culture essentially has this covered. You can't let what you assume others might think, especially when you don't respect their judgements anyway, govern how much you enjoy your life etc. etc. etc. More specifically, I'd say it's worth exercising caution because sometimes overthinking things gives you displeasure where there never needed to be any. So the other day at uni, I was talking to 3 young men, or rather standing there vaguely while they talked, about girls. One of them described a girl whom he knows, a friend of his girlfriend, as "really nice but not at all attractive. Totally not hot" (or somthing like that). At this point, all of them glanced slightly guiltily at me. The same way you might when someone tells a blonde joke and you glance at the blonde in the group to make sure she's cool with it, or something. In my overthinking mind, I instantly went "Oh yeah, so 'nice but unattractive' as a phrase makes you think of me, huh? Thanks, jerks. Although thanks for the 'nice' bit I guess. Huh." (although I'm a bit of a Psych geek, so what I actually though was more about being Primed with that phrase making me more Salient, but whatever). Which is crazy, because in retrospect it was clearly not a glance of "oh no, Ang is nice but unattractive, what if she's offended on that other unattractive girl's behalf?" but rather one of "this is a pretty dirrspectful way to talk about a girl, I hope the girl who is here is not offended on the basis of feminine solidarity or something". Or so I choose to believe. Otherwise, I stand by my "jerks" asnalysis. Also, it's always worth bearing in mind the vicissitudes of casual eye contact. It could be that they were all just doing that thing where you look at everyone in the conversation in turn, and the timing was just unfortunate.
Anyway, it's probably the "girl" thing, yeah?

Anyway, this post has gotten ridiculously long even for me, so the TL:DR version of this post is "watch that movie Stardust". It's supergreat and also the moral of the story is not to care what people think of you if you do not share their values and ideals, because you don't respect their ideas about other things, so why let them influence your ideas about you?" Also the moral is "all boys look better with slightly longer hair and a sword". Or that was what I took out of it, anyway.Plus, there were Sky Pirates and Dexter Fletcher was in it a bit.