I think I’ve managed to pin down my particular anxiety with eye contact to “I don’t know what looks natural, so if I try to make eye contact it’ll only look worse/creepier than avoiding it completely”.
Last night it came upon me that I shouldn’t just operate on this theory without checking if it’s true. So, people who actually do the eye contact thing/notice faces: which reads as worse to you, awkward eye contact (which might include staring for too long), or no eye contact at all?
I have the exact same problem. Anyone want to help us out?
From someone who notices faces: awkward. definitely awkward. If you’re really good at face watching, try to time your glances away so they match the other person’s saccades, b/c then eye contact seems seamless and normal.
Depends on the context, I would say. My default assumption with people I interact with might operate so that awkward signals “I’m trying to pass as neurotypical because it’s instrumental for my goals, and I haven’t perfected it YGM” while avoidance signals “I’m uncomfortable with the strange customs of this foreign species, please be aware of it and accommodate”.
Avoidance makes one less threatening if one has that kind of a problem (at least for me; my limbic system prefers people who are big and have testosterone-dominant endocrine systems to err on the side of avoidance and that’s blatantly unfair but until I get bodymods to equalize physical disparities my lizard brain is going to keep being a lizard brain) but otherwise I’d probably recommend that people favor awkward with people who don’t understand; especially if one has any confidence in their ability to learn the rules of natural-seeming eye contact consciously and thus become better at it over time.
Obviously, individual situation matters; if awkward is too stressful it would be perfectly rational to ration it only for the most important situations.
Then again, anything I say about social interaction should be taken with a 200-gram sodium chloride monocrystal because edge cases etc.
3 months ago · tagged #user's guide to interacting with a promethea · 8 notes · source: lizardywizard · .permalink
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socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from sdhs-rationalist and added:Depends on the context, I would say. My default assumption with people I interact with might operate so that awkward...
sdhs-rationalist reblogged this from rusalkii and added:From someone who notices faces: awkward. definitely awkward. If you’re really good at face watching, try to time your...
- rusalkii reblogged this from lizardywizard and added:
I have the exact same problem. Anyone want to help us out?
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