I was just thinking about this. I love that moment when you work a person out. It gives you such a rush.
And the strangest thing is this: the hardest people to read are those who communicate via minimal subtext. I suppose it works along similar principles to the whole 'you can't lie to a liar' idea; if you're manipulative, you easily recognise others' clumsy attempts at manipulation, and from there, motivations are clear as day. But if they only converse straightforwardly, it can completely confuse you...
...
Furthermore!
Those who don't use subtext don't use it for a reason- they are blind to the stuff. And why?
Because they struggle to empathise.
I don't mean garden-variety struggling (ie: the exasperating kind). Picture a brick wall and you're closer.
Everyone likes to think that they like people to 'say what they mean', but imagine it 24/7...
She says:
'Up to much?'
She means:
'LOOK AT THE GREAT INTEREST I AM DISPLAYING IN YOUR LIFE ILY.'
He only hears:
'Up to much?'
And wonders why she asked.
People amuse me.
It's pretty hard to figure someone out completely considering, most people have so many faces and you'll probably never see half of those faces anyway.
Questions like "what you been up to?" are basically just fillers, I challenge anyone who has every asked this question to actually care about the answer beyond a short, one-liner type of response
It's very dependent on context, actually, although most of the time you're right. It can mean anything from 'prove to me that you actually have a life' to 'this silence is awkward' to 'I'm bored' to 'I stalk you'.
I disagree that people are difficult to figure out. You'll never know every facet of someone's personality, but if you spend up to an hour puzzling someone out, you can usually work out how their mind works (and see what they're blind to). Things can suddenly hit you, too.
>>5 Depends if you mean people who you see or people on the net. With people you see you can tell some of their personality by the way they dress, pose, what they eat, even, etc, without hearing what they say. What they say, and how, is another way of telling too, obviously. But on forums it's much harder for obvious reasons. I suppose you need to read a particular person's writing for a length of time to be able to glean something from them, rather than relying on a one-off post, because comments can change in tone, syntax etc. And words have many connotations attached to them, so you have to choose which ones apply more.
Figuring people out is kind of funny if you place them in stereotypes e.g the anime freak, posh type, cool-and-laidback type and so on.
I think it's a lot of fun to try to figure a person out, actually, I want to study psychology when i get to college, only a few years away now!!!Anyway, figuring people out can be tricky because they don't always show who they really are.