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I’m right there with you, but I can’t ever seem to thread the needle. Like in your Matrix example I have had people get offended by a question like that.
More generally speaking, I think it’s so difficult because a lot of people aren’t actually all that interested in learning or communicating in a way where a mutual understanding of each other’s base reality/knowledge are understood. They prefer to operate on their innate or learned social cues and prefer making assumptions or reading between the lines of what the other person is saying. Or in modern parlance, they just go by the vibes.
I have watched two people completely talk past each other and misunderstand the other person and yet they both seemed to come out of the conversation pleased with the interaction so many times. It’s baffling to me.
This is what the case is 9 times out of 10.
Mansplaining is a thing, sure. lit happens. But I think a key aspect of it is talking down to someone. Its explaining things like how to turn on a computer or telling an engineer how to do addition.
My head is filled with mostly useless facts. I’ve learned that if im talking to someone about something I’m interested in chances are they’ll have never heard of it or no nothing about it. So I make sure to ask things like: do you know much about x? Or have you heard of you before?
It gives me an idea of how much I’ll need to explain. Ive had a few instances where someone has gotten indignant to the question. To which I normally reply by jumping right past first principles and into to the heart of it. Cue confused look.
In theory, asking them first makes sense, but when you’re me, and your nerdy interest is in stuff like nuclear reactors and linux. You don’t bother asking because 90% of the time, you either know who you’re talking to, and can assume that they have a similar level of knowledge, or you assume they don’t because you’re pretty certain they don’t and it works well 99% of the time.
I ask what people know about a topic before I start. Most people don’t like being put on the spot to prove their knowledge about a random topic, but it seems to work better and be more engaging than just assuming they do or don’t know and dumping accordingly.
I feel for me it’s more like:
A problem is presented to me that I haven’t encountered before but I feel like I’m expected to help. So I start talking while my brain works its way through all possible scenarios leading to me rambling on until I maybe possibly arrive at a conclusion which will hopefully make the whole thing make sense in the end.
Of course later, once the situation has long resolved, my brain will have completed a few other calculations subconsciously and I will know for sure that I was an idiot and you, the person I tried to help, will probably think so too. 😆
So which one is this post?
Hm, I think it is probably a bit more nuanced than that. Sure, insecurity with rejection plays a huge role. So does having having a brain that orders information in a neurodivergent way, be it more jumbled up, associative or more structured.
I often need to know everything about a certain topic until I feel like I understand it. And it has to follow logic. If you only give me single bits, I will be confused. So when explaining stuff to other people, I try to convey as much information as I can because that’s what I would need as well. This might easily be confused with mansplaining or with being pedantic. I point out logical fallacies when I spot them because my brain gets confused otherwise. Some people might also misread this as power play. But usually my insecurity speaks for itself I guess because if you are outwardly insecure it will fail as power play (e.g. mansplaining).
Another aspect of neurodivergent oversharing is getting obsessed with a special interest that then everything revolves around and you want to only talk about this topic. I guess it is a state where the brain is so focused on this one thing that the outside world just isn’t as relevant. This might also be confused with mansplaining, but is probably more likely to be read as socially awkward? Although both have in common that the other person is seen as somewhat irrelevant and unknowing.
I am so repetitive when explaining things or telling stories, it is awful.
usually when i’m getting into some really nerdy shit, i tend to explain the ever living hell out of it, because shits complicated as fuck.
I could ask whether the other party knows it, but let’s be real, i’m enjoying myself too much to ask lmao. Just tell me to stop and i will.
You forgot about the part of option 2 where you realize midway through explaining that the other person either understood and you misread the situation, or they just don’t care, but now you’ve gotten too far into the explanation and you just have to power through even though literally every fiber of your being is telling you to shut up
… wait
Yeah… Explaining things the other person doesn’t care about…
My wife called me on that earlier today. “I know you need to ADHD info dump on me, but it’s time to wrap it up.”
That’s sweet.
I’m very lucky to have a partner that’s helping me manage and understand my ADHD!
In my experience, they usually lose interest partway through the clarification and then later ask three questions that were covered while they weren’t paying attention.
deleted by creator
Why you guys calling me out like that?
No I mansplain because too many dumb fucks in my life will tell me they understand what I mean and then when I explain it anyway they have no idea what I meant.
Sucks to suck stupid people ruined it for everyone now y’all have to listen to explanations regardless.
So, everyone suffers because you surround yourself with people that you think are beneath you?
The thing is that there are almost an infinite number of things you can learn and you only have enough time to learn a few of them. So if I talk to someone else, there is a very small chance that person spent their limited time learning the exact same things I did. Of course, this depends on context. At work I assume that the people who also work in the quite specific niche I’m in have a large overlap in knowledge, but a random person I meet anywhere else probably won’t even be aware that this thing I know a lot about is even a thing. Not because they are stupid but because they spent their time learning other stuff I know fuck all about.
I don’t think anyone is beneath me but the amount of times I’ve gone through the aforementioned scenario.
"Hey do you understand how to do x?
“Yeah sure!”
Proceeds to not even slightly understand how to do x
“Hey this is how you do x”
“STOP EXPLAINING I ALREADY KNOW”
In reality it’s more of a 50/50 whether I actually explain it after they’ve fucked it up because I just can’t be bothered but a lot of the time if someone fucks it up it falls on me.
I should also say this is mainly a work thing. I don’t generally do it to random people.
I feel called out.
One great habit to get into is when you have something like this that can be mistaken for something rude you can just preemptively apologize for it. “I’m neurodivergent and have a tendency to overexplain” doesn’t make it not frustrating but it does make me not think you’re assuming I know fuck all. I also like using “I don’t know how much you know about x” it makes it very clear I understand you may be more knowledgeable than me on this
Although if you do this to people who already know you, it seems to gather less sympathy and more “oh great, time for 10 minutes of vaguely related facts”
Tangents! Tangents everywhere!
….oh
Is bolding every other word an ADHD thing or some zoomer thing
You can read the bold parts only and still understand the text
Tried it. It didn’t work
I’m an old millennial AuDHD and I have to resist the urge to use bold and italics everywhere for different kinds of emphasis. I’d use even more variations when available (text size, colors).
When I was younger, I used to do the same in analog form with multi colored pens when taking notes.
Oh! Same. You cannot portray the nuances of speech easily through text. I often feel like my intentions may be misconstrued if I don’t emphasize or elaborate, lol. I still have an array of colored pens for personal and close friend/family use!
I don’t often bold comments, but i do like using italics and sometimes all caps to EMPHASIZE an important part. I guess the difference for me is whether it’s something I get fired up over like bodily autonomy. I use caps to emphasize more than italics.
In a regular discussion or if I’m just overexplaining something, I stick to italics. (and if I feel something needs additional clarification, but also maybe the reader wants to skip because it’s not really necessary, I’ll use parenthesis to show where you can skip to)
(it’s parentheses all the way down)
I think it’s a form of ADHD over-clarifying.
Makes reading it very jittery for me, like if it was 👏 this 👏 sorta 👏 text
You don’t have to mansplain it to everybody.
You don’t have to adhdsplain it to everybody.
As the goto “Tech Support person” in my friend group, this really strikes a nerve. I really hope I haven’t come off as a know-it-all. Trying to explain any kind of broad subject feels like playing pinball with all the thoughts in my brain while trying not to let the conversation flow sink into the gutter.
I think if your friends are coming to you and asking for help, then you’re in the clear. Part of being a know-it-all/mansplaining, is that nobody asked and they decided they needed to bestow that information onto others.
As an over-explainer I never got the mindset of being mad at more information. Regardless of whether I know something or not I would never get upset that someone shared knowledge with me. The more information the better. If I already knew, what’s the big deal? If I didn’t, great learned something new. If I disagree, I’ll say why and try to understand their point of view and maybe end up with a better understanding based on their knowledge/perspective.
Genuinely curious why it is so upsetting? Why would we not want to encourage knowledge sharing? Seems like the person thinks you are calling them dumb by telling them things, but how are you supposed to know what other people know? Personally I think it says more about the person getting mad than the person sharing information, but I know I’m in the minority for that.
I get it from my father. He was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, but if you asked him anything, you better have a lot of free time cause it is going back to first principles.
I know his reasoning was that he wanted me to learn how to understand and find the answer, not just be given it, and now I’m guilty of the same thing.
I don’t do it at work, or at least I try not to, as they are paying me for the solution not a dissertation, but if friends or family ask for tech support, they are getting the whole explanation while I solve the problem.
I guess another part of it is that like me, he really didn’t have anyone to talk tech to other than his family, and really just enjoyed the time being able to share things he was knowledgeable about.
I feel attacked
