this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
839 points (98.6% liked)
Curated Tumblr
4930 readers
891 users here now
For preserving the least toxic and most culturally relevant Tumblr heritage posts.
The best transcribed post each week will be pinned and receive a random bitmap of a trophy superimposed with the author's username and a personalized message. Here are some OCR tools to assist you in your endeavors:
-
FOSS Android Recs per u/[email protected]: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You could also be even more cautious: "I noticed that they cheer you up, so I try to have them on hand for when you're feeling down." No mention of conditioning, wholesome, hard to argue against.
It also hides the conditioning aspect. We hide things when we consider them negative. If they are asking, they have potentially noticed a lot more. If you hide it, you believe it was a bad thing you were doing, and they will react VERY strongly to you doing it.
By being upfront it will derail their train of thought on the matter. I personally used this a few times in my youth. It pulls the teeth of an argument quickly.
Here it is basically acknowledging what you have been doing, while defusing the various "ah ha!" reveals and got-yas they had mentally planned. At that point they have to actually think, rather than just react according to the script they built in their head. Once they are thinking, it's a lot easier to communicate properly.
I’m very much a “direct communication” kinda person but even I know that timing is important. True it took learning it and that was certainly an experience but it happened.
If the person is feeling vulnerable and a little worried you’re manipulating them and you dive straight in with a scientific, emotionless reduction of “choco make boyo happy” then you’ll probably scare them. You’re excited about this thing and have had a lot of time to explore it but they haven’t had such time to be more comfortable with that kind of wording. You don’t want to derail their argument, that really only protects you and actually puts you back in hiding a negative aspect and that person now feels possibly even more confused and angry. They were probably hoping that it was just a mistake or that you were being nice, which you probably were, and now you’ve taken their “best case scenario” and told them straight-faced that you were consciously manipulating them.
After they feel better, after they’ve had some time to sit with it, sure maybe, but in the moment it’s good to soften it a little.
We constantly condition each other all the time. It's a part of human interaction. We don't usually do it consciously, but it's conditioning nonetheless. Couples will subtly condition their behavior to be more in tune with each other.
Consider a simple example. Imagine a you're in a couple, and you just moved in together. You're both used to living alone. You're used to flicking on the bedroom light as you walk into the bedroom before bed to prepare for bed. Unfortunately your partner tends to go to sleep before you. You wake them up a few times by accident, and they understandably grumble. You feel bad about it, as you care about them and don't want to wake them up. You wince the next day when you see how tired they seem. In time, you stop flicking the light on before you enter the room. Your partner's actions have conditioned you to not turn the light on. Your partner conditioned you without even intending to. We condition each other constantly. We observe what effect our behavior has on others, and we adjust our own behavior accordingly. We usually just don't refer to it as "conditioning," as that tends to have a nefarious connotation.
All true, but it isn't always best to lead with that. It can provoke an emotional response that might not be productive.