Do you often tune people out?

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I've gotten better about it, sort of. Sometimes I can just (and I doubt this description makes real sense) roll my mind back a couple of ratchet clicks and I'll get a word that will do the job but usually isn't the one I really wanted. Other times I just stand there making this spiraly gesture with my right hand while my listener gives me a funny look.



Yeah. Hate it. Total disrespect. They don't even half-try to pretend to listen, as I do when I zone out on people. People at that old job would often just walk away from me, mid-word, though I thought what I was saying was actually pretty bloody important to the work. Being cut off, either by verbal interruption or this kind of snub behavior drives me furious, too.

At least I'm not such a hypocrit that I mind it if people zone out when I'm just going off about my latest obsession, though. That's fine. I'll usually even clue in that I'm boring them after a while.

Once, tuning people out earned me a supportive and helpful friend. This good-hearted but ceaselessly boring person said she loved me for being such a good listener. Actually, I wasn't listening at all, but thinking of other things entirely while saying, "Uh-huh," and "That's terrible," at irregular intervals.

This story is also eerily familiar. I sometimes wonder if I have become invisible, and I sometimes wonder if my voice is at some perfectly strange pitch that people cannot hear.

Whoah that is just like me, but with me I stare around and its usually an object(i have no idea how my brain does it) that reminds me of something or I use it instead. And yeah I do thesame thing with my hands and its like they are staring at you wondering if you are mental or soemthing

My experience, as I get older I care less and less if people think I'm mental so long as they don't think I'm stupid. At uni, where they recognized that I'm some kinda value-time discount genius, professors (at least those in my department, who knew me) wouldn't mind if I stood there spiraling my hand for half a minute, they'd just wait. It's always been at work where I'd get the roll-eyed 'you're dumb' look and get treated shabbily after doing things like that. I so need a job that isn't like High School.

if i do not need to know what someone is saying, i almost never listen to them.

i listen carefully to bosses giving specifications.
when most casual people talk at me, i am only interested in my own lines of unrelated internal inquiries, so i pay attention to them to the exclusion of external stimulii.
i usually tell people i am not interested in what they are saying rather than let them continue wasting their energy on me.

it also makes things quieter and more serene.

peoples voices are like listening to blowflies trapped buzzing between a window and a flyscreen while trying to doze.

if it is not a one on one "conversation", then i just get up and go away.

there are 6.6 billion people in the world, and each of them has their bit to say.

value drops with oversupply.

when i was a kid i realized something i find interesting.

if all 6.6 billion people talked their most interesting sentences simultaneously, and if there could be some microphone distribution matrix that can record every voice with equal level, then it would sound like white noise.

even a football stadium with 80,000 people who all cheer at the same time is getting close to white noise.

it sounds like "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.."

if they were all screaming in terror, or all cheering or all laughing, it would still sound like "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh".

so if every thought in the world spoken simultaneously sounds like "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh", then that fits with my reaction to them as well.


but i do find some people interesting sometimes

Yeah thats exactly like me, but I tend to go firther and act in a way that leaves no room to the fact if I'm crazy or not, it lets me get away from these kind of thing. And usually with my tutors or parents they let me finish my hand waving and actually let me get to the point which is kind of relieving and you don't feel that your making yourself look stupid.

I don't think any job unless it was filled full of just aspies would be accomdating, because if you look at it from their view it does look like you are dumb because you can't string a sentence together because they can. And you waing your hands like that makes you even insaner, but us aspies recognise what you mean.

Well, the whole academia thing, especially the logic-heavy stuff I was doing, is crawling with people who are, like me, probably not diagnosable as aspies, but are chock-full of various aspie-traits. This sort of thing where I'd be talking along fast, stop, hand-spin for half a minute, start again fast, (whirrrr, grind, ca-chunk, whirrr) was nothin' special to them. I was weird, and so were most of the profs, and so was everybody in my major.

Now I'm about to enter this graduate program that'll make me an archivist. I figure it'll work out. I have a strong suspicion that all the people at the orientation who seemed really 'NT' are going into a different specialty, and will be avoidable in the school program and in the workplace. Archivists and catalogers are notorious for being weirdos.

I do this all the time, the person talking to me just becomes background noise. It really pisses off my partner

I have this thought when I'm at large social gatherings. Usually I can't get close enough to any particular conversation to actually hear what's being said so I just hear the "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh". I wonder how all those people in that crowded room can have so much to say. When I do manage to tune in to a particular group I realize the topic is a bunch of really dull mundane crap. It's as if people just talk to fill the air with noise. Even if there's absolutely nothing of importance to say people are uncomfortable being silent.

People depress me so much.

I tune out people alot of the time.

Actually silence is quite uncomfortable for most people, if it becomes deafly quiet a lot of people will feel a great void that needs to be lifted by anything. And talking is one of those things that can lift it, even if the conversation is crap.

Absolutely. "Sorry, I was spacing out..." is something I wind up saying at least twice a day.

Yes, but I usually don't mean to. It just happens. Even when I'm talking to my best friend about something interesting I'll zone out and lose the train of the conversation.

Yes, when they start to bore me.

What? Did you say something?

Since I tend to "zone out" people even when I'm interested in a subject, I think it has a lot to do with the "lack of ability" to concentrate properly, though I do naturally tune out people when I'm experiencing boredom.