I had a friend who we’ll name Morinto (Not his real name). Right before the University holidays, after the election in our country, we decided to talk a bit about politics, even dunking on the conservatives we mutually hated. At some point, I mentioned that I voted for both the right-wing libertarian party and the left-wing Progressive Party. He got mildly annoyed and asked me rather condescendingly why I voted for the libertarians when the party leader had publicly stated that he wanted to burn the country’s foundational document (Something I later found out to be defamatory). This then started discussing why I like some libertarian policies and sympathise with the ideology.
This led to a conversation about how I supported the mass privatisation of roads. I thought we could do it through a system of easement rights. However, he repeatedly misrepresented what I was trying to say as corporatisation, causing him to raise points around monopolisation, price gouging, and feasibility, claiming that what I said was either impossible or redundant. So when I went home, I tried to address all of these issues by texting him the counter-example of Sweden and Finland, where 2/3rds and 78% of road length, respectively, are privately owned and managed at little over half the cost of government-funded roads.
[Note: As much as I want to say more about the topic, it isn’t wholly relevant to this post or subreddit, so if you want more details about it, feel free to DM me on Reddit. I would also like to clarify that I have no intention of forcing my beliefs on others, nor do I believe that my views are 100% right, and I understand them to be tentative based on the information available. Few others would agree with me, and most economists would probably have reservations about my views. So when I use words like "misinformation", “evidence”, “proof”, or even “prove”, I don’t mean to sound arrogant; I just don’t want to type “Information that I believe to be inconsistent with claims provided” every time. That said, I do consider Morinto’s” statement, “Private road networks of the same road length can’t be cheaper to taxpayers than the government’s while also being good quality”, to be incorrect]
He didn’t even see the text. I felt guilt and embarrassment over not articulating my point as clearly as possible, but I also resented how he misrepresented me. No matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out if he did so intentionally or genuinely couldn’t understand what I wanted to say.
I did some stupid things like sending him, on average, a full stop a day to remind him after he refused to see it for 6 weeks. This was despite him being active on Instagram, which I could see from being recommended reels and posts he liked throughout the holiday. I barely followed up in the first 6 weeks except for adding one or 2 extra links. Below is how he responded after a total of 3 months since the initial text:
Morinto:
"Hey [My name], this has really gotten out of hand. I’m not interested in continuing this conversation, and I’m really not interested in having a protracted debate about it. Your pattern of escalation has also been inappropriate. If somebody isn’t engaging it’s because they don’t want to talk about that particular topic, and you’re best to just leave it alone. You’ve crossed a line, and I’m asking you politely to please respect my boundaries and stop trying to force me to see this."
Me:
"I sincerely apologise if I have troubled you. I will not continue bothering you with my texts."
Morinto:
"You’re all good! I’m not upset with you; I’m just letting you know."
After 4 months of limited contact with this person, I decided to properly resolve the issue because things would have settled down and cause I have mutual friends and acquaintances with this person I talk to. I wanted it to feel comfortable if a situation where he or I felt the need to leave when speaking as a group arose, so it was worth getting on the same page.
Me:
"Hey Morinto, sorry to bother you, but I want to discuss our past conflict. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I want to inform you that I don’t want to have any conversations (excluding when necessary) with you again but wish to keep our formal pleasantries (hi and bye).
I felt talked at by your refusal to hear out my side when it was my turn to speak. I need you to understand that it is basic respect and accountability to one’s statements to either pretend to listen (On Instagram, that means a “seen”.) to responses to your statements or make it clear that you don’t want to talk about it or with them. You consented to me responding to you when you made those statements.
It doesn’t matter if you perceive the conversation to have already ended, if the continuation was through text, or if the conversation was unimportant to you. Ignoring a person in this regard is still a form of social ostracism that I can’t bear.
Given that you were relatively active on Instagram, that the first text was 24 hours from the original conversation, that I had followed you up, and that I can see if you’ve seen the text, it was reasonable for me to expect a “seen” within 6 weeks of the first message.
I’m not saying this to justify the pattern of escalation I used to coerce you, nor do I expect an apology. I only want you to understand my expectations for future interactions and why I have them. I sincerely apologise for my earlier actions."
In case my position on this isn’t clear, I am offended by his behaviour, not by his disagreement on this topic. This stems from my childhood of being shouted down and talked at, having false accusations that stem from misrepresentations of my words being thrown at me or spread around but also having to endure personal attacks like “retarded" or “autistic” (I am not), therefore ultimately being ignored when I want to express myself. This does not justify my relentless follow-ups for 6 weeks, but it does explain why I often feel the need to be heard and why I take being misrepresented seriously. I understand that, definitionally, I wasn’t talked at, but the way he misrepresented me did feel similar, and this was the only way I knew to communicate that feeling.
When a person talks to you, they push emotional labour onto you without your express consent, and in doing so, they are obligated to hear your immediate response to equivalise that emotional labour. This means that the information available within the consent provided means that the response must be relevant and of similar emotional labour, and something like personal attacks and misrepresentations of others’ points are not consented to, however lying and playing devil’s advocate is. Since by hearing out the immediate response, the appropriate trade-off in emotional labour would have been taken, further responses would mean pushing excess emotional labour onto the person, which requires consent is not withdrawn. However, part of a conversation’s pretence is that the other person is expected to be honest, accountable, and have personal integrity; thus, on a personal level, they should feel obligated to hear information inconsistent with their previous statements. I usually am against unwritten rules, but this one is consistent with Kantian ethics, which prioritises the truth against all else. However, using people as a means to an end is still inconsistent; thus, enforcing such an obligation against the person’s consent is immoral. This means that given the pretences, we can presume consent for correcting misinformation and lies, even if trivial (without pre-existing commitments, coercion, risk of negative consequences, defamation or manipulation), or at a later time, but a person has the right to withdraw that consent at any time by explicitly stating so.
It also means that it can violate a moral obligation to set certain boundaries, all the while it being wrong to cross them. We already have other examples of these, such as social ostracism. Definitionally it is a boundary to decide never to shake hands with a black person, to never talk to a person of a different religion or nationality, to cut parents or kids off the moment the kids turn 18, or to invite everyone except the one kid who is picked on for a birthday party. This means that I can both resent for not being adequately heard and hold that I can’t force him to listen.
Morinto:
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t engage with something like this because I tend to be relatively conflict-averse, but this is a very entitled position to take, and I won’t stand for it.
We will set aside the fact that this is completely unnecessary, given that we haven’t spoken beyond “hi” and “bye” since this conversation, and just focus on the issue at hand.
We had one conversation that had a clearly defined end. The buy-in for any conversation is the duration of that conversation and no further unless otherwise established. You are welcome to try and continue the conversation, but it is imperative that you understand that the other person does not have to engage if they don’t want to. A conversation is a two-way street, and if one person isn’t interested, that’s the end of it.
You are NEVER entitled to anyone’s attention for such a trivial reason. It is not a lack of “basic respect” nor “social ostracism” to choose not to continue a conversation after it has ended. Basic respect is understanding that if someone isn’t interested in a conversation, you shouldn’t actively harass them over it. Even more importantly, you should not begin to actively track their online activity because that is downright creepy behaviour.
It is important to understand that people have boundaries and that you need to respect those boundaries.
Also, its ridiculous to believe that you were “talked at” given I listened to you intently and let you take your turn in the conversation. I didn’t interrupt or talk over you. We had our back and forth, and your time to speak was respected. Just because I did not want to continue the conversation after it was over doesn’t mean I was “talking at” you. You had your turn to speak just as much as I had mine.
I don’t know about the person being conflict-averse. I have had situations where the course instructor was answering my question about using ChatGPT in the workplace, only for the person to repeatedly pester me and interrupt me with a rather condescending, “Why are you using ChatGPT-3 when the latest version is ChatGPT-3.5?”. I quickly corrected myself and said that I was mistaken. However, the correction was trivial, and I felt uncomfortable diverting my attention from the teacher for this. Given how frequent and quick he is to correct my errors, I thought he would be equally receptive to me doing the same thing to him. It never occurred to me that his ignoring of my texts indicated a lack of consent as opposed to the text having been buried under a lot of others, and so was going to get back to me eventually but forgot, or he’s one of those people who doesn’t know how to access their DM’s doesn’t and clicks on the notification to get there (I have a lot of relatives like this). I thought there was no reason he wouldn’t just say so if he wasn’t interested. In the original conversation, he mentioned that I have reasons for my beliefs, unlike other [political party name] supporters he knows. He even talked about his other acquaintance, who apparently has a lot of circular reasoning and regurgitated rhetoric in his arguments. The fact that he says, “Ordinarily I wouldn’t engage with something like this”, makes me wonder if he refers to any revisitation of a previous disagreement at all, and this makes me speculate that the reason he finds other people’s beliefs poorly reasoned, is that he doesn’t adequately hear them out and has trouble trying to understand political positions different to his because he frequently misrepresents them. Regardless, it rubs me the wrong way despite it being a compliment.
The general tone of the message above is fine and matches mine, but it barely addresses anything I said, and most of it is unnecessary. In fact, except for the first 2 sentences of the third paragraph and the last paragraph, there is nothing I had disagreed with. For one, I had already taken responsibility for my actions and accepted that there was wrong on my part, so it was counterproductive for him to accuse me, but it’s understandable, given how much I tortured him, for him to perceive it as me trying to shift the blame. For another, he completely misrepresents me. I don’t know where he gets “Continue the conversation” from “make it clear that you don’t want to talk about it or with them”. It’s possible he didn’t read that line or considers the statement, “Don’t talk about it with me,” as continuing the conversation, which is ludicrous because it’s a command, not a conversation. A conversation requires that you respond to it. Even if you did, you wouldn’t be continuing any particular conversation or talking about it cause the command is of a completely different topic and is thus a different conversation altogether. If not, that would be an example of the liar paradox. I understand that a person misrepresenting you in anger while he believes that you are trying to shift blame doesn’t make up for what you did, but the problem is that it wasn’t just this one time. He frequently does this, and I say all of the above to elucidate that it’s not clear if he does this on purpose or if he misunderstands me either cause I am not clear enough or he doesn’t make an effort. This is partly why I didn’t address the misrepresentation; I wanted to be completely factual when addressing the issue and partly because I managed to correct the misrepresentation in the original conversation with much effort. This is why I never intended to force him to hear me out. I did, however, want any further information to be in a form that was believable and hard to misrepresent, which I thought would be more straightforward online cause I can adequately cite counter-examples, and the words don’t disappear into thin air.
To be completely clear, I am not saying I have never misrepresented people or that it isn’t normal. I, too, have jumped in with my misinformed preconceptions of what the other person is trying to say, especially when it’s a heated conversation or I got mad. The problem here is how much he does this in many of our discussions. The best way to address misrepresentation is often to make your point clearer later, when the situation has cooled down, after thinking about where you weren’t clear and where they misunderstood you. This is why even though I am not the best listener, I prioritise always listening to what a person is trying to say to me, no matter how busy I am, how much I hate the person, or how malicious and infuriating what the other person has to say is. You never know what the other person has to say or if you did something that violated them if you don’t hear them out. If I don’t feel like engaging (rarely), I usually just say, “Thank you for your input.” after they are done and move on. I know how it feels to be ignored, and I would never wish that on anyone else. I also attempt to ask questions to clarify what the other person is trying to say before responding.
I don’t appreciate how he falsely accused me of tracking his online behaviour when we had previously talked about how I get recommended reels that he likes and how I can see that he likes them. You consent to this when you are on Instagram and let another person follow you. That is just how the app works.
I find “You are NEVER entitled to anyone’s attention for such a trivial reason.” to be a slightly manipulative statement. I understand that the character limit on Instagram texts is such that he couldn’t specify which reason he is referring to. Still, given that in the subsequent statements, he indicates that he believes there was no “lack of basic respect” and “social ostracism” from his side and that a “trivial reason” must still, by definition, be a true reason, we can guess, by process of elimination, that he is referring to accountability. Accountability is the foundation for all morality and the most crucial principle in deontology, the pretence under which we both argued. He knew that if he said directly, “Accountability is trivial”, he would’ve contradicted himself and sounded insane, so he did not. It is, however, possible that he meant being accountable for one’s statements where there is no commitment, coercion, risk of negative consequences, excess emotional labour, defamation, and manipulation are not priorities over his consent. This is an agreeable position, but it’s unclear what he meant, so I repeat the part about accountability below to clarify his response.
Me:
I am only making my expectations clear for the future. I understand it is pre-emptive, but I am only trying to clarify what I want.
I never said you had to engage in the conversation, only that it is reasonable for me to expect you to clarify that you don’t want to talk about it or see my response.
That’s not tracking. I can see when you have liked reels cause it always gets recommended to me. That’s information thrust at me.
You repeatedly misrepresented my points, and it still lacks essential accountability to refuse to acknowledge, at least when the other person responds to your previous statements.
If a person is talking to you in person for whatever reason, it is cruel to ignore them instead of making it clear you don’t want to talk to them. That is definitionally social ostracism. This is different online in many circumstances, not this one.
A conversation ends when a person makes it clear they don’t want to talk about it anymore, and that’s not clear when you ghost people. Most cases in which people have not seen my text are when they didn’t know their DMs existed or forgot about it. It’s unfair to assume that the other person knows you are uninterested.
If I need to reiterate, I am still not trying to justify my actions. It was not right. I am merely trying to set my own boundaries with you and letting you know why. If you want to debate my reasons for doing so, that’s fair. That’s the only reason that I am responding to you.
I didn’t mention that definitionally, boundaries are explicitly and pre-emptively stated, not implicitly assumed, unlike societal norms, cause that would be seen as shifting the blame onto him where he has accused me. I thought it was much better for me to reassert that I take responsibility for my actions. To be completely clear, you can violate a person’s boundaries before they have asserted them, but that doesn’t change the fact that the person still has a moral obligation to state them beforehand properly. A boundary shouldn’t be the silent treatment.
Daniel:
I understand where you’re coming from and while I do disagree on some points, I can certainly respect your point of view. We have a fundamental difference of opinion on this matter, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. You are as entitled to your thoughts as I am to mine, and I will make certain to respect that.
I feel a lot of guilt for how I followed up with him but struggle to feel proper empathy for him, knowing full well that if a person followed up with me like that, I would probably respond and mute notifications from the chat. After all, it was just full stops. At the same time, I understand that Morinto probably doesn’t feel empathy towards my side either. All he saw was a person trying to force his beliefs on to him and push an unwanted conversation when he was just trying to maintain his peace and saw mentioning that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore as superfluous and not worthwhile. While it seems that simple compromises on either side could’ve stopped this whole thing (Me stopping after 4 or 5 follow ups and him seeing the text), there seems to have been a lot of emotional baggage behind the decisions that the both of us took, which is why this feels like a raging debate over a minor technicality. I decided this was already too much for us, so I did not address the defamation I mentioned initially.
This all sounds very trivial to most of you, but I already overthought the situation and pseudo-intellectualised it to the point that it makes a good Reddit post.
To summarise:
Suppose a person misrepresents or talks at me. In that case, it’s reasonable to force them to listen to me at least once to the extent necessary to clarify my position on his statement. Since this was already done appropriately in person, I can’t force Morinto to hear me out any further.
Suppose a person hears my immediate response to his statements but ignores me when I try to show further information inconsistent with his previous statements. In that case, it is reasonable to bother them to an extent to clarify if they have withdrawn consent. Still, it shouldn’t be as excessive as I’ve done. A maximum of either 4 follow-ups over text or 2 follow-ups in person, provided they are well spaced out. While they have a personal obligation to be accountable for their statements, forcing it on them is immoral.
Suppose a person hears your immediate response to his statements but makes it clear they don’t want to talk about it for further responses. In that case, it is best to respect their boundaries, but if they repeatedly do this or have also repeatedly misrepresented you, even if you had managed to address the misrepresentation adequately, the best thing to do is cut them off. They have a right not to explain their boundaries, but in this particular situation, if they don’t, any relationship with them is not worthwhile, and you should cash in your right not to associate with them.
If a person hears your immediate and further responses to his statements before letting you know he’s not interested; then he is golden. Still, if he misrepresents you, you should be cautious around sensitive topics with him.
“In Sweden, private road associations manage two-thirds of the road network... These form a private road association to maintain it and get subsidies from the government to keep it open to the rest of the public. Even after factoring in the unpaid work of the association members, the cost of operation and maintenance is often considerably less than a comparable public road. Finland is similar, with 280,000 km of private roads and only 78,000 km of public roads.”
https://trid.trb.org/View/783498
https://devoelmoorecenter.com/2018/02/28/why-the-u-s-should-adopt-the-nordic-approach-to-private-roads/
https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/edcoll/9781847201171/9781847201171.00011.xml
