Comment by JimDabell
8 days ago
> Why shouldn't people be overly emotional?
By definition overly emotional is bad – that’s what separates “overly emotional” from just “emotional”.
Regardless, having emotions is not the problem, lashing out at others because of those emotions is the problem.
> These are all valid and useful emotional responses. Telling someone "if you do this it will make me sad" should be useful feedback.
The person you are responding to said:
> we were constantly called names for absolutely any change we would do. Insulted and accused of the worst intentions.
Why are you misrepresenting this as “it will make me sad”?
> By definition overly emotional is bad – that’s what separates “overly emotional” from just “emotional”.
Human reactions are by definition not bad. They are a genuine expression of how we feel. We use that to signal our emotional state to others.
Try an experiment for me. Tell your partner that you want to split up. Once they finish crying, tell them that they're being "overly" emotional. See how that goes for you.
> Why are you misrepresenting this as “it will make me sad”?
Your mental model of the world has to include that other people have emotions, right? When you announce a change, you know that some people are going to be upset by it. That means you need to craft your message to account for other people's reactions.
Much like the above experiment, email your mother and tell her that you've decided that calling her every week is too much of a hassle and you're not going to do it any more. What do you think her reaction would be?
Perhaps you have a genuine reason for doing so. How would you best communicate that with her? What mitigation strategies would you use? What would you be prepared to compromise on?
Gatekeepers are usually terrible at accounting for the emotions of others. This is a repeated pattern and, by now, shouldn't be surprising to them.
> > By definition overly emotional is bad
> Human reactions are by definition not bad.
I said “overly emotional” was bad by definition, not “human reactions”. Don’t change my words then argue against what you changed them to.
> Try an experiment for me. Tell your partner that you want to split up. Once they finish crying, tell them that they're being "overly" emotional. See how that goes for you.
Why? They would not be overly emotional. Crying in response to being broken up with is a normal amount of emotion. Same goes for the mother example.
The whole point of overly emotional is that it is a label that specifically describes the emotions as being in excess. The label means “bad” – it’s bad by definition. If it were not bad in this way, then it would just be “emotional”, not “overly emotional”. Attaching “overly” is describing it as bad.
> > Why are you misrepresenting this as “it will make me sad”?
You did not even attempt to answer this.
GP said they received hate and insults. You misrepresented that as “it will make me sad”. Hate and insults are not somebody saying “it will make me sad”. You misrepresented what GP was saying. Why?
OK, so what makes you the arbiter of when an emotion is "in excess"?
Your partner crying at being broken up with is OK by you. What if they call you a rude name? Or throw crockery? Who decides that the emotions they are showing are bad?
> Hate and insults are not somebody saying “it will make me sad”. You misrepresented what GP was saying. Why?
"How dare you break up with me! You bastard!"
"Whoa! There's no need for rude language!"
Humans use language to indicate their strength of feeling. My reading of the GitHub thread is of people politely replying with several reasons why they don't want this change. When Chrome then ignores them, the people escalate their language to make their strength of feeling known.
This is a normal feature of human language. This is how humans have communicated for millennia.
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