Comment by soulofmischief

1 day ago

Obviously sometimes saying no is a problem. But, the user I responded to, and you to a degree, seemed to, intentionally or not, use this "sometimes" as a lever for "anytime". To be clear, my original criticism is meant for NikolaNovak and his friend's unwillingness to sell something to him at a slight discount. They initially say "slightly less" but later say "20%", I'm unsure which is the real number, obviously the perceived value of a high percentage discount does not scale as linearly.

You replied, saying "Declining to give you $600 out of the blue because you'd rather have more money is not being indifferent," and so I responded to this and your earlier comment, "If you ask your friend for $100 for no particular reason, just because you want $100, that's an annoying request and "no" is a reasonable response," because I disagree with it as framed.

Since then, you have widened that argument to give it more support, and we can now both certainly agree that there's nothing wrong with saying no to a request for money/gifts from a friend. And we can agree it would be annoying for a friend to constantly ask that, or even to ask a single time in certain contexts without sufficient social capital.

I understand your intended meaning might be different than how it came across to me, and said, "If this isn't your intent, you should reflect on how you've presented your argument."

I mean no ill intent and don't want this to devolve into an actual argument, so it's probably best we wind it down. If I came across as judgemental, I apologize, for my part I was attempting to offer my own perspective on what friendship can mean to different people.