Comment by swiftcoder
7 hours ago
The reason we call it "feigning surprise", is that the surprise is pretty rarely genuine. It's an interaction people have more-or-less-unthinkingly practiced throughout their lives to keep the out-group separated from the in-group
This is a sharply negative interpretation of behavior of people who may be acting genuinely, if without social grace. I think few people shocked that you don't know bash are displaying that surprise as a way to keep you in the out-group - I think they are surprised.
I would argue that the real in-group/out-group behavior is excluding people who aren't naturally adept at being social.
Wow, you didn't know this kind of behavior is insulting? Crazy!
You seem to be misinterpreting my comment, which can be summarized as "be kind to others and assume best intent".
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The whole point of making it a rule is so those people can learn it and avoid accidentally putting other people down.
Is being surprised somebody doesn't know something putting them down, or is being unsurprised they are ignorant putting them down?
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People doing that are doing it intentionally, and they aren't going to follow your rule.
People who are open to listening are not pretending to be surprised in order to put somebody down. They are actually surprised and (perhaps) unintentionally hurting somebody. If that somebody is hurt, they need to ask themselves which hurts more, having somebody surprised you didn't know something (aka they think you are smart), or being unsurprised you are ignorant of something (aka they think you don't know stuff).
> People doing that are doing it intentionally
Not usually, no. They haven't (for the most part) adopted gatekeeping behaviour just to be dicks, they've adopted it as a method of signalling to other members of the in-group that they too belong to the in-group.
From their perspective, the effect on the person in the out-group is merely collateral damage.
If somebody says something rude to me, why would my reaction be to try to decide if I’m glad they were rude unintentionally?
Reread what I wrote. The point is it is more rude to assume somebody is ignorant than it is to assume they are knowledgeable.
This is telling people to assume people are ignorant or at least pretend you think they are ignorant.
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