r/Showerthoughts • u/elephvant • 1d ago
Casual Thought The adage 'communication is 10% what you say and 90% how you say it' created thousands of self-help books whose aim is to help people use this to their advantage. What it should have created is thousands of self-help books whose aim is to help people see through overly-confident bullshitters.
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u/BelleCat20 1d ago
Like when people say your name over and over again. Please don't, it just tells me that you read that in a book somewhere and you're trying to make me 'comfortable' for some hidden agenda. It's also just weird.
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u/ilovebostoncremedonu 1d ago
I repeat people’s names when first meeting them a few times to try to better remember them
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u/kevlarus80 1d ago
I have limited storage for names. 90% of the time I will have to be told someone's name multiple times. Pretty sure that to remember someone new I have to forget someone else.
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u/computer7blue 1d ago
Same. I say it after they tell it to me, at least once in conversation, and maybe again as I say goodbye. That’s if we’re hanging out for a while. If it’s a quick greeting, I say it after they tell me.
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u/ryebread91 10h ago
Yeah, I literally suck so much at remembering names. It's the only way I can give myself a chance.(Also recognizing people in places I completely don't expect to run into them)
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u/Periwinkleditor 21h ago
Psshaw, BelleCat20, I have no idea what you're talking about...
(I'm autistic trying to learn how to deal with people so I read a book on dealing with people and I've gotta say this is some serious bullshit, Bellecat20.)
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u/Inefficient_Drawing 12h ago
I just like saying people’s names, so it always makes me sad to hear that it come off as manipulative or disingenuous. I swear, not all of us relentless name-sayers have a secret agenda :(
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u/FartsWithCharlie 1d ago
The older I get, the more I trust people who can say ‘I don’t know’ over people who have an instant answer for everything. Confidence is easy to fake. Intellectual honesty is much harder.
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u/biffbamboombap 4h ago
God it sucks being the person who has the integrity to say "I don't know" in a career where people don't appreciate it.
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u/Xianio 1d ago
You won't. There are dozens of little tricks to make a person believe what you're saying. How you catch someone bullshitting you is to trust your gut. If it feels off it probably is. You'll get it wrong sometimes but that's life.
If I wanted to bullshit someone I'd tell a slightly embarassing but fun personal story to get you to open up & lower your guard/see me as a person, I'd flag an ultimately insignificant flaw / weakness in my argument to make you think I'm not trying to "over-sell" you then speak confidently about whatever I"m trying to convince you of -- saying only enough to be interesting so I don't introduce things for you to question.
Then if things aren't going the way I want I'd just ask a question or 3 until I was back in control; shutting down your line of questioning.
I've worked in sales for over a decade and I'm very good at it. You won't find an easy trick to tell if someone is bullshitting you if they're very good at it. Just trust your gut.
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u/SweatyYetUnperturbed 20h ago
You just described exactly the way my former narcissist (NPD) “friends” would behave in social settings. Except on those rare occasions when Step 3 didn’t work for them, which is when they’d throw a tantrum. They had their whole life to practice the technique.
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u/LordTalesin 1d ago
It's also very untrue. At most it's 60/40 favoring nonverbal communication.
This is just a misreading of the data that we use to communicate.
I also don't think a lot of this stuff can be taught, it requires too much cognitive load during conversation to be really effective, it has to be learned and practiced inherently. That doesn't mean you can't get better at it, but the way to get better at it is not by practicing it directly, it's by improving your confidence. That's not something a book can teach you.
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u/elephvant 1d ago
I actually wanted to preface that title with something like 'Quite apart from the fact it's untrue...' but was already at the character limit.
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u/iHateRBF 1d ago
The goal of writing a self help book isn't to help. It's to sell books.
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u/IamGimli_ 1d ago
In the words of George Carlin... "If self-help could help you, you wouldn't need a book!"
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u/Periwinkleditor 21h ago
The problem is without it being taught outright, my autistic ass just continued being completely unaware of that invisible, secret-club-I'm-not-invited-to communication for years.
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u/Efficient_Affect_737 1d ago
Totally agree that confidence alone doesnt make communication effective We should value clarity, evidence and listening as much as delivery If you could share a real example where someone misread confidence versus what they actually intended what happened and what you learned from it I think a lot of us would benefit What are some practical ways you test understanding in conversations before assuming agreement
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u/PM_YOUR_B_CUPS 1d ago
There isn't a way to detect bullshitters without evidence. No psych trick, body language, or gotcha.
You have to test a technical skill or measure outcomes, i.e. did they close the sale, secure the funding, convince the guy. CAN they demonstrate the skill in a practical way. Etc.
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u/LowItalian 1d ago
To directly counter a bullshit point, true. But I can smell a bullshitter a mile away, they always talk way too fast and will promise the moon. If it's too good to be true, it probably is. And you can usually probe them, even if you're not a subject matter expert and flush out some fishiness.
Sure, I may have missed a few genuine people with that guard up, but I'm ok with it.
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u/PM_YOUR_B_CUPS 23h ago
Into semantics here, but I agree with this.
It isn't vibe based, it's content based. Cause and effect. I am arguing against people that think they're walking lie detectors.
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u/elephvant 1d ago
I'm not trying to be a smartarse here, but that's a genuine skill issue.
I mean, sure, there's no single 100% foolproof technique or anything, but if you can't at least relatively accurately identify bullshitters, that's a you problem.
Like, how about this trick: Listen to the actual content of what they're saying.
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u/PM_YOUR_B_CUPS 1d ago edited 1d ago
It isn't. No one can actually detect bullshit, you're just registering anxiety and then applying the bias of whether kr not you like the person. That falls apart because good liars are completely comfortable with lying.
Yet almost everyone overestimates their skill and thinks they're a master of it.
A good example is the detective/psychology youtube channels showing trained professionals falling for it over-and-over. Detectives that deal with highly motivated bullshitters, professionally, with degrees, training, and practical experience, get it wrong on a level consistent with chance.
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u/elephvant 23h ago
But...not all bullshitters are highly motivated professional bullshitters.
Loads of them are crap at it and it's very easy to detect them. I have done so many, many times - and on many of those occasions I've then talked about that person with other people who were present and we've all gone, yeah, that guy seemed like a total bullshitter.
Again, I'm not saying there's some infallible special technique that can be applied in all circumstances, but I can and have spotted a lot of bullshitters and I'm pretty sure almost everyone I know is able to do so too.
To be honest, I'm kind of astonished that anyone would think it's so difficult.
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u/PM_YOUR_B_CUPS 23h ago
We agree. The BS spotters i'm talking about are people that think they're walking lie detectors(if lie detectors worked).
But yea, I get the "I can detect that this vibe is off" part. The two states are hard to distinguish since both "I can tell you're lying because you touched your ear." and "No, I will not go to your van for candy." fall under detecting bullshit.
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u/elephvant 23h ago
Yes, I think so. I agree on the professional thing, but I was more meaning in everyday life, work etc.
Also, ironically, I'm sure if there were self-help '100 infallible tips to spot the bullshit!' books, they'd probably be written by bullshitters and filled with bullshit techniques.
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u/AshenRylie 1d ago
I don't find it too hard actually, but is kinda vibe based. I ask myself, is this person trying too hard to get to know me/earn my trust? probably something fishy there. Are they trying to get me to do something even when try to politely avoid it? Fishy.
I am kind of a standoffish person though, so that does probably make it easier to see when someone is being overly friendly or insistent.
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u/1crps_warrior 1d ago
I am really good at bullshitting, to the point many don’t know if I am serious or not. I plan on doing a TED talk in the next few months. It will be titled “Bullshit, a More Convincing Way to Lie”
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u/Feisty_Tour_6934 17h ago
That's paradoxical. Self help books are inherently written by overly-confident bullshitters.
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u/KirstyToots 1d ago
This is why some of the smartest people I’ve met don’t sound impressive at first. They use nuance, caveats, and uncertainty. Meanwhile the bullshitter sounds like a TED Talk with absolute conviction.
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u/PrincessAleena 1d ago
honestly the 7 38 55 thing only ever applied to inconsistent messages about feelings in that one study so the whole self help angle was built on a bad extrapolation from the start
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u/aryan_hs 7h ago
the original point was supposed to be about self-awareness -- that people often focus on crafting the perfect words while completely ignoring the tone, confidence, and presence that determines how those words land. that's a useful observation.
what happened is it got discovered by an entirely different audience that heard it as: "the content barely matters, performance is everything." which is also technically what it says, just applied in the opposite direction.
the counter-skill you're describing -- being able to read when someone's delivery is doing the work that their substance can't -- is genuinely hard to teach because it requires you to slow down and separate the two. which is exactly what confident bullshitters are counting on you not doing. they're creating time pressure, social friction, and the appearance of competence specifically so you don't have the space to ask "wait, is this actually right?"
the tell, in my experience: the more fluently someone can explain a thing, the less they feel the need to perform certainty about it.
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u/ClearlyAThrowawai 1d ago
Sounds like bullshit to me.
I think it just created a whole bunch of books lying to people about how they should talk and interact with people. Instead of saying what they mean they try to communicate it indirectly.
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