"Angela, you're really quiet"
Along with "You are tall," "You have fair skin" and "You look really innocent", "Angela, you are really quiet" joins a list of observations so superficially redundant that I file it somewhere between I Am Asian and This is what my Face Looks Like.
In my opinion, being quiet is a vocal inflection synonymous with being soft spoken or mild mannered. Being quiet should not be utilized or leveraged as a personality trait.
Over the years, I have deduced that "quiet" is the first word people pull out of their orifice when they simply don't know someone very well.
I find that people usually fall under three categories when they're in a new environment:
You know the type, they're the super friendly ones that either knows or wants to know everyone. They always care about your day, if the lunch you made is edible (in my case, it's always a No) and what you're watching on Youtube (cat videos, okay?).
Conversation Starters can then be split into "People who Really Do Care" and "People Who Pretend to Care but are subconsciously/consciously waiting for their turn to talk".
Those who genuinely do care are kind souls that need to be cryogenically preserved so they can save humanity in the year 3050. Those who just want attention are an organic representative of Us Weekly headlines.
I don't judge you for it because like Us Weekly, your stories are often funny, entertaining and sometimes come with blurry cell phone pictures.
I can usually judge a person's observational abilities based on how quickly they presume that someone is "quiet".
In my opinion, being quiet is a vocal inflection synonymous with being soft spoken or mild mannered. Being quiet should not be utilized or leveraged as a personality trait.
Over the years, I have deduced that "quiet" is the first word people pull out of their orifice when they simply don't know someone very well.
I find that people usually fall under three categories when they're in a new environment:
1) The Conversation Starters
You know the type, they're the super friendly ones that either knows or wants to know everyone. They always care about your day, if the lunch you made is edible (in my case, it's always a No) and what you're watching on Youtube (cat videos, okay?).
Conversation Starters can then be split into "People who Really Do Care" and "People Who Pretend to Care but are subconsciously/consciously waiting for their turn to talk".
Those who genuinely do care are kind souls that need to be cryogenically preserved so they can save humanity in the year 3050. Those who just want attention are an organic representative of Us Weekly headlines.
I don't judge you for it because like Us Weekly, your stories are often funny, entertaining and sometimes come with blurry cell phone pictures.
2) The Shy ones that don't want to be judged
Most people fall under Category 2. They engage in a friendly conversation but withhold personal information. No one likes to be judged by someone they just met. This is a time to be socially acceptable, dammit!
Remember the days when you thought I was as sweet as I looked?
That's my Nice Filter working at full capacity to constrain my snark. When I'm in a really stroppy mood, I crank it up with caffeine and sugar.
Category 2 people are usually talkative and very friendly once you get to know them. Like most of us, they've probably had the experience of someone judging them based on one off-hand thing they said that ended up being misconstrued. The next thing you know, there's a rumor going around that they've made out with a hot dog multiple times.
Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Remember the days when you thought I was as sweet as I looked?
That's my Nice Filter working at full capacity to constrain my snark. When I'm in a really stroppy mood, I crank it up with caffeine and sugar.
Category 2 people are usually talkative and very friendly once you get to know them. Like most of us, they've probably had the experience of someone judging them based on one off-hand thing they said that ended up being misconstrued. The next thing you know, there's a rumor going around that they've made out with a hot dog multiple times.
Yeah, that kind of stuff.
3) The Ones that just say "hi"
Ahhh, every one knows one of these. The ones that just go "hey man, nice to meet you" and goes back to their work. They're the ones that are usually deemed "quiet" or "unfriendly" if they're wearing a lot of black or have a Gucci wallet.
I've learned from experience that Category 3's like to avoid possibilities of awkward interactions by putting a short stop on verbal chit chat.
Sure you run into a few that presume they're so above you that your mere presence denounces their very existence but most of the time, Category 3's tend to be more guarded in nature, afraid that they might say something vapidly stupid or just exceedingly tired at the moment.
When I was in my first year of university, I once told someone who said "hi" to me that "the sky is very blue" after an all nighter.
The response looked like this: O_O
I've learned from experience that Category 3's like to avoid possibilities of awkward interactions by putting a short stop on verbal chit chat.
Sure you run into a few that presume they're so above you that your mere presence denounces their very existence but most of the time, Category 3's tend to be more guarded in nature, afraid that they might say something vapidly stupid or just exceedingly tired at the moment.
When I was in my first year of university, I once told someone who said "hi" to me that "the sky is very blue" after an all nighter.
The response looked like this: O_O
------
Most of us never fit into one specific category when we're introduced to someone new. We exhibit scattered fragments or interchange them depending on our mood, the situation, our "feel" of the person, etc etc.
Describing someone's personality as "quiet" is a write-off, especially if you don't know them very well. I have never met a quiet person, only people who are shy about expressing their opinions or are uncomfortable under certain circumstances.
We all have a word filter, some are big enough to clean out an aquarium and some can barely sustain a guppy. The problem with forming channels of communication is that when you have someone who isn't aware of where they stand and what their role is in this environment, conversation often becomes difficult to sustain.
If you really take the time to get to know any person, you will usually find that no one is whom they seem and that everyone has some concrete opinion to offer.
Most of the time, I believe that we're all going through life upholding an image that we've been given throughout the years. Once you strip away all the superficial layers , we're all just really weird people in search of people weird in the same way that we are.
Describing someone's personality as "quiet" is a write-off, especially if you don't know them very well. I have never met a quiet person, only people who are shy about expressing their opinions or are uncomfortable under certain circumstances.
We all have a word filter, some are big enough to clean out an aquarium and some can barely sustain a guppy. The problem with forming channels of communication is that when you have someone who isn't aware of where they stand and what their role is in this environment, conversation often becomes difficult to sustain.
If you really take the time to get to know any person, you will usually find that no one is whom they seem and that everyone has some concrete opinion to offer.
Most of the time, I believe that we're all going through life upholding an image that we've been given throughout the years. Once you strip away all the superficial layers , we're all just really weird people in search of people weird in the same way that we are.
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