Le Pinned Post
I find social stuff interesting and this has long been true. I've had a few college classes pertinent to that interest, such as Intro to Psychology, Social Psychology and Negotiation and Conflict Management.
When I took Intro to Psychology, a required part of the course was we had to participate as subjects in one or two psychology experiments run by grad students. One was about racism and they played a tape of two people talking and switched the labels for the audience as to who was White and who was Black and then asked a bunch of questions trying to see if what we imagined their skin color to be changed our perception.
This was explained to us afterwards and a Black guy in the front row said "We could tell by their voices we were being lied to. We knew who was really Black and who was really White by the sound of their voices."
There are distinct characteristics to Black voices and I no longer remember the explanation for the physiological differences for that, but it's true that in many cases most people can accurately detect a person's race -- at least with regards to Black American versus White American -- from hearing their voice alone.
It's not always true in every case. When Elvis Presley became famous, his music sounded so different from standard White music that radio announcers told the audience what (racially segregated White) high school he graduated from to signal "Never mind how fly he sounds, he's White."
I have also heard that the initial reaction to Rick Astley's music videos, such as Never Gonna Give You Up, was "There is NO WAY that skinny White guy is the real singer! It sounds like a Black guy!" and a small hullaballoo ensued over that.
But anyway, the point is that social stuff is extremely hard to study "scientifically" and there's a ZILLION ways attempts to do studies on social phenomenon go sideways, and a Black guy pointing out that your study is stupid and fooled no one is just one of them.
I don't have a PhD in Psychology or something like that. My strongest qualification is that I'm interested in the social thing, tend to be fairly socially savvy and observant AND raised two extremely bright sons with social challenges.
So I would say something like "Anger is kinda like fire." and hear back "So if you rub two people together, they explode?" because my kids know too much science and I would go "Uh. Forget everything I just said. Let me THINK about this and get back to you."
My primary qualification is that explaining social stuff to my socially challenged little hellions with genius IQs required me to up my game beyond anything college classes required or that most articles and studies I read follow in terms of rigor.
My son did his OWN studies and routinely did the thing mom told him not to do and reported back to me something like "Ninety percent of the time, it worked exactly like you said but sometimes it didn't." So I mean this is what I was dealing with AND he's such a butt, he basically thanked me for giving him a knife phobia inadvertently because he got to adulthood with all his fingers.
#priorities (and for once in my life, that's NOT sarcasm on my part)
Unfortunately, that's a private detail of my life, you don't know my kids and that utterly fails the test for establishing any kind of credentials whatsoever. So let's try THIS instead:
When I had a corporate job, one of my teammates claimed she was married to a guy who made a lot of money and after some years as a childless homemaker, he told her she needed to get a job to pay for her extravagant month-long vacays but BEFORE she did the homemaker thing, she had a job in a field that intensely interested me and she worked extremely long hours and blah blah blah.
She believed she was AMAZING at her old job AND constituted key personnel. She said "I always told them they would need three people to replace me and when I left they hired FIVE people to replace me!"
I didn't know her when she had the job. I didn't know the name of the company. I had absolutely no means whatsoever to check her story, though for me personally it seems to not pass the sniff test because I feel like if she was really key personnel, surely, she could have insisted on getting an assistant instead of quitting to -- according to her -- get more time with her husband.
However, it took me YEARS and YEARS to go "Wait a minute. Maybe business picked up BECAUSE she left and that's why they hired five people!" Because I'm a woman and I have no idea how this successful career schtick works AND even when I try to do exactly what I THINK the guys are doing, it frequently doesn't get me the same results.
So I have no idea if she was really key personnel but women have unique career challenges that make it shockingly easy for a smart, competent woman to not get the credit and pay she deserves or if she was sniffing her own farts.
This blog languished for a lot of years in part because I "know too much" and I know we ALL suffer tunnel vision, wherever you go there you are, and it's impossible to know for sure what would have happened had YOU not been there.
I've had plenty of life experiences where YEARS later, some new details came to light that completely changed my interpretation of something.
I know for certain if I publish anything on the Internet, SOME people will think I'm completely wrong AND no amount of evidence will sway them. I also have ZERO desire to get into a pissing contest or make it a hill to die on that "I'm RIGHT, damn it!"
Blogging is My Occupation. THIS blog is My OPINIONS about social things.
If it passes the sniff test for you, maybe because you were THERE when X thing I'm talking about happened on Y public forum, coolios. And if it doesn't, hey, go dick around on Reddit or something. I don't care, frankly.
Footnote
This blog has an unfortunately neurotic history and I never am happy with any solution for providing the following links to PAGES on the site as opposed to POSTS which is a technical distinction unique to blogger that boils down "These pieces don't automatically show up in the archive list nor on the landing page. If you don't make a page list somewhere, good luck finding them!"
1. About