I love learning and spend a lot of time learning new things. I am very particular about getting information from good sources and always seek out a neutral ground for truth.
I’m starting to notice my friends and boyfriend stopped enjoying having conversations with me because I often “correct” their misinformation. If a topic comes up and I have a solid answer, I give it because it’s something I enjoy about conversing with smart people; I feel like I learn something. But recently, my boyfriend pointed out that I’m always saying he is wrong. But the truth is he is wrong, and I’m not doing it in an asshole way or to feel superior. I just genuinely enjoy talking about stuff and want to contribute and give him the right answer. But now I feel really alone and discouraged to talk to anyone because everyone thinks I’m a know-it-all.
I feel really bummed and isolated. Does anyone have any advice or feel the same way?
10 comments
I’m the same way. I just realized that in general, people don’t like being corrected and find it annoying so I just stopped doing it and kept it to myself. It’s ok for them to be incorrect. If they ask specifically, then share your vast and sexy knowledge. 🙂 ps, if it’s something important and it’s very important for the correct info to be given, practice saying it in a tactful and diplomatic way, careful not to offend.
If it’s required, give your facts as opinions or personal thoughts. That way you’re not calling them “wrong”, you’re just sharing what you thought is right.
If correcting them is not required, just let them be wrong.
It is as simple as keeping your mouth shut. (I had the same situation.)
If people discuss an issue, let them. Sometimes later you can add your “opinion”, if you like. But don’t be a teacher.and don’t insist on being right.
Nothing is won by this.
Don’t correct everything he says, let the conversation flow and don’t interrupt. Unless if he’s telling you to do something based on his wrong opinions, let him be stupid.
>But recently, my boyfriend pointed out that I’m always saying he is wrong.
It’s the “always” part that concerns me and the fact that you don’t dispute it. You can’t have a productive social relationship if one person is *always* correcting the other person.
There are times to correct people and times to just have an enjoyable conversation. If the point of the conversation is to genuinely discuss new ideas, then yes, correct them. If the point is to just enjoy each other’s company then you don’t have to correct every single thing they say if it doesn’t change their overall point.
I remember seeing a post a while back that said something like “I corrected my neighbor who said that the average age in the Philippines is 25 when it’s actually 25.6. Why did he get mad?”
That’s an extreme example, but you can see that correcting every single mistake can just be annoying. People will feel like they can’t talk around you because you’ll shut down any little thing that you see as incorrect.
ask more questions. dont correct misinformation that often.
It really boils down to tact. Don’t come off as “No, actually it’s this” but rather ” Ah I see. I always thought it was this”, or “Oh. I heard it was this from so and so”. Basically you need to first acknowledge their point in some way, because they truly do have actual reasons for their beliefs, and then present your own point as equal ground.
The Truth doesn’t need you to defend it or champion it or anything else if you’re truly right in your understanding.
Im going through the same shit.. dunno tf i should do
If you want to be right keep correcting people if you want to be liked keep your opinions to yourself (mostly)!
Here’s the thing. Most people don’t want to be corrected, like, ever. And they definitely don’t want to be corrected unsolicited. Have you ever watched Curb Your Enthusiasm? Larry David’s most pronounced quality, besides being stubborn, is that he has to be “correct,” even over disagreements and perspectives that are quite trivial. Like, he has to chime in, no matter what. Now, you’re probably not this extreme, but you can imagine that people find this kind of behavior obnoxious, or else there wouldn’t be an entire comedy show centered around the character.
To make matters worse, knowledge alone is not inherently interesting. It’s the same problem Matt Damon’s character in Goodwill Hunting has. Like, yeah, you might be able to recite a poem and correct people that misquote it, but you still don’t know what it feels like to recite the poem in front of an audience. Or the people you’re with certainly don’t know. You might know all the sonnets Shakespeare wrote by memory, but you don’t know what love feels like. Knowledge becomes interesting when it drives stories and has passion behind it.
Factual corrections on their own are not only combative then, but they also don’t tell the person you’re with anything about you. If you do this enough, you sound like an encyclopedia, and you’re just boring and annoying at the same time. Yikes.
Maybe you think there’s another way to educate. Well… probably not, not in this kind of setting at least. Even in coordinated spaces, it’s hard. Believe me, I’ve tried. In grad school, I did a lot of science communication and science outreach to try and combat this monstrous wave of scientific misinformation out there. I thought, hey, I like to write, and I also like to educate, even the most contrarian of people will listen to me if I can get them drawn to my content. I did this for years, spent a lot of time researching and refining my message to be as accessible as possible. How did I do? Uh, I think my success rate with detractors was a solid 0%. Like, seriously, I didn’t convince anyone to change their opinion. And you know what? Your social circles are even less solicited. Unsolicited fact-dropping rarely works for the people that need to know.
So you just have to stop fact-dropping and correcting people all the time. Sure, but how can you stop? Well, when you approach conversations, don’t think of it as an opportunity to educate people. Instead, try to emphasize learning and sharing the perspectives of the people in front of you. Focus more on learning what people think, not if they’re right or wrong, and share your perspectives as an opportunity to be relatable. If they want advice or to learn, they will ask. Then drop your knowledge. Sprinkle in some humor and vulnerability in there, and bam, you’ve got a recipe for a conversation that everyone will like.