I would suggest getting new friends.
They sound like psychotic assholes.
Start standing up for yourself.
Don't lie down and take it when they dish out this kind of abuse.
They can either give you the respect you deserve or fuck off.
You don't need friends like that anyways.
Of course, that is provided that you're not being pretentious.
If you're using big, obscure words simply for the sake of looking smart, then that's just stupid.
If you're using those words because they are the most appropriate in context, then your friend is an idiot.
It could be a number of reasons a big one is tone of voice and how you deliver it. I say thing very literal and usually blunt and to the point and this tends to really bother people or piss them off. To me information is just information but to most people it does not matter what you say but how it makes them feel. As frustrating as this can be you need to just accept this if it is a person you want to continue relationships with you need to just learn their emotional habits.
Without further info or knowledge of the person and assuming you want to continue interaction with them just learn from the mistake and refrain from correcting them like( In incident 1) or making them feel dumb(Incident 2).
To avoid alienating people requires us to have some flexibility in how we would choose to interact with people.
I am going with the less drastic idea most the posts have, if you took the time to bother posting on the forums about them means you probably are upset over the issue between them and you and would like it to be resolved instead of just dumping them as friends.
I'd suggest asking them what you can do to 'better' yourself but in this situation I think it may do more harm. So instead, try and avoid correcting your friends. No matter how nicely you put it, you're going to piss a lot of people off and from what I've read, particularly your friends and in the casual environment they were in. There is no harm in not correcting them unless they're in a potentially dangerous situation, e.g. metal forks in toasters. If you really can't stop yourself from pointing out the error of their ways, perhaps you should consider that it's your fault too as well as theirs.
Hell, you know what? Keep correcting them but only so you can take notice of how you're doing it and when you are. Try to discover when it is okay to correct someone and the correct manner to do it in. A general rule of thumb is not to do it but I don't think going cold-turkey is going to help as well as noticing your mannerisms.
Honestly, you're the most qualified here to understand why they get upset so none of us can really give you a solid answer aside from speculation based on what you tell us. Keep trying to understand, and I'm glad you sought first to understand, but if you genuinely can't, that's something to think about as well. Even if it puts you outside of your comfort zone of thinking, try and get some perspective. If everyone had the same ideals, beliefs and personality, no one would ever get offended. But they don't do they? So put yourselves in their shoes, look at the bigger picture.
Well that sux.
I have a few close friends who are more intelligent than me, I am by no means stupid but they just have a higher knowledge of things than me. So if they use words or discuss stuff I don't know about, I ask them what the hell they mean or what the topic of discussion is about AND LEAVE IT AT THAT. I don't need to know everything about everything and if I'd say drugs are not dangerous, and a friend disproves me, I am certainly not going to start raging about it -.-
So since they react like this to your statements, you either stop correcting people or confront them asking why it was wrong and if they want you to completely stop correcting them. If you really feel they are your friends and they get pissed of by stuff like that, then I'd say you just stop correcting them unless you feel it's really, really necessary.
Well, as others have said, it's rather difficult figuring out what the source of the problem is as we only have one reference point. However, assuming no bias and going on your description of these events it would seem your friends over-reacted a bit. Since I don't know you at all I can on speculate. It could be the way you correct them, their own lack of self confidence, or the accumulation of all your corrections finally breaking them. Regardless, the way they behaved wasn't typical behavior for such a seemingly simple discussion.
Sounds to me like you need to get some less stupid friends!
Kidding, what you need to is bite your tongue when it comes to subjects of intellect. Let them wallow, since they're sure as hell not going to change their minds if you try and correct them. Sounds like they're kinda insecure about their intelligence (doubly so when they're talking with someone who they know in their heart of hearts is smarter than they are), and while a educated man of science would welcome their ideas being corrected, the average man sees this as an attack.
To quote John Green (on dating, but still applies to this): "The venn diagram of boys who don't like smart girls and boys you don't wanna date is a circle." If people think you're 'too smart', then they're probably not all that fun to be around themselves. And in any way, friends are supposed to accept and support each other.
That being said, you may want to check yourself. Maybe let some inaccuracies slide, or think about how you word the way you correct them. You're you, and if they want you to change into something you're not comfortable with, then maybe it's time to look for some more accepting people to hang out with.
I can actually understand the defensive reaction on your facebook comment. The thing is that people usually don't like to be corrected in public and facebook is kind of a very public place, when you corrected them you did so in front of everyone who could see that picture and comments.
Now when it comes to that example regarding you using "big words" i can't really comment. Maybe he's a douche or maybe you unknowingly do use an obnoxious amount of fancy words. Be aware that words that may not appear "fancy" to you may appear that way towards people less knowledgeable in the subject which is discussed.
Depends on how large their ego is and where their sense of worth stems from.
An individual with a large ego will see it as a slight on their "perfect being", a person who looks for acceptance/neutrality from a crowd will feel as though you're calling them out and cutting them down a notch.
I don't know you, I don't know the people you're talking to.
A combination of proteins and whatnots that, on a spatial basis, are located quite far from my current residence and whose continuing relevance in my life (this moment exempt) is quite debatable. But, it would appear that a few of them have noted some behavioral patterns of yours that they don't quite like.
One possibility is that they've had some experiences with other people, the ones who do talk down to others when they correct them, and thus associate your nature with them and their ilk. Another possibility is that they grew up being taught that the only path to success and knowledge is through university, and that they would be vastly inferior otherwise.
An extended vocabulary, a rather stereotypical trait of those who attend post-secondary, could serve as a trigger to an inferiority complex if coupled with actual attendance to an institution.
A sample size of two alongside some (fairly generalized) speculation will not yield any conclusive results.
I'd suggest continuing on just as you are for a while longer, note some more instances and then either;
a) ask the people you wish to socialize with in the future and adapt
b) find new company that you can better relate with
or opt to
c) better define the instances where you should interject and should not; ask yourself if it's worth the potential hassle and whether or not it's truly important.
Exhibit A seems to me like an insecure prick. As for Exhibit B... well I do that too and no one has ever called me out on that. I mean not intentionally, just words that I feel fit what I'm trying to convey the best are sometimes too complicated for people. throwing a hissy fit and storming out because you use a complicated word though...?
Then again, I've had the... ugh... privilege of spending 5 years among people smarter than me. They would get condescending a lot around me, they didn't have the patience to wait for me to catch up onto their level. I would, eventually, I just had to deal with lots of insults and being treated as inferior along the way. Make sure you don't make people feel that way (although if you really do explain things to them politely and patiently like you said you do, I think only the most insecure of people would not be happy to have learned something new).
Being told that you're wrong about something (or being made to realize that you don't know something) can trigger a set of common responses:
1) You feel stupid. You don't like this. So...
1a) ...You blame yourself for your ignorance.
1b) ...You blame someone else for making you feel stupid, and possibly reject the new knowledge.
2) You appreciate the opportunity to learn something new.
I'm either a 1a or a 2, depending on the situation. 1a if the situation makes my ignorance embarrassing.
With true friends you can speak your mind without alienating either side. I am now in a group of four good friends and we get along just fine despite our differences in musical taste, favourite pastime activities, and even intelligence. While I might claim to be the most intelligent one in the group, that alone hardly makes me any better as a person than them. They bring other qualities to the table and that brings the group together.
So yeah, I can make two conclusions based on your description of the situation.
The first, and the more probable one is that you are around the wrong people, and they simply don't "get" you. I don't believe in pseudoscience, superstition and other things, but you might just say that your bio-fields or auras or whatever are just incompatible. There's no scientific basis to this, but everybody knows that feeling when you're sometimes just repelled by another person for no apparent reason.
The second reason, and I'd like to believe it isn't true, is that you're a pompous ass whom nobody dares or even wants to befriend.
Pissing off people that believe in pseudoscience is extremely easy. I tend to not bother correcting them any more, unless they're specifically using something incorrect to try and win an argument, at which point I'll point out why they're wrong. This is pretty much routine whenever I talk to overly religious people.
The way I see it, it's much better to be the one with a brain than the one who's intimidated by people with brains.
Edit:
Out of curiosity, what bit of pseudoscience were they quoting in your first anecdote, and what word didn't they know in the second one?
Ok, so I don't really know how to write this, I will try to do so without bias but as I'm one of the "sides" in this I doubt it will be completely neutral.
So, I seem to be alienating people at a steady pace. There are a few ways I manage this and I'm going to give the 2 most recent examples, spoiler'd for space saving.
One of my friends on facebook shared one of those annoying pseudoscience pictures that go around and they were commenting on how it was interesting and they never knew that.
I commented that it was incorrect and corrected it (phrased nicely), giving them a link to a source. Since they found the new information interesting I thought they'd be happy to get the actual facts.
They exploded at me, told me I didn't know everything that I'm condescending and just because I have some "fancy degree" it doesn't make me any more intelligent than them.
I posted back saying that I was sorry but I thought they would like the real fact since they found it interesting.
They replied saying that I always try to intimidate others with my intelligence and I make others look small to feel good about myself all the time.
I left it at that and didn't comment back.
I was talking to a friend and I used a word they didn't understand so they asked me what it meant, I described it as best I could and when I was done they went off on a rant saying I only use all these big fancy words to make others look small and show off and they didn't need to know its meaning anyway and stormed off.
Now in both those "incidents" I was not talking down to anyone or trying to look big. I wasn't judgmental of the other person. Those people aren't stupid, they both know way more in their field than me and obviously I don't know everything. I may use what are considered longer words in my written and spoken English but only when necessary, when another shorter word would lose the specific meaning.
"he thinks he knows everything" seems to be a common reason people give why dislike me. My fiance's parents both hate me because apparently I think I know everything. Ok I do know more than the average person in sciences because well that's where my education and career lie. I know very little in say shakespeare's plays and would never pipe up in a conversation about them because I know I don't know enough.
Also as an aside I obviously don't think I know it all, otherwise why would I become a research physicist? If I knew it all I wouldn't exactly bother with research!
So escapists, what do you think causes this apparent insult to people when I talk to them? I honestly can't work it out, why should either of the people in those incidents react that way?
Your first friend sounds like an idiot trying desperately not to be seen as one. Your second friend sounds irrational for getting mad at you for something he asked. May we have more information on these two cases so we can make a better judgement?
Now, if I was ever at a dinner with them, and the daughter asked why I wasn't praying, I would tell her why very blatantly and fuck the consequences:"Because God probably isn't real."(You can't disprove god outright, but I do not worship a genocidal maniac). Now, that would be the right thing to do.
"Sharing your beliefs with your children is bad, but sharing my belief however..."
OT:
Since most of the stuff have been addressed, I'll just say that you should consider getting new friends and tuning down the usage of big words. Can't really say anything else with this little info.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
