Monday, November 01, 2021

Ignorance as social lubricant


When I was a kid and teen, I pretended to not know a lot of things I knew. I did this in self-defense. 

I had figured out at an early age that people didn't like it when I knew things they didn't know. Especially people who were older than me and thought of themselves as "authority". So I feigned ignorance a lot to survive socially. 

It was a hard habit to break, even once I stopped caring so much about what others thought. I still sometimes catch myself self-censoring for the same reason. 

I've also learned that it can be fun watching someone digging themselves into a deep hole. And, I'll admit I sometimes toss a little fuel on the fire by pretending to not know something, asking strange questions, and seeing where they go with it. We all need hobbies, right?

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