--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > * Message View in the Yahoo Web reader. Without it, I > > might have had to read 237 posts since this year began; > > with it I bothered to read only 42. You who read them > > all, or worse got sucked into arguments about them, try > > to imagine how much pettiness I managed to avoid that > > you didn't. > > Message View is not to be underappreciated IMO. > > It's like you're sitting at a nice, cozy bar in > front of the fire and someone comes up and tries > to engage you in conversation. The first words > out of their mouth often tell the story; you are > either interested in them and what they are "on > about" in the moment, or you're not. My experi- > ence is that if one's original impulse to not to > get terribly involved with them, it's almost > always a mistake to ignore that impulse. > > Once you've gotten to know the personalities on > FFL, I find that you can tell almost everything > you need to know about a post from the Subject > line and the first few words of it that you see > in Message View. If the person is selling some- > thing, you see that in the first few words. If > the person is acting out some petty grudge or > revenge fantasy, you see that in the first few > words, too. Plus, if you've spent any time at > all working on your intuition, you can feel the > poster's *intent* in writing the post. > > These last few months I've learned to make a game > of Message View. I scan it and try to get a feeling > for what each poster is "on about" in this particular > post. If I know their trends here over time, I tend > to trust that first impression and often don't bother > expanding the post. But if it's a newbie, or someone > with a record of having said a few interesting things > in the past, I click on the post anyway, to see how > it relates to the impression of it I gleaned from its > first few words. I find that my first impressions are > rarely wrong. > > I find this an interesting exercise, and recommend > it to those who might also find it interesting. > But if you enjoy reading every word of every post, > or even sadder, feel that you "should" or "have to," > I wish you well with that. >
Hey, thanks for sharing, and "authoring," the obvious. : ) Sometimes first impressions can be deceiving. I remember a young man who used to annoy the shit out of me while working at an unspecified place. I was in my teenage years (and not far past that now), and the young man drove me insane with his horrible jokes, and comebacks and he was around the corner at every minute when I would walk through a swinging door. His awareness was sharp as he did his duty at the unspecified place of business. A year or two of this about drove me crazy, but he was nice. One day, he asked me to go to a show with him (he had a girlfriend he loved, who I never met, but saw pictures of her in his wallet when he showed me.) thinking he was trying to pick up on me all the time, and I was repulsed by his behavioral nerdy-ness, I said yes, reluctantly. I went with him to a music show, and we had a blast and he did not try to touch me, or kiss me, or anything weird or kinky. My experience with all the other young men at that time had always been my grabbing for the door handle(if I was not interested), when they would leap their bodies at me when they got horny. Anyways, he and I, just had a great time together. I wished I still had contact with him, he was a really nice guy with horrible joking manner and the joking manner became less annoying once I saw past what I thought my intuition was telling me in the first place. He was a gentleman and I am thankful for ever having met him, as a friend. I never felt uncomfortable with him when we went to do fun things on a regular basis, afterwards. So there, Turq.
