1. Understand the difference between "ask" and "guess" cultures.
2. In a 1-bedroom apartment, the "bedroom" doesn't need to be the bedroom.
3. Just a guy falling. [UPDATE: Link removed because the video is no longer available.]
5. Your iPhone photo app has a built-in plant identification function.
6. A Southern etiquette lesson.
7. Here's a way to make a cheeseburger — an insane way, but a way nonetheless.
8. Dolly Parton talks to Oprah Winfrey about losing weight and goes on for 4 full minutes.
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36 comments:
Number one absolutely. My Dad was a WWII Marine, so I was in a don't ask, don't guess, just know everything culture.
Ask versus guess? Those people are obviously very short. Just reach up and get the goddamn box for yourself! Or get a boost.
#8 goes to same link as #1
2... waste
4 same link as 6
5. great tip
6. good advice, but wordy
7. Awful way to cook a cheeseburger. You are double cooking the burger.
9. Pretty good cover
5 is the best. My wife is goin through her iphone photos now.
In my life, I have never seen a male engage in guess culture. It was always girls and women.
The Dolly/Oprah link is showing the ask/guess video for me. It was the one I like the best, or at least found the most useful, but I would still like to see Dolly.
I agree with the Southern etiquette one and am very impressed with his bow tie tying skills. He also is showing for me in the photographing birds link.
Number 9 Hard rain's gonna fall is my favorite. Very well done. I would also vote for number 6, that dapper guy who actually ties his own bow tie. Impressive.
Lotta work, but I'd like to try one of those cheeseburgers.
The woman in #1 would be impossible to live with. You cannot expect people to be mind-readers.
The Southern Etiquette guy gives an excellent demo of tying a bow tie. BTW the Dolly Parton link goes to Ask vs Gusss.
Sorry about the 2 bad links. Should’ve tested them all. Fixed now.
Ask vs. Guess is interesting, something I'd never thought about before. The Hard Rain cover was excellent. I don't like that there's no obvious way to see how long the videos are, tho, or how much time is left. Maybe it's different on the ap?
The bow tie in #6 was purchased at Ben Silver. No guess.
They were all interesting except Hard Rain. I don't know - I just couldn't listen. Maybe seems to close.
I enjoyed Sourthern etiquette. He seemed like the type of person it would be fun to hang out with.
My husband and I are ask/guess. It made me laugh. He always wants me to tell him what I want or need and I always approach it sideways. One of the few things I’ll ask for pertains to the garbage. If I ask him to take the garbage out it’s because I need it done now. If he doesn’t do it right when I ask then I do it myself and he gets upset. He said he’d do it and he will in…in a while. But I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t need it done now. So she nailed it.
No "men in shorts" tag for the plant ID guy? I'm fine with shorts, but not a fan of folks in flip flops.
Thought the Southern etiquette guy was great; should be a universal rule.
Guess culture is obnoxious. Just say what you want and don’t make the other person try to figure it out. “The cereal box is too high” could mean you want help getting the cereal, but more logically it means “we need to reorganize the kitchen.”
I wonder, though if a variation of that is at work in my own marriage. I’m ask culture, for sure. Speak plainly. Be clear about your needs. But my wife is constantly trying to find the hidden subtext in order to address my real motivations, which is annoying because there is no hidden subtext. Getting a simple answer to a simple question is way harder than it needs to be. Her mother is the same way, so clearly she was raised to do it.
The cheeseburger looks creatively delicious, like a deep-fried Mars bar. But how do you do the toppings?
I don’t know how I missed the Southern etiquette lesson the first time through. He’s just fun to listen to. But I don’t fully agree with the advice. Maybe because I’m used to being surrounded by people with eating disorders—vegetarian this and gluten-free that—but I try to make sure I know what people will eat before I invite them so they can enjoy the meal I make. Which is probably why people don’t throw big dinner parties anymore—you wind up becoming a short-order cook.
The problem isn’t with the etiquette, the problem is the casualness with which people adopt special diets.
The cover of the Bob tune with the Scots inflection. Lovely that.
Not my favorite batch!
Falling man link doesn't go anywhere.
The birds are be-you-tiful. And I loved the Scottish accent. But picture and sound were out of sync which was distracting.
Dolly Parton goes on too long. So does the etiquette guy, though like other commenters I am awed by his bow tie skill. Cheeseburger clip is also too long and the result is appalling. Do I have ADHD?
"Falling man link doesn't go anywhere."
They took it down.
"... the result is appalling..."
If you don't think it's appallingly hilarious....
Hard Rain cover. I wished it had continued to the end of the song. I could listen to a whole album of Dylan covers from this guy.
P.S. If you put together "Ask vs. Guess" and the southern etiquette one, you kinda have my household.
P.P.S. It feels like our hostess is an Ask-type person. I intuit this from the fact that she asks us directly to tell her our favorite Tik-tok from her carefully-curated list ... and half the commenters bitch instead about their least-favorite.
Kinda like my household.
the Atlantic had a article about this in 2010. FWIW, calling it a "culture" seems a bit much its probably more about your interfamily dynamic than a whole regional culture
I like this quote from the Atlantic "Actually, One of Them Is Wrong The New Republic's Jonathan Chait takes a hard line. "This is actually pretty simple: Guessers are wrong, and Askers are right. Asking is how you actually determine what the Asker wants and the giver is willing to receive. Guessing culture is a recipe for frustration. What's more, Guessers, who are usually trying to be nice and are holding themselves to a higher level of politeness, ruin things for the rest of us ... Guessers are what forces people with poor social discernment, like me, to regard all kinds of interactions as a minefield of awkwardness.""
i also wonder if ask vs guess is just two *gendered* approaches.
"It feels like our hostess is an Ask-type person. I intuit this from the fact that she asks us directly to tell her our favorite Tik-tok from her carefully-curated list ... and half the commenters bitch instead about their least-favorite."
Ha ha. I'm mainly saying pick your best to deflect the generic don't-like-anything comments. Why don't people skip posts that don't appeal to them? Why drop in to say "that's bad" or "i'm not interested"? Obviously, I've picked these things out because I liked them and they felt shareable to me.
It's analogous to the dinner party the Southern etiquette man talks about. You've been invited. If you know you're not going to like everything, don't go. If you want to go, but there are things you don't like, don't say anything about that.
I don't know whether I'm an ask or guess person myself, but I've learned over time to try to figure out what the other person is. If you've got a strong "guess" person, do guess culture with them. If you've got a strong "ask" person, be straightforward and ask. I can do either and I prefer to be conscious of what makes the other person feel better.
But that speaks of in-person life. On the blog, sometimes I ask things directly and sometimes I present things where you need to think of what needs a response. I do whichever feels right for the material or suits my mood at the time.
"Guessers are what forces people with poor social discernment, like me, to regard all kinds of interactions as a minefield of awkwardness."
But what the guesser is providing is an opportunity for you to achieve in the activity of discerning, and when you have discerned, you can do the thing the other person wants and please them in a special way... and please yourself too, because you understood them and you — with your special skill, unlike awkward Jonathan — have discerned what this person wants. That's a whole subtle relationship that Jonathan doesn't even perceive might be wanted.
I mean, put it in the sexual situation. You just ask for each thing that you want? How do you even know what exactly you want and why would you be satisfied with someone who just does the things you said you wanted and thinks that's all there is?
now scoot on over to Powerline where Scott Johnson just posted his fave Dylan covers. Apparently Dylan prefers Jonny Rivers' Positively 4th Street to his own version. Maybe you will too!
If you've got the gendered format gdug imagines is common, where the wife is expecting you to guess what she wants and she be able to intuit what you want but you — let's say "you" means the husband — like to ask for want you want and want her to just ask for whatever she wants (and I presume you've already just asked her to do that) — then I think you ought to go "Gift of the Magi" on the relationship.
Each should give the other what they want. The ask-oriented husband should make a point of trying to understand what the wife is showing she wants, which includes wanted to be understood as a person who doesn't directly say but indicated. He should love that about her. The wife should get the message that he wants her to directly ask for things and to accept when he asks directly. She should love him for that too.
But it is not always gendered in that direction. I won't name the men in my life who were/are "guess" culture types. They are not perversely withholding. They are giving, and one of the things they want to give is their perception of what the other person wants and their voluntary doing of a favor (as opposed to responding to a command).
The iPhone plant i.d. instruction was interesting. He might make a good voice cover for Liberace though.
Ask/guess was a bit too much.
The Southern guy and his bow tie was interesting.
The Southern Etiquette Guy intuited that his topic was not a grabber so he grabbed with the knot.
I have never checked out any of your TikTok links, but today was the first time. The one that got me to click? #2. To this day I regret not using my living room with fireplace as my bedroom.
I think Dolly Parton's weight loss method might be a bit of genius. Telling someone to try having about 200 calories of whatever they want six or seven times a day sounds a lot more doable than telling them to eat 1200 or 1400 calories a day.
I liked #6, don't know why.
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