Diane wrote:Soz, I so agree with you. I am getting fairly hard of hearing and find that it is sometimes easier to appear to hear rather than always ask for the speaker to repeat what was said.
Huh. Last year in real life, you sure fooled
me into thinking you listened to me and understood what I said. Brilliant job faking it, Diane!
So far, once I met A2K people face to face, none of them expressed a whole lot of surprise after meeting me. My offline personality seems pretty similar to my online one. The major difference appears to be that in real life arguments, I tend to say some fairly blunt things, but at the same time have this sheepish smile on my face saying "By the way, I don't mean this in an aggressive way". Online, I just say some very blunt things, and only my monitor witnesses the sheepish smile that goes with it. That probably makes me come across as more confrontative online than I am in real life. But apart from such minor things, online me seems to be quite similar to real life me.
). If I sit there stony-faced and not responding at all, I freak them out and they stop turning towards me while speaking. So I have to do this thing where I smile when a joke seems to have been made and furrow my brow when something worrisome seems to have been said and cup my chin and nod thoughtfully when something profound seems to have been said, without participating because I don't yet have a grasp of what is actually being said. Absolutely hate that, though it's a necessary evil, especially as we've moved so much and I have to keep meeting new people (and I don't actually want to keep my social contacts to people who are fluent in ASL).
