Sensitive people are insensitive bastards

if you're not saying what I think you're saying--how dare you?

this is wrong. they are related intimately. they may be different skills but they belong to the same system - the proverbial different-sides-of-the-same-coin...

i think sensitive people can be assholes cause they feel like they're being treated like shit a lot of the time/misunderstood/judged incorrectly and so respond, sometimes preemptively, quite harsly in retaliation/defence. i suppose i am speaking about myself here, but i have seen this in other people like me.

very simple semiotics notes the connection between receiving and transmitting messages. you make sense of messages using your own rubric of interpretation, which is basically your personality/mind/intellect, and you rspond to them using the same 'organ'. in sensitive people i think the response is ratched up and the interpretative rubric is biased toward negative/attacking stimuli to the degree that it apprehends such messages in material that may well be mild.

thanks di, people that i get along with often like my bluntness. i still feel bad about it though. especially when i am mean to my mum, who's also sensitive.

They may also not realise if they hurt or neglect other people. People who are very self-sensitive can be very other-insensitive; like anything a balance between the two has to be achieved.

i don't think being sensitive and responding harshly necessarily means the sensitive meany isn't attuned to others' feelings. rather, it might be that they decide to or can't help responding harshly regardless. i think being sensitive and being harsh can result from worrying so much about how other people feel about a given thing that one just gives up and attacks - like a kinda autistic response.

i 'spose someone's gonna come on and say autism was cool in the late 90s, just like being schizoid and brilliant was cool (along with graham green) when donnie darko came out last year, or whenever it was...of course all these cultural trends in behaviour, which encourage affectation, are probably what the NME article was referring to.

i sstarted that other thread out of frustration of feeling other people's feelings against my will; i'm other-sensitive to a fault, but i don't really think i'm self-sensitive often since i rarely ever feel touchy or offended or anything. i don't think there's necessarily a correlation here between the different types, but i'm glad a distinction is being made. i don't really know if i'd call myself an asshole, just insane would do, and i think most agree. i don't attack others pre-emptively; i rarely feel "attacked" myself, actually. i'm just able to pick up others opinions and feelings around me with nothing being said with regularity

i think the importance of getting drunk has to be brought up here too, no? alcohol has a lot to do sometimes with people feeling hypersensitive, regardless of how you define it

That kind of thing.

conversely you know that you're *not* well attuned to the feelings of others if you say something to a friend that's not supposed to cause offence but they turn out to be very upset by it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sensitive person: I'm really sensitive.

(Among other things my 'sensitivity' has made me sensitive to my excessive sensitivity, which can be irrational and a fucking drag. My apologies, try and bear with me.)

Insensitive person: I'm really sensitive.

(You break your leg, comedy; I get a hangnail, tragedy.)

Applied similarly as a perjorative:

Sensitive person: God you're being sensitive.

(I see what's going on here, you're taking me the wrong way, I've stumbled into a sore spot, allow me to clarify)

Insensitive person: God you're being sensitive.

(Fuck you and your delicate flowereness. No one cares.)

Only if they go around telling everyone that they are "sensitive". Most who are won't risk doing that (in fear of rejection, natch)