More thoughts on the self-absorbed.

[randomness]

Self-absorbed people have a tendency to launch into conversation about themselves assuming you already know key points about themselves that they have never told you. This more often happens when they're seeing you again after some absence. It never occurs to them that you wouldn't know, because it's so important and obvious to them. This can make conversations with them confusing.

Sometimes, they get offended at you for not knowing things they haven't told you, because your not knowing them means you clearly didn't care enough to pay attention to things they didn't tell you. But this is a somewhat more extreme case.

(Thanks to cmeckhardt for helpful changes in wording.)

Comments

[amelia-g.livejournal.com]

I don't think this is necessarily a self-absorbed thing, so much as a limited world thing.

For example, although I generally prefer to shoot "real" people who actually do something cool and just want their picture taken, every once in a blue moon, I will photograph someone from the generally icky 818 Valley video smut industry. I am NOT a part of that industry. It is very rare that I find anyone who IS a part of that industry compelling enough to want to photograph them. Nonetheless, that world is so insular that the few people I have photographed from it freaking ALWAYS assume that I know everyone they know and know who they are dating and where they live and who is hard to work with and all sorts of business details. They just have such limited existences most of the time that, on the rare occasions where they venture beyond that world, they just have trouble shifting their conversational pattern to footnote properly.

Then again, members of my family tend to repeat stories really a lot and I know I sometimes don't want to tell someone a story twice, so I will end up not telling them at all. Not exactly the same thing though, I guess.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I don't think this is necessarily a self-absorbed thing, so much as a limited world thing.

In a lot of ways I think the limited-world problem is an extension of the self-absorption problem. It's a bigger bubble--a group of people rather than a single one--but nonetheless it's a problem of living in a bubble.

I know I sometimes don't want to tell someone a story twice, so I will end up not telling them at all. Not exactly the same thing though, I guess.

I wouldn't think so.