this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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1200 days of language learning? Different languages or the same one? If it’s the same one you probably don’t need an app anymore. Try talking to natives in your chosen second language. You might be surprised how much you know. I used duo for about a year when i moved to a different language country. After that year i found it was holding me back more than helping.
The same language, but I only did about 15 minutes a day. I am more the "pick away at it a little bit" than an "immerse your entire life in it" kind of learner. I learned a lot, and can have basic conversations at this point, but I still have a long way to go and will continue using some kind of language app going forward. I watch media too which helps. Apps are just one tool of many.
Do you just force yourself into their day and start talking at them? And you don't feel guilty for forcing them to talk to you?
Extroverts are wild lol
I live in colombia so it’d be pretty difficult to find someone who doesn’t speak spanish. Why would i feel guilty for talking to someone? I don’t force anyone to talk i just talk to them normally. I find a lot of times if they know a little english they like to practice that as much as i like to practice spanish.
That's the same thing - you interrupt their day and insert yourself into it by barging in to talk at them, forcing them to have an interaction with you.
The fact that you're asking this is amazing to me. You can't even imagine it!
No joke, you should go to therapy for that.
Average .ml user
wow it's like I never left reddit 🥲
Remember the phrase "if everywhere you go smells like shit..."
It doesn't smell like shit when I avoid reddit.world
I wonder why that is? 🤔
To, what? Convince me that being talked at by a stranger when I have my own stuff going on isn't rude and annoying? I certainly don't like it when people do that to me!
There are some spaces where being talked to by strangers is acceptable, but just doing it to everyone wherever in another country is alien behavior to me. I honestly don't get it.
Like, do they just sit next to strangers on the bus and talk at them? I think I'd die!
You're getting mad about imaginary situations. It's kind of pathetic.
Just confused. Where does someone in another country go to just talk to people without being annoying or rude? I can't imagine it.
Since when has speaking to another human been rude?
If I don't want you to talk to me and then you decide to bother me anyway, what would we call that? Seems rude to me.
Now, how do you know random strangers want to talk to you? Do you just assume everyone wants to be your friend?
No, it's just perfectly normal to talk to people and if they don't want to talk they express that.
"Excuse me, have you got a minute?" "No" "Okay, thank you"
Is perfectly polite.
It's perfectly normal to bother other people and then force them to tell you to go away, but let's not pretend this is perfectly polite. It's reasonable enough and not too rude of an imposition, but it's not perfect. Y'all do it to me all the time, and I promise you I really don't like it. I have to assume I'm not an alien, there are other people similar to me who also don't want to be bothered.
Add in the complication of moving to another country and not being fluent in the language? I think I'd just become a shut-in.
Because you don't like something it doesn't make it rude. Social interaction is a fundamental aspect of the human experience, there are of course outliers just as in anything. Anything approaching the expectation that everyone should stop talking to strangers because you personally don't enjoy it might be amongst the most narcissistic things I've ever read.
Yeah, this is something else to read.
I'm genuinely confused as to what you think they're doing. Like, do you assume that they're just barging into situations where they aren't welcome? Are you assuming that they're not using the same tact and discretion that one would use to engage in polite conversation anywhere else? What does it being in another country or language change?
I get the feeling that you don't do much socializing outside of the internet, so I'll let you know that yes, it is entirely normal for people to have polite and unexpected conversation in public or wherever. People can choose to disengage if they feel like it. Nobody is being held verbally hostage here. Just because you have difficulty interacting with others and find it annoying when people talk to you doesn't mean that others feel the same way.
I just don't want to bother anyone. It'd be rude to interrupt someone while they're shopping, or on their phone, or walking their dog, or in line, or working, or basically anywhere you'll run into other people outside of proscribed social situations like clubs.
And clubs I get! Everyone is there to talk to other people, the whole point is to socialize. I'm not sure how you navigate those spaces without already having a group of local friends or already being fluent in the local language (seems dangerous) but I guess someone could go to another country and then start chatting people up in bars to learn. That doesn't sound like what was being discussed, though. It sounds like they're just bothering random people because they think everyone wants to be their friend.
I basically have no idea how a person moves to another country and just starts talking at other people.
The same way you talk to people in any new place you move to, regardless of if it's the same country, state, or even city.
I don't think that's what was being talked about at all. That said, that's not always a bad thing either! Sometimes it is ok to just go up to random people and talk to them. If they engage with you, then great, you have a conversation. If they don't, then you take a hint and walk away.
I apologize for making assumptions here, but I'm guessing that you're a) on the autism spectrum (so am I), and b) have social anxiety at least partly because of it (I definitely did). But, it's not always rude to just go up to someone and talk to them. Honestly, there are situations where it can be appropriate in nearly any context.
I think it's generally an autistic thing to come up with a set of internal guidelines that we use to determine when and when not to talk to someone. Sometimes those guidelines end up erring too far on the side of "don't do, too risky".
I know it can be hard to figure out how to navigate social situations, especially since learning requires doing and that's the scary part, but the only way to learn is to put yourself in those situations in the first place. Just remember that for neurotypical people, whether or not something is appropriate is purely "vibes-based", using a set of fuzzy guidelines they don't even know they have. If you can figure out even approximately what those guidelines are, you'll be ok in the vast majority of situations.
Dude you got issues if you can’t talk to people. How do you accomplish any task without interacting with people? And why learn a second language if you arent going to talk to others in said language?
I just don't want to bother anyone.
I can still listen.
Everyone has different comfort levels when interacting with people. Try and find situations where you feel it would be less of a bother. For example, if Spanish is a language you are learning, you can go to a Spanish or Latin American restaurant, and mention you want to practice. It is worth asking if the server speaks the language, so as not to assume.
I feel like servers' jobs are hard enough without me heaping more work on them.
Yes but it's not fair to assume that everyone else is as averse to interaction as you are. Many people enjoy polite conversation as a distraction from the drudgery of their job.
Actually, that is the only fair assumption. Otherwise I have to bother them first to find out that they don't want to be bothered.
Then you stop the interaction and it's ultimately harmless. Should we pass up any and all opportunities to have meaningful interaction with people just on the chance that they don't want to be bothered?
Generally, you pass on the situations where it's likely that they want to be left alone. For most people, it's not hard to tell.
Posts like this are a psy op to keep English language speakers (especially in North America) lonely and atomized. There are numerous state and nonstate actors who benefit from this
If you are in public, you should expect to be spoken to. Conversations between strangers are an inherent part of existing in public in human society. Doing away with this causes loneliness on the level of a public health crisis
You're getting base and superstructure reversed.
This feeling of the rudeness of interrupting other people in public spaces arises from our material conditions. There are limited hours in a day and we have to give up at least eight (or more) of those hours for wages/commuting. Then the other eight (or fewer) hours cram in as many chores, hobbies, chores, entertainment, and chores as we can before we have to sleep and go back to work.
This produces hyper-alienated hyper-individuals that don't talk to anyone and only work. It's unhealthy and lonely.
But you aren't going to fix this by just forcing your way into other people's lives and making them talk to you! That doesn't change the material base. You're just wasting whatever limited time they have between shifts and probably just ruining their day.
Doing away with this requires restructuring society and production, not brute forcing the issue by talking at people.
To say that trying to talk to someone in public is "just superstructural" and therefore pointless misunderstands Marx's dialectical method. The superstructure—culture, ideas, social practices—does indeed arise from the base, but it also plays an active role in reproducing the base. Marx writes in The German Ideology that the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class—but this doesn’t mean culture is irrelevant. It means that challenging the dominant cultural norms (such as social atomization or emotional withdrawal) can be part of building class consciousness.
Casual human interaction and social warmth—even in public—are not distractions from revolution; they are preconditions for solidarity.
Yes, workers are alienated—precisely why we should reject behaviors that normalize atomization. Waiting for material conditions to change before trying to relate to one another humanely is mechanistic and non-dialectical. Marxists don’t just observe alienation—we oppose it.
You complain that people are "hyper-alienated hyper-individuals that don't talk to anyone and only work"—but then say we must preserve that isolation in the name of respecting their time. That’s a perfect example of how ideology defends the status quo: by making alienation feel like politeness.
Marx understood that our species-being is realized through conscious, cooperative activity—work, communication, creativity, and mutual recognition. In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he describes how under capitalism, “man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions… and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal.”
Avoiding spontaneous social interaction is not “neutral”—it is part of the internalization of capitalist discipline. Public silence is not a natural baseline—it is a social norm formed under capitalism’s conditions of isolation, commodification of time, and mistrust between individuals.
This isn't about "forcing" conversations. It's about reclaiming public life from capital. Small acts of human engagement push back against the logic of commodified time and estranged relationships. They are not revolutionary in themselves, but they are practices of de-alienation that matter for prefigurative politics: living as if the world were already more humane.
Just as Marxists support mutual aid, workers’ discussion groups, and community gardens—not because they overthrow capitalism directly, but because they prefigure new forms of life—so too should we support small acts of human connection.
Rejecting all unsolicited conversation in public on the grounds that capitalism has left us too tired to be human is the kind of defeatist logic Marx called “crude communism”—a desire to equalize misery rather than abolish it.
Instead of bowing to alienation, we should treat every opportunity for warmth, connection, and solidarity as a small but real blow against the isolating logic of capitalist society.
If we want a world where people can be free, we should practice being free—even in line at the grocery store.