i mean, they were probably silent because they were listening. if they were being loud and not even paying attention it’d be worse
Comment on Anon gives a speech
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Nah, fuck em if they can’t be active and supportive listeners. Means they’re in the class for the wrong reason.
You don’t have to like someone’s delivery and style, but part of the whole thing is to get the work done in an effective way.
festnt@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Anon described it as awkward silence. This implies that anon was picking up non verbal signals from their fellow students.
And that is a thing. Some courses even include learning how to watch for some signals to guide how you deliver a speech. In those classes, you might run into parts of the audience giving signals on purpose, but not to the point of it being registered as a single signal.
It’s also true that anon says they’re autistic, which means that there’s a decent chance that they weren’t reading the audience accurately, what with the difficulty neurotypical and neurodivergent people have reading each other.
That doesn’t change what I would tell anon though. It’s more useful, imo, to foster a mindset of “fuck em” when public speaking, and let nuance develop with experience. It helps build confidence, which changes your own body language and tone of voice.
As a constructed, exaggerated example of what I mean, an awkward silence is the audience looking down or away, while possibly fidgeting, or even cringing.
An active listener will be looking at you, even if not at your face, and at least pretend to be paying attention. Their hands would be less active, unless note taking is appropriate, because they’d be engaging different parts of the brain that tend to make people reduce movement.
Again, exaggerated for effect, but there’s a lot of little signals like that, that even autistic people can pick up on successfully despite the difficulties of crossreading NT and ND people.
Which, as an aside, discovering that NT and ND people have trouble reading each other, that it isn’t a one way street is such an important and useful discovery. It’s only been fairly recently proven out, but it completely changes how we can interact with each other. Just the awareness that an NT person is having as much trouble reading my signals for essentially the same reason I’m having trouble understanding theirs makes it so much easier.
But, it still comes back to, even if anon was misreading the room, that it’s still good to cultivate a sense of independence from the reaction of an audience. When attempting to change the minds of an audience, confidence, and projecting it matter. Yeah, anon would need to be taught how to mimic confidence as well, but that’s one part of what you learn when public speaking.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 50 minutes ago
Anon described it as awkward silence. This implies that anon was picking up non verbal signals from their fellow students.
They also claim to be autistic, so no sure what they’re picking up on exactly. They’re probably just extremely anxious and have zero self-confidence.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 36 minutes ago
Could be, but the text claims autism powers were activated, but I totally get your point.
festnt@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
sorry but this is too much because of one word in a 4chan post
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Malarkey.
The whole point of lemmy and any forum like it is humans reaching out to each other, sharing thoughts and little pieces of themselves.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 day ago
They’re listening to anon’s speech. Are they supposed to talk over it or something?
festnt@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
what? you mean i’m NOT supposed to start a conversation whenever the guy giving a speech stops for 2 seconds?!?! /s
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I’m going to copy/paste in my response to a very similar comment. Please don’t take that as your comment not being worthy of an individual response, it’s just that my arthritis is kicking my ass this morning, and individualizing it would hurt
Anon described it as awkward silence. This implies that anon was picking up non verbal signals from their fellow students.
And that is a thing. Some courses even include learning how to watch for some signals to guide how you deliver a speech. In those classes, you might run into parts of the audience giving signals on purpose, but not to the point of it being registered as a single signal.
It’s also true that anon says they’re autistic, which means that there’s a decent chance that they weren’t reading the audience accurately, what with the difficulty neurotypical and neurodivergent people have reading each other.
That doesn’t change what I would tell anon though. It’s more useful, imo, to foster a mindset of “fuck em” when public speaking, and let nuance develop with experience. It helps build confidence, which changes your own body language and tone of voice.
As a constructed, exaggerated example of what I mean, an awkward silence is the audience looking down or away, while possibly fidgeting, or even cringing.
An active listener will be looking at you, even if not at your face, and at least pretend to be paying attention. Their hands would be less active, unless note taking is appropriate, because they’d be engaging different parts of the brain that tend to make people reduce movement.
Again, exaggerated for effect, but there’s a lot of little signals like that, that even autistic people can pick up on successfully despite the difficulties of crossreading NT and ND people.
Which, as an aside, discovering that NT and ND people have trouble reading each other, that it isn’t a one way street is such an important and useful discovery. It’s only been fairly recently proven out, but it completely changes how we can interact with each other. Just the awareness that an NT person is having as much trouble reading my signals for essentially the same reason I’m having trouble understanding theirs makes it so much easier.
But, it still comes back to, even if anon was misreading the room, that it’s still good to cultivate a sense of independence from the reaction of an audience. When attempting to change the minds of an audience, confidence, and projecting it matter. Yeah, anon would need to be taught how to mimic confidence as well, but that’s one part of what you learn when public speaking.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Anon said something awkward that people didn’t know how to react to immediately. Nothing to do with them not being supportive imo.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I disagree.
I’ve taken communications and public speaking classes. Part of the class includes instructions on how to approach the class, which is partly how to actively listen as a way to ease the stress of the class.
But, as I said, it’s more about how anon should approach it for their own benefit
Hoimo@ani.social 1 day ago
What anon called “awkward silence” was the entire class being persuaded by his strong opening line.
Mac@mander.xyz 1 day ago
They were perched on the edge of their seats anticipating OPs genius, guaranteed.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Could have been ;)