Well this is awkward

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0:01:19 The episode you’re about to hear
0:01:22 was recorded a couple of weeks ago.
0:01:25 We obviously knew the election was around the corner,
0:01:29 and the idea at the time was that we’d all
0:01:31 be drowning in politics, and we wanted
0:01:36 to do a show that felt like a break from all of that.
0:01:39 So we had a conversation with a philosopher
0:01:44 about the philosophy of awkwardness and awkward situations,
0:01:48 and that’s the episode you’re about to hear today.
0:01:50 Because in the days after the election,
0:01:53 one of the things that’s really come through
0:01:56 is that things are going to get awkward.
0:01:59 Half of this country voted for a totally different vision
0:02:01 of the world than the other half,
0:02:05 but 100% of the country feels very certain that the vision
0:02:09 they have is the right one.
0:02:12 We’re living in a situation that nobody really
0:02:14 knows how to navigate, and the rules
0:02:18 for how to be in this world are pretty unclear,
0:02:20 and that is an awkward situation.
0:02:23 And as we settle into this world, as we
0:02:27 go to Thanksgiving and end of year holidays and New Year’s
0:02:30 parties with people we love who live
0:02:32 in a different world from us, it’s
0:02:34 going to feel even more awkward.
0:02:38 We’re going to mess up.
0:02:41 I’m Sean Elling, and this is the Gray Area.
0:02:44 [MUSIC PLAYING]
0:02:58 Today’s guest is Alexandra Plakius.
0:03:01 She’s a philosopher at Hamilton College
0:03:05 and the author of the book Awkwardness of Theory.
0:03:07 I’ve always loved it when philosophers
0:03:10 tackle practical everyday problems.
0:03:13 Usually the sort of problems we might assume
0:03:17 are unworthy of serious philosophical inquiry.
0:03:22 This book by Plakius is a great example of this.
0:03:26 She takes something we all think we understand, awkwardness,
0:03:30 and redefines it in a way that changes how you think about it,
0:03:34 or at least it changed how I think about it.
0:03:37 For Plakius, there are no awkward people
0:03:41 because awkwardness isn’t a personality trait.
0:03:44 Instead, it’s a kind of social property.
0:03:47 It’s what happens when the unofficial scripts governing
0:03:51 our social life collapse, which is why she
0:03:55 argues that only situations, not people, can be awkward.
0:04:06 Alexandra Plakius, welcome to the show.
0:04:08 Thanks so much for having me.
0:04:11 You have an interesting philosophical background.
0:04:17 You study moral psychology and the cultural foundations
0:04:19 of values and that sort of thing.
0:04:24 How did you end up writing a book about awkwardness?
0:04:27 So I think first, as a philosopher,
0:04:30 any time you come across a topic that it seems not
0:04:32 that many people have written them out,
0:04:34 there’s always a little bit of a thrill there.
0:04:39 But really, I think I was interested in awkwardness
0:04:42 because as a moral philosopher, I’m often
0:04:44 spending my time talking to students about life or death
0:04:47 dilemmas, whether to pull the switch on the trolley
0:04:50 so it hits one person instead of five.
0:04:53 But hopefully, most of my students
0:04:55 will never actually be in that situation.
0:04:58 On the other hand, there are all of these daily moments
0:05:01 of discomfort and awkwardness and things
0:05:03 like that that philosophers don’t often
0:05:04 talk that much about.
0:05:07 And there’s almost a sense that we shouldn’t really
0:05:08 care too much about that.
0:05:10 We should be above that.
0:05:12 We should be living the life of the mind.
0:05:14 But we live in a social world and those social issues
0:05:15 matter to us.
0:05:16 So I think I was attracted to the idea
0:05:19 of digging a little deeper into the kinds of everyday
0:05:22 interactions that we will encounter in our lives
0:05:25 and how we navigate them and why they matter.
0:05:31 And yet there is a good bit of serious philosophical work
0:05:36 on topics like anxiety, depression, loneliness,
0:05:37 those sorts of things.
0:05:42 But very little, as far as I can tell, on awkwardness.
0:05:44 Have any theories on why that is?
0:05:47 I think the main reason is that awkwardness
0:05:50 has typically been assimilated to discussions
0:05:53 of embarrassment and shame to the extent
0:05:54 that it’s really discussed at all.
0:05:57 Even there, it gets surprisingly little attention.
0:06:01 So the scholar William Miller has a book on humiliation.
0:06:02 And if you look at his index, he’s
0:06:06 got more entries for axe murder than he does for awkwardness.
0:06:08 So awkwardness– yeah, you’re right.
0:06:10 It gets surprisingly little attention,
0:06:12 even as philosophers have turned their attention
0:06:16 to particular emotions and particular negative emotions.
0:06:18 Well, let’s get into it.
0:06:25 Awkwardness is normally defined as a personal problem
0:06:29 or a personality trait.
0:06:31 Or sometimes, as you just said, it’s basically
0:06:33 a synonym for embarrassment.
0:06:36 And these are all understandings that you challenge.
0:06:39 So tell me how you define awkwardness.
0:06:44 And maybe just as importantly, tell me what you think it isn’t.
0:06:44 Right.
0:06:47 So starting with what it isn’t, I don’t think
0:06:49 awkwardness is a personal problem.
0:06:51 I don’t think awkwardness is a personal trait.
0:06:54 One of the things I was surprised by in writing this book
0:06:58 is how quickly people were willing to tell me
0:07:01 I’m really awkward or oh, I’m so excited to read your book
0:07:03 as a very awkward person.
0:07:05 It’s something that a lot of people are willing and even
0:07:07 eager to self-identify with.
0:07:09 But I actually think that’s a mistake.
0:07:10 I don’t think people are awkward.
0:07:12 I think situations are awkward.
0:07:14 On my view, awkwardness is something
0:07:18 that happens in a situation when we lack the social resources
0:07:20 we need to guide us through it.
0:07:22 And so interactions become awkward
0:07:25 when we’re uncertain what kind of interaction we’re in,
0:07:27 what our role in that interaction is,
0:07:29 what the other person’s role is, when
0:07:32 we’re unable to coordinate on a social script
0:07:33 to get us through it.
0:07:36 So in that sense, awkwardness is not a personal problem.
0:07:38 It’s an us problem.
0:07:44 But surely some people are more or less awkward than others,
0:07:46 right, even if it’s generally true that there
0:07:50 are no awkward people, only awkward situations.
0:07:52 So I think there’s an interesting ambiguity
0:07:55 when we describe people as awkward between meaning
0:07:59 that person feels awkward or they make me feel awkward.
0:08:01 So if I say, like, Sean is awkward at parties,
0:08:04 I might mean Sean makes me feel awkward when he’s at parties,
0:08:07 or I might mean Sean feels awkward at parties.
0:08:09 I do think that you’re right.
0:08:11 Some people read social cues differently,
0:08:14 and some people might have a difficult time
0:08:16 triangulating on the kind of social cues that most of us
0:08:18 rely on every day.
0:08:21 Some people also just give social cues differently, right?
0:08:24 So some people might be less inclined to make eye contact.
0:08:27 Or if you’ve ever tried to have a conversation with someone
0:08:30 whose conversational timing is just a little off
0:08:33 and you’re not sure when you’re supposed to break in, right?
0:08:36 Is that a pause that’s an invitation?
0:08:37 Is it a pause that’s a hesitation?
0:08:40 That can feel really awkward, right?
0:08:43 But that feeling of awkwardness doesn’t necessarily
0:08:46 tell us something about that person’s character.
0:08:49 It might just mean that we need to adjust our own social cues.
0:08:53 Or it might mean that we’re in a kind of situation for which we
0:08:56 really haven’t figured out the social norms yet.
0:09:00 Even if it’s true that maybe some people
0:09:04 have more difficulties navigating social interactions
0:09:07 than others, you still think it’s the case, right,
0:09:13 that labeling them awkward obscures more than it reveals.
0:09:14 That’s right.
0:09:16 I think labeling people as awkward is
0:09:20 unhelpful both in terms of the reason I just mentioned
0:09:25 that there’s that ambiguity there about where the awkwardness is.
0:09:28 I think also it obscures what’s interesting about awkwardness,
0:09:32 which is the way it can highlight gaps in our social scripts,
0:09:34 in our social norms, in our social resources.
0:09:37 So if I just blame you for the awkwardness that
0:09:40 arises at the party, I might be missing an opportunity
0:09:43 to reflect on my own behavior or on the norms governing
0:09:45 our social interaction.
0:09:46 One of the things I talk about in the book
0:09:49 is the way that labeling someone awkward
0:09:54 can also intersect with our social scripts around gender
0:09:57 and power and privilege in such a way that when an interaction
0:10:00 becomes uncomfortable, labeling one person as awkward
0:10:02 is often a way to offload responsibility
0:10:04 for that discomfort.
0:10:07 When I think of awkwardness, or at least
0:10:09 when I thought of it before reading your book,
0:10:15 your book basically did persuade me to think of it differently.
0:10:18 When I thought of awkwardness, I would think immediately
0:10:23 of fear, fear of interacting with other people.
0:10:26 But that implies a kind of misanthropy, right?
0:10:30 So if you’re awkward, that means you must just not like people
0:10:34 and get weirdly uncomfortable around them.
0:10:37 But you really think that’s not only not true,
0:10:41 but it’s actually harmful, right?
0:10:44 I hadn’t really thought about the intersection between awkwardness
0:10:45 and fear per se.
0:10:47 I do think there’s an intersection between awkwardness
0:10:49 and anxiety and social anxiety in particular.
0:10:52 And I think one reason people sometimes label themselves
0:10:55 as awkward, there’s some research suggesting
0:10:58 that this is a strategy to manage social anxiety, almost
0:11:01 a way of saying, don’t expect too much for me
0:11:04 in the social domain, I’m a very awkward person.
0:11:07 But I think what’s interesting is that in other cases,
0:11:09 people who we would tend to perceive as awkward
0:11:13 may not experience their own behavior in a negative way
0:11:16 or may not experience these social interactions
0:11:17 in a negative way, right?
0:11:19 It may be that the social cues they’re giving off
0:11:21 make us feel awkward, but they’re not
0:11:23 having any kind of negative experience.
0:11:25 I do think we fear awkwardness a lot.
0:11:28 I think that we are surprisingly afraid of awkwardness.
0:11:31 And another reason I was interested in studying it
0:11:33 was because I was interested in the ways
0:11:35 that awkwardness or the fear of awkwardness
0:11:39 inhibits us from engaging in certain kinds of conversations
0:11:44 and criticism of others and examinations of our own behavior.
0:11:47 And I think there are a lot of cases where we should act,
0:11:49 we know we should act, and we don’t
0:11:51 because we’re afraid of making things awkward.
0:11:54 After the #MeToo movement, there was an interview
0:11:57 with men about sexual harassment in the workplace.
0:12:00 And you would find men saying things like, well,
0:12:03 I knew my co-worker’s behavior wasn’t OK,
0:12:05 and I knew I should say something.
0:12:08 But I was afraid of making things awkward if I spoke up.
0:12:10 And on the one hand, that’s really puzzling.
0:12:14 Like, your co-workers are engaging in sexual harassment.
0:12:15 That’s not OK.
0:12:16 You know that.
0:12:19 That’s a moral obligation to speak up and do something.
0:12:24 Why would you let something as seemingly
0:12:29 minor as some social discomfort inhibit you from speaking up?
0:12:33 But I think awkwardness exerts a really powerful force on us.
0:12:37 Yeah, I’ll bracket the question of when you’re in situations
0:12:39 where there’s an obvious power imbalance.
0:12:42 But just in general, the fear part.
0:12:44 I mean, for me, awkwardness, at least a lot of it
0:12:50 is about this experience of uncertainty, which
0:12:52 is a panic inducing thing for a lot of people.
0:12:54 And I’ll count myself among them.
0:12:56 I mean, maybe panic is a strong word,
0:13:00 but I’ve never been super comfortable with uncertainty.
0:13:03 And to the extent I’ve never really
0:13:07 presented as awkward in social settings,
0:13:09 I think it’s mostly because I’m pretty good at performing
0:13:10 in that way.
0:13:13 But that discomfort is there all the time,
0:13:15 right underneath the mask.
0:13:18 What is it about uncertainty in social settings
0:13:22 that’s so unnerving, even when the stakes are low?
0:13:25 Like, what the hell are we afraid of, really?
0:13:26 That’s such a great point.
0:13:28 And I think that one of the things awkwardness can
0:13:31 highlight for us is, first, how reliant we
0:13:33 are on everyday social cues to get through things.
0:13:36 I think that we often don’t notice
0:13:38 the kind of social scaffolding that
0:13:41 goes into our interactions, because it’s just mostly there,
0:13:42 right?
0:13:44 But when it’s absent, all of a sudden,
0:13:47 it is like the floor is pulled out from under us.
0:13:48 And we have that almost that moment
0:13:51 where you go off a cliff and your legs are circling in the air.
0:13:53 And it is this feeling of panic.
0:13:55 And I think part of that is we seem
0:13:58 to have an expectation that socializing
0:14:01 should be effortless, that the ability
0:14:03 to move through the world and social interactions
0:14:06 and present yourself in public is something everyone just kind
0:14:08 of knows how to do without instruction,
0:14:11 and that your ability to do it is really a measure of you
0:14:12 as a person.
0:14:15 But when you think about it, that’s kind of puzzling.
0:14:19 Like, we have all of these various roles we inhabit
0:14:19 throughout the day.
0:14:22 We are put into new situations all the time.
0:14:24 We’re meeting new people.
0:14:25 That’s hard.
0:14:27 That’s complicated, right?
0:14:31 And so I think part of why I think
0:14:32 it’s a mistake to think about awkwardness
0:14:35 as an individual problem is that it’s
0:14:38 OK to need help navigating social interactions.
0:14:41 It’s OK not to know how to behave in a social setting.
0:14:44 And I think once we move past that expectation that this
0:14:45 is something everyone should know,
0:14:48 we might stop fearing uncertainty so much,
0:14:50 because that uncertainty no longer
0:14:52 threatens to unmask us, right?
0:14:55 It’s OK not to know how to behave at this kind of party.
0:14:58 It’s OK not to know what to call your professor
0:14:59 on the first day of class.
0:15:00 You can just ask.
0:15:04 And I think the more we admit that sometimes socializing
0:15:06 is hard and it’s OK to be uncertain,
0:15:10 then maybe the less threatening that uncertainty will seem.
0:15:11 I have never heard it put this way,
0:15:15 but I do like thinking of awkwardness
0:15:18 as a form of disorientation.
0:15:21 I mean, I like this idea that the essence of awkwardness
0:15:26 is really just being lost in a situation.
0:15:28 I’ve just never heard it frame that way.
0:15:30 But once you start seeing it through that lens,
0:15:33 it does change the way you think about it.
0:15:33 Right.
0:15:36 And I think this is another part of the kind of shift
0:15:38 from thinking about it as an individual issue
0:15:41 is when we see it as a navigation failure,
0:15:43 we might be less likely to blame ourselves for it.
0:15:45 And we might be more likely to think about, well,
0:15:48 what can we do next time to avoid that awkward situation?
0:15:51 What do we need in our navigational resources?
0:15:55 I think we both used the word embarrassment a few minutes ago.
0:15:58 But another word that often gets mixed up with awkwardness
0:16:00 is cringe.
0:16:04 And you write that our awkward moments are not cringe-worthy.
0:16:09 So what is the difference between awkward and cringy?
0:16:12 So I think there’s cringe in the sense
0:16:15 that people use it now sort of online.
0:16:19 I think cringe in the sense of like that cringing feeling
0:16:22 you have, cringing is retrospective.
0:16:24 It’s what happens when you look back on something.
0:16:26 And I know we all probably have those moments.
0:16:28 Some of them are just decades old,
0:16:31 where all it takes like one second of thinking about it
0:16:35 before you’re literally curling into a ball just wanting
0:16:37 to shrink inside yourself.
0:16:38 That’s cringing.
0:16:40 And cringing comes when we look back
0:16:43 on moments of awkwardness often, or moments of shame,
0:16:45 or moments of embarrassment.
0:16:47 And I think that the reason we associate cringing
0:16:49 and awkwardness is because we think
0:16:52 about our awkward moments as something shameful.
0:16:55 We think about them as something we should be ashamed of
0:16:56 or embarrassed about.
0:16:59 But notice that the cringing is a different response.
0:17:02 It’s a kind of after-the-fact response to awkwardness,
0:17:04 but it’s different from the awkwardness itself.
0:17:06 When you are in the middle of awkwardness,
0:17:08 you’re not really– you’re almost frozen, right?
0:17:09 You’re not cringing.
0:17:11 You’re not really doing anything.
0:17:13 It’s only when you kind of like stop and reflect
0:17:15 and notice the awkwardness later,
0:17:17 that’s when the cringe kicks in.
0:17:21 Why do you think some people are just more sensitive to
0:17:25 or attuned to that lack of a social script
0:17:29 and other people just seem to not notice it as much
0:17:30 or maybe not even care as much?
0:17:34 And therefore, maybe they don’t experience that awkwardness
0:17:38 in the way the other person does.
0:17:39 Right, that’s a great question.
0:17:41 I think that it’s tempting to envy those people
0:17:44 who don’t feel awkward about things,
0:17:47 but it’s also helpful to remember
0:17:49 that part of the reason we feel awkward
0:17:52 is because we care about being attuned to other people.
0:17:54 We care about being in sync with other people
0:17:57 and we care about other people’s responses to us.
0:17:59 And so in that sense, awkwardness is,
0:18:01 I think, related to empathy,
0:18:05 related to all of our pro-social characteristics.
0:18:08 I think it can go too far in the sense of self-consciousness
0:18:09 and self-monitoring.
0:18:11 And I think that there are moments
0:18:13 where we don’t feel awkward
0:18:16 because we’re just so in the flow
0:18:19 that those moments where you kind of lose yourself
0:18:21 in an interaction or an activity
0:18:22 and you don’t have time to feel self-conscious,
0:18:25 you don’t have time to think about what you’re doing.
0:18:27 As far as individual differences in feeling awkward,
0:18:29 I definitely think that’s true.
0:18:31 And I think that part of it is probably
0:18:34 a personality trait kind of thing.
0:18:36 I think there may be people who genuinely
0:18:38 don’t feel awkward at all ever
0:18:40 and I am a little afraid of those people.
0:18:44 And I think those people worry me maybe a little bit.
0:18:47 But I think there are also people who could probably do
0:18:49 with feeling a little bit less awkward.
0:18:52 And I think some of that has to do with how we see ourselves
0:18:56 as responsible for other people’s comfort
0:18:58 and how we are assigned responsibility
0:19:02 for other people’s comfort by social norms around gender
0:19:04 and privilege and things like that.
0:19:06 – So you’re saying if somebody doesn’t feel awkwardness ever,
0:19:10 they’re either the coolest person in history
0:19:13 of the world or a complete sociopath?
0:19:15 – I guess I had in mind more the latter.
0:19:18 But it could be the former.
0:19:21 I do think that we can probably think of people,
0:19:22 probably everyone can think of someone
0:19:24 who just has that kind of charisma
0:19:27 and who doesn’t seem to feel ill at ease
0:19:30 and who also seems to be able to put others at ease.
0:19:31 And I think that question of charisma
0:19:33 is a really interesting one.
0:19:34 And that’s something that I would love
0:19:36 to look more into in the future.
0:19:39 I think some of it is like a kind of social confidence
0:19:41 and a kind of social grace.
0:19:43 Throughout different cultures and history,
0:19:46 people have always admired that performance
0:19:48 of effortlessness, right?
0:19:50 And I think that’s supposed to be the mark
0:19:53 of social status and confidence
0:19:55 is just having that kind of social capital
0:19:59 and being able to seem at ease in any situation.
0:20:01 – Do we have a good sense of whether or not more
0:20:06 and more people are self-identifying as awkward?
0:20:09 Are the trend lines clear in either direction here?
0:20:13 Because my guess would be
0:20:15 that digital technology in particular
0:20:18 is making more people think of themselves as awkward
0:20:20 because we don’t socialize in real life
0:20:21 as often as we used to.
0:20:24 And so when we do have to actually go out into the world
0:20:27 with other people, we’re less comfortable,
0:20:28 less certain of what to do.
0:20:31 And I imagine that would increase
0:20:34 the experience of awkwardness.
0:20:35 – Yeah, that’s an interesting question.
0:20:37 And I don’t have data for you on that.
0:20:40 I can say that one of the things I found
0:20:42 when I was researching the book,
0:20:44 there’s a lot of like articles online
0:20:47 and media coverage suggesting like,
0:20:49 “Oh, we live in this golden age of awkwardness
0:20:51 “or we live in really awkward times.”
0:20:54 But you can find articles going back like 100 years
0:20:55 saying the same thing.
0:20:58 And there was, I found, it came across a Life Magazine letter
0:21:02 that began telling the story of an encounter
0:21:03 in like a restaurant.
0:21:05 And they were saying, “We live in awkward times.”
0:21:06 And I was in a tea shop
0:21:09 and the waiter or the server went over to a customer
0:21:12 and said, “Excuse me, sir, I mean, madam, I mean, sir,
0:21:13 “I mean, madam.”
0:21:15 And this observation that like,
0:21:16 “Oh, we live in really awkward times.
0:21:19 “You’re not sure which pronoun to use for someone.”
0:21:21 It just feels so contemporary.
0:21:23 And so in some sense, I think that
0:21:25 as long as social norms have been in flux
0:21:27 and there’s been room for uncertainty
0:21:29 about what social norms were in play,
0:21:31 there’s room for awkwardness.
0:21:34 – What do you think are the most frequently
0:21:39 awkward experiences that people have in their everyday lives?
0:21:40 – So if you ask people this,
0:21:43 one of the most common awkward experiences people cite
0:21:46 is clogging up someone’s toilet
0:21:48 when you’re a guest in their house,
0:21:53 accidentally sending a message to the group chat
0:21:55 that is about someone in the group chat.
0:21:57 So being kind of outed as gossiping
0:22:00 about a group chat member in that very chat.
0:22:03 Those are what people will say if you ask them
0:22:06 what are the most awkward experiences you can imagine.
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0:25:41 (gentle music)
0:25:43 (gentle music)
0:25:56 – I’ve got a question for you.
0:25:57 – Sure.
0:26:00 – As a resident awkwardness expert.
0:26:03 So I’m a podcaster.
0:26:06 I talk into the mic for a living,
0:26:11 but I hate the sound of my own voice.
0:26:16 And when I listen to my recordings alone,
0:26:17 I don’t like it.
0:26:19 I think it’s terrible.
0:26:21 I wanna turn it off, but it’s not awkward
0:26:23 because I’m alone.
0:26:27 But if I’m in the car with my family
0:26:28 and they turn my pod on,
0:26:32 or if I walk into a room and someone is listening
0:26:34 to my show, it’s awkward.
0:26:37 Because now it’s a social situation.
0:26:41 Now I’m worried about how I’m being seen by others.
0:26:44 But is this actually a case of awkwardness
0:26:45 as you understand it?
0:26:48 Is there a lack of a social script here?
0:26:53 Or am I just being neurotic and embarrassed?
0:26:57 But that’s not quite the same thing as awkwardness.
0:27:01 – Well, the bad news is you can be neurotic, embarrassed
0:27:03 and awkward all at the same time.
0:27:04 – Sweet.
0:27:09 – So yeah, I think that there is some awkwardness there
0:27:12 in that we may not always be great at knowing how to act
0:27:16 when our own voice is being played in front of other people.
0:27:18 So there might be a little bit of self-consciousness there
0:27:21 and a little bit of uncertainty about like, yeah,
0:27:24 how to act and what we’re supposed to do or say
0:27:26 or acknowledge or not acknowledge.
0:27:29 So one thing I’ve realized since the book came out is
0:27:33 I’m really awkward when people congratulate me on the book
0:27:36 or say, you know, oh, I saw your book on such and such
0:27:39 and I just don’t know what to say or do.
0:27:42 And I start to feel really awkward
0:27:44 and the interaction becomes awkward.
0:27:46 And I think that’s just a matter of feeling
0:27:50 maybe a little uncomfortable with our own standing
0:27:51 or status in those interactions.
0:27:53 Like what’s my role here?
0:27:54 What am I supposed to do?
0:27:56 You know, a lot of people can just say thanks and stop
0:27:57 and that’s it.
0:27:59 You might find yourself making a joke
0:28:02 to deflect your own embarrassment or awkwardness
0:28:03 in those situations.
0:28:07 And I think humor is a tool that we turn to a lot.
0:28:10 – Oh, my move is just to preemptively shit on myself
0:28:14 before anyone else can do it and it kind of neutralizes.
0:28:15 – Well, that works too.
0:28:18 And notice like that, I’m not saying that’s the best move.
0:28:21 I’m not necessarily recommending it, but it does work.
0:28:24 And I think one thing it does is it gives you a go-to move
0:28:27 and then it gives someone else like a next line, right?
0:28:30 Which is like, no, no, you sound great or no,
0:28:31 I love the episode.
0:28:34 So it kind of helps everyone out by setting the tone.
0:28:37 Like this is gonna be a self-deprecating interaction
0:28:38 and now your role is to reassure me
0:28:40 that I’m not shit, right?
0:28:46 – Why saying goodbye at parties so damn awkward?
0:28:47 That can’t be just for me, right?
0:28:51 I mean, that has to be pretty frequently cited
0:28:53 awkward experience, yeah?
0:28:56 – You know, a formative childhood experience was waiting
0:28:57 for my parents to say goodbye at parties
0:28:59 to like 20 million people.
0:29:00 So I just leave.
0:29:03 So I can’t really tell you for sure.
0:29:04 If I could solve that one.
0:29:07 Yeah, I’m just a quick wave to the room and I’m out.
0:29:10 – That’s the thing.
0:29:11 The old Irish goodbye.
0:29:12 I mean, that’s probably,
0:29:16 see if I was cooler, I would do that because a problem.
0:29:18 You know, you have those moments where you’re saying bye
0:29:22 to someone and again, again, I’m someone,
0:29:24 I have a lot of self chatter, self talk, right?
0:29:27 So you’re saying bye and you’re thinking,
0:29:29 wait a minute, are we shaking hands here?
0:29:30 Are we gonna hug it out?
0:29:32 Are we fist bumping?
0:29:35 We’re just gonna do a calm, cool nod.
0:29:37 It’s saying goodbye even necessary at all.
0:29:39 And it’s awkward because you don’t know
0:29:40 what’s in the script here.
0:29:43 And you don’t wanna guess wrong
0:29:47 because then you are embarrassed and it’s awkward.
0:29:48 – Yeah, I mean, there’s, you know,
0:29:51 a classic awkward moment is like, I go in for the hug,
0:29:53 the other person’s looking for a handshake
0:29:55 and it can get, that’s so awkward.
0:29:58 But I think also we’re identifying part
0:30:00 of your problem here, which is not just you,
0:30:03 but a lot of people have this kind of inner monologue
0:30:06 that involves second guessing and kind of monitoring
0:30:07 the interaction in real time.
0:30:10 And that is not helpful.
0:30:11 You know, if you think of something like playing piano
0:30:14 or dancing, right, when you’re in that flow state,
0:30:16 you’re not thinking about like,
0:30:17 oh, are my toes in the right place?
0:30:18 Where are my fingers going next?
0:30:21 You’re just doing it, you’re just executing, right?
0:30:24 And this goes back to that idea of effortless socializing.
0:30:26 It might sound weird to say that socializing
0:30:28 is a kind of flow state,
0:30:29 but I think we’ve all had those moments
0:30:30 where you have a really good hangout
0:30:32 or you have a great conversation and it just goes.
0:30:34 And you’re not thinking about it,
0:30:36 you’re not self-monitoring, you’re just in it.
0:30:39 And I think the minute we start second guessing stuff,
0:30:41 it’s not even that we don’t know the script,
0:30:42 but it’s like in that moment,
0:30:47 we create that doubt that leads us to be unable
0:30:49 to just land on one and execute it.
0:30:54 Why is silence so awkward?
0:30:57 – Silence becomes awkward
0:30:59 when we don’t know how to interpret it.
0:31:04 And I think that some silences can be quite clear.
0:31:06 Sometimes we know what a silence is doing
0:31:09 and there’s companionable silences, right?
0:31:10 Where we’re not worried about
0:31:11 what the other person is thinking.
0:31:13 That’s a moment, right?
0:31:15 That’s a milestone in a relationship,
0:31:16 the companionable silence.
0:31:19 But silence can be open to ambiguity
0:31:21 and that can create awkwardness.
0:31:24 – Small talk.
0:31:25 – Oof.
0:31:29 – Whether it’s like at a party or you’re just,
0:31:32 I don’t know, pushing the grocery cart
0:31:35 through your produce aisle and you bump into
0:31:36 someone you haven’t seen in a while.
0:31:38 Someone, maybe it’s an old friend,
0:31:40 maybe it’s someone who’s a friend of a friend.
0:31:42 You don’t really know what to say.
0:31:45 Under no other circumstances would you even
0:31:47 talk to them, really.
0:31:49 You’re probably not in each other’s life for a reason.
0:31:51 Why are those sorts of interactions
0:31:53 so painfully awkward?
0:31:55 – Yeah, I think it depends.
0:31:57 I don’t think they have to be.
0:32:00 I think, you know, my husband is British
0:32:02 and I think there’s like kind of a running joke
0:32:04 that British people talk about the weather a lot.
0:32:07 But notice, the weather is a great go-to small talk topic.
0:32:10 And I think what that shows is that often
0:32:13 the role of small talk is not to actually exchange
0:32:15 like a lot of meaningful information.
0:32:18 It’s just to kind of do a quick social check-in,
0:32:20 give a little FaceTime to the other person
0:32:22 and then you move on.
0:32:24 – Well, this is probably half the value
0:32:25 of following sports.
0:32:26 That’s another one.
0:32:28 If you don’t, if you have no idea what else to say,
0:32:30 just fuck man, you see the Dodgers game?
0:32:32 I mean, it’s like, it’s always there.
0:32:33 You can pull that cart out.
0:32:36 – And it cuts across so many other differences, right?
0:32:39 And it’s, I mean, even if someone roots for a rival team,
0:32:41 right, you can give them a little bit of a hard time
0:32:43 and tease them a little bit and it’s fine.
0:32:45 Think about small talk.
0:32:49 It may not even be exactly that it’s awkward,
0:32:53 at least in my experience, though it can be.
0:32:59 But if it’s not awkward, it’s most definitely boring,
0:33:00 which is one of the reasons I always,
0:33:03 even when I live in DC, I just,
0:33:06 I’m not into the whole cocktail circuit thing.
0:33:08 I just don’t like it.
0:33:12 Do you think that’s because when you’re doing small talk
0:33:16 in those settings, you’re not deviating
0:33:17 from the script actually.
0:33:20 Like it’s almost meant to alleviate awkwardness.
0:33:24 And therefore we stick very closely to a script.
0:33:28 – I think another reason small talk can become awkward
0:33:30 is that without realizing it,
0:33:33 we are depending on all kinds of social cues
0:33:35 from our partner, whether it’s eye contact,
0:33:38 timing of conversational pauses,
0:33:41 even the distance someone stands from us,
0:33:43 where they’re looking, are they looking at us?
0:33:44 Are they looking over our shoulder?
0:33:46 We’ve all had that experience.
0:33:49 So small talk can go off the rails,
0:33:52 even while the topic is, stays perfectly normal
0:33:54 and consistent and boring,
0:33:55 we can find the interaction awkward,
0:33:57 maybe even for reasons that we’re not aware of
0:34:00 or couldn’t articulate or couldn’t pinpoint.
0:34:02 But yes, I also agree that small talk,
0:34:05 if it goes perfectly well, can be boring, right?
0:34:06 And that brings up another interesting point,
0:34:08 which is like, well, what are the alternatives
0:34:09 to awkwardness sometimes, right?
0:34:12 Is it better to try to introduce a new topic?
0:34:15 Is it better to try to do something a little different?
0:34:18 Or is it better to play it safe, avoid awkwardness
0:34:20 and just be bored?
0:34:25 – One thing your book really emphasizes,
0:34:28 which I like, even if it’s not the main point,
0:34:34 is how much of social life really is a performance,
0:34:36 which isn’t to say that everything we do
0:34:38 with other people is phony,
0:34:41 but it is a kind of dance, isn’t it?
0:34:42 And because we can’t control everything
0:34:44 and because we don’t know what’s going on
0:34:47 in other people’s minds,
0:34:50 it’s fraught with all kinds of hazards.
0:34:52 – Yes, absolutely, I think that’s right.
0:34:57 And I think that, again, that there’s this tendency
0:34:59 or I think temptation to blame ourselves
0:35:01 when interactions go off the rails,
0:35:05 but the expression it takes to the tango is apt here, right?
0:35:08 We’re dependent on a partner also to give us cues.
0:35:10 And I think we have to also be mindful
0:35:11 of the cues we’re giving out to others.
0:35:13 So the idea of a performance,
0:35:15 I really like the point you made there,
0:35:18 that it’s not to say it’s insincere or phony,
0:35:22 but it is that we are executing a kind of performance.
0:35:26 And some of that is up to us
0:35:28 and some of it is based on the roles
0:35:31 that other people make available to us
0:35:35 and that our day-to-day life makes available to us.
0:35:37 – There’s the social cues part of it.
0:35:41 And then there’s experiences when you deviate
0:35:44 one way or the other from what’s expected.
0:35:47 You know, I may have talked about this on the show before,
0:35:51 but back in 2018, I went on this reporting trip
0:35:55 to Costa Rica and I did a lot of psychedelics
0:35:56 over the course of a week.
0:35:57 I even wrote about it for Vox
0:35:59 and you can find it on the interwebs
0:36:01 if you’re so inclined.
0:36:04 But I bring it up because reading your book,
0:36:06 it made me think a lot about that.
0:36:11 And that led for me to a very interesting social experiment.
0:36:16 I would say probably for at least six months or so
0:36:17 after that experience,
0:36:22 I was easily the most present I’ve ever been in my life
0:36:24 because it just wasn’t in my head really at all
0:36:26 like I normally am.
0:36:28 So I was very attuned to the moment
0:36:30 and the people around me.
0:36:35 And during this time, without thinking about it at all,
0:36:40 I was really, and I mean, really making eye contact
0:36:43 with people like if I was talking to you
0:36:45 or if you were talking to me, I was listening.
0:36:47 I mean, really listening.
0:36:49 And I was looking you right in the eyes the whole time.
0:36:52 And after a while, I started to realize
0:36:54 how much awkwardness this created
0:36:58 because people aren’t accustomed to that.
0:37:01 We’re not really present with each other in that way.
0:37:03 We’re distracted.
0:37:06 We often perform listening,
0:37:10 but we’re mostly in our little bubbles
0:37:12 colliding as minimally as possible
0:37:15 as we move through our mostly private lives.
0:37:17 And what I was doing,
0:37:22 unselfconsciously was rupturing that social pattern
0:37:23 a little bit, breaking from the script.
0:37:25 And it was awkward.
0:37:28 And after a while, I guess I just fell back
0:37:31 into the default routine and got back on the script.
0:37:33 And it’s less awkward, for sure.
0:37:36 But it was an instructive experiment for me.
0:37:41 And reflecting back on it now, that’s a lot clearer.
0:37:44 – I mean, I kind of love this.
0:37:46 This is kind of hilarious.
0:37:50 And to me, it’s this idea that you’re walking around
0:37:52 being really present and listening
0:37:54 and doing all these things that you are great
0:37:55 and that we want to do.
0:37:57 And yet simultaneously just making other people
0:38:01 super uncomfortable with the level of eye contact, right?
0:38:03 That they’re feeling like this is really awkward.
0:38:05 It was a little much, yeah.
0:38:08 – I think this point about eye contact is interesting
0:38:12 because we are so sensitive to differences in eye contact.
0:38:14 And it’s also something that’s culturally variable.
0:38:16 What amount of gaze time is appropriate?
0:38:18 What it means?
0:38:21 What it might mean coming from a man?
0:38:23 What it might mean coming from a woman
0:38:24 in different situations?
0:38:26 And I think we also can adjust pretty well
0:38:29 without making a conscious effort too, right?
0:38:31 I think some of us might have to like consciously
0:38:33 remind ourselves, look in the eyes, right?
0:38:35 Look at that person, make eye contact.
0:38:38 Sometimes people talk about telling their kids that too.
0:38:39 When you meet someone, shake their hand
0:38:41 and look at them in the eye, right?
0:38:43 So we can consciously adjust it.
0:38:46 But it is again, something that I think we negotiate
0:38:50 with others tacitly without intending to.
0:38:52 – What do you think is the biggest price we pay
0:38:56 for our fear of awkwardness?
0:38:58 What doesn’t happen in the world
0:39:00 that we should want to happen
0:39:05 because we’re so desperate to avoid awkward situations?
0:39:08 – So I think there’s a lot of opportunities
0:39:12 for human connection and comfort that are lost.
0:39:14 One case I think about a lot is grief
0:39:19 and that we are, let me preface this by saying,
0:39:22 I’m always mindful that when I draw these generalizations,
0:39:25 everybody’s experience of awkwardness is different.
0:39:27 And I think as a philosopher,
0:39:29 I’m trained to make pronouncements
0:39:32 like big generalizations, universal principles.
0:39:35 I think one thing that’s challenging about awkwardness
0:39:36 is everyone’s experience is different.
0:39:41 There are so many ways for things to be and go awkward.
0:39:45 But I do think that we tend to be awkward around grief
0:39:47 and talking about grief and loss.
0:39:49 And I think that comes to mind particularly
0:39:52 because that’s a time when people are really hurting
0:39:55 and can really use connection and comfort.
0:39:59 And I think that a lot of times people are hesitant
0:40:02 to reach out because they don’t know what to say.
0:40:05 I think that there was a time when
0:40:07 if everybody belonged to the same religious group,
0:40:09 we would have highly scripted rituals
0:40:10 around grief and mourning.
0:40:13 And I think that as we’ve gotten more choice
0:40:16 in our religious or spiritual practices,
0:40:19 which is a good thing, one of the side effects of that
0:40:23 has been a kind of loss of sense of how we should respond to
0:40:25 or talk about death and loss and grief.
0:40:28 So that’s one case that comes to mind.
0:40:30 Maybe a less emotionally fraught one,
0:40:33 although still pretty big, is money.
0:40:35 There’s been a lot written about the salary gap
0:40:38 and inequities in pay.
0:40:41 And I think that’s partly a consequence of the fact
0:40:44 that we don’t really necessarily know how to talk about money
0:40:46 or there’s all kinds of weird social norms
0:40:48 about discussing money.
0:40:50 And that can contribute to misapprehensions
0:40:55 and ignorance and allow inequalities to persist.
0:40:56 So those are two cases.
0:41:00 I think there’s probably other topics that come to mind.
0:41:03 People have recently started talking about menopause
0:41:06 and the way that the experience of menopause affects people
0:41:12 and that that’s something that we’ve had a lot of social silence
0:41:16 around to the point where when people start to experience it,
0:41:19 they may kind of be perplexed by their own experience
0:41:21 and not be sure how to talk about it with others.
0:41:24 I do think in a lot of these cases,
0:41:28 the ability to talk about things online has really helped
0:41:30 and has allowed people to figure out
0:41:33 how they want to talk about things in advance of in-person,
0:41:36 face-to-face social interactions.
0:41:38 And I think that that is one way in which the internet
0:41:42 can make life less awkward is by allowing us to try this out
0:41:45 and figure out what we think in advance of going
0:41:48 into those in-person, potentially awkward interactions.
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0:44:58 When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?
0:44:59 – For the longest time, we have these images
0:45:01 of somebody sitting crouched over their computer
0:45:03 with a hoodie on, just kind of typing away
0:45:04 in the middle of the night.
0:45:07 And honestly, that’s not what it is anymore.
0:45:11 – That’s Ian Mitchell, a banker turned fraud fighter.
0:45:14 These days, online scams look more like crime syndicates
0:45:18 than individual con artists and they’re making bank.
0:45:22 Last year, scammers made off with more than $10 billion.
0:45:25 – It’s mind blowing to see the kind of infrastructure
0:45:29 that’s been built to facilitate scamming at scale.
0:45:31 There are hundreds, if not thousands
0:45:34 of scam centers all around the world.
0:45:36 These are very savvy business people.
0:45:38 These are organized criminal rings.
0:45:41 And so once we understand the magnitude of this problem,
0:45:42 we can protect people better.
0:45:46 – One challenge that fraud fighters like Ian face
0:45:50 is that scam victims sometimes feel too ashamed
0:45:51 to discuss what happened to them.
0:45:55 But Ian says, one of our best defenses is simple.
0:45:57 We need to talk to each other.
0:46:00 – We need to have those awkward conversations around,
0:46:01 what do you do if you have text messages
0:46:03 you don’t recognize?
0:46:04 What do you do if you start getting asked
0:46:07 to send information that’s more sensitive?
0:46:10 Even my own father fell victim to a, thank goodness,
0:46:12 a smaller dollar scam, but he fell victim
0:46:14 and we have these conversations all the time.
0:46:18 So we are all at risk and we all need to work together
0:46:20 to protect each other.
0:46:25 – Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com/zel.
0:46:27 And when using digital payment platforms,
0:46:30 remember to only send money to people you know and trust.
0:46:36 (orchestral music)
0:46:51 – For me, it’s almost the tragic little paradox
0:46:54 of awkwardness that, you know, it’s only possible
0:46:59 because we’re social creatures and we want to belong.
0:47:00 We want to be accepted.
0:47:03 So we’re constantly trying to conform.
0:47:06 But it’s precisely because of this fear
0:47:11 of not being accepted that we’re often not present.
0:47:15 We’re not authentically open to real connection
0:47:18 because we’re too busy trying to perform our roles
0:47:22 or perform the social script, whatever we think it is.
0:47:28 But I don’t know, do you think I’m overthinking this?
0:47:30 – No, I think that’s exactly right.
0:47:34 I think that awkwardness, yeah, it’s a sign
0:47:38 of how much we care about coordinating with other people
0:47:41 as a way of making ourselves, it’s the vulnerability
0:47:43 that, you know, accompanies our movement
0:47:44 for the social world.
0:47:47 And I think that is a little bit sad,
0:47:49 but I think also if we can just own up to it
0:47:52 and recognize that it’s something that we share with others
0:47:55 and maybe be willing to make ourselves vulnerable,
0:47:59 maybe then we can start to evade some of that paradox
0:48:00 that you allude to.
0:48:03 I do think also that one thing we can do is be mindful
0:48:08 of, you know, if we think of awkwardness as bound up
0:48:11 with all of these dynamics of power and privilege
0:48:12 and who gets to be awkward
0:48:15 and who gets to get away with being awkward,
0:48:18 I think we can also try to bear some of that awkwardness
0:48:21 for others who might be less able to put themselves
0:48:23 out there and be vulnerable like that.
0:48:26 Anytime you’re talking about social dynamics,
0:48:28 there’s always this background element of power,
0:48:32 who has it, who doesn’t, and how that colors in interaction.
0:48:37 When there is a clear power imbalance between people,
0:48:41 who’s responsible for alleviating the awkwardness?
0:48:43 Who should be responsible?
0:48:46 Or is anyone really responsible for that?
0:48:49 – I mean, I really like that you went from who should,
0:48:52 who is responsible to who should be responsible
0:48:54 because I think that’s a distinction we don’t often make.
0:48:56 And I think without realizing it,
0:48:58 sometimes we have certain expectations.
0:49:01 I think women often feel responsible
0:49:04 for other people’s emotional comfort.
0:49:06 And I think there’s an expectation
0:49:08 that women will kind of manage emotions
0:49:10 in a way that doesn’t attach to men.
0:49:13 So I think that can make it doubly hard.
0:49:15 And if you think about some of the issues
0:49:18 that tend to become awkward when we’re discussing them.
0:49:19 So throughout the podcast,
0:49:21 I’ve alluded to like sexual harassment,
0:49:26 talking about menopause or reproduction, salary gaps,
0:49:27 things like this,
0:49:29 these do tend to be things that affect women.
0:49:31 And I don’t think it’s a coincidence
0:49:35 that women tend to be assigned responsibility
0:49:37 for alleviating awkwardness.
0:49:38 And therefore I might be more afraid
0:49:40 of making things awkward,
0:49:44 of not seeming to raise uncomfortable topics.
0:49:49 So I think that one thing we can do sort of collectively
0:49:51 is to be aware going into situations
0:49:54 of where we might have more privilege and more power
0:49:57 and then take it on ourselves to alleviate the awkwardness.
0:49:59 If we’re worried that a certain social norm
0:50:00 or script is unclear,
0:50:03 we could just make it explicit, right?
0:50:04 I am a college professor
0:50:07 and people sometimes talk about this kind of hidden curriculum
0:50:09 that a lot of our students come in
0:50:11 knowing what office hours are,
0:50:13 knowing how to email a professor,
0:50:14 knowing exactly what’s expected
0:50:17 in terms of behavior in class and note taking
0:50:18 and things like this,
0:50:19 but some students don’t.
0:50:22 And they might feel really awkward in certain situations.
0:50:25 And if we just take that minute and make things explicit
0:50:27 and say, when you’re emailing a professor,
0:50:29 here’s a good way to go about it
0:50:32 or here’s what office hours are
0:50:33 and here’s what you should expect
0:50:35 when you come to office hours,
0:50:37 we can just make things less awkward for those people.
0:50:39 It might feel weird to us to do that
0:50:43 because it’s not something we’ve ever explicitly articulated,
0:50:44 but it might, you know,
0:50:47 in taking on that little bit of weirdness for ourselves,
0:50:49 we might make things significantly less awkward
0:50:51 for someone else.
0:50:56 – I like that you point out what a weird,
0:51:00 and now this is my language, obnoxious flex.
0:51:03 It is when you have powerful people.
0:51:08 You know, it is a very particular kind of flex
0:51:11 by very powerful people to not care about creating awkwardness
0:51:14 because they’re always the most powerful person in the room.
0:51:16 So they don’t have to give a shit
0:51:19 about conforming to social norms.
0:51:23 So, you know, Mark Zuckerberg can walk into the room
0:51:27 and do his, whatever his thing is now.
0:51:30 He seems to have undergone quite a bit of brand management
0:51:31 here in the last couple of years,
0:51:33 but you know what I’m talking about, right?
0:51:35 I mean, that that is a very particular kind of flex
0:51:39 by a person who knows they’re sort of above it all
0:51:40 in that way and not accountable.
0:51:41 So they can create awkwardness
0:51:44 without really worrying about it
0:51:47 because they have more power than everyone else
0:51:49 they’re interacting with.
0:51:51 – Absolutely, I think that’s absolutely right.
0:51:52 And I think there’s really two issues there.
0:51:55 One is this ability to kind of use awkwardness
0:51:58 as a social flex that’s available to some people
0:51:58 and not others.
0:52:00 So if you contrast someone like Mark Zuckerberg
0:52:03 to someone like female CEO,
0:52:06 and the one who comes to mind is Elizabeth Holmes,
0:52:07 obviously had some other issues
0:52:10 in addition to her presentation.
0:52:12 But you know, she was widely pilloried
0:52:16 for her kind of self-presentation and her awkwardness
0:52:19 in a way that you just don’t see male CEOs
0:52:21 getting called out the same way
0:52:24 or losing credibility in terms of presentation
0:52:25 for being awkward.
0:52:27 But there’s a second point you mentioned
0:52:28 which is accountability.
0:52:30 And I think that we do see awkwardness being used
0:52:31 to evade accountability.
0:52:35 And I think this happens both in business and in academia
0:52:37 where there’s this sense of like,
0:52:38 well, that person’s just so awkward,
0:52:42 you can’t expect them to adhere to these kinds of norms
0:52:44 or, oh, they didn’t mean anything by it.
0:52:46 They’re just really awkward.
0:52:46 We have to, you know,
0:52:49 we can’t hold them to the same standards as others
0:52:52 where, you know, other people’s social discomfort
0:52:54 seems suddenly not to matter as much.
0:52:56 And we let people get away with behavior
0:52:59 that is really sometimes deeply problematic
0:53:01 in the name of awkwardness.
0:53:05 – If you’re right, and I think you are,
0:53:09 that awkwardness is a social property.
0:53:11 So individuals aren’t responsible
0:53:14 for creating it for the most part.
0:53:18 And it will always be a part of life with other people.
0:53:20 But if you are someone listening to this
0:53:22 and you’d like to decrease the amount of awkwardness
0:53:24 in your life as much as possible
0:53:27 or at least change your relationship to awkwardness
0:53:31 so that it’s less taxing, what’s your advice?
0:53:32 – So first, can I just say,
0:53:35 I do think people can create awkwardness.
0:53:37 And I think sometimes that can be very strategic
0:53:38 for good or evil, right?
0:53:40 Sometimes we can use awkwardness to draw attention
0:53:42 to an interaction that we find problematic.
0:53:44 So an example I use in the book is like,
0:53:47 if you’re, you know, some graduate students
0:53:48 are going to dinner with a professor
0:53:52 who makes a really sexist gross joke, you know,
0:53:54 one strategy might be to just call him out.
0:53:55 But if no one feels comfortable doing that,
0:53:58 you can just let an awkward silence sit there
0:54:00 and just not laugh, not respond, not say anything.
0:54:03 And that awkwardness kind of really draws attention,
0:54:06 I think, to the joke not landing.
0:54:08 And so it can be a way of saying something
0:54:10 where you don’t actually have the power to say it.
0:54:12 So I do think we can create awkward situations
0:54:15 sometimes strategically for good.
0:54:16 But to go to your question,
0:54:19 so if you want to decrease the awkward situations
0:54:22 in your life, I think there are a few things we can do
0:54:24 when we feel an awkward situation looming.
0:54:27 One is to think about the interaction itself
0:54:29 and what our goals are for that interaction.
0:54:32 Like what kind of interaction do we want this to be?
0:54:36 So say we’re worried about politics coming up
0:54:38 during the holiday dinner and it’s going to get awkward.
0:54:40 One thing we might think about as well,
0:54:42 if we have to have a conversation about politics,
0:54:44 what’s the most important thing to us?
0:54:46 Like what is our goal for that interaction?
0:54:48 Do we want to feel heard?
0:54:50 Do we want to convince the other person?
0:54:53 Do we want to make them feel comfortable?
0:54:54 Do we want to make a third party
0:54:55 who’s listening feel comfortable?
0:54:57 And that can help us figure out
0:55:00 what script should guide us through the interaction.
0:55:04 I think another thing we can do is admit uncertainty
0:55:06 and ask for help where we can.
0:55:07 So if we’re going into a situation
0:55:09 we really don’t know, right?
0:55:11 Like what kind of party is this going to be?
0:55:12 How many people are going to be there?
0:55:14 What should I wear?
0:55:15 It’s okay to ask these things.
0:55:17 And I think that if you’re someone who is, say,
0:55:20 hosting a party and you think it’s going to be really
0:55:22 ambiguous, you can tell people, right?
0:55:24 Hey, I’m having some people over,
0:55:26 they’ll probably be about 30 people there, right?
0:55:28 Let people know in advance what to expect.
0:55:30 And as I said before, I think this is something
0:55:34 that people in positions to do so can do
0:55:36 to make things easier for others
0:55:38 who might not feel as comfortable asking questions.
0:55:39 And it’s certainly that something
0:55:41 that we can be attentive to in the workplace.
0:55:44 So if you’re conducting job interviews,
0:55:47 you might let candidates know what to expect.
0:55:49 Here’s how the interview will be structured.
0:55:52 Here’s what we’d expect from you, so on and so forth.
0:55:54 And then the last thing I would just say is
0:55:59 it’s easy to focus on how unpleasant awkwardness is.
0:56:02 But I think one thing we can bear in mind is like,
0:56:05 what are the alternatives to awkwardness?
0:56:07 Because I think that sometimes we’re so afraid
0:56:09 of awkwardness that we lose sight of the fact
0:56:11 that the alternatives might be worse.
0:56:14 So going back to a conversation about politics,
0:56:16 maybe it’s awkward to talk about politics
0:56:18 with your extended family.
0:56:21 But what would you prefer, an awkward conversation
0:56:23 or a really angry conversation?
0:56:25 Because if awkwardness is a kind of uncertainty
0:56:27 and hesitation, the alternative to that
0:56:31 might be a kind of very certain, very angry tone
0:56:33 or interaction, right?
0:56:34 And so I think sometimes awkwardness
0:56:36 has this other function and this other utility,
0:56:40 which is it can keep us from landing on social scripts
0:56:43 that are really counterproductive or really negative, right?
0:56:45 It can kind of keep us reserved
0:56:50 or keep us from entering into like angry or offensive
0:56:55 or really other problematic emotional scripts.
0:56:58 One thing I learned in that experience
0:57:00 I was talking about earlier is that
0:57:04 there are real risks involved anytime you deviate
0:57:07 from the established social script
0:57:09 in ways that might create a little bit of uncertainty.
0:57:11 Even if your intentions are good,
0:57:14 it might not go the way you hope.
0:57:18 And maybe the point of all this is that that’s okay.
0:57:19 That’s life.
0:57:21 This isn’t actually a scripted TV show.
0:57:22 It’s unpredictable.
0:57:23 Shit happens.
0:57:26 But I guess easier said than done.
0:57:28 – Well, and scripts have to change sometimes too.
0:57:30 And I think that’s one place
0:57:31 where we see awkwardness emerging, right?
0:57:34 Sometimes the old scripts just don’t work anymore, right?
0:57:35 – And that’s good.
0:57:36 – Yeah, it’s good.
0:57:38 And we can be explicit, right?
0:57:41 We can say like, okay, look,
0:57:44 now I’m in this polyamorous relationship
0:57:46 and I wanna bring all my partners home for Thanksgiving
0:57:48 and like, what’s the deal?
0:57:51 What’s the norm around introducing multiple partners
0:57:52 to your family?
0:57:53 And we can just figure it out, right?
0:57:54 And that’s okay.
0:57:57 The world will not end if we kind of explicitly acknowledge
0:57:59 that some of these norms are things
0:58:01 we have control over, we can negotiate,
0:58:05 and we can figure out what’s gonna work for us collectively.
0:58:07 – Could we get rid of all this awkwardness
0:58:11 if everyone was forced to take improv classes in school?
0:58:12 And I’m kind of serious.
0:58:14 I mean, if awkwardness is just the result
0:58:16 of the lack of a social script,
0:58:20 then maybe being comfortable without a script is the answer.
0:58:23 – Maybe, I guess a different question is,
0:58:24 would we want to?
0:58:26 Would we want to get rid of awkwardness?
0:58:29 Or is it better to have situations
0:58:30 where we feel a little hesitant,
0:58:32 where we feel a little uncertain,
0:58:34 and where we take a minute to become aware
0:58:36 of the social infrastructure around us?
0:58:39 Because once we recognize that it’s there,
0:58:42 we can be conscious of our role in creating it
0:58:43 and that gives us the ability
0:58:46 to consciously reflect on and change it.
0:58:47 – Yeah, I don’t think it’s about getting rid
0:58:48 of that uncertainty.
0:58:50 It’s about changing our relationship to it.
0:58:52 It’s about being comfortable with it,
0:58:54 and not trying to expunge it.
0:58:55 – Yeah, and I don’t even think
0:58:57 we need improv classes for that.
0:58:59 I think people just need to read my book.
0:59:02 – First off, that’s a false choice.
0:59:04 We can clearly do both.
0:59:08 But I mean, I’ve always, I mean, the older I get,
0:59:10 the more I believe that doing improv comedy
0:59:13 is almost like the ultimate training for navigating life.
0:59:16 And it’s something I’ve always wanted to do,
0:59:17 but I keep not doing it.
0:59:19 – I mean, I think having a podcast
0:59:21 must be a kind of improv, right?
0:59:23 I mean, you have to get good at some kind of improv
0:59:28 and reacting to your yes, reacting to the conversation.
0:59:31 But I don’t know if we need to do,
0:59:33 there’s two things improv might do for you.
0:59:38 One is to help you sort of react on your feet in the moment.
0:59:43 And the other way to get out of awkwardness
0:59:44 or to mind awkwardness less
0:59:47 is to just be okay with discomfort, right?
0:59:49 And I do think that second thing,
0:59:52 I often think that being okay with other people’s discomfort
0:59:55 and your own discomfort is a kind of superpower, right?
0:59:56 And I think in some ways,
0:59:58 that’s what going to a cocktail party
1:00:01 can feel like sometimes it’s just standing there
1:00:04 feeling like you are on stage failing
1:00:06 and you have no choice but to push through.
1:00:08 And I think once we recognize that like,
1:00:10 it’s not just us, it happens to everyone
1:00:13 and it’s not necessarily our fault.
1:00:16 And it doesn’t say anything terrible about us, right?
1:00:19 Improv is about building connections with your partner.
1:00:20 I assume I haven’t really done it.
1:00:23 So I’m kind of basing this on what I know of improv.
1:00:26 But I think that’s another way to get out of our own awkwardness
1:00:28 is to pay attention to other people
1:00:30 and to try to attune ourselves to other people.
1:00:33 And I think that’s one reason that, you know,
1:00:35 we might see an analogy with improv here, right?
1:00:37 That willingness to put something out there
1:00:40 and have someone else say yes and, right?
1:00:43 But notice if your improv partner never gives you the yes and,
1:00:45 there’s not much you can do there.
1:00:47 And blaming yourself is really a mistake
1:00:50 because they’re not giving you much to work with.
1:00:52 Yeah.
1:00:56 So if someone listens to this conversation or read your book,
1:00:58 what is the most important lesson
1:01:01 you’d want them to walk away with?
1:01:04 Yeah, I mean, I think what I would hope people would take away
1:01:07 is awkwardness is not a personal failing.
1:01:12 Awkwardness is not a you problem, it’s an us problem.
1:01:16 And that awkwardness is something that happens
1:01:18 not necessarily because of a mistake someone made
1:01:21 or because someone is bad at something.
1:01:26 It can be something that happens simply because we’ve outgrown
1:01:30 the social norms and scripts available to us as a society.
1:01:34 So I guess the point of that is we can see awkwardness
1:01:36 as an opportunity to take something
1:01:40 that’s not working for us and re-engineer it.
1:01:41 I like that.
1:01:44 And yeah, I think I’d stress the same thing.
1:01:46 I mean, especially if you’re someone
1:01:48 who thinks of yourself as awkward
1:01:53 or who has been called awkward by other people,
1:01:55 maybe take it easy on yourself.
1:01:57 Maybe say, you know what, screw that, I’m not awkward.
1:02:00 The world we’ve built might make me feel awkward sometimes,
1:02:03 but that says more about the world than me.
1:02:06 So yeah, let’s leave it right there.
1:02:10 Alexandra Plakius, this was a lot of fun.
1:02:11 Thank you.
1:02:12 Thank you so much.
1:02:15 Also, go check out Alexandra’s book.
1:02:18 It is called Awkwardness, A Theory.
1:02:33 All right, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
1:02:36 As always, we wanna know what you think.
1:02:40 So go ahead and drop us a line at the grayarea@vox.com.
1:02:45 And after that, rate, review, and subscribe to the pod,
1:02:46 if you haven’t already.
1:02:49 This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey
1:02:51 and Travis Larchek.
1:02:54 Today’s episode was engineered by Patrick Boyd,
1:02:58 fact-checked by Anouk Dussot, edited by Jorge Just,
1:03:01 and Alex O’Brington wrote our theme music.
1:03:04 New episodes of The Gray Area drop on Mondays.
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