Does anyone else use Omegle as a measure of reader response, to see how a synopsis of a situation hits a stranger emotionally?
An example: At my university, there was a girl with terminal cancer, suicidal, a few months to live. I pity dated her. It’s been a year. She’s not only alive, but recovering. She wants to be engaged. How do I dump her gently?
That’s one I used tonight, with minor modifications to gauge how responses changed. When the terminal patient is male, for example, responders suggest you make a logical appeal even if it will hurt the patient. When the sufferer is female, the questioner is accused of being inhuman, or the person responds, “Don’t. You can’t do that to her now.” The hardship of the questioner is so secondary to the patient, that it isn’t even weighed.
When the patient isn’t suicidal, people adopt a nonchalant, “Just tell them” whether the patient is male or female.
Engaged, proposed engagement, just dating; no marked difference.
Reword it so the questioner is a bit more aloof: At my uni, there’s a girl with terminal cancer, suicidal, a few months to live. I pity dated her. It’s been a year. She’s not only alive, but recovering. She wants to be engaged. How do I dump her! and EVERYONE attacks the questioner, male or female.
It’s an interesting way to tailor the response you want from a story.
Omegle… I kinda assumed that site was for horny creeps, but yah, I know the human mind is easily influence, one slight word change can make a person disagree strongly with you or agree fully.
@2Ton I assume it’s because the “tone” of the sentence changes with the phrasing. So “dump her gently” has a sympathetic tone, whereas “dump her!” reads in a more brash, and consequently uncaring, manner. Words are secondary to language, after all. - We respond to their meaning above all else, and their tone is indicative of their meaning.
Words have power. You can say the same truth in two different ways and get two extremely different responses from the same person. Misunderstandings can crop up when the same word means different things, or simply has different connotations, to the speaker and the listener.
