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I checked my Pixelfed messages today and see this. I’ve literally no idea what the first half means, so I asked my daughter to translate the acronyms. No idea what “no disrespect” is conveying.

I never really thought of pixelfed as a place for spam or scammers. If the intent is genuine, then I’m even more perplexed by how they are choosing communicating. I’m not going to respond because it feels off, so yeah…

Perhaps I’m just showing my age?

Ehhh I don’t think this is too farfetched. Not all young people talk like this but some sure do. The no disrespect is kinda odd though, but may just be referring to him asking you a question out of the blue.

But yeah I wouldn’t respond just on the basis of I hate people asking if they can ask me a question but not asking the question. Like well you already asked me one question and now I need to wait to hear the second one?

Yeah. It’s not like you only get one message with X characters. They could have just got to the point. 😁

Seems more like the one of the wrong number sms spams.

Those can actually be pretty fun to respond to for awhile. 🙃

Ohh. That would be a pretty fun thread to start here.

No disrespect but may I ask you some questions

why not ask the question immediately, I don’t get this

What pisses me off about this is that if they believe that’s rude, they’re already being rude nt asking one. Like you literally just asked me a question. Just assssskkkkkkk ughhh. People can be exhausting.

That’d be a little rude, no? Gotta see if the person has time to talk first.

Looks to me like they want to ask it over a call instead of text, which could be reasonable depending on the question.

I’m curious about your response.

Since text messages can be answered any time, at any speed, I can’t imagine why it would be rude to just ask or how time availability would be an issue. Do you find yourself similarly texting and asking if people can text (immediately)?

Just feels like phishing… with the weirdest phishing message I’ve ever read as bait.

Asking someone if they have time to talk, no response is the same as a “no”.

Asking someone “Hey I wanna go to this concert on Friday, should I buy two tix and we’ll go together?” means you need an immediate response or you’re either going to miss the concert or piss off your friend.

The purpose of being polite is to reduce social frictions.

The jnteresting thing about politeness is how it varies between cultures and persons. Things really can very widely.

I personally can’t imagine emailing someone only to ask “may I ask you a question” rather than asking the question itself, but I suppose that might be more polite with some folks?

In the case of this original message, I literally have no idea what half of it meant. English isn’t my first language, but I think I’ve got it pretty down. This was a whole new (generational?) level. 😅

To be frank with you, it’s the opposite. Asking to ask means that now I have to wait to actually get your question, which is kind of annoying. It’s not egregious or anything, but I’m not keen on it, nor are others [1] [2] [3].

Those are pretty amusing links. 😁

This is one of those “varies by culture” things, I think. Asking to ask doesn’t create an obligation, asking the first time does. If it’s from a superior to a subordinate, that’s fine. Same if it’s from a student to teacher or any other relationship where “I am here to help you” is implicit. But between equals it’s different, mostly because it implies that they’re not equal, that the asker is in a position to create tasks for the other person.

This is engagement bait. It’s spam.

https://nohello.net/

I appreciate the response and perspective. For me, the obligation begins the instant I am made aware someone wants something, irrespective of if they actually ask it. Even if I end up turning it down, I still have to be polite and get the question first, explain why, and potentially who might be able to help if I have any leads. If I were to side step all of that and say “no, do not ask me a question” upon being asked to ask, that would be seen as very rude, and I would feel rude for doing it too.

Exactly my thought. Never heard the term “engagement bait”, but it smells right. 🙂

Statements followed by question marks hurt my brain, and I will perceive them as disrespectful.

Yes.

Yes. And it’s not even hard to understand what’s being said.

“Do you have time to answer some questions?” is a very considerate thing to ask. 🤨

If someone has a question, I can answer it immediately if they just ask me. If they say hi, ask me how I’m doing, or ask if they can ask me something, then it is going to take me longer to get them the information they need. Besides, there’s never a setting where the answer to “can I ask you a question” is no, because they’ve given me no information about what type of question they want to ask. So to properly even answer that question I’d need to ask them more questions! So just ask the damn question. If I’m busy and can’t answer I’ll just say “I’m busy right now and will answer when I can” or direct them to someone else who I think can answer sooner.

Here’s what would piss me of the most:

“Hey, I got a question. Do you have time to talk?”

Me not knowing what this is about or how long it would take to answer this mysterious question of yours: “not right now, gonna text you in the evening”

Me (later): “So what was your question?”

“I wanted to go to that concert on Friday. But now all of the tickets are gone and I’m going alone, lmao”

I HAD enough time to answer a simple yes/no question. I hate it when people ask if I have time to text. At least give me a fucking hint like “hey I got a short question: its about the concert on Friday”. Asking if one has time to text causes the most social friction IMO but the least visible friction (to you).

It’s not proper grammar but it’s pretty common in other languages like Spanish (in fact that’s pretty much the only way to ask a lot of questions). I think it’s only disrespectful if it’s used in a situation that demands formality.

In that situation, when you asked her later, your friend should’ve said “Oh don’t worry about it, I was able to resolve it without you, but thanks for checking in,” and then changed the subject.

Seems pretty straightforward.

“Hey, what’s up? You’re not in trouble or anything, but I’d like to ask if it’s okay to message you privately. I have a question for you.”

You dont speak jive, UNC.

Most people, regardless of language, use slang. Including myself. When it comes to acronym use though, I don’t often use text acronyms. I understand most early ones, but newer ones pop up now and again.

I’ve heard ‘what’s good’, but never a text acronym of wsg. After my daughter mentioned that, that made sense.

“No disrespect” is something I think I would normally understand given some context, but this message is out of the blue from a stranger I’ve never interacted with. I honestly thought that if this message wasn’t spam and if I responded, they were going to be critical or rude about something and they were perhaps trying to soften the blow or something. Ironically, that seems to be the opposite of what your suggesting. 🤷🏽

Language can be funny.

Well, to be honest, language is always hard to understand if you’ve never heard the words ( or acronyms) used in the first place. That’s the nature the ignorance.

Out of genuine curiosity, if you were to translate the original message into plain grammatically correct English, how would you translate it?

They sent a private message to ask if they could privately ask something? That’s really really strange to me.

And if they’re starting the message implying that I’m not in trouble, then that makes it even more confusing because I have no reason to think I would be in trouble.

But if this is a now common way of communicating with people, then I genuinely want to understand that. I simply never read or heard any examples of it from a stranger out of the blue.

The main reason I’m not indulging it is simply because I get multiple spam messages via SMS each week. They all start with an attempt to phish for somebody’s attention. Something as simple as saying “hello” or “are you still going to make it tonight?” Then it’s revealed that, whoops wrong number, and they start trying to interact with you (because, why not, it’s friendly) and eventually phish for information. It’s a pretty common scheme.

At first I used to have fun responding, but after doing more reading on the scheme and the unfortunate people who are being used to send those kinds of messages, I realized makes things worse for the person being forced to do that work.

What threw me off about this one is that I couldn’t understand it. And for that reason, it made me wonder if it really was spam in the first place. I mean I’ve seen grammatically incorrect spam all the time, but this one could be intentional. So I figured I’d see if other people fully understood what it meant.

“Hey, what’s going on? I don’t mean to bother you, but could you call me real quick? I got a question for you.”

Thank you Chat GPT for translating this one for me. Haha.

🧓🏽

It’s a cold message from a stranger on a platform that doesn’t have call support.

The first half is sort of what I got out of it, though.

Thanks.

I see what you’re saying here, yeah.

Digital etiquette has evolved a lot. Typically, these days, sending a message in your DMs is less like pulling you aside for a whisper and more like shouting inside your living room. The culture that’s grown up around power-tripping mod bans, scams, and other awful shit has made messaging someone privately a delicate matter.

This person is being polite by knocking on your door to announce that they’re already in your living room, and asking permission to speak with you. I see this as excellent behavior.

This is interesting.

My lack of experience on most socials isn’t helping. I’ve never used Snapchat Twitter Instagram tiktock etc. Pixelfed was my first venture into that realm, but i only use it as a person gallery and to check out interesting photography from others. I know it’s modeled on Instagram, which has grown beyond that quite a bit, but that’s never been for me though.

Anyway, thanks for the insight.

The Internet’s grown up a lot. Different websites and apps will develop entire subcultures, with different slang, etiquette, politics, and posting standards. What’s acceptable in one neighborhood will get you downvoted into oblivion somewhere else. Like the real world, everybody eventually finds their lunch table.

100% this. There are very specific kinds of communities that I gravitate towards. Forums, link aggregators, and the older social platforms like FB where are you friend actual friends. The lack of high-speed internet and mobile data made a lot of the other platforms less accessible to me as I’ve lived around the world. When you have a data budget, you don’t tend to use media centric services where people scroll through content rapidly. I’ve also never really been into “following” strangers. I’ve only recently started doing it on Pixelfed because it helps further define the kind of photography and art I’m interested in looking at.

I pick things up and figure things out over time. Like 4chan green text which I never understood, but would see quoted on Lemmy or Reddit. I’ll figure out these abbreviations and manners of speech as well… eventually..haha.

So if they don’t respond to your “do you have time to talk” initial message, then you just don’t invite them to the concert at all and never tell them about it?

All to avoid just asking them up-front whether they want to go or not?

That’s wild, I genuinely don’t understand how this is better in any way.

Imo if the question is urgent, either call them or add something to the text like “tickets are going quick and I’m going to buy them ASAP, so if I don’t hear back by , I’ll assume you’re out”

If you only reach out to someone with straightforward requests, it seems like they’re being used. I value the hypothetical you as an individual, rather than a resource that provides me with something.

I’ve grown to realize that most other people don’t seem to feel the same way and I try to accommodate, but every time I start a conversation with a demand, it feels rude to me.

What is ‘wsg?’ We sex goats? Why shoot, Granny? Welcome, Shit Gobbler?

So if they don’t respond to your “do you have time to talk” initial message, then you just don’t invite them to the concert at all and never tell them about it?

Yep, that’s right.

All to avoid just asking them up-front whether they want to go or not?

This is where I have to correct you. Not asking them straight out, and not mentioning it later if they don’t respond, are both is service of avoiding putting pressure on them.

Can you explain the “pressure” part a bit more? It sounds like you’ve got a time-sensitive question, but rather than asking the question and getting a response (or not), you’re asking to ask a time-sensitive question and getting a response (or not). If you’re trying to avoid the pressure of a time-sensitive question, it doesn’t seem like this approach fixes that.

Only thing I can see is that this approach prevents the situation where the recipient takes too long to respond but did actually want to go to the concert, forcing the sender to explain that it’s unfortunately too late, tickets have been purchased and they don’t have one. But it seems like clarity in the initial message is still the best way to give them a chance to respond promptly if they really do want to go.

Who knows, maybe I have finally gotten too old to understand modern youth etiquette

Most definitely the last one. 😁

Just curious: Would you consider it rude if someone else sends you a text with a straightforward request? Or do you just feel like it could be perceived as rude when you do it?

If the only messages I ever receive from that person are requests and demands, I don’t know if I would call it rude from them, but I certainly wouldn’t feel valued as a person.

[…] , are both is service of avoiding putting pressure on them.

All you’re avoiding is going to the concert with your friend.

I’d hate to be treated that way. Ofc it’s fine if this is the social norm for you and people around you.

https://media.piefed.social/posts/Ls/lf/LslfuWmoyvvAOXR.jpg

(Me after someone tells me ‘oh don’t worry about it’)

Okay I get that. However, I feel like this has nothing to do with the original issue. If I only ever receive “requests and demands” from someone it would not make it any better if they beforehand say “hey, do you have time for a quick question” every time.

Hey, I have some thoughts about your comment. Do you have time to read them? If so I’d like to formulate those thoughts as a reply to your comment.

Cheers

Yeah, just hit me up when you have time. It might take me a day to get back to you, though.

Sure I’ll, write when I got time.

I suppose that’s a valid point, but engaging in discourse with a person before and, ideally, after a request seems to me to express that you appreciate them as both a person with whom you’d like to engage as well as someone who can help you. Admittedly the positive impact is diminished if you only do so when you need something.

It is highly dependent on the other person’s interpretation of the situation. If they don’t like to chat, then the person attempting to do so certainly could be interpreted as the rude one.

Every generation creates words and slangs, which is totally fine, but when speaking or texting, use formal every day words.
Years ago in chat rooms people would ask AS, which meant age and sex, which I didn’t know.

ASL?

Yea this one. L is for language??

Yep. ☺️

Basically how every 90s chat room session started.

I remember L being for location.