Thread: Be Fake or be mean?

I've encountered this scenario twice so far, and I just simply can't find a suitable answer to it. What would you do if...

You know a person who was socially outcasted. For simplicity, let's call this person John Doe. John has no friends at all. And let's say this John comes up to you. Being the friendly nice person you are, you let John chill with you for a few times. But then, you start to realize that John tends to overstay their welcome. John is socially awkward. For example, you and John go to a party and you meet one of your friends (female) there so you end up introducing John to your friend out of common courtesy. Somehow John gets your friend's cell and ends up calling your female friend too. (John desperately wants a gf.) Your female friend calls you up afterwards giving a "wtf.. John is...creepy."

Let's say you don't want John to hang with you (and your ring of friends agree too). BUT you remember that John has no other friends (and you're in a small community so there's NO ONE ELSE his age who could potentially be his friend) and none of your friends wants to be the bitch that has to kick the person out. So, you try the secret approach by simply trying to ignore the person and coordinate all your hang outs through secrecy. But that doesn't even work either since he somehow always figures out where things are heading.

So, what should you do? Mind you, John is not a jerk or anything... just a very socially awkward person that doesn't rub on you the right way. How would you respond? Continue being a fake friend ? Be a bitch and kick him out?

I've been in this situation before, and sometimes you just have to sit them down and talk to them about their social awkwardness, and work it out. Tell them what to do and what not to do, and try to go over everything. Use techniques like, 'put yourself in this position' and 'how would you feel about this'. This way you could still be friends and his friendship with other people will expand. The best part would also be that his social awkwardness wouldn't bring down your social reputation and will not bother you as well.

If you ignore and fakie it, they will not improve. If you're mean, you'll just hurt their feelings, and they probably will not improve too, unless the start thinking about what they did.

No one even wants to be the person who has to talk/initiate that awkward talk...

gosh, we are not good friends. -.-

Atrum, do you live life by watching highschool dramas? That kind of thing doesn't always (no, usually doesn't) work. How would you react if someone you thought was your friend tried to tell you in what will probably seem like a patronizing way about your social awkwardness? You'd probably get pissed off and stomp away. Even if you did recognize the issue, changing isn't that easy, and it's really easy to slip back into old patterns.

Being a bitch is actually pretty hard, too. The easy route is faking it, but I think just being honest and saying "you know, I don't think we really get along super well. Let's try keeping some distance, okay?" and ignoring them when they persist in trying to befriend you is the best... er, most honest... thing to do. They probably won't change just because someone tells them they're socially awkward, and you shouldn't have to hang around them if you don't want to just because that person wants to do so. If they don't go away even when you ask them to, being a bitch probably won't be so hard anymore. XD

You should tell him how he should better himself. If you just kick him out, he won't want to make new friends anymore. He'll just think everybody is the same.

I'm a blunt guy. Too blunt at times and it gets people butthurt. Three guesses on what my course of action will be.

I and my best friends did kicked somebody out when we were in 5th grade.

We always joke today about this because we will rott in hell for that.
That guys life turned not so well after being kicked by us.... he became quite a bum later on. Maybe if we were good friends to him he would be a moderate student with high marks and so on now...


Anyway, I would kick that guy of yours out.
Tell him whats wrong about him, and then tell him he can come again when he has changed.

Hard question, you're dammed if you, dammed if you don't.
My own personal values wouldn't let me fake it, I'd either tell him to get lost or try and help him, but leading him on like that is cruel and then letting him eventually figure out for himself that he is not welcome at the end of it, is going to do far more damage to his self esteem than just getting rid of him.

Personally I'd try helping him first, sure hes a pain in the ass, but its not fair that he should be just thrown away without being given a chance when he has nowhere else to go; and it seems to me that you have a conscience about just casting him off. I think in this instance you have to be cruel to be kind, he is not going to change his ways if you don't tell him where he is going wrong.

It sounds to me like he is the sort of person who desperately wants to be in your group of friends (from my experience (of someone else) this is not for his own social standing, he probably just wants some company and he probably thinks you are the coolest people to be with), but doesn't know how to keep a comfortable distance and give people their own personal space. You need to talk to him about what is an acceptable level of contact.

I don't know the guy (or your friends for that matter) so I don't know where he would fit into your social group, but there might be some way for him to integrate (shared interests or perhaps regular social interaction through work or studies?), if he can learn where the thin red line between friendly and creepy lies. Unfortunately though it sounds like your friends are already jaded to him, so it may take time for them to change their minds.

Also, it shouldn't just be up to you to help him, your friends have also got to understand that complaining to you about him being creepy is not helping him and is just putting pressure on you. If they feel he is getting to close, they just need to politely let him know (obviously after you've disscussed his awkwardness with him first).

Remember, the guy is not a jerk, hes probably just a normal nice guy, he just isn't that socially adept.

I've come across that situation before, especially here in Japan (Japan attracts more than its fair share of socially-awkward foreigners).

General course of action is just to stop inviting them to places, but not minding if they turn up anyway, and being honest in your reactions to him. If he says something stupid, instead of laughing, give a "man, that's not cool" kind of answer. Don't shut him out, don't ostensibly correct his behaviour, just let him observe how normal people react, and let him know if he does something weird. If making comments directly to him is tough, make comments to each other right in front of him about how what he just said was pretty awkward or something.

He'll either figure out what bits he needs to change, or stop hanging out with you guys of his own accord

Maybe I'm an just an ass, but I don't really see any reason why you and your friends should be suddenly responsible for his social education. If you're really wedded to that idea, I think I'm with Sherman on this. But at the same time, I get the impression that you actually don't like this guy. Like, he's not necessarily flagrantly obnoxious, but I'm thinking you probably wouldn't want to spend time with him even if he wasn't so sketchy (creepy, apparently some people don't have that slang).

So, what I'm saying is, I would just let him know that you're not really interested in spending that much time with him. It's like having to break up with that girlfriend/boyfriend who you've come to realize isn't good for you. It's not doing anyone any good staying in the relationship so be honest with yourself and do the deed.