Reddit:What social custom needs to be retired?

People not being straightforward.

The issue with this is the only way to do this successfully is to know when to do X or Y, with honesty rarely having a benefit.

To take a tired example, even if someone genuinely wants to know if their butt looks big, it won't stop them from taking their aggression out on you or negatively impact them in some way (hurt, feel less confident, admit they're gaining weight, etc) and even if they appreciate it, there is no benefit for an honest answer.

How you phrase things is often more important than what you actually say. For instance, I've had people come up to me and ask if they have a good television and you can say something like "it's good for the price," which is a good way to say it's good within a limitation, where as "it's one of the worst ones on the market" is a terrible way to often approach something that is near the bottom in terms of quality. Obviously these are extremes but all it takes is saying "it's okay" instead of "not bad" and you're in hot water.

This really applies to everything and I'm not even getting to all the levels of it. When you start factoring in certain people are at a different level of closeness, so they can say more or less, it gets so tedious that it's almost always a better option to be positive than say anything negative.

/r/AskReddit Thread Parent