Did you infer rules of behaviour from TV and media

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I remember building out most of my social ruleset as a teenager from Friends (the American sitcom) and Neighbours (the Australian soap opera).

With hindsight I can see these weren't particularly good sources and I've had to clear out quite a few junk rules since then.

Did anyone else have this experience, do you exist by a set of heuristics, and did you add any bad rules to the rulebase which you had to clean out later?

Nope, I learned rules of social behavior from my family. My parents are quite religious, so I was dragged to church constantly, but it was a good training ground for basic manners and etiquette. I was strictly drilled on how to interact with others and immediately corrected on anything that was less than appropriate. Today it would probably be referred to as a form of Behavioral Therapy.

Of course, in the early 60s, television was still pretty conservative, too, so what I saw in the media pretty much backed up what I was taught at home.

Yes, all the time and it gets me in trouble. At least it used to. Now I don't do it as much.

One, something like 'Friends' with Ross, Monica, Raquel and the whole crew, has a lot of sarcasm and that's not likely to be well received.

Plus, it's just too complicated. It's all kinds of witty comebacks and that kind of stuff. Well, I tend to think too long before I talk anyway.

**or I have too high standards. I've been helped a lot by the approach of taking a conscious decision to turn down my internal censor so that the default setting is that it's probably okay to go ahead and say it anyway, unless it really jumps out at me as inappropriate. Combined with such skills as, if a person needs space, go ahead and give them space.***

And the witty comeback is trying too hard, and that kind of works against social interaction, too.

**instead, any kind of straightforward broach of conversation, and maybe the other person is in a talkative mood and maybe they're not, and either way is fine.**

I used to watch a lot of tv when I was younger. I have learned the hard way how life is not rosy like the 80s sitcoms might have you believe. Life is not a Disney movie as much as we might like for it to be. Oh man do I love family films from the 8 's. I admit, thanks to 80's media, I do live in a dreamworld. My expectations for an enjoyable life are far higher than how my life is turning out. I hope to make my Golden Retriever famous, but we'll see.

Yes it was the same for me. I learned how to act from what I saw in movies and tv shows. And I was always confused when things didn't work that way in real life.

Yep, I did this. When Big Brother first hit Australian television in 2001, I watched it obsessively for the sole purpose of learning what was socially acceptable behaviour amongst other people. I was actually so excited about the whole reality TV concept, because it meant that I could observe, study and learn, without needing to interact myself, to do so. I liken it to the experience of a field scientist who gets a new piece of equipment enabling her to observe wild animal tribes from a distance. This provides benefits both in limiting personal exposure to danger, as well as reducing the risk of data collection itself altering the animals natural behaviours.

Of course, as you can imagine, the kind of personalities enlisted for shows like Big Brother are not necessarily the best models for someone introverted and a bit awkward to attempt to imitate, but luckily I held back somewhat from the more extroverted behaviours, and concentrated more on piecing together the rules of casual conversation as best I could.

The most memorable error I made in the beginning, was assuming that the rules governing what was allowed to be said or done, could be applied in a blanket-type approach to everyone. Therefore, if 'so&so #1' was observed to say something to 'so&so #2', then that must mean that this is a phrase or sentence that is ok to be uttered to anyone, by anyone. Took me a bit longer (and a few embarrassing social interaction trials), to realise that social status, group status, and especially the personal relationships between people, are actually vitally important pieces of information in assessing who was allowed to get away with something, and who was not.

So complicated!

Last edited by la_damoiselle on 06 Dec 2013, 4:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, I did. The problem was that the type of TV show the BBC showed in the UK at the time bore very little resemblance to the life I was living in a poor working class part of a poor city. Soap operas weren't really in existence then, with a very few exceptions like Coronation Street which has run for nearly 53 years (first episode December 9, 1960). That show bore some resemblance to my lived experience but I ended up trying to carry off a mixture of 'Northern Grit' and 'Little Lord Fauntleroy'.

I realised many years later that this was a mistake.

"Friends" taught me that humor is a great defense mechanism

Kids in sitcoms ALWAYS sassed back, but for some reason it just got me smacked in the mouth by my mother.

I learned social skills mostly from my parents, though now I learn a lot more from books and TV, since I have started to look for what other people do. Some of the instruction from my parents was confusing, though, like "Don't talk back." I was over 30 before I figured out what on earth "talking back" even meant. I just knew that sometimes when I was talking I would be scolded or sent to my room for doing this mysterious thing called "talking back". I didn't even pick up that it always happened when I disagreed with them, much less realizing that it was when I expressed my disagreement in a particular way. I am still not totally clear on where the line is between respectful disagreement and "talking back", though "talking back" seems to be used as a label only when a child, employee, or "underling" is disagreeing (rudely?) with someone in authority over them.

Other lessons from my parents were more helpful--say thank you when someone gives you something; you have to answer when someone says something to you, even if you don't see anything in particular that needs to be added; sharing toys by dividing them evenly between all the people playing (especially helpful when other kids want to "play wrong", because now they can use their blocks/cars/dolls how they want, and you can use yours the way you want); the hello/how are you/fine routine, etc. "Don't be so literal" was not particularly helpful, though I have learned to look for a second meaning if the first meaning that occurs to me doesn't seem to make sense.

TV and books reinforced real life comments like "look at me when I'm talking to you", though how to properly interface that with "don't stare" is still beyond me.

I had a conservative family, and I grew up in the 1970s, with lots of old TV shows from the 1950s-1960s as well, so I didn't have the bad examples from Friends. However, it's a little hard to apply conversational skills learned from Superfriends, Space Giants, and Star Trek to real life, especially as a kid. The Brady Bunch and Happy Days were probably closer, but I actually did end up talking more like Spock than the Brady kids. The idea of using popular slang always seemed to me like I was copying or pretending to belong to a group I didn't belong to. So, while I understood the changing slang terms, I never used them. (Except for "neat-o", which appealed to me for some reason, and I said it rather too often for a few months.)

For other social skills, TV and books were more helpful, because I learned that "_____________ offends/bores people", which people were either too polite to tell me, or told me to subtly for me to pick up on. I wasn't really aware enough to pick up on a lot of things until past 30yo, though. I do remember realizing that a character who was depicted as negative (boring or stuck up or something) in a book I was reading was talking like I would, and realizing that I shouldn't talk that way. I don't remember what he did though--probably talking too much about himself and his interests instead of listening to other people.

"Talking back" is what I used to get in trouble for, really that is the ONLY thing I ever got in trouble for as a child...well either that or I got criticized for being too quiet and not responding to people I never could figure that out, was I supposed to talk or not? I always thought what I had to say was completely reasonable but it would make people angry. But they didn't like it if I was quiet either. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I was always clear on one thing though I never saw myself as being "under" to anyone no matter what kind of authority they were supposed to have over me....I saw myself as equal to them but I guess that is what offended people.

Somewhat to my shame, during a period of minimal social interaction spanning from about 16 to 21, I attempted to keep up on social behaviour by watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Of course, I had already had a significant development of my social skills in my childhood and teenage years, through interaction with relatives and age peers. But what a young adult was supposed to do when faced with another human being, was not entirely clear to me. So, I watched Buffy (and some other shows).

Just like superliminary and Aardvark, it did not yield all that many good results.

I did. It's part of why I wish I never grew up watching TV.

So many bad rules learned from watching TV. Even with "reality TV" today, you aren't seeing ACCEPTABLE human interaction or even a truthful representation of what really went on during the filming of the show.

Wowwww. I can so relate to this. I thought I was the only one. There was a period of my life where, for whatever reason, I thought that Ewan McGregor's character from Trainspotting was the person to emulate. Everything from copying his mannerisms to acquiring a heroin addiction, the latter of which I am still recovering from.

Yeah, well.

When I was much younger I attempted to emulate various models of behavior I saw on tv and in the movies with little success and a lot of embarassing mistakes.
As an adult, especially since being diagnosed at 20, I've given up on acting as anything other than what I am.

Although I do still co-opt phrases and mannerisms, I generally cherry-pick them and integrate them with my set of scripts.
It's funny, the look on the face of NTs, when you explain to them that nearly all of your mannerisms and speech paterns are essentially contrived affectations learned, maintained, updated, and practiced till they're relatively natural seeeming, but at their base they're nothing but a set of scripts.

They think I'm joking, or messing with them when I try to explain it, but they just can't accept that even the explaination i'm giving them was scripted and practiced.
Silly NTs, what with their spontaneous responses and weird social world which requires me to prepare scripted responses, mannerisms, turns of phrase, etc, just to get along with them, and they can't even bring themselves to believe I'm doing it.

*sigh*