wut are social situations

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an wuts social context

pepole with
autism struggle with that

Situations that involve interaction on a social level.

Are there interactions which do not occur on a social level?

Last edited by Rocket123 on 04 Sep 2016, 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Social situations are brought on by interacting with other people. Not social interaction by itself, but situations that can be good, neutral, or bad that involves two or more people.

So, say, it's your friend's birthday party. That's a social situation because it's special. It's an event that happens outside of normal chit-chat. You would have certain expectations that you need to meet. For example, you would bring a present. Not bringing one is considered rude. Another example is that you would be required to interact with the person who is the centre of attention. Not doing so is considered rude.

Social context, on the other hand, is what people mean by what they say and do. For example, someone greets you after a long time of separation. The context is that you are going to be deeply affected by this reunion and the other person would expect you to be equally emotional. It's context. It's like saying "Hello" and expecting someone to respond in the same way. It's not a "social situation". It's your meaning, the definition of your words. Talking out of context is like saying "I like baseball" after someone says "What is your favourite colour?"

I guess interactions with inanimate objects would count. Any interaction that didn't involve other life forms at all, and more narrowly, any interaction that didn't involve other people.

To me social situations are when people just talk. It could be where co workers are talking to each other on a break at work, man and woman talking together, people getting together and they visit and chat. People going to a group rather it's an autism group or a gaming group or a chess group and they just talk and have conversations.

For a child social situations are when kids just play together and share or play a board game together.

As I think about it a bit more, the only social situations I enjoy occur when either:
a) I have interest in a particular topic (and want to hear others talk about it more so I can learn) or
b) I have something to say about a particular topic and want to hear other's opinions

These days, these situations mostly occur at work, where I have the opportunity to talk about a topic that I am totally immersed in. When I was younger, these situations mostly occurred at school.

Must confess, if my interest isn't there already, I just get bored, I can't conjur up enthusiasm out of thin air and I hate faking it. The best I can do is search hard for some aspect of the subject that interests me at least a little bit, and try to build on that, but if I'm not careful I just drag the conversation off at a tangent they don't take kindly to. I've done the "just listening" thing, but it usually feels pretty empty unless they're expressing something quite profound, such as telling me how the really feel, and in particular, telling me about their frustrations, anxieties, and other emotional pain - for some reason I'm usually interested in that kind of thing. I still get a strong feeling that I'm letting them down if I can't offer them possible solutions, so it's mostly a matter of faith for me that sometimes I do good just by simply lending them an ear.

I get a lot out of working co-operatively with people, which I consider to be a kind of social interaction. It definitely alleviates my sense of loneliness, often more so than mere social chit-chat. And I like solving problems, and when I help somebody to solve their problem, that too feels like a good social thing.

I have a tendency to do this as well.

My wife and I were with another couple last night. The guy kept on talking and talking about some issue he was struggling with. I tried to offer some advice about how to approach the situation. But he kept reverting back to some ass backwards justification (I suppose for ignoring my advice). Later, I was telling my wife that it was boring talking to the guy for > 45 minutes about this problem. She asked me why I didn't change the subject. Um, I didn't know what else to talk about?


I work in the software industry. I do like working with engineers on solving problems. I know nothing about these people as individuals. I just know that they are talented in doing engineering work.