I highly recommend having a Pillow of Shut Up if you have close relationships with people with special interests. "This is boring" hurts people's feelings. A WHAP with the Pillow of Shut Up is too silly to be upsetting.
There was a webcomic in which - at first, without explanation - women could magically summon giant comedy mallets to whack men that were making offensive comments. It turns out that the hammers were the result of a magic artifact created with the purpose of *increasing* the rate of offensive comments: hitting people with giant magic comedy mallets was mostly harmless to the one hit, satisfying for the mallet-wielder, and would replace things like actual reasonable discussion about offensive behavior that might actually result in long-term behavior modification. The woman who learns this was *not amused*.
Supposedly, in Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, whenever Bond was in a social situation and wanted to direct discussion away from what he did for a living, he would tell people he was an engineer, which would end the discussion immediately.
Excuse me while I purchase a Pillow of Shut Up for the use of any and all of my future romantic partners.
I highly recommend having a Pillow of Shut Up if you have close relationships with people with special interests. "This is boring" hurts people's feelings. A WHAP with the Pillow of Shut Up is too silly to be upsetting.
There was a webcomic in which - at first, without explanation - women could magically summon giant comedy mallets to whack men that were making offensive comments. It turns out that the hammers were the result of a magic artifact created with the purpose of *increasing* the rate of offensive comments: hitting people with giant magic comedy mallets was mostly harmless to the one hit, satisfying for the mallet-wielder, and would replace things like actual reasonable discussion about offensive behavior that might actually result in long-term behavior modification. The woman who learns this was *not amused*.
Still is a webcomic!
Supposedly, in Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, whenever Bond was in a social situation and wanted to direct discussion away from what he did for a living, he would tell people he was an engineer, which would end the discussion immediately.
Fantastically insightful, thanks