Absolutely not; clearly communicating expectations makes life easier for everyone, which is (much of) what politeness is supposed to be about in the first place. The only possible suggestion I have is inlining a 1-sentence summary.

The angry person argued we shouldn't be so "submissive" and are perfectly in our right to be demanding etc

My response: "It took me less time and effort to type please than it took you to get angry and write all this about it."

> Say "please" and "thank you"... use emojis...

I'll add to this one -- use exclamation points!

It's actually ridiculous how effective all these little things are.

In my experience, men, engineers, and especially engineers who are men tend to think of this as unnecessary fluff. They often decline to add these little social niceties because to them, they sound inauthentic.

That's not a character flaw or anything! You have every right to feel that way. I do think it is just categorically wrong, though.

I don't know a better way to say it, but: you should really just start doing this. Even if it feels weird to you, it is incredible the degree to which it eases text-based interactions. Even if you aren't noticing it, I promise that other people are.

...but that can be done politely, or not(†). In my experience, being polite doesn't add a high cost to calling someone out, makes the person being called out less upset on average, and generally improves the quality of ensuing answers/discourse (because those involved aren't burning emotional energy on pushing their anger to the background). Both of those latter two things are good.

Sure, there are some people who can take a flaming load of unfiltered criticism to the face and remain unfazed, but assuming that that's the _norm_ doesn't seem especially realistic.

(† = Or in between - "polite" is not a boolean. It's not even a numeric measurement; one can be polite/rude in different sorts of ways.)

Good call. I'm certainly not an authority on being well-adjusted, but for me personally, those sound like seeds planted in insincerity leading to a varied bouquet of suffering. In the context of creating a sense of community around us, we are better off if we learn to strive to act thoughtfully and sincerely from a young age, and encourage others who do likewise. I'd much prefer this rule to be a minor counter-example beneath "empower others".

Answering sincerely-yet-appropriately to "How are you?" isn't trivial, but it's worth it. In the past week, I've responded with a wide variety of sighs (to friends), "ok. I'm ok." (to a doctor who I was seeing after being kept awake by excruciating pain), "right now? good, happy to see you!" (to a less frequently seen acquaintance), "oy, don't ask, there's a line. but I'm looking forward to this porkbelly!" (to a grocer).

I imagine I might come off as a brash American if I were to try what I perceive as sincerity in more reserved cultures, but in middle class America it seems to work at-least-OK :-)

"I'm not rude, I just tell it like it is"

It's like when I'm having a meeting with my manager and I want to talk, so I start, they stop, I apologize for interrupting, and they say no, no, go on.

I assume there is no emotional drama going on. If they really want to continue talking, they can do so. That's why I apologize and pause. I'm not sorry, but I need to show appropriate deference.

It would be unfortunate if someone was building up resentment because they're not on the same wavelength about appropriate behavior. The purpose of etiquette seems to me to provide a formula to negotiate common situations without having to navigate emotional complexities.

But when different people have different rules, there's not much that can be resolved.

Think of politeness as a social technology that allows large groups of people to live and work in close proximity. It's not that politeness is more efficient - it's clearly less efficient. It's that most people can't psychologically handle too much direct communication.

Smilies and pleasantries are fine, if they come up naturally. But why do people get slighted when someone replies to them with a straightforward – not rude, not crass, not sarcastic, just straightforward – answer?

I've caught myself getting slighted at people I know who reply to texts or messages in a direct way. Now that everyone uses smilies for personal communication, the direct to-the-point style feels cold and dismissive. But then I realize that they might be perfectly kind and pleasant people in reality. They just have a different text/message style.

I often wrestle with these dynamics when trying to respond to community proposals, and I think there's a hidden variable: the cost of the time to respond. As a sweeping generality, the short-term cost of writing a straight "yes" (agreeable, lax) or straight "no" (rude, firm) is cheaper than the short-term cost of writing a "yes...but" or "no...but" (politely acknowledging the other side while critically discussing the merits of particulars).

Sometimes, someone can quickly come up with an explanation that is both incisive and pithy. That's awesome, and it's a good skill to develop, but (for mere mortals like me) you can't bank on it all the time. There will be scenarios which require a trade-off (time XOR quality).

I'd wager that those two clusters ("agreeable, lax" and "rude, firm") have normal people who are pressed for time. I don't think people are generally stuck in one of those clusters, but getting out... takes time and attention.

It costs nothing to be polite.

> Just teach them to say please to Alexa et Al. Much easier and generally better to be polite when you don't need to be, than to be impolite when you're supposed to be, by mistake.