Tips on Being a Considerate Audience Member
by Abram
Having attended quite a few different events where the audience consisted largely of Aspies, I feel both qualified and compelled to share some indispensable advice on how one ought to behave at such events. First of all, when I say “how one ought to behave,” I’m not talking about some archaic system of etiquette which certain NTs continue to follow out of habit. Rather, I am referring to the sort of social “Best Practices” that will prevent you from annoying your fellow audience members to the extent that they intentionally forget to tell you about the next event.
Here are some basic definitions for concepts with which some of you may be unfamiliar.
- When the speaker says, “I have a lot of material to get through, so please save your questions until the end,” what he or she really means by that is that they have a lot of material to get through, and so to make sure they get to cover all of it (which is why they are there, after all), they would like everyone to save their questions until the end of the presentation. This means that even though something they said reminds you of something interesting that you’d like to share with the group, or you have a probing question about something tangentially related to the topic at hand, you should not raise your hand or yell something out. Instead you should wait until the end of the presentation, when the speaker asks if there are any questions. I understand this is a difficult concept for a lot of you, but it is a very important one.
- The idea of a “question” is actually a request for information. That is, there is some particular piece of data which you desire, and which you have reason to believe the current speaker possesses. In other words, just opening your mouth during the question-and-answer period does not automatically qualify as “asking a question”. For example, telling a long, detailed, and meandering anecdote about something that happened to you one time that was sort of like something the speaker said, is not a question. Not even if you follow it with, “Um, could you comment on that?”.
- If you do tell a long and meandering anecdote, or volunteer some unrelated information, or otherwise open your mouth just to see what comes out, and the speaker says something like, “That’s a good question,” or “Thank you for sharing that,” that does not actually mean it was a good question, or that the speaker appreciates that you shared it. The reason the speaker says “That’s a good question” is because that is the polite thing to say, even if it is the most boring, asinine thing the speaker has ever heard and sincerely wishes you had stayed home. Please try to remember this, and not take the speaker’s common courtesy as an invitation to share anything else.
A good rule of thumb when deciding whether or not to say something during a question-and-answer period after a presentation is to ask yourself, “Would anyone else in the audience benefit from hearing what I’m about to say?” If the answer is no, maybe you should try talking to the speaker after the event, or send them an email, or something, so you are not wasting everyone’s time with your drivel. If you can’t figure out whether anyone else would benefit from what you have to say, try looking at it from another perspective. I know this is one of those things a lot of us have trouble with, but imagine being forced to listen to someone else tell a long and pointless story about something that happened to them one time, even though it has almost nothing to do with the current topic. I have no doubt you can relate to this if you’ve attended even one AANE event (unless you didn’t notice because you were too busy telling your own long pointless anecdote). Is the experience of listening to somebody’s endless story fun for you? I can tell you with complete honesty that it is not at all fun for me. Of course we all enjoy telling long pointless anecdotes, but usually nobody enjoys hearing them.
So unless your goal is both to irritate the rest of the audience and bore them to tears, please limit future post-presentation questions to the actual end of the presentation, and avoid irrelevant questions and/or your life story, however interesting it might be to you.
August 13, 2010
Posted in: Events, Life
Tags: audience etiquette, endless anecdotes, irritation
One comment so far
One Response
Thank you, Abram for this post. I too have felt the exact same way at conferences. Maybe pamphlets should be given out at conferences to remind people on how to act.
Leave a Reply