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- [00:01]
A
Support for the gray area comes from March of Dimes. The US Is among the most dangerous developed nations for childbirth. Two women die from pregnancy related causes every day and two babies die every hour. It doesn't have to be that way. For more than 85 years, March of Dimes has led the fight for the health of all moms and babies. With supporters like you, they fund research, provide education and advocacy and offer programs and services so every family can get the best possible start. Donate today@marchofdimes.org box that's marchofdimes.org box.
- [00:42]
B
Amazon has everything for everyone on your list, like your husband who hauls out the 40 pound canister vacuum to address a single dropped popcorn kernel. He'll spend 12 minutes setting up, plugging in and maneuvering. It's like using a fire hose to water a houseplant. Get him a cordless vacuum and with Amazon early holiday deals, you can save big on home electronics. Now Dustin can skip the project planning phase and go straight to tactical crumb elimination.
- [01:16]
A
Thanksgiving is the super bowl of awkward. You love these people, mostly, but the scripts are fuzzy. Do we hug? Do we talk politics? What the hell do I say after the third? So, how's work? It's a tricky sit situation. We've all been there. But here's the good news. Awkwardness isn't a you problem, and it's not a personality flaw. It's what happens when our social scripts break down. In other words, it's an us problem. I'm Sean Iling, and this is the gray area. Today's episode is a conversation with Alexandra Plakius, philosopher and author of Awkwardness A Theory. The episode, which is from last winter, has become a team favorite because Plakias challenges us to rethink a common experience that we all dread. She has a lot of great insights to share and a helpful reminder that it's not your fault when you feel awkward. Something that's worth keeping in mind as we plunge into those family gatherings this holiday season. Alexandra Plaikius, welcome to the show.
- [02:48]
B
Thanks so much for having me.
- [02:51]
A
You have an interesting philosophical background. I mean, you study moral psychology and the cultural foundations of values and that sort of thing. How did you end up writing a book about awkwardness?
- [03:08]
B
So I think first, as a philosopher, anytime you come across a topic that it seems not that many people have written about, there's always a little bit of a thrill there. But really, I think I was interested in awkwardness because as a moral philosopher, I'm often spending my time talking to students about life or death, dilemmas, whether to pull the switch on the trolley so it hits one person instead of five. But hopefully most of my students will never actually be in that situation. On the other hand, there are all of these daily moments of discomfort and awkwardness and things like that that philosophers don't often talk that much about. And there's almost a sense that we shouldn't really care too much about, that we should be above, that we should be living the life of the mind. But we live in a social world and those social issues matter to us. So I think I was attracted to the idea of digging a little deeper into the kinds of everyday interactions that we will encounter in our lives and how we navigate them and why they matter.
- [04:08]
A
And yet there is a good bit of serious philosophical work on topics like anxiety, depression, loneliness, those sorts of things, but very little, as far as I can tell, on awkwardness. You have any theories on why that is?
- [04:27]
B
I think the main reason is that awkwardness has typically been assimilated to discussions of embarrassment and shame to the extent that it's really discussed at all. Even there, it gets surprisingly little attention. So the scholar William Miller has a book on humiliation, and if you look at his index, he's got more entries for axe murder than he does for awkwardness. So awkwardness, yeah, you're right, it gets surprisingly little attention, even as philosophers have turned their attention to particular emotions and particular negative emotions.
- [04:59]
A
Well, let's get into it. Awkwardness is normally defined as a personal problem or a personality trait, or sometimes, as you just said, it's basically a synonym for embarrassment. And these are all understandings that you challenge. So tell me how you define awkwardness, and maybe just as importantly, tell me what you think it isn't.
- [05:27]
B
Right, so starting with what it isn't. I don't think awkwardness is a personal problem. I don't think awkwardness is a personal trait. One of the things I was surprised by and writing this book is how quickly people were willing to tell me I'm really awkward, or oh, I'm so excited to read your book as a very awkward person. It's something that a lot of people are willing and even eager to self identify with. But I actually think that's a mistake. I don't think people are awkward. I think situations are awkward. On my view, awkwardness is something that happens in a situation when we lack the social resources we need to guide us through it. And so interactions become awkward when we're uncertain what kind of interaction we're in, what our role in that interaction is what the other person's role is when we're unable to coordinate on a social script to get us through it. So in that sense, awkwardness is not a personal problem. It's an us problem.
- [06:21]
A
But surely some people are more or less awkward than others, right? Even if it's generally true that there are no awkward people, only awkward situations.
- [06:33]
B
So I think there's an interesting ambiguity when we describe people as awkward between meaning that person feels awkward or they make me feel awkward. So if I say, like, Sean is awkward at parties, I might mean Sean makes me feel awkward when he's at parties, or I might mean Sean feels awkward at parties. I do think that you're right. Some people read social cues differently, and some people might have a difficult time triangulating on the kind of social cues that most of us rely on every day. Some people also just give social cues differently. Right? So some people might be less inclined to make eye contact. Or if you've ever tried to have a conversation with someone whose conversational timing is just a little off and you're not sure when you're supposed to break in. Right. Is that a pause? That's an invitation. Is it a pause? That's a hesitation that can feel really awkward. Right. But that feeling of awkwardness doesn't necessarily tell us something about that person's character. It might just mean that we need to adjust our own social cues. Or it might mean that we're in a kind of situation for which we really haven't figured out the social norms yet.
- [07:39]
A
Even if it's true that maybe some people have more difficulties navigating social interactions than others, you still think it's the case, right? That labeling them awkward obscures more than it reveals?
- [07:56]
B
That's right. I think labeling people as awkward is unhelpful both in terms of the reason I just mentioned that there's that ambiguity there about where the awkwardness is. I think also it obscures what's interesting about awkwardness, which is the way it can highlight gaps in our social scripts, in our social norms, in our social resources. So if I just blame you for the awkwardness that arises at the party, I might be missing an opportunity to reflect on my own behavior or on the norms governing our social interaction. One of the things I talk about in the book is the way that labeling someone awkward can also intersect with our social scripts around gender and power and privilege in such a way that when an interaction becomes uncomfortable, labeling one person as awkward is often a way to offload responsibility for that Discomfort.
- [08:47]
A
When I think of awkwardness, or at least when I thought of it before reading your book. And your. Your book basically did persuade me to think of it differently. When I thought of awkwardness, I would think immediately of fear. You know, fear of interacting with other people. But that implies a kind of misanthropy. Right. So, like, if you're awkward, that means you must just not like people and get weirdly uncomfortable around them. But you really think that's not only not true, but it is. It's actually harmful. Right.
- [09:24]
B
I hadn't really thought about the intersection between awkwardness and fear per se. I do think there's an intersection between awkwardness and anxiety and social anxiety in particular. And I think one reason people sometimes label themselves as awkward, there's some research suggesting that this is a strategy to manage social anxiety, almost a way of saying, don't expect too much from me in the social domain. I'm a very awkward person. But I think what's interesting is that in other cases, people who we would tend to perceive as awkward may not experience their own behavior in kind of a negative way or may not experience these social interactions in a negative way. Right. It may be that the social cues they're giving off make us feel awkward, but they're not having any kind of negative experience. I do think we fear awkwardness a lot. I think that we are surprisingly afraid of awkwardness. And another reason I was interested in studying it was because I was interested in the ways that awkwardness or the fear of awkwardness inhibits us from engaging in certain kinds of conversations and criticism of others and examinations of our own behavior. And I think there are a lot of cases where we should act. We know we should act, and we don't because we're afraid of making things awkward. After the MeToo movement, there was an interview with men about sexual harassment in the workplace. And you would find men saying things like, well, I knew my coworker's behavior wasn't okay, and I knew I should say something, but I was afraid of making things awkward if I spoke up. And on the one hand, that's really puzzling, like, this is your co workers are engaging in sexual harassment. That's not okay. You know that. That's a moral obligation to speak up and do something. Why would you let something as. As seemingly minor as some social discomfort inhibit you from speaking up? But I think awkwardness exerts a really powerful force on us.
- [11:16]
A
Yeah. I'll bracket the question of when you're in situations where there's an Obvious power imbalance, but just in general the fear part. I mean, for me, awkwardness, at least a lot of it, is about this experience of uncertainty, which is a panic inducing thing for a lot of people. And I'll count myself among them. I mean, maybe panic is a strong word, but I've never been super comfortable with uncertainty. And to the extent I've never really presented as awkward in social settings, I think it's mostly because I'm pretty good at performing in that way. But that discomfort is there all the time, right underneath the mask. What is it about uncertainty in social settings that's so unnerving even when the stakes are low? Like, what the hell are we afraid of, really?
- [12:08]
B
That's such a great point. And I think that one of the things awkwardness can highlight for us is first how reliant we are on everyday social cues to get through things. I think that we often don't notice the kind of social scaffolding that goes into our interactions because it's just mostly there, right? But when it's absent, all of a sudden it is like the floor is pulled out from under us and we have that, you know, almost that moment where you go off a cliff and your legs are circling in the air and it is this feeling of panic. And I think part of that is we seem to have an expectation that socializing should be effortless, that the ability to move through the world and social interactions and present yourself in public is something everyone just kind of knows how to do without instruction. And that your ability to do it is really a measure of you as a person. But when you think about it, that's kind of puzzling. Like we have all of these various roles we inhabit throughout the day. We are put into new situations all the time. We're meeting new people. That's hard. That's complicated, right? And so I think part of why I think it's a mistake to think about awkwardness as an individual problem is that it's okay to need help navigating social interactions. It's okay not to know how to behave in a social setting. And I think once we past that expectation that this is something everyone should know, we might stop fearing uncertainty so much because that uncertainty no longer threatens to unmask us. Right? It's okay not to know how to behave at this kind of party. It's okay not to know what to call your professor on the first day of class. You can just ask. And I think the more we admit that sometimes socializing is hard and it's okay, to be uncertain, then maybe the less threatening that uncertainty will seem.
- [13:52]
A
I have never heard it put this way, but I do like thinking of awkwardness as a form of disorientation. I mean that I like this idea that the essence of awkwardness is really just being lost in a situation. I've just never heard it framed that way. But once you start seeing it through that lens, it does change the way you think about it. Right.
- [14:16]
B
And I think this is another part of the kind of shift from thinking about it as an individual issue is when we see it as a navigation failure, we might be less likely to blame ourselves for it and we might be more likely to think about, well, what can we do next time to avoid that awkward situation? What do we need in our navigational resources?
- [14:34]
A
I think we both used the word embarrassment a few minutes ago. But another word that often gets mixed up with awkwardness is cringe. And you write that our awkward moments are not cringeworthy. So what is the difference between awkward and cringe? Cringy.
- [14:52]
B
So I think there's cringe in the sense that people use it now sort of online. I think cringe in the sense of like that cringing feeling you have. Cringing is retrospective. It's what happens when you look back on something. And I know we all probably have those moments, some of them are just decades old where all it takes is like one second of thinking about it before you're literally like curling into a ball, just wanting to like shrink inside yourself. That's cringing. And cringing comes when we look back on moments of awkwardness often, or moments of shame or moments of embarrassment. And I think that the reason we associate cringing and awkwardness is because we think about our awkward moments as something shameful. We think about them as something we should be ashamed of or embarrassed about. But notice that the cringing is a different response. It's a kind of after the fact response to awkwardness, but it's different from the awkwardness itself. When you are in the middle of awkwardness, you're not really. You're almost frozen, right? You're not cringing, you're not really doing anything. It's only when you kind of like stop and reflect and notice the awkwardness later, that's when the cringe kicks in.
- [16:00]
A
Why do you think some people are just more sensitive to or attuned to that lack of a social script and other people just seem to not notice it as much or maybe not even care as much, and therefore maybe they don't experience that awkwardness in the way the other person does, Right?
- [16:21]
B
That's a great question. I think that it's tempting to envy those people who don't feel awkward about things, but it's also helpful to remember that part of the reason we feel awkward is because we care about being attuned to other people. We care about being in sync with other people, and we care about other people's responses to us. And so in that sense, awkwardness is, I think, related to empathy, related to all of our pro social characteristics. I think it can go too far in the sense of self consciousness and self monitoring. And I think that there are moments where we don't feel awkward because we're just so in the flow that those moments where you kind of lose yourself in an interaction or an activity and you don't have time to feel self conscious, you don't have time to think about what you're doing. As far as individual differences and feeling awkward, I definitely think that's true. And I think that part of it is probably a personality trait kind of thing. I think there may be people who genuinely don't feel awkward at all, ever. And I am a little afraid of those people. And I think those people worry me maybe a little bit. But I think there are also people who could probably do with feeling a little bit less awkward. And I think some of that has to do with how we see ourselves as responsible for other people's comfort and how we are assigned responsibility for other people's comfort by social norms around gender and privilege and things like that.
- [17:47]
A
So you're saying if somebody doesn't feel awkwardness ever, they're either the coolest person in the history of the world or complete sociopath?
- [17:56]
B
I guess I had in mind more the latter, but it could be the former. I do think that we can probably think of people, probably everyone can think of someone who just has that kind of charisma and who doesn't seem to. To feel ill at ease and who also seems to be able to put others at ease. And I think that question of charisma is a really interesting one. And that's something that I would love to look more into in the future. I think some of it is like a kind of social confidence and a kind of social grace. Throughout different cultures and history, people have always admired that performance of effortlessness. Right. And I think that's supposed to be the mark of social status and confidence is just having that kind of social capital and being able to seem at ease in any situation. Situation.
- [18:42]
A
Do we have a good sense of whether or not more and more people are self identifying as awkward. Are the trend lines clear in either direction here? Because I. My guess would be that digital technology in particular is making more people think of themselves as awkward because we don't socialize in real life as often as we used to. And so when we do have to actually go out into the world with other people, we're less comfortable, less certain of what to do. And I imagine that would increase the experience of awkwardness.
- [19:17]
B
Yeah, that's an interesting question, and I don't have data for you on that. I can say that one of the things I found when I was researching the book, there's a lot of like, articles online and media coverage suggesting like, oh, we live in this golden age of awkwardness, or we live in really awkward times. But you can find articles going back like 100 years saying the same thing. And there was. I came across a Life magazine letter that began telling the story of an encounter in like a restaurant. And they were saying, we live in awkward times. And I was in a tea shop and the waiter or the server went over to a customer and said, excuse me, sir, I mean madam, I mean, sir, I mean madam. And this observation that like, oh, we live in really awkward times, you're not sure which pronoun to use for someone, it just feels so contemporary. And so in some sense, I think that as long as social norms have been in flux and there's been room for uncertainty about what social norms were in play, there's room for awkwardness.
- [20:15]
A
What do you think of the most frequently awkward experiences that people have in their everyday lives?
- [20:22]
B
So if you ask people this, one of the most common awkward experiences people cite is clogging up someone's toilet when you're a guest in their house, accidentally sending a message to the group chat that is about someone in the group chat. So being kind of outed as gossiping about a group chat member in that very chat, those are what people will say if you ask them what are the most awkward experiences you can imagine?
- [21:02]
A
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- [25:00]
B
Sure.
- [25:01]
A
As a resident Awkward Awkward Awkwardness Expert so I'm a podcaster. I talk into the mic for living, but I hate the sound of my own voice. And when I listen to my recordings alone, I don't like it. I think it's terrible. I want to turn it off, but it's not awkward because I'm alone. But if I'm in the car with my family and they turn my pod on, or if I walk into a room and someone is listening to my show, it's awkward because now it's a social situation. Now I'm worried about how I'm being seen by others. But is this actually a case of awkwardness as you understand it? Is there a lack of a social script here? Or am I just being neurotic and embarrassed? But that's not quite the same thing as awkwardness.
- [26:02]
B
Well, the bad news is you can be neurotic, embarrassed and awkward all at the same time.
- [26:07]
A
Sweet.
- [26:08]
B
So, yeah, I think that there is some awkwardness there in that we may not always be great at knowing how to act when our own voice is being played in front of other people. So there might be a little bit of self consciousness there and a little bit of uncertainty about like, yeah, how to act and what we're supposed to do or say or acknowledge or not acknowledge. So one thing I've realized since the book came out is I'm really awkward when people congratulate me on the book or say, you know, oh, I saw your book on such and such, and I just don't know what to say or do. And I start to feel really awkward and the interaction becomes awkward. And I think that's just a matter of feeling maybe a little uncomfortable with our own standing or status in those interactions. Like, what's my role here? What am I supposed to do? You know, a lot of people can just say thanks and stop and that's it. You might find yourself making a joke to deflect your own embarrassment or awkwardness in those situations. And I think humor is a tool that we turn to a lot.
- [27:11]
A
Oh no, my move is just to preemptively shit on myself before anyone else can do it. And it kind of neutralizes.
- [27:18]
B
Well, that works too. And notice like that I'm not saying that's the best move. I'm not necessarily recommending it. But it does work. And I think one thing it does is it gives you a go to move and then it gives someone else like a next line. Right. Which is like, no, no, you sound great. Or no, I love the episode. So it kind of helps everyone out by setting the tone like this is going to be a self deprecating interaction. And now your role is to reassure me that I'm not shit. Right.
- [27:46]
A
Why is saying goodbye at parties so damn awkward? That can't be just for me, right? I mean that has to be pretty frequently cited awkward experience. Yeah.
- [27:57]
B
You know, a formative childhood experience was waiting for my parents to say goodbye at parties to like 20 million people. So I just leave. So I can't really tell you for sure. I could solve that one. Yeah, I'm, I'm just a quick wave to the room and I'm out. That's so.
- [28:13]
A
Yeah, the old Irish goodbye. I mean I, that's probably. See if I was cooler, I would do that. Because the problem, you know, you have those moments where you're saying bye to someone and again, I'm someone. I have a lot of self chatter. So self talk. Right? So you're saying bye and you're thinking, wait a minute, are we shaking hands here? Are we going to hug it out? Are we fist bumping? We're just going to do a calm cool nod. Is saying goodbye even necessary at all? And it's awkward because you don't know what's in the script here and you don't want to guess wrong because then you, then you are embarrassed and it's awkward.
- [28:51]
B
Yeah, I mean there's, you know, a classic awkward moment is like I go in for the hug, the other person's looking for a handshake. That's so awkward. But I think also we're identifying part of your problem here, which is not just you, but a lot of people have this kind of inner monologue that involves second guessing and kind of monitoring the interaction in real time. And that is not helpful. You know, if you think of something like playing piano or dancing, right. When you're in that flow state, you're not thinking about like, oh, are my toes in the right place? Where are my fingers going next? You're just doing it you're just executing, right? And this goes back to that idea of effortless socializing. It might sound weird to say that socializing is a kind of flow state, but I think we've all had those moments where you have a really good hangout or you have a great conversation and it just goes. And you're not thinking about it, you're not self monitoring, you're just in it. And I think the minute we start second guessing stuff, it's not even that we don't know the script, but it's like in that moment we create that doubt that leads us to be unable to just land on one and execute it.
- [29:55]
A
Why is silence so awkward?
- [30:00]
B
Silence becomes awkward when we don't know how to interpret it. And I think that some silences can be quite clear. Sometimes we know what a silence is doing and there's companionable silences, right, where we're not worried about what the other person is thinking. That's a moment, right? That's a milestone in a relationship, the companionable silence. But silence can be open to ambiguity and that can create awkwardness.
- [30:27]
A
Small talk, whether it's like, you know, at a party or you're just, I don't know, pushing the grocery cart through a produce aisle and you like bump into someone you haven't seen in a while, someone, maybe it's an old friend, maybe it's someone who's a friend of a friend and you don't really know what to say. Under no other circumstances would you even talk to them, really. You're probably not in each other's life for a reason. Why are those sorts of interactions so painfully awkward?
- [30:58]
B
Yeah, I think it depends. I don't think they have to be. I think, you know, my husband is British and I think there's like kind of a running joke that British people talk about the weather a lot. But notice the weather is a great go to small talk topic. And what I think what that shows is that often the role of small talk is not to actually exchange like a lot of meaningful information. It's just to kind of do a quick social check in, give a little FaceTime to the other person, and then you move on.
- [31:26]
A
Well, this is probably half the value of following sports. That's another one. If you don't, if you have no idea what else to say, just fuck, man. You see the Dodgers game, I mean, it's like, yes, it's always there. You can pull that card out and.
- [31:38]
B
It cuts across so many other differences, right? And I mean, even if someone roots for a Rival team, right? You can give them a little bit of a hard time and tease them a little bit. Little bit, and it's fine.
- [31:48]
A
Think about small talk. It may not even be exactly that it's awkward, at least in my experience, though it. It can be. But if it's not awkward, it's most definitely boring. Which is one of the reasons I always. Even when I lived in dc, I just. I'm not into the whole cocktail circuit thing. I just don't like it. Do you think that's because when you're doing small talk in those settings, you're not deviating from the script? Actually, like, it's almost meant to alleviate awkwardness, and therefore we stick very closely to a script.
- [32:29]
B
I think another reason small talk can become awkward is that without realizing it, we are depending on all kinds of social cues from our partner. Whether it's eye contact, timing of conversational pauses, even the distance someone stands from us. Where they're looking, are they looking at us? Are they looking over our shoulder? We've all had that experience. So small talk can go off the rails, even while the topic stays perfectly normal and consistent and boring. We can find the interaction awkward, maybe even for reasons that we're not aware of or couldn't articulate or couldn't pinpoint. But, yes, I also agree that small talk, if it goes perfectly well, can be boring.
- [33:08]
A
Right?
- [33:09]
B
And that brings up another interesting point, which is like, well, what are the alternatives to awkwardness Sometimes, right? Is it better to try to introduce a new topic? Is it better to try to do something a little different? Or is it better to play it safe, avoid awkwardness, and just be bored?
- [33:24]
A
One thing your book really emphasizes, which I like, even if it's not the main point, is how much of social life really is a performance. Which isn't to say that everything we do with other people is phony, but it is a kind of dance, isn't it? And because we can't control everything and because we don't know what's going on in other people's minds, it's fraught with all kinds of hazards.
- [33:54]
B
Yes, absolutely. I think that's right. And I think that, you know, again, that there's this tendency, or I think, temptation to blame ourselves when interactions go off the rails. But, you know, the expression it takes two to tango is apt here, right? We're dependent on a partner also to give us cues. And I think, you know, we have to also be mindful of the cues we're giving out to others. So the idea of a Performance. I really like the point you made there, that it's not to say it's insincere or phony, but it is that we are executing a kind of performance. And some of that is up to us and some of it is based on the roles that other people make available to us and that, that our day to day life makes available to us.
- [34:39]
A
There's the social cues part of it, and then there's those experiences when you deviate one way or the other from what's expected. I may have talked about this on the show before, but back in 2018 I went on this reporting trip to Costa Rica and I did a lot of psychedelics over the course of a week. I even wrote about it for Vox and you can find it on the interwebs if you're, you're so inclined. But I bring it up because reading your book, it made me think a lot about that. And that led for me to very interesting social experiment. I would say probably for at least six months or so after that experience. I was easily the most present I've ever been in my life because it just wasn't in my head really at all like I normally am. So I was very attuned to the moment and the people around me. And during this time, without thinking about it at all, I was really, and I mean really making eye contact with people. Like if, if, if I was talking to you or if you were talking to me, I was listening, I mean really listening. And I was looking you right in the eyes the whole time. And after a while I started to realize how much awkwardness this created because people aren't accustomed to that. We're not with each other in that way. We're distracted. We often perform listening, but we're mostly in our little bubbles, colliding as minimally as possible as we move through our mostly private lives. And what I was doing unselfconsciously was rupturing that social pattern a little bit, breaking from the script. And it was awkward. And after a while I guess I just fell back into the default routine and got back on the script. And it's less awkward for sure, but it was an instructive experiment for me. And reflecting back on it now, that's a lot clearer.
- [36:46]
B
I mean, I kind of love this. This is kind of hilarious. And to me it's this idea that you're walking around being really present and listening and doing all these things that are great and that we want to do and yet simultaneously just making other people super uncomfortable with the Level of eye contact. Right. That they're feeling like, this is really awkward.
- [37:07]
A
It was a little much, yeah.
- [37:09]
B
I think this point about eye contact is interesting because we are so sensitive to differences in eye contact. And it's also something that's culturally variable. What amount of gaze time is appropriate, what it means, what it might mean coming from a man, what it might mean coming from a woman in different situations. And I think we also can adjust pretty well without making a conscious effort to. Right. I think some of us might have to, like, consciously remind ourselves, look in the eyes. Right. Look at that person. Make eye contact. Sometimes people talk about telling their kids that too. When you meet someone, shake their hand and look at them in the eye. Right. So we can consciously adjust it. But it is, again, something that I think we negotiate with others tacitly, without intending to.
- [37:54]
A
What do you think is the biggest price we pay for our fear of awkwardness? What doesn't happen in the world that we should want to happen because we're so desperate to avoid awkward situations?
- [38:10]
B
So I think there's a lot of opportunities for human connection and comfort that are lost. One case I think about a lot is grief, and that we are. Let me preface this by saying I'm always mindful that when I draw these generalizations, everybody's experience of awkwardness is different. And I think as a philosopher, I'm trained to make pronouncements like, you know, big generalizations, universal principles. I think one thing that's challenging about awkwardness is everyone's experience is different. There's so many ways for things to be and go awkward. But I do think that we tend to be awkward around grief and talking about grief and loss. And I think that comes to mind particularly because that's a time when people are really hurting and can really use connection and comfort. And I think that a lot of times people are hesitant to reach out because they don't know what to say. I think that there was a time when if everybody belonged to the same religious group, we would have highly scripted rituals around grief and mourning. And I think that as. As we've gotten more choice in our religious or spiritual practices, which is a good thing. One of the side effects of that has been a kind of loss of sense of how we should respond to or talk about death and loss and grief. So that's one case that comes to mind. Maybe a less emotionally fraught one, although still pretty big, is money. You know, there's been a lot written about the salary gap and inequities in pay And I think that's partly a consequence of the fact that we don't really necessarily know how to talk about money or there's all kinds of weird social norms about discussing money. And that can contribute to misapprehensions and ignorance and allow inequalities to persist. So those are two cases. I think we can. You know, there's probably other topics that come to mind. People have recently started talking about menopause and the way that the experience of menopause affects people. And that that's something that we've had a lot of social kind of of silence around to the point where when people start to experience it, they may kind of be perplexed by their own experience and not be sure how to talk about it with others. I do think in a lot of these cases, the ability to talk about things online has really helped and has allowed people to figure out how they want to talk about things in advance of in person, face to face social interaction. And I think that that is one way in which the Internet can make life less awkward is by allowing us to try this out and figure out what we think in advance of going into those in person, potentially awkward interactions.
- [41:04]
A
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B
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A
Wow. IPhone 17s, you splurged.
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B
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A
I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe.
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B
Well, it's better than socks.
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A
So I have to trade in my old phone, right? No.
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B
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A
Incredible.
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B
In fact, wrap up my old phone too for my aunt Rosa. Forget that. Aunt Liz will be jealous.
- [41:59]
A
Sounds like my family's request drama.
- [42:00]
B
Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with. Hey, where are you going? To T Mobile. Thanks, Zoe.
- [42:07]
A
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- [44:08]
B
No, I think that's exactly right. I think that that awkwardness, yeah, it's a sign of how much we care about coordinating with other people as a way of making ourselves. It's the vulnerability that, you know, accompanies our movement through the social world. And I think that is a little bit sad. But I think also if we can just own up to it and recognize that it's something that we share with others and maybe be willing to make ourselves vulnerable, maybe then we can start to evade some of that paradox that you allude to. I do think also that that one thing we can do is be mindful of, you know, if we think of awkwardness as bound up with all of these dynamics of power and privilege and who gets to be awkward and who gets to get away with being awkward. I think we can also try to bear some of that awkwardness for others who might be less able to put themselves out there and be vulnerable like that.
- [45:03]
A
Anytime you're Talking about social dynamics, there's always this background element of power, who has it, who doesn't, and how that colors an interaction. When there is a clear power imbalance between people. Who's responsible for alleviating the awkwardness? Who should be responsible, or is anyone really responsible for that?
- [45:26]
B
I mean, I really like that you went from who is responsible to who should be responsible, because I think that's a distinction we don't often make. And I think without realizing it, sometimes we have certain expectations. I think women often, often feel responsible for other people's emotional comfort. And I think there's an expectation that women will kind of manage emotions in a way that doesn't attach to men. So I think that can make it doubly hard. And if you think about some of the issues that tend to become awkward when we're discussing them. So throughout the podcast, I've alluded to, like, sexual harassment, talking about menopause or reproduction, salary gaps, things like this. These do tend to be things that affect. Affect women. And I don't think it's a coincidence that women tend to be assigned responsibility for alleviating awkwardness and therefore might be more afraid of making things awkward, of not seeming to raise uncomfortable topics. So I think that one thing we can do sort of collectively is to be aware, going into situations of where we might have more privilege and more power, and then take it on ourselves to alleviate the awkwardness. If we're worried that a certain social norm or script is unclear, we could just make it explicit.
- [46:42]
A
Right?
- [46:42]
B
I am a college professor, and people sometimes talk about this kind of hidden curriculum that a lot of our students come in, knowing what office hours are, knowing how to email a professor, knowing exactly what's expected in terms of behavior in class and note taking and things like this. But some students don't, and they might feel really awkward in certain situations. And if we just take that minute and make things. Things explicit and say, when you're emailing a professor, here's a good way to go about it, or here's what office hours are and here's what you should expect when you come to office hours, we can just make things less awkward for those people. It might feel weird to us to do that because it's not something we've ever explicitly articulated, but it might, you know, in taking on that little bit of weirdness for ourselves, we might make things significantly less awkward for someone else.
- [47:30]
A
I like that you point out what a weird. And now this is my language. Obnoxious flex it is when you have Powerful people. You know, it, it is a very particular kind of flex by very powerful people to not care about creating awkwardness because they're always the most powerful person in the room. So they don't have to give a shit about, about conforming to social norms. So, you know, Mark Zuckerberg can walk into the room and do his, whatever his thing is. Now he seems to have undergone quite a bit of brand management here in the last couple of years. But you know what I'm talking about, right? I mean, that is a very particular kind of flex by a person who knows they're sort of above it all in that way and not accountable. So they can create awkwardness without really worrying about it because they have more power than everyone else they're interacting with.
- [48:28]
B
Absolutely. I think that's absolutely right. And I think there's really two issues there. One is this ability to kind of use awkwardness as a social flex that's available to some people and not others. So if you contrast someone like Mark Zuckerberg to someone like female CEO, and the one who comes to mind is Elizabeth Holmes, obviously had some other issues in addition to her presentation. But you know, she was widely pilloried for her kind of self presentation and her awkwardness in a way that you just don't see male CEOs getting called out the same way or losing credibility in terms of presentation for being awkward. But there's a second point you mentioned which is accountability. And I think that we do see awkwardness being used to evade accountability. And I think this happens both in business and in academia where there's this sense of like, well, that person's just so awkward, you can't expect them to adhere to these kinds of norms or oh, they didn't mean anything by it, they're just really awkward. Have to, you know, we can't hold them to the same standards as others where, you know, other people's social discomfort seems suddenly not to matter as much. And we let people get away with behavior that is really sometimes deeply problematic in the name of awkwardness.
- [49:42]
A
If you're right, and I think you are, that awkwardness is a social property, so individuals aren't responsible for or creating it for the most part, and it will always be a part of life with other people. But if you are someone listening to this and you'd like to decrease the amount of awkwardness in your life as much as possible, or at least change your relationship to awkwardness so that it's less taxing, what's your advice?
- [50:11]
B
So first, can I Just say, I do think people can create awkwardness. And I think sometimes that can be very strategic for good or evil. Right. Sometimes we can use awkwardness to draw attention to an interaction that we find problematic. So an example I use the book is like, if you're, you know, some graduate students are going to dinner with a professor who makes a really sexist gross joke, you know, one strategy might be to just call him out. But if no one feels comfortable doing that, you can just let an awkward silence sit there and just not laugh, not respond, not say anything. And that awkwardness kind of really draws attention, I think, to the joke not landing. And it. So it can be a way of saying something where you don't actually have the power to say something, say it. So I do think we can create awkward situations sometimes strategically, for good.
- [50:53]
A
Yeah.
- [50:54]
B
But to go to your question, so if you want to decrease the awkward situations in your life, I think there are a few things we can do when we feel an awkward situation looming. One is to think about the interaction itself and what our goals are for that interaction. Like, what kind of interaction do we want this to be? So say we're worried about politics coming up during the holiday dinner, and it's going to get awkward. One thing we might think about is, well, if we have to have a conversation about politics, what's the most important thing to us? Like, what is our goal for that interaction? Do we want to feel heard? Do we want to convince the other person? Do we want to make them feel comfortable? Do we want to make a third party who's listening feel comfortable? And that can help us figure out what script should guide us through the interaction. I think another thing we can do is admit uncertainty and ask for help. Help where we can. So if we're going into a situation we really don't know, right? Like, what kind of party is this going to be? How many people are going to be there? What should I wear? It's okay to ask these things. And I think that if you're someone who is, say, hosting a party and you think it's going to be really ambiguous, you can tell people, right? Hey, I'm having some people over. There'll probably be about 30 people there, right? Let people know in advance what to expect. And as I said before, I think this is something that, that people in positions to do so can do to make things easier for others who might not feel as comfortable asking questions. And it's certainly something that we can be attentive to in the workplace. So if you're conducting job interviews, you might let candidates know what to expect. Here's how the interview will be structured, here's what we'd expect from you, so on and so forth. And then the last thing I would just say is it's easy to focus on how unpleasant awkwardness is. But I think one thing we can bear in mind is, like, what are the alternatives to awkwardness? Because I think that sometimes we're so afraid of awkwardness that we lose sight of the fact that the alternatives might be worse. So going back to, like, a conversation about politics, maybe it's awkward to talk about politics with your extended family, but what would you prefer, an awkward conversation or a really angry conversation? Because if awkwardness is a kind of uncertainty and hesitation, the alternative to that might be a kind of very certain, very angry tone or interaction. Right. And so I think sometimes awkwardness has this other function and this other utility, which is it can keep us from landing on social scripts that are really counterproductive or really negative. Right. It can kind of keep us reserved or keep us from entering into, like, angry or offensive or, you know, really other problematic emotional scripts.
- [53:34]
A
One thing I learned in that experience I was talking about earlier is that there are real risks involved. Anytime you deviate from the established social script in ways that might create a little bit of uncertainty, even if your intentions are good, it might not go the way you hope. And maybe the point of all this is that that's okay. That's life. This isn't actually a script scripted TV show. It's unpredictable, happens, but I guess easier said than done.
- [54:06]
B
Well, and scripts have to change sometimes too. And I think that's one place where we see awkwardness emerging. Right. Sometimes the old scripts just don't work anymore.
- [54:13]
A
Right. And that's good.
- [54:15]
B
Yeah, it's good. And we can be explicit, right? We can say, like, okay, look, now I'm, you know, in this polyamorous relationship, and I want to bring all my partners home for Thanksgiving.
- [54:25]
A
And.
- [54:26]
B
And, like, what's the deal? What's the norm around introducing multiple partners to your family? And we can just figure it out, right? And that's okay. The world will not end if we kind of explicitly acknowledge that some of these norms are things we have control over. We can negotiate, and we can figure out what's going to work for us collectively.
- [54:44]
A
Could we get rid of all this awkwardness if everyone was forced to take improv classes in school? And I'm kind of serious. I mean, if awkwardness is just a result of the lack of a social script, then maybe being comfortable without a script is the answer.
- [55:00]
B
Maybe. I guess a different question is, would we want to. Would we want to get rid of awkwardness, or is it better to have situations where we feel a little hesitant, where we feel a little uncertain, and where we take a minute to become aware of the social infrastructure around us? Because once we recognize that it's there, we can be conscious of our role in creating it, and that gives us the ability to consciously reflect on and change it.
- [55:25]
A
Yeah. I don't think it's about getting rid of that uncertainty. It's about changing our relationship to it. It's about being. It's about being comfortable with it, not trying to expunge it.
- [55:33]
B
Yeah. And I don't even think we need improv classes for that. I think people just need to read my book.
- [55:40]
A
First off, that's a false choice. We can clearly do both. But, I mean, I'm saying I've always. I mean, the older I get, the more I believe that doing improv comedy is almost. Almost like the ultimate training for navigating life. And it's something I've always wanted to do, but I keep not doing it.
- [55:57]
B
I mean, I think having a podcast must be a kind of improv. Right. I mean, you have to get good at, like, some kind of improv and, you know, reacting to your guests, reacting to the conversation. But, you know, I don't know if we need to do. There's. There's two things improv might do for you. One is to help you sort of. Of react on your feet in the moment. And the other way to get out of awkwardness or to mind awkwardness less is to just be okay with discomfort. Right. And I do think that. Second thing, I often think that being okay with other people's discomfort and your own discomfort is a kind of superpower. Right. And I think in some ways, that's what going to a cocktail party can feel like. Sometimes it's just standing there feeling like you are on stage failing, and you have no choice but to push through. And I think once we recognize that, that, like, it's not just us, it happens to everyone, and it's not necessarily our fault, and it doesn't say anything terrible about us. Right. Improv is about building connections with your partner, I assume. I haven't really done it, so I'm kind of basing this on what I know of improv. But I think that's another way to get out of our own awkwardness is to pay attention to other people and to try to attune ourselves to other people. And I think that's one reason that, you know, we might see an analogy with improv here. Right. That willingness to put something out there and have someone else say yes and right. But notice if your improv partner never gives you the yes, and there's not much you can do there. And blaming yourself is really a mistake because they're not giving you much to work with.
- [57:29]
A
Yeah. So if someone listens to this conversation or read your book, what is the most important lesson you'd want them to walk away? Away with? Yeah.
- [57:41]
B
I mean, I think what I would hope people would take away is awkwardness is not a personal failing. Awkwardness is not a you problem. It's an us problem. And that awkwardness is something that happens not necessarily because of a mistake someone made or because someone is bad at something. It can be something that happens simply because we've outgrown the social norms and scripts available to us as a society. So I guess the. The point of that is we can see awkwardness as an opportunity to take something that's not working for us and re engineer it.
- [58:19]
A
I like that. And yeah, I think I'd stress the same thing. I mean, especially if you're someone who thinks of yourself as awkward or who has been called awkward by other people, people, you know, maybe take it easy on yourself. Maybe say, you know what? Screw that. I'm not awkward. The world we've built might make me feel awkward sometimes, but that says more about the world than me. So, yeah, let's leave it right there. Alexandra Plakius. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.
- [58:50]
B
Thank you so much.
- [58:52]
A
Also, go check out Alexandra's book. It is called Awkwardness a Theory. All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I loved it the first time. I loved it even more when I listened to it again. But as always, we want to know what you think. So please drop us a line at the gray area@vox.com or you can leave us a message on our new voicemail line at 1-800-214-5749. And if you have time after that, go ahead. Rate Review. Subscribe to the podcast that helps us grow our show. This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey and Travis Larchuk. Today's episode was engineered by Patrick Boyd and Christian Ayatollah. Fact checked by Anok Duso, edited by Jorge Just and Alex Overington wrote our theme music. New episodes of the Gray Area drop on Mondays. Listen and subscribe. The show is part of Vox Support. Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to vox.commembers to sign up, and if you decide to sign up because of this show, let us know.