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by kelseyfrog 1430 days ago
> people mostly don't judge you but a stereotype they project onto you.

This point deserves expansion.

Goffman's approach is how I first learned it. In order to explain the complexities of the world including the social world, people learn to typify behaviors. Typifications can become frames when they are used to interpret people's actions[1], "She did this because she's a woman" or "He did this because he's tired" where woman and tired are framing devices. Even "I did this because I was upset."

It takes a lot of work to resist framing people's actions. Perhaps it's even impossible to truly apprehend unframed behavior since even language itself is a framing device. But, seeing people closer to who they are is always valuable, and overly applying frames or rushing to frame peoples' actions does them an injustice to seeing them for who they are.

1. These are specifically frames which explain behavior. There are an infinite variety of frames. Browsers are frames, this comment being on HN is a frame.

2 comments

Framing and typification sound similar to literary deconstruction, except using words that are more comprehensible (less in-group).
Is absence of frame a frame?
I came upon this today and thought you might enjoy it.

> An absolute perspective, one of unconditioned objectivity, would, as Nietzsche says, have us “think an eye which cannot be thought at all, an eye turned in no direction at all, an eye where the active and interpretative powers are to be suppressed, absent, but through which seeing still becomes a seeing-something, so it is an absurdity and nonconcept of eye that is demanded.”