[brhsagain]

That feels like a bit of an edge case. I mean, I take your point that you can definitely have no social skills and run around interrupting people's conversations and going "hey, did you know that animals are tortured every day?" and that would be you being a jerk. But I'm not talking about that.

Am I crazy? I feel like what I'm describing is a near universal phenomenon and everyone knows what I'm referring to/has experienced this. I'm talking about how in general, people just don't like people who are "right all the time." People don't like criticism delivered bluntly even when it's correct, relevant and actionable. People don't want to hear things with implications that go against their moral values, or suggest that something they spent lots of time on was wasted, or reflect badly on themselves. There's that famous quote about how people don't want to hear things when their paycheck depends on them not hearing it. They don't like hearing those things even when they are true and directly related to them. I don't like hearing those things. I'm talking about those cases.

[lazyasciiart]

You’re looking for straightforward “shooting the messenger”. While it’s true that it can be straightforward deflection of negative feelings about the scenario to the person who made them aware of it, I think you’re still discounting that a lot of the time, the majority IMO, people shoot the messenger so that they stop getting messages. Stop telling me your colleague is stealing paperclips so I can pretend I don’t know. Stop reminding me I have homework to do because I’m trying to forget it.