No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
(Disclaimer: armchair expert here, admittedly with some personal experience)
Poor guy. Rejection sensitivity is a thing, and it sounds like this guy's got it bad. Some people essentially walk around with the emotional equivalent of a bad sunburn - even a casual touch can be pretty nasty.
If he's as socially awkward as this suggests, the whole "setting boundaries" thing is likely hard for him to deal with, and his reaction suggests that he's never learned to handle feedback very well. I'm assuming there's no hint of malice, just childishness and being oblivious of social norms. 46 years' worth of subtle or overt feedback along the lines of "you're not pulling this social thing off" can make people do some weird and counterproductive things in order to try to fit in. It can also sensitize them extremely to criticism no matter how accurate, necessary and well-intentioned.
If you can make sure he knows you're on his side, and are very careful to not make things sound like an attack, you have a reasonable chance of getting through. He is distinct from his fart jokes, and people don't dislike him but specific bits of inappropriate behavior. Since any hint of rejection tilts him, help him be secure in the ways he's valued. If he's got the classic "bad with subtext" thing then you need to be prepared to spell things out, while keeping it inoffensive. As a hunch, I'd stay well away from anything that sounds like a judgment either on your part or anyone else's - stick to the facts. This is what happens when people get distracted, humor is important in the workplace but there's a time and place, etc.
That being said, you don't need to coddle him too much (particularly if he's either guilty about needing it, or suspects it's not genuine) but it's ideal if it works - he's happier and stops setting himself up for "rejection", everyone else is happy due to less friction in general, you're happy, your boss is happy.
If that doesn't work, it might be time for brass tacks: "this specifically doesn't work, it doesn't mean people hate you, but it does need to stop." In the extreme, he could dig in and then you might want to call backup from e.g. your superior or someone less hands-on.