Making and maintaining notes on friends / relationships

Knowledge management
21

I love this write-up, thanks for this.

I don’t share the notes, and I don’t share things with other people unless I’m sure they would be comfortable sharing that information. I never really put that much thought into that, I just thought that was normal.

Yeah, I would feel uncomfortable with that. I don’t really want to have that kind of relationship where I’m catching them out on things. I don’t use social media either, so I guess I’m also just not used to the whole social media stalking thing that people do.

I like finding out things from people through conversation.

Thanks for this, it’s nice to know I’m not totally weird for doing this kind of note-taking. There are maybe ethical considerations for coming up with connections and conclusions between many disparate notes as they maybe haven’t actually told me those things, though surely people do this anyway? I just feel like I have an easier time of it.

22

Yo, this entire thread scares the daylights out of me. I understand this all sounds sensible to everyone here and it seems okay if you are ethical about it, but no. Just no. If you’re a sales person keeping track of leads, it’s completely creepy but sensible. For friends that I hangout with, absolutely not under any circumstance. Hard no.

At least fifty percent of the population will find this totally creepy.

And yes I know you’re still going to do it and not tell anyone. Jeez. I suddenly have a significantly reduced need to meet yet more new people.

1 Like
23

I value deeper relationships than lots of shallow relationships.

It’s ok though.

1 Like
24

Hi Markimus,

I agree that it sounds weird, but if it is just an extension of your brain, then I don’t see the problem. Most would not object to you keeping a diary, where you may, legitimately, write loads of things about people. and then go back and reread the diary later. It aids reflection. "the unreflected life is not worth living*

What makes it feel bad, what makes me slightly recoil, is the idea that it’s more external than that, because it seems more public - but it’s not more public. It’s local. It’s on your hard drive/phone, and/or you’ve presumably taken reasonable measures to make it hard to get to.

I guess the other way it might be bad isn’t from an other people point of view, but from a personal one. Does it help you think, or simply grow negative thoughts/resentments, without a view to resolving them. That would be unhealthy, of course. I’m not accussing you of this, just considering the idea in the abstract.

Continuing to overthink this: Another way it could be bad is if you tried to understand a person to a degree where it’s none of your business (ergo: unhealthy). I have a fence missing between me and my neighbour. I could cross, it but that doesn’t mean I ought. I’m not sure how to explain that one further. I once told my sister “I understand you perfectly”. She was offended. It took me years to really understand why she was offended. I crossed some invisible line…

Just some thoughts,
Thanks for reading

25

I have measures in place to stop that information from getting out.

I find that often the more I understand a person, the more I feel safe with them and the more forgiving I am towards them. I feel like that’s a natural consequence of learning deeply about someone. I don’t think it could be used to echo-chamber a feeling of resentment towards a person.

“I understand you perfectly” is talking in absolutes; you can never understand a person perfectly, as much as you try. I don’t think your sister was mad because it crossed some invisible line, rather, I think she was mad because if you had perfect understanding then you would ignore any subsequent attempts from her to explain, and she didn’t really feel perfectly understood.

The fence boundary analogy I would more relate to the social media stalking; that’s an invisible line. I deal only in the information that I feel that they wanted me to have. I would also probably write down things other people tell me, though it’s not like I would interrogate people for that information. I don’t know, it is just an extension of my brain. I write down the things I hear and then find fun and interesting ways to make use of that information, like present ideas, trip ideas, conversation ideas, etc.

It’s nothing ill-intentioned at all. I think that’s the worrying part, the motive behind that information-gathering, and that’s how I see it being controversial.

26

Thanks for responding.

One critique for the last thing you said: Motivation does not justify a given action. Means does matter. Somebody can brush their teeth with a cable with the pure intention of having clean teeth, but still be utterly wrong/stupid, despite the intention. I’m not applying this to what you’re doing, just that particular defence

27

Oh, I agree with you of course. In this case though, I feel like the “means” of taking notes in order to learn deeply about the other person is unavoidable.

With the intention of learning deeply about someone, you would have a seriously hard time if you never wrote anything down. All that really matters here is the intention as to why you’re doing that deep learning about the other person.

28

I’m interested to know if the thing that creeped you out with my initial post was the guy-girl dynamic, or if I gender-switched you would have a different opinion on this.

Let’s say I was a guy talking about making notes on a male friend, or a woman making notes about a guy friend (or another woman friend). In those scenarios, would you still have the same reaction?

29

No, no, not at all. I also have to retract my statement a bit. I see now better where you are coming from. For me it was more the way one writes about other people. I wouldn’t consider a diary creepy , because it usually is a resumé of a day, week or whatever. However, and this is personal opinion, I don’t like the idea of creating profiles on people specifically. I had this mental image of you pulling out a file on someone, like in a bad detective movie. I’m not sure how to convey my emotions correctly, but I feel that it weirdly invades my privacy. I would be wondering if you would use everything you “collected” on me to create problems for me when the time is right or in the case that we’d have a fight. Something like this.

But I now know better how and for what you take these notes, which makes it a less creepy.

1 Like
30

would this be of value?

31

Here it seems that you’re assuming that at least fifty percent of the population shares your own moral intuitions about the “creepiness” of this note-taking practice. Even if it were true that they share those intuitions (and I have no evidence that it is true), those intuitions can still be unjustified or poorly justified (or more crudely stated: wrong). There is no rational justification given in the quoted comment for such a position.

Writing notes as an extension of the brain is a helpful way to think about it: if, instead of writing thoughts about a relationship, someone with a good memory were to remember those thoughts inside their head instead (as a smart therapist with only one client could do, for example), it would essentially have the same desired effect of retaining one’s thoughts about another person and about one’s relationship with them.

Given this equivalence of effects, to be consistent with the stated desire to avoid people who record their thoughts about other people, @muppet would have to avoid not only people who could be writing down such thoughts, but also anyone with a good memory who could be remembering facts and thoughts about other people. I imagine that the quantity of such people could be large. If @muppet is correct that at least half of all people share their moral intuitions about this topic, we could have a pandemic of avoidant personality disorder when people start thinking about how much other people are thinking about them and remembering those thoughts! Or, in a better scenario, we could come to accept that it’s good to think deeply about each other and remember those thoughts in an ethical way—whether in our heads or in writing.

32

My personal opinion is that if someone is taking extensive notes on me, much more extensive than any other individual in their life, out of romantic interest, then I would, as a gut reaction, get creeped out. I might change my mind given further explanation though.

Regardless of whether I cut off relationships, just how worried I would be depends on many factor. Gender is a factor (I would be scared of obsessive men for different reasons than obsessive women, e.g. legal biases for either case), but there are many other red flags too, such as if said person is a coworker or senior, if they have a history of abusive, violent or obsessive tendencies, and if they are beloved by others who might come to their defense to attack me.

A key difference between this situation and a therapist taking notes on a patient is that the patient signs a consent form to the process of therapy, which is explicitly explained to them. They have rights as a patient and have official avenues of complaint if the therapist abuses their power. I would argue, that in a business setting, it is also implicitly agreed upon that the parties parties involved are keeping track of information relevant to business, but not that would be inappropriate for a business setting.

The creepiness factor is that the other person, in personal relationships, rarely explicitly consent to having detailed notes about their personality and history recorded, nor may reasonably expect that to be the case. Now, there are many people in my life whom I trust, and I would certainly be okay with them taking notes about me. Especially given the explanation that it is something that helps you navigate relationships, and the possible neurodivergence context. However, the main issue here, putting myself into the shoes of this Angela, is that I never got the chance to consent, neither explicitly nor implicitly.

I know I don’t have a right to not be recorded per se, but it would certainly be nice to be asked first, and otherwise not have people write detailed notes about my personal history as if they’re my biographer.

Thus, having thought about this topic on and off, I suppose it may be most ethical to close friends whom you takes extensive notes on, explain that you do this thing and why you do it. If they know that you struggle with relationships otherwise, as you have explained to us, then I presume most would find it to be a quirk of yours but not mind too much.

33

For example, if someone whom I know well and doesn’t raise immediate red flags asked the following, then I would probably be like “oh, okay, sure.”

Hey, there’s this thing I do, which is taking notes about my favorite people, such as interesting ideas they brought up and questions that I want to ask. I find that it helps me navigate relationships better, because I am really forgetful and I’m not very good at spontaneous small talk. I want to know if that crosses any boundaries for you and I promise to stop if it does.

34

I am not going to ask for consent to take things off of my mind and into note form.

I think that would honestly drive me a bit crazy if I had no way of taking notes.

What is even the point of recounting that information? I would literally have to have it explained to me over and over again and we would never actually get anywhere. That’s how shallow relationships stay shallow.

I also don’t do this just with people I’m romantically involved in, though literally anyone who I talk to on a regular basis. It’s literally talked about in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People; you’re supposed to remember the details of the conversations you’re having with people so you can bring that up in future conversations. This is the way I’m choosing to do that.

It is not creepy or obsessive because taking notes is something I do with everyone, not just this person. Angela was just an example. It is also just the way I take notes about the world in general, and I have extensive notes on myself mixed within that system that I wouldn’t really want shared either.

35

The clarification of who you take notes on, and that you mostly use it to remember things, eases my mind more so, and I have no reason to believe that you are obsessive in some unhealthy way.

Even with all that safety guarantees though, it is still embarrassing to have people remember everything about me. It is the same desire that I have to not be photographed in public without consent, even though I know it is fully legal where I live for anyone to photograph me in public. It’s still nice to ask someone before taking a picture.

I don’t want my bad hair day or that one day that I didn’t shower to be immortalized in some photograph or someone’s notes. I don’t want every single one of my stupid, off-the-cuff takes to be searchable on someone’s files. I don’t want people to speculate about my personal history or insecurities.

It’s not about asking consent in a cumbersome way every time, it’s more that there is a chance I would feel hurt if I found out someone actually did write down all the things I wanted to be forgotten. And others have no idea the thing they thought was benign is, for me, something I wish everyone would just forget and get lost to the void.

36

I don’t attribute people’s individual mistakes to their personality, nor do I think that people’s “personalities” are incapable of change. I know that because my personality really doesn’t stay the same at all, I learn new things all the time.

The most of anything that sticks around is the consciousness itself; everything else about the person changes.

It’s not like I would bring up those embarrassing moments either, really because in the grand scheme of things they are not all that relevant. It may make for a funny story in the future, though that’s about it.

Edit: If you understand the greater context of a person then mistakes just tend to smooth over; you don’t have this recency bias.

As I mentioned in a previous post, you become a lot more forgiving of someone when you understand them.

I’m also not really a mean / angry person. I don’t make enemies of people. That also tends to happen when you understand a person.

37

Perhaps it would help you understand why I have such desire not to be recorded, either in photograph or text, unless explicitly asked, with a little more context.

I am someone who has changed my identity and moved to a different country, out of very personal reasons. Although others who know me from before would think nothing of my prior self, I would rather not there be many records of it in existence, and I would be very embarassed if a friend, even if in a completely kind and nonjudgemental way, had detailed records of who I used to be.

This is, of course, my feelings. I would rather be asked before being recorded in detail. I can’t say how your friends feel.

1 Like
38

I think this is a very niche case; you are in the extreme minority. Another commentator suggested not mentioning the whole note-taking thing, I think I’m going to stick with that; I’m not embarrassed about it and I would admit that I do that if I was asked.

It’s not really a secret though; during conversations with Angela I will literally have my phone out taking notes as she’s speaking, especially with names. I am not so good with remembering names. :sweat_smile:

I think you’re going to struggle with relationships if you don’t want people remembering details about you; I don’t know the specifics of your situation, though if someone had old notes on a past life then I wouldn’t even see those notes as valid. I’ve already moved past that time in my life, it’s like notes on a completely different person.

1 Like
39

There are many scenarios that I can think of why someone might want their history completely off the books, so to speak. Former felon, plastic surgery, temporary disability or illness, gender transition, escaping abusive past relationships, religious minority, cringey phase as a teen, cringey political beliefs in the past, made some terrible mistakes in relationships, a general desire for privacy, etc. (To add, I think my quirms are less about people remembering things about me, and more about that being officially on record somewhere.)

With aaaaaaaaaaaall that said, if your habit is not that much of a secret, then perhaps your friends have given some implicit consent that note-taking about conversations is OK and so all this conversation is moot.

40

It’s not even officially on the record somewhere though, I just see all of this note-taking as an extended part of my brain. It’s only on the record for me personally; it’s not like it’s a collection of notes that I share with the world, it’s very private, and I only really use it in conversation with the other person.

I’m not going to share the extended part of my brain with other people, there’s personal stuff in there.

If you don’t mind people remembering details about you, then I’m unsure how this is particularly different given I’ve told you that I struggle with remembering things.

I’m not going to take away my crutch just because it’s inconvenient for the other person. I need to be able to remember things in order to be able to function in society, just as a disabled person needs their wheelchair in order to get around.