Along these lines, I am a big fan of the Recurse Center's social rules -- particularly in this case the one about "no feigning surprise." Their explanation of this:
Feigned surprise is when you act surprised when someone doesn’t know something. Responding with surprise in this situation makes people feel bad for not knowing things and less likely to ask questions in the future, which makes it harder for them to learn.
No feigning surprise isn’t a great name. When someone acts surprised when you don’t know something, it doesn’t matter whether they’re pretending to be surprised or actually surprised. The effect is the same: the next time you have a question, you’re more likely to keep your mouth shut. An accurate name for this rule would be no acting surprised when someone doesn’t know something, but it’s a mouthful, and at this point, the current name has stuck.
Feigning (or actually being) surprised is definitely not as mean spirited as some of the examples you referenced, but it can still discourage folks that are new to an area from speaking up or reaching out for help. Just wanted to note this as well since I think it's pretty easy for (otherwise well-intentioned) people to do this without meaning to.
Thanks for writing up this post @picocreator !
Along these lines, I am a big fan of the Recurse Center's social rules -- particularly in this case the one about "no feigning surprise." Their explanation of this:
Feigning (or actually being) surprised is definitely not as mean spirited as some of the examples you referenced, but it can still discourage folks that are new to an area from speaking up or reaching out for help. Just wanted to note this as well since I think it's pretty easy for (otherwise well-intentioned) people to do this without meaning to.
Really like the Recurse Center's social rules, wish I knew about it earlier.
I embedded your whole comment to the end of the article to highlight it much better!