Ask Lemmy

I didn't presume you were hostile, just erratic. I seriously considered you were under some influence. I see now you just worded your reply poorly.

When someone says "I couldn't care less", and the immediate reply is proof or suggestion that they cared to some degree, this is usually taken as a challenge or denial to the fact that they couldn't care less. Especially when it's something easy to Not Do, such as commenting. This is because the phrase "I couldn't care less" is more often than not used as an idiom, not in a literal sense. And in this particular occasion, you just so happened to point at how they could, in fact, care less: by not even commenting.

I'll illustrate with a different example: A:"I couldn't care less what my ex does with their life" B: "Yet you cared enough to check their social media yesterday" ...so as you can see, B's reply directly suggests A actually does care to some degree.

Therefore, without any context to show appreciation for the reply or without any visual or voice cues (this is text after all) to show the tone of your reply, it's easy to presume you are trolling or not making any sense. The fact that you are coming up with this reply to someone who simply answered your question just adds another layer of confusion. Imagine asking someone to jump only to immediately say they shouldn't be jumping. Just confusing.

And that's also what the first commenter probably thought too, only they gracefully replied "non sequitur" as opposed to "dude what?" or "wtf?" which carry a similar sentiment and are just as applicable in this situation.

I'm not the other responder, but their assumption of hostility was most likely due to the glibness of your response. A single sentence, especially in text, leaves a great deal of room for misinterpretation. Almost no one is looking at your comments or posts by placing them in the context of your previous posts or comments. Most users will be looking at the title, some of the post text, and the text of some comments without ever even looking at the usernames. Thus, regardless of any reputation you feel you should have, they aren't seeing it. Add on how the response is phrased similarly to a snarky reddit debater or a 'gotcha,' and it was almost guaranteed to be interpreted as hostile.

Now, imagine how you might have interpreted this comment if my entire response to you had been:

cuz ya glib