Increasingly baffled by people thinking they can dictate to me point for point what I need to do based on their politeness standards, or else.
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It's just hilarious, in all its gaslighting glory: people wanting to act the taskmaster in return for literally nothing, getting offended if rebuked.
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Believers in cultural relativism and absolutism share the exact same defect: they can't tell the difference between acceptable and unacceptable demands.
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The problem seems to be that most people use the same, extremely ridiculous heuristic to solve these issues: would I do the same in their stead?
If you limit your understanding of human interaction & behaviour to your own cognitive empathy, that isn't much of an understanding.
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So for this particular case, I find the most effective response in almost any eventuality is the simplest:
No. Fuck off.
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There are of course nuanced, empathetic and refined ways to say "fuck off," and sometimes I guess those are better.
But if they gon' gaslight, it's some version of that sentiment, however you choose to get it across.
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The worst part of the entire thing is how brain-dead simple it is to present demands with appropriate etiquette, relative to your culture.
All you have to do is ask politely and not presume compliance. The particulars can be more or less effective, but how can you fuck this up?
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If a request is fair and polite, it will be so simple and unobtrusive or else proportional and fair that you can't actually say no without looking like an asshole.
If you have to use coercion, you're either being stupid or, more probably, you are being neither fair nor polite.
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I feel like this is such a basic life skill to know with people who could theoretically go postal and kill you at any time- sorry, got sidetracked- that there really is no excuse not to have learned it outside of maybe people w/chronic experiences of severe emotional abuse.
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Generally speaking, the only right you have over other people is the right to walk away.
If you think they're being rude, selfish, petty or so on, by your own standards, that's your prerogative.
If you want to tell people what to do, you'd better have a good fucking reason.