21 Observations From People Watching
by shani
This page contains highlights I saved while reading 21 Observations From People Watching by shani. These quotes were collected using Readwise.
Highlights
I watch the person with the loudest laugh. The most striking thing isn’t the volume—it’s the feverish pitch. As the night goes on, it begins to sound more like desperation. Their joy has a fraying quality; it is exhausting to carry because it comes with a desire to seem happy and make others happy at all times.
It is easy to spot the person in the room who thinks they are better than everyone. It is the person uninterested in giving any of their attention, the genuine and open-ended kind, to anyone else. This is also painful to see, because they often cannot see their own misery, how unpleasant the world is if no one is good enough to be loved.
When someone is flirting: Flirting is marketing, revealing yourself at a specific angle to coax a certain response. People have different marketing strategies, but this is always true: there is energy that is snaking outward, trying to find a surface to grip on. It can feel intrusive when un-welcomed, and pleasurably intimate if welcomed. Some people flirt with everyone. Some people only flirt with people they find hot. Some people never flirt.
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