Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
It’s not a meme, it’s a psychological concept. It boils down to when you attribute a motive or a mindset to someone when in fact you’re only speculating based on that of your own. So if you assert that someone let’s say is doing something because they’re afraid of xyz - and in fact there could be many reasons and there’s no real evidence of what you’re claiming, but if your peers know that that is a characteristic of yours, they might accuse you of projecting.
I mean the way you explained it does make sense for them to do, for example if I had a certain medical condition, I might see someone describe it in terms I'd describe and say "it sounds like you might have MS", but the confusing side/aspect of it, to me, comes from exchanges where someone is, for example, accusing another person of being an art thief, and that person responds "stop projecting, you're the art thief" (or, alternatively, the act of projecting is hard to think of a lead-up for). And it happens often enough I scratch my head at how it's seen as having gravity.
I've seen/heard it described as "psychologically caused", but I've never been in a situation where I've felt gravitation towards doing it, or, strictly speaking (which I say that way because it might boil down to coincidence when I describe others doing it, so I'm saying it relatively loosely in those instances), suspected it. It reminds me of how long it took me to understand sarcasm, which I still take literally, since "I didn't know you were being sarcastic" when they were is easier to fathom as a plea for forgiveness than "I thought you were being sarcastic" in response to someone being sarcastic.