system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is there a phrase for people's tendency to ignore what you say and to instead respond to their own little conversation? Why do people do this?

Not necessarily a Strawman argument, but where you're essentially having two different (but similar) conversations. It's like people just assume you have some hidden meaning or agenda, or something.

Like, random example, but if I say "I like pineapples" and someone responds with "You don't like bacon? Why? What's wrong with you??" or "Banana cream pie is disgusting tho" or something. Even though neither bacon, bananas, or pies were at all mentioned.

It's exhausting to have so many conversations that go nowhere, just spinning out, because people hear what they want to hear rather than the words coming out of your mouth. I'd like to better understand this tendency (I know I've *probably* done it at some point, myself, even if I can't remember)

Is there a phrase describing this? Why do people do this?
gpt
One common term for this is "talking past one another."

As to why people do this, well, that's an empirical question, but, speculatively I'd say that there are a few common kinds of problems:

1. That everyday arguments almost always leave things out (they are enthymemetics).
2. That many important everyday arguments include things like thick or essentially contested concepts (or their rhetorical equivalents like god/devil/charismatic terms).
3. That ambiguity is an important part of how communication works and, sometimes, communication doesn't work.
4. People are not trained to be good listeners and, as such, are bad at it.
5. Some people seem to think of communicative exchanges as being essentially/correctly about making assertions or some kind of agonistic nonsense.