tact is not my strongest suit

[dr4b]

There really must be a polite way to say "thanks for going to such a great effort to inform me about something I already knew", right?

(In English, by the way. There's no point in even remotely trying to convey it in Japanese.)

Comments

[zml.livejournal.com]

How necessary is it to convey that you knew it? If I'm being polite, I frequently just don't state it.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

The idea is presumably to say something which is itself unobjectionable, but has the desired snarky implications, thus giving the other person the vague feeling that they're being insulted but denying them the opening to retort.

[rjmccall.livejournal.com]

That would be an intriguing variant on "polite".

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Well, yes--it's a subversion of intent. I agree that the most polite thing to do is not to mention it at all. If the level of effort was sufficiently great, there's no really good way to tell them that it was in vain without making them feel bad.
From the general frustration level in Deanna's entries lately I was assuming that this person was annoying. So if you're going to tell them, it might as well be with the intention of getting them to go away.

[zml.livejournal.com]

Yes, leave it to Carl to come up with the passive aggressive meaning for "polite." :)

[rjmccall.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is what I do. Or "Oh yeah, I heard a little about that, thanks for the pointer", which leaves open the possibility that they've still helped me out.

If they're not openly shy about it, you can even respond by asking for clarification of some point (possibly something you already know), which shows that you're familiar with the topic but consider them a valuable source. And hey, they might actually have more information. Something like, "Oh right, Obama's been elected President. Who do you think he's going to pick for Secretary of State?"

[dr4b]

That's actually a pretty good line. "Yeah, I heard about that, thanks though" might be short and succinct and not rude. I should macro it so I can auto-reply :)

[dr4b]

So, this is a blog-related thing. What I worry about is, if I smile and nod and say "why thank you for telling me!", it could come back to bite me later in the form of someone saying "hey, *I* scooped you on that, why aren't you giving me credit?" and it's not like I can just say "oh, I knew all along" then.

most things that it happens for, this probably isn't an issue, but there are a few where I just never posted about something on my blog itself even though I knew about it... and then someone will send me a long comment or a long email out of nowhere to tell me about it, and in my brain I'm like "...yes, i KNOW that" but I hate to type anything for fear of being rude.

Actually, the worse ones are when I *DID* post about the thing in question, but the person writing to me simply kind of found my blog and was like "omg! you like Japanese baseball! let me share with you everything I know about it!" without actually reading or searching first. In those cases I'm usually just like "Yeah, I know" with those words being a link to where I posted about it, without saying anything else.

(It's funny, because I've gotten to the point where *I* tend to preface comments on other people's blogs like "...you probably know about this already, but...")