Whether the person saying it actually cares or not is irrelevant. They’re saying it to be rudely dismissive of what is being said while simultaneously trying to sound like a badass for attempting to speak for everyone else.

i.e., Being assholes for clout.

It’s schoolyard bullshit that shows the person saying it still has a bit of growing up to do.

I was playing an online team game the other day. A team mate was banging on about how well he was doing and how he was going to post a video to tiktok, I said “dude, no one cares”, he didn’t post anything after that.

I actually really regret it and wish I could be a more positive person, I’m not sure how though.

tldr but usually the meta language of ‘no one cares’ is ‘shut up(because no one cares)’

It has been my experience 100% of the time that if someone says “No one cares” they in fact do care. People who don’t care say nothing.

So I pretty much agree with your assessment that it’s Self-disproving.

Context matters a lot:
-Discussing a general topic at length among peers, and someone says “Dude, no one cares”? They’re telling you to stop taking, and a) are annoyed, or b) in a mood to put you down. Use the rest of the context to determine your next move (e.g. stop discussing it, point out why it’s important, or leave).

-Discussing an insecurity of yours, and someone says “Dude, no one cares”. Usually means they think the basis for your feeling insecure is unwarranted, usually though not always followed by a more direct statement on said insecurity. Meant to be reassuring, as someone else said.

-In some cases, “no one cares” means that in the speaker’s experience, the amount of people who do care about thing x is marginal, to the point that paying too much attention to that warps the understanding of the situation. This is tricky - by way of example, I’ve said “no one cares if people are trans or not” before (I’ve learned - this is a deliberate example, stay with me). Taken at face value, this is blatantly untrue - some people care a lot, both in a negative and positive sense. But as just a guy in the world, this is truly my experience - other people being trans generally isn’t something the majority of people care about. I can think of only one person I’ve met who does care (negative sense), and he’s generally a weird guy anyway.

As you can imagine, though, going around saying this carries some danger, as it can gloss over the risks posed to trans people by those ostensibly marginal figures. My saying no one cares is a product of my necessarily limited exposure to and experience of the world. The best way to approach this IMO is considering, and speaking respectfully to, the speaker’s blindspots - whether or not the people who care are truly marginal demographically, the impact the people at the margins actually have in the topic of discussion, etc. Depending on the exact topic, either it will be demonstrated that it is essentially true - while it’s doubtless someone cares, the number of people and impact they have on the topic is marginal to the point that this is irrelevant to the topic at hand - or identify a blindspot that hampers the speaker’s understanding of the situation.

I will note that in speaking of context, you may not be neurotypical (took a couple tests at some insistance by my kid, and despite being an odd duck in general, odds are I am) - unfortunately I can’t speak to how to elicit and identify full context in that case, but others here might. Apologies if that’s the case, where “use the rest of the context” probably sounds like “draw the rest of the fucking owl” in an owl drawing tutorial.

Everyone appears to be hitting the “shut up, no one cares”.

There is also the “stop worrying, no one cares.” This is meant to be reassuring. It may be literal.

It’s like “fuck”, it means several different things depending on context.

For example, there’s also the meaning of lamenting that people seem too cavalier, ignorant, or dismissive of something you feel is important.

But you’re right, the meaning in context is sometimes unclear and there are better ways to communicate your feelings.

As for responses, you could always go with a polite “What do you mean?”

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Nobody cares, Sean

You’re missing a critical distinction.

People can not care about (topic), while caring a lot about (disruptive discussion of (topic)).

The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

It’s like I don’t have a particular opinion about cornflakes, but if you keep waving a box of them in people’s face and hitting them with it, then i’mma ask you to stop.

It can be annoying to have to deal with someone going into excessive detail, making inappropriately-fine distinctions, or taking a strong position on one side or other of an argument that nobody’s making - since in all of those cases, nobody is willing or able to engage with the topic, and it’s just taking up conversation-space with (effectively) a monologue that they find boring and exhausting.

If someone says ‘hey look at that funny-shaped tree’ because it looks like something else, it’s usually worth a ‘heh’ in the moment and you move on.

If you start going into great detail of whether or not it actually counts as a tree, or just infodumping neat tree facts, or start ranting about which genus it properly belongs to despite what some people think… then someone will shut you down with ‘Dude. No one cares’.

Going out on a limb here that you’re either young, or some flavor of “nuero-spicy” (I think that’s the hip new term people are using lately).

It’s almost always used rhetorically. To a degree that I could count the number of times I’ve heard it used otherwise in my over 30 years of life on one hand.

The way to respond to it depends on the conversation, but generally it’s your cue to change the subject, or drop the topic they were referring to. Unless you want to start an argument or make things awkward.

You’re also missing some other important “rhetorical” or at least non-literal uses:

• “You’re over thinking this”
• “So few people care about this that it isn’t worth discussing (at least right now or in this context)”
• “That isn’t relevant”

I’m sure I’m missing some other uses myself.

The only way to determine which it’s being used as is through context clues, tone, body language, facial expressions, etc. Welcome to the annoying as hell wonderful world of navigating conversations with people that don’t directly say what they mean.

It gets easier over time with experience, same as any other skill. It’s just a harder skill for some of us to build than it is for others… same as any other skill.

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