13 ms·

Bored Lonely Angry Stupid

218 points by laurex 8y ago

kurthr 8y ago
I love the Verizon phone ads on there, "Be the first to Real Time!" They really make the point.
nabnob 8y ago
I've definitely noticed this trend in my own thinking - hyper-individualism, along with a healthy dose of woe-is-me. It's especially bad on sites like Tumblr, where people list out their mental health problems along with other ways they define themselves in the header of their blog. On the one hand, I think it's good that people are discussing things like depression, anxiety, etc. more openly. But as someone who has struggled with depression and feeling suicidal at various points, I think there's a healthier way to frame your thinking, so that you're not acting like depression, or loneliness, or sadness are inevitable, and like you have zero control over your mood or feelings. I had this epiphany after going through a break up, where I could feel myself heading towards a depressive spiral. I was obsessing over how sad I was, replaying happy moments and unfulfilled fantasies about the future in my head...and then I realized I was actually making myself feel worse, and that I could actually make myself stop wallowing in my own sadness by thinking about other things. I think the most important thing to do is to get away from staying in your own head and overthinking things. Interact with other people in real life (not on social media), do physical exercise, practice mindfulness meditation, and try observing your feelings and separating your sense of self from those feelings.
- oceanghost 8y ago
  This is the meaning of the phrase, "depression is a choice." Unfortunately, depression robs you of the skills you need to make the choice. Glad things worked out for you.
  - abstractbarista 8y ago
    A bummer this perspective is shunned. This is exactly what I realized when I went through many years of depression. I never saw a therapist: "If I can't fix or accept this on my own, it's not worth fixing." I slowly started seeing more friends, thought deeply about why I felt so horrible via substances, and eventually came out the other side. Now, you simply cannot get me down, and I'm lovin' it. :)
    - EADGBE 8y ago
      I believe it is shunned because it points the blame back mostly on the sufferer. Since it's a "choice" it's often deduced (incorrectly) that it's similar to choosing something menial like what clothes you want to wear or what you want to eat for lunch. Instead, if you want to think this way (that depression is largely a choice) then you need to reflect on the fact that one can make a series of choices in order to better control one's mood and outlook. A sustained series of choices over a period of time can elevate the mood and mental state. This isn't ignoring the fact that some should seek professional help, or chemical aides in getting this done. Depression is simply a spectrum (like everything else these days) which may or may not require more outside sources to circumnavigate. In that way it's a choice, and becomes less of an issue with "someone is broken, but they choose to be". Their selective consciousness is controlling their outlook.
      - FooHentai 8y ago
        >because it points the blame back mostly on the sufferer. It's certainly perceived to do that, but it can also be read as putting the power to change back mostly on the sufferer. Which is exactly right. Unfortunately it's a chicken/egg kinda situation where the advice is right but entirely indigestible to someone in need of it.
    - ryanchoi 8y ago
      Happy to hear you've got yourself back on track :) I heard/hold a similar take on depression that sounds a little nicer, for better or for worse: it's an issue for which you must seek the answer to on your own, but the problem is that the condition itself takes away your motivation to do anything about it...
- sdegutis 8y ago
  The only thing that has been working for me was following traditional Catholic teachings to a "t". I know religion is taboo in scientific circles, and educated people think of it as just another psychological tool, but it's actually the other way around. Catholicism encompasses everything about psychology, but while remaining grounded in the philosophical truths and principles that make up objective existence. Without that, we have no anchor, and so psychological principles change regularly as the leaders of the field "learn more" about how they were previously mistaken (and then wipe their hands clean of the damage done to innocent people by their incorrect teachings, as they cover it up and move on). Saint Frances de Sales and Saint John Bosco were called masters of human psychology, and secular psychology is only now catching up to them in agreement. Before we can get rid of negative problems in ourselves or others, we must first understand the nature of ourselves, and of the problems, because if we misunderstand these true natures, we're going to be remedying it the wrong way. And thinking of life or the mind as merely effects of the material world is already starting off on a bad principle, and leads to things like over medication, presuming that the mind can be fixed by changing things in the physical brain, which is really only a telephone by which the soul interacts with the physical world. I know enlightened minds will scoff at these ideas, assuming religion to be for the ignorant, and maybe I am an ignorant fool, but anyone who agrees that there are absolute and objective truths will see clearly that the world is going insane. Parents proudly teaching their children that they can choose their gender, encouraging safe spaces where intellectual growth is supposed to be sought by mature young adults, grown men and women spending all their free time chasing every physical and mental pleasure as slaves of their passions without ever accomplishing anything of value, left wondering why they feel unfulfilled at the end of each wasted day. Anyone who recognizes these truths and is frustrated by the world going in the wrong direction, especially with how it has been addressing (or rather enabling and encouraging) mental health issues, should not scoff at the ideas, principles, values, and beliefs that produced men and women who were willing to give up every good pleasure on earth for the honorable and noble goal of selflessly doing good for others in this life, that they may reap rewards for themselves and others in the next life. The Catholic Church has produced so many saints like Saint Benedict, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint John Paul II, Saint Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and so many more that you'd do well to look further into what biases and inaccurate beliefs you have against its objective, intellectual, noble truths.
tom-thistime 8y ago
Maybe. But I was already bored, lonely, angry and stupid before devices and social media were even invented.
- jfengel 8y ago
  Though not TV and the telephone. The interviewee isn't really blaming the Internet, but rather many of the trappings of modernity. The Internet and the smartphone may exacerbate it, but the overall thesis is that we've spent about a century becoming more and more connected, and more and more continually entertained. I'm not entirely sure I buy the notion: Shakespeare describes characters who troll for entertainment(Don John, Iago), and Jane Austen's characters often grapple with boredom. Our expectations do seem to ratchet up with our technological ability to fulfill them, but I feel like it's more of a hedonic treadmill. Boredom and loneliness may be, on some scale, roughly constant. I do believe that social media has allowed us to ratchet up the effects of the "angry" and "stupid" part, possibly to unmanageable levels.
- jimbokun 8y ago
  But more or less than today?
ouid 8y ago
The assertion that "for most of human history boredom and loneliness have been the norm" is idiotic. The 19th and 20th centuries in america are not "most of human history". For the actual vast majority of human history, we were hunter-gatherers. We operated in tight social circles, and, and I'm just assuming here, we were rarely alone. I don't know how bored you would be as a hunter gatherer, either, but I suspect not terribly.
- tcmb 8y ago
  The phrase you put in quotation marks is not an actual quote from the interview, and I didn't interpret it as suggesting this. An actual quote is: "So for most of human history, loneliness or boredom were just accepted features of the human condition." In my view it's different to say that boredom and loneliness were accepted _when they occured_, rather than saying they were the norm, which might mean they were experienced most of the time.
- jimbokun 8y ago
  I've been hunting, when I was much younger. So I can attest the hunting part of "hunter-gatherer" can be exceedingly lonely and boring. It's mostly being very still and quiet, waiting for a prey animal to wander by.
  - aketchum 8y ago
    This depends on the game being hunted, and really only applies for certain big game hunting like deer. Fowl hunting is a social event, walking along with some friends and at a dog, same with rabbit hunting. I think in hunter-gatherer times it is very likely people hunted in a group in order to better corner an animal or shepherd it towards a trap.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    It's mostly being very still and quiet, waiting for a prey animal to wander by. Yep. In his teens, my dad used to make money by killing foxes for the bounty on their head when one was raiding some farmer's chicken coop. If you could do it in one night, it was good money. The more nights it took you, the lower the de facto hourly pay. He would lay perfectly still for several hours in the dark by himself with a cocked gun waiting for the fox, often with bugs crawling over him that he didn't swat at because that would involve moving. He usually got it the first night.
sverige 8y ago
> Over the course of the 19th century and 20th centuries, these older senses of vanity, of the vain futility of life, fell away. And as a result, what we see today is that when people post on social media, there’s no sense of their own limitations as humans. There’s often little modesty, or little fear that one could be going too far in self-promotion. Apparently I was raised with outdated values, since I am pretty much always aware of the vain futility of life and the serious limitations of my humanity. I don't understand the current culture of constant self-promotion and especially the public advertising of what used to be considered moral failings. I lived over half my life without the internet, though, so it's not hard for me to imagine a world without smartphones and the online world. I spent a lot of time in the mid-90s online, then was mostly offline for over five years, then connected again around 2003 or so. For the past few months I have been seriously considering going completely offline again, and my current work situation makes that possible except for a handful of administrative tasks that would take maybe ten minutes a week. If I completely disappear from here, I've followed through on the thought. I think the point of TFA might be that the damage to our culture due to always being connected outweighs the benefits. It sure seems that way to me.
griffinkelly 8y ago
I just got back a month-long trip by myself. It was interesting to note that a ton of people I talked to before going, friends, family, acquaintances, were all shocked I would travel alone. The overwhelming response was, "aren't you going to get lonely?" I think it's important to be alone and enjoy your own company. Working remotely too, I get a very similar question. "Don't you miss working with people?" I work with people all the time, but I think that being alone magnifies the effect of spending quality time with people, rather than just spending time together for the sake of being together.
- cosmodisk 8y ago
  A lot of people don't get this. When I tell I like companies, everyone's fine.When I say I equally like being on my own, a lot of people get funny about it. I could sit in a room just with myself for weeks and I'd be fine and I'd enjoy it,while a lot of people would go crazy pretty quickly.
  - OneWordSoln 8y ago
    It's just my guess, but I think that most people are so uncomfortable with their own thoughts and feelings that they have to continually drown them out with idle chatter. The problem is that they select those others very carefully so as to avoid any ideas that may impinge upon their established worldview. Perhaps it comes down to that there are just very few genuinely curious and intellectually honest people in the world, the result being that the majority (i.e. the others) self-select their environments and then either ignore others or, worse yet, attack them.
    - nsrivast 8y ago
      Perhaps there are some genuinely curious and intellectually honest people who learn from interacting and experiencing with others. Perhaps more.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  I had a similar (relating more to social media than people), but qualitatively different, experience last fall. My partner and I went on a trip for a few days. While relaying the plans to some coworkers and visiting colleagues while out for lunch I was asked for my instagram handle so they could see my photos. I replied I didn't have one. The group started into shock and said, to summarize, nobody can follow along to my trip. All i could say was I don't care. Of course, there are many other ways to share photos if I want, but keeping a live journal of it wasn't why I went...
cerealbad 8y ago
it's a historical plateau. if you were born in 1899 you may have lived as: baby (vaccinated), child (student), farmer (subject), citizen (worker), ally (soldier), employee (consumer), retiree (investor). if you were born in 1999 i am hard pressed to imagine over the next 100 years you will see this much of a sea-change. in the most hyper-optimistic development: baby (ivf), child (self-educated), teenager (self-starter), adult (colonist), neural map (biomachine), rebirth (clone). far more likely you see space stagnation after a manned mars mission in the 2060s, and various forms of "new" movements arising arguing for ethics around engineered reproduction both for humans and animals to be reworked around a global utility model due to various food and water shocks, a type of one-child-world policy. it could very well be that a dominant monarchy reappears, since empires with long lived monarchs provide at least 50 years of stability if managed correctly, and we are approaching various global inflection points in the 21st century which could cause a large and unnecessary loss of human life due to poor long term planning (family management in the developing world, too many abortions/immigration in the first world causing genetic displacement and social revolutionary movements, extreme weather events stretching global insurance/banking/money markets and the typical decline of the concept of civil liberties for an new enforced set of social civilities with fragmentary groups echoing radical ideas in secrecy - which historically leads to insurrection and civil war). people don't really change as quickly as their technology does, so it's very dangerous to hear all thoughts without also having some type of pan-humanist framework in which to put them and try to form relative links between superficially disparate ideas. it's much easier to jump to contrast and division, and then force the issue, the radicalization of at risk youth into violent murder in public spaces is especially concerning, the school shooter phenomenon is mutating into a church shooter or a mall shooter, a park shooter, a club shooter. half a dozen coordinated shooters could shut down an entire city, at which point every city will need check points and will have to become gun free, a sort of TSA for metropolitan and then suburban areas. i wonder if at some certain point life would be safer in a prison than outside one. technology will advance towards safety and must necessarily lead to schemes with voluntary basis of total monitoring, eg food credits if you allow permanent personal surveillance. the cheesy 80s dystopia now creeping over the horizon. the hug and squeeze technique of totalitarianism, where you're crushed between abundance and fear is a model that is being exported globally and seems quite profitable and certainly preferable to war, famine and disease.
dlkf 8y ago
I find this concept of the "history of emotions" unconvincing on so many levels. Between the mind-body problem and our coarse understanding of the brain, it's hard enough to talk sensibly about emotions in the present. That language changes and new words are invented is hardly evidence that the spectrum of human emotions (and where we lie on it) has undergone a fundamental shift. The problem space here is complex, mysterious, and rife with opportunities to conflate the map and the territory. The authors are exploiting this confusion to sell a pre-determined narrative about social media which, while great for Vox articles and Ted talks, doesn't actually offer any new knowledge.
dvt 8y ago
My theory is that social media, the internet, and these manufactured communities trick our brains into feeling like we belong to actual communities -- when in reality, we do not. I work remotely and I'm no stranger to being "alone" -- and as an experiment, I did a "social media" detox for about 6 months -- I deleted all social media off my phone (FB, IG, dating apps), I blocked all "social" forums on my computer (HN, reddit, etc.) and even though throughout my entire adult life I've considered myself an introvert (which I probably am), I randomly started to interact with people around me. This was actually pretty surprising. I've never been a "good morning, Joe!" bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed kind of person, but that's exactly what I became. I started getting better at conversations, more interested in people around me, and just generally in more of a "social vibe." I've always been terrible at remembering names, and instead of brushing it off (after all, who cares about remembering random old guy #7 from coffee shop #4?), I started keeping notes of names and appearance in my phone, so I don't forget who's who. It's actually kind of mind-blowing that my personality underwent such a palpable change. I've since sworn off dating apps and attempting to limit my social media as much as possible. HN and reddit are probably going to get blocked again soon, too.
- robbyking 8y ago
  A couple times I've caught myself saying "I know a person who..." when what I meant to say was "I follow a person on Instagram who..." It was really eye opening.
  - jaden 8y ago
    I've found myself doing the same thing. But you can work next to someone in a cubicle for years and know less about them than you would from subscribing to someone's blog (assuming it's honest). I value in-person interaction, but I've also gotten to feel like I know people with whom I've only interacted with online, via email and MUDing back in the day. How well you really know someone is hard to quantify.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > My theory is that social media, the internet, and these manufactured communities trick our brains into feeling like we belong to actual communities -- when in reality, we do not. I was having a discussion with my daughter about this just last night, where I made a similar point. I was pointing out how celebrities (particularly, but not solely, movie stars) are always playing a role, even in interviews, etc. When they make a public appearance that isn't overtly as a character, the role they're playing is their "movie star" persona. Unless you are an actual friend of theirs, you don't really know what their true authentic selves are. Social media, it seems to me, has caused everyone to do the same thing. In social media, people tend to be playing a role -- that role being what they view as the best version of themselves. But it's not their true authentic selves any more than with the celebrities. I think this has caused a serious degradation in the social fabric. Before social media, the most common interactions you had were with friends and family, and you were mostly interacting with their authentic selves. After all, nobody really knows you until they've seen you at your worst. Interactions in social media are not like that. You're interactive with people playing parts, and that interaction is no longer genuine human contact. It just has the window-dressing of that. Loneliness and isolation is the logical result of that. It's a bit like replacing most of your food with "dietary fiber" that is made to look and taste like food. It will fill you up and taste good, but in the end you'll still starve to death.
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blancNoir 8y ago
The other BLAS.
revskill 8y ago
My experience with being online, is that: if you're in a messy online environment, you can comment or raise your voice, but it's nessesary NOT to follow your comment's responses. Our brain unfortunately accept everything that we don't want to put in our brain. And it hurts.
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austincheney 8y ago
Bored and lonely? I blame my military deployment.
weeksie 8y ago
I think this is right. At least the lonesomeness and monotony. That's how I remember my childhood and I grew up in Alaska in a tiny fishing town in the 70s-80s (...) so that put a lot of my experiences back a bit, but the flip-over of the internet in the 90s and then, you know, phones, just changed everything. The way that extra time can be absorbed now, entirely without friction, is a step change on the pace of how a person experiences the world. Long idle times are more painful now, though they were always a little painful. That acute discomfort drives us back into "action" and we've built a world around ourselves that is one big dopamine feedback loop and . . . that's fine. Like it's not better or worse but it's just how we live and it's extremely different than how we lived 30 years ago (and so on down the pike) and these huge step changes happen more and more often the richer and better at communicating we get. Which is totally, totally fine. Sometimes you gotta marvel at those fast changes. Glad to see people studying/documenting this. Amazing to think how this suite of emotions will be coded in another 20 years.
puranjay 8y ago
I think this article might be the final trigger to convince me to switch to a dumb phone
- hindsightbias 8y ago
  You’ll get lost. Many gas stations don’t have maps anymore. And what will you do at concerts? Listen to the music?

218 points by laurex 8y ago

I love the Verizon phone ads on there, "Be the first to Real Time!" They really make the point.

I've definitely noticed this trend in my own thinking - hyper-individualism, along with a healthy dose of woe-is-me. It's especially bad on sites like Tumblr, where people list out their mental health problems along with other ways they define themselves in the header of their blog. On the one hand, I think it's good that people are discussing things like depression, anxiety, etc. more openly. But as someone who has struggled with depression and feeling suicidal at various points, I think there's a healthier way to frame your thinking, so that you're not acting like depression, or loneliness, or sadness are inevitable, and like you have zero control over your mood or feelings. I had this epiphany after going through a break up, where I could feel myself heading towards a depressive spiral. I was obsessing over how sad I was, replaying happy moments and unfulfilled fantasies about the future in my head...and then I realized I was actually making myself feel worse, and that I could actually make myself stop wallowing in my own sadness by thinking about other things. I think the most important thing to do is to get away from staying in your own head and overthinking things. Interact with other people in real life (not on social media), do physical exercise, practice mindfulness meditation, and try observing your feelings and separating your sense of self from those feelings.

oceanghost 8y ago
This is the meaning of the phrase, "depression is a choice." Unfortunately, depression robs you of the skills you need to make the choice. Glad things worked out for you.
- abstractbarista 8y ago
  A bummer this perspective is shunned. This is exactly what I realized when I went through many years of depression. I never saw a therapist: "If I can't fix or accept this on my own, it's not worth fixing." I slowly started seeing more friends, thought deeply about why I felt so horrible via substances, and eventually came out the other side. Now, you simply cannot get me down, and I'm lovin' it. :)
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    I believe it is shunned because it points the blame back mostly on the sufferer. Since it's a "choice" it's often deduced (incorrectly) that it's similar to choosing something menial like what clothes you want to wear or what you want to eat for lunch. Instead, if you want to think this way (that depression is largely a choice) then you need to reflect on the fact that one can make a series of choices in order to better control one's mood and outlook. A sustained series of choices over a period of time can elevate the mood and mental state. This isn't ignoring the fact that some should seek professional help, or chemical aides in getting this done. Depression is simply a spectrum (like everything else these days) which may or may not require more outside sources to circumnavigate. In that way it's a choice, and becomes less of an issue with "someone is broken, but they choose to be". Their selective consciousness is controlling their outlook.
    - FooHentai 8y ago
      >because it points the blame back mostly on the sufferer. It's certainly perceived to do that, but it can also be read as putting the power to change back mostly on the sufferer. Which is exactly right. Unfortunately it's a chicken/egg kinda situation where the advice is right but entirely indigestible to someone in need of it.
  - ryanchoi 8y ago
    Happy to hear you've got yourself back on track :) I heard/hold a similar take on depression that sounds a little nicer, for better or for worse: it's an issue for which you must seek the answer to on your own, but the problem is that the condition itself takes away your motivation to do anything about it...
sdegutis 8y ago
The only thing that has been working for me was following traditional Catholic teachings to a "t". I know religion is taboo in scientific circles, and educated people think of it as just another psychological tool, but it's actually the other way around. Catholicism encompasses everything about psychology, but while remaining grounded in the philosophical truths and principles that make up objective existence. Without that, we have no anchor, and so psychological principles change regularly as the leaders of the field "learn more" about how they were previously mistaken (and then wipe their hands clean of the damage done to innocent people by their incorrect teachings, as they cover it up and move on). Saint Frances de Sales and Saint John Bosco were called masters of human psychology, and secular psychology is only now catching up to them in agreement. Before we can get rid of negative problems in ourselves or others, we must first understand the nature of ourselves, and of the problems, because if we misunderstand these true natures, we're going to be remedying it the wrong way. And thinking of life or the mind as merely effects of the material world is already starting off on a bad principle, and leads to things like over medication, presuming that the mind can be fixed by changing things in the physical brain, which is really only a telephone by which the soul interacts with the physical world. I know enlightened minds will scoff at these ideas, assuming religion to be for the ignorant, and maybe I am an ignorant fool, but anyone who agrees that there are absolute and objective truths will see clearly that the world is going insane. Parents proudly teaching their children that they can choose their gender, encouraging safe spaces where intellectual growth is supposed to be sought by mature young adults, grown men and women spending all their free time chasing every physical and mental pleasure as slaves of their passions without ever accomplishing anything of value, left wondering why they feel unfulfilled at the end of each wasted day. Anyone who recognizes these truths and is frustrated by the world going in the wrong direction, especially with how it has been addressing (or rather enabling and encouraging) mental health issues, should not scoff at the ideas, principles, values, and beliefs that produced men and women who were willing to give up every good pleasure on earth for the honorable and noble goal of selflessly doing good for others in this life, that they may reap rewards for themselves and others in the next life. The Catholic Church has produced so many saints like Saint Benedict, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint John Paul II, Saint Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and so many more that you'd do well to look further into what biases and inaccurate beliefs you have against its objective, intellectual, noble truths.

tom-thistime 8y ago

Maybe. But I was already bored, lonely, angry and stupid before devices and social media were even invented.

jfengel 8y ago
Though not TV and the telephone. The interviewee isn't really blaming the Internet, but rather many of the trappings of modernity. The Internet and the smartphone may exacerbate it, but the overall thesis is that we've spent about a century becoming more and more connected, and more and more continually entertained. I'm not entirely sure I buy the notion: Shakespeare describes characters who troll for entertainment(Don John, Iago), and Jane Austen's characters often grapple with boredom. Our expectations do seem to ratchet up with our technological ability to fulfill them, but I feel like it's more of a hedonic treadmill. Boredom and loneliness may be, on some scale, roughly constant. I do believe that social media has allowed us to ratchet up the effects of the "angry" and "stupid" part, possibly to unmanageable levels.
jimbokun 8y ago
But more or less than today?

ouid 8y ago

The assertion that "for most of human history boredom and loneliness have been the norm" is idiotic. The 19th and 20th centuries in america are not "most of human history". For the actual vast majority of human history, we were hunter-gatherers. We operated in tight social circles, and, and I'm just assuming here, we were rarely alone. I don't know how bored you would be as a hunter gatherer, either, but I suspect not terribly.

tcmb 8y ago
The phrase you put in quotation marks is not an actual quote from the interview, and I didn't interpret it as suggesting this. An actual quote is: "So for most of human history, loneliness or boredom were just accepted features of the human condition." In my view it's different to say that boredom and loneliness were accepted _when they occured_, rather than saying they were the norm, which might mean they were experienced most of the time.
jimbokun 8y ago
I've been hunting, when I was much younger. So I can attest the hunting part of "hunter-gatherer" can be exceedingly lonely and boring. It's mostly being very still and quiet, waiting for a prey animal to wander by.
- aketchum 8y ago
  This depends on the game being hunted, and really only applies for certain big game hunting like deer. Fowl hunting is a social event, walking along with some friends and at a dog, same with rabbit hunting. I think in hunter-gatherer times it is very likely people hunted in a group in order to better corner an animal or shepherd it towards a trap.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  It's mostly being very still and quiet, waiting for a prey animal to wander by. Yep. In his teens, my dad used to make money by killing foxes for the bounty on their head when one was raiding some farmer's chicken coop. If you could do it in one night, it was good money. The more nights it took you, the lower the de facto hourly pay. He would lay perfectly still for several hours in the dark by himself with a cocked gun waiting for the fox, often with bugs crawling over him that he didn't swat at because that would involve moving. He usually got it the first night.

sverige 8y ago

> Over the course of the 19th century and 20th centuries, these older senses of vanity, of the vain futility of life, fell away. And as a result, what we see today is that when people post on social media, there’s no sense of their own limitations as humans. There’s often little modesty, or little fear that one could be going too far in self-promotion. Apparently I was raised with outdated values, since I am pretty much always aware of the vain futility of life and the serious limitations of my humanity. I don't understand the current culture of constant self-promotion and especially the public advertising of what used to be considered moral failings. I lived over half my life without the internet, though, so it's not hard for me to imagine a world without smartphones and the online world. I spent a lot of time in the mid-90s online, then was mostly offline for over five years, then connected again around 2003 or so. For the past few months I have been seriously considering going completely offline again, and my current work situation makes that possible except for a handful of administrative tasks that would take maybe ten minutes a week. If I completely disappear from here, I've followed through on the thought. I think the point of TFA might be that the damage to our culture due to always being connected outweighs the benefits. It sure seems that way to me.

griffinkelly 8y ago

I just got back a month-long trip by myself. It was interesting to note that a ton of people I talked to before going, friends, family, acquaintances, were all shocked I would travel alone. The overwhelming response was, "aren't you going to get lonely?" I think it's important to be alone and enjoy your own company. Working remotely too, I get a very similar question. "Don't you miss working with people?" I work with people all the time, but I think that being alone magnifies the effect of spending quality time with people, rather than just spending time together for the sake of being together.

cosmodisk 8y ago
A lot of people don't get this. When I tell I like companies, everyone's fine.When I say I equally like being on my own, a lot of people get funny about it. I could sit in a room just with myself for weeks and I'd be fine and I'd enjoy it,while a lot of people would go crazy pretty quickly.
- OneWordSoln 8y ago
  It's just my guess, but I think that most people are so uncomfortable with their own thoughts and feelings that they have to continually drown them out with idle chatter. The problem is that they select those others very carefully so as to avoid any ideas that may impinge upon their established worldview. Perhaps it comes down to that there are just very few genuinely curious and intellectually honest people in the world, the result being that the majority (i.e. the others) self-select their environments and then either ignore others or, worse yet, attack them.
  - nsrivast 8y ago
    Perhaps there are some genuinely curious and intellectually honest people who learn from interacting and experiencing with others. Perhaps more.
52-6F-62 8y ago
I had a similar (relating more to social media than people), but qualitatively different, experience last fall. My partner and I went on a trip for a few days. While relaying the plans to some coworkers and visiting colleagues while out for lunch I was asked for my instagram handle so they could see my photos. I replied I didn't have one. The group started into shock and said, to summarize, nobody can follow along to my trip. All i could say was I don't care. Of course, there are many other ways to share photos if I want, but keeping a live journal of it wasn't why I went...

cerealbad 8y ago

it's a historical plateau. if you were born in 1899 you may have lived as: baby (vaccinated), child (student), farmer (subject), citizen (worker), ally (soldier), employee (consumer), retiree (investor). if you were born in 1999 i am hard pressed to imagine over the next 100 years you will see this much of a sea-change. in the most hyper-optimistic development: baby (ivf), child (self-educated), teenager (self-starter), adult (colonist), neural map (biomachine), rebirth (clone). far more likely you see space stagnation after a manned mars mission in the 2060s, and various forms of "new" movements arising arguing for ethics around engineered reproduction both for humans and animals to be reworked around a global utility model due to various food and water shocks, a type of one-child-world policy. it could very well be that a dominant monarchy reappears, since empires with long lived monarchs provide at least 50 years of stability if managed correctly, and we are approaching various global inflection points in the 21st century which could cause a large and unnecessary loss of human life due to poor long term planning (family management in the developing world, too many abortions/immigration in the first world causing genetic displacement and social revolutionary movements, extreme weather events stretching global insurance/banking/money markets and the typical decline of the concept of civil liberties for an new enforced set of social civilities with fragmentary groups echoing radical ideas in secrecy - which historically leads to insurrection and civil war). people don't really change as quickly as their technology does, so it's very dangerous to hear all thoughts without also having some type of pan-humanist framework in which to put them and try to form relative links between superficially disparate ideas. it's much easier to jump to contrast and division, and then force the issue, the radicalization of at risk youth into violent murder in public spaces is especially concerning, the school shooter phenomenon is mutating into a church shooter or a mall shooter, a park shooter, a club shooter. half a dozen coordinated shooters could shut down an entire city, at which point every city will need check points and will have to become gun free, a sort of TSA for metropolitan and then suburban areas. i wonder if at some certain point life would be safer in a prison than outside one. technology will advance towards safety and must necessarily lead to schemes with voluntary basis of total monitoring, eg food credits if you allow permanent personal surveillance. the cheesy 80s dystopia now creeping over the horizon. the hug and squeeze technique of totalitarianism, where you're crushed between abundance and fear is a model that is being exported globally and seems quite profitable and certainly preferable to war, famine and disease.

dlkf 8y ago

I find this concept of the "history of emotions" unconvincing on so many levels. Between the mind-body problem and our coarse understanding of the brain, it's hard enough to talk sensibly about emotions in the present. That language changes and new words are invented is hardly evidence that the spectrum of human emotions (and where we lie on it) has undergone a fundamental shift. The problem space here is complex, mysterious, and rife with opportunities to conflate the map and the territory. The authors are exploiting this confusion to sell a pre-determined narrative about social media which, while great for Vox articles and Ted talks, doesn't actually offer any new knowledge.

dvt 8y ago

My theory is that social media, the internet, and these manufactured communities trick our brains into feeling like we belong to actual communities -- when in reality, we do not. I work remotely and I'm no stranger to being "alone" -- and as an experiment, I did a "social media" detox for about 6 months -- I deleted all social media off my phone (FB, IG, dating apps), I blocked all "social" forums on my computer (HN, reddit, etc.) and even though throughout my entire adult life I've considered myself an introvert (which I probably am), I randomly started to interact with people around me. This was actually pretty surprising. I've never been a "good morning, Joe!" bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed kind of person, but that's exactly what I became. I started getting better at conversations, more interested in people around me, and just generally in more of a "social vibe." I've always been terrible at remembering names, and instead of brushing it off (after all, who cares about remembering random old guy #7 from coffee shop #4?), I started keeping notes of names and appearance in my phone, so I don't forget who's who. It's actually kind of mind-blowing that my personality underwent such a palpable change. I've since sworn off dating apps and attempting to limit my social media as much as possible. HN and reddit are probably going to get blocked again soon, too.

robbyking 8y ago
A couple times I've caught myself saying "I know a person who..." when what I meant to say was "I follow a person on Instagram who..." It was really eye opening.
- jaden 8y ago
  I've found myself doing the same thing. But you can work next to someone in a cubicle for years and know less about them than you would from subscribing to someone's blog (assuming it's honest). I value in-person interaction, but I've also gotten to feel like I know people with whom I've only interacted with online, via email and MUDing back in the day. How well you really know someone is hard to quantify.
JohnFen 8y ago
> My theory is that social media, the internet, and these manufactured communities trick our brains into feeling like we belong to actual communities -- when in reality, we do not. I was having a discussion with my daughter about this just last night, where I made a similar point. I was pointing out how celebrities (particularly, but not solely, movie stars) are always playing a role, even in interviews, etc. When they make a public appearance that isn't overtly as a character, the role they're playing is their "movie star" persona. Unless you are an actual friend of theirs, you don't really know what their true authentic selves are. Social media, it seems to me, has caused everyone to do the same thing. In social media, people tend to be playing a role -- that role being what they view as the best version of themselves. But it's not their true authentic selves any more than with the celebrities. I think this has caused a serious degradation in the social fabric. Before social media, the most common interactions you had were with friends and family, and you were mostly interacting with their authentic selves. After all, nobody really knows you until they've seen you at your worst. Interactions in social media are not like that. You're interactive with people playing parts, and that interaction is no longer genuine human contact. It just has the window-dressing of that. Loneliness and isolation is the logical result of that. It's a bit like replacing most of your food with "dietary fiber" that is made to look and taste like food. It will fill you up and taste good, but in the end you'll still starve to death.

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blancNoir 8y ago

The other BLAS.

revskill 8y ago

My experience with being online, is that: if you're in a messy online environment, you can comment or raise your voice, but it's nessesary NOT to follow your comment's responses. Our brain unfortunately accept everything that we don't want to put in our brain. And it hurts.

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austincheney 8y ago

Bored and lonely? I blame my military deployment.

weeksie 8y ago

I think this is right. At least the lonesomeness and monotony. That's how I remember my childhood and I grew up in Alaska in a tiny fishing town in the 70s-80s (...) so that put a lot of my experiences back a bit, but the flip-over of the internet in the 90s and then, you know, phones, just changed everything. The way that extra time can be absorbed now, entirely without friction, is a step change on the pace of how a person experiences the world. Long idle times are more painful now, though they were always a little painful. That acute discomfort drives us back into "action" and we've built a world around ourselves that is one big dopamine feedback loop and . . . that's fine. Like it's not better or worse but it's just how we live and it's extremely different than how we lived 30 years ago (and so on down the pike) and these huge step changes happen more and more often the richer and better at communicating we get. Which is totally, totally fine. Sometimes you gotta marvel at those fast changes. Glad to see people studying/documenting this. Amazing to think how this suite of emotions will be coded in another 20 years.

puranjay 8y ago

I think this article might be the final trigger to convince me to switch to a dumb phone

hindsightbias 8y ago
You’ll get lost. Many gas stations don’t have maps anymore. And what will you do at concerts? Listen to the music?