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I think you might be underestimating: A) the number of degrees of discomfort between, "I can talk about this any time with no effort", and "I literally can't t

I think you might be underestimating: A) the number of degrees of discomfort between, "I can talk about this any time with no effort", and "I literally can't talk about this". B) how normal it is for certain types of people to struggle with this kind of interaction in general. On the first point, I am perfectly capable of being frank with friends. I am perfectly capable of telling them how I feel. And when I need to have confrontational conversations with friends, I do. But that's not the same thing as feeling no aversion or worry at all about disappointing someone. And if a crutch exists that mitigates part of that problem, I just don't see the harm in that crutch. There are dozens of tiny, inessential affordances everyone gives themselves every day to help manage non-crippling problems. That's normal. It shouldn't be weird to anyone that people with even mild anxiety around friendships might want similar affordances. Sometimes it's not about necessity, people just want a tool that makes their life easier. On the second note, I'm not going to go in depth here, but people who don't struggle with social anxiety usually don't understand how many other people do, or what their experiences are actually like. There's a pretty wide range of different annoyances or aversions that people can have about this stuff, and I really don't want to pretend to speak for other people. Some introverts don't struggle with this at all, some struggle in completely different areas. I am speaking in very broad generalities. But I consider these to be very common situations for someone like me: - going to an event I'd rather not just because I don't want to disappoint a friend or make them think I don't enjoy their company. - actively not inviting a friend to an event because I'm worried they'd only come out of obligation and would resent that I asked. - feeling like if I just express interest in changing plans a friend will accommodate me even though they had their heart set on something. I'm not going to say people like me are a majority: we're definitely not. But we're not that rare. If you've never had even a casual acquaintance like me, you're not looking very hard. > I can't imagine being friends with someone who is this incapable of communicating. I realize this is somewhat blunt and a little uncharitable, and I don't mean it as an attack or as a character flaw -- but in the general spirit of being confrontational and open: when I hear this, my immediate thought is, "this person probably doesn't have many introverted friends, and they probably don't have many deep, honest relationships with the few introverted friends they do have." Your perspective definitely isn't uncommon, and it shouldn't surprise me when I hear it, but I'm always surprised anyway. :) It's like seeing someone who lives in a completely different world, to the point where when they see the world I'm familiar with it's not just unexpected to them, but so unexpected that they think, "there must be something wrong with that."

kelnos 7y ago
Not the parent you're replying to, but I agree with their perspective for the most part. I think absolutes are silly to use as arguments, and sure, there are certainly some people for whom it's really difficult to proactively cancel plans. Sometimes I'm that person. But I choose to suck it up and act like a human instead of (if I were to use this app) hiding behind a computer to let it do my dirty work for me. I certainly grant that there are some people who just can't do that sometimes, or even more often than sometimes. It's hard to believe that there are enough people like that for an app. My feeling is that most people who use this would actually otherwise actively cancel plans, but will use the app instead just to be socially lazy or to avoid even a hint of confrontation, and the effect will be to lower the quality of social interaction between people overall.
- danShumway 7y ago
  When I say that you're underestimating the number of people who have these types of anxieties, I don't mean it in the way I might say, "you'd be surprised how many people have PTSD", or "more people than you think are homeless." What I mean is that there are a lot of completely normal people that you probably meet every single day who feel this way about social interactions. The reason you find that hard to believe is not because those people are wildly uncommon or because they're hiding, but simply because you don't personally know how to recognize them, or that (ironically) you haven't been in a position yet where one of them talked to you that openly about their feelings. What I'm trying to get across is that people like me are not aberrations, and our personality traits are not debilitating character flaws. To try and get across how weird your perspective feels to me: Imagine that one day you showed a friend Candy Crush, and their immediate reaction was, "but who would ever install this? Sure, occasionally even I get bored, but when I do I just sit silently and motionlessly like an adult. I don't need constant distractions." Imagine trying to convince your friend that: A) Installing Candy Crush doesn't actually mean that you have undiagnosed ADHD, and that B) It's actually not that big a deal if people occasionally pull out an app to keep themselves from getting bored during long flights, or train rides -- that the fact that some people get bored sometimes is not a big societal problem that needs to be addressed by altering their personalities. Phrases like this stick out to me, > act like a human because from my perspective, I'm not sure I can think of many things more human than caring a lot about other people's preferences, even occasionally to the point where I dismiss what I want to do. And I don't see how using an app to accommodate someone else makes that accommodation suddenly robotic. I'm seeing a bunch of people on here who (as far as I can tell) have a view of introverted relationships like they're this completely impersonal thing that comes down to never wanting to see another person's face or deal with conflict in any way. And the reality is that of course introverted people have conversations and conflicts. In reality, what these relationships often look like is just friends accommodating each other a bunch and going out of their way to make each other feel comfortable via tiny, almost invisible gestures. My proposal: in moderation, maybe that kind of relationship can be nice sometimes, and you don't have to be frightened that society will collapse if more people do that -- even if that involves using an occasional app?

kelnos 7y ago

Not the parent you're replying to, but I agree with their perspective for the most part. I think absolutes are silly to use as arguments, and sure, there are certainly some people for whom it's really difficult to proactively cancel plans. Sometimes I'm that person. But I choose to suck it up and act like a human instead of (if I were to use this app) hiding behind a computer to let it do my dirty work for me. I certainly grant that there are some people who just can't do that sometimes, or even more often than sometimes. It's hard to believe that there are enough people like that for an app. My feeling is that most people who use this would actually otherwise actively cancel plans, but will use the app instead just to be socially lazy or to avoid even a hint of confrontation, and the effect will be to lower the quality of social interaction between people overall.

danShumway 7y ago
When I say that you're underestimating the number of people who have these types of anxieties, I don't mean it in the way I might say, "you'd be surprised how many people have PTSD", or "more people than you think are homeless." What I mean is that there are a lot of completely normal people that you probably meet every single day who feel this way about social interactions. The reason you find that hard to believe is not because those people are wildly uncommon or because they're hiding, but simply because you don't personally know how to recognize them, or that (ironically) you haven't been in a position yet where one of them talked to you that openly about their feelings. What I'm trying to get across is that people like me are not aberrations, and our personality traits are not debilitating character flaws. To try and get across how weird your perspective feels to me: Imagine that one day you showed a friend Candy Crush, and their immediate reaction was, "but who would ever install this? Sure, occasionally even I get bored, but when I do I just sit silently and motionlessly like an adult. I don't need constant distractions." Imagine trying to convince your friend that: A) Installing Candy Crush doesn't actually mean that you have undiagnosed ADHD, and that B) It's actually not that big a deal if people occasionally pull out an app to keep themselves from getting bored during long flights, or train rides -- that the fact that some people get bored sometimes is not a big societal problem that needs to be addressed by altering their personalities. Phrases like this stick out to me, > act like a human because from my perspective, I'm not sure I can think of many things more human than caring a lot about other people's preferences, even occasionally to the point where I dismiss what I want to do. And I don't see how using an app to accommodate someone else makes that accommodation suddenly robotic. I'm seeing a bunch of people on here who (as far as I can tell) have a view of introverted relationships like they're this completely impersonal thing that comes down to never wanting to see another person's face or deal with conflict in any way. And the reality is that of course introverted people have conversations and conflicts. In reality, what these relationships often look like is just friends accommodating each other a bunch and going out of their way to make each other feel comfortable via tiny, almost invisible gestures. My proposal: in moderation, maybe that kind of relationship can be nice sometimes, and you don't have to be frightened that society will collapse if more people do that -- even if that involves using an occasional app?