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> You're misunderstanding what the point of an app like this is. It's not to lie to friends, it's to get them to be more honest with me. You're assuming that I

> You're misunderstanding what the point of an app like this is. It's not to lie to friends, it's to get them to be more honest with me. You're assuming that I don't understand this: I do understand it, I'm saying that this does not increase honesty in your relationship, it just enables social anxiety. Even if people are really honest through the app (and I'm not sure why you're assuming they will be), this is enabling the overall behavior of not communicating their preferences and needs. You're fixing one symptom but exacerbating a larger problem. > If I tell a casual acquaintance that I'm not feeling great about an event, 99% of the time they will say it's not big deal and cancel. They will almost never tell me honestly whether or not they were excited about it and really wanted me to come anyway. a) That may be true, but that's their choice, not yours. b) That doesn't justify you not communicating your needs. > That tendency is not an introverted vs extroverted thing, it's just a thing everybody does. I agree that this isn't an introverted/extroverted thing, but it's absolutely not a thing I do, or that my close friends do. I've met people who do this, but failure to effectively communicate is going to be a major hindrance to our relationship becoming close. > The affordance here for me is being able to skip an awkward conversation where I try to convince someone else that I don't want the polite answer, I want to know whether or not they're disappointed. I understand that, and I'm saying this is not a desirable outcome. That sort of awkward conversation is absolutely fundamental to relationships becoming closer. If you can't say, "Hey, I'm not feeling psyched about hanging out today" or "Hey, just so you know, I won't be offended if you don't want to hang out, and I'd prefer to only hang out if you're feeling excited about it", those are the easy conversations. If you can't say those things, how are you going to say, "Hey, I'm really feeling insecure about what that girl said to me yesterday," or "Hey, what you just said kind of hurt my feelings". The answer is: you won't. Becoming close enough to have a deeply vulnerable conversation like that doesn't just happen ex nihilo, it grows out of having less important conversations that require just a little vulnerability. > It's not so I can lie to friends, its so I can express my preferences without worrying that I'm being lied to. But you're not expressing your preference to your friends. On the contrary, you're avoiding expressing your preferences to your friends, out of fear that they'll lie to you if you express your preferences. > Would it be better if no one, introverted or extroverted, ever hid what they wanted? Maybe, but I'm not convinced that's true. Could I sit down with all of my friends, one on one, and say, "you need to promise me that if I ask if it's OK to cancel, you will always tell me whether or not you're disappointed in me." I've done that with a few very close friends, but in general, I've found that kind of a conversation is a good way to creep out casual acquaintances. Well yeah, if you lead in with that, that's pretty intense. It's also a pretty big assumption that everyone needs to be told to be honest with you. > Or maybe I should just change my personality to not care at all if I'm disappointing those people? No--I'm saying change your behavior to get the results you want. If you want close relationships where you can be open, honest, and vulnerable with each other, then starting off hiding something minor like this is not the way to get there. > Again, I cycle back to this idea that everyone hides preferences and insecurities all the time, that everyone has quirks, and that we all tolerate mild social lubricants that make friendships easier. Tolerating things is not the same as leaning into them so hard that you build an app around them. Yes, people make mistakes, and we should allow for humans to be humans. > Except when those lubricants are designed for introverts, in which case suddenly they're problematic. Wait, I thought you said this wasn't an introvert/extrovert thing? > The problem people have here is not that they think politeness is the same as lying -- otherwise all of these commenters would have already joined the radical honesty movement. I try my best to be radically honest. :) Whether I succeed, I dunno. I'm certainly more honest since I started trying.

danShumway 7y ago
What makes this difficult to get across is that there are relationships I have where I'd almost agree with you. There are people I'm friends with where we have, for lack of a better word, 'contracts' where we've promised to never lie to each other, even about trivial things and even if it's hurtful. But in the same way that there are gradients of anxiety, there are also gradients of friendship. I do not need to be comfortable having difficult conversations with my coworkers. I can have difficult conversations with my coworkers if it's important, but there is no inherent virtue in forcing myself to go through that unpleasantness just so we can plan a board-game night. Your view also discounts the extent that relationships develop over time. You do understand that immediate, radical honesty isn't how relationships work: > Well yeah, if you lead in with that, that's pretty intense. But you don't follow through with that thought to its natural conclusion. If I'm not going to lead with something like this, what you're essentially saying to me is, "you should be uncomfortable around our calendar until I feel comfortable having this conversation with you." My understanding of your position is that if I don't force myself to feel safe talking about small things, I won't ever feel safe talking about big things. Frankly, I don't think that's a realistic or practical view of relationships, and I guarantee if you applied that standard equally to all of the other social graces you extend to everyone around you, you would not have many friends (deep or otherwise). I disagree that accommodating some behaviors necessarily means that relationships can't deepen over time. Of course practicing vulnerability is important for relationships, but it is equally important to practice grace and care. If you show people you care about making them feel safe rather than pressing every issue, then they might eventually feel safe enough to trust you to be gentle when they're really insecure about something serious. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I deal with people who will get incredibly lonely or feel incredibly disliked if they're left alone for a long period of time. I'm curious, if I built a calendar app for my friends that reminded us every 3 or 4 days to call that person and catch up with them, would you say that's an unhealthy technological solution that's stunting the relationship? My take on this kind of 'dishonesty' is that sometimes friends agree to handle each other's quirks and work around their specific issues rather than barreling through them head-on, and that doesn't mean they're avoiding responsibility or undermining the friendship. It just means they care about each other and want to meet each other's personalities halfway. > Tolerating things is not the same as leaning into them so hard that you build an app around them. I don't want to get too off-topic or dismissive, but I think this is a somewhat uncritical view of how modern relationships work among most 'normal' friends. We've built Tinder and designed blind dating apps to help people get around their social anxiety asking strangers for dates. People go to bars and drink substances designed specifically to bypass the restraint parts of their brain so they'll be less guarded with their friends. We've built apps like Facetime so that people who lack the ability to emotionally connect to written messages can get the visual and auditory signifiers they need to feel connected to other people. We build games that are designed to let people avoid boredom. We use online polls among friends to avoid conflicts around small decisions. We build bar-room trivia apps for people who have problems interacting with each other or picking conversation topics without 3rd-party intervention. I pretty regularly go out of my way to build systems, use systems, and structure my life to accommodate behaviors that do not make sense to me, and I still manage to avoid thinking that every person with those behaviors is broken and needs to be fixed.

danShumway 7y ago

What makes this difficult to get across is that there are relationships I have where I'd almost agree with you. There are people I'm friends with where we have, for lack of a better word, 'contracts' where we've promised to never lie to each other, even about trivial things and even if it's hurtful. But in the same way that there are gradients of anxiety, there are also gradients of friendship. I do not need to be comfortable having difficult conversations with my coworkers. I can have difficult conversations with my coworkers if it's important, but there is no inherent virtue in forcing myself to go through that unpleasantness just so we can plan a board-game night. Your view also discounts the extent that relationships develop over time. You do understand that immediate, radical honesty isn't how relationships work: > Well yeah, if you lead in with that, that's pretty intense. But you don't follow through with that thought to its natural conclusion. If I'm not going to lead with something like this, what you're essentially saying to me is, "you should be uncomfortable around our calendar until I feel comfortable having this conversation with you." My understanding of your position is that if I don't force myself to feel safe talking about small things, I won't ever feel safe talking about big things. Frankly, I don't think that's a realistic or practical view of relationships, and I guarantee if you applied that standard equally to all of the other social graces you extend to everyone around you, you would not have many friends (deep or otherwise). I disagree that accommodating some behaviors necessarily means that relationships can't deepen over time. Of course practicing vulnerability is important for relationships, but it is equally important to practice grace and care. If you show people you care about making them feel safe rather than pressing every issue, then they might eventually feel safe enough to trust you to be gentle when they're really insecure about something serious. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but I deal with people who will get incredibly lonely or feel incredibly disliked if they're left alone for a long period of time. I'm curious, if I built a calendar app for my friends that reminded us every 3 or 4 days to call that person and catch up with them, would you say that's an unhealthy technological solution that's stunting the relationship? My take on this kind of 'dishonesty' is that sometimes friends agree to handle each other's quirks and work around their specific issues rather than barreling through them head-on, and that doesn't mean they're avoiding responsibility or undermining the friendship. It just means they care about each other and want to meet each other's personalities halfway. > Tolerating things is not the same as leaning into them so hard that you build an app around them. I don't want to get too off-topic or dismissive, but I think this is a somewhat uncritical view of how modern relationships work among most 'normal' friends. We've built Tinder and designed blind dating apps to help people get around their social anxiety asking strangers for dates. People go to bars and drink substances designed specifically to bypass the restraint parts of their brain so they'll be less guarded with their friends. We've built apps like Facetime so that people who lack the ability to emotionally connect to written messages can get the visual and auditory signifiers they need to feel connected to other people. We build games that are designed to let people avoid boredom. We use online polls among friends to avoid conflicts around small decisions. We build bar-room trivia apps for people who have problems interacting with each other or picking conversation topics without 3rd-party intervention. I pretty regularly go out of my way to build systems, use systems, and structure my life to accommodate behaviors that do not make sense to me, and I still manage to avoid thinking that every person with those behaviors is broken and needs to be fixed.