9 ms·

Is presentation the cause of loneliness? (2017)

94 points by _ttg 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 7y ago
Isn't the web a connection without presentation ? it works to an extent, I also think people have a need for deeper, thus presented connection.
- prostheticvamp 7y ago
  No. It’s a low bandwidth communication medium which, because it is asynchronous, allows for more calculated choice of presentation (eg, Instagram).
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    I had irc and reddit in mind, not social networks with images though
    - mjevans 7y ago
      It's still the same, and also much harder to tell when people leave the conversation if they do so without interaction clues.
- rchaud 7y ago
  It was, initially. Message boards would attract like minded people, and as the community grew, a culture of sorts would form. Still, people would set up in-person meetups, as there is that desire for deeper connection, as you mentioned. With social networks, that went out the window. Interactions become performative, particularly among those that build up enough followers to become influences. How many time have we seen posts like "What would you do in this situation?" with a meme image attached, or a "How's everyone doing this Monday?" type Instagram story. The poster doesn't care what the answer is, or who is answering. They just look to maximize the number of responses so their engagement score increases.
LandR 7y ago
I've always thought that my chosen superpower, if I could have one, would be as to tell by looking at someone what they honestly think about me. Do they think I'm cool, weird, ugly, creepy, friendly etc. I would never hsve to ask if someone is only pretending to like me or put up withe because they want something out of it. Life would be so much easier, meeting people would be so much easier.
- rajlego 7y ago
  I’d love being able to do that too but imagine if both of us had that same power. If we both have no prior experience with each other, it would either be wonderful (if both of us really have nothing we want to hide) or horrible (because instead of overthinking what the other person is thinking we’ll have to think about what we respectively think).
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  I think you would be shocked by how little this power would be used. Most of us drastically over-estimate how much other people are thinking about us. I think 99% of the time you used this power you would find that people, know who you are, think of you as generally ok, with a slight positive association just for remembering your name, but no other significant opinions about you one way or the other. By the time people actually develop strong opinions about you as a person, your superpower would no longer be necessary to learn what those opinions are. Maybe a few times a year you would catch a hardcore "faker" though. So that is kind of cool.
  - Invictus0 7y ago
    Perhaps this person wants to use this superpower to gain a deeper understanding of their closest relationships?
- derjames 7y ago
  I had this exercise at some point while at high school and in the psychology class. Everyone had to hang a blank paper on their backs. Then the professor asked to start chasing the other peers and write in their papers what you thought about him/her in the most honest way. Since the paper was on the back it was very difficult to see who was writing what. At the end of the exercise I was in shock. I could not believe what the people around was thinking about me. The stuff they wrote was not in line to what I was thinking of myself. It was very hard. After about 25 years I am still recalling that episode. Interesting exercise nonetheless.
rajlego 7y ago
What he mentions about people being superficially nice to allow for more selectiveness is very interesting. I think it’s hard to say that being direct from the get go about interest is ideal beyond that reason alone because friendship with people is something you build, not something you immediately just know you’ll have when you meet someone. If you don’t feign interest in the beginning you’ll miss out on all the people who you could have become good friends with only after a certain level of closeness. While feigning interest causes people to second guess themselves, I think being direct could also do the same. If I know someone I’ve just met will tell me they don’t like me if I don’t give them a good impression I’ll be constantly trying to please them. Though I guess if you’re also trying to be highly direct things become even more complicated. It seems like there are far more social dimensions to this than I’d first thought.
zepto 7y ago
There is a budding sector of the economy now selling ‘authentic’ relating. Recycled cult indoctrination methods are easily repackaged as the solution to loneliness and lack of community.
hirundo 7y ago
On the other hand, if nobody in the room thinks you're cool enough to want to talk to you, the ambiguity in presentation is more a feature than a bug. You're wishing that we could read each other's minds, but only a subset of us would enjoy that knowledge. Please leave the rest of us space to indulge our illusions. They make some of us more social.
- patcon 7y ago
  Very much in agreement
- rchaud 7y ago
  Never thought of it that way, but you're right!
Enginerrrd 7y ago
I think the inability to find a price here also has to do with value. To develop a relationship with someone requires that you offer value in the form of conversation, entertainment, etc. People are most attracted to attractive people. (And by "attractive" I mean primarily personality characteristics.) Most people seem to actually have an aversion to lonely people whether conscious or subconscious. Perhaps it's an old social defense mechanism from times in our history where it was dangerous to associate with unpopular people. You were more likely to be shunned as well and less likely to be given mating opportunities. I often go out of my way to talk to the wall flowers and shy people that no one is talking to, but I've found by and large, they are also much harder to talk to! It's much more work to stoke the conversation, and we all know there's a threshold there, below which, the conversation just isn't stable. Putting two wall flowers together has a much lower conversational success rate (which is a basic minimum hurdle to continuing any kind of social relationship) than two social people. It's a tough nut to crack, and I don't think unknown intentions is the problem.
- ardy42 7y ago
  > I think the inability to find a price here also has to do with value. To develop a relationship with someone requires that you offer value in the form of conversation, entertainment, etc. I think part of the problem here is forcing everything to be viewed through the lens of market economics and trying to make every human activity a kind of market exchange. Markets are a powerful paradigm in some contexts, but they're not the end-all-be-all of human behavior. Loneliness may be a product of marketization of social relationships, so market-thinking won't offer a path out.
  - Invictus0 7y ago
    Perhaps where the market thought model breaks down is that in a marketplace, the value of the product offered is compared against the price and the transaction goes forward or does not. Friendship requires some sustained investment and so might be modelled more like a chemical reaction: high activation energy to gain new friends with comparatively lesser energy going into the interaction once the friendship has been established. With this model, it makes sense that individuals would seek to maintain existing friendship instead of acquiring new ones because the energy expenditure is much lower in the former than the latter.
dilippkumar 7y ago
I've been thinking about this for a long time. About 5 years ago, me and some friends got together to build a "Dating app but for people looking for friends and activity partners". Fortunately, we all quit before we got in too deep. It didn't seem like a problem that had any good solutions. Today, I'm convinced that a technology solution is not the right approach. Screen addiction and various dopamine hits from social media have produced a catastrophic collapse of various IRL social institutions that traditionally facilitated opportunities to meet new people. The most practical "if I had a magic wand..." solution that I can think of is to wave a magic wand and undo all forms of screen addictions that has destroyed our IRL social interactions.
- dnissley 7y ago
  Screen addiction and various dopamine hits from social media have produced a catastrophic collapse of various IRL social institutions that traditionally facilitated opportunities to meet new people. The book "Bowling Alone" documented this collapse and was written between 1995-2000, well before the advent of smartphones and social media. While I'm not convinced a technology solution is necessarily the right approach, what you're suggesting is straight up waldenponding.
  - ardy42 7y ago
    > The book "Bowling Alone" documented this collapse and was written between 1995-2000, well before the advent of smartphones and social media. Smartphones and social media may just be the latest and most extreme manifestation of technological changes that were already underway then. Before you had smartphone screens, you had television screens, etc.
recursive 7y ago
My god, it's full of scroll bars. https://imgur.com/a/KcV6v5W https://imgur.com/a/KcV6v5W
orasis 7y ago
This article is an autistic pondering that completely misses the point. Love people first and you’ll receive love in return.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
  That's not remotely true lmao, but if you really do think that, then appreciate your privilege.
- cdbattags 7y ago
  Can someone please flag this? IMO this comment is pretty insensitive and disrespectful.
nixpulvis 7y ago
Whatever floats your boat. I'm pretty lonely sometimes, and I wish I was nicer sometimes, and I wish people spoke my language more often. These things are harder when the culture is larger, as funny as it sounds. Keeping up, is just so damn hard. Staying in requires trust, and empathy. There's a sad paradox of our times. We both need to slow down and get to know each other, and we need to race to address the problems we all see plain as day. Sadly, we're DISTRACTED. And the more distracted we are, the less we address the underlying issues. </rant>
KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
Hmm maybe I can give some advice here. The key is to just not care whether or not people are just pretending to like you. "Just don't give a fuck" sounds really trite but I really think caring too much about other people's feelings is an anti-super power. I find what really helps me is just assuming that the other person doesn't like me, and then making a conscious decision to make the effort to make them like me. This is almost the opposite of what people say, "just be confident". I think being attractive (personality) and likable is a trainable social skill, and once you do it often enough the effort becomes effortless. Of course a mind reading device to skip the presentation stuff would also be nice.
- choxi 7y ago
  How do you both "don't give a fuck" while also "mak[ing] the effort to make them like me"?
  - ak39 7y ago
    That’s always the problem with these forms of obliquitous advice - they are paradoxical. I’m not saying they don’t work or are necessarily to be dismissed because they seem practically impossible because they are on the surface self-limiting. I’m just saying that’s what they all share. Zen. Buddhism. Sufism. Stoicism. Minimalism. Less is more. You have to experience it to know it. The anti-thesis of science.
    - openfuture 7y ago
      Actually, the manifestation of science.. Science is about testing (experiencing) your hypothesis not memorizing dogma. If someone says: “gravity is a thing” then as a scientist you think through the consequences, if something doesn't align with your expectation then you design an experiment. This way you realize the truth yourself, problem is that people use the word 'science' as 'that thing that other people do to find out the truth' (where 'truth' is the thing you are supposed to believe unquestioningly since you are not a priest, sorry.. scientist).
admiral33 7y ago
Judith Butler has spent a good portion of her career exploring this concept from a non tech third wave feminist view point, and I have found her work to be incredibly insightful and applicable to many discussions outside of feminism as well. As a man, I have caught myself "performing" for other people on a regular basis. Wearing a suit to formal occasions. Shaking hands with a firm handshake. Laughing at jokes that I wouldn't laugh at in private. Are these things "me"? By outlining both mentally and on paper which behaviors I do for myself and which I do for other people I have unraveled a good portion of my character. Many of the behaviors I have decided to keep, despite knowing that they are a performance for others - the difference now being that I can feel confident that my performance is rooted in active decision and authenticity with how I want the world to perceive me, rather than a simple need to please others. This is an ongoing process.
- gowld 7y ago
  What's the boundary between "performing" and "behaving in a socially expected way"?
  - rchaud 7y ago
    For me, 'performing' meant going above and beyond at social events to be the person with a witty one-liner or good observational humour. It felt fine initially and I enjoyed the positive attention, but eventually it became a chore. No one is funny 100% of the time, and when I started thinking more about "How can i get a laugh from these people next time", that's a sign that I need to re-evaluate what I get out of this relationship. The feeling should be "I'd like to hang out with these people with no expectations from them or from me" but that's not always there unless you have a specific level of comfort with those people.
  - notmainacct 7y ago
    In my opinion the difference is that "behaving in a socially expected way" is following norms so that no bad attention is drawn to you or to prevent others from having negative experiences from your behavior, and "performing" is the constant feedback cycle of emulating behaviors and traits that you think will draw positive attention and create good experiences with others. A good example is that most things people do to be polite are considered "behaving in a socially expected way" while interactions like a young adolescent male lowering their voice when talking to somebody they are attracted to is "performing". Performance is common for many other interactions like dressing up and formalizing language for job interviews, "telephone voice", as well as matching posture and speaking style during interactions. Performance captures the potentially unfounded change in behavior to better a specific interaction. Many sitcoms often create comedic moments when performance for a specific interaction is not compatible with performance for another interaction, so when "worlds collide" (as in Seinfeld) the character has to either struggle with maintaining both performances, or choose one form of performance to stick with and ruin an interaction with some other situation.
zadkey 7y ago
Can we talk about why there are so many scrollbars on this page?
- bckygldstn 7y ago
  The css has "div{overflow:scroll}".
- zadkey 7y ago
  It looks like they fixed the issue.
overgard 7y ago
Relationships naturally form when people have common activities and goals. I think the problem is that outside of the office and family, that connective tissue just isn't there anymore. You can find it, if you seek it out (various hobby meetups for instance), but anymore nobody is just automatically included. Everyone has diverse interests, which is great, but often you find you have nothing in common with your neighbours. I don't think the problem is people's protective layers of presentation. We need those fictions when we're learning if we can trust someone. The problem is it's incredibly hard to form a bond with someone if you don't have a clear "why", and there's rarely that context anymore. There are a lot of people I meet Id love to be friends with, but it's awkward to just organise that without a social excuse sometimes. Especially because if the relationship goes poorly, if you have a common thing its easier to pull back, whereas if its just "want to be friends?", if you pull back it seems more personal.
- cheeko1234 7y ago
  You hit the nail there. So many hobbies that used to be in-person have transferred to the internet. Personally, I thought that would be enough for getting my social fix, but boy was I wrong. As I get older, I'm finding out that there is something essential about physically hanging out with a common goal, whether it's sports, hiking, boardgames, etc.
- watwut 7y ago
  I think that these two are causes rather then requirements. The fact that in our current culture it is awkward and socially wrong to "just organise that without a social excuse" and that we need "common activities and goals" to even consider socialization is why we are lonely. Of course common activities and goals do help. But when they are the only thing, the relationship is destined to die the moment something changes. But people who are not lonely tend to value relationships for themselves. They organize without excuse, send each other mails for no reason about ordinary life and call each other for no reason. What they do have is values that put priority on relationship and skills to keep them. There is also mutual reciprocity to some extend with helping each other and such. A lot of these things are low-key stigmatized in some sub-cultures. The above is wasting time, just hanging around, just being social etc. See how spending a lot of time on phone was mocked - but it was reasonable way for people who dont have common activities and goals to keep relationships. The need for at least pretend common goal and important enough topic so that we dont feel like wasting time is more of symptom then the solution. Because it prevents us to keep relationship unless it is immediately useful.
tony 7y ago
A favorite book on this is Our Internal Conflicts by psychoanalyst Karen Horney. Carl Rogers referred to congruence of the self, as we navigate to actualize ourselves against external introjections from parental / authority figures and society. Both Rogers and Horney had concepts of an ideal self and the anxiety when we're strained by social pressures. The emotions are hard to articulate, and why bother, what's to gain in vulnerability? If we dare to say our feelings, we fear others will not regard us in a positive light. Our feelings will be hurt deeply. So, we shape ourselves based on the impressions we want the audience to see, which feels safe, but leaves us inner unease. We're not doing what we really want, we're pleasing others. Another area to dig into is True self and false self: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_self_and_false_self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_self_and_false_self In Social Psychology, related terms and concepts include self-monitoring, impression management (https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_07.pdf https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_07.pdf) > And they have good reason to: In a game theoretic way, unless they’re already inundated with social bids Social Exchange Theory and CL-Alt covers this in greater detail: https://smashtyn.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/social-exchange-theory/ https://smashtyn.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/social-exchange-th...
crimsonalucard 7y ago
No you're thinking too much the cause of loneliness is living alone. It 100% starts and ends at how we live in modern society. Living spaces that have shared communal spaces for essential requirements like a kitchen, dining table or a Television room will end loneliness. I have no doubt about this. The problem is, people living in these communal spaces complain about the lack of privacy or ownership. People don't know what they want even when the answer is in front of them. Humans have conflicting individualistic needs and needs for companionship as well, the dual nature of our desires actually evolved under communal living spaces so in actuality, despite the fact that you desire privacy, you're actually healthier if you give in to the alternative desire of companionship. People do need to own things but not to the extent that communal living spaces are abandoned. What people think is that we're designed to search for this state of satisfaction even when living things aren't actually designed to ever reach this state. There is no evolutionary advantage to a creature who is perpetually content and therefore you will never be content. That being said my theory is humans are actually designed to live in communal spaces while being a bit discontent about the lack of privacy or ownership. This is the natural state of things similar to how you have endless desires to eat greasy unhealthy junk food but your desires are not evolved to be in an environment where such food is plentiful. The alternative is to give in to your capitalistic desires and be lonely. I believe this is the worse alternative from pure anecdotal experience and from the way humans lived anthropologically in the past.
claudeomusic 7y ago
This is why I love dog tails. They can't help but show their authentic intentions
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

94 points by _ttg 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Isn't the web a connection without presentation ? it works to an extent, I also think people have a need for deeper, thus presented connection.

prostheticvamp 7y ago
No. It’s a low bandwidth communication medium which, because it is asynchronous, allows for more calculated choice of presentation (eg, Instagram).
- agumonkey 7y ago
  I had irc and reddit in mind, not social networks with images though
  - mjevans 7y ago
    It's still the same, and also much harder to tell when people leave the conversation if they do so without interaction clues.
rchaud 7y ago
It was, initially. Message boards would attract like minded people, and as the community grew, a culture of sorts would form. Still, people would set up in-person meetups, as there is that desire for deeper connection, as you mentioned. With social networks, that went out the window. Interactions become performative, particularly among those that build up enough followers to become influences. How many time have we seen posts like "What would you do in this situation?" with a meme image attached, or a "How's everyone doing this Monday?" type Instagram story. The poster doesn't care what the answer is, or who is answering. They just look to maximize the number of responses so their engagement score increases.

LandR 7y ago

I've always thought that my chosen superpower, if I could have one, would be as to tell by looking at someone what they honestly think about me. Do they think I'm cool, weird, ugly, creepy, friendly etc. I would never hsve to ask if someone is only pretending to like me or put up withe because they want something out of it. Life would be so much easier, meeting people would be so much easier.

rajlego 7y ago
I’d love being able to do that too but imagine if both of us had that same power. If we both have no prior experience with each other, it would either be wonderful (if both of us really have nothing we want to hide) or horrible (because instead of overthinking what the other person is thinking we’ll have to think about what we respectively think).
ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
I think you would be shocked by how little this power would be used. Most of us drastically over-estimate how much other people are thinking about us. I think 99% of the time you used this power you would find that people, know who you are, think of you as generally ok, with a slight positive association just for remembering your name, but no other significant opinions about you one way or the other. By the time people actually develop strong opinions about you as a person, your superpower would no longer be necessary to learn what those opinions are. Maybe a few times a year you would catch a hardcore "faker" though. So that is kind of cool.
- Invictus0 7y ago
  Perhaps this person wants to use this superpower to gain a deeper understanding of their closest relationships?
derjames 7y ago
I had this exercise at some point while at high school and in the psychology class. Everyone had to hang a blank paper on their backs. Then the professor asked to start chasing the other peers and write in their papers what you thought about him/her in the most honest way. Since the paper was on the back it was very difficult to see who was writing what. At the end of the exercise I was in shock. I could not believe what the people around was thinking about me. The stuff they wrote was not in line to what I was thinking of myself. It was very hard. After about 25 years I am still recalling that episode. Interesting exercise nonetheless.

rajlego 7y ago

What he mentions about people being superficially nice to allow for more selectiveness is very interesting. I think it’s hard to say that being direct from the get go about interest is ideal beyond that reason alone because friendship with people is something you build, not something you immediately just know you’ll have when you meet someone. If you don’t feign interest in the beginning you’ll miss out on all the people who you could have become good friends with only after a certain level of closeness. While feigning interest causes people to second guess themselves, I think being direct could also do the same. If I know someone I’ve just met will tell me they don’t like me if I don’t give them a good impression I’ll be constantly trying to please them. Though I guess if you’re also trying to be highly direct things become even more complicated. It seems like there are far more social dimensions to this than I’d first thought.

zepto 7y ago

There is a budding sector of the economy now selling ‘authentic’ relating. Recycled cult indoctrination methods are easily repackaged as the solution to loneliness and lack of community.

hirundo 7y ago

On the other hand, if nobody in the room thinks you're cool enough to want to talk to you, the ambiguity in presentation is more a feature than a bug. You're wishing that we could read each other's minds, but only a subset of us would enjoy that knowledge. Please leave the rest of us space to indulge our illusions. They make some of us more social.

patcon 7y ago
Very much in agreement
rchaud 7y ago
Never thought of it that way, but you're right!

Enginerrrd 7y ago

I think the inability to find a price here also has to do with value. To develop a relationship with someone requires that you offer value in the form of conversation, entertainment, etc. People are most attracted to attractive people. (And by "attractive" I mean primarily personality characteristics.) Most people seem to actually have an aversion to lonely people whether conscious or subconscious. Perhaps it's an old social defense mechanism from times in our history where it was dangerous to associate with unpopular people. You were more likely to be shunned as well and less likely to be given mating opportunities. I often go out of my way to talk to the wall flowers and shy people that no one is talking to, but I've found by and large, they are also much harder to talk to! It's much more work to stoke the conversation, and we all know there's a threshold there, below which, the conversation just isn't stable. Putting two wall flowers together has a much lower conversational success rate (which is a basic minimum hurdle to continuing any kind of social relationship) than two social people. It's a tough nut to crack, and I don't think unknown intentions is the problem.

ardy42 7y ago
> I think the inability to find a price here also has to do with value. To develop a relationship with someone requires that you offer value in the form of conversation, entertainment, etc. I think part of the problem here is forcing everything to be viewed through the lens of market economics and trying to make every human activity a kind of market exchange. Markets are a powerful paradigm in some contexts, but they're not the end-all-be-all of human behavior. Loneliness may be a product of marketization of social relationships, so market-thinking won't offer a path out.
- Invictus0 7y ago
  Perhaps where the market thought model breaks down is that in a marketplace, the value of the product offered is compared against the price and the transaction goes forward or does not. Friendship requires some sustained investment and so might be modelled more like a chemical reaction: high activation energy to gain new friends with comparatively lesser energy going into the interaction once the friendship has been established. With this model, it makes sense that individuals would seek to maintain existing friendship instead of acquiring new ones because the energy expenditure is much lower in the former than the latter.

dilippkumar 7y ago

I've been thinking about this for a long time. About 5 years ago, me and some friends got together to build a "Dating app but for people looking for friends and activity partners". Fortunately, we all quit before we got in too deep. It didn't seem like a problem that had any good solutions. Today, I'm convinced that a technology solution is not the right approach. Screen addiction and various dopamine hits from social media have produced a catastrophic collapse of various IRL social institutions that traditionally facilitated opportunities to meet new people. The most practical "if I had a magic wand..." solution that I can think of is to wave a magic wand and undo all forms of screen addictions that has destroyed our IRL social interactions.

dnissley 7y ago
Screen addiction and various dopamine hits from social media have produced a catastrophic collapse of various IRL social institutions that traditionally facilitated opportunities to meet new people. The book "Bowling Alone" documented this collapse and was written between 1995-2000, well before the advent of smartphones and social media. While I'm not convinced a technology solution is necessarily the right approach, what you're suggesting is straight up waldenponding.
- ardy42 7y ago
  > The book "Bowling Alone" documented this collapse and was written between 1995-2000, well before the advent of smartphones and social media. Smartphones and social media may just be the latest and most extreme manifestation of technological changes that were already underway then. Before you had smartphone screens, you had television screens, etc.

recursive 7y ago

My god, it's full of scroll bars. https://imgur.com/a/KcV6v5W https://imgur.com/a/KcV6v5W

orasis 7y ago

This article is an autistic pondering that completely misses the point. Love people first and you’ll receive love in return.

KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
That's not remotely true lmao, but if you really do think that, then appreciate your privilege.
cdbattags 7y ago
Can someone please flag this? IMO this comment is pretty insensitive and disrespectful.

nixpulvis 7y ago

Whatever floats your boat. I'm pretty lonely sometimes, and I wish I was nicer sometimes, and I wish people spoke my language more often. These things are harder when the culture is larger, as funny as it sounds. Keeping up, is just so damn hard. Staying in requires trust, and empathy. There's a sad paradox of our times. We both need to slow down and get to know each other, and we need to race to address the problems we all see plain as day. Sadly, we're DISTRACTED. And the more distracted we are, the less we address the underlying issues. </rant>

KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago

Hmm maybe I can give some advice here. The key is to just not care whether or not people are just pretending to like you. "Just don't give a fuck" sounds really trite but I really think caring too much about other people's feelings is an anti-super power. I find what really helps me is just assuming that the other person doesn't like me, and then making a conscious decision to make the effort to make them like me. This is almost the opposite of what people say, "just be confident". I think being attractive (personality) and likable is a trainable social skill, and once you do it often enough the effort becomes effortless. Of course a mind reading device to skip the presentation stuff would also be nice.

choxi 7y ago
How do you both "don't give a fuck" while also "mak[ing] the effort to make them like me"?
- ak39 7y ago
  That’s always the problem with these forms of obliquitous advice - they are paradoxical. I’m not saying they don’t work or are necessarily to be dismissed because they seem practically impossible because they are on the surface self-limiting. I’m just saying that’s what they all share. Zen. Buddhism. Sufism. Stoicism. Minimalism. Less is more. You have to experience it to know it. The anti-thesis of science.
  - openfuture 7y ago
    Actually, the manifestation of science.. Science is about testing (experiencing) your hypothesis not memorizing dogma. If someone says: “gravity is a thing” then as a scientist you think through the consequences, if something doesn't align with your expectation then you design an experiment. This way you realize the truth yourself, problem is that people use the word 'science' as 'that thing that other people do to find out the truth' (where 'truth' is the thing you are supposed to believe unquestioningly since you are not a priest, sorry.. scientist).

admiral33 7y ago

Judith Butler has spent a good portion of her career exploring this concept from a non tech third wave feminist view point, and I have found her work to be incredibly insightful and applicable to many discussions outside of feminism as well. As a man, I have caught myself "performing" for other people on a regular basis. Wearing a suit to formal occasions. Shaking hands with a firm handshake. Laughing at jokes that I wouldn't laugh at in private. Are these things "me"? By outlining both mentally and on paper which behaviors I do for myself and which I do for other people I have unraveled a good portion of my character. Many of the behaviors I have decided to keep, despite knowing that they are a performance for others - the difference now being that I can feel confident that my performance is rooted in active decision and authenticity with how I want the world to perceive me, rather than a simple need to please others. This is an ongoing process.

gowld 7y ago
What's the boundary between "performing" and "behaving in a socially expected way"?
- rchaud 7y ago
  For me, 'performing' meant going above and beyond at social events to be the person with a witty one-liner or good observational humour. It felt fine initially and I enjoyed the positive attention, but eventually it became a chore. No one is funny 100% of the time, and when I started thinking more about "How can i get a laugh from these people next time", that's a sign that I need to re-evaluate what I get out of this relationship. The feeling should be "I'd like to hang out with these people with no expectations from them or from me" but that's not always there unless you have a specific level of comfort with those people.
- notmainacct 7y ago
  In my opinion the difference is that "behaving in a socially expected way" is following norms so that no bad attention is drawn to you or to prevent others from having negative experiences from your behavior, and "performing" is the constant feedback cycle of emulating behaviors and traits that you think will draw positive attention and create good experiences with others. A good example is that most things people do to be polite are considered "behaving in a socially expected way" while interactions like a young adolescent male lowering their voice when talking to somebody they are attracted to is "performing". Performance is common for many other interactions like dressing up and formalizing language for job interviews, "telephone voice", as well as matching posture and speaking style during interactions. Performance captures the potentially unfounded change in behavior to better a specific interaction. Many sitcoms often create comedic moments when performance for a specific interaction is not compatible with performance for another interaction, so when "worlds collide" (as in Seinfeld) the character has to either struggle with maintaining both performances, or choose one form of performance to stick with and ruin an interaction with some other situation.

zadkey 7y ago

Can we talk about why there are so many scrollbars on this page?

bckygldstn 7y ago
The css has "div{overflow:scroll}".
zadkey 7y ago
It looks like they fixed the issue.

overgard 7y ago

Relationships naturally form when people have common activities and goals. I think the problem is that outside of the office and family, that connective tissue just isn't there anymore. You can find it, if you seek it out (various hobby meetups for instance), but anymore nobody is just automatically included. Everyone has diverse interests, which is great, but often you find you have nothing in common with your neighbours. I don't think the problem is people's protective layers of presentation. We need those fictions when we're learning if we can trust someone. The problem is it's incredibly hard to form a bond with someone if you don't have a clear "why", and there's rarely that context anymore. There are a lot of people I meet Id love to be friends with, but it's awkward to just organise that without a social excuse sometimes. Especially because if the relationship goes poorly, if you have a common thing its easier to pull back, whereas if its just "want to be friends?", if you pull back it seems more personal.

cheeko1234 7y ago
You hit the nail there. So many hobbies that used to be in-person have transferred to the internet. Personally, I thought that would be enough for getting my social fix, but boy was I wrong. As I get older, I'm finding out that there is something essential about physically hanging out with a common goal, whether it's sports, hiking, boardgames, etc.
watwut 7y ago
I think that these two are causes rather then requirements. The fact that in our current culture it is awkward and socially wrong to "just organise that without a social excuse" and that we need "common activities and goals" to even consider socialization is why we are lonely. Of course common activities and goals do help. But when they are the only thing, the relationship is destined to die the moment something changes. But people who are not lonely tend to value relationships for themselves. They organize without excuse, send each other mails for no reason about ordinary life and call each other for no reason. What they do have is values that put priority on relationship and skills to keep them. There is also mutual reciprocity to some extend with helping each other and such. A lot of these things are low-key stigmatized in some sub-cultures. The above is wasting time, just hanging around, just being social etc. See how spending a lot of time on phone was mocked - but it was reasonable way for people who dont have common activities and goals to keep relationships. The need for at least pretend common goal and important enough topic so that we dont feel like wasting time is more of symptom then the solution. Because it prevents us to keep relationship unless it is immediately useful.

tony 7y ago

A favorite book on this is Our Internal Conflicts by psychoanalyst Karen Horney. Carl Rogers referred to congruence of the self, as we navigate to actualize ourselves against external introjections from parental / authority figures and society. Both Rogers and Horney had concepts of an ideal self and the anxiety when we're strained by social pressures. The emotions are hard to articulate, and why bother, what's to gain in vulnerability? If we dare to say our feelings, we fear others will not regard us in a positive light. Our feelings will be hurt deeply. So, we shape ourselves based on the impressions we want the audience to see, which feels safe, but leaves us inner unease. We're not doing what we really want, we're pleasing others. Another area to dig into is True self and false self: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_self_and_false_self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_self_and_false_self In Social Psychology, related terms and concepts include self-monitoring, impression management (https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_07.pdf https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_07.pdf) > And they have good reason to: In a game theoretic way, unless they’re already inundated with social bids Social Exchange Theory and CL-Alt covers this in greater detail: https://smashtyn.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/social-exchange-theory/ https://smashtyn.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/social-exchange-th...

crimsonalucard 7y ago

No you're thinking too much the cause of loneliness is living alone. It 100% starts and ends at how we live in modern society. Living spaces that have shared communal spaces for essential requirements like a kitchen, dining table or a Television room will end loneliness. I have no doubt about this. The problem is, people living in these communal spaces complain about the lack of privacy or ownership. People don't know what they want even when the answer is in front of them. Humans have conflicting individualistic needs and needs for companionship as well, the dual nature of our desires actually evolved under communal living spaces so in actuality, despite the fact that you desire privacy, you're actually healthier if you give in to the alternative desire of companionship. People do need to own things but not to the extent that communal living spaces are abandoned. What people think is that we're designed to search for this state of satisfaction even when living things aren't actually designed to ever reach this state. There is no evolutionary advantage to a creature who is perpetually content and therefore you will never be content. That being said my theory is humans are actually designed to live in communal spaces while being a bit discontent about the lack of privacy or ownership. This is the natural state of things similar to how you have endless desires to eat greasy unhealthy junk food but your desires are not evolved to be in an environment where such food is plentiful. The alternative is to give in to your capitalistic desires and be lonely. I believe this is the worse alternative from pure anecdotal experience and from the way humans lived anthropologically in the past.

claudeomusic 7y ago

This is why I love dog tails. They can't help but show their authentic intentions

deleted 7y ago

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