10 ms·

Rejection Sensitivity

90 points by exolymph 5y ago

mlang23 5y ago
I find it funny that english sometimes uses german words. But "exfreund" actually implies a sexual relationship, just saying.
- weinzierl 5y ago
  Yup, as German native speaker I can confirm that. You wouldn't normally use the term for someone you haven't had a romantic relationship with.
  - archduck 5y ago
    Do you feel like saying "ein Ex-Freund von mir" still carries this boyfriend connotation as opposed to "mein Ex-Freund"? The latter is clear to me, but I could see myself saying the former and thereby mistakenly suggesting a past relationship. (Non-native speaker.) On the other hand, it's clear that "eine Ex-Freundin von mir" means ex-girlfriend. Maybe I'll stick to "ehemaliger Freund" or just use "Kumpel" instead of Freund(-in) altogether. Otherwise people will think I've dated everyone I know.
    - weinzierl 5y ago
      "Do you feel like saying "ein Ex-Freund von mir" still carries this boyfriend connotation" Native-speaker, but I honestly cannot make my mind up about this. "The latter is clear to me, but I could see myself saying the former and thereby mistakenly suggesting a past relationship. (Non-native speaker.) On the other hand, it's clear that "eine Ex-Freundin von mir" means ex-girlfriend. Maybe I'll stick to "ehemaliger Freund" or just use "Kumpel" instead of Freund(-in) altogether. Otherwise people will think I've dated everyone I know." Hits the nail on the head. Your feeling of the language is excellent.
- np- 5y ago
  Fair trade for the German word for mobile phone: “handy”, which certainly has more than one meaning in English ;)
- Torwald 5y ago
  Why is that funny? Our own (German) culture is full of usage of english words. Wouldn't it be natural to assume that other people would likewise adopt foreign words?
  - mlang23 5y ago
    Yeah, apparently it is natural that languages do that. I think german does too much of that, we're basically too lazy to figure out how to phrase things properly in german, so we just stick in a few english words. That feels different then what english does with words like "Kindergarten" and "Zeitgeist". But I guess I am too much on one side of the fence to see the similarities.
    - titanomachy 5y ago
      English is a highly recombinant language, it’s natural for English speakers to pull words from German or elsewhere rather than inventing new English words from scratch.
ilovefood 5y ago
Frankly as much as I read it (twice now) I find nothing good or bad to say, I don't seem to get the point and maybe someone can enlighten me? Is this a piece about how people became fragile at the face of delayed gratification or when something doesn't go their usual way (it seems a twitter unfollow initiated this whole thing)? So many questions. I understand that for some, that represents a drama which surely begs the question of what the person who wrote this thinks a friendship means and what the boundaries of that friendship are since a benign online transaction shattered their world view. I also don't get the parallels to other people? Am I missing the point? What is OP trying to say? I have friends I haven't talked to for ages and that friendship is not quantifiable by the amount of likes they give me on twitter/ig/fb and even less on the amount of messages we share but it's qualitative, when we meet we always have a blast and I can count on them if I have to move to another place (well some would help, others I am damn sure they won't lol). To me this comes over as a bit hollow and a tad whiny? I don't know. Again, I might be missing something crucial here. (As a sidenote I'm getting a few GPT-3 vibes but seriously there surely is a function that states "any article has non null probability of being written by GPT-3" so you can ignore this last part...)
- brabel 5y ago
  Seems to me you are not very acquainted with rejection, which is the topic of the article. It talks about how, in our modern age, we face rejection all the time: at work, dating, in friendships... and how the internet has made the number of rejections you might face in your day-to-day explode... and how we're not psychologically prepared to face that. An article, IMO, doesn't need to have a call for change, or a very deep insight or idea.... this one just calls to our attention what's happening and how that might be causing consequences we're not paying much attention to (like the appearance of incels culture and other "avoid rejection at all costs" movements), which is something I do agree with.
  - ilovefood 5y ago
    Well the first part might not be true, as a north african immigrant in Europe I am very well acquainted with rejection in so many things I lost count, a simple case is searching for a flat in Munich which made the news a few years ago. My name only is a reason for rejection and frankly nothing can ever prepare you for that unless, you get a lot of rejections. Has it ever stopped me? no. Thank you for clarifying though, I get it, I definitely had a different definition of what a rejection is which is what caused my confusion. For the last part, I absolutely agree, some people tend to be too focused on the rejection itself and define themselves by it instead of doing something to changing it or themselves. Which always leads to bad things.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Interesting read. It sort of states the obvious, but one of the hallmarks of today's world, is that everyone "just knows" stuff, without actually ever "coming out and saying it." As far as rejection goes, I'm very fortunate, as I can take my toys and go home, if no one wants to play with me. I worked for many years, for a corporation that had a culture of excellence. It could be grating, near-abusive, and frustrating, at times, but it did teach me to set and maintain a very high personal bar. I got rejected a lot, and it taught me to be fairly self-sufficient, irt self-evaluation. I won't do it to other people, though. I won't establish any relationships that I don't intend to maintain, and, when I change the status of a relationship, I make it a point to communicate it to the other person. That's not always easy. I also try to make it a point not to project personal values onto others (also not easy). Also, not every relationship needs to be a lover. I have perfectly good relationships with people that horrify me. I don't need to do anything more than chat with them, once a month or so, and we don't need to talk about anything that causes friction, so I just keep it superficial. Of course, humans being what we are, the favor is seldom returned, and one of the things that I've learned to do, through many painful years of hard work, is have enough personal self-regard, that the opinions and maltreatment from others doesn't have damaging effects. TL;DR: I make sure that I have a good relationship with myself, I establish a minimum bar of Honor and Integrity for myself, and my relationships with others have flourished, as a result. I've learned that people don't respect people that don't respect themselves, so respecting myself is job one. An interesting thing, for me, was looking for work, after leaving my job of 27 years. I encountered ageism, which was quite a shock. I've never had to deal with rejection; simply based on my physical appearance (I've always actually been rather sought-after, because of my skills, and, I hate to admit, probably because I'm a white male). It helped me to understand what a lot of folks go through. When we "hear" about something, it doesn't have the same weight as when it actually happens to us. Funny thing about ageism, is that we will all get older (the alternative isn't fun). We'll each get a turn at this oar.
- brabel 5y ago
  > one of the things that I've learned to do, through many painful years of hard work, is have enough personal self-regard, that the opinions and maltreatment from others doesn't have damaging effects. That's a really great quote... a lot of people need to learn this. Offense must be taken to have an effect. You can choose to not take it. Please don't misinterpret this to read like it's ok to intentionally go around trying to cause offense to other people... that's not ok! But people disagreeing with you, for example, is NOT offensive. People criticizing your work in a professional manner is NOT offensive. People having different cultures is NOT offessive.
mettamage 5y ago
The idea of cummulative rejection is interesting! I never thought about it that explicitly in that way. I think it's an idea that transcends social rejection and might apply to all rejection. In my case, I have this with job interviews. Unfortunately, every 10 additional rejections is affecting my mental health. This is about after a threshold of 50 initial rejections, including being rejected in the resume round. I wouldn't be surprised if many people experience this with job interviews. I think it's because, in a sense, everything that one has experienced in life suddenly may come together (in terms of values, beliefs, behaviors and so on). If that what comes together is not a system that can work in any way shape or form, then people crash and can crash hard. Especially when one decides to "act out" their cummulative rejection. I've noticed that I sometimes happen to do that now as I'm noticing my patience is wearing thin on all facets of life and it sucks for everyone involved unfortunately. It might be weird to say, but because of this I sometimes wonder, maybe I should become a bus driver or something "simple" [1] like that (pre-corona at least). [1] I'm fairly sure that if I don't give a job like that my full attention, it isn't simple at all. I guess that some people see it as simple since there's less "IQ-ish reasoning" involved.
- titanomachy 5y ago
  I felt this way at some point. After dozens of rejections I had to admit that I had the “wrong” background and I started trying different approaches. Eventually did a coding boot camp followed by an internship at a startup, which wasn’t prestigious, but it was considered by a mid-sized company to be the right kind of experience. Experience at the mid-sized company was finally considered relevant by FAANG, etc.
jokoon 5y ago
Before WW2, people were living together more often. Apartment buildings were less common. Today we are all atomized and individualized. Individual kitchen, bathrooms and living rooms are the source of the problem. We feel rejected because our brain are naturally wired for a need of social interaction. It's a normal and legit emotion. In earlier times, people lived closer together. We experienced prosperous large homes, but now unemployment and other jobs are making social life difficult. In my view, neighborhoods should have a large living space for people to live together: read, talk, eat, etc. Since communism ended this concept of the commons died. We are all depressed to go back home to rest in an empty apartment.
- laurieg 5y ago
  I remember in university I lived in a house with 8 people. We would all gather for dinner, often with a few extras from out of the house. It was such a wonderful feeling (and wonderfully efficient, you only had to cook once a week!). The idea of communal spaces needs to come back. I don't think it would be too hard for a 10-story apartment block to offer a communal area, especially as the shops that were often on the first and second floors are going out of business due to online shopping.
  - ratww 5y ago
    Did it ever died? Most of my younger friends who live in large cities (in Europe and Latin America) live in communal apartments, and most of the older ones certainly did in the past, especially when in university.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    I'd like to see more architecture (and organizational/financial) oriented towards this. There were a lot of great experiments in the early Soviet Union that were hammered down by Stalin and his desire to imitate western opulence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_architecture
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I agree. I wasn't built at all for the internet/phone/email things that people call friendships now. Long-distance friendships aren't even even friendships to me, or rather they're in maintenance mode until we live near each other again.
dmichulke 5y ago
There is this other school of thought where you actively embrace rejection. Quotes like the following (paraphrased) show this: - If you have no enemies, you're not doing something important - If you don't fail 90% of the time, you're not pushing your boundaries hard enough The idea being that once you get rejected often enough, you lose your fear of it and you start becoming authentic and true to yourself.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I kinda understand what you're going for, but it sounds... very narcissistic, almost psychopathic, and indifferent or numbed to rejection and interpersonal relationships. Maybe the authentic and true self is a prick that nobody wants to interact with in that case.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  God I wish I could afford to fail 90% of the time.
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    Failing 90% of the time means you have an extremely generous buffer such that it’s no longer a requirement to have moderate success on the first try.
    - wholinator2 5y ago
      Well since the quote says 90%, it seems to be saying you don't need to succeed on the first _9_ tries (at most), which I think is where the sentiment that it's an unachievable clause comes from.
- scsilver 5y ago
  Or you become an insane person who people cannot resonate with or identify themselves in. It kind of sounds like actively seeking trauma.
dronesoul 5y ago
"Incels, a subculture mostly composed of young men" yeah...that's certainly _a_ way to describe them. haha.
- dronesoul 5y ago
  lol, downvoted. A sensitive incel I suppose? should've realized this is incel land. Using that power to silence other users here when they criticize incels seems like quite the abuse of that power. "Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment and hatred, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against sexually active people. The American nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups. Incels are mostly male and heterosexual, and many sources report that incels are predominantly white. Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands. At least seven mass murders, resulting in a total of 46 deaths, have been committed since 2014 by men who have either self-identified as incels or who had mentioned incel-related names and writings in their private writings or Internet postings. Incel communities have been criticized by researchers and the media for being misogynistic, encouraging violence, spreading extremist views, and radicalizing their members." So yeah, FU incels.
  - dang 5y ago
    Your comments have broken several of the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here? We'd be grateful. Flamewar and fulmination are two things we're trying to avoid, and going on about downvotes is a third. Your GP comment was flamebait and unsubstantive, so it's hardly surprising that it was downvoted.
least 5y ago
We have more opportunities to interact with more people from all walks of life from all over the world in a way that is unprecedented. Marginalized groups have found ways to connect to people like them (which would have been impossible in the past). They've found validation about their identity and made real friends. There's so many positive aspects about the society and world we live in today. But because there's so much opportunity for connection today, there's also so many more opportunities for rejection which, as the author puts it, "becomes a painful memory, no matter how many." Occasionally I'll think to look up someone that I hadn't thought of in a while on Facebook, only to find that they, some time ago, removed me from their friends list. No matter how far removed we were from each other in real life, this always kind of stings. The action requires effort on their part; they look at my profile and evaluate our friendship, or lack thereof, and actively decide that no, they don't want me to be a part of their life anymore, no matter how socially removed Facebook is from it. I've been removed and rejected from participating in their life in this way. I've also dealt with people of whom I thought I was pretty close and they suddenly drop all contact with me. What did I do to make her not want to be my friend anymore? I don't know. Should I have done something differently? Probably. Is she going through some shit? I don't know and I can't find out. It's frustrating and depressing and is damaging to my already fragile ego. I don't really have any friends, anymore. There are people that I will occasionally talk to but every year it feels like I've become more and more isolated, despite the fact that there's so much more available out there. Internal factors like depression, anxiety, and ADHD play a part, for sure. When you stop participating in social activities enough for long enough, even the most loyal friends will stop putting in the effort to maintain a relationship with you when they get so little back in return. It's selfish to expect them to do so. Life marches forward at an almost cruel pace. It doesn't care that I need a breather. That I'm starving for affection or that I'm searching for the faintest drop of connection with another human being. It cares not that the rejections are piling up on top of me making it gradually harder and harder for me to move. It continues on and I have to keep moving forward. Hopefully at some point on the way I can find someone who, if not ease my burden, can at least commiserate as we continue to march forward through it together.
- rubin55 5y ago
  It sounds like you’re in a bind. Truly hope everything is ok-ish in any case. I’m rubin55 on Libera.chat, rann on OFTC. If you ever feel like having a chat, send me a dm. You can also send me a message on me@rubin55.org. Don’t know if I can make a difference, but your message rings true with me.. life and relationships with peeps really got strange in the last decade(s) or so, and all this COVID business didn’t help much either! In any case, hang in there and try not to get too much down about the apparent bleakness of it all; sometimes a few days/some time makes all the difference in how a particular moment feels.
runawaybottle 5y ago
It’s possible countries with mega populations don’t have this problem. I wonder if people in India or China have any disillusion that they are one out of a billion in their country, and are nothing special. It’s possible they value whatever the hell life gives them (whatever friends they have, whatever family, whatever job, etc). The west is taught that we are unique. Really? Let me connect everyone to the internet and show you how untrue that is. Now what do you value? It’s the type of existential crisis of finding out you are really not to the right of the normal distribution, and in fact, dead smack in the middle (or to the left, horrifyingly). Someone can easily stop talking to you. You didn’t sincerely believe you were special did you? Could be wrong though.
- krishvs 5y ago
  I am from India but have lived in the Middle East ( over a decade) and the US( few years ). I see very little difference among the middle and upper middle class people of these countries nowadays. With globally connected social media everyone thinks they are unique ( maybe rightfully so ). Just because you are born in India or China you are not going to be thankful for whatever life has given to you. Western values( or is it global ) as far as uniqueness seems to be the dominant thought process atleast in the metros. I see the problem described in the article among my friends here. Everyone is depressed, anxious or having an existential crisis.
jollybean 5y ago
'Ghosting' is one of the most petty things imaginable. Sorry to say I judge a person's character so much by this. It's understandable that someone may not want to break up with their partner, but simply not responding is still terrible behaviour. I'd rather be yelled at than ghosted, at least it's candour. Summon the courage and civility to find a few empathetic words and that's that. It's odd that we teach 'knowledge' and even 'morality' in school but not 'basic manners'. I can imagine a room of teenagers laughing out loud at someone trying to teach them how to be civil and polite, and it probably wouldn't change them, however, I think that a few years later it would start to click in. As if they were 'lessons for later, when you're not an irreverent teenager'. They would at least have choices and options for human engagement, it's a form of knowledge.
- clipradiowallet 5y ago
  Ghosting is bad for other reasons also.. Imagine one of your parents "ghosted" you. Would you feel rejected? Or would you think something bad must have happened, and break down their door assuming they must be in duress and need assistance? That's an extreme example, but I was trying to point out that dropping off the face of the earth to avoid an uncomfortable interaction, and lead to a _much more_ uncomfortable and awkward interaction later.
  - eswat 5y ago
    It would be especially bad if the person experienced ghosting-like behaviour when they were young, including from their parents. All those little events build up and can make one insecure about their relationships if any hint of abandonement is in the air, let alone complete abandonement through ghosting.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    If a very significant other ghosted you it would almost invariably be an emergency. That or an extremely problematic relationship. Parents don't 'ghost' children. I mean, unless there's something very, very wrong already like an abusive relationship etc. etc.. For 'recently dating couples' the issues is that the one couple doesn't want to own up to saying 'no' so they just duck and avoid.
hirundo 5y ago
How much violence in society is a reaction to cumulative rejection? I'd guess a good deal if not most of it. Our ancient lobster-shared neural mechanisms take it deadly seriously whether we do consciously or not. From the long perspective of our selfish genes, rejection is a mortal threat. I appreciate the sympathetic treatment of incels in this article, which seems like an exception to the norm. I think most of us can sense the pain that goes with this designation. At least with race or gender based rejection we can see progress and action and a way forward. But how do you deal with rejection that isn't about your group, but is about your personal characteristics, your character and attractiveness? Things you either can't change or would make you someone else if you did? Violence is a loathsome reaction, but not one that's hard to understand. I think that's why incels attract such hate. We usually can't help them, so our empathy becomes just frustration and shared pain. We imagine the mix of anger and depression a lifetime of that would cause us, which leads us to fear them. We reject people for suffering too much rejection, a vicious circle. Yet much rejection is utterly necessary. You can't be a friend, lover or business partner with everyone. We must sometimes cause as well as recieve such deep pain. It's not a solvable problem.
- andi999 5y ago
  Do you know any peer reviewed scientific paper which confirms the lobster shared neural mechanism? Was looking for evidence for this claim a while back, couldn't find it.
  - hirundo 5y ago
    E.g https://www.jneurosci.org/content/17/2/697 https://www.jneurosci.org/content/17/2/697 Homo sapiens have a similar response to seratonin manipulation. I wouldn't call this confirmation, and I'm not sure what I would accept. But I do think it's a compelling association.
- virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
  > I think that's why incels attract such hate. I'm pretty sure it's because they are largely unbe-LIEV-ably misogynistic and hateful towards women.
theshadowknows 5y ago
I don’t have this issue with social media because I don’t really participate all that much. Occasionally one of you guys gets on my case but hey HN are a rowdy sort so I take my punches :) In terms of job interviews I can see where it would get hard for people. The best advice I ever got for that is to expect one call back for every hundred applications, one interview for every hundred call backs, and maybe one offer for every hundred interviews. If you expect that sort of ratio then it stops feeling personal and just feels like a numbers game.
- ipsi 5y ago
  Are... you sure about those numbers? That would be one interview per ten thousand applications, and one offer per million applications. I know you have to submit a lot of job applications, but, uh, that seems excessive!
  - theshadowknows 5y ago
    Oh it’s not meant to be exact :) just sort of a way to think about applications as a big numbers game.
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    Time to automate the process and become a job application spambot!
    - theshadowknows 5y ago
      We will let the application bots and the application scanner bots fight for dominance
Ensorceled 5y ago
When I was in high school and university decades ago, before social media and even stable phone numbers, friends used to come and go all the time; co-workers at summer and co-op jobs, classmates, roommates, ... You'd have beers and a few good times and then the next term/year would happen and you might never see them again. It didn't feel like rejection because there really wasn't a practical way to stay in touch. You only felt rejected by romantic partners and old friends who decided to move on. Now, we "connect" to everyone; we follow each other on Facebook/Twitter/Signal/WeChat and we have each others emails. I'm trying to imagine the roommates I had one summer, who I had almost nothing in common with but who shared their stash with me because I would bring good steaks and fresh vegetables from home, reaching out to me a year later and saying "hey man, why did you ghost us?". What would you even say to that? So, now, when these temporary friendships are over ... we have this lingering connection that doesn't just go away at the end of term. Someone has to take the extra step of closure. I get that this feels like rejection but that feeling is a new thing. Summer loves and friendships were meant to end with a sobbing farewell at the end of August, not with a unfollow and block in November.
- xbar 5y ago
  This is an essay that more closely reflects my experience.
- ub99 5y ago
  > Summer loves and friendships were meant to end with a sobbing farewell at the end of August, not with a unfollow and block in November. This is such a good thought. I think it applies to other areas of human relationships as well. Breaking up, for example. It was easier to have healthy boundaries after breaking up... before social media made it so easy to stalk or just be constantly reminded of your past relationship.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    Oh man, agreed. My family reunion Facebook pages both now have a firm "no exes" rule, with exceptions for my two "cousins-in-law" whose spouses passed.
twic 5y ago
> N. wasn’t a particularly close friend, and we didn’t have a falling out per se. The friendship just fizzled, until eventually he decided to unfollow me on Twitter, to put a final nail in a slow process of undoing. > A flaccid “what happened?” text went unresponded to, and just like that, the relationship was over. > Rationally, I know there was no reason for him to respond to a text asking for closure. Our friendship was brief, just over a year, and for the last six months, not much of a friendship at all. It amounted to a mostly barren Signal thread, with the odd message here or there about astrology, or a podcast neither one of us listened to completion. The author didn't lose a friend here. They never had a friend here. I wonder how much of the author's problem is about a mistaken expectation. The expectation that you can meet someone, make contact, and then file that person as a friend forever who will never leave you.
lwhi 5y ago
The author is treating friendship as a transactional exchange. You obtain friends. If you're well connected, you obtain many .. .. however, it's difficult to keep hold of them. --- The issue is friendship and human relations—while transactional during an exchange—are not transactional in the way recent app based culture has lead us to believe. We maintain relationships. We need to tend to them. They change as time moves forward. We can pause; and pick things up later. The best friendships involve high degrees of honesty, and because of that we need to be vulnerable at times. I'm not sure writing a blog post or tweet is displaying the necessary levels of sensitivity (at least on an interpersonal level) to meet this criteria.
- meesterdude 5y ago
  > I'm not sure writing a blog post or tweet is displaying the necessary levels of sensitivity (at least on an interpersonal level) to meet this criteria. This is an unnecessary dig on the author, and is just a bit pompous. I would counter: writing a blog post on the loss of a close friend and exploring how and why for them and in society at large; displays a high level of introspection, self awareness, and a mature relationship with their emotions. When anger and blame are the typical reactions for such an outcome, it was a mature and reasoned exploration.
  - lwhi 5y ago
    I think it's fair. I can understand your point, but I think the response of writing a blog post is an example of continued transactionality. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm aiming to be honest.
EFruit 5y ago
There is (yet another) aspect that the author didn't cover: internalized rejection. Imagine you burn out during college, so you pivot and get a professional certification instead. You pass the exam and have the certificate in hand, and you start looking for jobs. You scroll and scroll through indeed, glassdoor, the job sites for the organizations that would hire someone with your certification and training, and... they all require that degree you don't have. They all require N years of experience that you haven't gotten. How many visits like this does it take before you stop looking altogether?
AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
Beware: high rejection sensitivity is one of the symptoms of atypical depression [1]. Make sure to reach out for help if in doubt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atypical_depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atypical_depression
clipradiowallet 5y ago
Rejection can seem to be overwhelming and all-important because of pack-mentality behaviors that sustained our species long ago. EG...belonging to a pack/tribe/whatever increased your odds of survival against predators. Getting kicked out of the pack thousands of years ago was likely a death sentence. Old habits(and our mental/emotional reactions to them) die hard.
jcims 5y ago
Then there's the rejection martyrdom that happens on Twitter. 'Seeing a lot of unfollows after my <edgy in-group signaling> on <topic flooding everyone's timelines>, I guess <broad strokes description of out-group> just can't handle <more in-group signaling>'.
plank_time 5y ago
Maybe I’m more considerate than average to people I’ve known throughout my life, but being rejected is not normal for me. The frequency to which the author was rejected by people seems to indicate there’s a problem with him, not society. Of course it has happened, but we are talking about ex-girlfriends or people I’ve had legitimate fights with. But I still have friends from every stage of my life. I have a group of friends that I’ve known since grade 1 and we WhatsApp every day. We get into salty verbal arguments all the time like brothers, but we never have coke close to rejecting each other. During the pandemic I’ve had friends from high school that I haven’t spoken with for 30+ years that sought me out and we talked on the phone for 2 hours. In the last few weeks I had a coworker from 20 years ago reach out to me because she heard I “retired” pre-pandemic and wanted my advice on if she should do it. We chatted for over an hour. During the pandemic I’ve pinged several friends/coworkers from various companies I’ve worked with just to say hi. I’m planning on going for lunch with another coworker from 20 years ago in the next few weeks. I’ve even made new friends during the pandemic, having met someone that shared my same cynical views on the Federal Reserve, the stock market, etc. It’s not hard to maintain friendships with people, just be considerate and courteous! Not everyone needs to be your best friend, but you also don’t need to be so navel gazing that all you care about is yourself. The fact that the author has so many people rejecting the author makes me think he’s simply not a good friend and deserves to be rejected.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  Social skills are not equally easy for everyone. > makes me think he’s simply not a good friend and deserves to be rejected. You sound like maybe a bit more rejection would have been good for your sense of empathy.
  - plank_time 5y ago
    Empathy doesn’t mean saying “everything you do is okay.” Thats called enabling their behavior. It sometimes means having to say the honest, hard things in hopes that people will change their behavior for the better. It’s fairly obvious that the author has a hard time maintaining friendships. To blame that on society today and social media is wrong.
pixel_tracing 5y ago
I mean she kind of implied a reason why some people are “rejecting” her. I don’t want to talk professionally after work with certain people as I don’t gain much value. Certain people I enjoy mentoring, certain people I don’t. I don’t want another “task” to do. Also people with “too many” friends I find a little fake. You can’t expect me to take you seriously if you’re trying to maintain “close / intimate” friendships with 100 or more people. > The number of people I speak to on any given timescale far exceeds Dunbar’s number, and if I took every instance of rejection personally, I would be a very depressed person. I have lost friends, acquaintances, and people who exist in the liminal space between the two for all sorts of reasons: I’m too flaky, they don’t like what I write here or on Twitter, my real or imagined allegiances with people they’ve decided are their enemies, I don’t sufficiently respect their otherkin identity, they don’t sufficiently respect my professional identity. >Sometimes it’s because I’m being an ass, but a lot of the time, it’s just a statistical normality. Cast a wide enough net, you’re bound to lose a certain number of fish.
default_friend 5y ago
Author here! I think what (maybe?) got lost in this blog post is that it's more about the unhealthy nature of lifestyles that encourage the constant churn of socialization than feeling rejected by someone unfollowing me on Twitter. For me, lots of people I know in person follow me on Twitter, it's a bit of a ding. I'm also a super high visibility person on social and elsewhere, which complicates things. But lots of folks are in this boat -- people like me who are constantly meeting new people, folks who work in jobs that necessitate hundreds of applications, people on dating apps who go on hundreds of first dates. It's not so much that every individual rejection is a character indictment on anyone involved, it's more that the transient nature of socialization is stressful. I hope my frame didn't suggest a shallow definition of friendship or one specifically anchored in social. One last example that might be salient - The Bay Area is all about this kind of radical openness that isn't scalable or sustainable. Even if you have more real friends outside of that framework, being a human airport of connection kind of blows. Maybe a very specific scenario.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  > I hope my frame didn't suggest a shallow definition of friendship or one specifically anchored in social. I certainly didn't take it that way, but I do believe the "lingering" nature of these new types of friendships has changed the nature of rejection; or forced things that didn't have a rejection component before to now have one. And I agree with your point of we have a lot more connections now and, hence, a lot more "micro rejections". As someone with actual rejection sensitivity (ADHD), I know exactly what you mean.
- jm__87 5y ago
  Just curious, who or what is encouraging this constant churn of socialization that you are experiencing? I am not aware of this phenomenon

90 points by exolymph 5y ago

I find it funny that english sometimes uses german words. But "exfreund" actually implies a sexual relationship, just saying.

weinzierl 5y ago
Yup, as German native speaker I can confirm that. You wouldn't normally use the term for someone you haven't had a romantic relationship with.
- archduck 5y ago
  Do you feel like saying "ein Ex-Freund von mir" still carries this boyfriend connotation as opposed to "mein Ex-Freund"? The latter is clear to me, but I could see myself saying the former and thereby mistakenly suggesting a past relationship. (Non-native speaker.) On the other hand, it's clear that "eine Ex-Freundin von mir" means ex-girlfriend. Maybe I'll stick to "ehemaliger Freund" or just use "Kumpel" instead of Freund(-in) altogether. Otherwise people will think I've dated everyone I know.
  - weinzierl 5y ago
    "Do you feel like saying "ein Ex-Freund von mir" still carries this boyfriend connotation" Native-speaker, but I honestly cannot make my mind up about this. "The latter is clear to me, but I could see myself saying the former and thereby mistakenly suggesting a past relationship. (Non-native speaker.) On the other hand, it's clear that "eine Ex-Freundin von mir" means ex-girlfriend. Maybe I'll stick to "ehemaliger Freund" or just use "Kumpel" instead of Freund(-in) altogether. Otherwise people will think I've dated everyone I know." Hits the nail on the head. Your feeling of the language is excellent.
np- 5y ago
Fair trade for the German word for mobile phone: “handy”, which certainly has more than one meaning in English ;)
Torwald 5y ago
Why is that funny? Our own (German) culture is full of usage of english words. Wouldn't it be natural to assume that other people would likewise adopt foreign words?
- mlang23 5y ago
  Yeah, apparently it is natural that languages do that. I think german does too much of that, we're basically too lazy to figure out how to phrase things properly in german, so we just stick in a few english words. That feels different then what english does with words like "Kindergarten" and "Zeitgeist". But I guess I am too much on one side of the fence to see the similarities.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    English is a highly recombinant language, it’s natural for English speakers to pull words from German or elsewhere rather than inventing new English words from scratch.

ilovefood 5y ago

Frankly as much as I read it (twice now) I find nothing good or bad to say, I don't seem to get the point and maybe someone can enlighten me? Is this a piece about how people became fragile at the face of delayed gratification or when something doesn't go their usual way (it seems a twitter unfollow initiated this whole thing)? So many questions. I understand that for some, that represents a drama which surely begs the question of what the person who wrote this thinks a friendship means and what the boundaries of that friendship are since a benign online transaction shattered their world view. I also don't get the parallels to other people? Am I missing the point? What is OP trying to say? I have friends I haven't talked to for ages and that friendship is not quantifiable by the amount of likes they give me on twitter/ig/fb and even less on the amount of messages we share but it's qualitative, when we meet we always have a blast and I can count on them if I have to move to another place (well some would help, others I am damn sure they won't lol). To me this comes over as a bit hollow and a tad whiny? I don't know. Again, I might be missing something crucial here. (As a sidenote I'm getting a few GPT-3 vibes but seriously there surely is a function that states "any article has non null probability of being written by GPT-3" so you can ignore this last part...)

brabel 5y ago
Seems to me you are not very acquainted with rejection, which is the topic of the article. It talks about how, in our modern age, we face rejection all the time: at work, dating, in friendships... and how the internet has made the number of rejections you might face in your day-to-day explode... and how we're not psychologically prepared to face that. An article, IMO, doesn't need to have a call for change, or a very deep insight or idea.... this one just calls to our attention what's happening and how that might be causing consequences we're not paying much attention to (like the appearance of incels culture and other "avoid rejection at all costs" movements), which is something I do agree with.
- ilovefood 5y ago
  Well the first part might not be true, as a north african immigrant in Europe I am very well acquainted with rejection in so many things I lost count, a simple case is searching for a flat in Munich which made the news a few years ago. My name only is a reason for rejection and frankly nothing can ever prepare you for that unless, you get a lot of rejections. Has it ever stopped me? no. Thank you for clarifying though, I get it, I definitely had a different definition of what a rejection is which is what caused my confusion. For the last part, I absolutely agree, some people tend to be too focused on the rejection itself and define themselves by it instead of doing something to changing it or themselves. Which always leads to bad things.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Interesting read. It sort of states the obvious, but one of the hallmarks of today's world, is that everyone "just knows" stuff, without actually ever "coming out and saying it." As far as rejection goes, I'm very fortunate, as I can take my toys and go home, if no one wants to play with me. I worked for many years, for a corporation that had a culture of excellence. It could be grating, near-abusive, and frustrating, at times, but it did teach me to set and maintain a very high personal bar. I got rejected a lot, and it taught me to be fairly self-sufficient, irt self-evaluation. I won't do it to other people, though. I won't establish any relationships that I don't intend to maintain, and, when I change the status of a relationship, I make it a point to communicate it to the other person. That's not always easy. I also try to make it a point not to project personal values onto others (also not easy). Also, not every relationship needs to be a lover. I have perfectly good relationships with people that horrify me. I don't need to do anything more than chat with them, once a month or so, and we don't need to talk about anything that causes friction, so I just keep it superficial. Of course, humans being what we are, the favor is seldom returned, and one of the things that I've learned to do, through many painful years of hard work, is have enough personal self-regard, that the opinions and maltreatment from others doesn't have damaging effects. TL;DR: I make sure that I have a good relationship with myself, I establish a minimum bar of Honor and Integrity for myself, and my relationships with others have flourished, as a result. I've learned that people don't respect people that don't respect themselves, so respecting myself is job one. An interesting thing, for me, was looking for work, after leaving my job of 27 years. I encountered ageism, which was quite a shock. I've never had to deal with rejection; simply based on my physical appearance (I've always actually been rather sought-after, because of my skills, and, I hate to admit, probably because I'm a white male). It helped me to understand what a lot of folks go through. When we "hear" about something, it doesn't have the same weight as when it actually happens to us. Funny thing about ageism, is that we will all get older (the alternative isn't fun). We'll each get a turn at this oar.

brabel 5y ago
> one of the things that I've learned to do, through many painful years of hard work, is have enough personal self-regard, that the opinions and maltreatment from others doesn't have damaging effects. That's a really great quote... a lot of people need to learn this. Offense must be taken to have an effect. You can choose to not take it. Please don't misinterpret this to read like it's ok to intentionally go around trying to cause offense to other people... that's not ok! But people disagreeing with you, for example, is NOT offensive. People criticizing your work in a professional manner is NOT offensive. People having different cultures is NOT offessive.

mettamage 5y ago

The idea of cummulative rejection is interesting! I never thought about it that explicitly in that way. I think it's an idea that transcends social rejection and might apply to all rejection. In my case, I have this with job interviews. Unfortunately, every 10 additional rejections is affecting my mental health. This is about after a threshold of 50 initial rejections, including being rejected in the resume round. I wouldn't be surprised if many people experience this with job interviews. I think it's because, in a sense, everything that one has experienced in life suddenly may come together (in terms of values, beliefs, behaviors and so on). If that what comes together is not a system that can work in any way shape or form, then people crash and can crash hard. Especially when one decides to "act out" their cummulative rejection. I've noticed that I sometimes happen to do that now as I'm noticing my patience is wearing thin on all facets of life and it sucks for everyone involved unfortunately. It might be weird to say, but because of this I sometimes wonder, maybe I should become a bus driver or something "simple" [1] like that (pre-corona at least). [1] I'm fairly sure that if I don't give a job like that my full attention, it isn't simple at all. I guess that some people see it as simple since there's less "IQ-ish reasoning" involved.

titanomachy 5y ago
I felt this way at some point. After dozens of rejections I had to admit that I had the “wrong” background and I started trying different approaches. Eventually did a coding boot camp followed by an internship at a startup, which wasn’t prestigious, but it was considered by a mid-sized company to be the right kind of experience. Experience at the mid-sized company was finally considered relevant by FAANG, etc.

jokoon 5y ago

Before WW2, people were living together more often. Apartment buildings were less common. Today we are all atomized and individualized. Individual kitchen, bathrooms and living rooms are the source of the problem. We feel rejected because our brain are naturally wired for a need of social interaction. It's a normal and legit emotion. In earlier times, people lived closer together. We experienced prosperous large homes, but now unemployment and other jobs are making social life difficult. In my view, neighborhoods should have a large living space for people to live together: read, talk, eat, etc. Since communism ended this concept of the commons died. We are all depressed to go back home to rest in an empty apartment.

laurieg 5y ago
I remember in university I lived in a house with 8 people. We would all gather for dinner, often with a few extras from out of the house. It was such a wonderful feeling (and wonderfully efficient, you only had to cook once a week!). The idea of communal spaces needs to come back. I don't think it would be too hard for a 10-story apartment block to offer a communal area, especially as the shops that were often on the first and second floors are going out of business due to online shopping.
- ratww 5y ago
  Did it ever died? Most of my younger friends who live in large cities (in Europe and Latin America) live in communal apartments, and most of the older ones certainly did in the past, especially when in university.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I'd like to see more architecture (and organizational/financial) oriented towards this. There were a lot of great experiments in the early Soviet Union that were hammered down by Stalin and his desire to imitate western opulence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_architecture
pessimizer 5y ago
I agree. I wasn't built at all for the internet/phone/email things that people call friendships now. Long-distance friendships aren't even even friendships to me, or rather they're in maintenance mode until we live near each other again.

dmichulke 5y ago

There is this other school of thought where you actively embrace rejection. Quotes like the following (paraphrased) show this: - If you have no enemies, you're not doing something important - If you don't fail 90% of the time, you're not pushing your boundaries hard enough The idea being that once you get rejected often enough, you lose your fear of it and you start becoming authentic and true to yourself.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I kinda understand what you're going for, but it sounds... very narcissistic, almost psychopathic, and indifferent or numbed to rejection and interpersonal relationships. Maybe the authentic and true self is a prick that nobody wants to interact with in that case.
the_only_law 5y ago
God I wish I could afford to fail 90% of the time.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  Failing 90% of the time means you have an extremely generous buffer such that it’s no longer a requirement to have moderate success on the first try.
  - wholinator2 5y ago
    Well since the quote says 90%, it seems to be saying you don't need to succeed on the first _9_ tries (at most), which I think is where the sentiment that it's an unachievable clause comes from.
scsilver 5y ago
Or you become an insane person who people cannot resonate with or identify themselves in. It kind of sounds like actively seeking trauma.

dronesoul 5y ago

"Incels, a subculture mostly composed of young men" yeah...that's certainly _a_ way to describe them. haha.

dronesoul 5y ago
lol, downvoted. A sensitive incel I suppose? should've realized this is incel land. Using that power to silence other users here when they criticize incels seems like quite the abuse of that power. "Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment and hatred, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against sexually active people. The American nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups. Incels are mostly male and heterosexual, and many sources report that incels are predominantly white. Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands. At least seven mass murders, resulting in a total of 46 deaths, have been committed since 2014 by men who have either self-identified as incels or who had mentioned incel-related names and writings in their private writings or Internet postings. Incel communities have been criticized by researchers and the media for being misogynistic, encouraging violence, spreading extremist views, and radicalizing their members." So yeah, FU incels.
- dang 5y ago
  Your comments have broken several of the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here? We'd be grateful. Flamewar and fulmination are two things we're trying to avoid, and going on about downvotes is a third. Your GP comment was flamebait and unsubstantive, so it's hardly surprising that it was downvoted.

least 5y ago

We have more opportunities to interact with more people from all walks of life from all over the world in a way that is unprecedented. Marginalized groups have found ways to connect to people like them (which would have been impossible in the past). They've found validation about their identity and made real friends. There's so many positive aspects about the society and world we live in today. But because there's so much opportunity for connection today, there's also so many more opportunities for rejection which, as the author puts it, "becomes a painful memory, no matter how many." Occasionally I'll think to look up someone that I hadn't thought of in a while on Facebook, only to find that they, some time ago, removed me from their friends list. No matter how far removed we were from each other in real life, this always kind of stings. The action requires effort on their part; they look at my profile and evaluate our friendship, or lack thereof, and actively decide that no, they don't want me to be a part of their life anymore, no matter how socially removed Facebook is from it. I've been removed and rejected from participating in their life in this way. I've also dealt with people of whom I thought I was pretty close and they suddenly drop all contact with me. What did I do to make her not want to be my friend anymore? I don't know. Should I have done something differently? Probably. Is she going through some shit? I don't know and I can't find out. It's frustrating and depressing and is damaging to my already fragile ego. I don't really have any friends, anymore. There are people that I will occasionally talk to but every year it feels like I've become more and more isolated, despite the fact that there's so much more available out there. Internal factors like depression, anxiety, and ADHD play a part, for sure. When you stop participating in social activities enough for long enough, even the most loyal friends will stop putting in the effort to maintain a relationship with you when they get so little back in return. It's selfish to expect them to do so. Life marches forward at an almost cruel pace. It doesn't care that I need a breather. That I'm starving for affection or that I'm searching for the faintest drop of connection with another human being. It cares not that the rejections are piling up on top of me making it gradually harder and harder for me to move. It continues on and I have to keep moving forward. Hopefully at some point on the way I can find someone who, if not ease my burden, can at least commiserate as we continue to march forward through it together.

rubin55 5y ago
It sounds like you’re in a bind. Truly hope everything is ok-ish in any case. I’m rubin55 on Libera.chat, rann on OFTC. If you ever feel like having a chat, send me a dm. You can also send me a message on me@rubin55.org. Don’t know if I can make a difference, but your message rings true with me.. life and relationships with peeps really got strange in the last decade(s) or so, and all this COVID business didn’t help much either! In any case, hang in there and try not to get too much down about the apparent bleakness of it all; sometimes a few days/some time makes all the difference in how a particular moment feels.

runawaybottle 5y ago

It’s possible countries with mega populations don’t have this problem. I wonder if people in India or China have any disillusion that they are one out of a billion in their country, and are nothing special. It’s possible they value whatever the hell life gives them (whatever friends they have, whatever family, whatever job, etc). The west is taught that we are unique. Really? Let me connect everyone to the internet and show you how untrue that is. Now what do you value? It’s the type of existential crisis of finding out you are really not to the right of the normal distribution, and in fact, dead smack in the middle (or to the left, horrifyingly). Someone can easily stop talking to you. You didn’t sincerely believe you were special did you? Could be wrong though.

krishvs 5y ago
I am from India but have lived in the Middle East ( over a decade) and the US( few years ). I see very little difference among the middle and upper middle class people of these countries nowadays. With globally connected social media everyone thinks they are unique ( maybe rightfully so ). Just because you are born in India or China you are not going to be thankful for whatever life has given to you. Western values( or is it global ) as far as uniqueness seems to be the dominant thought process atleast in the metros. I see the problem described in the article among my friends here. Everyone is depressed, anxious or having an existential crisis.

jollybean 5y ago

'Ghosting' is one of the most petty things imaginable. Sorry to say I judge a person's character so much by this. It's understandable that someone may not want to break up with their partner, but simply not responding is still terrible behaviour. I'd rather be yelled at than ghosted, at least it's candour. Summon the courage and civility to find a few empathetic words and that's that. It's odd that we teach 'knowledge' and even 'morality' in school but not 'basic manners'. I can imagine a room of teenagers laughing out loud at someone trying to teach them how to be civil and polite, and it probably wouldn't change them, however, I think that a few years later it would start to click in. As if they were 'lessons for later, when you're not an irreverent teenager'. They would at least have choices and options for human engagement, it's a form of knowledge.

clipradiowallet 5y ago
Ghosting is bad for other reasons also.. Imagine one of your parents "ghosted" you. Would you feel rejected? Or would you think something bad must have happened, and break down their door assuming they must be in duress and need assistance? That's an extreme example, but I was trying to point out that dropping off the face of the earth to avoid an uncomfortable interaction, and lead to a _much more_ uncomfortable and awkward interaction later.
- eswat 5y ago
  It would be especially bad if the person experienced ghosting-like behaviour when they were young, including from their parents. All those little events build up and can make one insecure about their relationships if any hint of abandonement is in the air, let alone complete abandonement through ghosting.
- jollybean 5y ago
  If a very significant other ghosted you it would almost invariably be an emergency. That or an extremely problematic relationship. Parents don't 'ghost' children. I mean, unless there's something very, very wrong already like an abusive relationship etc. etc.. For 'recently dating couples' the issues is that the one couple doesn't want to own up to saying 'no' so they just duck and avoid.

hirundo 5y ago

How much violence in society is a reaction to cumulative rejection? I'd guess a good deal if not most of it. Our ancient lobster-shared neural mechanisms take it deadly seriously whether we do consciously or not. From the long perspective of our selfish genes, rejection is a mortal threat. I appreciate the sympathetic treatment of incels in this article, which seems like an exception to the norm. I think most of us can sense the pain that goes with this designation. At least with race or gender based rejection we can see progress and action and a way forward. But how do you deal with rejection that isn't about your group, but is about your personal characteristics, your character and attractiveness? Things you either can't change or would make you someone else if you did? Violence is a loathsome reaction, but not one that's hard to understand. I think that's why incels attract such hate. We usually can't help them, so our empathy becomes just frustration and shared pain. We imagine the mix of anger and depression a lifetime of that would cause us, which leads us to fear them. We reject people for suffering too much rejection, a vicious circle. Yet much rejection is utterly necessary. You can't be a friend, lover or business partner with everyone. We must sometimes cause as well as recieve such deep pain. It's not a solvable problem.

andi999 5y ago
Do you know any peer reviewed scientific paper which confirms the lobster shared neural mechanism? Was looking for evidence for this claim a while back, couldn't find it.
- hirundo 5y ago
  E.g https://www.jneurosci.org/content/17/2/697 https://www.jneurosci.org/content/17/2/697 Homo sapiens have a similar response to seratonin manipulation. I wouldn't call this confirmation, and I'm not sure what I would accept. But I do think it's a compelling association.
virgil_disgr4ce 5y ago
> I think that's why incels attract such hate. I'm pretty sure it's because they are largely unbe-LIEV-ably misogynistic and hateful towards women.

theshadowknows 5y ago

I don’t have this issue with social media because I don’t really participate all that much. Occasionally one of you guys gets on my case but hey HN are a rowdy sort so I take my punches :) In terms of job interviews I can see where it would get hard for people. The best advice I ever got for that is to expect one call back for every hundred applications, one interview for every hundred call backs, and maybe one offer for every hundred interviews. If you expect that sort of ratio then it stops feeling personal and just feels like a numbers game.

ipsi 5y ago
Are... you sure about those numbers? That would be one interview per ten thousand applications, and one offer per million applications. I know you have to submit a lot of job applications, but, uh, that seems excessive!
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  Oh it’s not meant to be exact :) just sort of a way to think about applications as a big numbers game.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  Time to automate the process and become a job application spambot!
  - theshadowknows 5y ago
    We will let the application bots and the application scanner bots fight for dominance

Ensorceled 5y ago

When I was in high school and university decades ago, before social media and even stable phone numbers, friends used to come and go all the time; co-workers at summer and co-op jobs, classmates, roommates, ... You'd have beers and a few good times and then the next term/year would happen and you might never see them again. It didn't feel like rejection because there really wasn't a practical way to stay in touch. You only felt rejected by romantic partners and old friends who decided to move on. Now, we "connect" to everyone; we follow each other on Facebook/Twitter/Signal/WeChat and we have each others emails. I'm trying to imagine the roommates I had one summer, who I had almost nothing in common with but who shared their stash with me because I would bring good steaks and fresh vegetables from home, reaching out to me a year later and saying "hey man, why did you ghost us?". What would you even say to that? So, now, when these temporary friendships are over ... we have this lingering connection that doesn't just go away at the end of term. Someone has to take the extra step of closure. I get that this feels like rejection but that feeling is a new thing. Summer loves and friendships were meant to end with a sobbing farewell at the end of August, not with a unfollow and block in November.

xbar 5y ago
This is an essay that more closely reflects my experience.
ub99 5y ago
> Summer loves and friendships were meant to end with a sobbing farewell at the end of August, not with a unfollow and block in November. This is such a good thought. I think it applies to other areas of human relationships as well. Breaking up, for example. It was easier to have healthy boundaries after breaking up... before social media made it so easy to stalk or just be constantly reminded of your past relationship.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  Oh man, agreed. My family reunion Facebook pages both now have a firm "no exes" rule, with exceptions for my two "cousins-in-law" whose spouses passed.

twic 5y ago

> N. wasn’t a particularly close friend, and we didn’t have a falling out per se. The friendship just fizzled, until eventually he decided to unfollow me on Twitter, to put a final nail in a slow process of undoing. > A flaccid “what happened?” text went unresponded to, and just like that, the relationship was over. > Rationally, I know there was no reason for him to respond to a text asking for closure. Our friendship was brief, just over a year, and for the last six months, not much of a friendship at all. It amounted to a mostly barren Signal thread, with the odd message here or there about astrology, or a podcast neither one of us listened to completion. The author didn't lose a friend here. They never had a friend here. I wonder how much of the author's problem is about a mistaken expectation. The expectation that you can meet someone, make contact, and then file that person as a friend forever who will never leave you.

lwhi 5y ago

The author is treating friendship as a transactional exchange. You obtain friends. If you're well connected, you obtain many .. .. however, it's difficult to keep hold of them. --- The issue is friendship and human relations—while transactional during an exchange—are not transactional in the way recent app based culture has lead us to believe. We maintain relationships. We need to tend to them. They change as time moves forward. We can pause; and pick things up later. The best friendships involve high degrees of honesty, and because of that we need to be vulnerable at times. I'm not sure writing a blog post or tweet is displaying the necessary levels of sensitivity (at least on an interpersonal level) to meet this criteria.

meesterdude 5y ago
> I'm not sure writing a blog post or tweet is displaying the necessary levels of sensitivity (at least on an interpersonal level) to meet this criteria. This is an unnecessary dig on the author, and is just a bit pompous. I would counter: writing a blog post on the loss of a close friend and exploring how and why for them and in society at large; displays a high level of introspection, self awareness, and a mature relationship with their emotions. When anger and blame are the typical reactions for such an outcome, it was a mature and reasoned exploration.
- lwhi 5y ago
  I think it's fair. I can understand your point, but I think the response of writing a blog post is an example of continued transactionality. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm aiming to be honest.

EFruit 5y ago

There is (yet another) aspect that the author didn't cover: internalized rejection. Imagine you burn out during college, so you pivot and get a professional certification instead. You pass the exam and have the certificate in hand, and you start looking for jobs. You scroll and scroll through indeed, glassdoor, the job sites for the organizations that would hire someone with your certification and training, and... they all require that degree you don't have. They all require N years of experience that you haven't gotten. How many visits like this does it take before you stop looking altogether?

AlexTWithBeard 5y ago

Beware: high rejection sensitivity is one of the symptoms of atypical depression [1]. Make sure to reach out for help if in doubt. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atypical_depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atypical_depression

clipradiowallet 5y ago

Rejection can seem to be overwhelming and all-important because of pack-mentality behaviors that sustained our species long ago. EG...belonging to a pack/tribe/whatever increased your odds of survival against predators. Getting kicked out of the pack thousands of years ago was likely a death sentence. Old habits(and our mental/emotional reactions to them) die hard.

jcims 5y ago

Then there's the rejection martyrdom that happens on Twitter. 'Seeing a lot of unfollows after my <edgy in-group signaling> on <topic flooding everyone's timelines>, I guess <broad strokes description of out-group> just can't handle <more in-group signaling>'.

plank_time 5y ago

Maybe I’m more considerate than average to people I’ve known throughout my life, but being rejected is not normal for me. The frequency to which the author was rejected by people seems to indicate there’s a problem with him, not society. Of course it has happened, but we are talking about ex-girlfriends or people I’ve had legitimate fights with. But I still have friends from every stage of my life. I have a group of friends that I’ve known since grade 1 and we WhatsApp every day. We get into salty verbal arguments all the time like brothers, but we never have coke close to rejecting each other. During the pandemic I’ve had friends from high school that I haven’t spoken with for 30+ years that sought me out and we talked on the phone for 2 hours. In the last few weeks I had a coworker from 20 years ago reach out to me because she heard I “retired” pre-pandemic and wanted my advice on if she should do it. We chatted for over an hour. During the pandemic I’ve pinged several friends/coworkers from various companies I’ve worked with just to say hi. I’m planning on going for lunch with another coworker from 20 years ago in the next few weeks. I’ve even made new friends during the pandemic, having met someone that shared my same cynical views on the Federal Reserve, the stock market, etc. It’s not hard to maintain friendships with people, just be considerate and courteous! Not everyone needs to be your best friend, but you also don’t need to be so navel gazing that all you care about is yourself. The fact that the author has so many people rejecting the author makes me think he’s simply not a good friend and deserves to be rejected.

shkkmo 5y ago
Social skills are not equally easy for everyone. > makes me think he’s simply not a good friend and deserves to be rejected. You sound like maybe a bit more rejection would have been good for your sense of empathy.
- plank_time 5y ago
  Empathy doesn’t mean saying “everything you do is okay.” Thats called enabling their behavior. It sometimes means having to say the honest, hard things in hopes that people will change their behavior for the better. It’s fairly obvious that the author has a hard time maintaining friendships. To blame that on society today and social media is wrong.

pixel_tracing 5y ago

I mean she kind of implied a reason why some people are “rejecting” her. I don’t want to talk professionally after work with certain people as I don’t gain much value. Certain people I enjoy mentoring, certain people I don’t. I don’t want another “task” to do. Also people with “too many” friends I find a little fake. You can’t expect me to take you seriously if you’re trying to maintain “close / intimate” friendships with 100 or more people. > The number of people I speak to on any given timescale far exceeds Dunbar’s number, and if I took every instance of rejection personally, I would be a very depressed person. I have lost friends, acquaintances, and people who exist in the liminal space between the two for all sorts of reasons: I’m too flaky, they don’t like what I write here or on Twitter, my real or imagined allegiances with people they’ve decided are their enemies, I don’t sufficiently respect their otherkin identity, they don’t sufficiently respect my professional identity. >Sometimes it’s because I’m being an ass, but a lot of the time, it’s just a statistical normality. Cast a wide enough net, you’re bound to lose a certain number of fish.

default_friend 5y ago

Author here! I think what (maybe?) got lost in this blog post is that it's more about the unhealthy nature of lifestyles that encourage the constant churn of socialization than feeling rejected by someone unfollowing me on Twitter. For me, lots of people I know in person follow me on Twitter, it's a bit of a ding. I'm also a super high visibility person on social and elsewhere, which complicates things. But lots of folks are in this boat -- people like me who are constantly meeting new people, folks who work in jobs that necessitate hundreds of applications, people on dating apps who go on hundreds of first dates. It's not so much that every individual rejection is a character indictment on anyone involved, it's more that the transient nature of socialization is stressful. I hope my frame didn't suggest a shallow definition of friendship or one specifically anchored in social. One last example that might be salient - The Bay Area is all about this kind of radical openness that isn't scalable or sustainable. Even if you have more real friends outside of that framework, being a human airport of connection kind of blows. Maybe a very specific scenario.

Ensorceled 5y ago
> I hope my frame didn't suggest a shallow definition of friendship or one specifically anchored in social. I certainly didn't take it that way, but I do believe the "lingering" nature of these new types of friendships has changed the nature of rejection; or forced things that didn't have a rejection component before to now have one. And I agree with your point of we have a lot more connections now and, hence, a lot more "micro rejections". As someone with actual rejection sensitivity (ADHD), I know exactly what you mean.
jm__87 5y ago
Just curious, who or what is encouraging this constant churn of socialization that you are experiencing? I am not aware of this phenomenon