14 ms·

> “For the last year,” a friend recently wrote to me, “a lot of us have been enjoying unaccustomed courtesy and understanding from the world.” When people asked

by slibhb 5y ago

> “For the last year,” a friend recently wrote to me, “a lot of us have been enjoying unaccustomed courtesy and understanding from the world.” When people asked how you were doing, no one expected you to say “Fine.” Instead, they asked, “How are you holding up?” and you’d answer, “Well, you know.” (That “you know” encompassed a lot that was left unspoken: deteriorating mental health, physical atrophy, creeping alcoholism, unraveling marriages, touch starvation, suicidal ideation, collapse-of-democracy anxiety, Hadean boredom and loneliness, solitary rages and despair.) You could admit that you’d accomplished nothing today, this week, all year. Having gotten through another day was a perfectly respectable achievement. I considered it a pass-fail year, and anything you had to do to get through it—indulging inappropriate crushes, strictly temporary addictions, really bad TV—was an acceptable cost of psychological survival. Being “unable to deal” was a legitimate excuse for failing to answer emails, missing deadlines, or declining invitations. Everyone recognized that the situation was simply too much to be borne without occasionally going to pieces. This has, in fact, always been the case; we were just finally allowed to admit it. A bit harsh but to me this is one long keening whine. This is the new elite in a nutshell: extremely privileged but obsessed with their own psychological frailty which they flaunt like it's something to be proud of.

smoldesu 5y ago
> This is the new elite in a nutshell: extremely privileged but obsessed with their own psychological frailty which they flaunt like it's something to be proud of. Absolutely this. Middle/upper class America has been doing this for the last decade, and it's left a horrible impression on our youth. I'm not going to teach the next generation of kids to give up so easily.
skystarman 5y ago
IMO it's preferable than the macho BS of pretending any and all vulnerability makes you a sissy incapable of ever amounting to much.
- cupofcoffee 5y ago
  I guarantee you that they are decimated by trauama on the daily and hide behind thin veneers of "just do it".
BitwiseFool 5y ago
Agreed, how did mollycoddling become a virtue? Look, I get that it's fun to commiserate about how stressful life can be, but people today are taking it to a whole new level. Some people are projecting that their lives are balanced on a knife's edge of disaster because of the burden of ... adult responsibilities? I sense this is coming about because of an cultural emphasis on empathy and validation rather than resilience and mindfulness.
- saltdoo 5y ago
  I had to google the word 'mollycoddling' and now feel the urge to use this word in conversation. Perhaps popularizing this fun term will help to de-virtue-ize this phenomenon!
- browningstreet 5y ago
  The humble bragging online about “my first haircut in 18 months” or “I’m going to a party for the first time since the pandemic and I don’t know if I’ll remember how to party!” can all roll into a ditch.
  - matt-attack 5y ago
    Honest question: how are those two statements boastful in your mind?
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      Because many people read it as the following sarcastic virtue signal. "I was such an obedient shut in, and now that it's okay with the government and there's an experimental vaccine in me, I'm going back out."
      - helen___keller 5y ago
        Repeating the parents question: How is your (satirical) statement boastful?
airza 5y ago
Sorry dude, but the new elite are me, you and the rest of the people on this board: receiving six figure salaries for staring at a screen and writing programs for a couple hours every day. It's not the writer getting work for feature sets in the collapsing media landscape.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Who do I speak to to get my blue checkmark on Twitter?
  - RugnirViking 5y ago
    A blue sign does not an elite maketh.
    - reedjosh 5y ago
      Yeah, maybe an upper-middler, but not an elite.
  - camgunz 5y ago
    I mean, sure on the one hand we're not super famous. But on the other, we get to make stuff like Twitter so, I guess what I'm saying is roll your character carefully.
- reedjosh 5y ago
  I'll admit we're nearer to elite than most, but billionaires and politicians would privately mock this statement. I think we should all acknowledged there's well to do peasants (us), and then there's true elites. There are more levels of wealth than are typically acknowledged in conversations like this, and it leads to very muddy arguments.
- programmarchy 5y ago
  You're seeing a local maxima. The elite are earning your full salary in one day simply by the interest gained on their capital, and they have actual power to exert their will upon society and shape the future of mankind. They have the resources and ability to survive the next great filter and form a breakaway civilization, but at this stage of the game, you and I do not.
ta1234567890 5y ago
> extremely privileged but obsessed with their own psychological frailty which they flaunt like it's something to be proud of This type of judgement about mental health is what drove Naomi Osaka to withdraw from Roland Garros yesterday. It’s about time that as society we open up about mental health and how to deal with our issues, instead of blaming the people with the issues and calling them weak or snowflakes. People with issues need help, not bullying.
- aphextron 5y ago
  > People with issues need help, not bullying. Absolutely. True mental health issues need clinical diagnosis and treatment. Things like CBT and antipsychotics have saved the lives of many people with psychological disorders, and modern mental health treatment is as valid as any other area of medical science. But the type of "therapy culture" the parent describes is absolutely obnoxious, self serving, and all pervading among the upper and middle class. People have been so convinced, jeered on by social media, of this pseudo-Freudian nonsense about deep seated emotional traumas requiring therapy, that the real issue of mental health has been conflated with feeling annoyed about having to respond to work emails or being bummed about a breakup.
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    Agreed, to me it seems that the "therapy culture" is missing a key element of actual therapy, working to address the root causes and cultivating a sense of agency and ability to change one's situation in life. Acknowledging one's own mental illness or troublesome state of mind is an excellent first step but it needs to progress past that. What I'm seeing is a sort of "pop-therapy" where people self diagnose and then wallow in it looking for sympathy while not making sincere efforts to overcome what they have to deal with.
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      "people self diagnose and then wallow in it looking for sympathy while not making sincere efforts to overcome what they have to deal with" The thing about depression is that it makes making an effort hard. You can feel hopless, have no energy (even to get out of bed, shower, brush your teeth, or feed yourself), and be full of slef-recrimination and self-loathing on top of that. The more they don't do the worse they feel, leading to a worsening spiral. It's easy to say that the sufferer should just make the effort to get out of this state, but it is the nature of depression to prevent that. The lucky ones can do it, but many others can't. Saying to a depressed person that they should make the effort is like telling a gambling addict not to gamble, an alcoholic not to drink, or a person with an eating disorder to just eat less. It's a lot easier said than done, and what keeps them from doing so often runs a lot deeper than people who make offhand dismissals realize.
seneca 5y ago
Agreed. I can't only imagine what would happen to these people if they had to face any actual adversity, given what had happened to them in the face of staying at home in the most comfortable civilization that had ever existed. In reality though, I suspect most of them are fine. This is just the result of a subculture that celebrates being a victim. Anything that can signal as suffering and weakness is somehow warped into a desirable trait because it triggers the wildly overstimulated empathy response, and leads to attention.
- Bishizel 5y ago
  Pain (among other experiences) exists as a gradient compared against both your average experience and any outlier experiences (good or bad). A result of living in a more comfortable, advanced society is that things that seem smaller to someone on the outside are bigger on the personal level. These people aren't inherently weak or soft, it's just that the worst thing or day they have experienced is pretty good in a global sense, but pretty bad in a personal subjective sense.
  - doggodaddo78 5y ago
    Depression magnifies emotional and physical pain. Lack of recent exposure also makes people weak. They need to get back in practice or it's like they're skipping the gym to veg-out on the couch with Netflix, weed, and a case of Doritos. If you want to up your social-pain threshold, say "hello" strangely to 200 random people.
bakedbeanz 5y ago
Snide viewpoints like this are one of the main reasons people with mental illness often hide their conditions and suffer in silence. Oh, you have the gall to mention how depression or anxiety manifests in your life? You better stop flaunting your psychological frailty!
- stuff4ben 5y ago
  It's one thing to mention it, quite another to continually moan about it day in and day out. Yes, I have empathy for your situation and if you need help, I can be there. But the rest is on you and not me. I don't need to see continual Facebook posts about it. There is quite a bit of sympathy-gathering that's taken hold and it's getting ridiculous.
  - ABCLAW 5y ago
    "Yes, I have empathy for your situation" "I don't need to see continual Facebook posts about it." Framing someone's struggle purely in terms of how it annoys you makes you come across as something other than empathetic.
    - stuff4ben 5y ago
      Clearly you didn't read all of my comment. Continually moaning about it is not doing anything about it except being a drama-queen. Yes I have empathy, but endless Facebook "woe is me..." posts are not the key to getting help.
      - ABCLAW 5y ago
        >Clearly you didn't read all of my comment. I did. I also read this post. Saying you are empathetic while also uniformly dismissing those you claim to empathize with doesn't ring too clear. No evidence of empathy, lots of evidence of dismissal. Just my 2c as someone looking at how the issue has been framed.
        5y ago
scythe 5y ago
The author's complaint is about an entirely self-imposed nonsense barrier. >When people asked how you were doing, no one expected you to say “Fine.” Instead, they asked, “How are you holding up?” and you’d answer, “Well, you know.” So what? Maybe it's because I've spent my life in careers where performance can be measured (even badly), but I haven't since high school felt pressure to exaggerate beyond "alright" or the classic "it's going". I mean, sometimes I am actually in a good mood. I must be crazy. I'm sitting here waiting for a bleomycin infusion and I just told the nurse I had a good weekend. How inconceivable! Just two days ago I could barely eat dinner! What right do I have to be happy? Good news: typing this made me laugh, a little. It was worth it.
uhtred 5y ago
I disagree. For a very long time people have been coping with their depression and anxiety by drinking too much, eating badly, becoming violent, abusive, killing themselves. It's not that the "new elite" can't handle the stresses of life, the stresses of life have always been there, but finally some people are waking up to the fact that there are better ways to cope with them than my above list. Such as therapy, or leaving that awful fucking toxic open office corporate environment. Being honest that you are struggling mentally is brave, not frail. They are the people probably most likely to not have another scotch or two, and get divorced.
weasel_words 5y ago
There is an excellent lecture on this topic: "Jonathan Haidt: The Coddling of the American Mind" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3Ob4CK4Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3Ob4CK4Xs (a little over an hour) The lecture includes multiple studies and actual science. Basically scientifically illustrating what many people feel intuitively - that somehow society has become obtusely frail.
digisud 5y ago
We never had what we have today: Fast communication about every topic including religion. Riches like modern houses, a high standard of lifing for a lot (no war in Germany or food shortage for 50? Years). When Im done with my high paying job Im done and due to me being so small I do question why do I work? For what? What is my goal in my life? It is our zeitgeist. I have seen much more philosophical life questions asked in tv shows and movies as well. There was also a very disturbing and hitting closer than expected south park episode were Kyle? Saw everything as shit. When you could do everything but everything stops mattering what do you do?
NelsonMinar 5y ago
I can't think of a more on-brand Hacker News comment than to respond to an article talking about "enjoying unaccustomed courtesy and understanding from the world" with a whole screed on how people don't deserve courtesy and understanding.
- ABCLAW 5y ago
  I agree. It's unfortunate that the tone of this site has shifted from a playful, exuberant, rebellious culture looking to creatively tinker, build and solve problems with new approaches and solutions to... this. Denying problems exist if they don't affect you doesn't solve them.
  - finnthehuman 5y ago
    >playful, exuberant, rebellious Just not the wrong kind of rebellion where you might be exposed to an opinion that doesn't give you good vibes, right? This website is in the shadow of tech in general and the valley in particular. HN doesn't mirror that culture, but does reacts to it. The culture here is visibly molded by the ongoing cultural rot in the Bay Area and Tech. If you're good at sniffing out the trends IRL, you can watch in real time how attitudes shift here in the following few months. Why should anyone put on a show that lets you feel "playful, exuberant, rebellious" if soaking in ""tech" culture" has caused the attitude of regular people to come out of alignment with the safe-for-tv entertainment you seek?
- dporter 5y ago
  The article isn't about "enjoying unaccustomed courtesy and understanding from the world." It's about the author's experience on a year long vacation. "Actually, depression isn't that bad because I don't have to work" has not been the experience of anyone I know. All this article does is minimize the very real suffering that many people are experiencing.
nickstinemates 5y ago
Agreed - the effects of mental illness and its ability to flourish shouldn't be something to celebrated.
m0llusk 5y ago
A bit harsh, but to me this is nothing but whining. The article talks about different ways of living and the trade offs associated with each. Then this commentary comes in with a harsh call them like they seem them framing where these ideas about life are not to be considered or discussed because they might interfere with the appearance of brave engagement or whatever it is that is being endorsed. This is kind of like the trade offs with being social or being extremely focused with little time and energy allocated to socialization. Committing to spending the time and energy to be social might generate great value from weak connections but it might also generate or expose conflicts and reveal that hardly anyone in your community sees or values things the way you do. Neither way of living is whining, they are just different ways of living. Comparing ways of living is always full of opportunities for conflict and misunderstanding, but being ready or even anxious to judge others negatively limits the ability to evaluate alternatives in a cool and realistic manner.
exo-pla-net 5y ago
This scathing contempt for poor mental health is precisely the kind of attitude that drives people to commit suicide instead of seeking help. Poor mental health isn't "whining"; it's the number one cause of death for ages 15-24 in the US. It's rampant, and many people reading your comment will themselves be struggling. If anyone reading this is in a bad way, please know that most of us don't look down on you. Many downright heroic people who have changed the world have had their (very) bad patches. Newton, Tesla, Lincoln. Programmers aren't known for their empathy, so don't pay attention to any tone deaf drum beating you hear here. Outside of Hacker News, you're surrounded by people who do indeed care about and respect you, as well as professionals who will put the best of their minds into helping you through the storm.
- NoOneNew 5y ago
  Okay, as someone who used to suffer from really bad depression for about 5 years, you're the one over stepping your position on this. There is poor mental health. Theres also fishing for attention and making outlandish claims for sympathy. This article isnt a testament of poor mental health. It's a whining child who refuses to grow, at best. If you suffer from depression or other issues, you can spot out a phony in a heartbeat. Thats why some people in the comments get pissed off over these articles. The author is faking it and doing more harm than good. Most people with actual mental health issues WANT it to end, unlike the author, because guess what, the word suffering isnt an accident. The culture of "it's okay to suffer" is pretty fucked up. In truth, no one really looks down on poor mental health anymore. Get with the times. The most backwoods redneck these days understands that life or severe events gets hard on people, it can happen to anyone, and it takes a toll on them, being hard on that person doesn't help. It's really the woke crowd that keeps bringing up that theres a stigma. No one else does or thinks that. Honestly, the veteran community is probably the best right now when it comes to helping with poor mental health. Most of you are going to look down on that, but that's your prejudice problem. If anyone wants to try picking themselves back up, take some lessons from that crowd to see how they help vets with PTSD.
  - RugnirViking 5y ago
    > If anyone wants to try picking themselves back up, take some lessons from that crowd to see how they help vets with PTSD. as someone suffering who is not a veteran, nor in the US at all, is there something I can read about that outlines their approach or what they are doing to help them that is new?
handrous 5y ago
You know, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think in our (laudable) effort that's ramped up over the last 15-30 years, as a society, not to shit on people who become mentally ill or fragile in the face of certain adversity or stress, we've made becoming mentally ill and fragile the most valid way to respond to stress, always above criticism, and in a real sense generated more of that than would have existed otherwise.
- baumy 5y ago
  I have mostly the same thoughts, and found this to be the best presentation of them I've come across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3Ob4CK4Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3Ob4CK4Xs There's also a book by the same title

by slibhb 5y ago

smoldesu 5y ago

> This is the new elite in a nutshell: extremely privileged but obsessed with their own psychological frailty which they flaunt like it's something to be proud of. Absolutely this. Middle/upper class America has been doing this for the last decade, and it's left a horrible impression on our youth. I'm not going to teach the next generation of kids to give up so easily.

skystarman 5y ago

IMO it's preferable than the macho BS of pretending any and all vulnerability makes you a sissy incapable of ever amounting to much.

cupofcoffee 5y ago
I guarantee you that they are decimated by trauama on the daily and hide behind thin veneers of "just do it".

BitwiseFool 5y ago

Agreed, how did mollycoddling become a virtue? Look, I get that it's fun to commiserate about how stressful life can be, but people today are taking it to a whole new level. Some people are projecting that their lives are balanced on a knife's edge of disaster because of the burden of ... adult responsibilities? I sense this is coming about because of an cultural emphasis on empathy and validation rather than resilience and mindfulness.

saltdoo 5y ago
I had to google the word 'mollycoddling' and now feel the urge to use this word in conversation. Perhaps popularizing this fun term will help to de-virtue-ize this phenomenon!
browningstreet 5y ago
The humble bragging online about “my first haircut in 18 months” or “I’m going to a party for the first time since the pandemic and I don’t know if I’ll remember how to party!” can all roll into a ditch.
- matt-attack 5y ago
  Honest question: how are those two statements boastful in your mind?
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    Because many people read it as the following sarcastic virtue signal. "I was such an obedient shut in, and now that it's okay with the government and there's an experimental vaccine in me, I'm going back out."
    - helen___keller 5y ago
      Repeating the parents question: How is your (satirical) statement boastful?

airza 5y ago

Sorry dude, but the new elite are me, you and the rest of the people on this board: receiving six figure salaries for staring at a screen and writing programs for a couple hours every day. It's not the writer getting work for feature sets in the collapsing media landscape.

jaywalk 5y ago
Who do I speak to to get my blue checkmark on Twitter?
- RugnirViking 5y ago
  A blue sign does not an elite maketh.
  - reedjosh 5y ago
    Yeah, maybe an upper-middler, but not an elite.
- camgunz 5y ago
  I mean, sure on the one hand we're not super famous. But on the other, we get to make stuff like Twitter so, I guess what I'm saying is roll your character carefully.
reedjosh 5y ago
I'll admit we're nearer to elite than most, but billionaires and politicians would privately mock this statement. I think we should all acknowledged there's well to do peasants (us), and then there's true elites. There are more levels of wealth than are typically acknowledged in conversations like this, and it leads to very muddy arguments.
programmarchy 5y ago
You're seeing a local maxima. The elite are earning your full salary in one day simply by the interest gained on their capital, and they have actual power to exert their will upon society and shape the future of mankind. They have the resources and ability to survive the next great filter and form a breakaway civilization, but at this stage of the game, you and I do not.

ta1234567890 5y ago

> extremely privileged but obsessed with their own psychological frailty which they flaunt like it's something to be proud of This type of judgement about mental health is what drove Naomi Osaka to withdraw from Roland Garros yesterday. It’s about time that as society we open up about mental health and how to deal with our issues, instead of blaming the people with the issues and calling them weak or snowflakes. People with issues need help, not bullying.

aphextron 5y ago
> People with issues need help, not bullying. Absolutely. True mental health issues need clinical diagnosis and treatment. Things like CBT and antipsychotics have saved the lives of many people with psychological disorders, and modern mental health treatment is as valid as any other area of medical science. But the type of "therapy culture" the parent describes is absolutely obnoxious, self serving, and all pervading among the upper and middle class. People have been so convinced, jeered on by social media, of this pseudo-Freudian nonsense about deep seated emotional traumas requiring therapy, that the real issue of mental health has been conflated with feeling annoyed about having to respond to work emails or being bummed about a breakup.
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  Agreed, to me it seems that the "therapy culture" is missing a key element of actual therapy, working to address the root causes and cultivating a sense of agency and ability to change one's situation in life. Acknowledging one's own mental illness or troublesome state of mind is an excellent first step but it needs to progress past that. What I'm seeing is a sort of "pop-therapy" where people self diagnose and then wallow in it looking for sympathy while not making sincere efforts to overcome what they have to deal with.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "people self diagnose and then wallow in it looking for sympathy while not making sincere efforts to overcome what they have to deal with" The thing about depression is that it makes making an effort hard. You can feel hopless, have no energy (even to get out of bed, shower, brush your teeth, or feed yourself), and be full of slef-recrimination and self-loathing on top of that. The more they don't do the worse they feel, leading to a worsening spiral. It's easy to say that the sufferer should just make the effort to get out of this state, but it is the nature of depression to prevent that. The lucky ones can do it, but many others can't. Saying to a depressed person that they should make the effort is like telling a gambling addict not to gamble, an alcoholic not to drink, or a person with an eating disorder to just eat less. It's a lot easier said than done, and what keeps them from doing so often runs a lot deeper than people who make offhand dismissals realize.

seneca 5y ago

Agreed. I can't only imagine what would happen to these people if they had to face any actual adversity, given what had happened to them in the face of staying at home in the most comfortable civilization that had ever existed. In reality though, I suspect most of them are fine. This is just the result of a subculture that celebrates being a victim. Anything that can signal as suffering and weakness is somehow warped into a desirable trait because it triggers the wildly overstimulated empathy response, and leads to attention.

Bishizel 5y ago
Pain (among other experiences) exists as a gradient compared against both your average experience and any outlier experiences (good or bad). A result of living in a more comfortable, advanced society is that things that seem smaller to someone on the outside are bigger on the personal level. These people aren't inherently weak or soft, it's just that the worst thing or day they have experienced is pretty good in a global sense, but pretty bad in a personal subjective sense.
- doggodaddo78 5y ago
  Depression magnifies emotional and physical pain. Lack of recent exposure also makes people weak. They need to get back in practice or it's like they're skipping the gym to veg-out on the couch with Netflix, weed, and a case of Doritos. If you want to up your social-pain threshold, say "hello" strangely to 200 random people.

bakedbeanz 5y ago

Snide viewpoints like this are one of the main reasons people with mental illness often hide their conditions and suffer in silence. Oh, you have the gall to mention how depression or anxiety manifests in your life? You better stop flaunting your psychological frailty!

stuff4ben 5y ago
It's one thing to mention it, quite another to continually moan about it day in and day out. Yes, I have empathy for your situation and if you need help, I can be there. But the rest is on you and not me. I don't need to see continual Facebook posts about it. There is quite a bit of sympathy-gathering that's taken hold and it's getting ridiculous.
- ABCLAW 5y ago
  "Yes, I have empathy for your situation" "I don't need to see continual Facebook posts about it." Framing someone's struggle purely in terms of how it annoys you makes you come across as something other than empathetic.
  - stuff4ben 5y ago
    Clearly you didn't read all of my comment. Continually moaning about it is not doing anything about it except being a drama-queen. Yes I have empathy, but endless Facebook "woe is me..." posts are not the key to getting help.
    - ABCLAW 5y ago
      >Clearly you didn't read all of my comment. I did. I also read this post. Saying you are empathetic while also uniformly dismissing those you claim to empathize with doesn't ring too clear. No evidence of empathy, lots of evidence of dismissal. Just my 2c as someone looking at how the issue has been framed.
      - 5y ago

scythe 5y ago

The author's complaint is about an entirely self-imposed nonsense barrier. >When people asked how you were doing, no one expected you to say “Fine.” Instead, they asked, “How are you holding up?” and you’d answer, “Well, you know.” So what? Maybe it's because I've spent my life in careers where performance can be measured (even badly), but I haven't since high school felt pressure to exaggerate beyond "alright" or the classic "it's going". I mean, sometimes I am actually in a good mood. I must be crazy. I'm sitting here waiting for a bleomycin infusion and I just told the nurse I had a good weekend. How inconceivable! Just two days ago I could barely eat dinner! What right do I have to be happy? Good news: typing this made me laugh, a little. It was worth it.

uhtred 5y ago

I disagree. For a very long time people have been coping with their depression and anxiety by drinking too much, eating badly, becoming violent, abusive, killing themselves. It's not that the "new elite" can't handle the stresses of life, the stresses of life have always been there, but finally some people are waking up to the fact that there are better ways to cope with them than my above list. Such as therapy, or leaving that awful fucking toxic open office corporate environment. Being honest that you are struggling mentally is brave, not frail. They are the people probably most likely to not have another scotch or two, and get divorced.

weasel_words 5y ago

There is an excellent lecture on this topic: "Jonathan Haidt: The Coddling of the American Mind" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3Ob4CK4Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3Ob4CK4Xs (a little over an hour) The lecture includes multiple studies and actual science. Basically scientifically illustrating what many people feel intuitively - that somehow society has become obtusely frail.

digisud 5y ago

We never had what we have today: Fast communication about every topic including religion. Riches like modern houses, a high standard of lifing for a lot (no war in Germany or food shortage for 50? Years). When Im done with my high paying job Im done and due to me being so small I do question why do I work? For what? What is my goal in my life? It is our zeitgeist. I have seen much more philosophical life questions asked in tv shows and movies as well. There was also a very disturbing and hitting closer than expected south park episode were Kyle? Saw everything as shit. When you could do everything but everything stops mattering what do you do?

NelsonMinar 5y ago

I can't think of a more on-brand Hacker News comment than to respond to an article talking about "enjoying unaccustomed courtesy and understanding from the world" with a whole screed on how people don't deserve courtesy and understanding.

ABCLAW 5y ago
I agree. It's unfortunate that the tone of this site has shifted from a playful, exuberant, rebellious culture looking to creatively tinker, build and solve problems with new approaches and solutions to... this. Denying problems exist if they don't affect you doesn't solve them.
- finnthehuman 5y ago
  >playful, exuberant, rebellious Just not the wrong kind of rebellion where you might be exposed to an opinion that doesn't give you good vibes, right? This website is in the shadow of tech in general and the valley in particular. HN doesn't mirror that culture, but does reacts to it. The culture here is visibly molded by the ongoing cultural rot in the Bay Area and Tech. If you're good at sniffing out the trends IRL, you can watch in real time how attitudes shift here in the following few months. Why should anyone put on a show that lets you feel "playful, exuberant, rebellious" if soaking in ""tech" culture" has caused the attitude of regular people to come out of alignment with the safe-for-tv entertainment you seek?
dporter 5y ago
The article isn't about "enjoying unaccustomed courtesy and understanding from the world." It's about the author's experience on a year long vacation. "Actually, depression isn't that bad because I don't have to work" has not been the experience of anyone I know. All this article does is minimize the very real suffering that many people are experiencing.

nickstinemates 5y ago

Agreed - the effects of mental illness and its ability to flourish shouldn't be something to celebrated.

m0llusk 5y ago

A bit harsh, but to me this is nothing but whining. The article talks about different ways of living and the trade offs associated with each. Then this commentary comes in with a harsh call them like they seem them framing where these ideas about life are not to be considered or discussed because they might interfere with the appearance of brave engagement or whatever it is that is being endorsed. This is kind of like the trade offs with being social or being extremely focused with little time and energy allocated to socialization. Committing to spending the time and energy to be social might generate great value from weak connections but it might also generate or expose conflicts and reveal that hardly anyone in your community sees or values things the way you do. Neither way of living is whining, they are just different ways of living. Comparing ways of living is always full of opportunities for conflict and misunderstanding, but being ready or even anxious to judge others negatively limits the ability to evaluate alternatives in a cool and realistic manner.

exo-pla-net 5y ago

This scathing contempt for poor mental health is precisely the kind of attitude that drives people to commit suicide instead of seeking help. Poor mental health isn't "whining"; it's the number one cause of death for ages 15-24 in the US. It's rampant, and many people reading your comment will themselves be struggling. If anyone reading this is in a bad way, please know that most of us don't look down on you. Many downright heroic people who have changed the world have had their (very) bad patches. Newton, Tesla, Lincoln. Programmers aren't known for their empathy, so don't pay attention to any tone deaf drum beating you hear here. Outside of Hacker News, you're surrounded by people who do indeed care about and respect you, as well as professionals who will put the best of their minds into helping you through the storm.

NoOneNew 5y ago
Okay, as someone who used to suffer from really bad depression for about 5 years, you're the one over stepping your position on this. There is poor mental health. Theres also fishing for attention and making outlandish claims for sympathy. This article isnt a testament of poor mental health. It's a whining child who refuses to grow, at best. If you suffer from depression or other issues, you can spot out a phony in a heartbeat. Thats why some people in the comments get pissed off over these articles. The author is faking it and doing more harm than good. Most people with actual mental health issues WANT it to end, unlike the author, because guess what, the word suffering isnt an accident. The culture of "it's okay to suffer" is pretty fucked up. In truth, no one really looks down on poor mental health anymore. Get with the times. The most backwoods redneck these days understands that life or severe events gets hard on people, it can happen to anyone, and it takes a toll on them, being hard on that person doesn't help. It's really the woke crowd that keeps bringing up that theres a stigma. No one else does or thinks that. Honestly, the veteran community is probably the best right now when it comes to helping with poor mental health. Most of you are going to look down on that, but that's your prejudice problem. If anyone wants to try picking themselves back up, take some lessons from that crowd to see how they help vets with PTSD.
- RugnirViking 5y ago
  > If anyone wants to try picking themselves back up, take some lessons from that crowd to see how they help vets with PTSD. as someone suffering who is not a veteran, nor in the US at all, is there something I can read about that outlines their approach or what they are doing to help them that is new?

handrous 5y ago

You know, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think in our (laudable) effort that's ramped up over the last 15-30 years, as a society, not to shit on people who become mentally ill or fragile in the face of certain adversity or stress, we've made becoming mentally ill and fragile the most valid way to respond to stress, always above criticism, and in a real sense generated more of that than would have existed otherwise.

baumy 5y ago
I have mostly the same thoughts, and found this to be the best presentation of them I've come across: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3Ob4CK4Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b3Ob4CK4Xs There's also a book by the same title