11 ms·

Framing everything in terms of mental health is one of those things were I can't tell if people are participating in some kind of mass social joke, or are serio

Framing everything in terms of mental health is one of those things were I can't tell if people are participating in some kind of mass social joke, or are serious.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
LandR 1y ago
We are in a time where it's fashionable to have mental health issues. It's very strange.
- dylan604 1y ago
  That's what I fell about the 21 pilots track I'm so stressed out.
  - nemomarx 1y ago
    isn't it mostly about childhood nostalgia? "I'm more stressed then when I was a kid" seems pretty basic
    - alabastervlog 1y ago
      I'm more stressed out than like... during Summer, when I was a kid. I've never, ever been as stressed out as during school, grades 7-12. If the rest of life had been that stressful or worse, I'd have checked out a long time ago.
      - nemomarx 1y ago
        Maybe I just had an easy time but 7-12 was a lot less stressful than office work and arbitrary meetings all day. I probably just miss the predictable schedule
        alabastervlog 1y ago
        Huh, I'd liken school in those grades to a series of meetings basically all day, that are mostly presentations, every day of the week, with a lot of restrictions and harsh conduct & expectations from the people leading the meetings, which'd never fly in an office. Often with terrible lighting and long stretches without seeing the outdoors, even though a window. And crazy-early start times that may have you not seeing the sun until 3PM or so, for months. And, especially toward the end, a couple more hours of work at home every day. Mostly of math problems. Also, all that, plus you're not getting paid for it.
        fragmede 1y ago
        OTOH, if you fail out of class, most of us wouldn't have become homeless, just placed in a remedial class. Whereas getting fired from your office job would land you out on the street if you're living paycheck to paycheck.
        Tijdreiziger 1y ago
        Only if you live somewhere without unemployment insurance (or you mis-manage your money).
        s1artibartfast 1y ago
        If that were a job, I was characterize it as a boring job, not a stressful one. I'm sure experiences differ, but mine was that school was trivially easy and inconsequential, but sometimes time intensive. I wouldn't consider a job where I have to go and listen to a boring presentation for 8 hours a day stressful. What is stressful is the rat race and making sure I can afford mortgage payments
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - ForOldHack 1y ago
        My school had a lot of field trips. I have never been part of a job that included trips to "the little farm. "I asked a friend from Hong Kong, if he had trips to A little farm, and he said he did.
        nemomarx 1y ago
        I think this is supposed to be team building exercises, but I've never heard of a farm for one. Could be good!
      - p1necone 1y ago
        Yeah I remember a constant trend in my child->young adult years was hearing "oh you think it's hard now? wait until you get to "next thing"'. Every single time without fail (except maybe the jump from kindergarten to school) what actually happened was that the adults around me breathed down my neck a little bit less and I got access to a little more freedom to do fun stuff. Being a kid in school is horrible. You're entirely reliant on your parents to buy you everything and enable you to experience things, nobody trusts you, everything is full of arbitrary rules. The jump from school to university was especially stark - I kept being told it was going to be really hard, I'd need to work way harder than in highschool etc etc. Turns out what actually happened was I went from 6 straight hours of unavoidable class a day to maybe 2 or 3 much more interesting ones that were recorded and posted online and could be skipped when needed with no consequence, roughly the same amount of homework and I got to live with people my age 5 minutes walk from a 24 hour McDonalds. And working... they pay you quite a lot of money to be there (seriously even a minimum wage job is unfathomable to a kid, do you know how many gameboys you could buy with that?), there's no homework and you get to do something you're really good at.
      - TeMPOraL 1y ago
        I'm having hard time relating; my experience is literally the opposite of yours. Grade 7-12 (if I parse that correctly; I mean 12-17yo) were literally the best part of my life. School was boring AF, but had its moments; it gave me some interesting people to talk with every day, and then I had plenty of time to pursue my interests. Stress? What stress? Before that period? I don't remember much. After that period? Everything gets downhill. Being an adult in a society sucks and I hate it. Normal people lifestyle, with its routines and "work/life balance", with everyone around you having expectations around random customs, with having to do everything in tiny bite-sized chunks, because there's not enough time left after work, chores and family - that's just not compatible with my mind. Yeah, I guess, this could be a mental health issue.
        imp0cat 1y ago
        There was another discussion @hn a few days ago where this was explained. When you're young, your life is pretty much on rails and you are very sure what the next step is (ie. kindergarten - > school -> high school -> uni). But when you finally finish your education, the tracks end there and now you have to figure out where to go from here and that can be mentally draining.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  I've seen this plenty of times, young people almost boasting about their diagnosis like the old upper class used to be proud of gout Some health care professionals are becoming hesitant to talk about diagnoses because it hurts the patient when they start identifying with the diagnosis it makes the condition worse when the patient starts to act more like the diagnosed condition because that's how they're supposed to act
  - Nursie 1y ago
    There was an opinion piece in The Guardian a few years ago expounding the idea that 'awareness' and particularly the medicalisation of minor cases of things like anxiety and depression may be counterproductive, may lead more people to sink into these conditions rather than battle through and pull themselves out of them - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/medicalising-mental-health-ilnness-nhs https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/medica... And it's interesting to me that we now have the UK government talking about providing mental health support to try to foster grit and self-reliance - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/16/much-needed-grit-to-be-fostered-in-englands-schoolchildren-say-ministers https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/16/much-needed-...
  - Tijdreiziger 1y ago
    Whether I’m still young depends on your definition of that word, but I’m proud of my autism diagnosis, because it gave me the vocabulary to explain what I had always felt and the ability to find tools to improve my life. I used to be dismissed as lazy, and I simply had to live with my apparent moral failure. Man, I tried so much self-improvement advice, and none of it worked. Now I know that this is not the case, that there’s nothing wrong with me, and I found a huge community of like-minded people. Turns out there are quite a lot of self-improvement tools for autistic people, and they actually work. (I believe many ADHDers feel the same way about their diagnosis.)
    - ddingus 1y ago
      Very interesting! I am likely to have ADHD. Was never diagnosed as a youth because I never allowed it. Seriously! Growing up during the late 70's and 80's was a weird time for these things. My mistrust in all of that came from watching friends get diagnosed then medicated. Then most of those people kind of shut down. Some presented very differently, generally not in a good way, as far as I was concerned. A few personas I loved just got medicated away. So... nope. Not gonna happen. I threw up a barrier that took well into maybe my late 30's to come down. I had decided very young that I was in charge of who I was, nobody else and was fairly aware of all that during formative years. My trust was literally zero on that front, unless knowing someone would, in my eyes, be good for me. From there, I identified with who I thought were pretty great people and the rest got the Okie Dokie, next treatment. These days seem different for sure. I knew damn well I was not neurotypical, a word that did not appear for many years ahead of my own struggles, and frankly that had to be OK, because I needed to be OK to exist as me. Who were others to say otherwise? Today, seems like we live in a more permissive society than we did before. I do know my own perception is keen for having managed my own struggles. I can reach others and help. No meds needed, just real trust and the right experiences. Sometimes meds are needed too. I feel they are used in lazy ways too often. Other means should be first. And my beef with the meds boils down to how effective the right experiences can be. Kid has anger management issues? Medicate! Or.. maybe put then into a wrestling club and see them mello right out and become a great, fairly tolerant person. Both can work well, and both can go badly too. It mostly boils down to how the humans in charge of debugging and empowering the young humans handle problems and the tools they use. IMHO people reached for the meds far too often back then. Maybe we are now too permissive, not doing enough to tease out the best in people, coping instead. What I like most in your take is you are self aware and have others like you to build on. I did not. Or, I did, but finding them and experiencing what you are was a lot harder, due to how less connected everyone was back then. What I did was seek good mentors. Found them and came up OK, and capable. You appear to be getting after the same thing. Good! It all starts with self acceptance and awareness. From there, many who achieve those things can build on that and live a fine life. I bet you do. Thanks for sharing a little perspective. It is high value.
- lowhighseco 1y ago
  Only certain mental health issues. Being a full on schizophrenic newspaper hoarder won’t ever be in style.
  - darknavi 1y ago
    Not physically, but digital hoarding is in full swing.
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    Yesterday newspaper hoarder was just replaced with 90's videogames, mangas or hifi / computer manuals.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > We are in a time where it's fashionable to have mental health issues. It's very strange I'd argue it isn't. The first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 [1]. This is right after "the routine annual comprehensive physical examination (PE) became a fixture in American medical practice" [2]. Add 25 years for a generation to be educated, another 25 for the old guard to retire, and you'd expect the paradigm shift around mental health to land around the millenium. Unless you have evidence we had a nonlinear jump between then and now, I'd argue the trend is analagous to folks becoming aware of and culturally assimilating the concept of blood type. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders#Early_versions_(20th_century) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Man... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK82767/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK82767/
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    Something can be causal or even predictable but still strange and difficult to reconcile. I do think that there is a component of fashion or social currency that has piggybacked on medical awareness, or perhaps as a byproduct of its mixing with moral credentialism of disadvantage.
- jagged-chisel 1y ago
  Fashionable? I disagree. Acceptable? Hopefully. People have been stigmatized and isolated for generations for being “different” in some way. Emotional and psychological reasons included. People are all different. We all have different issues. We all have different experiences. No one should be shunned for seeking out others with similarities to get advice and support. And how can you do that without making people aware? Do we have more mental health issues than in the past? I don’t think so. I think we’re more aware and more accepting than past generations.
- pjc50 1y ago
  It's fashionable to use the language of mental health to talk about how you feel, but that's not quite the same thing.
Bender 1y ago
I suspect they are all in support of the soon to be 28th amendment "The right to bear, breed, harvest, and sell chickens shall not be infringed."
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
coldpie 1y ago
I think it is a little of both :) Emotional support animals are a real thing, but they are expensive and require a lot of maintenance and there are limits on where they may be taken. Stuffed animals can make people feel better for similar reasons, it's a companion to "talk to" or a nice familiar sight, and they have a lot lower bar to ownership than real animals do. So a stuffed animal can be reasonably considered to be in the same category as a real emotional support animal, but they are obviously a lot less serious than a real animal. So it's fun and funny to choose an animal with a bit of silliness and humor to it, like a chicken. It is a joke, yeah, but it can also be a mood booster. So it's both.
- dumbfounder 1y ago
  There are also obviously some people that take advantage of the rules around emotional support animals. Like Great Danes on airplanes (second hand anecdote). So the effect is that people tend to suspect everyone is taking advantage. There are even a ton of services to make it super easy to classify a pet as an emotional support animal. So, I am all for these ridiculous chickens. Might buy some for my kids (I am not into knitting).
  - owlninja 1y ago
    My understanding that those services that classify your animal are all unnecessary and sort of a scam.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      Yup. A pretty clear giveaway that a service animal is fake is those vests with “SERVICE ANIMAL” in size 9000 font on the side.
    - ForOldHack 1y ago
      Clearly not a pet person. I am a total fan of emotional support chickens, real or knitted. I am also a fan of rotisserie chickens.
  - tshaddox 1y ago
tokai 1y ago
You are overreacting. There's nothing about mental health in there. They are called Emotional Support Chicken because they are comforting. Calm down.
tshaddox 1y ago
I'm curious what you think counts as "framing in terms of mental health." Or more interestingly, if you think this article constitutes "framing in terms of mental health," I'm curious what you wouldn't consider as such. This article does use words related to mental states, like "comforting" and "relaxing." But that's pretty difficult to avoid in most writing of non-trivial length.
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  The name they've decided to give these, "emergency" chickens, knitting them for hurricane survivors. It's all a step up from just "we like these and they're nice" and into "these are Helpful with a capital H". My point is exactly that that kind of thing reads like a joking exaggeration, but this sort of approach to things is really common now and I truly have trouble telling when people are joking or being serious about it. Most of it reads like joking to me, but I don't know. It's also been going on long enough that it's making me wonder even more, since, judged as a joke, it was played out and over-done years ago.
  - tokai 1y ago
    There's lots of research showing stuffed animals can reduce stress even in adults. There is no joke here.
    - alabastervlog 1y ago
      You're weirdly concerned about how much I'm reacting, which is pretty minimally. Like, I can't imagine how I could have raised this while reacting any less. But yes, I also saw your other post and got your message that you're bothered I brought this up at all. [EDIT] Ah, ninja-edited this paragraph into irrelevance! :-) Maybe you need a chicken. [EDIT] But perhaps we all need chickens? But thank you for helping me understand this. The framing is 100% serious, I guess.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    I would say that it is 99% joke, but the 1% is important in validating, justifying, and elevating the concept in the current culture.
NoPicklez 1y ago
In this case for me its is it really an emotional support chicken? Or it is just a cuddly chicken that people like and find enjoyment from. Not everything that brings people joy is an emotional support xxx. Similar to saying you have OCD because you double checked if you switched your iron off. It's not obsessive compulsive you just double checked something.

Framing everything in terms of mental health is one of those things were I can't tell if people are participating in some kind of mass social joke, or are serious.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

LandR 1y ago

We are in a time where it's fashionable to have mental health issues. It's very strange.

dylan604 1y ago
That's what I fell about the 21 pilots track I'm so stressed out.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  isn't it mostly about childhood nostalgia? "I'm more stressed then when I was a kid" seems pretty basic
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    I'm more stressed out than like... during Summer, when I was a kid. I've never, ever been as stressed out as during school, grades 7-12. If the rest of life had been that stressful or worse, I'd have checked out a long time ago.
    - nemomarx 1y ago
      Maybe I just had an easy time but 7-12 was a lot less stressful than office work and arbitrary meetings all day. I probably just miss the predictable schedule
      - alabastervlog 1y ago
        Huh, I'd liken school in those grades to a series of meetings basically all day, that are mostly presentations, every day of the week, with a lot of restrictions and harsh conduct & expectations from the people leading the meetings, which'd never fly in an office. Often with terrible lighting and long stretches without seeing the outdoors, even though a window. And crazy-early start times that may have you not seeing the sun until 3PM or so, for months. And, especially toward the end, a couple more hours of work at home every day. Mostly of math problems. Also, all that, plus you're not getting paid for it.
        fragmede 1y ago
        OTOH, if you fail out of class, most of us wouldn't have become homeless, just placed in a remedial class. Whereas getting fired from your office job would land you out on the street if you're living paycheck to paycheck.
        Tijdreiziger 1y ago
        Only if you live somewhere without unemployment insurance (or you mis-manage your money).
        s1artibartfast 1y ago
        If that were a job, I was characterize it as a boring job, not a stressful one. I'm sure experiences differ, but mine was that school was trivially easy and inconsequential, but sometimes time intensive. I wouldn't consider a job where I have to go and listen to a boring presentation for 8 hours a day stressful. What is stressful is the rat race and making sure I can afford mortgage payments
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - ForOldHack 1y ago
      My school had a lot of field trips. I have never been part of a job that included trips to "the little farm. "I asked a friend from Hong Kong, if he had trips to A little farm, and he said he did.
      - nemomarx 1y ago
        I think this is supposed to be team building exercises, but I've never heard of a farm for one. Could be good!
    - p1necone 1y ago
      Yeah I remember a constant trend in my child->young adult years was hearing "oh you think it's hard now? wait until you get to "next thing"'. Every single time without fail (except maybe the jump from kindergarten to school) what actually happened was that the adults around me breathed down my neck a little bit less and I got access to a little more freedom to do fun stuff. Being a kid in school is horrible. You're entirely reliant on your parents to buy you everything and enable you to experience things, nobody trusts you, everything is full of arbitrary rules. The jump from school to university was especially stark - I kept being told it was going to be really hard, I'd need to work way harder than in highschool etc etc. Turns out what actually happened was I went from 6 straight hours of unavoidable class a day to maybe 2 or 3 much more interesting ones that were recorded and posted online and could be skipped when needed with no consequence, roughly the same amount of homework and I got to live with people my age 5 minutes walk from a 24 hour McDonalds. And working... they pay you quite a lot of money to be there (seriously even a minimum wage job is unfathomable to a kid, do you know how many gameboys you could buy with that?), there's no homework and you get to do something you're really good at.
    - TeMPOraL 1y ago
      I'm having hard time relating; my experience is literally the opposite of yours. Grade 7-12 (if I parse that correctly; I mean 12-17yo) were literally the best part of my life. School was boring AF, but had its moments; it gave me some interesting people to talk with every day, and then I had plenty of time to pursue my interests. Stress? What stress? Before that period? I don't remember much. After that period? Everything gets downhill. Being an adult in a society sucks and I hate it. Normal people lifestyle, with its routines and "work/life balance", with everyone around you having expectations around random customs, with having to do everything in tiny bite-sized chunks, because there's not enough time left after work, chores and family - that's just not compatible with my mind. Yeah, I guess, this could be a mental health issue.
      - imp0cat 1y ago
        There was another discussion @hn a few days ago where this was explained. When you're young, your life is pretty much on rails and you are very sure what the next step is (ie. kindergarten - > school -> high school -> uni). But when you finally finish your education, the tracks end there and now you have to figure out where to go from here and that can be mentally draining.
colechristensen 1y ago
I've seen this plenty of times, young people almost boasting about their diagnosis like the old upper class used to be proud of gout Some health care professionals are becoming hesitant to talk about diagnoses because it hurts the patient when they start identifying with the diagnosis it makes the condition worse when the patient starts to act more like the diagnosed condition because that's how they're supposed to act
- Nursie 1y ago
  There was an opinion piece in The Guardian a few years ago expounding the idea that 'awareness' and particularly the medicalisation of minor cases of things like anxiety and depression may be counterproductive, may lead more people to sink into these conditions rather than battle through and pull themselves out of them - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/medicalising-mental-health-ilnness-nhs https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/medica... And it's interesting to me that we now have the UK government talking about providing mental health support to try to foster grit and self-reliance - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/16/much-needed-grit-to-be-fostered-in-englands-schoolchildren-say-ministers https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/16/much-needed-...
- Tijdreiziger 1y ago
  Whether I’m still young depends on your definition of that word, but I’m proud of my autism diagnosis, because it gave me the vocabulary to explain what I had always felt and the ability to find tools to improve my life. I used to be dismissed as lazy, and I simply had to live with my apparent moral failure. Man, I tried so much self-improvement advice, and none of it worked. Now I know that this is not the case, that there’s nothing wrong with me, and I found a huge community of like-minded people. Turns out there are quite a lot of self-improvement tools for autistic people, and they actually work. (I believe many ADHDers feel the same way about their diagnosis.)
  - ddingus 1y ago
    Very interesting! I am likely to have ADHD. Was never diagnosed as a youth because I never allowed it. Seriously! Growing up during the late 70's and 80's was a weird time for these things. My mistrust in all of that came from watching friends get diagnosed then medicated. Then most of those people kind of shut down. Some presented very differently, generally not in a good way, as far as I was concerned. A few personas I loved just got medicated away. So... nope. Not gonna happen. I threw up a barrier that took well into maybe my late 30's to come down. I had decided very young that I was in charge of who I was, nobody else and was fairly aware of all that during formative years. My trust was literally zero on that front, unless knowing someone would, in my eyes, be good for me. From there, I identified with who I thought were pretty great people and the rest got the Okie Dokie, next treatment. These days seem different for sure. I knew damn well I was not neurotypical, a word that did not appear for many years ahead of my own struggles, and frankly that had to be OK, because I needed to be OK to exist as me. Who were others to say otherwise? Today, seems like we live in a more permissive society than we did before. I do know my own perception is keen for having managed my own struggles. I can reach others and help. No meds needed, just real trust and the right experiences. Sometimes meds are needed too. I feel they are used in lazy ways too often. Other means should be first. And my beef with the meds boils down to how effective the right experiences can be. Kid has anger management issues? Medicate! Or.. maybe put then into a wrestling club and see them mello right out and become a great, fairly tolerant person. Both can work well, and both can go badly too. It mostly boils down to how the humans in charge of debugging and empowering the young humans handle problems and the tools they use. IMHO people reached for the meds far too often back then. Maybe we are now too permissive, not doing enough to tease out the best in people, coping instead. What I like most in your take is you are self aware and have others like you to build on. I did not. Or, I did, but finding them and experiencing what you are was a lot harder, due to how less connected everyone was back then. What I did was seek good mentors. Found them and came up OK, and capable. You appear to be getting after the same thing. Good! It all starts with self acceptance and awareness. From there, many who achieve those things can build on that and live a fine life. I bet you do. Thanks for sharing a little perspective. It is high value.
lowhighseco 1y ago
Only certain mental health issues. Being a full on schizophrenic newspaper hoarder won’t ever be in style.
- darknavi 1y ago
  Not physically, but digital hoarding is in full swing.
- prmoustache 1y ago
  Yesterday newspaper hoarder was just replaced with 90's videogames, mangas or hifi / computer manuals.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> We are in a time where it's fashionable to have mental health issues. It's very strange I'd argue it isn't. The first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 [1]. This is right after "the routine annual comprehensive physical examination (PE) became a fixture in American medical practice" [2]. Add 25 years for a generation to be educated, another 25 for the old guard to retire, and you'd expect the paradigm shift around mental health to land around the millenium. Unless you have evidence we had a nonlinear jump between then and now, I'd argue the trend is analagous to folks becoming aware of and culturally assimilating the concept of blood type. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders#Early_versions_(20th_century) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Man... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK82767/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK82767/
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  Something can be causal or even predictable but still strange and difficult to reconcile. I do think that there is a component of fashion or social currency that has piggybacked on medical awareness, or perhaps as a byproduct of its mixing with moral credentialism of disadvantage.
jagged-chisel 1y ago
Fashionable? I disagree. Acceptable? Hopefully. People have been stigmatized and isolated for generations for being “different” in some way. Emotional and psychological reasons included. People are all different. We all have different issues. We all have different experiences. No one should be shunned for seeking out others with similarities to get advice and support. And how can you do that without making people aware? Do we have more mental health issues than in the past? I don’t think so. I think we’re more aware and more accepting than past generations.
pjc50 1y ago
It's fashionable to use the language of mental health to talk about how you feel, but that's not quite the same thing.

Bender 1y ago

I suspect they are all in support of the soon to be 28th amendment "The right to bear, breed, harvest, and sell chickens shall not be infringed."

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

coldpie 1y ago

I think it is a little of both :) Emotional support animals are a real thing, but they are expensive and require a lot of maintenance and there are limits on where they may be taken. Stuffed animals can make people feel better for similar reasons, it's a companion to "talk to" or a nice familiar sight, and they have a lot lower bar to ownership than real animals do. So a stuffed animal can be reasonably considered to be in the same category as a real emotional support animal, but they are obviously a lot less serious than a real animal. So it's fun and funny to choose an animal with a bit of silliness and humor to it, like a chicken. It is a joke, yeah, but it can also be a mood booster. So it's both.

dumbfounder 1y ago
There are also obviously some people that take advantage of the rules around emotional support animals. Like Great Danes on airplanes (second hand anecdote). So the effect is that people tend to suspect everyone is taking advantage. There are even a ton of services to make it super easy to classify a pet as an emotional support animal. So, I am all for these ridiculous chickens. Might buy some for my kids (I am not into knitting).
- owlninja 1y ago
  My understanding that those services that classify your animal are all unnecessary and sort of a scam.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Yup. A pretty clear giveaway that a service animal is fake is those vests with “SERVICE ANIMAL” in size 9000 font on the side.
  - ForOldHack 1y ago
    Clearly not a pet person. I am a total fan of emotional support chickens, real or knitted. I am also a fan of rotisserie chickens.
- tshaddox 1y ago

tokai 1y ago

You are overreacting. There's nothing about mental health in there. They are called Emotional Support Chicken because they are comforting. Calm down.

tshaddox 1y ago

I'm curious what you think counts as "framing in terms of mental health." Or more interestingly, if you think this article constitutes "framing in terms of mental health," I'm curious what you wouldn't consider as such. This article does use words related to mental states, like "comforting" and "relaxing." But that's pretty difficult to avoid in most writing of non-trivial length.

alabastervlog 1y ago
The name they've decided to give these, "emergency" chickens, knitting them for hurricane survivors. It's all a step up from just "we like these and they're nice" and into "these are Helpful with a capital H". My point is exactly that that kind of thing reads like a joking exaggeration, but this sort of approach to things is really common now and I truly have trouble telling when people are joking or being serious about it. Most of it reads like joking to me, but I don't know. It's also been going on long enough that it's making me wonder even more, since, judged as a joke, it was played out and over-done years ago.
- tokai 1y ago
  There's lots of research showing stuffed animals can reduce stress even in adults. There is no joke here.
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    You're weirdly concerned about how much I'm reacting, which is pretty minimally. Like, I can't imagine how I could have raised this while reacting any less. But yes, I also saw your other post and got your message that you're bothered I brought this up at all. [EDIT] Ah, ninja-edited this paragraph into irrelevance! :-) Maybe you need a chicken. [EDIT] But perhaps we all need chickens? But thank you for helping me understand this. The framing is 100% serious, I guess.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  I would say that it is 99% joke, but the 1% is important in validating, justifying, and elevating the concept in the current culture.

NoPicklez 1y ago

In this case for me its is it really an emotional support chicken? Or it is just a cuddly chicken that people like and find enjoyment from. Not everything that brings people joy is an emotional support xxx. Similar to saying you have OCD because you double checked if you switched your iron off. It's not obsessive compulsive you just double checked something.