22 ms·

30 minutes with a stranger

1103 points by MaxLeiter 1y ago

muddi900 1y ago
"They reported feeling better" Has anyone ever controlled for the fact that people lie? Especially about how they feel. Furthermore, people don't even know how they feel half the time. How do you even measure this?
jensnielsen 1y ago
I'm ready
motbus3 1y ago
This has been one of the best things I've read in a while. I hope it is real :)
knuppar 1y ago
it's so refreshing to see this kind of content in HN :*)
thenoblesunfish 1y ago
Beautiful. I have certainly noticed that, at work, despite my desire to be efficient, without this sort of thing, it becomes unbearable no matter how interesting the actual work is.
- fragmede 1y ago
  what type of work environment are you usually in?
  - thenoblesunfish 1y ago
    Big company software engineering, plenty of remote coworkers.
theharshb 1y ago
Wow the web design's amazing
frizlab 1y ago
This is the third time this is posted and the first time this makes it to the front page. I’m glad it finally got some attention! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44443348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44443348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44269179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44269179
- thierrydamiba 1y ago
  “If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again”-Aliyah
  - hackboyfly 1y ago
    Total banger!
- MaxLeiter 1y ago
  I was surprised I hadn't seen it on HN and saw it had so few upvotes, so figured I'd try again. Sometimes you just need some luck.
mdavid626 1y ago
I wish it would be normal scrolling.
- qwertox 1y ago
  I quit reading after a couple of minutes because of the scrolling.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  I wish people would read the rules of the website they are using.
  - mdavid626 1y ago
    I couldn’t - the scrolling mess made it impossible for me.
    - BoredPositron 1y ago
      I meant HN.
- paganel 1y ago
  It's not only the scrolling that isn't normal, I got dizzy when some image-like thingies starting flowing around the screen, had to close the browser tab at once. Maybe the page wanted to tell something, but whatever it is they could have done it via pure text form, that's what reading is all about.
  - mdavid626 1y ago
    Exactly. Make it normal by default, and animations on toggle.
fragmede 1y ago
How do I load this into a database and query it with an LLM? I applied to get access to the dataset as a random. Guess I just have to wait and see what they say.
Miraltar 1y ago
I see a lot of people complaining about the scrolling thing but I don't get why, can someone explain?
- frou_dh 1y ago
  Many HN users are always looking for an excuse to complain about the format or appearance of the linked sites. So much so that the following had to be added to the guidelines (but doesn't seem to be enforced that much): > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lelele 1y ago
  Because we're used to speed-reading content and that website wouldn't allow us.
lukol 1y ago
It looks nice and I really want to engage with the page further but since my time is limited today and I'll have forgotten about this by tomorrow: What's the tl;dr?
- locallost 1y ago
  tl;dr the journey is the destination
- lukol 1y ago
  Claude to the rescue: This is an interactive data story from The Pudding about research showing that talking to strangers makes us feel better, despite our expectations. The piece follows conversations from a study of nearly 1,700 video calls between strangers with different backgrounds (age, race, politics, etc.). While people predicted they'd have negative experiences talking to strangers, the vast majority actually felt better by the end of their 30-minute conversations - regardless of how different they were from each other.The story argues that we've lost "bridging social capital" (connections with people unlike us) and explores how this contributes to declining social trust. It ends with a personal reflection on helping a bleeding teenager on the subway, suggesting that despite our fears, most people will help strangers when needed - and that these connections are crucial for tackling big societal challenges.
  - sksrbWgbfK 1y ago
    The topic is about 2 humans beings talking, and you manage to insert slop in the process. That's really missing the point.
mcv 1y ago
Nice project, although often the text falls off the screen of my phone.
locallost 1y ago
Not a fan of fancy websites, but this one really hits the nail on the head. It's telling about society how much of these conversations revolve around work. It makes sense, since it's where we spend most of our time, but at the same time a lot of people are not happy at work. Recently I've been avoiding this type of smalltalk because it has this pattern that starts with "and what do you do for a living". I'm trying to make the world a better place is not usually the answer. I wish it gets normalized to ask "what do you like to do in your life" as a first question. I like to cook and fix bicycles and in general do something practical.
- derektank 1y ago
  People tend to enjoy talking about things they're not happy about, no? Complaining is a revered pastime
- CalRobert 1y ago
  I wonder if the participants were American? When I moved to Ireland I had to learn to stop asking that when I met people because it was a bit rude to start off like that.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
pwdisswordfishz 1y ago
[flagged]
- ashwinsundar 1y ago
  Sheesh, I liked it. It turned some research that may have been otherwise inaccessible or difficult to understand, and expanded it’s reach.
  - dirkc 1y ago
    I also liked it! Since it's based on a research data set, I'm sure someone has written some "normal f###ing prose" about it somewhere on the web. A search for "Candor corpus" yields some results, although none of it looks like what @pwdisswordfishz is looking for?
- _def 1y ago
  https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3197 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3197
m00dy 1y ago
I remember the days using chatroulette :)
pavlov 1y ago
Really great design. This is the unicorn of fancy websites because for once, it actually makes sense to override browser's standard scrolling behavior. The 30-minute timeline on the right provides an obvious context for what you're navigating with the scroll actions, and you wouldn't be able to do that with a regular scrollbar. Usually scrolling overrides happen because the designers' mindset was that the site should be a sequence of beautiful slides. They might prototype it as a Keynote presentation that is approved by management. And then some poor web developer gets tasked with building a site that feels like the Keynote slide show that everyone loved, and the only way to do that is to turn scrolling into an annoying "next slide" action.
- darkwater 1y ago
  I'm with you and I actually love these "special scrolling" websites. They are much closer to a truly work of art exactly because of the different design. To the haters: why do we have churches or buildings with marble statues in the walls or column instead of a standard stone wall, which was designed to do the job in a standard way?
  - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
    Niches (recesses in walls for statues) and columns in church buildings are actually central features that serve the primary purpose of the building. Niches provide spaces for statues for remembering the dead, or prayers and veneration (for Catholics), enhancing the link between the spiritual and corporeal realms. Arguably they're also used to encourage payments from patrons for a church building's upkeep or construction. Columns allow spaces within a building to be connected, ensuring the body of the church (the people) can worship and receive teaching together. They can also reduce material cost of construction. Yes, for historic church buildings decoration was applied, ornate capitals in the pillars and such; bright, garish paint on the statues and everything -- and expression of the vitality of the building and of worship to God. I think perhaps your analogy needs buttressing (heh!) to make it clear? All I got really was 'I like the scrolling'. Maybe a revolving door is a good scrollbar analogue - it's central to access to a space (website), some people hate them, but used properly they enhance access (they're really good for limiting heat exchange with the outside when compared with regular doors!).
dataexec 1y ago
The Pudding is such a cool publication. They have incredible research and dataviz, in particular on cultural topics but not only. It’s worth subscribing to their newsletter. Glad to see them there!
sema4hacker 1y ago
On a site designed like this where I tend to not notice the scroll bar, I usually just click on the things I see to try and make something happen. In this case, not much happens from clicks (because the site desperately needs a graphic to encourage you to scroll), so I quickly lose interest and bail.
- dullcrisp 1y ago
  Well don’t leave us hanging. Did you figure out that you need to scroll?
- Reimersholme 1y ago
  [dead]
- swiftcoder 1y ago
  I don’t really understand this viewpoint - scrolling has always been the default way to see more content on a webpage. Clicking on things to navigate is very much a secondary activity. Why would you not scroll every web page to see if there is more content that didn’t fit on your screen?
  - qrobit 1y ago
    I suppose because modern websites are actually apps, in an app you click on stuff to see more content If web page does not look like a blog or a newsletter, it is not wrong to assume the app format
tiniuclx 1y ago
For us that spend a lot of time on the internet, it's easy to forget that most people are not that different from you. I believe comments online, on Hacker News on otherwise, tend to be made by people with fairly extreme views - you have to feel something very strongly to shout your opinion into the internet! But most people are, well, normal, including you. Step out of your bubble every now and then and you'd be surprised at what good may come out of it.
- Recursing 1y ago
  Reminds me of the most upvoted post of all time on r/slatestarcodex https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
  - saagarjha 1y ago
    I guess I am here to contribute a little bit of my insanity to this site.
kwie 1y ago
[dead]
willemlaurentz 1y ago
Following the book "The Power of Strangers" I once did an experiment with talking to random strangers, it is amazing what you'll learn from random conversations: https://willem.com/en/2023-10-13_hello-stranger/ https://willem.com/en/2023-10-13_hello-stranger/
- hackboyfly 1y ago
  I would like to do that but I live in Sweden, talking to stranger is considered rude. Would be cool if there were a serious version of those random cam chats like omegle.
  - skeezyboy 1y ago
    > I would like to do that but I live in Sweden, talking to stranger is considered rude. you all sound like a lovely bunch. is this a modern thing?
    - kruffalon 1y ago
      Not who you asked, but no, old ingrained cultural thing! The trick is to trick us into not realising we are interacting, then we are quite friendly and polite :)
      - skeezyboy 1y ago
        > The trick is to trick us into not realising we are interacting, then we are quite friendly and polite :) i dont think you can be friendly and ALSO dislike talking to strangers. I think thats what it means to be friendly, or at least its a necessary component of it
  - kruffalon 1y ago
    Well, that's not entirely true, you just have to be a bit particular about when and how to start the conversation. Things I find work most of the time in Sweden to get started is complaining about something mutually bothersome, annoying or scary that you don't have any power over, things like: - A third party being rude. So if you notice that someone gets annoyed by someone else you can huff and puff a little over that. - the weather, obviously and often! - if someone hurts themselves or trips (doesn't have to be as big an injury as in the article) - children are great conversation starters, regardless if they are cute, loud, awake, still or whatever. And this is one of the few positive topics that work. The trick is also to not keep talking about the annoying thing, because that is quite boring! If you get more courageous you can also just ask about a place, piece of public art or even the way to some random thing, in my experience (a whole life) swedes are very helpful :) My favourite question is to ask people who clearly hope to see me go away about the names of places, I don't know why that topic works so well to tear walls down, but it does.
gwd 1y ago
One of the problems with their "better / worse" statistics: Bad interactions tend to outweigh good interactions. I think the rule of thumb is that 4:1 good/bad ratio in a relationship is "breakeven" where the relationship will stay neutral; higher than that and things get better, lower than that and things go south. So if you could talk to a stranger, and there's only a 20% chance you'll feel worse, a lot of people would still not consider it worth the risk.
- a5c11 1y ago
  Yes, we tend to remember negative experiences better than the good ones. Also, we all are so low on good emotions, we don't want to risk losing them to random strangers.
  - nakedneuron 1y ago
    This hits deep.
- RataNova 1y ago
  Makes me think the real challenge isn't just encouraging people to talk to strangers, but designing situations where the expected value of those conversations skews heavily positive
  - dpkirchner 1y ago
    I do most of my stranger-talking at niche events like board games down at the maker space or at cons. This definitely skews the results.
- namuol 1y ago
  I think it depends on what you’re used to. If you’re in an abusive relationship or socially isolated, a single positive social interaction can feel like a breakthrough.
  - netmansion 1y ago
alex-moon 1y ago
I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154625000440 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215462... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362500005X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362... https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/hate-lies-and-loneliness-fuel-online-extremism/ https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/hate-lies-and-loneliness-f...
- rkagerer 1y ago
  I wonder how much of this is due to social media sites and how the choice to interact that way (where the medium is geared to show off shallow facets of our achievements or amplify polarized opinions) is robbing us from traditional ways of spending time together.
  - heresie-dabord 1y ago
    > is robbing us from traditional ways of spending time together. The assumption that social-media applications are really social is robbing us of traditional ways of maintaining actual society.
    - a5c11 1y ago
      True. It's so hard nowadays to go out with a friend to grab a beer or a coffee. They don't feel the urge because they satisfy social interactions online, and they think it's enough. Well, it's undoubtedly simpler that way, but it's fake. I, personally, hate chatting through instant messengers. I lost many connections because people started moving online more and more, and I just couldn't handle that anymore. For example, I don't like interrupting what I'm doing, and people usually expect to get a response within minutes. Plus, when I don't respond immediately, I simply forget and remind myself a month later. I could be the problem too, but the way we do communication today doesn't help either.
hackboyfly 1y ago
After moving to a new city I desperately need this in my life. Something like omegle but more serious.
- llmthrow0827 1y ago
  Go to an event that you have an interest in, and strike up conversations with random people who are unoccupied. You at least have one common topic to talk about, and in my experience the odds you find someone you want to grab a bite or a drink after the even with are pretty high, and at the very worst the next time you go to a similar event you might see some familiar faces.
navaed01 1y ago
The Pudding is one of the bright spots of the internet for me. Does anyone have any recommendations for other new / blog interestings websites on the same level?
a022311 1y ago
As someone who is generally shy, this sparked some hope in me. I have a really stressful time meeting new people, I just have absolutely no idea what to say, I panic and I leave. Well done for the execution, it's a very nice way to reveal interactive content!
- a5c11 1y ago
  Same. However, I had a few encounters where I was scared initially that I won't know what to say, and the talk will be quiet and weird, but my freshly met partner was so into the chat that I had problems cutting into. It was fun. Remember that the other person doesn't want to be weird either and will try to maintain the chat, unless it's totally not interested.
saberience 1y ago
I know it's supposed to be fancy and cool looking but this sort of website design where you have to scroll and then the whole screen animates really bothers me. It actually gives me a headache to try and follow it versus normal scrolling behaviour and text. As soon as I start scrolling down and I can't scroll normally and images and text start flying around I feel a disturbing feeling in my head and lose concentration and almost get brain-fog from the distracting content moving around. Please provide more accessible versions of websites if you're going to override the default behavior. I couldn't make it 10 seconds before having to close the tab.
- itsTyrion 1y ago
  it's even worse on mobile for me: any time there's a full screen animation, the site lags to a crawl – as in, 500ms+ lag spikes and aingle-digit FPS
- qnpnp 1y ago
  Sometimes this is indeed merely "fancy" and vacuous, but other times it is a meaningful and more engaging way to present the content. I feel like this is an example of the latter. Even if you're not a fan and would have done it differently, it seems a bit hard to understand what could be so bothersome that you have to close it in 10s...
  - saberience 1y ago
    Well, it literally makes me feel almost nauseous, i.e. I felt physically unwell from the images and text moving around the screen. Note: this doesnt happen from a regular video, or normal scrolling text behaviour. Just sites like this that combine overriding the scroll bar with moving text and images.
  - llm_nerd 1y ago
    I often like the use of advanced media. The NYT and Washington Post have done some amazing advanced media that fully exploits the richness possible with the web. Not so sure about this one, though. Like others, I was more annoyed with the constant scrolling to get tiny niblets of information and didn't even make it through. It makes it feel like work and the mechanisms completely overwhelms the message. Also weird that it's hogging CPU even when you're sitting on a completely static portion of the page.
szszrk 1y ago
I have a laptop coil whine that syncs animation on that page exactly :O That makes me scared of both modern webdev and hardware quality.
musha68k 1y ago
I always liked the idea and practice of what they called "rejection therapy" at the time. Probably builds high-bandwidth, interpersonal muscle like nothing else?
RianAtheer 1y ago
I think spending 30 minutes with a stranger can be surprisingly powerful. You never know what perspective, idea, or connection might come from an unexpected conversation. I remember that once spent 30 minutes with a stranger at a cafe who turned out to be a trader in a completely different market than mine. In that short conversation, I picked up a few strategies and a perspective on risk management I’d never considered before. It reminded me that sometimes the most valuable insights come from unexpected places and just half an hour with the right person can change how you approach your work.
adithyassekhar 1y ago
Don't scroll too fast, the cards with texts won't show if you do and then you'll miss it
kreetx 1y ago
There have been a few of these types of website designs on science/popular science topics, while very cool at first then the novelty fades - I wish they just get to the point.
mentalgear 1y ago
Great visualisation ! We need more of this "social glue" since that's what keeps society together.
K0balt 1y ago
I love this study and the presentation - first time I’ve not hated the hijacking of scrolling on a website. But I shudder at the thought of the new AI product that this data will inspire or train. It’s gotten to the point that I see any significant collection of data about humans as a low-key threat to humanity.
trumbitta2 1y ago
I can't read it like this. It's just too much work.
dvcoolarun 1y ago
To me, talking to strangers is like not flexing that judgment muscle we keep on, while also gaining different perspectives and learning.
lordnacho 1y ago
It's the internet. When you talk to people online, it often descends into pettiness. When you talk to people in the real world, that rarely happens. But it's much easier to talk online, so people get the wrong impression. You should talk to strangers. It's never gone wrong for me. Most people have a warmth and agreeableness that comes out when you are there with them, talking about stuff. There's also the interesting effect that people will give you their innermost secrets, knowing you won't tell anyone (I actually met a serial killer who did this, heh). For instance I was on a long haul flight earlier this year, and my neighbour told me everything about her divorce. Like a kind of therapy. I also find when I have a real disagreement with someone, it's a lot easier when you're face-to-face. For instance, I have friends who are religious, in a real way, ie they actually think there's a god who created the earth and wants us to live a certain way. Being there in person keeps me from ridiculing them like I might on an internet forum, but it also keeps them from condemning me to hell. So folks, practice talking to people. Much of what's wrong in the current world is actually loneliness, having no outlet for your expressions.
- manapause 1y ago
  Beautifully said. I believe wholeheartedly that in real life, disagreements between two people hinge on an ability to disarm each other through charm and disposition. The less you know someone, and the more they appear to earnestly try to understand you - becoming heated and firing phasers just feels unbecoming; why would I perpetuate personal loneliness or ennui in a moment that is genuinely devoid of it?
- BrandoElFollito 1y ago
  I learned the hard way that religion is something best left aside in discussions. I am an absolute atheist, and I believe that people who are educated in science and are religions have some kind of mental illness. This is just too set the context :) I also used to be very active on radio about science vs religion. First, people who are hard core religious may get off their way to cure you. I had people yelling in front of my house. I never saw physicists doing the same. But that's a perk of the "atheism job" :) I had something much worse happening to me. A friend of mine was religions, from a very religions family. We had long discussions and she gradually realized that her while world is going to shit when she discovered the insanity of religion. She got into a deep depression and tried to commit suicide. I was with her 7 years until she somehow snapped back to a normal life. I never attempted to turn an individual anymore. Sure, general information about rational hygiene (religion, homeopathy, ...) but not on z 1:1 basis.
np1810 1y ago
UI Feedback - I was having trouble figuring out what to do with the website, possibly due to the lack of text. I was tapping everywhere just to find the interactive areas (invisible buttons: who invented flat UI without shadows to hide all the interactivity?), and it took me some time to realize the website was scrollable (invisible scroll bars: who thought hiding the scrollbars without any indication of scrollable content was a good idea?). These issues are typically not the fault of the website, but rather the general UI/UX trends we have accepted nowadays. I’m using Firefox on Android. Regarding social media - it has created more gaps rather than making us more social. It's ultimate goal is to capture our attention for as long as possible rather than connecting us. And lately, with the celebrities populating it, it has become a showoff/bragging machine.
RataNova 1y ago
A perfect blend of design, empathy, and data
TechDebtDevin 1y ago
[flagged]
mrjay42 1y ago
Just an observation, not a mean critique about the project or even the conclusions. There's 180 participants. There's 26 people marked at "very liberal", which is 14% of the sample. There's 39 people marked at "very conservative", which is 21% of the sample. ----- Then we have 31 people marked as liberal, which is 17% of the sample. And we have 63 people marked as conservative, which is 35% of the sample. That already I would say is kind of an issue: more than a third of the sample are conservative people and 17% are their liberal 'counter part' or 'equivalent' (sorry for my wording, I'm not native speaker). --- If we do a little additions we therefore have: 39+63 = 102, which means that 56% of the sample is conservative 31+26= 57, which means that 31% of the sample is liberal The rest of the sample are centrists or "neutrals" (whatever this means) --- I am NOT saying that the study is invalid I am not saying that it's poorly done However, I think it's fair to say that the sample is skewed towards people with conservative views, by a HUGE amount, not just "a little bit". --- Aside from this: amazing UI design, I'm jealous and admirative of the results ^^
- cheema33 1y ago
  In the US, registered liberals/Dems outnumber conservatives. However this study has more conservatives. It could be geography. Some states are more conservative than others. Or it could be that the $15 on offer is more appealing to conservatives.
  - nonethewiser 1y ago
    The study denotes "political views", not party registration, which have historically deviated. Part affiliation has been quite even for a long time between Republicans and Democrats but political ideology has had a significant conservative skew going back at least 30 years https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
- nonethewiser 1y ago
  >There's 26 people marked at "very liberal", which is 14% of the sample. > There's 39 people marked at "very conservative", which is 21% of the sample I think these numbers are off. Where are you getting that from? Is there raw data somewhere? I counted the people on the page and see 39 very conservative and 47 very liberal (not 26). I did not check the other numbers. But with that its 78 liberals which is 43%. And the total liberals + conservatives are 180. So I dont think the total participant number is 180 - thats just the total of liberals and conservatives. And if its a 56/43 (~1.3) split for conservatives that seems to actually udnerrepresent conservatives compared to the general population without moderates. Where we see a 36/25 (1.44) conservative/liberal split in terms of ideology, not voter registration, which I think aligns more closely with the "political views" label. >The way Americans identify themselves ideologically was unchanged in 2021, continuing the close division that has persisted in recent years between those describing themselves as either conservative or moderate, while a smaller share identifies as liberal. On average last year, 37% of Americans described their political views as moderate, 36% as conservative and 25% as liberal. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-steady-conservatives-moderates-tie.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-stead...
petercooper 1y ago
Such a minor thing but I absolutely love the way the faces / avatars are rendered here. Just characters in a PRE tag. Gives me Commodore 64 vibes. I'd love to know how they came up with those and put it all together.
magicmicah85 1y ago
Very cool design. I would love to listen to those conversations that grinded to a halt. I saw one profile where their affect before was 9, at beginning was 6, by middle and end was a 1. Their partner went from 7 to 8. Is it miscommunication or misunderstanding of how they were perceived?
igtztorrero 1y ago
In my family we usually travel to many parts of the world, and we have been compiling a series of anecdotes, when we take a taxi or an Uber, we ask the taxi driver different aspects of the city then always asking him some anecdote, funny or strange, that he has had in his life as a taxi driver. And we have collected a large number of funny stories that we constantly bring up when we are at a party. For example, the story of the Argentine taxi driver who, when he received some Danish tourists, they realized that they had forgotten a suitcase at the airport, but since they had an Apple tracker, they started looking for the suitcase with the help of the police and it turned out that the suitcase was in the trunk of a car belonging to another police officer, unbelievable right? Or the story of the London taxi driver who, being tired after a long shift, picked up an old lady for the last trip and the old woman lay in the back seat and fell completely asleep, when the taxi driver turned to his rearview mirror and no longer saw anyone behind he thought: "What am I doing ? I'm driving alone, I am too tired." so he decided to go home. When he got home the old lady woke up and thought that the taxi driver was kidnapping her, and called the police. Incredible stories and anecdotes are collected when you start talking to strangers and they feel confident expressing their ideas. It's part of living, talking to strangers is very satisfying.
jibal 1y ago
In addition to the fascinating content, this is a very cool way to present it.
7e 1y ago
This is interesting, but I’m curious how much of the effect is due to getting paid $15, and how much the data was affected by the fact that everyone was isolated in COVID lockdown at the time.
- eggbrain 1y ago
  Another potential self-selection bias -- if people know they are signing up to have a conversation with a stranger, perhaps they are already predisposed to be more "pleasant" in conversations, vs a potential curmudgeon who doesn't ever want to speak to anyone, even for money.
killjoywashere 1y ago
Chatroulette was on to something. But is it still full of men exposing themselves?
paulorlando 1y ago
I've been interested in this general question for a while. Years ago I ran a startup that connected strangers for spoken conversations. After tests, we kept it to audio only - no video, no text, no profile info. That was what kept the conversations civil. Add video, or text, or profiles and behavior changed (basically became a dating site). Results: F-M talks were only about 10% longer than F-F and M-M talks. (Longer-term we focused on connecting people recovering from serious health issues.)
- titanomachy 1y ago
  Wasn’t there a moderately popular audio-only social media startup a couple years ago?
  - paulorlando 1y ago
    You're thinking of Clubhouse? Raised around $200M. Fast up and down. The behavior our old startup had noticed 10 years earlier was that while people were happy to engage with audio only, retention was tough unless there was something more. For us that meant focusing on the health-related talks. Patients and their doctors and support group leaders took the talks as part of the recovery process. Very different retention came from that.
    - titanomachy 1y ago
      Yep, that's the one. I'd totally forgotten about it until this thread. The mental health support angle makes sense, though.
NoSalt 1y ago
I know this is 100% not the point of this post, but I really dug the little ASCII animations of the post. I'd love to know how they did that.
- hoetmaaiers 1y ago
  Indeed, also the ASCII avatars look really good.
0xbadcafebee 1y ago
"In 2014 in the 2014 study on Illinois trains and buses reach our searchers followed up with people who were asked to talk to strangers The people who predicted they wouldn't enjoy the experience. What these participants reported back was almost no rejections, pleasant conversations, and an overall positive experience." This is basically fear the emotional pain of rejection or embarrassment, brought on by a fear of the unknown. Between 18 and 24 months old, we begin to develop the 'ability' to feel embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride, etc. This is self-consciousness, a part of self-awareness. Embarrassment, shame, etc have important functions. They signal a violation of social norms. This helps create and reinforce the interpersonal boundaries and rules that govern how we deal with people in society. When you perceive others are observing you, you imagine what their impressions of you will be. If it's a stranger, a lot of people jump to a negative conclusion. Part of this is a mirror of how we see other people. Part of it is a human heuristic to fear the unknown, which keeps us alive in the jungle. And part of it is you making a snap judgement about what kind of person someone is based on how they look or what environment you're in. So when you're afraid that talking to a stranger will be a negative experience, really you're just trying to avoid getting eaten in the jungle by someone you fear. But we aren't in a jungle - we're in a society, with rules, laws, and norms. There is no threat to a conversation. And, as the study shows, your fears are usually unfounded. So go ahead and strike up a conversation with a stranger - it's safe.
ryandv 1y ago
[flagged]
- justonceokay 1y ago
  The projecting looks like it goes both ways
  - ryandv 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - kortilla 1y ago
      There is a lot of racism in your modeling of humanity. You should introspect and determine if it’s beneficial to your life to dehumanize and classify people based on the color of their skin.
- marknutter 1y ago
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teiferer 1y ago
There is a huge selection bias there. People who are very disagreeable and hard to talk to tend to not participate in such a thing. Of course the average participant was open to talk to somebody and connect.
- ngriffiths 1y ago
  Fair, but it's still interesting that people underestimate how much they will enjoy the conversation, even if it's with a random person on a bus who did not volunteer for an experiment.
  - popularonion 1y ago
    The participants in the train study were essentially given a "job" to talk to strangers, which completely changes the mental framing. People generally try to follow through on a job they promised to do. They'll try to make the best of it so they feel like they made a good decision accepting the job. If the conversations go badly, they can easily rationalize it away with "I didn't want to talk to them anyway, but I didn't have a choice". Many shy and socially anxious people do basically fine in public-facing jobs because of this phenomenon.
laurieg 1y ago
There's something comforting about conversations with strangers. It gives me a feeling that we are all in this together. One subtle effect of living as a visible minority is people assume you can't speak the local language. Even in minute everyday moments like stepping into a crowded elevator people avoid saying a few words. No one means any harm but it can feel surprisingly isolating. Almost like everyone else is in some grand linguistic conspiracy against you.
moribvndvs 1y ago
I have significant social anxiety and was bullied much growing up, but I painstakingly built a small but close group of friends as a teenager and into my 20s. At the same time, the Internet was changing everything, I thought for the better, and goodness it really did seem like it made things much easier for me. Like my meatspace friends, I fell into a familiar pattern of carefully constructing a consistent circle. More often than not this translated into online friends becoming IRL friends. Then social media happened. Again, that feeling that this makes things so much easier for me. Occasionally I noticed I was not carefully curating friends anymore, I was unwittingly in a race to collect acquaintances and to attract attention. But I’m working at a startup, I don’t have time for the old ways! I stopped seeing people so much (even old friends and family), it seemed we had nothing to talk about because everything was already posted online. I’m spending more and more of my time arguing with strangers, who I see as little more than NPCs, through distant connections. I’m getting more angry, feeling more hopeless and alone, disliking people more, and finding myself brimming with hostility governed by a hair trigger. I am thinking about moving to a more remote place with my wife to get away from people. This is what social (and mainstream traditional, I suppose) media has wrought. It’s hard to say if it was always intended to be this way, but the truth is all sorts of malevolent individuals and groups picked up on its ability to divide and conquer us unlike any propaganda tool in history, so it certainly is now. I few years ago I killed all my accounts (except this and one other thing… I do still feel a need to find and connect with interesting people, but sparingly and only where I feel relatively in control). I started calling people and trying to hang out in person again. I have even found myself daring to talk to strangers, even when I know we are on completely different ends of the ideological spectrum. And much like the subjects in this article, I almost always feel better. I am rediscovering the terror and joy of making friends and temporary acquaintances again.
steve_aldrin 1y ago
this is the best thing i have seen in a while
jojo20 1y ago
Hi
jojo20 1y ago
Hello
m3047 1y ago
Words to the effect of "we live around people who act and feel like us": Yeah, but maybe not for the reasons you think. I'm not sure the reasons are a priori discoverable, although they can be revealed by statistics. Or to put it another way "is it something in the water, or new car smell?" So something happens in groups which amplifies similarities. The State of Washington collects voting results by precinct, and precinct sizes are typically in the hundreds of voters. * http://athena.m3047.net/elections/36th-dist-colored.html http://athena.m3047.net/elections/36th-dist-colored.html The distributions are not normal. * http://athena.m3047.net/elections/dist-not-normal/distribution-not-normal.html http://athena.m3047.net/elections/dist-not-normal/distributi... What got me started with this was King County making their canvass available in digital form. At the time I was feeling bored and like I needed some additional exercise, and publishing a quarterly zine and knocking on doors and delivering it to everyone in my precinct seemed like a natural thing to do; I had the thought that I might be able to see some effect, of some kind, in the canvass for my precinct (just a rather arbitrary notion, I like measuring things). As I kept doing this over a number of years it gained the attention of the established political order. Anyway I started clustering the results because I had the software, and hammer... nail. * http://athena.m3047.net/elections/perl/data-index.cgi?imagemode=png&setImageMode=Set&setprefix=sea- http://athena.m3047.net/elections/perl/data-index.cgi?imagem... One of Cialdini's "weapons of influence" is "liking", and again that may not mean exactly what you think it does. There was contemporaneous research going on about this. One of the notions was that you would be more likely to sway people who were "like" you. So where do you find these people? Well, maybe in precincts which vote similarly to yours. So this raises an issue for politicians: maybe they should identify people who are on their side in places where they are weak and prevail on those people to talk to their neighbors. Just a thought. But the reality was that trying to get for instance a "90%-er" to go to actively meet and court "40%-ers" was like asking them to lick dog vomit. On the other hand I used cluster correlations to identify an "like" precinct in another part of the City and took a walk; I was shocked at how similar it was in terms of physical features. I know, I know, confirmation bias. * http://athena.m3047.net/elections/perl/cluster-correlate.cgi?set=sea-05-07-all.10&precinct=SEA%2036-1295&closest=3&sort=std_dev http://athena.m3047.net/elections/perl/cluster-correlate.cgi... I suppose it does take a certain mindset to make knocking on stranger's doors a good time; and I don't know that that is a good idea everywhere. But I like talking to strangers, hearing their stories, and flipping each other shit. It's a skill which has served me well in my life.
The-Bus 1y ago
For those interested in the subject, recommend the book The Power of Strangers by Joe Keohane that covers this with further depth. Worth reading!
marc_abonce 1y ago
I'm surprised with how most of the people that felt worse after the conversation seem to be paired with someone that felt better after the same conversation. I would expect any negative feelings to be reciprocal so I wonder what happened in these interactions...
- hatthew 1y ago
  Possibly one-sided conversations where one person got to enthusiastically talk about something that the other person didn't care about.
m-calmius 1y ago
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m-calmius 1y ago
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karpovv-boris 1y ago
A good conclusion at the end. I'm right now going to therapy, feels good and helpful. But remembering recent experience (before therapy), I can say that I am very similar to the wounded in the sense that even thinking of making a new acquaintance, I evaluated people with suspicion. Now, during therapy, I'm all for new acquaintances and even started taking the first steps towards it.
0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
Pretty sure I read somewhere that many people prefer Waymo over Uber because there's no driver, which kinda contradicts these findings. How about HN users? Do you typically enjoy chatting with an Uber driver? If this "30 minutes with a stranger" experiment was performed during the pandemic, it could be that people were short on human connection at the time, and that explains why they valued it so much.
- chr15m 1y ago
  People often prefer things that are worse for them.
- titanomachy 1y ago
  It doesn't necessarily contradict the findings. People in this study also predicted that they would hate interacting with a stranger. I've had interesting conversations with uber drivers and not so interesting conversations. I prefer to use one of those charge-by-the-minute rental cars if they're available, because they tend to cost 1/3 as much and I'm perfectly capable of driving myself.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
    >It doesn't necessarily contradict the findings. People in this study also predicted that they would hate interacting with a stranger. Sure, but if you've ridden in an Uber, you presumably would've noticed that your prediction was off?
- bariswheel 1y ago
  Not really though. When people are busy and attempting to go from A to B, they may want to eliminate variables to better focus on their friends or something else in the Waymo. This is similar to the experiment where an incredible musician played violin in the subway terminal and people 'ignored' him. It's all about intention, when people plan to talk to a stranger, they're geared for that, if they are on their way somewhere, it's not the time or place to stop and 'smell the roses' most of the time as they are in a rush, doesn't have much to do with how great the musician is in the subway. When people go to a concert, and if that's same musician in the subway, they'll most definitely enjoy it, because they're planning on enjoying music at that time.
ryder125 1y ago
Jh
shymaple 1y ago
I have been talking to people online as well as in person and especially strangers. What I felt is, many only talk about work, and how they are doing well and all and it takes huge time to build trust with the person when it's online. While, in offline meet, you talk more about interest, hobbies or common things and build trust faster and usually they even share personal information easily because they trust you.

1103 points by MaxLeiter 1y ago

"They reported feeling better" Has anyone ever controlled for the fact that people lie? Especially about how they feel. Furthermore, people don't even know how they feel half the time. How do you even measure this?

jensnielsen 1y ago

I'm ready

motbus3 1y ago

This has been one of the best things I've read in a while. I hope it is real :)

knuppar 1y ago

it's so refreshing to see this kind of content in HN :*)

thenoblesunfish 1y ago

Beautiful. I have certainly noticed that, at work, despite my desire to be efficient, without this sort of thing, it becomes unbearable no matter how interesting the actual work is.

fragmede 1y ago
what type of work environment are you usually in?
- thenoblesunfish 1y ago
  Big company software engineering, plenty of remote coworkers.

theharshb 1y ago

Wow the web design's amazing

frizlab 1y ago

This is the third time this is posted and the first time this makes it to the front page. I’m glad it finally got some attention! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44443348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44443348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44269179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44269179

thierrydamiba 1y ago
“If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again”-Aliyah
- hackboyfly 1y ago
  Total banger!
MaxLeiter 1y ago
I was surprised I hadn't seen it on HN and saw it had so few upvotes, so figured I'd try again. Sometimes you just need some luck.

mdavid626 1y ago

I wish it would be normal scrolling.

qwertox 1y ago
I quit reading after a couple of minutes because of the scrolling.
BoredPositron 1y ago
I wish people would read the rules of the website they are using.
- mdavid626 1y ago
  I couldn’t - the scrolling mess made it impossible for me.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    I meant HN.
paganel 1y ago
It's not only the scrolling that isn't normal, I got dizzy when some image-like thingies starting flowing around the screen, had to close the browser tab at once. Maybe the page wanted to tell something, but whatever it is they could have done it via pure text form, that's what reading is all about.
- mdavid626 1y ago
  Exactly. Make it normal by default, and animations on toggle.

fragmede 1y ago

How do I load this into a database and query it with an LLM? I applied to get access to the dataset as a random. Guess I just have to wait and see what they say.

Miraltar 1y ago

I see a lot of people complaining about the scrolling thing but I don't get why, can someone explain?

frou_dh 1y ago
Many HN users are always looking for an excuse to complain about the format or appearance of the linked sites. So much so that the following had to be added to the guidelines (but doesn't seem to be enforced that much): > Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
lelele 1y ago
Because we're used to speed-reading content and that website wouldn't allow us.

lukol 1y ago

It looks nice and I really want to engage with the page further but since my time is limited today and I'll have forgotten about this by tomorrow: What's the tl;dr?

locallost 1y ago
tl;dr the journey is the destination
lukol 1y ago
Claude to the rescue: This is an interactive data story from The Pudding about research showing that talking to strangers makes us feel better, despite our expectations. The piece follows conversations from a study of nearly 1,700 video calls between strangers with different backgrounds (age, race, politics, etc.). While people predicted they'd have negative experiences talking to strangers, the vast majority actually felt better by the end of their 30-minute conversations - regardless of how different they were from each other.The story argues that we've lost "bridging social capital" (connections with people unlike us) and explores how this contributes to declining social trust. It ends with a personal reflection on helping a bleeding teenager on the subway, suggesting that despite our fears, most people will help strangers when needed - and that these connections are crucial for tackling big societal challenges.
- sksrbWgbfK 1y ago
  The topic is about 2 humans beings talking, and you manage to insert slop in the process. That's really missing the point.

mcv 1y ago

Nice project, although often the text falls off the screen of my phone.

locallost 1y ago

Not a fan of fancy websites, but this one really hits the nail on the head. It's telling about society how much of these conversations revolve around work. It makes sense, since it's where we spend most of our time, but at the same time a lot of people are not happy at work. Recently I've been avoiding this type of smalltalk because it has this pattern that starts with "and what do you do for a living". I'm trying to make the world a better place is not usually the answer. I wish it gets normalized to ask "what do you like to do in your life" as a first question. I like to cook and fix bicycles and in general do something practical.

derektank 1y ago
People tend to enjoy talking about things they're not happy about, no? Complaining is a revered pastime
CalRobert 1y ago
I wonder if the participants were American? When I moved to Ireland I had to learn to stop asking that when I met people because it was a bit rude to start off like that.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

pwdisswordfishz 1y ago

[flagged]

ashwinsundar 1y ago
Sheesh, I liked it. It turned some research that may have been otherwise inaccessible or difficult to understand, and expanded it’s reach.
- dirkc 1y ago
  I also liked it! Since it's based on a research data set, I'm sure someone has written some "normal f###ing prose" about it somewhere on the web. A search for "Candor corpus" yields some results, although none of it looks like what @pwdisswordfishz is looking for?
_def 1y ago
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3197 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3197

m00dy 1y ago

I remember the days using chatroulette :)

pavlov 1y ago

Really great design. This is the unicorn of fancy websites because for once, it actually makes sense to override browser's standard scrolling behavior. The 30-minute timeline on the right provides an obvious context for what you're navigating with the scroll actions, and you wouldn't be able to do that with a regular scrollbar. Usually scrolling overrides happen because the designers' mindset was that the site should be a sequence of beautiful slides. They might prototype it as a Keynote presentation that is approved by management. And then some poor web developer gets tasked with building a site that feels like the Keynote slide show that everyone loved, and the only way to do that is to turn scrolling into an annoying "next slide" action.

darkwater 1y ago
I'm with you and I actually love these "special scrolling" websites. They are much closer to a truly work of art exactly because of the different design. To the haters: why do we have churches or buildings with marble statues in the walls or column instead of a standard stone wall, which was designed to do the job in a standard way?
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  Niches (recesses in walls for statues) and columns in church buildings are actually central features that serve the primary purpose of the building. Niches provide spaces for statues for remembering the dead, or prayers and veneration (for Catholics), enhancing the link between the spiritual and corporeal realms. Arguably they're also used to encourage payments from patrons for a church building's upkeep or construction. Columns allow spaces within a building to be connected, ensuring the body of the church (the people) can worship and receive teaching together. They can also reduce material cost of construction. Yes, for historic church buildings decoration was applied, ornate capitals in the pillars and such; bright, garish paint on the statues and everything -- and expression of the vitality of the building and of worship to God. I think perhaps your analogy needs buttressing (heh!) to make it clear? All I got really was 'I like the scrolling'. Maybe a revolving door is a good scrollbar analogue - it's central to access to a space (website), some people hate them, but used properly they enhance access (they're really good for limiting heat exchange with the outside when compared with regular doors!).

dataexec 1y ago

The Pudding is such a cool publication. They have incredible research and dataviz, in particular on cultural topics but not only. It’s worth subscribing to their newsletter. Glad to see them there!

sema4hacker 1y ago

On a site designed like this where I tend to not notice the scroll bar, I usually just click on the things I see to try and make something happen. In this case, not much happens from clicks (because the site desperately needs a graphic to encourage you to scroll), so I quickly lose interest and bail.

dullcrisp 1y ago
Well don’t leave us hanging. Did you figure out that you need to scroll?
Reimersholme 1y ago
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swiftcoder 1y ago
I don’t really understand this viewpoint - scrolling has always been the default way to see more content on a webpage. Clicking on things to navigate is very much a secondary activity. Why would you not scroll every web page to see if there is more content that didn’t fit on your screen?
- qrobit 1y ago
  I suppose because modern websites are actually apps, in an app you click on stuff to see more content If web page does not look like a blog or a newsletter, it is not wrong to assume the app format

tiniuclx 1y ago

For us that spend a lot of time on the internet, it's easy to forget that most people are not that different from you. I believe comments online, on Hacker News on otherwise, tend to be made by people with fairly extreme views - you have to feel something very strongly to shout your opinion into the internet! But most people are, well, normal, including you. Step out of your bubble every now and then and you'd be surprised at what good may come out of it.

Recursing 1y ago
Reminds me of the most upvoted post of all time on r/slatestarcodex https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
- saagarjha 1y ago
  I guess I am here to contribute a little bit of my insanity to this site.

kwie 1y ago

[dead]

willemlaurentz 1y ago

Following the book "The Power of Strangers" I once did an experiment with talking to random strangers, it is amazing what you'll learn from random conversations: https://willem.com/en/2023-10-13_hello-stranger/ https://willem.com/en/2023-10-13_hello-stranger/

hackboyfly 1y ago
I would like to do that but I live in Sweden, talking to stranger is considered rude. Would be cool if there were a serious version of those random cam chats like omegle.
- skeezyboy 1y ago
  > I would like to do that but I live in Sweden, talking to stranger is considered rude. you all sound like a lovely bunch. is this a modern thing?
  - kruffalon 1y ago
    Not who you asked, but no, old ingrained cultural thing! The trick is to trick us into not realising we are interacting, then we are quite friendly and polite :)
    - skeezyboy 1y ago
      > The trick is to trick us into not realising we are interacting, then we are quite friendly and polite :) i dont think you can be friendly and ALSO dislike talking to strangers. I think thats what it means to be friendly, or at least its a necessary component of it
- kruffalon 1y ago
  Well, that's not entirely true, you just have to be a bit particular about when and how to start the conversation. Things I find work most of the time in Sweden to get started is complaining about something mutually bothersome, annoying or scary that you don't have any power over, things like: - A third party being rude. So if you notice that someone gets annoyed by someone else you can huff and puff a little over that. - the weather, obviously and often! - if someone hurts themselves or trips (doesn't have to be as big an injury as in the article) - children are great conversation starters, regardless if they are cute, loud, awake, still or whatever. And this is one of the few positive topics that work. The trick is also to not keep talking about the annoying thing, because that is quite boring! If you get more courageous you can also just ask about a place, piece of public art or even the way to some random thing, in my experience (a whole life) swedes are very helpful :) My favourite question is to ask people who clearly hope to see me go away about the names of places, I don't know why that topic works so well to tear walls down, but it does.

gwd 1y ago

One of the problems with their "better / worse" statistics: Bad interactions tend to outweigh good interactions. I think the rule of thumb is that 4:1 good/bad ratio in a relationship is "breakeven" where the relationship will stay neutral; higher than that and things get better, lower than that and things go south. So if you could talk to a stranger, and there's only a 20% chance you'll feel worse, a lot of people would still not consider it worth the risk.

a5c11 1y ago
Yes, we tend to remember negative experiences better than the good ones. Also, we all are so low on good emotions, we don't want to risk losing them to random strangers.
- nakedneuron 1y ago
  This hits deep.
RataNova 1y ago
Makes me think the real challenge isn't just encouraging people to talk to strangers, but designing situations where the expected value of those conversations skews heavily positive
- dpkirchner 1y ago
  I do most of my stranger-talking at niche events like board games down at the maker space or at cons. This definitely skews the results.
namuol 1y ago
I think it depends on what you’re used to. If you’re in an abusive relationship or socially isolated, a single positive social interaction can feel like a breakthrough.
- netmansion 1y ago

alex-moon 1y ago

I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154625000440 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235215462... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362500005X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027795362... https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/hate-lies-and-loneliness-fuel-online-extremism/ https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/hate-lies-and-loneliness-f...

rkagerer 1y ago
I wonder how much of this is due to social media sites and how the choice to interact that way (where the medium is geared to show off shallow facets of our achievements or amplify polarized opinions) is robbing us from traditional ways of spending time together.
- heresie-dabord 1y ago
  > is robbing us from traditional ways of spending time together. The assumption that social-media applications are really social is robbing us of traditional ways of maintaining actual society.
  - a5c11 1y ago
    True. It's so hard nowadays to go out with a friend to grab a beer or a coffee. They don't feel the urge because they satisfy social interactions online, and they think it's enough. Well, it's undoubtedly simpler that way, but it's fake. I, personally, hate chatting through instant messengers. I lost many connections because people started moving online more and more, and I just couldn't handle that anymore. For example, I don't like interrupting what I'm doing, and people usually expect to get a response within minutes. Plus, when I don't respond immediately, I simply forget and remind myself a month later. I could be the problem too, but the way we do communication today doesn't help either.

hackboyfly 1y ago

After moving to a new city I desperately need this in my life. Something like omegle but more serious.

llmthrow0827 1y ago
Go to an event that you have an interest in, and strike up conversations with random people who are unoccupied. You at least have one common topic to talk about, and in my experience the odds you find someone you want to grab a bite or a drink after the even with are pretty high, and at the very worst the next time you go to a similar event you might see some familiar faces.

navaed01 1y ago

The Pudding is one of the bright spots of the internet for me. Does anyone have any recommendations for other new / blog interestings websites on the same level?

a022311 1y ago

As someone who is generally shy, this sparked some hope in me. I have a really stressful time meeting new people, I just have absolutely no idea what to say, I panic and I leave. Well done for the execution, it's a very nice way to reveal interactive content!

a5c11 1y ago
Same. However, I had a few encounters where I was scared initially that I won't know what to say, and the talk will be quiet and weird, but my freshly met partner was so into the chat that I had problems cutting into. It was fun. Remember that the other person doesn't want to be weird either and will try to maintain the chat, unless it's totally not interested.

saberience 1y ago

I know it's supposed to be fancy and cool looking but this sort of website design where you have to scroll and then the whole screen animates really bothers me. It actually gives me a headache to try and follow it versus normal scrolling behaviour and text. As soon as I start scrolling down and I can't scroll normally and images and text start flying around I feel a disturbing feeling in my head and lose concentration and almost get brain-fog from the distracting content moving around. Please provide more accessible versions of websites if you're going to override the default behavior. I couldn't make it 10 seconds before having to close the tab.

itsTyrion 1y ago
it's even worse on mobile for me: any time there's a full screen animation, the site lags to a crawl – as in, 500ms+ lag spikes and aingle-digit FPS
qnpnp 1y ago
Sometimes this is indeed merely "fancy" and vacuous, but other times it is a meaningful and more engaging way to present the content. I feel like this is an example of the latter. Even if you're not a fan and would have done it differently, it seems a bit hard to understand what could be so bothersome that you have to close it in 10s...
- saberience 1y ago
  Well, it literally makes me feel almost nauseous, i.e. I felt physically unwell from the images and text moving around the screen. Note: this doesnt happen from a regular video, or normal scrolling text behaviour. Just sites like this that combine overriding the scroll bar with moving text and images.
- llm_nerd 1y ago
  I often like the use of advanced media. The NYT and Washington Post have done some amazing advanced media that fully exploits the richness possible with the web. Not so sure about this one, though. Like others, I was more annoyed with the constant scrolling to get tiny niblets of information and didn't even make it through. It makes it feel like work and the mechanisms completely overwhelms the message. Also weird that it's hogging CPU even when you're sitting on a completely static portion of the page.

szszrk 1y ago

I have a laptop coil whine that syncs animation on that page exactly :O That makes me scared of both modern webdev and hardware quality.

musha68k 1y ago

I always liked the idea and practice of what they called "rejection therapy" at the time. Probably builds high-bandwidth, interpersonal muscle like nothing else?

RianAtheer 1y ago

I think spending 30 minutes with a stranger can be surprisingly powerful. You never know what perspective, idea, or connection might come from an unexpected conversation. I remember that once spent 30 minutes with a stranger at a cafe who turned out to be a trader in a completely different market than mine. In that short conversation, I picked up a few strategies and a perspective on risk management I’d never considered before. It reminded me that sometimes the most valuable insights come from unexpected places and just half an hour with the right person can change how you approach your work.

adithyassekhar 1y ago

Don't scroll too fast, the cards with texts won't show if you do and then you'll miss it

kreetx 1y ago

There have been a few of these types of website designs on science/popular science topics, while very cool at first then the novelty fades - I wish they just get to the point.

mentalgear 1y ago

Great visualisation ! We need more of this "social glue" since that's what keeps society together.

K0balt 1y ago

I love this study and the presentation - first time I’ve not hated the hijacking of scrolling on a website. But I shudder at the thought of the new AI product that this data will inspire or train. It’s gotten to the point that I see any significant collection of data about humans as a low-key threat to humanity.

trumbitta2 1y ago

I can't read it like this. It's just too much work.

dvcoolarun 1y ago

To me, talking to strangers is like not flexing that judgment muscle we keep on, while also gaining different perspectives and learning.

lordnacho 1y ago

It's the internet. When you talk to people online, it often descends into pettiness. When you talk to people in the real world, that rarely happens. But it's much easier to talk online, so people get the wrong impression. You should talk to strangers. It's never gone wrong for me. Most people have a warmth and agreeableness that comes out when you are there with them, talking about stuff. There's also the interesting effect that people will give you their innermost secrets, knowing you won't tell anyone (I actually met a serial killer who did this, heh). For instance I was on a long haul flight earlier this year, and my neighbour told me everything about her divorce. Like a kind of therapy. I also find when I have a real disagreement with someone, it's a lot easier when you're face-to-face. For instance, I have friends who are religious, in a real way, ie they actually think there's a god who created the earth and wants us to live a certain way. Being there in person keeps me from ridiculing them like I might on an internet forum, but it also keeps them from condemning me to hell. So folks, practice talking to people. Much of what's wrong in the current world is actually loneliness, having no outlet for your expressions.

manapause 1y ago
Beautifully said. I believe wholeheartedly that in real life, disagreements between two people hinge on an ability to disarm each other through charm and disposition. The less you know someone, and the more they appear to earnestly try to understand you - becoming heated and firing phasers just feels unbecoming; why would I perpetuate personal loneliness or ennui in a moment that is genuinely devoid of it?
BrandoElFollito 1y ago
I learned the hard way that religion is something best left aside in discussions. I am an absolute atheist, and I believe that people who are educated in science and are religions have some kind of mental illness. This is just too set the context :) I also used to be very active on radio about science vs religion. First, people who are hard core religious may get off their way to cure you. I had people yelling in front of my house. I never saw physicists doing the same. But that's a perk of the "atheism job" :) I had something much worse happening to me. A friend of mine was religions, from a very religions family. We had long discussions and she gradually realized that her while world is going to shit when she discovered the insanity of religion. She got into a deep depression and tried to commit suicide. I was with her 7 years until she somehow snapped back to a normal life. I never attempted to turn an individual anymore. Sure, general information about rational hygiene (religion, homeopathy, ...) but not on z 1:1 basis.

np1810 1y ago

UI Feedback - I was having trouble figuring out what to do with the website, possibly due to the lack of text. I was tapping everywhere just to find the interactive areas (invisible buttons: who invented flat UI without shadows to hide all the interactivity?), and it took me some time to realize the website was scrollable (invisible scroll bars: who thought hiding the scrollbars without any indication of scrollable content was a good idea?). These issues are typically not the fault of the website, but rather the general UI/UX trends we have accepted nowadays. I’m using Firefox on Android. Regarding social media - it has created more gaps rather than making us more social. It's ultimate goal is to capture our attention for as long as possible rather than connecting us. And lately, with the celebrities populating it, it has become a showoff/bragging machine.

RataNova 1y ago

A perfect blend of design, empathy, and data

TechDebtDevin 1y ago

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mrjay42 1y ago

Just an observation, not a mean critique about the project or even the conclusions. There's 180 participants. There's 26 people marked at "very liberal", which is 14% of the sample. There's 39 people marked at "very conservative", which is 21% of the sample. ----- Then we have 31 people marked as liberal, which is 17% of the sample. And we have 63 people marked as conservative, which is 35% of the sample. That already I would say is kind of an issue: more than a third of the sample are conservative people and 17% are their liberal 'counter part' or 'equivalent' (sorry for my wording, I'm not native speaker). --- If we do a little additions we therefore have: 39+63 = 102, which means that 56% of the sample is conservative 31+26= 57, which means that 31% of the sample is liberal The rest of the sample are centrists or "neutrals" (whatever this means) --- I am NOT saying that the study is invalid I am not saying that it's poorly done However, I think it's fair to say that the sample is skewed towards people with conservative views, by a HUGE amount, not just "a little bit". --- Aside from this: amazing UI design, I'm jealous and admirative of the results ^^

cheema33 1y ago
In the US, registered liberals/Dems outnumber conservatives. However this study has more conservatives. It could be geography. Some states are more conservative than others. Or it could be that the $15 on offer is more appealing to conservatives.
- nonethewiser 1y ago
  The study denotes "political views", not party registration, which have historically deviated. Part affiliation has been quite even for a long time between Republicans and Democrats but political ideology has had a significant conservative skew going back at least 30 years https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
nonethewiser 1y ago
>There's 26 people marked at "very liberal", which is 14% of the sample. > There's 39 people marked at "very conservative", which is 21% of the sample I think these numbers are off. Where are you getting that from? Is there raw data somewhere? I counted the people on the page and see 39 very conservative and 47 very liberal (not 26). I did not check the other numbers. But with that its 78 liberals which is 43%. And the total liberals + conservatives are 180. So I dont think the total participant number is 180 - thats just the total of liberals and conservatives. And if its a 56/43 (~1.3) split for conservatives that seems to actually udnerrepresent conservatives compared to the general population without moderates. Where we see a 36/25 (1.44) conservative/liberal split in terms of ideology, not voter registration, which I think aligns more closely with the "political views" label. >The way Americans identify themselves ideologically was unchanged in 2021, continuing the close division that has persisted in recent years between those describing themselves as either conservative or moderate, while a smaller share identifies as liberal. On average last year, 37% of Americans described their political views as moderate, 36% as conservative and 25% as liberal. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-steady-conservatives-moderates-tie.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-stead...

petercooper 1y ago

Such a minor thing but I absolutely love the way the faces / avatars are rendered here. Just characters in a PRE tag. Gives me Commodore 64 vibes. I'd love to know how they came up with those and put it all together.

magicmicah85 1y ago

Very cool design. I would love to listen to those conversations that grinded to a halt. I saw one profile where their affect before was 9, at beginning was 6, by middle and end was a 1. Their partner went from 7 to 8. Is it miscommunication or misunderstanding of how they were perceived?

igtztorrero 1y ago

In my family we usually travel to many parts of the world, and we have been compiling a series of anecdotes, when we take a taxi or an Uber, we ask the taxi driver different aspects of the city then always asking him some anecdote, funny or strange, that he has had in his life as a taxi driver. And we have collected a large number of funny stories that we constantly bring up when we are at a party. For example, the story of the Argentine taxi driver who, when he received some Danish tourists, they realized that they had forgotten a suitcase at the airport, but since they had an Apple tracker, they started looking for the suitcase with the help of the police and it turned out that the suitcase was in the trunk of a car belonging to another police officer, unbelievable right? Or the story of the London taxi driver who, being tired after a long shift, picked up an old lady for the last trip and the old woman lay in the back seat and fell completely asleep, when the taxi driver turned to his rearview mirror and no longer saw anyone behind he thought: "What am I doing ? I'm driving alone, I am too tired." so he decided to go home. When he got home the old lady woke up and thought that the taxi driver was kidnapping her, and called the police. Incredible stories and anecdotes are collected when you start talking to strangers and they feel confident expressing their ideas. It's part of living, talking to strangers is very satisfying.

jibal 1y ago

In addition to the fascinating content, this is a very cool way to present it.

7e 1y ago

This is interesting, but I’m curious how much of the effect is due to getting paid $15, and how much the data was affected by the fact that everyone was isolated in COVID lockdown at the time.

eggbrain 1y ago
Another potential self-selection bias -- if people know they are signing up to have a conversation with a stranger, perhaps they are already predisposed to be more "pleasant" in conversations, vs a potential curmudgeon who doesn't ever want to speak to anyone, even for money.

killjoywashere 1y ago

Chatroulette was on to something. But is it still full of men exposing themselves?

paulorlando 1y ago

I've been interested in this general question for a while. Years ago I ran a startup that connected strangers for spoken conversations. After tests, we kept it to audio only - no video, no text, no profile info. That was what kept the conversations civil. Add video, or text, or profiles and behavior changed (basically became a dating site). Results: F-M talks were only about 10% longer than F-F and M-M talks. (Longer-term we focused on connecting people recovering from serious health issues.)

titanomachy 1y ago
Wasn’t there a moderately popular audio-only social media startup a couple years ago?
- paulorlando 1y ago
  You're thinking of Clubhouse? Raised around $200M. Fast up and down. The behavior our old startup had noticed 10 years earlier was that while people were happy to engage with audio only, retention was tough unless there was something more. For us that meant focusing on the health-related talks. Patients and their doctors and support group leaders took the talks as part of the recovery process. Very different retention came from that.
  - titanomachy 1y ago
    Yep, that's the one. I'd totally forgotten about it until this thread. The mental health support angle makes sense, though.

NoSalt 1y ago

I know this is 100% not the point of this post, but I really dug the little ASCII animations of the post. I'd love to know how they did that.

hoetmaaiers 1y ago
Indeed, also the ASCII avatars look really good.

0xbadcafebee 1y ago

"In 2014 in the 2014 study on Illinois trains and buses reach our searchers followed up with people who were asked to talk to strangers The people who predicted they wouldn't enjoy the experience. What these participants reported back was almost no rejections, pleasant conversations, and an overall positive experience." This is basically fear the emotional pain of rejection or embarrassment, brought on by a fear of the unknown. Between 18 and 24 months old, we begin to develop the 'ability' to feel embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride, etc. This is self-consciousness, a part of self-awareness. Embarrassment, shame, etc have important functions. They signal a violation of social norms. This helps create and reinforce the interpersonal boundaries and rules that govern how we deal with people in society. When you perceive others are observing you, you imagine what their impressions of you will be. If it's a stranger, a lot of people jump to a negative conclusion. Part of this is a mirror of how we see other people. Part of it is a human heuristic to fear the unknown, which keeps us alive in the jungle. And part of it is you making a snap judgement about what kind of person someone is based on how they look or what environment you're in. So when you're afraid that talking to a stranger will be a negative experience, really you're just trying to avoid getting eaten in the jungle by someone you fear. But we aren't in a jungle - we're in a society, with rules, laws, and norms. There is no threat to a conversation. And, as the study shows, your fears are usually unfounded. So go ahead and strike up a conversation with a stranger - it's safe.

ryandv 1y ago

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justonceokay 1y ago
The projecting looks like it goes both ways
- ryandv 1y ago
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  - kortilla 1y ago
    There is a lot of racism in your modeling of humanity. You should introspect and determine if it’s beneficial to your life to dehumanize and classify people based on the color of their skin.
marknutter 1y ago
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- ryandv 1y ago
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teiferer 1y ago

There is a huge selection bias there. People who are very disagreeable and hard to talk to tend to not participate in such a thing. Of course the average participant was open to talk to somebody and connect.

ngriffiths 1y ago
Fair, but it's still interesting that people underestimate how much they will enjoy the conversation, even if it's with a random person on a bus who did not volunteer for an experiment.
- popularonion 1y ago
  The participants in the train study were essentially given a "job" to talk to strangers, which completely changes the mental framing. People generally try to follow through on a job they promised to do. They'll try to make the best of it so they feel like they made a good decision accepting the job. If the conversations go badly, they can easily rationalize it away with "I didn't want to talk to them anyway, but I didn't have a choice". Many shy and socially anxious people do basically fine in public-facing jobs because of this phenomenon.

laurieg 1y ago

There's something comforting about conversations with strangers. It gives me a feeling that we are all in this together. One subtle effect of living as a visible minority is people assume you can't speak the local language. Even in minute everyday moments like stepping into a crowded elevator people avoid saying a few words. No one means any harm but it can feel surprisingly isolating. Almost like everyone else is in some grand linguistic conspiracy against you.

moribvndvs 1y ago

I have significant social anxiety and was bullied much growing up, but I painstakingly built a small but close group of friends as a teenager and into my 20s. At the same time, the Internet was changing everything, I thought for the better, and goodness it really did seem like it made things much easier for me. Like my meatspace friends, I fell into a familiar pattern of carefully constructing a consistent circle. More often than not this translated into online friends becoming IRL friends. Then social media happened. Again, that feeling that this makes things so much easier for me. Occasionally I noticed I was not carefully curating friends anymore, I was unwittingly in a race to collect acquaintances and to attract attention. But I’m working at a startup, I don’t have time for the old ways! I stopped seeing people so much (even old friends and family), it seemed we had nothing to talk about because everything was already posted online. I’m spending more and more of my time arguing with strangers, who I see as little more than NPCs, through distant connections. I’m getting more angry, feeling more hopeless and alone, disliking people more, and finding myself brimming with hostility governed by a hair trigger. I am thinking about moving to a more remote place with my wife to get away from people. This is what social (and mainstream traditional, I suppose) media has wrought. It’s hard to say if it was always intended to be this way, but the truth is all sorts of malevolent individuals and groups picked up on its ability to divide and conquer us unlike any propaganda tool in history, so it certainly is now. I few years ago I killed all my accounts (except this and one other thing… I do still feel a need to find and connect with interesting people, but sparingly and only where I feel relatively in control). I started calling people and trying to hang out in person again. I have even found myself daring to talk to strangers, even when I know we are on completely different ends of the ideological spectrum. And much like the subjects in this article, I almost always feel better. I am rediscovering the terror and joy of making friends and temporary acquaintances again.

steve_aldrin 1y ago

this is the best thing i have seen in a while

jojo20 1y ago

Hello

m3047 1y ago

Words to the effect of "we live around people who act and feel like us": Yeah, but maybe not for the reasons you think. I'm not sure the reasons are a priori discoverable, although they can be revealed by statistics. Or to put it another way "is it something in the water, or new car smell?" So something happens in groups which amplifies similarities. The State of Washington collects voting results by precinct, and precinct sizes are typically in the hundreds of voters. * http://athena.m3047.net/elections/36th-dist-colored.html http://athena.m3047.net/elections/36th-dist-colored.html The distributions are not normal. * http://athena.m3047.net/elections/dist-not-normal/distribution-not-normal.html http://athena.m3047.net/elections/dist-not-normal/distributi... What got me started with this was King County making their canvass available in digital form. At the time I was feeling bored and like I needed some additional exercise, and publishing a quarterly zine and knocking on doors and delivering it to everyone in my precinct seemed like a natural thing to do; I had the thought that I might be able to see some effect, of some kind, in the canvass for my precinct (just a rather arbitrary notion, I like measuring things). As I kept doing this over a number of years it gained the attention of the established political order. Anyway I started clustering the results because I had the software, and hammer... nail. * http://athena.m3047.net/elections/perl/data-index.cgi?imagemode=png&setImageMode=Set&setprefix=sea- http://athena.m3047.net/elections/perl/data-index.cgi?imagem... One of Cialdini's "weapons of influence" is "liking", and again that may not mean exactly what you think it does. There was contemporaneous research going on about this. One of the notions was that you would be more likely to sway people who were "like" you. So where do you find these people? Well, maybe in precincts which vote similarly to yours. So this raises an issue for politicians: maybe they should identify people who are on their side in places where they are weak and prevail on those people to talk to their neighbors. Just a thought. But the reality was that trying to get for instance a "90%-er" to go to actively meet and court "40%-ers" was like asking them to lick dog vomit. On the other hand I used cluster correlations to identify an "like" precinct in another part of the City and took a walk; I was shocked at how similar it was in terms of physical features. I know, I know, confirmation bias. * http://athena.m3047.net/elections/perl/cluster-correlate.cgi?set=sea-05-07-all.10&precinct=SEA%2036-1295&closest=3&sort=std_dev http://athena.m3047.net/elections/perl/cluster-correlate.cgi... I suppose it does take a certain mindset to make knocking on stranger's doors a good time; and I don't know that that is a good idea everywhere. But I like talking to strangers, hearing their stories, and flipping each other shit. It's a skill which has served me well in my life.

The-Bus 1y ago

For those interested in the subject, recommend the book The Power of Strangers by Joe Keohane that covers this with further depth. Worth reading!

marc_abonce 1y ago

I'm surprised with how most of the people that felt worse after the conversation seem to be paired with someone that felt better after the same conversation. I would expect any negative feelings to be reciprocal so I wonder what happened in these interactions...

hatthew 1y ago
Possibly one-sided conversations where one person got to enthusiastically talk about something that the other person didn't care about.

m-calmius 1y ago

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m-calmius 1y ago

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karpovv-boris 1y ago

A good conclusion at the end. I'm right now going to therapy, feels good and helpful. But remembering recent experience (before therapy), I can say that I am very similar to the wounded in the sense that even thinking of making a new acquaintance, I evaluated people with suspicion. Now, during therapy, I'm all for new acquaintances and even started taking the first steps towards it.

0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago

Pretty sure I read somewhere that many people prefer Waymo over Uber because there's no driver, which kinda contradicts these findings. How about HN users? Do you typically enjoy chatting with an Uber driver? If this "30 minutes with a stranger" experiment was performed during the pandemic, it could be that people were short on human connection at the time, and that explains why they valued it so much.

chr15m 1y ago
People often prefer things that are worse for them.
titanomachy 1y ago
It doesn't necessarily contradict the findings. People in this study also predicted that they would hate interacting with a stranger. I've had interesting conversations with uber drivers and not so interesting conversations. I prefer to use one of those charge-by-the-minute rental cars if they're available, because they tend to cost 1/3 as much and I'm perfectly capable of driving myself.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
  >It doesn't necessarily contradict the findings. People in this study also predicted that they would hate interacting with a stranger. Sure, but if you've ridden in an Uber, you presumably would've noticed that your prediction was off?
bariswheel 1y ago
Not really though. When people are busy and attempting to go from A to B, they may want to eliminate variables to better focus on their friends or something else in the Waymo. This is similar to the experiment where an incredible musician played violin in the subway terminal and people 'ignored' him. It's all about intention, when people plan to talk to a stranger, they're geared for that, if they are on their way somewhere, it's not the time or place to stop and 'smell the roses' most of the time as they are in a rush, doesn't have much to do with how great the musician is in the subway. When people go to a concert, and if that's same musician in the subway, they'll most definitely enjoy it, because they're planning on enjoying music at that time.

ryder125 1y ago

shymaple 1y ago

I have been talking to people online as well as in person and especially strangers. What I felt is, many only talk about work, and how they are doing well and all and it takes huge time to build trust with the person when it's online. While, in offline meet, you talk more about interest, hobbies or common things and build trust faster and usually they even share personal information easily because they trust you.