5 ms·

By the time you get to my age, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's. A lot of people ge

By the time you get to my age, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's. A lot of people genuinely don't want to hang out with you. Likely that number exceeds the "real" Anna's by an order of magnitude. If there's someone I particularly like, I'll keep inviting him. But if the person is otherwise normal (e.g. clearly has a social life), I invite 3-5 times, and then stop. If the guy wants to hang out with me, the ball's in his court. You'll find no shortage of people who'll say "Hey man! What happened? I never hear from you any more!" To which I'd love to respond with s/any more/ever/ If you're the guy who always invite people regardless of their response (or non-response), you'll find that people will have an expectation that you always invite them. I would recommend not getting to that point.

efsavage 1y ago
I overheard two very outgoing co-workers once, where one asked the other if he was having his holiday party. "It was last weekend", he said. "Oh, I didn't get an invite" "That's because you never come" She looked shocked, I think she genuinely didn't know what to say. After an awkward silence she said, "but I liked to be invited" "I'll happily invite you next year if you promise to come" She smiled politely and walked away. It was memorable to me because it was such a foreign interaction on both sides from my perspective.
- dexterdog 1y ago
  It's probably just ego on the one side. That person likes to be invited to feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship. If I were the other person I would make sure that invitation is never extended.
  - squigz 1y ago
    I'm so glad I don't understand and thus can't play these games with people. It sounds tiring.
    - snapcaster 1y ago
      What part don't you understand? I'm sure you engage with other forms of social status and signaling and this one seems pretty straightforward
      - Zenbit_UX 1y ago
        I believe they were implying they don’t get social cues due to neurodivergence, likely autism. Hilariously you’re also not picking up on their social cues and implications, which is likewise telling.
        squigz 1y ago
        Quite right. Reading such intense motives behind such simple interactions is one of those allistic things that has me going like ???
        bckr 1y ago
        It’s perhaps even more maddening than that. Even if all these factors are at play, it doesn’t mean they actually matter all that much to anyone involved. These two coworkers might otherwise really get along and respect each other, but this is one of the games that they are playing with each other. On the surface, implicitly negotiating over who is more important sounds horribly dramatic, but it’s a game that’s happening constantly among everyone. Usually folks push and pull over some equilibrium point, one person making concessions, then the other, in turns, with the actual hierarchy determining roughly how many turns each person should concede before making a demand of the other. This is where you get dynamics like “he’s a very demanding boss but he cares a lot about his employees” (high amplitude of switching between demand and concession) or “she’s very sharp but also hard to get along with” (doesn’t concede enough to make others feel important). Concession in this game can be anything, small to large, from being the one who opens the door to let the other through, to offering help during personal problems, to letting someone take more credit on a collaboration. But, again, these are all played in the implicit layer. They can be raised to the explicit layer by having a “heart to heart”, like “you’re always so kind. I appreciated when you did XYZ”, or “I’d really like if sometimes you did ABC”.
  - mock-possum 1y ago
    Oh wow that is foreign to me, but I’m sure you’re right - Collecting invites you never intend to answer just sounds like… I don’t know, some sort of weird social hoarding. If somebody I don’t want to hang out with keeps inviting me that doesn’t make me feel good about myself, that makes me feel anxious, like I haven’t properly clarified our relationship with them. > That person likes to be invited to feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship. For me, I would expect the opposite - if you get invited all the time but never come, it’s because you’re not actually involved in their life, you’re not actually all that valuable. In order to be valuable you’d have to be making the effort to be present, or at the very least, communicating your availability so the other person would better understand when it’s appropriate to expect you.
    - mac-mc 1y ago
      It is ultimately a form of insecurity.
  - teapot7 1y ago
    Or because they're shy and antisocial but it's nice to think that they're part of the gang - as the original article was all about.
    - nine_k 1y ago
      It's understandable, but in no way nice. One side is going to bring their authentic shy and antisocial self, and stonewall the invitations, while the other side needs to keep smiling and send invitations no matter what. This sounds slightly lopsided, doesn't it? If you would like the other side to do you a small favor every time, it's worth considering to do the same. At least respond to the invitation with gratitude and a hope to maybe do it next time.
      - volemo 1y ago
        People have different capacity for social "niceties". Sometimes I'm full of energy and am happy to be Alexei for someone, sometimes I am Anna.
      - BeetleB 1y ago
        > while the other side needs to keep smiling and send invitations no matter what. No one is suggesting one needs to. It's a choice. And when you make it a choice, it is indeed nice.
    - WA 1y ago
      You can overcome shyness to some extend. Not getting invited anymore can also be a sign that the shy person has to change something about their behavior, instead of all others just accepting that.
      - mrheosuper 1y ago
        >the shy person has to change something about their behavior This is like asking depressing people to stop being "depressing"
  - singhrac 1y ago
    Who cares if they feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship? Do you decide your framework based on mental games other people might play? Decide if extending an invite that is declined will cost you something (food, space, etc.) and whether you want the person there.
  - watwut 1y ago
    > That person likes to be invited to feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship Or it was just a comment without any major feelings of dominance attached to it. Some people interpret everything as a status fight, but most dont.
  - mfru 1y ago
    That sounds like you projecting onto others
- jacquesm 1y ago
  You can't feel powerful by rejecting an invitation that you never receive in the first place.
type0 1y ago
> By the time you get to my age, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's. By the time facebook has been used to plan events, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens, because Anna doesn't use fb and it's too difficult to send sms's. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  I have no idea what you're trying to say, but FWIW I never used social networks - at least not the ones you can use to plan events (LinkedIn doesn't count).
  - type0 1y ago
    Alice and Bob are planning a party, they might invite Anna but don't want Mallory to show up and ruin everything so they turn to Facebook and create a closed group for party planning. Anna, being privacy conscious, doesn't use fb and expects to receive an invite on Signal. But Alice and Bob decide not to invite Anna because they're Danish politicians and Anna is against Chat Control.
    - alex1138 1y ago
      To further the analogy, Alice and Bob decide on potentially emailing Anna instead but Zuckerberg is such a megalomaniac that he's overriden everybody's email addresses https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 ("But that's on Facebook, which Anna doesn't have" - true, but apparently syncing contacts with Facebook - something FB presumably often does automatically - will wipe out email addresses of your contacts)
63stack 1y ago
I had the same opinion and I am surprised by the amount of feelgood responses in this thread. Anna needs to realize that the amount of people who have the time and willingness to invite someone out for _years_ while receicing no is very low. These friends need to be treasured and appreciated, and Anna needs to make an effort by saying yes sometimes, or at least expressing what she's going through. The friends are making an effort by keeping her in the group, she needs to do the same.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  My comment was not meant as a judgment on Anna, and if she's depressed, I would not put this kind of onus on her. I was merely pointing out that most people who don't respond or always say "no" are not like the Anna in this submission. If I know someone who is in similar shoes as Anna, then I have no problem continuing to invite.
- dvsfish 1y ago
  100% agree. You'd start to think "Anna doesn't like us" and just move on. Despite what they're going through, some level of responsibility falls on them to express a sense of "it's not you it's me", if they legitimately do want to remain part of the friend group. Not engaging with the friend group is effectively the same as not being a part of it. If the "pleasant feeling of being included in the group" is the entirety of your involvement, it's actually a somewhat selfish and shallow position after a while. That's not to say that the group has to ban her, but at a certain point there is no valid reason to engage with someone (in a group context) who doesn't engage back. If you have friends you think are depressed or have something else going on, by all means reach out, but thats not the same thing.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  I came here to make a feelgood response and I’m shocked by the highly upvoted grumpiness! “It costs nothing to be kind.” Whenever I go anywhere or make plans to do something social, I try to invite everyone I can. You’re sending the invite already, the marginal extra keystrokes it takes to add someone is trivial. And even if you know they’re not interested, the invitation might bring them some joy, so why not? Life is not a game where people build up points with you and you start to be kind to them only if they maintain themselves above a threshold.
NuclearPM 1y ago
> To which I'd love to respond with s/any more/ever/ What does that mean?
- GreenWatermelon 1y ago
  `s` is a replace command, so parent is saying "substitute 'anymore' with 'ever' "
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  It's a sed command, which (as the other poster said) replaces the first occurrence of the first string with the second in some document.
lynnharry 1y ago
First year in collage is probably a rare case. Everyone is in a new environment and everyone's social group is quite limited. They probably know that they're Anna's only social connnection at the campus so the effort can be worthwhile.
stevage 1y ago
I knew a guy who had a clear "three strikes rule". If you turned down invitations three times in a row, you were told clearly that you weren't getting any more invites until you had extended one yourself. It's pretty fair. These days I know a lot of busy people, so my softer version is, if I invite you to a thing and three times in a row you don't even reply, I'll probably just quietly stop inviting you altogether. I'm ok to keep you on the list if you make the effort to reply and explain why you can't come.
- jll29 1y ago
  You bringing in the "three strikes rule", I'm reminded of game theory. They have the famous (repeat) prisoner's game, where two parties decide to either collaborate or to screw the other party. People ran software simulations of various strategies, and the winner is: Tit for tat. In other words, you start positive (invite), and stay like that until the other person screws you. They you screw them once next time and turn collaborative again immediately after (no hard feelings). I'm not advocating you play the prisoner's game on people, but it's interesting that people worked formally on something relating to this.
  - stavros 1y ago
    AFAIK the strategy was slightly different: You start collaborative, and then simply repeat the other person's last action. This means that, if they screw you, you keep screwing them until they turn collaborative, at which point you collaborate in the next iteration.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - waterhouse 1y ago
      Yup. In real situations, one element is that sometimes things are misunderstood, and in particular sometimes collaborating is mistaken for defecting, so if all sides are playing pure tit-for-tat, then one can end up in a defect-defect loop forever (or, I guess, until the opposite misinterpretation occurs). Therefore, an element of forgiveness (some percent chance that you'll respond to a defect with a cooperate) can be helpful.
Vinnl 1y ago
I don't think you always have to invite every Anna to everything. Usually, there are somewhat natural groups that are relevant to invite, and you invite the Anna's that are part of that. So if I'm having drinks with colleagues, I'll also invite my colleague Anna, but not my former college classmate Anna. Nowadays this happens even more naturally, as my different groups will also be organised in their own Signal groups. So I'll just send a group message to my colleagues group, and there will always be people in there that never go - but they're welcome to.
- dmesg 1y ago
  This, especially since I don't want to come off with tech bro vibes by asking "Would you like $thing?": [YES!!!] / [Remind me later™]
slumberlust 1y ago
I'll initiate three or four times before I pull back and let them show some interest. Family friends are an exception.
egorfine 1y ago
> your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens Yes. The strategy outlined in the article works for college, but really afterwards. It's really creepy to constantly invite someone who has clearly stated intentions of never joining.

efsavage 1y ago

I overheard two very outgoing co-workers once, where one asked the other if he was having his holiday party. "It was last weekend", he said. "Oh, I didn't get an invite" "That's because you never come" She looked shocked, I think she genuinely didn't know what to say. After an awkward silence she said, "but I liked to be invited" "I'll happily invite you next year if you promise to come" She smiled politely and walked away. It was memorable to me because it was such a foreign interaction on both sides from my perspective.

dexterdog 1y ago
It's probably just ego on the one side. That person likes to be invited to feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship. If I were the other person I would make sure that invitation is never extended.
- squigz 1y ago
  I'm so glad I don't understand and thus can't play these games with people. It sounds tiring.
  - snapcaster 1y ago
    What part don't you understand? I'm sure you engage with other forms of social status and signaling and this one seems pretty straightforward
    - Zenbit_UX 1y ago
      I believe they were implying they don’t get social cues due to neurodivergence, likely autism. Hilariously you’re also not picking up on their social cues and implications, which is likewise telling.
      - squigz 1y ago
        Quite right. Reading such intense motives behind such simple interactions is one of those allistic things that has me going like ???
        bckr 1y ago
        It’s perhaps even more maddening than that. Even if all these factors are at play, it doesn’t mean they actually matter all that much to anyone involved. These two coworkers might otherwise really get along and respect each other, but this is one of the games that they are playing with each other. On the surface, implicitly negotiating over who is more important sounds horribly dramatic, but it’s a game that’s happening constantly among everyone. Usually folks push and pull over some equilibrium point, one person making concessions, then the other, in turns, with the actual hierarchy determining roughly how many turns each person should concede before making a demand of the other. This is where you get dynamics like “he’s a very demanding boss but he cares a lot about his employees” (high amplitude of switching between demand and concession) or “she’s very sharp but also hard to get along with” (doesn’t concede enough to make others feel important). Concession in this game can be anything, small to large, from being the one who opens the door to let the other through, to offering help during personal problems, to letting someone take more credit on a collaboration. But, again, these are all played in the implicit layer. They can be raised to the explicit layer by having a “heart to heart”, like “you’re always so kind. I appreciated when you did XYZ”, or “I’d really like if sometimes you did ABC”.
- mock-possum 1y ago
  Oh wow that is foreign to me, but I’m sure you’re right - Collecting invites you never intend to answer just sounds like… I don’t know, some sort of weird social hoarding. If somebody I don’t want to hang out with keeps inviting me that doesn’t make me feel good about myself, that makes me feel anxious, like I haven’t properly clarified our relationship with them. > That person likes to be invited to feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship. For me, I would expect the opposite - if you get invited all the time but never come, it’s because you’re not actually involved in their life, you’re not actually all that valuable. In order to be valuable you’d have to be making the effort to be present, or at the very least, communicating your availability so the other person would better understand when it’s appropriate to expect you.
  - mac-mc 1y ago
    It is ultimately a form of insecurity.
- teapot7 1y ago
  Or because they're shy and antisocial but it's nice to think that they're part of the gang - as the original article was all about.
  - nine_k 1y ago
    It's understandable, but in no way nice. One side is going to bring their authentic shy and antisocial self, and stonewall the invitations, while the other side needs to keep smiling and send invitations no matter what. This sounds slightly lopsided, doesn't it? If you would like the other side to do you a small favor every time, it's worth considering to do the same. At least respond to the invitation with gratitude and a hope to maybe do it next time.
    - volemo 1y ago
      People have different capacity for social "niceties". Sometimes I'm full of energy and am happy to be Alexei for someone, sometimes I am Anna.
    - BeetleB 1y ago
      > while the other side needs to keep smiling and send invitations no matter what. No one is suggesting one needs to. It's a choice. And when you make it a choice, it is indeed nice.
  - WA 1y ago
    You can overcome shyness to some extend. Not getting invited anymore can also be a sign that the shy person has to change something about their behavior, instead of all others just accepting that.
    - mrheosuper 1y ago
      >the shy person has to change something about their behavior This is like asking depressing people to stop being "depressing"
- singhrac 1y ago
  Who cares if they feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship? Do you decide your framework based on mental games other people might play? Decide if extending an invite that is declined will cost you something (food, space, etc.) and whether you want the person there.
- watwut 1y ago
  > That person likes to be invited to feel like they are the more valuable person in the relationship Or it was just a comment without any major feelings of dominance attached to it. Some people interpret everything as a status fight, but most dont.
- mfru 1y ago
  That sounds like you projecting onto others
jacquesm 1y ago
You can't feel powerful by rejecting an invitation that you never receive in the first place.

type0 1y ago

> By the time you get to my age, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's. By the time facebook has been used to plan events, your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens, because Anna doesn't use fb and it's too difficult to send sms's. You simply cannot keep this up with all the Anna's.

BeetleB 1y ago
I have no idea what you're trying to say, but FWIW I never used social networks - at least not the ones you can use to plan events (LinkedIn doesn't count).
- type0 1y ago
  Alice and Bob are planning a party, they might invite Anna but don't want Mallory to show up and ruin everything so they turn to Facebook and create a closed group for party planning. Anna, being privacy conscious, doesn't use fb and expects to receive an invite on Signal. But Alice and Bob decide not to invite Anna because they're Danish politicians and Anna is against Chat Control.
  - alex1138 1y ago
    To further the analogy, Alice and Bob decide on potentially emailing Anna instead but Zuckerberg is such a megalomaniac that he's overriden everybody's email addresses https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433 ("But that's on Facebook, which Anna doesn't have" - true, but apparently syncing contacts with Facebook - something FB presumably often does automatically - will wipe out email addresses of your contacts)

63stack 1y ago

I had the same opinion and I am surprised by the amount of feelgood responses in this thread. Anna needs to realize that the amount of people who have the time and willingness to invite someone out for _years_ while receicing no is very low. These friends need to be treasured and appreciated, and Anna needs to make an effort by saying yes sometimes, or at least expressing what she's going through. The friends are making an effort by keeping her in the group, she needs to do the same.

BeetleB 1y ago
My comment was not meant as a judgment on Anna, and if she's depressed, I would not put this kind of onus on her. I was merely pointing out that most people who don't respond or always say "no" are not like the Anna in this submission. If I know someone who is in similar shoes as Anna, then I have no problem continuing to invite.
dvsfish 1y ago
100% agree. You'd start to think "Anna doesn't like us" and just move on. Despite what they're going through, some level of responsibility falls on them to express a sense of "it's not you it's me", if they legitimately do want to remain part of the friend group. Not engaging with the friend group is effectively the same as not being a part of it. If the "pleasant feeling of being included in the group" is the entirety of your involvement, it's actually a somewhat selfish and shallow position after a while. That's not to say that the group has to ban her, but at a certain point there is no valid reason to engage with someone (in a group context) who doesn't engage back. If you have friends you think are depressed or have something else going on, by all means reach out, but thats not the same thing.
ryandrake 1y ago
I came here to make a feelgood response and I’m shocked by the highly upvoted grumpiness! “It costs nothing to be kind.” Whenever I go anywhere or make plans to do something social, I try to invite everyone I can. You’re sending the invite already, the marginal extra keystrokes it takes to add someone is trivial. And even if you know they’re not interested, the invitation might bring them some joy, so why not? Life is not a game where people build up points with you and you start to be kind to them only if they maintain themselves above a threshold.

NuclearPM 1y ago

> To which I'd love to respond with s/any more/ever/ What does that mean?

GreenWatermelon 1y ago
`s` is a replace command, so parent is saying "substitute 'anymore' with 'ever' "
bigstrat2003 1y ago
It's a sed command, which (as the other poster said) replaces the first occurrence of the first string with the second in some document.

lynnharry 1y ago

First year in collage is probably a rare case. Everyone is in a new environment and everyone's social group is quite limited. They probably know that they're Anna's only social connnection at the campus so the effort can be worthwhile.

stevage 1y ago

I knew a guy who had a clear "three strikes rule". If you turned down invitations three times in a row, you were told clearly that you weren't getting any more invites until you had extended one yourself. It's pretty fair. These days I know a lot of busy people, so my softer version is, if I invite you to a thing and three times in a row you don't even reply, I'll probably just quietly stop inviting you altogether. I'm ok to keep you on the list if you make the effort to reply and explain why you can't come.

jll29 1y ago
You bringing in the "three strikes rule", I'm reminded of game theory. They have the famous (repeat) prisoner's game, where two parties decide to either collaborate or to screw the other party. People ran software simulations of various strategies, and the winner is: Tit for tat. In other words, you start positive (invite), and stay like that until the other person screws you. They you screw them once next time and turn collaborative again immediately after (no hard feelings). I'm not advocating you play the prisoner's game on people, but it's interesting that people worked formally on something relating to this.
- stavros 1y ago
  AFAIK the strategy was slightly different: You start collaborative, and then simply repeat the other person's last action. This means that, if they screw you, you keep screwing them until they turn collaborative, at which point you collaborate in the next iteration.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - waterhouse 1y ago
    Yup. In real situations, one element is that sometimes things are misunderstood, and in particular sometimes collaborating is mistaken for defecting, so if all sides are playing pure tit-for-tat, then one can end up in a defect-defect loop forever (or, I guess, until the opposite misinterpretation occurs). Therefore, an element of forgiveness (some percent chance that you'll respond to a defect with a cooperate) can be helpful.

Vinnl 1y ago

I don't think you always have to invite every Anna to everything. Usually, there are somewhat natural groups that are relevant to invite, and you invite the Anna's that are part of that. So if I'm having drinks with colleagues, I'll also invite my colleague Anna, but not my former college classmate Anna. Nowadays this happens even more naturally, as my different groups will also be organised in their own Signal groups. So I'll just send a group message to my colleagues group, and there will always be people in there that never go - but they're welcome to.

dmesg 1y ago
This, especially since I don't want to come off with tech bro vibes by asking "Would you like $thing?": [YES!!!] / [Remind me later™]

slumberlust 1y ago

I'll initiate three or four times before I pull back and let them show some interest. Family friends are an exception.

egorfine 1y ago

> your list of potential Anna's will be in the high dozens Yes. The strategy outlined in the article works for college, but really afterwards. It's really creepy to constantly invite someone who has clearly stated intentions of never joining.