Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity' • Hacker News Board

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#31

Post by DoreenMichele » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 6:50 PM UTC

itronitron wrote: post #24

headcanon wrote: post #13

This article seems more related to social media, but my experience with toxic positivity at some former workplaces took the form of "Our startup is the best! We're so much better than all our competitors. Everything they do is wrong, and we do everything better!", which is a fine attitude to have in general, until its objectively not true, and I'm afraid to even say anything for fear of being a "hater". A "Salesperso…

While working in a startup for several years I became fairly practiced at running everything our CEO said through an internal BS meter and have found it incredibly useful in every workplace since then. The spectrum is 'true', 'optimistic', 'possibly true', 'not quite', 'probably lying', 'lying', 'lying to themselves'. During any company meeting I would keep a mental tally of how each statement measured up and used th…

'lying to themselves'

In my twenties, I concluded that most people lying to me were actually lying to themselves. They weren't trying to make my life harder or deceive me per se. It was simply not possible to state the truth to someone else and keep lying to themselves.

It made social BS vastly easier for me to cope with.

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#32

Post by moosey » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

I would propose a corollary in regards to toxic positivity: Even if you are a happy, positive person, just in general, try to be available for people that having issues like the author of the article.

I disagree with the writer of the article about how important positive thinking is. I believe the gap is in how we try to help people become more positive: a walk and letting people vent a bit is probably far superior to informing them that they should think positively, and will more quickly lead to that resilience that, I think, improves quality of life.

For some people, it can be easy to be happy, and letting people know that their negative feelings have a good reason for existing, I imagine, is cathartic. Teaching people how to have more emotional resilience would probably also be valuable.

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#33

Post by mcguire » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #22

zwieback wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon after our first was born my wife asked her moms group: 'is four in the afternoon too early to have a beer?'. They answered: 'Oh, no, we've discussed it extensively and three o'clock is fine.' Nothing wrong with being an ambitious mom but you need to pick the right support group and it's probably not instagram.

One of my hobbies tends to attract a fairly rural and blue collar crowd (or at least more rural and blue collar than Reddit and HN) and the requirements of the hobby mean that you probably have your shit together at least a little bit. The "everything else" sub-forum on our forum is so good at giving life advice that it's become a running joke. This sounds like exactly the kind of answer their wives would give. That…

Would it be too personal to tell us what the hobby is? (I've never seen one that requires you to have your shit together, any at all.)

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#34

Post by byproxy » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

RandomInteger4 wrote: post #11

I'd rather see this so called "toxic positivity" than people patting each other on the back and reinforcing their depression and mental health issues as though it were an identity or something to form a community around. It sounds harsh, but there are so many counter productive behaviors people engage in while meaning well with regard to mental health issues on social media. One I see often is that people are effecti…

I definitely relate to what you're saying, but finding a community of like-minded down-n-out individuals can be somewhat therapeutic in itself. Assuming you're all able to laugh about it, that is.

http://www.mytinyphone.com/uploads/users/uzueta/387840.jpg

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#35

Post by brooklyn_ashey » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #7

For a more in-depth look at this, I heartily recommend Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America

Thank you for this- was trying to think of that book. The positivity culture, in my view anyway, was the far-reaching soft-spoken herald of a growing fascism in our work cluture. It is not hard to see why it would need hardcore deployment in these times.

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#36

Post by throwaway123x2 » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

pickle-wizard wrote: post #30

jedberg wrote: post #2

I'm constantly having to remind my wife that she's a good mother. She keeps seeing all the posts on Facebook from her groups about how some woman made dinner, built a diorama and made enough to buy a new purse from her side business all in one day! And she thinks she's a slacker because "all" she can do is feed the kids and read them a story. I have to keep telling her that she's only seeing the highlight reel of tho…

This place gets that ways some times. I like reading the comments here, as there are a lot of insightful comments that I often learn more from than the article itself. Though sometimes it feels that if you are not working at one of the FAANGs making $400k/year that you are a total loser.

Yup, I feel like a total loser when I see posts like that.

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#37

Post by erulabs » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #33

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my hobbies tends to attract a fairly rural and blue collar crowd (or at least more rural and blue collar than Reddit and HN) and the requirements of the hobby mean that you probably have your shit together at least a little bit. The "everything else" sub-forum on our forum is so good at giving life advice that it's become a running joke. This sounds like exactly the kind of answer their wives would give. That…

Would it be too personal to tell us what the hobby is? (I've never seen one that requires you to have your shit together, any at all.)

While not entirely requiring your life to be together, any significantly tough outdoors activity tends to get an interesting group. Local search and rescue volunteer hiking groups, for example, tends to be a weird mix of geology teachers, ex-marines and firefighters, and nerdy hiker types.

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#38

Post by MockObject » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 7:02 PM UTC

headcanon wrote: post #19

xrd wrote: post #5

There is science to suggest that negative talk can influence your mental health in deleterious ways. Words do create a reality to some extent, great or small. There is no science (at least none that I know of) that indicates that someone telling you this fact helps you get out of this mode of being. Therein lies the rub.

Mind over matter is definitely a thing, but where it becomes toxic is if you choose to ignore problems in order to keep the good vibes going, and could lead to a worse outcome than if you kept an objective mind. Reality distortion fields only work if they actually influence reality, and not just your perception of it. With that said, I have a friend who is in a depression rut. He hates his job but believes any other…

> Reality distortion fields only work if they actually influence reality, and not just your perception of it.

eg Billy McFarland, Elizabeth Holmes...

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#39

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

mbostleman wrote: post #8

So on the other hand there is a toxic negativity that seems to reign in pop culture where people's impression of many things in society in general are on the pessimistic side of what real data shows. I wonder if this tendency towards toxic positivity in social media is some kind of equal but opposite effect that acts as a balance.

I don't see the dominance of negativity in pop culture. Just browsing through the top songs on itunes right now, about half appear to be in some way positive about finding love, overcoming something etc. The other half do seem negative, but that's not dominance, that's 50/50. Then there's other avenues of pop culture, like movies. Literally the most popular movies in the world for most of the past decade have been about people with awesome super powers coming together to do what's right and overcome evil. So again, not really negative.

Re: Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

#40

Post by bena » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

headcanon wrote: post #19

xrd wrote: post #5

There is science to suggest that negative talk can influence your mental health in deleterious ways. Words do create a reality to some extent, great or small. There is no science (at least none that I know of) that indicates that someone telling you this fact helps you get out of this mode of being. Therein lies the rub.

Mind over matter is definitely a thing, but where it becomes toxic is if you choose to ignore problems in order to keep the good vibes going, and could lead to a worse outcome than if you kept an objective mind. Reality distortion fields only work if they actually influence reality, and not just your perception of it. With that said, I have a friend who is in a depression rut. He hates his job but believes any other…

I think people think confuse pessimism with acknowledging negative things.

Being happy won't stop your house from burning down. It's fine to acknowledge that your house is burning down. What you can't do is sit on the floor and cry about it. You have to believe you can handle the situation. By getting out, getting the fire department, etc.

Optimism is the belief that no matter what happens, you can handle it. Not that everything is good. Optimism is a "short memory".