Live data from Hacker News

Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

bail-app.netlify.com

121–130 of 168 posts

Re: Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

#121
post #117
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people here are missing the point. Let me tell you a story. Wednesdays, my friends and I go to the bar to hang out. We grab some beers and some wings, and we have a bit of a chat about, y'know, whatever. Sometimes we're around because someone just wants some company. Sometimes we're around because someone just wants to gripe about something going on. Sometimes we're there because... well, some Wednes…

I feel like if you really wanted to use technology to fix this issue, it's just as easily -- and maybe better? -- done in a more affirmative way. Say you have a repeating calendar invite for your nights out. Everyone agrees that they'll leave the invitation un-responded until they definitively do or do not want to meet up. If, within an hour or so (or whatever) of the meeting time, no one has replied "yes" to the inv…

I feel like it being implicitly cancelled would be a bug, not a feature, but maybe that's because my scenario is, generally speaking, a positive thing that most people want to attend, and increasing friction is just not something anyone wants.

We're mostly just agreeing about the idea and nitpicking about the particulars, though.

Re: Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

#123
post #120
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dishonesty doesn't help anybody, and it makes navigating the relationship more difficult for all parties. Empathic dishonesty is a consequence of poor social skills, where people don't know how to be truthful and set boundaries without being hurtful.

So says you. Like I said, I know people like this, and I am not willing to label them as people who have poor social skills or other disparaging things. I don't consider this category of dishonesty to be one that a person necessarily needs to correct, if there are approaches to the scenario where the conflict between honesty and empathy that conflict for them could allow the person to live more according to their val…

Your suggestion that honesty and empathy are in conflict implies that honest people are less empathetic, which is at least as disparaging as anything I said.

I'm not suggesting it's something they need to correct. The problem tends to solve itself through selection. Flaky people hang out with other flaky people. Dishonest people have dishonest friends. Mercenary and opportunistic people have friends who are likewise.

Why bother with these elaborate rationalizations to justify dishonesty?

Re: Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

#124
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent you're replying to, but I agree with their perspective for the most part. I think absolutes are silly to use as arguments, and sure, there are certainly some people for whom it's really difficult to proactively cancel plans. Sometimes I'm that person. But I choose to suck it up and act like a human instead of (if I were to use this app) hiding behind a computer to let it do my dirty work for me. I cert…

When I say that you're underestimating the number of people who have these types of anxieties, I don't mean it in the way I might say, "you'd be surprised how many people have PTSD", or "more people than you think are homeless." What I mean is that there are a lot of completely normal people that you probably meet every single day who feel this way about social interactions. The reason you find that hard to believe i…

I think there are limits, though, to caring about people's preferences. To me, dealing with people who make me jump through hoops to successfully communicate with them is an incredibly draining, patience-testing, tedious activity. For some people it's worth it, and for others it's not; I've definitely reduced my level of interaction with some people due to this.

I used to be very introverted and shy, and I still hate doing things like answering the phone or talking in person to people I don't know (and I still work on improving there). But I've learned that communicating with the people around me who care about me (and vice versa) is nothing to be anxious about. It's taken literally decades for me to get here (I now consider myself a somewhat-shy extrovert), but I do feel that my life is better having (mostly) left that anxiety behind. I don't see this as some "personal preference" type of thing; I mean, social anxiety disorder is, well, actually a disorder listed in the DSM.

Your analogy about Candy Crush doesn't really speak to me, because I absolutely agree that there's nothing wrong with killing time with a silly game when you're in a situation where you have to wait (with the exception of games that deliberately and maliciously hook into addictive tendencies). But I do think that an inability/aversion/anxiety around basic communication between friends is actually a problem. I'm not saying that people who have these issues are bad people or anything like that, but I would hope that people with those issues actually view them as issues, and not just a "style of communication" or whatever.

Beyond that, one possibility is that this app just won't gain much traction, and it'll either fail or find a small niche. Otherwise, I just don't see this as something that people will use in moderation. I feel like the people who do genuinely need it (due to introversion or social anxiety or something like that) will use it frequently, and will end up bailing on more activities than they would have otherwise (which sometimes will be good and sometimes will be bad). And I think other people, who don't really have introversion issues, will use it as a way to make rude flakiness easier to justify, and have a normalizing effect on that kind of behavior.

Re: Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

#125
post #121
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like if you really wanted to use technology to fix this issue, it's just as easily -- and maybe better? -- done in a more affirmative way. Say you have a repeating calendar invite for your nights out. Everyone agrees that they'll leave the invitation un-responded until they definitively do or do not want to meet up. If, within an hour or so (or whatever) of the meeting time, no one has replied "yes" to the inv…

I feel like it being implicitly cancelled would be a bug, not a feature, but maybe that's because my scenario is, generally speaking, a positive thing that most people want to attend, and increasing friction is just not something anyone wants. We're mostly just agreeing about the idea and nitpicking about the particulars, though.

Yeah, that's a good point. I think I personally like the idea of a default-on get-together vs. one where people have to opt-in week after week. And, again, I do agree that your use case would be a really benign and useful way to solve your problem.

Re: Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder who bailed first?

Did they use the app? Talk about dogfooding...

Yea, they had an entry "work on startup" in it and realized all the founders had chosen to bail so the project got canceled

Re: Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

#127
post #106
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That... also sounds worse. This is all just advocating for not actually communicating with your friends. That's not friendship, that's transactional hanging-out.

I think a lot of people here are missing the point. Let me tell you a story. Wednesdays, my friends and I go to the bar to hang out. We grab some beers and some wings, and we have a bit of a chat about, y'know, whatever. Sometimes we're around because someone just wants some company. Sometimes we're around because someone just wants to gripe about something going on. Sometimes we're there because... well, some Wednes…

I get what you're saying, but with both these scenarios -- (1) "going out when you don't feel like it because a friend needs your support" or (2) "telling a friend you don't feel like going out because you're feeling down, but they realize they have the energy between the both of you to buoy your low spirit" -- these are both important social negotiations that make us better at human'ing. An app that attempts to take them away is one that makes us less good at being the best sort of human to one another, imho (and more likely to fall behind on the practices that keep social anxiety at bay).

All just my opinion of course, and spoken from a place of care :)

Re: Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

#129
post #55

I thought this was going to be a service to schedule robocalls to your phone: Robocaller: "Hello is this $FIRST_NAME $LAST_NAME?" Happy customer acting surprised: "Why yes it is. May I ask who is calling at such an hour? I'm hanging out with my friends." Robocaller: "Yes this is $AUTHORITY. We need you to do $MANDATORY_TASK immediately. Happy customer acting surprised: "Oh my! Okay, I'll be there soon." Happy custome…

I'd pay for that just for the lulz

Re: Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

#130

Is this even a thing or just a landing page with an email harvester?

Ugh, I missed that.

All: Show HN requires that a thing exists and that people can try it out. A sign up page doesn't count. Please read the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

Post reply on HN