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Rejection Therapy (2011)

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Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#91

Post by extheat »

munificent wrote: post #66
exo-pla-net wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sketchy if you frame it in such an awful, uncharitable way. Behold: Talking about the weather = using strangers as unwitting tools in your compulsive need for social interaction. How about rejection therapy = "Harmlessly interacting with other humans to overcome your trauma, so you can become a more productive member of society"?

Asking someone the weather is not at all the same. The whole point of "rejection therapy" is to interact with a stranger that pushes against their boundaries such that they feel the need to assert themselves in order to reject you. I'm all about helping people overcome their trauma, but not at the expense of making nonconsenting strangers uncomfortable.

Non consenting to what? A conversation? Do people need consent now to talk to other strangers? Should people look away from problems and mind their own business? I don’t know but comments like these don’t seem healthy to me.

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#92

Post by CaptainZapp »

mettamage wrote: post #90
klabb3 wrote: post #36

Slightly OT: It seems to me that a large part of our social fabric is based on chance encounters. Talking to strangers in passing, as you go about your day to day business. With increasing digitalization, especially in the first world, we're quickly losing these opportunities. There is often no longer any need to talk to anyone when buying groceries, running errands, asking for directions, etc. All of these are poten…

I've sometimes tried to meet people on Hacker News. But I do think it's harder, because you can't actually be with them at the same place. The conversations I've had were always nice, but apparently in order for friendship to become a thing, something more needs to happen. If anyone lives in Amsterdam and wants to meet a fellow HN'er, have a cup of coffee/tea, feel free to email me.

Create a post under "Ask HN" or "Tell HN".

A few years ago I was in thread where it turned out that a couple of the commenters lived in Zurich. We thought a meet up would be a nice idea and created such a post.

Maybe a dozen people met up in a public place for beers and chats.

The effort was totally minimal and you'll find that enough participants live in Amsterdam and enjoy hooking up for such a gathering.

The only challenge, I think, is to find a public venue, which offers enough space for such an impromptu meetup.

In the Zurich case we met at http://www.ziegelohlac.ch/ (sorry, page in German) which offers enough seating and when the weather is nice, seating is essentially unlimited.

How do you identify the group? Well, we just scribbled it on an A4 page. But that wouldn't even have been necessary. You know them when you see them.

Good luck.

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#93

Post by klabb3 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #61
klabb3 wrote: post #36

Slightly OT: It seems to me that a large part of our social fabric is based on chance encounters. Talking to strangers in passing, as you go about your day to day business. With increasing digitalization, especially in the first world, we're quickly losing these opportunities. There is often no longer any need to talk to anyone when buying groceries, running errands, asking for directions, etc. All of these are poten…

honestly i think it’s a shame that online ways to meet people are inferior than chance encounters. Chance encounters rely on luck, with online you get filters and algorithms to pair you with similar people. Unfortunately the filters filter out good people, the algorithms are shoddy and gamed, and you genuinely don’t know if who you meet online is some weirdo who could turn out to harass or stalk you (of course there…

> Chance encounters rely on luck, with online you get filters and algorithms to pair you with similar people.

Agreed, but this change in topology isn't obviously beneficial or desirable. Superficial interest based similarities are not necessarily a good predictor of meaningfulness, and likely a negative predictor for understanding and acceptance of people who are different from us.

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#94

Post by munificent »

extheat wrote: post #91
munificent wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking someone the weather is not at all the same. The whole point of "rejection therapy" is to interact with a stranger that pushes against their boundaries such that they feel the need to assert themselves in order to reject you. I'm all about helping people overcome their trauma, but not at the expense of making nonconsenting strangers uncomfortable.

Non consenting to what? A conversation? Do people need consent now to talk to other strangers? Should people look away from problems and mind their own business? I don’t know but comments like these don’t seem healthy to me.

I feel like we're talking past each other.

Did you read the article? Rejection therapy isn't just talking to someone. It's making some kind of request of them that you know they don't want to do in order to force them to actively reject you so that you can experience the rejection.

It's not, "Hey, how's the weather." It's, "Can I see what's in your wallet?"

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#95

Post by munificent »

beaconstudios wrote: post #72
munificent wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not rejection therapy. That's just talking to strangers, which is totally reasonable. The point of rejection therapy is to make a request in a pushy enough way for something that the other person doesn't want to do that they end up assertively saying no. It's not "friendly offer therapy" or "polite decline therapy".

Alright then, how about asking out random people on a date after like a 2 minute conversation? That's a kind of rejection people often fear the most but it's also fairly normal to ask people out after a little small talk. My point is that you don't have to push other people into strange territory to get rejected.

> Alright then, how about asking out random people on a date after like a 2 minute conversation?

If it's not your honest intention to date them, that's still a shitty thing to do.

Would you want someone doing this to you?

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#96

Post by beaconstudios »

munificent wrote: post #95
beaconstudios wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright then, how about asking out random people on a date after like a 2 minute conversation? That's a kind of rejection people often fear the most but it's also fairly normal to ask people out after a little small talk. My point is that you don't have to push other people into strange territory to get rejected.

> Alright then, how about asking out random people on a date after like a 2 minute conversation? If it's not your honest intention to date them, that's still a shitty thing to do. Would you want someone doing this to you?

I was thinking that you'd actually ask out people you're attracted to. Why would you be nervous to be rejected by someone you wouldn't actually want to date and thus weren't invested in the answer?

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#97

Post by nuclearnice1 »

openknot wrote: post #83
nuclearnice1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. He doesn’t even want these things. May I try on your sunglasses? Can I have a taste of your ice cream? I guess they set the bar low to encourage the experimenters. “Don’t worry you can ask for anything — ask for a dollar! Borrow their newspaper!” I would be more open to it if they had done some thinking. What’s something you genuinely need? Go ask for it. But I guess that’s not as simple. This is ju…

I had a different impression about the magnitude of the requests from your comment than from the article. I pictured the "ice cream" request as asking a person with an ice cream code to let you have a taste, but there's a nuance: the article doesn't actually refer to ice cream, and it looks like it would involve asking a food sample from a store. From the article: "Examples would be asking for their newspaper, or ask…

Thanks for your detailed thoughts.

On the ice cream, I was referring to this catchy tune and Apple advertising:

https://youtu.be/h6o51Qr7cPU

Enjoy!

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#98

Post by munificent »

beaconstudios wrote: post #96
munificent wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alright then, how about asking out random people on a date after like a 2 minute conversation? If it's not your honest intention to date them, that's still a shitty thing to do. Would you want someone doing this to you?

I was thinking that you'd actually ask out people you're attracted to. Why would you be nervous to be rejected by someone you wouldn't actually want to date and thus weren't invested in the answer?

> I was thinking that you'd actually ask out people you're attracted to.

At that point, you're not doing "rejection therapy", you're just asking people out.

> Why would you be nervous to be rejected by someone you wouldn't actually want to date and thus weren't invested in the answer?

The premise behind rejection therapy is that some people do feel intense anxiety about being rejected even in cases where the stakes are low like this, and deliberately seeking rejection is essentially exposure therapy to get over that.

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#99

Post by beaconstudios »

munificent wrote: post #98
beaconstudios wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking that you'd actually ask out people you're attracted to. Why would you be nervous to be rejected by someone you wouldn't actually want to date and thus weren't invested in the answer?

> I was thinking that you'd actually ask out people you're attracted to. At that point, you're not doing "rejection therapy", you're just asking people out. > Why would you be nervous to be rejected by someone you wouldn't actually want to date and thus weren't invested in the answer? The premise behind rejection therapy is that some people do feel intense anxiety about being rejected even in cases where the stakes a…

OK I could keep trying to come up with off-the-cuff examples and you could keep throwing asterisks on them, but instead I'll just say this: I think you can do rejection therapy with the public without putting people into a weird place.

Re: Rejection Therapy (2011)

#100

Post by morelisp »

whatshisface wrote: post #25
sacrosancty wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ, why so much hand-wringing? MLM salesmen exist, religious prostheletizers exist, weird people exist. We manage to stay friendly regardless, even towards those people who often open their conversation with something dishonest to hide their true intent. Society isn't going to be altered by some wave of asking-for-favors fad. It's all perfectly fine.

> MLM salesmen exist, religious prostheletizers exist, weird people exist. Those three groups contribute substantially to what people expect when they meet a stranger in public and adding more disingenuous possibilities would make it worse.

Since the context of this event was a rationality seminar, I think it even counts as a hat-trick.
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