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Toxic Positivity

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Re: Toxic Positivity

#51

Post by stackbutterflow »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #40
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of toxic empathy?

I don't know what the official definition is, but I'd consider deliberate mirroring of posture, online tone, and emotional state for conscious deceptive, and manipulative ends to be toxic empathy. Trivial example - phone services with the stock "Your call is important to us but we're experiencing an unusually high level of calls right now" message. When the truth is the company is spending a bare minimum on phone sup…

That sounds like most CEOs jumping on an HN thread when there is an article denouncing there company.

They follow the same pattern. Start with "Hey! SomeStartup CEO here."

Then proceed to explain that they are happy about the feedbacks and that they hear the complains. Followed by more words that could have been written by GPT-3.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#52

Post by galoisgirl »

robertlagrant wrote: post #26

Just using the word "toxic" as a binary classifier of "things I don't like" is a problem. That includes people not being positive enough.

I don't mind it that much for things, but I hate it used towards people.

I think few people are that bad that you need to isolate yourself from them. In most cases, you can learn not to take their criticism, not to give into their games...

Re: Toxic Positivity

#53

Post by cgrealy »

orwin wrote: post #48
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people just want to be modest and realistic. They don't like decorating things, telling half-truths or flat-out lying about the truth. Both being overly positive and being overly negative do this. However, from personal experience, most places which affect one's personal life and cannot be reasonably skipped (unless you wish to live close to a poverty wage, and even that is questionable) emphasize being more…

I quit my job because I was a bit bored, my new job isn't better, but at least I have 10 weeks of vacations, and my 35h a week allows me to enjoy my life without sacrificing either sleep or family when I'm not traveling. Is this toxic positivity?

Sounds more like a humblebrag to me.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#54

Post by FargaColora »

I consider YouTube comments to be an example of "toxic positivity".

YouTube are using AI to only show "postive" comments first, but the overall effect is a bizarre cultish "uncanny valley" approximation of how a real community react.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#55

Post by cpill »

Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #50
mlindner wrote: post #44

How about the toxicity of attacking positivity? This world has WAY too much negativity right now and it's downright harmful to human psyche. People are freaking giving up on the world and deciding that they should never have children because they think they'd just be bring them into a doomed world. That's when you know negativity has gone so far. Some toxic positivity on the odd occasion to counteract the nonsensical…

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Re: Toxic Positivity

#56

Post by HyprMusic »

mlindner wrote: post #44

How about the toxicity of attacking positivity? This world has WAY too much negativity right now and it's downright harmful to human psyche. People are freaking giving up on the world and deciding that they should never have children because they think they'd just be bring them into a doomed world. That's when you know negativity has gone so far. Some toxic positivity on the odd occasion to counteract the nonsensical…

You're exhibiting the exact behaviour that you're chastising by negatively focusing on points the article didn't even make. The article promotes genuine positivity and human emotion whilst considering the circumstances of those around you.

Please take a second to read the HN guidelines if you genuinely want to make HN (and the world) a more positive and constructive place: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Toxic Positivity

#57

Post by stavros »

Veen wrote: post #18
groceryheist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree! This was disjointed and didn't have a point. Wish I could downvote.

Part of the disjointedness comes from the writer's apparent obsession with over-simple language and very short sentences made by chopping up longer sentences. It's a good example of what happens when inexperienced writers rely on readability tools like Readable (it's on the Readable blog).

> It’s natural to emulate what we see online. But, going overboard on the ‘positive vibes’ may affect your content.

Agreed, come on, splitting the sentence there just made it worse. Unlike many people, I'm not opposed to sentences that start with "but", but here it serves no purpose. It's not like we have an attention span of six words.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#58

Post by samhw »

Veen wrote: post #18
groceryheist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree! This was disjointed and didn't have a point. Wish I could downvote.

Part of the disjointedness comes from the writer's apparent obsession with over-simple language and very short sentences made by chopping up longer sentences. It's a good example of what happens when inexperienced writers rely on readability tools like Readable (it's on the Readable blog).

Yeah, I don't want to be cruel, in case the author is reading this, but it really is uniquely egregious writing (no toxic positivity here!). The broken-up sentences you mention are. Awkward and mostly grammatically inco. Rrect as a result. They seem weirdly unaware of the incredibly basic writer's injunction to vary your sentence length. There's no rhythm or cadence to it. You can literally feel the author grimly trudging toward the target word count.

It feels completely disconnected from anything real, full of unevocative abstract nouns connected with unevocative abstract verbs. "Don't be too hard on yourself if you're struggling with negative thoughts" - well, what the fuck do you think 'negative thoughts' are? Reading this felt like having my teeth pulled.

I think the biggest problem, though, is that they really just do not have anything valuable to say. I wouldn't be surprised if it were written at gunpoint. We used to write essays on random subjects instead of lines as a punishment at school, and I think those essays were more enthusiastic and insightful than this one. It just meanders along, with no overarching direction or purpose, from useless bromide to useless bromide, until they get to the word count and stop, and that's it.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#60

Post by maxerickson »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #40
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of toxic empathy?

I don't know what the official definition is, but I'd consider deliberate mirroring of posture, online tone, and emotional state for conscious deceptive, and manipulative ends to be toxic empathy. Trivial example - phone services with the stock "Your call is important to us but we're experiencing an unusually high level of calls right now" message. When the truth is the company is spending a bare minimum on phone sup…

Apparently the official definition is when someone over-identifies with the emotions of someone else (the over identifier is experiencing toxic empathy).

I resent the scripted CS, so I'm not arguing about that part of it, but I think those are actually the opposite of empathy, sociopathically inserted in order to manipulate, emotionally aware but indifferent.

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