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Toxic Positivity

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Re: Toxic Positivity

#131
post #105

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Quoted post unavailable.

> That's the reason they give when they are put a microphone in their face, in reality humans are pleasure utility maximizers, if you cannot extract any advantage out of kids then it's only natural that people won't have them. Exactly. I know that having kids ruined my mother's life and trapped my parents in an unfulfilling relationship. Why would I want to waste my life raising kids, when it leads to misery (scienti…

>when it leads to misery (scientifically proven!)

1. I have kids (n=4) 2. I'm not miserable. In fact, the opposite.

Myth Busted!

Re: Toxic Positivity

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's because the author seems to be firmly anchored in a coastal elite bubble. In particular this phrase: > invalidate someone's lived experience ...is particularly cringe-inducing. These are code words. This is not how any normal human in the English speaking world has ever spoken prior to exposure to a particular brand of (most often quite expensive) education, and let's be clear--that's the whole point. People t…

Aye. Policy should be based on data. In that world, lived experience has a proper word to describe it: anecdotes. The reason there's an attempt to change the language around anecdotes is that "lived experience" is intended to be beyond argument as evidence.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any evidence that the writer has that level of self-awareness. I'm increasingly beginning to suspect that business culture is inherently hallucinogenic. Between title inflation (everyone is an "executive" or maybe a "champion" and has "superpowers"), emotional distortions (don't be too negative, don't be too positive, never be sure where the line is or what the correct emotional state is), and perpetual o…

I wonder if you have any self-awareness about the toxicity of making a presumptuous and insulting comment about me, someone you don't know, based only on an article I wrote about toxicity... Or maybe you are just that uncaring about the impact you may have on someone's day? I can take valid criticism and have read the critique on here with genuine interest. However, I don't believe this comment about 'the writer' is…

>I don't see anywhere I've talked about our "incredible journey" on the post either? This is a little baffling.

I'll step in to defend the OP because I know where they are coming from: your article is a drop in an ocean of a certain genre of article that HN has encountered over the years and we've devised certain aphorisms to describe them, and by association, describe the authors.

One of those is that the author is complaining, praising, making a statement about something that shows they are severely out of touch with reality. Usually it's some kind of a self-congratulatory or self-aggrandizing thing that completely glosses over red flags - like say somebody building a very eco-unsustainable house in British Columbia's mountain ranges while fawning over how eco-friendly they are in the details, missing the larger scale of problems they are (intentionally?) ignoring. Being flush with tech money does funny things to people.

Often times, however, we've seen the opposite, "Our Great Journey", which has been parodied over the years elsewhere, not just HN. It describes a PR puff piece style that glosses over the fact that a company has failed/not been profitable in it's mission and is being sold off to another company. The founders, of course, would never dare say it in those direct terms, and so the PR speak is written, copied, and eventually parodied.

And eventually we arrive to what OP is commenting on, where the language used to describe rather mediocre and boring jobs is flourished with fanciful titles/words (like "empathy superpowers"). It begs to be mocked because it's such an extravagant literal style that, at this point, we can't take seriously anymore. We've seen too much of this bullshit and it cannot be unseen. We've seen too many associations of this kind of phrasing with people who really are out of touch and whatever plights they have should at worst be ridiculed, at best be completely ignored.

Basically, it's all so tiresome.

As for your post, there's not enough meat on it. Using social media as a launchpad to talk about "toxic positivity" is fairly benign - you can find just about any stupid shit on Instagram to talk about and segue into whatever moral grandstanding you want to convey. You can find both for- and against- examples. Hell, you don't even need to give examples, you can just say such-and-such is happening, and people will nod and go with it, because who are they to know better, right?

Re: Toxic Positivity

#134
post #84

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If you can provide those kinds of affordances to someone after they've informed you that they're "struggling, either professionally or personally", then you can do it without making them have that conversation as a precondition to your charity. If someone is struggling , that means they're vulnerable. Forcing them to take a gamble by enlarging the "surface area" of the risk that they're exposed to (by advertising it…

I disagree: If I assume that anyone is struggling all of the time, then I cannot prioritize assistance to those that are actually struggling - which means that those that are actually struggling loose out. I agree that it comes with vulnerability and risk. However, I believe that the way out here is reducing the risk, by building team structures where people can talk about these issues without being punished for it.…

I can't see anything here that's not solved by the simple algorithm "If someone is performing badly, help them. If they still perform badly, fire them." I don't think you need to know about their personal life. Just provide help to whoever is underperforming.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's because the author seems to be firmly anchored in a coastal elite bubble. In particular this phrase: > invalidate someone's lived experience ...is particularly cringe-inducing. These are code words. This is not how any normal human in the English speaking world has ever spoken prior to exposure to a particular brand of (most often quite expensive) education, and let's be clear--that's the whole point. People t…

[deleted]

Re: Toxic Positivity

#137
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're illustrating that person's point. I'm a liberal, with-the-times person in a liberal, with-the-times city, and I cringe at the thought of ever uttering the words "invalidate someone's lived experience". Aside from anything else, what the fuck does it even mean? I don't think it's a bad rule of writing to speak in simple, clear, plain words, not glutinous agglomerations of abstract verbiage which evoke n…

> Aside from anything else, what the fuck does it even mean? I'm assuming this is a genuine question, so I'll answer with my genuine understanding. Invalidating someone's lived experience is the process by which someone more or less says, "that didn't happen to you", or "your interpretation of events that happened to you is wrong." Before we start to find edge cases like "they clearly left the door unlocked and belie…

That phrase is often used to move goalposts when someone is using an anecdote to justify actions they've taken, or policy they're advocating. This can include leveling accusations at other people.

It is a linguistic tactic that attempts to bypass debate through appeal to emotion. "You can't tell me I don't feel this way!" Correct, you feel that way, but your feelings don't magically turn assertions into fact. The objection of "invalidating lived experience" is the notion that one's feeling are facts when they are not. They are subjective impressions unsuitable as the sole grounds for action.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you have any self-awareness about the toxicity of making a presumptuous and insulting comment about me, someone you don't know, based only on an article I wrote about toxicity... Or maybe you are just that uncaring about the impact you may have on someone's day? I can take valid criticism and have read the critique on here with genuine interest. However, I don't believe this comment about 'the writer' is…

>I don't see anywhere I've talked about our "incredible journey" on the post either? This is a little baffling. I'll step in to defend the OP because I know where they are coming from: your article is a drop in an ocean of a certain genre of article that HN has encountered over the years and we've devised certain aphorisms to describe them, and by association, describe the authors. One of those is that the author is…

Hey, thanks for this!

Re: Toxic Positivity

#139
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my mind, I think toxic is a byword for 'extreme behaviour'; and furthermore, extreme behaviour is often a symptom of a personality disorder at its most pronounced.

Like toxic skiing? Or toxic mountain climbing? Toxic marathon running?

Hi, this put a smile on my face imagining it being used in place of 'ultimate'. Toxic Frisbee. :)

Re: Toxic Positivity

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aside from anything else, what the fuck does it even mean? I'm assuming this is a genuine question, so I'll answer with my genuine understanding. Invalidating someone's lived experience is the process by which someone more or less says, "that didn't happen to you", or "your interpretation of events that happened to you is wrong." Before we start to find edge cases like "they clearly left the door unlocked and belie…

That phrase is often used to move goalposts when someone is using an anecdote to justify actions they've taken, or policy they're advocating. This can include leveling accusations at other people. It is a linguistic tactic that attempts to bypass debate through appeal to emotion. "You can't tell me I don't feel this way!" Correct, you feel that way, but your feelings don't magically turn assertions into fact. The obj…

Really good example. Thank you. This is precisely the type of thinking that goes into invalidating lived experience.

The mechanism behind invalidating lived experience is fundamentally a reality construction mechanism. It's goal is to construct a reality, namely by the person doing the invalidating. The reality being constructed is absent bigotry and abuse as a way of avoiding the task of confronting them directly. In short it says, "My reality is objectively true and yours is not" when the person doing the constructing hasn't the same personal encounters as the person being invalidated.

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