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Toxic Positivity

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Re: Toxic Positivity

#161

Post by Kaze404 »

rfrey wrote: post #121
Kaze404 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? That's a completely normal sentence. I don't understand what in particular triggered this rant full of strawmen.

I have used this exact phrase multiple times, but your parent's "rant full of strawmen" did make me reflect on it. - How is "lived experience" different than "experience"? - How can an experience be "invalidated"? What does that mean? Disrespected, discounted, something else?

I think there are great discussions to be had on the subject of listening to people's experiences without necessarily ignoring factual evidence that contradicts it. My problem is specifically with that person writing two paragraphs of literal fantasy over someone expressing themselves in a way that feels foreign to them, interestingly enough contradicting the very point they're trying to make by doing so. Just very weird, in a way I haven't seen here before.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#162

Post by antifa »

layer8 wrote: post #108

They recommend empathy. However, businesses trying to communicate that they care about their customers by feigning empathy (“we are sorry to hear you’re encountering this issue with our awesome product”) but not actually acting like they care (not providing useful information, not engaging with the actual problem, not actually fixing the issue) is what comes across as toxic positivity for me. At least in a business r…

Feigning empathy isn't a good definition of toxic positivity. A better definition would be:

> We define toxic positivity as the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.

https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/

Re: Toxic Positivity

#163

Post by noodleman »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #42
noodleman wrote: post #28

This is quite a thin article. Not really much to go on in either direction. I'd be interested in some better reading on the subject if anyone has any. Personally, I think I see a lot more toxic negativity than toxic positivity in the world and I've rarely heard the phrase "toxic positivity" used in a justifiable situation. Not to say that toxic positivity can't exist but quite often articles discussing it come across…

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…

Firstly, job interviews are difficult but they are not dystopian. Secondly, your claim that you can skip negativity by unplugging from social media is ludicrous.

While I understand the point you're making, it is obvious why negativity is a no-no. A negative disposition makes you hard to work with and if you can't find the effort to present yourself in a positive light during a job interview, then you probably can't maintain good working relationships. Greed is a no-no in a job interview because everyone wants more pay. How does "I want more pay" differentiate you from the next applicant? I do not see this as toxic positivity - just positivity.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#164

Post by layer8 »

antifa wrote: post #162
layer8 wrote: post #108

They recommend empathy. However, businesses trying to communicate that they care about their customers by feigning empathy (“we are sorry to hear you’re encountering this issue with our awesome product”) but not actually acting like they care (not providing useful information, not engaging with the actual problem, not actually fixing the issue) is what comes across as toxic positivity for me. At least in a business r…

Feigning empathy isn't a good definition of toxic positivity. A better definition would be: > We define toxic positivity as the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience. https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/

I didn’t mean it as a definition, just as an instance. The “feigned empathy” is intended to make the recipient feel better (by making them feel empathized with), and in that sense is meant to be positive, but since it doesn’t address the actual objective of the inquiry, it instead makes the recipient feel like taken for a fool, aggravating any misgivings they may already have had, or generating ones in the first place.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#165

Post by adrianbd »

drugstorecowboy wrote: post #106
adrianbd wrote: post #82

As some other comments touch on, what this could be framed as is "Ruinous Empathy", which is what Kim Scott calls it in Radical Candor: https://www.radicalcandor.com/radical-candor-not-brutal-hone... . The crux of it is that it's more useful to give someone a harsh truth that will help them grow (in a tactful way, while conveying that you care about them personally) rather than trying to be nice but ultimately not he…

When people are so generously out there "helping people grow" in tactful ways, much of the time the benevolent helper doesn't actually know how to do that. People generally make what they think are rational decisions, it always feels like extreme hubris when someone decides that they know what would be best for someone else. They can't possibly know what reasoning lead to their current course of action. Thats what ma…

Just to be clear, my comment is talking about toxic positivity in the workplace (I intended to anchor my reply to another related comment) - I agree that toxic positivity regarding other people's more general problems will just minimize their decisions and experiences.

At work however, I've definitely been helped by being given direct advice on things I hadn't even been considering I could be doing better (or doing at all, as a matter of fact). Your take implies a lack of trust in the motive of the other party, which is obviously a deal breaker, and the reason why establishing trust in the first place is required.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#166

Post by samhw »

lauraekelly_ wrote: post #126
samhw wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's probably not a good idea to read comments about your writing on the internet. They aren't sending them 'to you' - you've sought out this discussion - so it's on you if you choose to read people's opinions. If you want constructive advice: try to write in the same way that you would talk. Shallowly, that means read your writing out loud – what Flaubert called his 'gueulade' – or, even better, vice versa:…

Hey, thanks for your comment. I took a walk in the sunshine to decompress a bit and before I go I just wanted to pop back on to explain a couple of things. I didn't seek this out. I don't really go looking for such discussions because I'm a bit too time-starved, but someone let me know they shared my article on here because they liked it so I checked it out. Because I don't go looking for this, this hasn't really hap…

> someone let me know they shared my article on here because they liked it so I checked it out.

> I didn’t seek this out.

Oh, come on.

> Ultimately it is compliance - someone called it aggressive compliance, I can't really comment on that.

Hmm, I suppose either the house style mandates what I would consider extremely poor writing (I won’t belabour the reasons), or the house style mandates some broadly formal style and the challenge is to write well within it. If the former, I suppose you should take my comments as applying to the house style and not your own writing ability; if the latter, I’d more or less reiterate what I said, and I doubt any non-insane style guide would, say, forbid you to use plain Anglo-Saxon words, vary your sentence length, write grammatically, etc.

In either case I admit I find it very bewildering to reconcile your well written comment with the solecisms and illiteracies that post was littered with*, or to make sense of your coming here to read and grow upset at criticism of a post which – given your now-evident possession of a brain stem – you must surely have known was atrociously written.

Thanks for your civil response, and for your taking my comment in the same spirit. It wasn't meant as a personal attack, no. It was meant to be an impersonal attack: all I knew of you was that piece of writing, and that was all I wanted to consider. Hopefully** my comment contributes to better instructing whoever and/or whatever was or were responsible for that lobotomised dross!

* With which that post… **Yeah, yeah, ok

Re: Toxic Positivity

#167

Post by alexjurkiewicz »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #80
groceryheist wrote: post #7

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…

> the author seems to be firmly anchored in a coastal elite bubble

> These are code words

Jargon for me, code words for thee.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#168

Post by samhw »

prepend wrote: post #141
lauraekelly_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks for your comment. I took a walk in the sunshine to decompress a bit and before I go I just wanted to pop back on to explain a couple of things. I didn't seek this out. I don't really go looking for such discussions because I'm a bit too time-starved, but someone let me know they shared my article on here because they liked it so I checked it out. Because I don't go looking for this, this hasn't really hap…

I think one of the contributors to toxic positivity is to try to head off subthreads like this. I spend more time than I’d like adding in positive language around everything because people overreact to anything not super positive. So to avoid people misinterpreting my comments, Ill usually add in lots of “a+,” blue ribbon, superpowers, etc blargh. I appreciate you writing your article and participating in this thread…

Eh, I think a Master's in English is good (a fortiori) proof that they know how to string a sentence together. I am still absolutely mystified at how they wrote that flatulent nonsense. And I mean truly, genuinely mystified, not 'mystified' as in 'clearly suspecting X or Y but not wanting to say'. It's now 100% beyond doubt, in my mind, that they are capable of writing far better than that, indeed very well by any standard, even within some given register[0]. I also don't at all buy their explanation of 'malicious compliance', considering their hurt, piqued responses to the criticism in this thread. Every possibility here makes very little sense to me.

[0] Not in a Dr Jekyll scenario, not even if in some Parfit-esque farce their brain were indexterously bisected with cheese wire and not either half but the intervenient dribble of corpus callosum attained sentience would said brain-dribble even in its admitted abjection be left with the deficit in neuronal voltage absolutely required to bring that tripe into existence, no more than I could fake a Pollock, or Infinite Jest, or Finnegans Wake.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#169

Post by lauraekelly_ »

samhw wrote: post #153
antiverse wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I suspect, as with other writing I've seen before, that (a) they have no real thoughts about this topic (indeed it strikes me as very difficult for anyone to form a genuine thought about), and (b) therefore they are mechanically churning out 'content' (euch), emulating whatever examples they have seen. That's what explains so many in the comments feeling that it was produced by GPT-3. And, let's be honest, this is on…

I would like to say a second thank you for your response here. The way you've expressed this gives me food for thought on how I spread my time and energy, and how it manifests in terms of quality. I'm leaving this behind me tomorrow and taking what I have found useful so I've actually screen-shotted this comment in particular to take away with me. The way you've worded the issue is thoughtful and I'm not able to respond to it point by point here but I appreciate it.

Re: Toxic Positivity

#170

Post by JonShartwell »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #148
MockObject wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invalidation of Lived Experience is also what we do, and should do, to Targeted Individuals [0], people who boast of having diseases cured by crank medicine, and con game victims certain that they're beloved by overseas supermodels. Skepticism is a rational and healthy habit. [0] https://www.wired.com/story/mind-games-the-tortured-lives-of...

Great. In agreement, but help me understand how we went from lived experiences involving bigotry and abuse to crank medicine and con game victims? I added that boundary specifically so that cases like this wouldn't be brought up and used to counter-example. > Skepticism is a rational and healthy habit. Agreed. Veiled-skepticism is, however in the case of invalidating lived experience, a powerful gaslighting tool. Dis…

How would you be able to tell what’s veiled skepticism vs legitimate skepticism?
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