Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

nate.leaflet.pub

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 390 posts

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#111

Post by 9rx »

labrador wrote: post #94

As a anti-social person and a misanthrope, these are all tips for amateurs that assume you must be in a relationship with other people. This is not true. One can be a hermit and enjoy the solitude. My comment here is not designed for replies and social interaction. I'm making it to test my idea against the wisdom of the crowds in case someone can enlighten me about where I might be wrong. I'm seeking information, not…

> I'm making it to test my idea against the wisdom of the crowds in case someone can enlighten me about where I might be wrong.

Which is the same reason everyone else seeks relationships with other people. That is the value social interaction brings. Now that you've cracked the code, so to speak, do you find this behaviour grating because you don't normally like to have your thoughts and ideas challenged/enlightened?

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#112

Post by svnt »

justonceokay wrote: post #54
arowthway wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "being yourself" even mean? Obviously not "acting the exact same way you act when alone", since this would be impossible/weird/rude/illegal but also not "acting intuitively without overthinking", since the socially anxious person's intuition is to run away.

I don’t mean like being “authentic” or whatever that means. In this conversation “being yourself” means literally you existing in that moment in your body. I can’t tell you specifically what being “yourself“ means. But I can absolutely tell you that if you panic when you meet a stranger that you are not centered in your own experience. Your mind is elsewhere. You don’t know this new person, so all of the panic in the…

Panic -> response distribution shrinks -> freeze/be angry/make social mistake, but hey it’s fast

You: wouldn’t it be more adaptive if you didn’t do this?

Millions of years of mammalian evolution, unevenly distributed in homo sapiens: No

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#113

Post by em-bee »

justonceokay wrote: post #46
hoppp wrote: post #24

I am autistic and asocial fits more than anti-social because I am not actually doing any "anti" behavior, just trying to avoid the beurocratic small talk and general conformist interactions

I.e. the things that make people become friends and feel safe around each other. As a fellow autistic person we should not be avoiding small talk, we should be learning how to better connect with those around us since we need more time and work to do so. It’s easy to use a diagnosis as an excuse not to connect. But it’s a lame excuse. It is much more interesting to understand what tools we need to gain to connect wit…

i am not autistic, but i hate smalltalk too. i can't bear it. it takes all the fun out of talking to people and i feel like it's a waste of time. not sure where i am going with this argument other than maybe saying that it's ok not to like smalltalk.

maybe learning to be better at it would help, because the biggest pain and discomfort for me is that i don't know what to say and that anything i can think of feels meaningless.

i "solved" the problem by moving to a country with a different native language and culture. this raises the barrier to communicate and it seems to have an effect of curbing smalltalk.

while in a wheelchair, how comfortable were you asking for help? that would be the biggest challenge for me.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#114

Post by MalbertKerman »

zetanor wrote: post #67

online sociability protip: writing in all lowercase outside of instant messaging comes across (to me) as weirdly manipulative, status seeking behavior. you want people to read your stuff and to come to some form of conclusion—you wouldn't be writing, editing and posting text otherwise—but you feel you have to put your ideas and your vulnerability behind a moat of detached, nonchalant aesthetics nothing personnel, kid

To me, all-lowercase text comes across one of two ways:

(a) I felt speed was far more important than readability (reasonable for rapid-fire short messages or constrained typing ability such as a flip phone, also a common way to imply "fuck you, my time is more important than yours" in longer forms such as email), or

(b) i'm 14 and e e cummings is so deep (blogs)

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#115

Post by legacynl »

Zambyte wrote: post #105
legacynl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm someone who is good at those situations, and what I've learned is that no matter how much you disagree, there's always something that you can agree on. If you're stuck in disagreement, zoom out, and try to move back to a position that you both can agree on.

It's also important to not compromise on values you find personally fundamental for the sake of "finding common ground". It depends on the matters being discussed. Assume good faith, attempt to find common understanding by zooming out, but stand firm when you have zoomed out as far as you feel comfortable. If you push past that, you run the risk of validating insane or dangerous behavior or opinions.

When I say find common ground I mean things that you (both) already agree with, i.e. it's bad to kill people, it's good to help people in need.

It wasn't my intention to advocate for 'compromising on values' rather, I think the best way to do any discussion is being honest, and that starts with being honest about your values.

I think the whole point of my method is to identify who is the person that's compromising their values, i.e. someone who agrees with "it's good to help people" but then disagree with social healthcare shows that somewhere on the imaginary line between helping people and social healthcare that person flips their opinion, which is incredibly helpful information in debating.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#116

Post by em-bee »

lwkl wrote: post #87
themgt wrote: post #38

(Cognitive behavioral therapy enjoyer l just cut off in traffic) Think positively. He is probably in a rush for a reason. Maybe he's late for a job interview. Maybe his wife is giving birth Me: I'm da king of da highway

What you should be thinking: Oh an unpredictable driver I should probably increase the distance between us.

right, the reason does not matter. only my reaction matters. coming to a negative conclusion only induces rage. think positively but be cautious. it's simply self protection.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#117

Post by dijksterhuis »

0xmattf wrote: post #82
foo12bar wrote: post #33

How about the old fashioned freezing with a face contorted in fear like your being held at knife point unable to think of anything to say and just waiting to be able to leave? When you get asked a question, fumble over your words and say something stupid. Later on, you can reflexively watch the memory played over and over again so you're even worse the next time. If you see anyone you met during the encounter afterwa…

You reminded me of one of the first interviews I ever had in tech. I took 2 phone screens, and a take home assignment. Last step: Zoom interview with some of the IT team (3 people). It started well, but I slowly started panicking. All three of them were shooting questions at me, which I answered them all correctly, as far as I know, but I was so... cold. Started stammering my words and speaking like a terrified child…

tbf it sounds like you might have dodged a bullet there, so try to not beat yourself up too much for thinking you weren’t good enough.

we all have imposter syndrome when we start out. as long as you didn’t outright obviously lie or something then you probably didn’t do anything particularly wrong that’s worthy of the cringe.

(i’ve done the exact same thing in interviews, most of us probably have some story like that).

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#118

Post by legacynl »

ernesto905 wrote: post #29

> when all hope is lost in conversation, retreat into your self This speaks to me quite a bit, particularly around unfalsifiable topics I'll have with friends/family, such as theology. If we define hope as the idea they'll change their mind and agree with me, seems not much one can do but retreat into themself, right? I suppose I can sympathize with their sentiment before I retreat into myself, but taking this bullet…

(If you're an atheist) You shouldn't debate theology with religious people. The whole idea of religion is that they 'believe' despite their experiences, facts, reasoning and logic. There's literally nothing to gain from using logic and reasoning to debate religious people.

edit: also the article is sarcastic. You shouldn't retreat into yourself just because you cannot agree on something. Talk about something else.

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#119

Post by Miraltar »

em-bee wrote: post #100
zetanor wrote: post #67

online sociability protip: writing in all lowercase outside of instant messaging comes across (to me) as weirdly manipulative, status seeking behavior. you want people to read your stuff and to come to some form of conclusion—you wouldn't be writing, editing and posting text otherwise—but you feel you have to put your ideas and your vulnerability behind a moat of detached, nonchalant aesthetics nothing personnel, kid

hmm, i have been writing all lowercase almost anywhere since a few decades. but it most people have complained about readability. this is the first time that someone suggests that it is manipulative, status seeking. if i want people to read my stuff, then what kind of manipulation would writing all lower case accomplish? seems counterproductive. and if it is counterproductive then it can't really be manipulative in m…

I personally dislike all lowercase, to me it feels like not greeting someone but I don't get GP's argument either.

The article is a bullet point, yes, but some items have multiple sentences with no caps

Re: How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences

#120

Post by criddell »

nickburns wrote: post #95
justonceokay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any one single interaction makes you have such a response, that might be a reason to see someone. I wish for everyone to be able to move through the social world with grace and ease. Put less kindly: there’s nothing so special about you that being yourself around a new person should cause such a panic. Even if they take an instant dislike to you, that should be something you can take in stride

Matching your latter register: and what, in your mind, will 'seeing someone' do to change somebody's lack of social 'grace and ease'?

It depends on the type of help you seek, but generally you are given tools and techniques to deploy in those situations that can help.
Post reply on HN