[flagged]
30 minutes with a stranger
131–140 of 406 posts
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same here — once you get the scrolling part it's pretty great, but like you I was stuck at the top for a while. A downwards-pointing arrow on the hero would help a lot here.
If you use a sane browser, the page will have a scrollbar indicator on the right?
I have (Firefox on macOS), still easy to miss.
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#133One of the problems with their "better / worse" statistics: Bad interactions tend to outweigh good interactions. I think the rule of thumb is that 4:1 good/bad ratio in a relationship is "breakeven" where the relationship will stay neutral; higher than that and things get better, lower than that and things go south. So if you could talk to a stranger, and there's only a 20% chance you'll feel worse, a lot of people w…
Makes me think the real challenge isn't just encouraging people to talk to strangers, but designing situations where the expected value of those conversations skews heavily positive
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#134Really great design. This is the unicorn of fancy websites because for once, it actually makes sense to override browser's standard scrolling behavior. The 30-minute timeline on the right provides an obvious context for what you're navigating with the scroll actions, and you wouldn't be able to do that with a regular scrollbar. Usually scrolling overrides happen because the designers' mindset was that the site should…
Took me a really long time to realize that I should scroll. Because why would I? There is absolutely no indication that there is anything to scroll to. I clicked on the two avatars but that didn't get me very far and the only thing left to click was "by alvin chang" but that was about as fruitful as I imagined it would be. So I assumed it was a podcast, re-checking that I had audio on etc. But nope, so I checked anot…
> Took me a really long time to realize that I should scroll. Because why would I? There is absolutely no indication that there is anything to scroll to.
> I clicked on the two avatars but that didn't get me very far and the only thing left to click was "by alvin chang" but that was about as fruitful as I imagined it would be.
Thank god, I wasn’t the only one, just posted a similar comment here.
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#135I know it's supposed to be fancy and cool looking but this sort of website design where you have to scroll and then the whole screen animates really bothers me. It actually gives me a headache to try and follow it versus normal scrolling behaviour and text. As soon as I start scrolling down and I can't scroll normally and images and text start flying around I feel a disturbing feeling in my head and lose concentratio…
Would be nice if we could disable JavaScript and just get access to the text. I also dislike this style, plus it lags on my computer. I scrolled all the way down but all I got was that it is a story of how it's not so bad to talk to strangers.
Would be nice if you would stop expecting the whole web to have stopped developing at your preferred point in time.
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#136I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear. https://www.sciencedirect.com…
> loneliness is a perceptual phenomenon that represents a paradoxical component; it is not mitigated through proximity to others It might be better described as alienation. Then we can fit it into Hannah Arendt's theory of fascism being caused by alienation. In the modern world, that alienation is accelerated by social media and cost of living for those without assets, who pay the cost of inflation without benefiting…
I do wonder if this is really the same type of alienation that Arendt refers to.
I can understand how if you are afraid the neighbor is going to be an informant, you stop interacting. Public discourse breaks down and ideology takes hold.
This seems quite different to me than the type of alienation we are talking about in 2025 from online interactions. I am not sure alienation is really the right word in terms of isolation from a group. If anything the problems from social media are from too much interaction and too much political discourse.
I would say that is completely opposite to what Arendt was talking about.
I think it is the way "boredom" has quite a different meaning today than in 1990. While you can still be bored in 2025, I don't feel boredom the same way as in 1990 when none of my friends answered the phone and there was nothing on tv. 2025 boredom is more the lack of hyper stimulation and hyper novelty as opposed to the 1990 version of going through your "junk drawer" to find something again novel because you can't think of anything else to do. I can't even remember the last time I had junk drawer to even go through.
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#137I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear. https://www.sciencedirect.com…
> social isolation is the single great social ill
You might find this short 60-second video of interest.
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Had a chat about this with a friend yesterday. In richer societies you can afford to be alone. This isn't good for tribal beings, humans didn't evolve as lone wolves. Even something as cooking for more than one person involves so much interaction. At the lower end of the global income scale , you can't afford to be alone in your giant house. You might need to share communal goods. Not everyone, but just having a role…
I agree with 99.9% of what you wrote. It’s presented very clearly. We are social animals even if we don’t like to admit it. A while ago I would say I agree 100%, but more recently I learned that ads have value. Therefore i can’t agree with the final sentence in this post. It’s not easy to recognize but I’d like to try to share how I see it now. Any time you think or say one of these things, it means that someone did…
Ads are agents in a zero-sum war for your attention.
If you have focus, if you're not aimlessly wandering around, ads try to distract you. They attack your personal agency and sovereignty, trying to divert you from what you were doing, to pay attention to what they're pushing.
Because they're in a zero sum competition, the dynamics are to escalate. There's only so much inventory, and the winners of the bids for your attention need to have more and more effect on your behavior to justify the escalating costs. Text isn't enough, images are needed. Images aren't enough, videos are needed. Videos aren't enough, interstitials with tiny close buttons are needed, with mandatory pauses. If advertisers could reach out and physically grab you by the head, they would.
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not disagree with you entirely, but I feel this almost borders on self-delusion. The sole purpose of ads is to (probabilistically) shift the targets spending behavior in favor of the one buying the ads, nothing more, nothing less. While ads can have utility from the victims point of view (contain relevant information), this is entirely incidental. If you want product updates or information, getting that from ded…
I disagree that this is the sole purpose of ads. I can see how people arrive at that opinion, but I feel it is narrow and incomplete. With a little restrospection and introspection, anyone can see examples in their own life where marketing had another purpose. Marketing can take many forms. Many people narrowly define it as "spam emails" or "unsolicited phone calls." Those are also marketing, but there is so much mor…
I feel your own examples undermine your positions:
Drinks specifically are one of the most clearcut negative examples to me, where there is zero product discovery/information/customer upside involved; the sole purpose of that CocaCola banner is to marginally shift the ad-targets consumption behavior (fully to his or her detriment, either from overconsuming and/or overpaying).
If I seek product information, ads are the absolute last place to look because they have all the incentive to hide everything negative about the product and to obfuscate any comparison with potentially superior competitors.
I'm not saying that all marketing is a wasteful detriment to humanity as a whole, but a lot of advertising has a zero-sum "benefit" to society, while binding a lot of ressources (but every rational company is somewhat "forced" to play anyway).
Re: 30 minutes with a stranger
#140It's the internet. When you talk to people online, it often descends into pettiness. When you talk to people in the real world, that rarely happens. But it's much easier to talk online, so people get the wrong impression. You should talk to strangers. It's never gone wrong for me. Most people have a warmth and agreeableness that comes out when you are there with them, talking about stuff. There's also the interesting…
> I actually met a serial killer who did this, heh Would love to hear the story behind this one.
When I was an intern in a small town, I took a trip to London. On my way back, I caught a cab from the provincial station to my house.
The cabbie seemed fun. We were talking about football. Just ordinary banter with a cab driver. Out of the blue, he asks me "hey mate, just for fun, what would you do if you'd murdered someone and had a dead body to dispose of?"
I was a bit surprised, but it's not that odd a thing to think about. People watch crime flicks all the time. But I hadn't thought much about it and gave a bland answer like "maybe dig a hole in the roadside, something like that". But I did think it was an odd switch in mood. He drops me off, end of that.
A few years later, I've graduated, I'm watching the news. A cab driver has been convicted of murdering multiple women, in the town I was in. Over the same period. He's buried the bodies in various places. I happened to run into a detective from the same town, to whom I explained my anecdote. He's pretty sure it's the same guy, but the cabbie has been sent down for life, so I wouldn't really be adding anything if I reported it.