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Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

freyaindia.co.uk

161–170 of 537 posts

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#161

Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses. But there are a few things we can learn from this: - if you give people th…

The author's concerns would mostly all be ameliorated by logging out of TikTok and never logging back in. They seem to think that "TikTok" and "Society" are synonyms. They are not.

you seem unaware that over 60% (150M) of the US uses tiktok and around 70% of that (100M) are 18-30. it's unclear on the i don't think it's unreasonable, particularly when she qualifies gen-z, to conflate tiktok and society.

it's really out of hand. the brain rot, beyond just the psych labeling she touches on, is crazy.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#162

Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses. But there are a few things we can learn from this: - if you give people th…

The author's concerns would mostly all be ameliorated by logging out of TikTok and never logging back in. They seem to think that "TikTok" and "Society" are synonyms. They are not.

It exists outside of TikTok (and Tumblr before it). It may not be as noticeable or strong, but it’s there.

Especially with children and teenagers - which is why labeling them early can be so bad (or good, if used sparingly).

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#164
I’m reluctant to blame therapy-speak and diagnoses of legitimate mental health disorders for the lack of personality in a lot of folks.

Instead, I lay blame at several altars of the modern world:

* Late stage Capitalism desperately trying to source novelty and products by convincing everyone they’re a “brand” to be marketed and sold to others

* Social media algorithms forcing people into bubbles for the sake of advertising revenue and data harvesting

* An “awakening” of modern mental health awareness (especially post-pandemic) that’s both (likely) engaging in overdiagnosing while also laying groundwork to understand people for who they are, rather than trying to shove them into neat little boxes of compliance

* The internet and free exchange of information enabling a lot of disparate researchers and experts to realize that these issues aren’t unique to a single cohort, but are likely environmental in nature to some significant degree

Add it all together, and you’ve got the current “label” era of personalities - shorthand for how you’d like others to see you and explain your quirks or eccentricities, but of questionable health if not accompanied by actual therapy (pharmaceutical, medical, behavioral, or otherwise).

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#165

Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses. But there are a few things we can learn from this: - if you give people th…

> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it. This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok. There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Man…

This parallels the debate about free will and determinism. If you were in the determinist camp, believing that all that one does was predetermined by prior environmental causes, could you still hold people responsible for their actions?

Hobart makes a convincing argument that you can: "Fatalism says that my morrow is determined no matter how I struggle. This is of course a superstition. Determinism says that my morrow is determined through my struggle. There is this significance in my mental effort, that it is deciding the event." [1]

i.e., he is a "compatibilist", thinking that you can believe in free will and determinism too.

If you find Hobart persuasive, time-blindness or no, it does make sense to reproach someone for being habitually unpunctual.

[1] https://philarchive.org/archive/HOBFWA

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#166
post #149
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really my original point but the reason I dislike the "you don't have ADHD you have capitalism" meme is that ADHD's intentionality symptoms isn't about attention but about self control[0] So if you "really actually" have ADHD[0], that isn't just manifesting in not getting work done, it's manifesting in saying things before speaking, issues with addiction, issues with self-management leading to hygiene issu…

the idea of "its capitalisms fault" is that capitalism is responsible for placing these "self control" constraints on people. capitalism is the thing making too much choice, and to many choices over time. capitalism set the context for you snapping at your friend, where you are doing work you dont want to to avoid being homeless, while they are doing different work and you feel like its unfair that their work is diff…

> if you werent fighting your friend to pay off some capitalist to pay them the most rent, you wouldnt be snapping at them

These interactions are not in that sense, they are in the "I say some stupid unvarnished opinion first and immediately realize there was a better way of saying it" variety. It is not downstream of me being stressed out about money or work or whatever. These are things that happen when I am in a perfectly normal mood, not thinking about how to pay rent or whatever.

I have plenty of social failings that are very much unrelated to capitalism. I have also had bad social interactions downstream of money/capitalism/etc too! But that's its own thing

Maybe you subscribe to some grand unifying theory here but I don't. Social structures and norms existed before market capital, and they exist in spaces fairly separate from the economic sphere ("those don't exist!" you might say, but I believe they do exist, at least in a time-and-space limited fashion).

Subsuming all of my issues to capitalism is unsatisfying. Thinking about the texture of it all (and potentially identifying some things that really are linked to that, and become as solvable as gravity[0]) is more valuable to me. I think it's also valuable to others.

[0]: or political action or whatever

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#167

Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses. But there are a few things we can learn from this: - if you give people th…

> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it. This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok. There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Man…

I'm sure there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition, but you do realise time blindness is a real issue, right?

https://www.simplypsychology.org/adhd-time-blindness.html

I don't watch TikTok videos, I don't use Instagram, but I have been plagued by these symptoms my entire life, and don't really care about others opinions on it. You probably don't have it if those symptoms don't resonate with you, but there are plenty of people who genuinely struggle, and there's likely some overlap with those who have undiagnosed ADHD.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#168
LOL speak for yourself- if you're American maybe. Rest of the world, not so much. I deeply resent these articles which claim to speak for everyone but irresponsibly push destructive narratives like this. Like a least have a discussion before shilling your depressing viewpoint as the truth.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#169
post #152
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who is clinically depressed isn’t just sad, they are unable to return to normal. Things that help normal people feel better simply fail, it’s a meaningfully different situation. Similarly treatments for depression like electroconvulsive therapy shouldn’t be applied to normal people. OCD, clinical addiction, etc are all more involved than just feeling the desire to do something. The lack of control is the issu…

Are there people who don’t have clinical diagnoses of depression being subjected to electro convulsive therapies? Addendum: I believe I’m close to figuring out what you are communicating but for me it’s not working. I’m reasonably sure we’d agree that neurological conditions are complex and that labels only tell part of the story.

I’m sure ECT is being misused occasionally, but what I’m referring to is the underlying condition such treatments are addressing as well as the research associated with finding what treatments are useful in which situations.

Seasonal affective disorder and bereavement-related depression may have similar symptoms on the surface, but there’s different treatments due to differences in underlying causes.

Some conditions may be a continuum with the same underlying cause taken to different extremes, but that continuum need not be continuous down to normal human behavior.

Re: Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

#170
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it. This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok. There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Man…

I'm sure there are those who self-diagnose without really suffering from a condition, but you do realise time blindness is a real issue, right? https://www.simplypsychology.org/adhd-time-blindness.html I don't watch TikTok videos, I don't use Instagram, but I have been plagued by these symptoms my entire life, and don't really care about others opinions on it. You probably don't have it if those symptoms don't resona…

“Time blindness” is not named anywhere in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5, 2013) nor in the DSM-5-TR (text-revision, 2022). It is not recognized as a stand-alone disorder or an official diagnostic criterion.
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