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30 minutes with a stranger

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Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#311

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

mordechai9000 wrote: post #296
rapnie wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a kind of 'bubble effect' where people are wrapped in their own world. A similar effect can be seen once people drive a car and there's a behavior change towards other people on the road, and 'road rage' becoming a thing.

I think people (myself included) have a mental model of the other driver that seems to default to the worst possible interpretation of their motives. If I was in a grocery store and someone "cut me off" and forced me to slow down because they misjudged the timing, I would think nothing of it. I certainly wouldn't make an obscene gesture and shout at them.

Also, when we are driving, we're in a pretty high state of anxiety; just as a baseline.

I find it amazing, that, when I'm driving, and some knucklehead does something that almost makes me crash (and thus, maybe kill me), I get incandescent with rage, but, five minutes later, I've all but forgotten the incident.

I could easily see myself fanning that rage into something that could result in self-destructive road rage.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#312

Post by [deleted] »

lordnacho wrote: post #115

It'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…

[deleted]

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#313

Post by kayge »

rorads wrote: post #77
saberience wrote: post #68

I 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…

I usually agree with this, but I make an exception for Pudding because they consistently do this and it’s kind of their brand to have really immersive JS art/media. But I have the benefit of having read and enjoyed their stuff before. It’s probably a false distinction, but it feels different to a SaaS product offering page, or product launch, where I need to get information, compared to someone using JS to create art…

Not quite as immersive as their deep dive into the Visual History of Rickrolling [0] but still a neat and interesting project.

[0] https://pudding.cool/2021/07/rickrolling/

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#314

Post by alexashka »

lordnacho wrote: post #115

It'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…

> So folks, practice talking to people. Much of what's wrong in the current world is actually loneliness, having no outlet for your expressions.

If I had a penny for every bizarre theory people who ruin the world believe about who/what is actually ruining the world.

My favourite was an interview with Jerry Springer. He also had a theory of what's wrong in the current world and none of it had anything to do with what he did.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#315

Post by kulahan »

koliber wrote: post #100
narmiouh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way ads are run these days is almost completely wrong! - Lies are ok - Thrusting your product in a users face, doesn't care if the user cares, Just because I like golfing, doesn't mean every new golf ball brand needs to hit me up all the time. - Product with Money wins, not necessarily the right product - Most people are oblivious to their psychological drivers, Ad makers have learnt to exploit those to drive sal…

A lot of marketing is done badly. These bad ways are the most glaring and people sometimes think that all marketing is like that. In reality, there is a lot of marketing that is completely unnoticeable. Some people would not even consider those things marketing. That is marketing done well (or at least better).

Unfortunately, when that makes up a trillionth of a percent of all ads, it appears to me as though the overall idea is terrible, with a few who got lucky here and there.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#316

Post by kulahan »

arethuza wrote: post #170
rkomorn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the best examples of your second point is that tweet that went something like "I bought a toilet seat and now I'm getting ads for toilet seats everywhere I go". It's annoying and not even productive for the advertiser.

I seem to get a stream of ads for terrible products on YouTube on my phone (I get completely different ads when watching on an Apple TV) - by this point I'm convinced it is Google punishing me into signing up for YouTube Premium...

It’s insane how many are some random idiot in their car, filming with a phone, trying to act like they’re having a conversation with you before it completely switches to sales mode and they’re (terribly) reading a script. They don’t even put EFFORT into ads anymore it seems. Then you want to watch a video and it’s 3 pre-roll ads, 90 seconds of video, then another 2-3 ads.

I’ll never feel bad about using Adblock, and I hate the idea of rewarding these companies’ behavior with money.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#317

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

RataNova wrote: post #127
lordnacho wrote: post #115

It'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…

Online, it feels like we're all half-performing for an invisible audience, so the incentives skew toward snark or point-scoring. In person, there's no scoreboard, just two humans trying to get through the moment together

An interesting "control case" is random-chat websites like Omegle. I spent many many hours on that site before it shut down. Omegle pairs you up with a single random stranger, so there's no audience. I typically used it in text-only mode, so there's no face-to-face communication either.

I'd say my experience was closer to the "30 minutes with a stranger" study than it was to modern social media. It was fairly common for a conversation to degrade into insult-trading. But it was more common to have a deep, heartfelt conversation. (Oftentimes I felt like I should follow up with the person I talked to, but I rarely did so in practice, even when we traded contact information.)

Another interesting "control case" is Usenet. You mention the concept of point-scoring. The point-scoring metaphor is rather literal on a website like HN which has upvotes/likes/etc. Usenet didn't have that stuff, but I'm told it had flamewars nonetheless.

Surely some HN users reading this comment are old enough to remember Usenet. Was it better or worse than modern social media in terms of civility? I'm especially curious about Usenet after Eternal September, once small-group norm enforcement broke down, and the underlying characteristics of the platform shone through. If we score early Usenet as 10/10 for civility, and modern X or reddit as 0/10, what score would latter-day, post-AOL Usenet receive?

Another thought: It occurred to me that "point-scoring" could actually be less of an issue with pure-anonymity platforms like 4chan, since you have less of a persona to defend. I've barely used 4chan though, so I can't say much here.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#318

Post by JoblessWonder »

arccy wrote: post #56
n2d4 wrote: post #53

Earlier 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?

Firefox in Windows has the tiniest little scrollbar indicator in the top right that honestly blends in very well with the background. I didn't realize I needed to scroll until I came to the comments. I clicked around... got some interaction... but basically left the first time being very confused.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#319

Post by pastage »

pjc50 wrote: post #197
sentinelsignal wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dehumanisation of online dialogue is interesting. Is it because of 'anonymity' or is there more at play?

I think it's an exaggeration of the "city effect": the denser an environment is, the more likely it is that people who see you out to talk to you are going to have a negative agenda, because everyone else is trying to keep their head down. If you meet a stranger at the North Pole, where you're the only two humans around, you're going to talk to them. If you meet a stranger in a remote village, you're probably going t…

The idea of the city effect is suburbia romatization. My view is that people (me included) tend to be biased in what they like. I love cities and dense areas and hence most interactions I have are positive.

I like what you said about the kinship through hate, I feel no connection to a city though rather I see the segregation of suburbia as the breeding ground for hate.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#320

Post by hitekker »

gwd wrote: post #34

One 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…

Absolutely true.

Another angle that goes unmentioned: "the more you know someone, the less you like them."

Most strangers in 30 minutes won't show off their ugly side. It takes a lot longer for those rough edges to come out, and for the really bad parts to surface in human relationships.

For some people, we can look past that. For most others, our interactions would not be so positive.

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