30 minutes with a stranger • Hacker News Board

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#341

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 9:57 PM UTC

pastage wrote: post #319

pjc50 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most interactions in a city are neutral: you can walk past a thousand people in a subway without conceiving of it as an interaction, you just ignore them and they ignore you. In a way you couldn't do it you met in a wilderness.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#342

Post by socalgal2 » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 9:58 PM UTC

9rx wrote: post #187

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?

Dehumanization is a poor framing, really. It was never humanized in the first place. Sure, those of us who have a technical understanding understand that it is likely that there are humans involved as an implementation detail, but from the user perspective there is no other human to be seen. If the technical backend were replaced by a sufficiently capable LLM (or whatever technology) absolutely nothing about the user…

You could say the same about NPCs in a holodeck, effectively declaring that talking to people face to face is really a solitary activity

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#343

Post by belorn » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:03 PM UTC

mihaic wrote: post #49

alex-moon wrote: post #39

I'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…

It's not just loneliness, it's that by being isolated you can make sweeping generalizations about other people, and fall for the hatefull narative. When you actually and honestly communicate with people different than you, and are able yo understand them, you stop feeling that simplistic hate for them.

From the research I have heard and seen on the subject, when people communicate with people different than themselves it can both help and hurt trust. The primary factor that I took from the research is that it depend on ethical values. If the two people are different but share ethical values, especially symbolic ones, then relationships tend to improve. If however people have different ethical values, then the results of such meeting tend to create more hostility and distrust. People can generally accept that people have different ethical values only if they don't need to actually see it.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#344

Post by dghlsakjg » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:06 PM UTC

koliber wrote: post #227

bityard wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are deliberately confusing ads with things that already have better names, such as notices or listings. They feel different because they ARE different. Advertising is wildly successful because it's literally everywhere and we are conditioned from birth that the whole concept of "strangers using psychological tricks so you give them your money" is just a normal fact of everyday life. Most people are NOT conditione…

I am taking a broader definition of ad to include things that also have other names. - job ads and classified ads that can also be called listings - ads for events that can also be called notices - product description on services like Amazon and Ebay - websites describing products and services - 1st hand and 2nd hand mentions of products and services online that can be as close to the Some of the comments here seem t…

A huge distinguishing characteristic is that some of these things come to you, or are found passively, and some of them you seek out. I think that when the ad comes to you, there is a very good chance it has little or no value.

Job listings are useful, but I have to seek them out.

An event calendar is something I seek out.

Product descriptions are only shown to me when I seek details about the product.

An ad on the street is somewhere in the middle. For most people the acceptability of it is about setting (not in a nature park, please), and ignorability (LCD billboard vs. telephone pole flyer).

I think that is the distinction that people are making between marketing and what is being called ads.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#345

Post by dghlsakjg » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:08 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #217

koliber wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is true for a large portion of web ads. Then there is the ad for your kids' school fundraiser. Or the ad for a used car that your cousin would love. Or the poster for the concert at your local community hall. These ads also are "trying to divert you from what you were doing, to pay attention to what they're pushing". Yet these feel ads differently despite also being "agents in a zero-sum war for your atte…

All of that is true for all web ads. The friendly types of ads you're describing only work as offline ads. If I am online I don't want any of that offline context following me around at the behest of a creepy surveillance industry. A web page knowing what is local to me or what I might be interested in is a bug . Frankly I categorize it in the realm of security vulnerabilities. And that's still putting aside the ques…

Upgrade to the Burrito+ community to eliminate pre-burrito adroll!

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#346

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:09 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #238

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…

> You should talk to strangers. It's never gone wrong for me. I guess it depends on your definition of wrong. I feel the opposite, where it has never gone right. I can’t remember any actual interesting conversations I have had with strangers. I can remember a lot of bad, awkward, and boring ones, though.

Lots of context we're missing here obviously and we might not even be talking about the same thing but in what way were conversations you have had with strangers "bad"?

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#347

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:11 PM UTC

rkomorn wrote: post #112

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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#348

Post by dghlsakjg » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:13 PM UTC

StilesCrisis wrote: post #163

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.

Apparently some of the very best-converting ads are repeat sales. Of course it helps if the product is obviously consumable, but I'm told that this counterintuitive strategy actually works well. Maybe it's because they can track conversions but not product returns, so maybe you're searching for a better one after returning the first purchase.

I would be willing to believe that most toilet seats are bought by people that buy toilet seats as part of their job (builders, plumbers and maintenance). They might buy more in a month than you buy in your life.

Follow up ads might be very productive even if you personally get swept into the professional toilet installer ad pipeline inappropriately.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#349

Post by saltcured » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:13 PM UTC

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #317

RataNova wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My view is that USENET ran the gamut, depending on what group you were reading. Some would feel more like your typical HN thread or a well-behaved, niche Reddit topic, and others could be just as messy as you could find today. Just in text form rather than images and whatnot.

There is an overall style shift over the long term, e.g. USENET was a little more like email lists and less like chat. More like writing letters to one another rather than having an interactive conversation.

But, those social network problems already existed. There were various kinds of trolls, just like today. Some were just permanently in it for a laugh, others seeming more focused on dealing out grief, and some who (rumor had it) would escalate their newsgroup beefs into real life harassment and stalking. I think there was a period where using real identities, e.g. university email IDs and real names, was typical but then eventually it was mostly pseudonyms whether by explicit blind mailers or just the wave of random usernames at random commercial ISPs.

I don't know what drove what, but I'd say many groups died by attrition. People with niche interests and finite patience started finding other venues like web rings and web forums. Eventually it was mostly trolls, floods of binary attachments, and newsgroup necromancers.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#350

Post by hitekker » Thu, Sep 04, 2025, 10:15 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #322

hitekker wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "the more you know someone, the less you like them." That is completely the opposite of my experience. Even the handful of people who, after I got to know them, turned out to be unprincipled or toxic, I actually liked them as people and were kind of sad that they were the way they were. Their negative qualities were a mar on the their individual beauty. There are certainly people in whom, after a relatively brief i…

> Their ugly side may have made me want to avoid interacting with them as a whole

For me, that means "dislike" or "not like". When I see a part of them is not good for me, I can say I don't like that part. When that part underlies the rest of them, then I wouldn't like them very much and I'd want to keep my distance. It's human nature. Not a judgement but a preference.

You may be speaking instead about "love" which I would agree more with as a child of God. Love the person I dislike as a fellow person, because of a true beauty in them that may not be because of them[1]. I think that can also work without religion in select cases: my mom knows my sister and she doesn't like my sister, but my mom still loves her all the same.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infused_righteousness