
Is presentation the cause of loneliness? (2017) - _ttg
https://kaomorphism.com/2017/10/06/Is-Presentation-The-Cause-Of-Loneliness.html
======
overgard
Relationships naturally form when people have common activities and goals. I
think the problem is that outside of the office and family, that connective
tissue just isn't there anymore. You can find it, if you seek it out (various
hobby meetups for instance), but anymore nobody is just automatically
included. Everyone has diverse interests, which is great, but often you find
you have nothing in common with your neighbours.

I don't think the problem is people's protective layers of presentation. We
need those fictions when we're learning if we can trust someone. The problem
is it's incredibly hard to form a bond with someone if you don't have a clear
"why", and there's rarely that context anymore. There are a lot of people I
meet Id love to be friends with, but it's awkward to just organise that
without a social excuse sometimes. Especially because if the relationship goes
poorly, if you have a common thing its easier to pull back, whereas if its
just "want to be friends?", if you pull back it seems more personal.

~~~
watwut
I think that these two are causes rather then requirements. The fact that in
our current culture it is awkward and socially wrong to "just organise that
without a social excuse" and that we need "common activities and goals" to
even consider socialization is why we are lonely.

Of course common activities and goals do help. But when they are the only
thing, the relationship is destined to die the moment something changes.

But people who are not lonely tend to value relationships for themselves. They
organize without excuse, send each other mails for no reason about ordinary
life and call each other for no reason. What they do have is values that put
priority on relationship and skills to keep them. There is also mutual
reciprocity to some extend with helping each other and such.

A lot of these things are low-key stigmatized in some sub-cultures. The above
is wasting time, just hanging around, just being social etc. See how spending
a lot of time on phone was mocked - but it was reasonable way for people who
dont have common activities and goals to keep relationships. The need for at
least pretend common goal and important enough topic so that we dont feel like
wasting time is more of symptom then the solution. Because it prevents us to
keep relationship unless it is immediately useful.

~~~
stuxnet79
> A lot of these things are low-key stigmatized in some sub-cultures.

I would actually go further and say that it is high-key stigmatized. My take
on this is it has a lot to do with how individualistic & market-oriented
American culture (and to an extent 'western' culture) is. I spent the
formative part of my youth both in a highly individualistic culture and a more
communal culture and while both have their pros and cons the lack of authentic
interaction or community is very much a feature of the existing (North
American) culture, it is not a bug.

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KaoruAoiShiho
Hmm maybe I can give some advice here. The key is to just not care whether or
not people are just pretending to like you. "Just don't give a fuck" sounds
really trite but I really think caring too much about other people's feelings
is an anti-super power. I find what really helps me is just assuming that the
other person doesn't like me, and then making a conscious decision to make the
effort to make them like me. This is almost the opposite of what people say,
"just be confident". I think being attractive (personality) and likable is a
trainable social skill, and once you do it often enough the effort becomes
effortless. Of course a mind reading device to skip the presentation stuff
would also be nice.

~~~
choxi
How do you both "don't give a fuck" while also "mak[ing] the effort to make
them like me"?

~~~
ak39
That’s always the problem with these forms of obliquitous advice - they are
paradoxical. I’m not saying they don’t work or are necessarily to be dismissed
because they seem practically impossible because they are on the surface self-
limiting. I’m just saying that’s what they all share.

Zen. Buddhism. Sufism. Stoicism. Minimalism. Less is more.

You have to experience it to know it. The anti-thesis of science.

~~~
openfuture
Actually, the manifestation of science..

Science is about testing (experiencing) your hypothesis not memorizing dogma.
If someone says: “gravity is a thing” then as a scientist you think through
the consequences, if something doesn't align with your expectation then you
design an experiment. This way you realize the truth yourself, problem is that
people use the word 'science' as 'that thing that other people do to find out
the truth' (where 'truth' is the thing you are supposed to believe
unquestioningly since you are not a priest, sorry.. scientist).

~~~
watwut
Scientists learn awful lot without checking from books, articles and talks.
Each scientist tests and verifies only tiny little part of he or she considers
science. And they typically assume that non cutting edge parts are correct,
unless there is very strong reason to doubt that.

It does cause too much inertia in some cases and it can be hard to overturn
old theories, but it also makes science overall possible.

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Enginerrrd
I think the inability to find a price here also has to do with value. To
develop a relationship with someone requires that you offer value in the form
of conversation, entertainment, etc.

People are most attracted to attractive people. (And by "attractive" I mean
_primarily_ personality characteristics.) Most people seem to actually have an
aversion to lonely people whether conscious or subconscious. Perhaps it's an
old social defense mechanism from times in our history where it was dangerous
to associate with unpopular people. You were more likely to be shunned as well
and less likely to be given mating opportunities.

I often go out of my way to talk to the wall flowers and shy people that no
one is talking to, but I've found by and large, they are also much harder to
talk to! It's much more work to stoke the conversation, and we all know
there's a threshold there, below which, the conversation just isn't stable.
Putting two wall flowers together has a much lower conversational success rate
(which is a basic minimum hurdle to continuing any kind of social
relationship) than two social people.

It's a tough nut to crack, and I don't think unknown intentions is the
problem.

~~~
ardy42
> I think the inability to find a price here also has to do with value. To
> develop a relationship with someone requires that you offer value in the
> form of conversation, entertainment, etc.

I think part of the problem here is forcing everything to be viewed through
the lens of market economics and trying to make every human activity a kind of
market exchange. Markets are a powerful paradigm in some contexts, but they're
not the end-all-be-all of human behavior.

Loneliness may be a product of marketization of social relationships, so
market-thinking won't offer a path out.

~~~
rland
This exchange triggered me:

I'm so sick of the "market" paradigm. It's seeped so deeply into every
cultural value we have blinded us to many parts of life.

Everything is a market now. Every waking moment your time is on the market.
Every thought you have is either contributing to "value" or worthless. Every
social interaction is an exchange of value. Every relationship is "optimized."
Everyone is an atomized economic actor.

This idea has completely outlived its usefulness and is like a sort of
cultural grey goo that corrodes humanity from the inside out.

Sorry, rant over.

~~~
ardy42
> Everything is a market now. Every waking moment your time is on the market.
> Every thought you have is either contributing to "value" or worthless. Every
> social interaction is an exchange of value. Every relationship is
> "optimized." Everyone is an atomized economic actor.

You might want to check out _The Great Transformation_ by Karl Polanyi. I'm
about 3/4 of the way through, and it's been eye-opening.

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admiral33
Judith Butler has spent a good portion of her career exploring this concept
from a non tech third wave feminist view point, and I have found her work to
be incredibly insightful and applicable to many discussions outside of
feminism as well.

As a man, I have caught myself "performing" for other people on a regular
basis. Wearing a suit to formal occasions. Shaking hands with a firm
handshake. Laughing at jokes that I wouldn't laugh at in private. Are these
things "me"? By outlining both mentally and on paper which behaviors I do for
myself and which I do for other people I have unraveled a good portion of my
character. Many of the behaviors I have decided to keep, despite knowing that
they are a performance for others - the difference now being that I can feel
confident that my performance is rooted in active decision and authenticity
with how I want the world to perceive me, rather than a simple need to please
others. This is an ongoing process.

~~~
gowld
What's the boundary between "performing" and "behaving in a socially expected
way"?

~~~
notmainacct
In my opinion the difference is that "behaving in a socially expected way" is
following norms so that no bad attention is drawn to you or to prevent others
from having negative experiences from your behavior, and "performing" is the
constant feedback cycle of emulating behaviors and traits that you think will
draw positive attention and create good experiences with others.

A good example is that most things people do to be polite are considered
"behaving in a socially expected way" while interactions like a young
adolescent male lowering their voice when talking to somebody they are
attracted to is "performing".

Performance is common for many other interactions like dressing up and
formalizing language for job interviews, "telephone voice", as well as
matching posture and speaking style during interactions. Performance captures
the potentially unfounded change in behavior to better a specific interaction.
Many sitcoms often create comedic moments when performance for a specific
interaction is not compatible with performance for another interaction, so
when "worlds collide" (as in Seinfeld) the character has to either struggle
with maintaining both performances, or choose one form of performance to stick
with and ruin an interaction with some other situation.

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hirundo
On the other hand, if nobody in the room thinks you're cool enough to want to
talk to you, the ambiguity in presentation is more a feature than a bug.
You're wishing that we could read each other's minds, but only a subset of us
would enjoy that knowledge. Please leave the rest of us space to indulge our
illusions. They make some of us _more_ social.

~~~
rchaud
Never thought of it that way, but you're right!

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crimsonalucard
No you're thinking too much the cause of loneliness is living alone. It 100%
starts and ends at how we live in modern society. Living spaces that have
shared communal spaces for essential requirements like a kitchen, dining table
or a Television room will end loneliness.

I have no doubt about this. The problem is, people living in these communal
spaces complain about the lack of privacy or ownership. People don't know what
they want even when the answer is in front of them. Humans have conflicting
individualistic needs and needs for companionship as well, the dual nature of
our desires actually evolved under communal living spaces so in actuality,
despite the fact that you desire privacy, you're actually healthier if you
give in to the alternative desire of companionship. People do need to own
things but not to the extent that communal living spaces are abandoned.

What people think is that we're designed to search for this state of
satisfaction even when living things aren't actually designed to ever reach
this state. There is no evolutionary advantage to a creature who is
perpetually content and therefore you will never be content. That being said
my theory is humans are actually designed to live in communal spaces while
being a bit discontent about the lack of privacy or ownership. This is the
natural state of things similar to how you have endless desires to eat greasy
unhealthy junk food but your desires are not evolved to be in an environment
where such food is plentiful.

The alternative is to give in to your capitalistic desires and be lonely. I
believe this is the worse alternative from pure anecdotal experience and from
the way humans lived anthropologically in the past.

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nixpulvis
Whatever floats your boat.

I'm pretty lonely sometimes, and I wish I was nicer sometimes, and I wish
people spoke _my_ language more often. These things are harder when the
culture is larger, as funny as it sounds.

Keeping up, is just so damn hard. Staying in requires trust, and empathy.

There's a sad paradox of our times. We both need to slow down and get to know
each other, and we need to race to address the problems we all see plain as
day.

Sadly, we're DISTRACTED. And the more distracted we are, the less we address
the underlying issues.

</rant>

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recursive
My god, it's full of scroll bars.
[https://imgur.com/a/KcV6v5W](https://imgur.com/a/KcV6v5W)

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dilippkumar
I've been thinking about this for a long time. About 5 years ago, me and some
friends got together to build a "Dating app but for people looking for friends
and activity partners".

Fortunately, we all quit before we got in too deep. It didn't seem like a
problem that had any good solutions.

Today, I'm convinced that a technology solution is not the right approach.
Screen addiction and various dopamine hits from social media have produced a
catastrophic collapse of various IRL social institutions that traditionally
facilitated opportunities to meet new people.

The most practical "if I had a magic wand..." solution that I can think of is
to wave a magic wand and undo all forms of screen addictions that has
destroyed our IRL social interactions.

~~~
dnissley
_Screen addiction and various dopamine hits from social media have produced a
catastrophic collapse of various IRL social institutions that traditionally
facilitated opportunities to meet new people._

The book "Bowling Alone" documented this collapse and was written between
1995-2000, well before the advent of smartphones and social media.

While I'm not convinced a technology solution is necessarily the right
approach, what you're suggesting is straight up waldenponding.

~~~
ardy42
> The book "Bowling Alone" documented this collapse and was written between
> 1995-2000, well before the advent of smartphones and social media.

Smartphones and social media may just be the latest and most extreme
manifestation of technological changes that were already underway then. Before
you had smartphone screens, you had television screens, etc.

------
tony
A favorite book on this is _Our Internal Conflicts_ by psychoanalyst Karen
Horney.

Carl Rogers referred to congruence of the self, as we navigate to actualize
ourselves against external introjections from parental / authority figures and
society.

Both Rogers and Horney had concepts of an ideal self and the anxiety when
we're strained by social pressures. The emotions are hard to articulate, and
why bother, what's to gain in vulnerability? If we dare to say our feelings,
we fear others will not regard us in a positive light. Our feelings will be
hurt deeply. So, we shape ourselves based on the impressions we want the
audience to see, which feels safe, but leaves us inner unease. We're not doing
what we really want, we're pleasing others.

Another area to dig into is True self and false self:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_self_and_false_self](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_self_and_false_self)

In Social Psychology, related terms and concepts include self-monitoring,
impression management
([https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_07.pdf](https://faculty.washington.edu/jdb/452/452_chapter_07.pdf))

> And they have good reason to: In a game theoretic way, unless they’re
> already inundated with social bids

Social Exchange Theory and CL-Alt covers this in greater detail:
[https://smashtyn.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/social-exchange-
th...](https://smashtyn.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/social-exchange-theory/)

------
rajlego
What he mentions about people being superficially nice to allow for more
selectiveness is very interesting. I think it’s hard to say that being direct
from the get go about interest is ideal beyond that reason alone because
friendship with people is something you build, not something you immediately
just know you’ll have when you meet someone. If you don’t feign interest in
the beginning you’ll miss out on all the people who you could have become good
friends with only after a certain level of closeness.

While feigning interest causes people to second guess themselves, I think
being direct could also do the same. If I know someone I’ve just met will tell
me they don’t like me if I don’t give them a good impression I’ll be
constantly trying to please them. Though I guess if you’re also trying to be
highly direct things become even more complicated.

It seems like there are far more social dimensions to this than I’d first
thought.

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LandR
I've always thought that my chosen superpower, if I could have one, would be
as to tell by looking at someone what they honestly think about me.

Do they think I'm cool, weird, ugly, creepy, friendly etc.

I would never hsve to ask if someone is only pretending to like me or put up
withe because they want something out of it.

Life would be so much easier, meeting people would be so much easier.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
I think you would be shocked by how little this power would be used.

Most of us drastically over-estimate how much other people are thinking about
us.

I think 99% of the time you used this power you would find that people, know
who you are, think of you as generally ok, with a slight positive association
just for remembering your name, but no other significant opinions about you
one way or the other.

By the time people actually develop strong opinions about you as a person,
your superpower would no longer be necessary to learn what those opinions are.

Maybe a few times a year you would catch a hardcore "faker" though. So that is
kind of cool.

~~~
Invictus0
Perhaps this person wants to use this superpower to gain a deeper
understanding of their closest relationships?

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claudeomusic
This is why I love dog tails. They can't help but show their authentic
intentions

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zepto
There is a budding sector of the economy now selling ‘authentic’ relating.
Recycled cult indoctrination methods are easily repackaged as the solution to
loneliness and lack of community.

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zadkey
Can we talk about why there are so many scrollbars on this page?

~~~
bckygldstn
The css has "div{overflow:scroll}".

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agumonkey
Isn't the web a connection without presentation ? it works to an extent, I
also think people have a need for deeper, thus presented connection.

~~~
prostheticvamp
No. It’s a low bandwidth communication medium which, because it is
asynchronous, allows for more calculated choice of presentation (eg,
Instagram).

~~~
agumonkey
I had irc and reddit in mind, not social networks with images though

~~~
mjevans
It's still the same, and also much harder to tell when people leave the
conversation if they do so without interaction clues.

