[HN Gopher] Impoverished Emotional Lives ___________________________________________________________________ Impoverished Emotional Lives Author : imartin2k Score : 77 points Date : 2022-10-01 10:38 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (theconvivialsociety.substack.com) (TXT) w3m dump (theconvivialsociety.substack.com) | shanusmagnus wrote: | One (of many possible) ways to characterize the article is that | social media, and our online lives, have restricted our emotional | repertoires the way junk food has restricted our dietary ones. | This resonates with me. A related phenomenon I've been thinking | about -- or maybe it's the same exact one -- concerns limited | emotional range. | | Hypothesis: people still apply all their emotional machinery to | the very restricted emotional universes that modern life | presents, as they did to the full gamut of emotional experiences | that people were built to deal with, but which modern life rarely | elicits. | | The implications of this hypothesis are unclear to me, but one | candidate is that small and relatively unimportant issues that | would hardly have been recognized in the past, become magnified | so greatly that they can bring a group to the point of civil war | or dissolution. | nonrandomstring wrote: | > restricted our emotional repertoires the way junk food has | restricted our dietary ones. | | /me wonders if you've read a little book "Digital Vegan" [1] :) | | > Hypothesis: people still apply all their emotional machinery | to the very restricted emotional universes that modern life | presents, | | Is modern life flattened with respect to emotion? Incendiary | Twitter traffic and torrents of "hate speech" everywhere would | imply otherwise. Perhaps the intensity has gone up, but the | range and nuance has shrunk? | | Interesting development I saw; Royal Marines started | introducing "emotional intelligence literacy". Unsurprisingly | the recruits hated it and thought it was "politically correct | sissy stuff". Upshot was a measurable decrease in losses and | incidents resulting from hot-headed decision making, poor | judgement in the heat of anger etc. Emotional Intelligence now | features highly in selection. | | It may be that the highest "EQ" self-exclude from social media. | | [1] https://digitalvegan.net | shanusmagnus wrote: | The digital vegan idea is interesting and I hadn't heard of | it -- thank you. I think physiological metaphors have much to | offer in thinking about online life. A sort of 'emotional | hysteresis' akin to insulin resistance is another one I reach | for frequently; and, like with IR, fasting seems to be a | surprisingly effective intervention for the digital version | of the pathology, though of course you have to apply it | repeatedly to counter the 'dietary' excess. | | > Is modern life flattened with respect to emotion? | Incendiary Twitter traffic and torrents of "hate speech" | everywhere would imply otherwise. | | Maybe an example will be helpful to make this less abstract. | | Most Westerners are far safer, physically, than they have | ever before. They are less likely to starve to death, get | eaten by a bear, be murdered, die of exposure or of an | infected hang-nail. And yet, I suspect that even in the midst | of this relative luxury and safety, we are just as miserable | as when danger from all causes was drastically increased. | | Put more mathematically, I suspect that people react | emotionally to a problem of magnitude 4 as people 200 years | ago reacted to a problem of magnitude 9, because progress has | skewed the distribution of modern hazards so radically that | the far ends of the scale are almost never experienced. So in | a world of small problems, the largest small problems feels | large because the brain is bad at absolutes. | Klinky wrote: | 200 years ago the western world reacted with magnitude 9 to | the thought of an independent woman or African American, or | a homosexual. Shockingly some westerners still do. While | we've moved further towards a post-scarcity world, forced | artificial scarcity to prop up 200-year-old economic models | has become problematic. Perhaps you now have this potential | access to more "luxury"(education, healthcare, housing, | transport, communication), but no way to actually afford it | without massive debt. You end up with a lot of people | feeling insecurity about their future & the end goal of | society as a whole. | nonrandomstring wrote: | > people react emotionally to a problem of magnitude 4 as | people 200 years ago reacted to a problem of magnitude 9 | | A most interesting thought that I'll reflect on. Thank you. | Anecdotally, I've seen adults turn pale, silent and shaky | at the prospect of a lost smartphone. | bckr wrote: | I think this article is insightful, but I am compelled to short- | circuit the conversation it would start, by offering a rude | injunction: | | Go touch grass. | | Really, stop using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and their ilk. | Restrict your use of media like Reddit. | | OR you are doomed to be caught up in the mass emotional- | intellectual toilet-circling that these platforms are a vessel | for. | | One of several quantum leaps in emotional vibrancy I've | experienced over the last few years was refusing to scroll | through Facebook anymore. It is right up there with not calling a | toxic family member and taking an antidepressant. | coder4life wrote: | My cheap self-enforced act to stop using Facebook for a month: | | Every time someone come up on your feed (which you watch | constantly you crazy bastards), hide them for 30 days. | Eventually, within 5 days, barely anyone is going to be on your | feed. You'll get to see that rarely seen message | | "You are all caught up for now" | | And thanks for writing this. It's been a year and I need | another small break | namaria wrote: | You know, deleting your account is way more effective. | MarkPNeyer wrote: | Same. | | It took working at a social media company on ad ranking to make | the thing stick; I saw how much effort is going into putting | stuff in front of my brain that is sorted in terms of the | likelihood that I will react to it. | rexpop wrote: | And, have you got any _positive_ prescriptions to offer? The | social institutions that Twitter (and, let 's be honest, | television before it) replaced _have since atrophied_ , and | there's not much of a society to return to. Or, at least, it | would seem from a certain "impoverished" vantage point. | | So, please, without mockery, offer some _positive_ | prescriptions? Once one has "touched grass," then where are | they to go? Join a bowling league? | nicbou wrote: | Join nicer (online) communities, and aggressively filter out | the rest. | | I'm down to Hacker News, a handful of subreddits, and | literally nothing else. I forget about the toxic internet | like I forgot about the internet without an ad blocker. | | I don't think that most of it needs replacing. I meet friends | and friends of friends, and occasionally strangers, and I get | plenty of interesting interactions that way. Twitter and the | like were never a substitute for that. | bckr wrote: | Sure thing. | | I get most of my social interactions through alternative | spirituality groups I belong to. | | Bowling league sounds great. I'll be attending a runner's | meet-up this week. Can I run? Barely, but I want to get | better. | | I have weekly phone calls with long distance friends. | | I have dinner / go to concerts with a cousin who lives 45 | minutes away about once a month. | | I have a domestic partner. | | There are a number of other social pursuits that I want to | take up, like using coworking spaces or makerspaces, and | starting to cultivate a network of people interested in | coliving. | | It's challenging. I put effort into it. It's always top of | mind for me to be cultivating my social life. It's very much | worth it. | UncleOxidant wrote: | Never got on Facebook, fortunately. Quit Twitter last May. I'm | still on Instagram because I get a lot of good recipes, | exercise tips and underwater scenes - I guess it seems lot more | positive for me than the others, but possibly that's because | I've been careful about who/what I follow there. | raydiatian wrote: | " "It is the emotional register that accounts for the Pavlovian | alacrity with which we attend to our devices and the digital | flows for which they are a portal," I observed in 2017. " | | Stroke your own dick harder. You lost me at this nonsense. | nicbou wrote: | This is when I thought "this person needs an editor". This | article has many flaws. | CliffStoll wrote: | Slightly paraphrasing Donald Knuth: The Internet | is a great way to stay on top of things. But I want | to get to the bottom of things. | | Understanding, compassion, and emotional depth require | reflection, concentration, and time ... a quiet walk in a garden | does more for me than an hour of social media. | makeitdouble wrote: | > a quiet walk in a garden does more for me than an hour of | social media. | | This is to me a weird way to put it, as we're probably doing | both, and for different reasons. We all have different goals | and expectations regarding social media, but I don't think | compassion and emotional depth are the first and formost reason | most of us are here for instance. | | On the "social media" label, HN is one, but it works pretty | differently from the others. Same goes for MMORPGs, drawing | sites, reddit gardening communities etc. Putting all of it in a | single basket makes the discussion a lot harder I think. | UncleOxidant wrote: | > a quiet walk in a garden does more for me than an hour of | social media. | | A quiet walk in a garden does something positive whereas an | hour on social media would leave me feeling very negative and | depleted - there's an inverse relationship between time spent | on social media and how one feels. The more time spent there, | the worse one feels. You could say this is "by design" - | outrage increases engagement. | bigyikes wrote: | I hear this repeated a all the time. I can see how this might | be the case, but I just don't get it. | | My social media is overwhelmingly positive. I see | celebrations, beauty, fun, and love. Social media makes me | happy and more connected. | | Maybe it's because I've deliberately curated my feeds and | follow few people? If I see something I don't like | repeatedly, I unfollow. | UncleOxidant wrote: | > Maybe it's because I've deliberately curated my feeds and | follow few people? | | Maybe. I guess I could say my Instagram feed is like what | you're saying to some extent - mostly exercise tips, | recipes, underwater photography, pics of friends having | dinner, etc. But twitter on the other hand was terrible. I | quit twitter in May as it was just becoming an outrage | factory. Maybe I've been more careful with who I'm | following on IG? Maybe IG isn't as amenable to political | discussions and thus tends to stay saner? I'm not sure. | marginalia_nu wrote: | Twitter is fine if you very meticulously curate who you | follow and list tweets by chronological order. | | But yeah, I sometimes accidentally click a trending | topic. That makes me a bit sad, mostly because there | clearly are a lot of people out there who aren't getting | the help they need. | agumonkey wrote: | Just this afternoon I was reflecting on how, in many case, N | hours of internet feels like nothing in your mind. It's a long | stream of nice actions that rarely lead to a worthy memory. On | paper it's great, you have free, high grade information.. but | something is missing. | nicbou wrote: | Perhaps leave some time for contemplation. It's getting | really hard to just be alone with your thoughts; a whole | industry is devoted to replacing it with more scrolling. It's | still worth it though. | | I love going on long motorcycle rides, because I get to let | thoughts resurface, and to chew on them for as long as | needed. I can't chase them online unless they persist for | hours. I have to just think about stuff unassisted. | | I often return from longer motorcycle trips with a sense of | clarity that's hard to describe. | | The same applies to long walks and hiking, if I can resist | using my phone. | bumby wrote: | Your motorcycle riding reminded me of Attention Restoration | Theory, where spending time in nature recharges oneself in | pert due to the loosely held attention (as opposed to | directed attention, like when we read or spend time | online). | nicbou wrote: | It's basically an extended shower thinking session. | | I started adding tea breaks to my work day and it helps | too, if I can force myself to sit idle on the balcony. | ghiculescu wrote: | Good comment - time to put the phone away for the day. | Jtsummers wrote: | Real engagement, not passive. Even discussions like these | aren't always memorable. It's like driving the same route to | and from the office for years, at some point you start | arriving home or at the office with little recollection of | what happened in between. You weren't asleep, but you made | few new memories if nothing out of the ordinary happened | (days I remember: Seeing a red truck on its side off the | road, the days deer or antelope cross the path, the time a | cow decided to turn up on the road, etc.). So what are you | doing on the internet? Just reading? Is it creating new | memories, new connections? Sometimes, but how frequently? | What if you try to actively engage with the material, make | summaries, try out the ideas in a small project, _anything_. | agumonkey wrote: | right, thus I wonder about two things: | | - disconnected events even if passive, like contemplating, | or having someone around, doesn't cause the same kind of | void | | - being genuinely active on internet is hard, your brain is | constantly battling the possibility of a sweet distraction | in your browser tab | PuppyTailWags wrote: | I think the essay does not share my understanding of emotion. | Emotions are a complex but transient physiological+psychological | state in conversation with and reacting to events and thinking. | The essay describes months of mourning as if people don't still | grieve for months; the performative aspect of mourning constantly | for months has gone out of fashion. People still grieve for | months and years after the death of a loved one and the thought | that somehow the internet has caused a shortening of grieving is | a claim that would require much more than a substack essay for me | to believe. | | All emotions generally last at most 10 or 15 minutes. An | emotional state can refresh due to rumination, current | circumstances, etc. Losing my dog causes me to weep over multiple | days, but it's not like I'm crying constantly. Instead, I cry | when I would normally walk him. I cry when I would normally feed | him. I cry when I go to bed by myself, without the sounds of my | friend settling in too. On the same day I feel happy when I hit a | new high at my gym. I feel hungry when I skip breakfast. I feel | annoyed when a car booming music passes me by. It's not like I'm | sad all the time even though I am grieving. | | There is a conversation to be had about how social media affects | the rhythms of the multiple transient emotional states humans go | through regularly as part of normal behavior. But I don't think | they _shorten_ emotions specifically, because emotions are | already pretty short phenomena. I would speculate they instead | add in additional stimuli that affect what emotional states | humans enter and how often they enter them. | wpietri wrote: | Interesting points, but I don't think it goes deep enough. The | rhythms of social media contribute to people's emotions, but they | are also a function of people's emotions. There's a ton of | parallel evolution in social media because it's seeking the | intersection of capitalism's incentives and what people respond | to. | | I think it also ignores that social media creates opportunity for | both emotional stunting and emotional growth. One of the reasons | I'm still on Twitter is that it allows me to get perspectives on | the world that I would never normally encounter. People all | across society, people with very different experiences. | Personally, I've grown a lot in the broadness of my empathy | through years of frequent encounters with people just talking | openly about their lives. | | To make that work, though, I need to avoid spiraling down into | many of social media's traps, like doomscrolling or pointless | argument. Which in turn requires stronger emotional regulation | than I had before. So used correctly, I feel like social media is | an opportunity to practice the sort of intellectual and emotional | skills that lead to good self-regulation. | nopenopenopeno wrote: | Karl Marx predicted this. See: Estranged Labor (1844) | | https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts... | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Karl Marx did _not_ predict this. He predicted estrangement | from _labor_ - from being emotionally dissociated from the | results of your work. He didn 't predict being estranged from | (or worse, because of) your non-work interactions with others | through media. | WallyFunk wrote: | > our emotional lives tend to be impoverished in an online | context | | When you realize that when you pay attention to something and are | getting negative results, then you become very selective about | what you pay attention to. You just have to select and curate the | things that excite you in a positive way, and nurture that. This | applies online as-well as IRL/AFK. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-02 23:00 UTC)