| ▲ | isaacfrond 4 days ago |
| Read the whole article wondering how lonely people think differently. But I now understand that it is just that: different. They do not conform to what the norm thinks. Seen in that light: lonely people are lonely because they are weird. Right. Good to know. |
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| ▲ | zusammen 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| I was a standup comedian in the 1980s and was occasionally asked why “my people” were so funny, and it’s odd because there are a lot of things that are funny about us, but not the real answer to this one. We had to be, for thousands of years, or we died. If we had humorless dumb ones (and we do, but not as many, again, because of what happened to them, as well as quite a number of our best) they didn’t do as well. I was also a clinical psychologist for a few years, and could say more on this, but some other time. Jewish humor, gay humor, autistic humor… they’re all more similar than they are different. You learn, from atypical experience, to see everything one degree off and you have a story that people will listen to and eventually they might even like you. You see things three degrees off and you shut up so no one else knows. You get six degrees off and even you don’t know, but everyone else does. |
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| ▲ | Der_Einzige 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is why the male oriented dating communities call it “goofmaxxing” or “jester maxing” to get good at comedy for the purposes of attracting others. The need to become funny for literal survival is among the worst of all humiliation rituals that most of us will be forced to do. I want people to be funny because they like being funny - not because they will literally not breed or be killed without it! | | |
| ▲ | PrismCrystal 3 days ago | parent [-] | | There’s also being funny not quite for attracting others, but for avoiding alienating people one has already attracted. As someone surely autistic somehow, I find myself making frequent jokes because I know my interlocutors don’t want to hear about the subjects I’d really like to talk about, so joking seems the least-offensive and least-effort part I can play in socializing. When I saw Mike Leigh’s 1987 short film The Short and Curlies, about a young man who reacts to every single thing with a little joke, I very much recognized myself. |
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| ▲ | viciousvoxel 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | As they say, tragedy (or alternatively, adversity) plus time equals comedy. | |
| ▲ | wigglyartichoke 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think a lot about Victor Frankl's description of the use of dark comedy while in concentration camps |
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| ▲ | wigglyartichoke 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Lonely people are weird because there's no social feedback loop, a lot of teachings are "self-taught" (for example how not to be an asshole), and even in engineering there's a "different" way self-taught engineers think For a lot people this lack of a feedback loop started as children. In the worst cases, where there's child hood abuse and neglect, any seeking out of positive feedbacks either goes unheard or punished The feedback loop reinforces itself in the short-term because being lonely and staying in the "hell you know" is better than dealing with the social failure, which might "prove" you don't belong in society and it will never change Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to do especially being born into it |
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| ▲ | Der_Einzige 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Hence why the term “oversocialization” is more real than ever. Autists don’t deserve the hell they get just because everyone else around them was over socialized. It’s telling that these days, the majority of real advancements in the world are done by people with ASD. Maybe the world should try being nicer to them. | | |
| ▲ | valec 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | terms like "oversocialized" suggest you spend too much time on imageboards and you would do well to get off those sites. same with "humiliation ritual" | | | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Autists don’t deserve the hell they get Sure. > Maybe the world should try being nicer to them. That's hard because of negativity bias. 90% of the world can be nice, but that 10% will stick out like a sore thumb. That strategy of "be nice" works on a micro level, but not macro. |
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| ▲ | doublerabbit 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to do especially being born into it And it doesn't happen overnight. It's taken myself five years just to be at a level where by you can defensively stand for myself and look at myself in the mirror and be pleased at where I am. The only support being my mother. | |
| ▲ | valec 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | well, thankfully there are tools [1] 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3 |
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| ▲ | 127 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Lonely people are also weird because they are lonely (and don't get the calibration from human interaction). |
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| ▲ | kaffekaka 3 days ago | parent [-] | | The article does not claim this nor support the claim. It merely says that loneliness is associated with being "weird". No causality. | | |
| ▲ | Oarch 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's possible to reverse this and infer the more mainstream your thoughts of these celebrities, the more popular you are / will be. | |
| ▲ | darkerside 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Well, exactly. Parents poster is pointing out that the cause is ambiguous. Actually, technically, they are attributing causality to the opposite direction, but in practice, I'd say it gets the point across. | | |
| ▲ | viciousvoxel 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | My intuition is that it goes both ways and it's a feedback loop/downward spiral. | | |
| ▲ | wigglyartichoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes, a social feedback loop, but the internal feedback loop is what causes the downward spiral |
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| ▲ | kaffekaka 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Indeed, but the article does not mention causality at all. |
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