I hadn’t heard the word countersignaling before, but it matches something I had observed many years ago.
My closest groups of friends always make so much fun of each other. We make negative comments about the worst traits about each other, the things that we are most self-conscious about… yet every time my friends make fun of me for something I worry about, I actually feel better and more comfortable with myself.
When I thought about why, I realized it’s because of the hidden message behind the ridicule of my longtime friends; they are telling me, “we are keenly aware of the worst qualities about you, and we love you and want to spend time with you anyway.”
There is comfort in knowing you don’t have to hide your flaws to be accepted and loved.
I wish I could find the original source on this, but I remember reading a tweet or blog that I thought had a really good metaphor for this kind of "male friend ribbing."
The metaphor went something like this: men making fun of each other are actuall y showing that they understand their friends deeply, because they know how to stab without hitting an organ.
That is - in order to make fun of someone without actually hurting them, you have to know which kinds of topics not to touch for any given friend. You skip the "your mom" joke for the friend with parent issues, and so on.
On the other hand, though, I have very often see my fellow enginerd types badly misread this dynamic. I've seen guys come onto an established team where some mutual teasing has evolved, then fall flat when they try to emulate that it - because they haven't yet earned the depth of relationship that makes it OK.
It kind of reminds me of another "nerd social fallacy" I've often observed, which I guess I'd name: "I can't be a bully." I think a lot of times people who've grown up dealing with bullying don't realize when they've become one. Sometimes the mutual teasing degrades into one guy just being a dick to the other.
It's two different kinds of logic. The stereotypically male way makes sense to me: you take the weapons that could be used against someone and make them harmless. If you're fat, your friends call you fat, and you're like, hey, they know I'm fat, it's established that I'm fat, and they're my friends anyway! Being fat is fine! It takes all the fear out of it.
In my perception, the stereotypically female way is, if you're fat, nobody calls you fat. They're careful using the word around you. They might even tell you you're not fat. To me, that makes it seem like the friendship depends on the obvious lie that you're not fat, which makes it seem inevitable that it's going to end. One day they're going to make some acknowledgment of the evident truth that you're fat, and that's your signal that they're done with you and the friendship is over. To me, it feels like the truth is being kept in reserve for the day when they're going to shank you with it.
That's my (male) perspective. I'd rather have friends who acknowledge the truth about me and make me feel okay about it than friends who act like the truth about me isn't compatible with friendship and inclusion.
On an intellectual level, I get the (stereotypically) female perspective, too -- I get that it doesn't seem friendly to constantly remind someone of their shortcomings, and that a friend group should give someone an escape from oppressive social perceptions. But that doesn't resonate with me as much emotionally.
I haven't looked at this topic this way, but now this really does make sense! I remember a lady asking me once how tall I am. I'm rather tall and in fact I don't like being asked that, since it is obvious that I am tall and the actual number does not matter. I responded with my height and immediately asked: what is your weight? Wrong question. In my male brain it was an equal kind of question. In the female brain totally not.
Eh... if you're fat, and your friends call you fat, they mean it. You're fat.
They just don't mean for it to hurt, and that's the wholesome part. Every time they call you fat, they're showing you that it's okay with them that you're fat.
If you're fat, and your friends tell you you're not fat, then to me that implies that the truth is too awful to say, but for your sake they'll pretend you're a different person. Which to me seems like it really underscores that it's not actually okay to be the way you are.
Recently a lady was telling me that she wasn't taken seriously. When a male colleague proposed something that she proposed years ago, people suddenly accepted it, she said. I explained her about 'implicit pecking order' in company culture and 'he is taller'. Then she said "yeah i'm short". Then I said yes but you are perfect the way you are, and I think she appreciated that.
Only some kind of men behave like that. I had many friends growing up and we never did that sort of thing, and it always put me off to see people who did.
I have many friends who I don’t do this with, because I know they don’t like it and it doesn’t work with them. I show my friendship to them by understanding the type of person they are and knowing that friendly ribbing is not for them.
Would you mind being friends with someone like me? Or do you feel like engaging in that behavior at all, even if not directed at you, is enough to make you not want to be friends with them?
By definition, if you don't like to experience it; don't like to witness it, it's not 'ribbing': it's bullying. It's crucial that the person being ribbed is part of the joke, and should be obvious.
It's very common for people to engage in the bullying, thinking that they are just ribbing; perhaps, never having experienced the safety that is required for ribbing.
There's also the common experience of a bully who always retreats to the defense of "I'm just ribbing you, why are you so defensive?" anytime they're challenged. Making the victim feel like they're the problem.
This is the case for so many things, though. Some people try to be funny but aren’t. Some people think they know how to drive safely but can’t. Some people think they are great programmers but aren’t.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t funny people, or safe drivers, or great programmers. It also doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to KNOW you are funny, safe, or great at something.
It is a bit of a paradox, though, that right and wrong people can be equally certain.
Lots of people like that in this thread. I'm pretty sure their friends do not find it as funny or innocent.
I've seen such a friend group explode after one too many "I was just joking", and it turned out everyone pretty much hated each other. So much trash talking behind people's back due to harmless "ribbing".
Not OP. It's not about the words or the intentions, it's about the fact that we can talk about anything in the world, do any activity together, and you want to do something I'm not comfortable with.
That said, I understand relationships are about give and take. I couldn't be in a romantic relationship like this, but I'll indulge my friends or my cousins. I have a friend who engages in "countersignaling" often. Our connection is generally worth the uncomfortableness, but sometimes it is unbearable.
Not the person you asked, but I think it comes down to past experiences/family environment/etc. Theres poking fun at someone to signal "i like you anyway"... that is real. There's also people who cross the line with their words, and use "i was just joking" as an excuse to be cruel.
If someone has experienced a lot of the later, it makes sense that they don't really trust the former.
With age Ive found myself much more comfortable with folks "being mean, but in a friendly way" as they intend it. When I was younger though, I never understood why folks didn't instead just "say the nice part." Like, if your friends are always glad you join them even if you're always late, making fun of you for being late with a big smile can still feel pretty bad for you. Much better to say "hey please don't be late" and also "we really enjoy you spending time with us."
With age Ive come to see that for reasons I don't understand, lots of folks have a massive aversion to saying clearly the things they appreciate about the people around them directly. Eh, their loss.
I don’t find it very gendered, my sister and I used to do this often, like young wolf pups, we’d jostle and play for the upper hand.
I have women friends who will play like this with me. It can reveal insights that neither of us were clear on without the other bringing it to light.
Of course it can be one sided too, and it turns into bullying. I think context matters and even if you’re being bullied, it’s still revealing if you are able to see beyond the emotion. You’re not your looks, your body, your mind, your bank account, your friend group, etc… Your worth is beyond these things. I hope you find that someday!
It's a stereotype that women are directly mean to other women more than men are mean to other men. No idea if there is any data to back that up, only that it's a commonly repeated meme.
There's also culture at play. I don't know if men affectionately dissing their friends is universal but there's plenty of related things like:
In Japanese culture you don't brag about co-workers or family to outsiders. Outsiders you treat with respect. Insiders you don't. The fact that you don't get the more polite treatment is proof that you're an insider. It's a common scene in stories where someone asks to stop being treated like an outsider by specifically asking for the less polite language. You can also watch the ribbing man to man, man to woman, woman to man, woman to woman. I don't know if there is data on which is more common.
There's a fine line between teasing, which can build up a person, and degradation designed to destroy self esteem. It's also easy to dismiss that degradation as "I'm just teasing. You're too sensitive. "
Same goes for how men are comforting each other by acknowledging flaws/mistakes/situation to try to help move on.
Which is very different on how women comfort each other.
I know both kinds of people, men, women and kids. Its a thing that is nurtured across generations and different for each family and not that much gender-specific.
I think that's because when women do it, they are usually being intentionally cruel. Any woman will tell you how cruel teenage girls are to each other.
That's astute. I was always uncomfortable with this kind of joking. I felt threatened. The real reason was that I didn't have a good comeback.
Let's say my nose was large, and a friend jokes about it. I need to say something back. And I could not think of anything. A low stakes situation becomes higher stakes than it needs to be.
So on their side they see me struggle and probably feel bad, so they don't do it again. But then we are just friends not best friends.
I don’t know if I have a clear answer to how I learned and practiced this. Probably a lot of simple exposure and observation. The important thing is the friendship comes first; I never make an insult joke to someone I don’t know well. I build a friendship first, then test out the waters with small jokes.
I also always start and focus on myself; I make jokes at my own expense often. A big part of my personality is a strange juxtaposition of bravado and self deprecation. I will joke about how amazing I am and how much of a failure I am at the same time.
It seems to work? I think people like me, generally? I don’t know man, I just wing it! I have no idea what I am doing, but I am also pretty great at not knowing what I am doing.
when i dont have a comeback i simply say, "oh no ive been owned" or something similar. the toxic male environment social equivalent of brushing yourself off and standing back up. lets them get whatever they needed from the exchange but also signals theyre not going to get a big reaction from you if they happen to be 100% bully
I've identified two approaches to this situation. One is to take the insult graciously, as though it's feedback:
"Careful: you could put someone's eye out with that!"
"Oh! Thanks for the reminder." (adjust the position of your head, as appropriate for your extremely large and dangerous nose)
---
The other is to take whatever they said, and exaggerate it. This produces really good comebacks. (It's important to insist upon this point, regardless of any evidence you might receive to the contrary.)
"Careful: you could put someone's eye out with that!"
"Oh, could I? Well, your entire face is bad."
If they respond with another insult, repeat the same strategy. They'll notice what you're doing after the second or third attempt, and then it will turn from "this person's bad at comebacks" into "this person's (pretending to be) bad at comebacks and it's funny".
"My face is bad? Is that the best you could come up with?"
"Your face is so bad that it makes everyone else's faces bad, too."
"But… that means your face is also bad."
"And whose fault is that? It's your fault. Specifically, the fault of your face. Which is bad."
"Still means you've got a big nose."
"Well you've got a small nose."
"No I don't. We've got the same sized noses."
"Thus invalidating your previous aspersion that my nose is unusually large. Who's bad at comebacks now?"
"Still you."
---
There's a third approach, if the insult is disguised as faux-concern: pretend you're taking it seriously, while exaggerating the characteristic they're concerned about.
"Hey, you having trouble seeing past that, mate?"
"Oh, no, it's alright: most of my vision is unobstructed." / "I've got some tape in my bag if I need it." / "It's no worse than binoculars."
> Oh, could I? Well, your entire face is bad."
> If they respond with another insult
I seriously doubt they will. “Your entire face is bad” sounds like lashing out from a place of hurt. Typical response would probably be a confused or disgusted look followed by a change of topic.
There are not a lot of people who could pull this kind of response off without coming off extremely weird or like assholes. And none of the people who could pull this off successfully are asking for comeback advice on Hacker News.
Yeah but also no. This feels a like bit like “just be charismatic”. Someone asking how to respond to this sort of playful insult is unlikely to pull this off in any natural way.
I would think a better response for someone who does not know how to naturally respond to these sorts of playful insults would be to just absorb it goodnaturedly. “Haha, yep. I get this big nose from my dad.” Instead of continuing banter that is awkward, end it in a friendly way and move on.
True. Back in the day, the mates and I would greet each other by saying, "Hey, fuck you." Then, "No, fuck you.". You can kinda guess it eventually ping pongs louder and funnier. We kind of had to stop when other innocent people would pop in and ask if everything is "ok".
That may be an interpretation. Another is that many have difficulty regulating their feelings, and “venting” the discomfort in this semi-controlled manner is a socially acceptable release because it invites others to do the same to you, and you all minimize the risk of catastrophic attacks under tension.
It's a game that allies play in order to prepare for enemies.
When played with allies, it connects you to each other and lets you put your guard down (which is perverse to those that don't get it).
The same game played with an enemy teaches you to deflect rather than internalize bad-faith insults and teaches you to use wit and words to stand up for yourself, keeping your dignity without violence.
...
Also it's a demonstration of equality.
e.g. you can't play the game with your boss or your son, but you can play it with your brother and your peers.
The book Impro treats extensively of what it calls "status games", in the context of building believable, natural scenes of dialog for the stage (or other dramatic purposes) and as a framework for making improvisation interesting.
The author muses that the situation of feeling safe playing status games with another person—that is, treating them only as games, not as serious and with real status in play—is perhaps the definition of what friendship is.
This could include trading barbs, taking turns playing the bully and the victim, trading playing "high" and "low" roles, jokey one-upsmanship, that kind of thing. Stuff you don't do with non-friends because there's too much risk of being taken seriously, and too much risk of losing actual status or of hurting someone else's status for-real when you didn't intend to.
My friend group from my school did the same thing, but I've always hated this pattern. Because of exactly this behavior, after finishing school I've decided to intentionally drop some contacts.
Maybe I've interpreted it as "I'm better than you, because you're doing X. I'm mentioning this over and over again, because it makes me feel better."
Can I float an adjacent idea? It collapses the anxiety by simply forcing the thing your anxious about to be over. I've definitely had the experience you're describing where someone likes me despite something I'm insecure about. I've also had the experience where someone dislikes me precisely because of something I'm insecure about and tells me as much to my face. Both are better than not knowing.
This seems fairly culture-dependent, from my experience.
For instance, I've noticed a distinct difference in how sarcasm is received in the Northeast US vs the West Coast. What you described feels more Northeast-y to me (I'm sure it varies by other segments and sub-sub-cultures, too).
There's the saying: "If an Irish person calls you 'asshole,' it means they think you're a friend. If they call you 'friend' it means they think you're an asshole."
Ha that's funny. I'm from the Midwest and found my dry/sarcastic humor tended to confuse people on the West Coast. A lot of people tended to take me completely seriously when I was obviously joking.
I always chalked that up to being around people that were new to the country and hadn't yet wrapped their head around the latest fashionable American cynicism. Generally takes a few decades to kick in, but when it does it's usually worth the wait (see Kumail Ali Nanjiani).
The problem with using clinical phrases to describe normal behavior is demonstrated in this post. "Social anxiety" has a specific clinical meaning that is not covered by this post. The post is actually discussing a very natural and rational nervousness that normal people have in social situations. The post is providing a way of thinking about that nervousness that can help reduce it, for the nervous person's benefit, and it's great if that works, but it's not addressing social anxiety.
Social anxiety is a condition that cannot be thought away, you cannot rationalize social anxiety nor can it be represented as a cost/benefit analysis of risk of being disliked vs. reward of being liked. You can feel socially anxious without having social anxiety. You can be depressed without having depression. You will be depressed after your beloved pet dies. You will be socially anxious walking into a room full of people you haven't met before.
> You will be depressed after your beloved pet dies.
You'll experience *grief* after a pet dies. We've pathologizing grief to a point that it makes it harder for those experiencing both grief and depression, two separate (but sometimes linked) human conditions.
I agree with you as a general rule. But this is actually pretty close to how Social Anxiety is defined. It's about the fear of being negatively evaluated or embarrassed.
I think what this blog post is getting at is describing for people the difference between fear of negative evaluation and positive desire to be liked.
One thing the post misses is that sometimes these are learned behaviors that come from a lifetime of experience being disliked for no obvious reason. For example, sometimes outgoing autistic children develop social anxiety after their peers reject them repeatedly.
You can feel socially anxious without having social anxiety.
That is not true in plain English, just because a particular profession decides to use words one way, does not mean the definitions change for the rest of us.
> just because a particular profession decides to use words one way, does not mean the definitions change for the rest of us
This is a particular pain in physics, which has taken very commonly used words and given them a very narrowly defined meaning, within a strict framework - like the words Energy or Work
> Social anxiety is a condition that cannot be thought away
I hope not, I don't want to be hooked on some prescription meds eg. what about exposure therapy
I do wonder if being nervous to talk to a hot girl is the same as social anxiety I mean I'm not the jock/main attention guy either but I can talk to strangers (guys or not attractive women)
Except it’s not. It can be thought away, under enough pressure people can do extraordinary things. There is just no such pressure in society now. I’ve suffered immensely in my life, and if you describe your condition as “anxiety” you simply aren’t suffering enough for treatment to have any real impact.
If you think you’re suffering rises to the medical treatable level please develop a more serious condition before getting on a waitlist. All doctors are taken up on your non-physical problems and you don’t immediately need care like I do.
I have social anxiety and it is completely unrelated to likeableness.
I do not think people would not like me, I do not try to avoid people disliking me, that's not the point at all. Quite the opposite, I'm sure I'm an interesting person and I'm confident people would like me if I could take the step.
Problem is, there is something that physically prevents me from saying "Hi!" to a stranger. I literally cannot get myself to take a step towards them and I can't explain why that is, because I do not understand it myself.
Also quite interestingly (to me), this completely goes away under certain circumstances: (1) If I take around 2-3 units of alcohol and it is not a totally alien environment (it would not help if I was in a bar alone with complete strangers). (2) If more than about 70% of people in the room are people I know well. Then I do not feel anxious about approaching the remaining 30%.
I find it helpful to think of that physical barrier as your own emotions barring you from entering a state where the uncertainty as to whether you'll be safe grows too high to trust yourself to operate in real time.
The problem isn't really being liked or not being liked, the problem is the cognitive overload of trying to predict what will happen and respond to it in realtime, which is sure to set in when one's mental model of the potential interaction is very uncertain. Of course, if your brain quits in a conversation, the other person is not going to be very impressed with you, so this kind of failure carries social risk itself.
The way to fix this is to have as many interactions which are bearable as possible so as to build out the mind's mental model of itself and others in social situations. Gradually the danger just fades away. There's no substitute for firsthand experience; no amount of premeditating, ruminating, or brooding will fix this.
I have the same exact experience as you. It's like some weird physical barrier, but I can't really articulate the feeling or explain it. The exposure therapy method here doesn't work because "just do it a bunch of times and you'll get more comfortable" isn't even possible for me, I can't "just do it."
For me though, it takes more than a few beers to be comfortable approaching someone. I'd have to be completely sloshed and even then it's a struggle.
The only time I didn't experience the seemingly physical barrier was in college when a friend convinced me to try MDMA and we went out. I became almost the exact opposite of who I am with the social anxiety. I was the most extraverted, outgoing person in our group quite literally chatting up anyone and everyone that I crossed paths with without any care or inhibition around it.
No other pharmaceutical has been able to cure it for me like that, and it's a bit depressing because I liked that version of myself and I'd like to be able to be that person again without an incredibly dangerous illegal substance.
Mine is similar to this. In addition the anxiety comes from me thinking that most interactions are banal and more about “trading good vibes and energy” with the other person rather than a genuine deep conversation, and I fear that my facial expressions will reflect what I’m really feeling inside - “ugh can we transition off talking about my weekend or the weather?”. And also because I’m not that witty without alcohol, but it’s almost like most of western small talk is based off of exchanging humor and wit, then laughing very loudly at the punchline. So my anxiety is more to do with not performing well enough to have this stereotypical exchange done smoothly.
You have the fear of being judged; the antidote is realizing that most people barely notice you, it just feels like they do because you’re self-conscious around new people.
I assume it can be different for everyone. This post resonates with me, but my social anxiety mixes being sensitive to negative feedback and low self-esteem.
So, you want to avoid both being disliked, but also being liked - because this puts you in novel situations you fear lead to an even bigger failure down the road.
Neither "wanting to be liked" or "wanting to avoid being disliked" rings true to me, at least as applied to my own social anxiety. I want to avoid being thought of at all. The idea of being liked is just as anxiety-producing as being disliked. Possibly more so. Every relationship with another person, positive or negative, is another cognitive burden to maintain. I would vastly prefer most of my interactions to just remain at the default/stranger level where I can re-use the same anticipatory model for most people I deal with.
Tangentially related, I have for some time had a desire to write short stories, but the anxiety around revealing anything that might expose my inner self is probably the biggest reason why I don't.
I was reading a collection of short stories yesterday and came upon Michael Swanwick's "Slow Life". It struck me that it shares more than a few similarities to his "The Very Pulse of the Machine": Woman astronaut on a moon in the outer solar system is placed in lethal danger, encounters alien intelligence that communicates by reading/influencing minds, she isn't sure whether the communication is genuine or hallucinated, eventually the alien intelligence provides a long-shot resolution to save her.
Maybe Swanwick just had another story to tell with some of the same beats. It happens. Or maybe it's like bare feet in a Tarantino movie. The point is, the idea of someone examining my own stories and thinking such thoughts about me is extremely distressing. It's not being disliked that I try to avoid. I'm trying to avoid the baseline stress of social interaction.
I recognize the irony of opening up about this in writing. If you have something to say _about me_, please don't.
The weird thing about "The idea of being liked is just as anxiety-producing as being disliked" is that it is an incorrect prediction of reality: actually being liked would. Thinking about it is really a different thing: it overestimates the stakes involved, it mistakenly invents "ideas of people" to do the liking which do not behave like actual people, and is unable to build any self-esteem by imagining people liking you because these imagined people are under your our control; being liked by your own imagined people doesn't "count" the way being liked by real people would...
The human mind is not really designed to handle under-socialization well, and seems to fill in the empty space with imaginary figures which fail to meet its social needs. Taken outside its natural tribal operating regime, it bugs out in all kinds of strange ways.
> the idea of someone examining my own stories and thinking such thoughts about me is extremely distressing
This is a very familiar feeling to me, and in my experience it actually is a fear of being disliked, or more specifically about not being able to control others' reactions to me. But the fear is so great and unapproachable that the mind cordons it "out of sight" of conscious feeling.
It becomes better to not be thought of than to expose myself to the possibility of others seeing me poorly, especially if I'm not able to defend myself and make the case for my being seen with grace. I suspect that it is over-exposure to human meanness and judgement and under-exposure to kindness and grace which brings about this expectation of others' dispositions towards oneself; this perhaps is the reason for the Christian injunction that humans not judge one another--it guards against this particular failure mode of the social mind.
This rings true to me as someone who's overcome most of his social anxiety over the last few years. The last graph is particularly correct. It's about being authentic and being okay with people not liking you. This is especially useful in dating because then you stop being needy (which is unattractive) when you can let go of the outcome and just show someone who you are and if they reject you then you simply realize that they aren't the person you were looking for because you were looking for someone who likes you for who you are.
Is the person who wrote the post qualified to say this though? Like are these statements the result of scientific research or just his opinion like my opinion?
It's a opinion piece. But so are must attempted explanations of emotions. How would you even study this?
It seems some in the comments resonate and some disagree. So its somewhat useful.
One thing i feel missing is the anxiety part of social anxiety. The way the brain colors vague or unclear external (social) signals in default negative ways, in a feedback loop.
Not avoiding being disliked or seeking being liked, but simply being unable to quantity it correctly.
Fair enough but I still don't understand this person's relationship to the subject and why they are so vague about what they do and what their qualifications are on all of their social media.
As someone with apparent social anxiety, I don't really care about being disliked either. Being left alone is the overriding priority by far, it is not an aversion to being disliked, although being disliked is not the best since it's still attention.
If someone came to me and tried to mentor me about unlearning my discomfort with being disliked, I would feel like I'm being manipulated and I would make sure to avoid that person.
Yeah same here. I like people, I like me - what I don’t like is the expectation that I essentially perform improv for others when I don’t want to. The problem is being observed, and expected to perform. It feels bad. Being left alone, with no risk of social interaction, feels really really good. It’s a literal relief from the constant energy expenditure that is acting out socializing.
I’d prefer to avoid being disliked - or at any rate, disliked without good reason - but as you say, that’s mostly because then I’d be wasting even more of my time managing interactions with (or more likely avoiding interactions with) those who dislike me. My god what a waste of energy, how I abhor it.
I’ve never been good at banter so this speaks to me.
But it’s interesting to think that when people like you, they tend to want more from you and that leads to social obligations. And you can either go along with these social obligations or decline and come off as rude.
So in a sense, social connections give people some amount of control over your life and that can feel restricting and draining sometimes.
Even something as simple as a text message can be thought of as a task that someone gave you without your consent. And if you don’t respond within a certain time window then you’re rude and risk damaging the relationship. Or if you respond poorly that can damage it as well.
Sometimes I wonder if this is social anxiety or just being extra aware of the realities of life.
A book "How to attract women through honesty" by Mark Manson (I think the only book in dating genre I recommend without some caveats, and recommend regardless on one's gender or orientation) has a lot about insecurity vs security (or: neediness vs non-neediness).
There was one passage that although most insecure people are in this "I don't want be hated" or "let anyone like/love me", there are also some people that are obsessed with everyone liking them. It has some different symptoms, but also stems from insecurity.
I guess you know friends (or maybe you are one yourself) who play too hard to be liked by everyone. Also, there is an interesting case of super-popular people, who are super-needy, even though at the first glance they don't look so. What's is characteristic, though, it is that everything starts to fall apart when they lose their spotlight. (Think about actors or musicians who, after they are no longer as popular as they used to be, drown in depression and drugs.)
I can dig it. I'm constantly and annoyingly replaying every social interaction in my head for days, and even longer when they're (in my perception) bad. Why would I want to go out, if I might subject myself to more of that? (I do go out and continue to subject myself to that, but nowhere near as frequently as my more social friends.)
This is part of it, but everyone to some degree has discomfort with being disliked and will do things to avoid it. At least in my experience, social anxiety is much more about the cognitive distortions that convince you others dislike you, when they may in fact be neutral or even have a positive view of you.
Just as one example, when I'm interacting with someone who I haven't reached a certain level of comfortability with, I'm highly aware of and sensitive to their reactions to me in terms of what they're saying, their tone, their micro facial expressions, etc., and I perceive any small negative reaction as a sign that they don't like me. This usually isn't true! But it ironically has the effect of inducing self-sabotaging avoidant behaviors in me, such as over-censoring of what I say and just general awkwardness around them, which makes it much more likely they will end up disliking me.
A person's existence is made up of what others think about the person and how the person relates to them. There is hardly anything else to make up the existence for the person. You are just a collection of perceptions about you, and your relations with the world. Even your money and assets are only as a valuable as seen by the world around you. You look trendy and stylish only because you align with the trends of the place and time. Your physical fitness is meaningful only at your place and time. A village woman in a third world can outlive many gym goers of the Western world.
There is nothing else left to be considered as your absolute existence outside of how you relate with the world.
I think the premise, backed up by a couple of random tweets, is questionable, but glossing over that, the conclusion is more or less "just be yourself and you'll have more success". Maybe. But I feel like it's pinning social anxiety purely on neurotic safety-seeking behavior, which is superficial. Surely generalized social anxiety is an unhealthy over-correction, but some personality types have inherently more success socially than others, or in blunt terms, some people are more likeable than others. If you're socially compatible with 90% of the population, it's not hard to ignore the 10% you don't meld with, but swap the numbers and the negative feedback will be overwhelming and makes the majority of social interactions anxiety-inducing. I guess that's why the anonymous Internet is full of disagreeable people.
I've been reading through the book The Courage to be Disliked recently. I'm not a big fan of the writing style of the book, but some of the ideas in the book appear in this post too.
One of the concepts in the book is being comfortable with being disliked. If instead you're trying to avoid being disliked, you're effectively subject to other people's whims.
When you look at it from that perspective, that's a pretty stressful experience!
IDK, in my experience not avoiding being disliked only results in a lot of people disliking me, but hasn't brought any gains, unless a rate limit on HN is a gain (they say I'm "too ideological", whatever that means)
As a person with social anxiety and a fear of being disliked I get to be the person that people love to talk about how much they hate all of the people that don't fear being disliked and all of the ways they are getting either getting screwed by other people or are being screwed by other people. We really deserve the society we live in
No kidding, I read your comment first and then wondered how bad could it be. Turns out the whole comment is nearly that one sentence. Sentences are like functions, sometimes you need a really long one, but oftentimes they work better in reasonable chunks.
I like that bit about optimizing for not going bankrupt vs. windfall
Idk you hear these phrases all the time excelsior, shoot for the stars land in the moon, etc... gotta actually apply it
Tangent about drugs I wish I felt like I did when on the snow all the time damn, what a great mindset like anything is possible, same with adhd meds but I can see how it would be bad too not having fear/self doubt eg. "I'm gonna jump off this building and land over there", over confidence
Oh this was about 10 yrs ago I was partaking I'm not in that env anymore where I can easily source stuff, now it's just alochol
I find merit with the core point as well the delivery.
I wish it was more commonly accepted that choosing not to act is effectively a stand against one's own value system in favor of the value systems of those who do act.
Off topic, but my eye twitched at the word "agentic." This word has infested every computing and software discussion as a buzzword, to the point where I am having a visceral reaction just seeing it. Even though it's used appropriately here, I have to admit I retched a little while reading. So tired of hearing "agentic."
As friends of mine who I consider popular have suggested to me “don’t give a fuck what people think about you”, and this blog says that in a much longer form.
As someone who was extensively bullied as a kid, including with physical violence, my social anxiety went through the roof and it has taken me a long time and awareness of my trauma to heal from those wounds to the point I no longer have social anxiety.
The world is sadly full of miserable cruel people who want to put me down so they can no longer have to deal with their own feelings of inferiority. I have made friends who truly love me for who I am, who give me space to talk, who do not constantly put me down in cruel ways (yes, I once had “friends” like that), and who truly care about my feelings, but it has taken a lot of work to get there. I can now sniff out someone who is starting to engage in bullying behavior, and block them from being in my life.
> Why else would someone be so anxious about how others see them?
The scientific consensus would tell the author that judgement in humans happens already the moment they see a person and it is immediate, even if the person not doing anything:
>across three studies, we find that first impressions [...] made from thin slices of real-world social behavior by typically-developing observers are not only far less favorable across a range of trait judgments compared to controls
Edit:
Okay this was completely misunderstood. My point was that the "normal" people in the study immediately internally know if to like or not like a person. Hence why first impressions DO matter the most. Which is why I simply disagree with the argument in the OP that anyone has control over their perception.
You also cannot win people over if the most respected person in a group dislikes you. The others will follow boot.
The article describes how neurotypical people, i.e. the average Joe would come up with a decision to like or not like a person based on first impressions before the person being judged even talks. Fairly sure in an article about how people are thinking how they are perceived by others this is relevant. But I get it can upset people that it is out of their control entirely.
I disagree. I think the article is about the motivations of people with social anxiety. I'd agree it makes assumptions and paints with a broad brush but it feels relevant to some of the socially anxious people I know.
I edited and rephrased a lot of my posts and the other replies and maybe my though process is clearer now. I didn't word it all too well, forgive me for not being a native, I struggled to bring my point across in an enunciated way.
Thank you for the improvements, I think it does read better now. Thank you for making the effort to converse in a second language.
I still think you are making a point that feels orthogonal to the article. The author presents (supported by public expressions of the opinion) that some people believe social anxiety is based on wanting to be liked. While to that point your study indicating that autistic people may be at a disadvantage on the getting people to like them front, the author is then rejecting that proposition (i.e. that the socially anxious are actually concerned about avoiding dislike). I suppose your point can be understood relevant there too, in that for the autistic population, the baseline "disliked" level is higher. However, the article remains about the internal focus of those with social anxiety (whether it over generalizes or not) between "liked" and "not disliked" which seems orthogonal to any baseline "likability" considerations for one or any other sub-population.
[edit: s/"liked" level is lower/"disliked" level is higher/ for higher congruence with context]
Curious, yet the most people suffering from anxiety as secondary comorbid psychiatric condition are the depressed, autistic and ADHD sufferers.
The article is definitely a mental health topic. A little harmless stage fright before a presentation is not real clinical generalized anxiety and affects most normal people.
You can be diagnosed with GAD or social anxiety disorders without being autistic. The comorbidity isn't total.
I think there's a good question about whether people can tell you're anxious at a glance but worrying about that will make your anxiety much more visible.
> I think there's a good question about whether people can tell you're anxious at a glance
Which is why I linked the nature article? It's plain obvious an interesting point I tried to make that "normal" people will instantly perceive someone as likeable or unlikeable. Which the article in the OP goes great lengths to discuss.
I mean I can live with people immediately going against my point, I just see they didn't even gave it 5 minutes of thought. Which is not necessarily directed at you, I cannot possibly convince anyone and reply to anyone at the same time.
Social anxiety is significantly more prevalent in the general population than autism. So sure, the article may be less applicable to people with autism, who have other visible symptoms besides what comes from “mere” social anxiety.
>There's this popular idea that socially anxious folks are just dying to be liked
Really? I've never come across that idea. If fact, in my experience 'social anxiety' is almost always driven by the fear of failure, not the ambition of uncertain success.
I would counter that the opposite of 'social anxiety' - 'social vanity' - is more indicative of a deep desire to be liked.
I've struggled with social anxiety for years. Just yesterday I discovered that I am unable to visualize mental images such as faces (aphantasia).
I have always struggled in social settings where I people will be attending whom I've met on multiple but infrequent prior occasions - and I will recognize that I know them from somewhere but will be unable to place them or their name.
This has happened for 40 years when I see my wife's cousins at funerals every 2-3 years (but otherwise never see them). They are so friendly and nice. Smiling and hugging me. But they have to realize that I am never able to use their name because I can't remember it - nor am I able to make inquiries about work or life because I remember nothing about them.
The same happens when I, as a middle manager, travel for multiple day business trips to the home office.
It is incredibly embarrassing which causes me to avoid such settings which in turn makes me seem aloof and unfriendly.
Social anxiety has to be correlated with deepness, aka the more shallow a person is the less social anxiety they present.
Also some fixation with a person/ small group of people in particular and trying to win them over. The less socially anxious people cast a big net and that will cause people who'd like them and dislike them but the net is so big that they simply stick with those who like them.
I hadn’t heard the word countersignaling before, but it matches something I had observed many years ago.
My closest groups of friends always make so much fun of each other. We make negative comments about the worst traits about each other, the things that we are most self-conscious about… yet every time my friends make fun of me for something I worry about, I actually feel better and more comfortable with myself.
When I thought about why, I realized it’s because of the hidden message behind the ridicule of my longtime friends; they are telling me, “we are keenly aware of the worst qualities about you, and we love you and want to spend time with you anyway.”
There is comfort in knowing you don’t have to hide your flaws to be accepted and loved.
Perhaps this is controversial, but I think this is a mostly male way of expressing affection.
Women observing this sometimes conclude that men are horribly cruel to each other.
I wish I could find the original source on this, but I remember reading a tweet or blog that I thought had a really good metaphor for this kind of "male friend ribbing."
The metaphor went something like this: men making fun of each other are actuall y showing that they understand their friends deeply, because they know how to stab without hitting an organ.
That is - in order to make fun of someone without actually hurting them, you have to know which kinds of topics not to touch for any given friend. You skip the "your mom" joke for the friend with parent issues, and so on.
On the other hand, though, I have very often see my fellow enginerd types badly misread this dynamic. I've seen guys come onto an established team where some mutual teasing has evolved, then fall flat when they try to emulate that it - because they haven't yet earned the depth of relationship that makes it OK.
It kind of reminds me of another "nerd social fallacy" I've often observed, which I guess I'd name: "I can't be a bully." I think a lot of times people who've grown up dealing with bullying don't realize when they've become one. Sometimes the mutual teasing degrades into one guy just being a dick to the other.
Reminds me of Scalzi's Law: the failure mode of 'clever' is 'asshole'.
I was shown around one job by Dave The Cunt. He was alright
It's two different kinds of logic. The stereotypically male way makes sense to me: you take the weapons that could be used against someone and make them harmless. If you're fat, your friends call you fat, and you're like, hey, they know I'm fat, it's established that I'm fat, and they're my friends anyway! Being fat is fine! It takes all the fear out of it.
In my perception, the stereotypically female way is, if you're fat, nobody calls you fat. They're careful using the word around you. They might even tell you you're not fat. To me, that makes it seem like the friendship depends on the obvious lie that you're not fat, which makes it seem inevitable that it's going to end. One day they're going to make some acknowledgment of the evident truth that you're fat, and that's your signal that they're done with you and the friendship is over. To me, it feels like the truth is being kept in reserve for the day when they're going to shank you with it.
That's my (male) perspective. I'd rather have friends who acknowledge the truth about me and make me feel okay about it than friends who act like the truth about me isn't compatible with friendship and inclusion.
On an intellectual level, I get the (stereotypically) female perspective, too -- I get that it doesn't seem friendly to constantly remind someone of their shortcomings, and that a friend group should give someone an escape from oppressive social perceptions. But that doesn't resonate with me as much emotionally.
I haven't looked at this topic this way, but now this really does make sense! I remember a lady asking me once how tall I am. I'm rather tall and in fact I don't like being asked that, since it is obvious that I am tall and the actual number does not matter. I responded with my height and immediately asked: what is your weight? Wrong question. In my male brain it was an equal kind of question. In the female brain totally not.
"Men bond by saying nasty things they don’t mean. Women bond by saying nice things they don’t mean."
I think there is some truth to this old saying. If so, it would make sense that both sides find the way of the other side a bit off-putting.
Eh... if you're fat, and your friends call you fat, they mean it. You're fat.
They just don't mean for it to hurt, and that's the wholesome part. Every time they call you fat, they're showing you that it's okay with them that you're fat.
If you're fat, and your friends tell you you're not fat, then to me that implies that the truth is too awful to say, but for your sake they'll pretend you're a different person. Which to me seems like it really underscores that it's not actually okay to be the way you are.
Recently a lady was telling me that she wasn't taken seriously. When a male colleague proposed something that she proposed years ago, people suddenly accepted it, she said. I explained her about 'implicit pecking order' in company culture and 'he is taller'. Then she said "yeah i'm short". Then I said yes but you are perfect the way you are, and I think she appreciated that.
Interesting.
I don't think it's OK or fine to be fat. It's a health risk. But I also don't think that "fat shaming" is OK either.
Only some kind of men behave like that. I had many friends growing up and we never did that sort of thing, and it always put me off to see people who did.
There are more women in my friends circle who do this than not.
Yeah, I don't do this at all, and I don't like being friends with those that do
I have many friends who I don’t do this with, because I know they don’t like it and it doesn’t work with them. I show my friendship to them by understanding the type of person they are and knowing that friendly ribbing is not for them.
Would you mind being friends with someone like me? Or do you feel like engaging in that behavior at all, even if not directed at you, is enough to make you not want to be friends with them?
I would gladly be friends with someone like you!
By definition, if you don't like to experience it; don't like to witness it, it's not 'ribbing': it's bullying. It's crucial that the person being ribbed is part of the joke, and should be obvious.
It's very common for people to engage in the bullying, thinking that they are just ribbing; perhaps, never having experienced the safety that is required for ribbing.
There's also the common experience of a bully who always retreats to the defense of "I'm just ribbing you, why are you so defensive?" anytime they're challenged. Making the victim feel like they're the problem.
This is the case for so many things, though. Some people try to be funny but aren’t. Some people think they know how to drive safely but can’t. Some people think they are great programmers but aren’t.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t funny people, or safe drivers, or great programmers. It also doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to KNOW you are funny, safe, or great at something.
It is a bit of a paradox, though, that right and wrong people can be equally certain.
Lots of people like that in this thread. I'm pretty sure their friends do not find it as funny or innocent.
I've seen such a friend group explode after one too many "I was just joking", and it turned out everyone pretty much hated each other. So much trash talking behind people's back due to harmless "ribbing".
Why did it put you off? Did you not understand the intention behind the words, or were the words unforgiveable despite their intention?
Not OP. It's not about the words or the intentions, it's about the fact that we can talk about anything in the world, do any activity together, and you want to do something I'm not comfortable with.
That said, I understand relationships are about give and take. I couldn't be in a romantic relationship like this, but I'll indulge my friends or my cousins. I have a friend who engages in "countersignaling" often. Our connection is generally worth the uncomfortableness, but sometimes it is unbearable.
Not the person you asked, but I think it comes down to past experiences/family environment/etc. Theres poking fun at someone to signal "i like you anyway"... that is real. There's also people who cross the line with their words, and use "i was just joking" as an excuse to be cruel.
If someone has experienced a lot of the later, it makes sense that they don't really trust the former.
Not who you asked.
With age Ive found myself much more comfortable with folks "being mean, but in a friendly way" as they intend it. When I was younger though, I never understood why folks didn't instead just "say the nice part." Like, if your friends are always glad you join them even if you're always late, making fun of you for being late with a big smile can still feel pretty bad for you. Much better to say "hey please don't be late" and also "we really enjoy you spending time with us."
With age Ive come to see that for reasons I don't understand, lots of folks have a massive aversion to saying clearly the things they appreciate about the people around them directly. Eh, their loss.
I don’t find it very gendered, my sister and I used to do this often, like young wolf pups, we’d jostle and play for the upper hand.
I have women friends who will play like this with me. It can reveal insights that neither of us were clear on without the other bringing it to light.
Of course it can be one sided too, and it turns into bullying. I think context matters and even if you’re being bullied, it’s still revealing if you are able to see beyond the emotion. You’re not your looks, your body, your mind, your bank account, your friend group, etc… Your worth is beyond these things. I hope you find that someday!
It's a stereotype that women are directly mean to other women more than men are mean to other men. No idea if there is any data to back that up, only that it's a commonly repeated meme.
https://www.google.com/search?q=women+are+just+horribly+crue...
There's also culture at play. I don't know if men affectionately dissing their friends is universal but there's plenty of related things like:
In Japanese culture you don't brag about co-workers or family to outsiders. Outsiders you treat with respect. Insiders you don't. The fact that you don't get the more polite treatment is proof that you're an insider. It's a common scene in stories where someone asks to stop being treated like an outsider by specifically asking for the less polite language. You can also watch the ribbing man to man, man to woman, woman to man, woman to woman. I don't know if there is data on which is more common.
There's a fine line between teasing, which can build up a person, and degradation designed to destroy self esteem. It's also easy to dismiss that degradation as "I'm just teasing. You're too sensitive. "
Same goes for how men are comforting each other by acknowledging flaws/mistakes/situation to try to help move on. Which is very different on how women comfort each other.
I know both kinds of people, men, women and kids. Its a thing that is nurtured across generations and different for each family and not that much gender-specific.
It's also women ... here's the proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xS9Y_mjTjc
Likely because women do it too, but they aren't joking.
It can certainly be a barrier to male-male relationships if you didn't grow up around this behavior.
I think that's because when women do it, they are usually being intentionally cruel. Any woman will tell you how cruel teenage girls are to each other.
That's astute. I was always uncomfortable with this kind of joking. I felt threatened. The real reason was that I didn't have a good comeback.
Let's say my nose was large, and a friend jokes about it. I need to say something back. And I could not think of anything. A low stakes situation becomes higher stakes than it needs to be.
So on their side they see me struggle and probably feel bad, so they don't do it again. But then we are just friends not best friends.
Curious how did you learn / practice this?
I don’t know if I have a clear answer to how I learned and practiced this. Probably a lot of simple exposure and observation. The important thing is the friendship comes first; I never make an insult joke to someone I don’t know well. I build a friendship first, then test out the waters with small jokes.
I also always start and focus on myself; I make jokes at my own expense often. A big part of my personality is a strange juxtaposition of bravado and self deprecation. I will joke about how amazing I am and how much of a failure I am at the same time.
It seems to work? I think people like me, generally? I don’t know man, I just wing it! I have no idea what I am doing, but I am also pretty great at not knowing what I am doing.
when i dont have a comeback i simply say, "oh no ive been owned" or something similar. the toxic male environment social equivalent of brushing yourself off and standing back up. lets them get whatever they needed from the exchange but also signals theyre not going to get a big reaction from you if they happen to be 100% bully
> And I could not think of anything.
I've identified two approaches to this situation. One is to take the insult graciously, as though it's feedback:
"Careful: you could put someone's eye out with that!"
"Oh! Thanks for the reminder." (adjust the position of your head, as appropriate for your extremely large and dangerous nose)
---
The other is to take whatever they said, and exaggerate it. This produces really good comebacks. (It's important to insist upon this point, regardless of any evidence you might receive to the contrary.)
"Careful: you could put someone's eye out with that!"
"Oh, could I? Well, your entire face is bad."
If they respond with another insult, repeat the same strategy. They'll notice what you're doing after the second or third attempt, and then it will turn from "this person's bad at comebacks" into "this person's (pretending to be) bad at comebacks and it's funny".
"My face is bad? Is that the best you could come up with?"
"Your face is so bad that it makes everyone else's faces bad, too."
"But… that means your face is also bad."
"And whose fault is that? It's your fault. Specifically, the fault of your face. Which is bad."
"Still means you've got a big nose."
"Well you've got a small nose."
"No I don't. We've got the same sized noses."
"Thus invalidating your previous aspersion that my nose is unusually large. Who's bad at comebacks now?"
"Still you."
---
There's a third approach, if the insult is disguised as faux-concern: pretend you're taking it seriously, while exaggerating the characteristic they're concerned about.
"Hey, you having trouble seeing past that, mate?"
"Oh, no, it's alright: most of my vision is unobstructed." / "I've got some tape in my bag if I need it." / "It's no worse than binoculars."
> Oh, could I? Well, your entire face is bad." > If they respond with another insult
I seriously doubt they will. “Your entire face is bad” sounds like lashing out from a place of hurt. Typical response would probably be a confused or disgusted look followed by a change of topic.
There are not a lot of people who could pull this kind of response off without coming off extremely weird or like assholes. And none of the people who could pull this off successfully are asking for comeback advice on Hacker News.
just say it with big ass grin on your face, problem solved
Yeah but also no. This feels a like bit like “just be charismatic”. Someone asking how to respond to this sort of playful insult is unlikely to pull this off in any natural way.
I would think a better response for someone who does not know how to naturally respond to these sorts of playful insults would be to just absorb it goodnaturedly. “Haha, yep. I get this big nose from my dad.” Instead of continuing banter that is awkward, end it in a friendly way and move on.
the jerk store called
Another strategy is to tell them to fuck off.
ur ma
True. Back in the day, the mates and I would greet each other by saying, "Hey, fuck you." Then, "No, fuck you.". You can kinda guess it eventually ping pongs louder and funnier. We kind of had to stop when other innocent people would pop in and ask if everything is "ok".
That may be an interpretation. Another is that many have difficulty regulating their feelings, and “venting” the discomfort in this semi-controlled manner is a socially acceptable release because it invites others to do the same to you, and you all minimize the risk of catastrophic attacks under tension.
It's a game that allies play in order to prepare for enemies.
When played with allies, it connects you to each other and lets you put your guard down (which is perverse to those that don't get it).
The same game played with an enemy teaches you to deflect rather than internalize bad-faith insults and teaches you to use wit and words to stand up for yourself, keeping your dignity without violence.
...
Also it's a demonstration of equality.
e.g. you can't play the game with your boss or your son, but you can play it with your brother and your peers.
The book Impro treats extensively of what it calls "status games", in the context of building believable, natural scenes of dialog for the stage (or other dramatic purposes) and as a framework for making improvisation interesting.
The author muses that the situation of feeling safe playing status games with another person—that is, treating them only as games, not as serious and with real status in play—is perhaps the definition of what friendship is.
This could include trading barbs, taking turns playing the bully and the victim, trading playing "high" and "low" roles, jokey one-upsmanship, that kind of thing. Stuff you don't do with non-friends because there's too much risk of being taken seriously, and too much risk of losing actual status or of hurting someone else's status for-real when you didn't intend to.
Not sure why this article didn't link to the original when citing it, but here's the link to the Scott Alexander blog: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/23/friendship-is-counters...
And a follow up: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/09/friendship-is-still-co...
FWIW, this blog writer appears to only be cross-linking to his own posts. Perhaps good for his own SEO, but not as much for his readers...
This is a great observation. The concept from article was a eye opener. I always wondered why we give each other shit.
My friend group from my school did the same thing, but I've always hated this pattern. Because of exactly this behavior, after finishing school I've decided to intentionally drop some contacts.
Maybe I've interpreted it as "I'm better than you, because you're doing X. I'm mentioning this over and over again, because it makes me feel better."
Can I float an adjacent idea? It collapses the anxiety by simply forcing the thing your anxious about to be over. I've definitely had the experience you're describing where someone likes me despite something I'm insecure about. I've also had the experience where someone dislikes me precisely because of something I'm insecure about and tells me as much to my face. Both are better than not knowing.
This seems fairly culture-dependent, from my experience.
For instance, I've noticed a distinct difference in how sarcasm is received in the Northeast US vs the West Coast. What you described feels more Northeast-y to me (I'm sure it varies by other segments and sub-sub-cultures, too).
There's the saying: "If an Irish person calls you 'asshole,' it means they think you're a friend. If they call you 'friend' it means they think you're an asshole."
Not just for the Irish though, I don't think (:
Well, I have lived in California my whole life, and 90% of my friends are also native Californians, so i guess it isn't exclusively east coast.
:) I also think this applies to Scotland and the UK. I love the irony that continent brings to the world.
Ha that's funny. I'm from the Midwest and found my dry/sarcastic humor tended to confuse people on the West Coast. A lot of people tended to take me completely seriously when I was obviously joking.
I always chalked that up to being around people that were new to the country and hadn't yet wrapped their head around the latest fashionable American cynicism. Generally takes a few decades to kick in, but when it does it's usually worth the wait (see Kumail Ali Nanjiani).
The problem with using clinical phrases to describe normal behavior is demonstrated in this post. "Social anxiety" has a specific clinical meaning that is not covered by this post. The post is actually discussing a very natural and rational nervousness that normal people have in social situations. The post is providing a way of thinking about that nervousness that can help reduce it, for the nervous person's benefit, and it's great if that works, but it's not addressing social anxiety.
Social anxiety is a condition that cannot be thought away, you cannot rationalize social anxiety nor can it be represented as a cost/benefit analysis of risk of being disliked vs. reward of being liked. You can feel socially anxious without having social anxiety. You can be depressed without having depression. You will be depressed after your beloved pet dies. You will be socially anxious walking into a room full of people you haven't met before.
> You will be depressed after your beloved pet dies.
You'll experience *grief* after a pet dies. We've pathologizing grief to a point that it makes it harder for those experiencing both grief and depression, two separate (but sometimes linked) human conditions.
https://undark.org/2022/07/21/the-hidden-dangers-of-patholog...
I agree with you as a general rule. But this is actually pretty close to how Social Anxiety is defined. It's about the fear of being negatively evaluated or embarrassed.
For example the DSM definition https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t12/ or the Mayo Clinic explainer page https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/social-anxiet....
I think what this blog post is getting at is describing for people the difference between fear of negative evaluation and positive desire to be liked.
One thing the post misses is that sometimes these are learned behaviors that come from a lifetime of experience being disliked for no obvious reason. For example, sometimes outgoing autistic children develop social anxiety after their peers reject them repeatedly.
You can feel socially anxious without having social anxiety.
That is not true in plain English, just because a particular profession decides to use words one way, does not mean the definitions change for the rest of us.
> just because a particular profession decides to use words one way, does not mean the definitions change for the rest of us
This is a particular pain in physics, which has taken very commonly used words and given them a very narrowly defined meaning, within a strict framework - like the words Energy or Work
> Social anxiety is a condition that cannot be thought away
I hope not, I don't want to be hooked on some prescription meds eg. what about exposure therapy
I do wonder if being nervous to talk to a hot girl is the same as social anxiety I mean I'm not the jock/main attention guy either but I can talk to strangers (guys or not attractive women)
He (and it’s a he, of course) says this on a forum full of people who have convinced themselves they’re neurodivergent.
inb4 we live in a society etc
Except it’s not. It can be thought away, under enough pressure people can do extraordinary things. There is just no such pressure in society now. I’ve suffered immensely in my life, and if you describe your condition as “anxiety” you simply aren’t suffering enough for treatment to have any real impact.
If you think you’re suffering rises to the medical treatable level please develop a more serious condition before getting on a waitlist. All doctors are taken up on your non-physical problems and you don’t immediately need care like I do.
I have social anxiety and it is completely unrelated to likeableness.
I do not think people would not like me, I do not try to avoid people disliking me, that's not the point at all. Quite the opposite, I'm sure I'm an interesting person and I'm confident people would like me if I could take the step.
Problem is, there is something that physically prevents me from saying "Hi!" to a stranger. I literally cannot get myself to take a step towards them and I can't explain why that is, because I do not understand it myself.
Also quite interestingly (to me), this completely goes away under certain circumstances: (1) If I take around 2-3 units of alcohol and it is not a totally alien environment (it would not help if I was in a bar alone with complete strangers). (2) If more than about 70% of people in the room are people I know well. Then I do not feel anxious about approaching the remaining 30%.
This is not a full solution, but it really helped me; the book The Charisma Myth
Every chapter has exercises that help deal with social anxiety
Even doing just the 3 basic recommendations in the intro can be very impactful
I find it helpful to think of that physical barrier as your own emotions barring you from entering a state where the uncertainty as to whether you'll be safe grows too high to trust yourself to operate in real time.
The problem isn't really being liked or not being liked, the problem is the cognitive overload of trying to predict what will happen and respond to it in realtime, which is sure to set in when one's mental model of the potential interaction is very uncertain. Of course, if your brain quits in a conversation, the other person is not going to be very impressed with you, so this kind of failure carries social risk itself.
The way to fix this is to have as many interactions which are bearable as possible so as to build out the mind's mental model of itself and others in social situations. Gradually the danger just fades away. There's no substitute for firsthand experience; no amount of premeditating, ruminating, or brooding will fix this.
I have the same exact experience as you. It's like some weird physical barrier, but I can't really articulate the feeling or explain it. The exposure therapy method here doesn't work because "just do it a bunch of times and you'll get more comfortable" isn't even possible for me, I can't "just do it."
For me though, it takes more than a few beers to be comfortable approaching someone. I'd have to be completely sloshed and even then it's a struggle.
The only time I didn't experience the seemingly physical barrier was in college when a friend convinced me to try MDMA and we went out. I became almost the exact opposite of who I am with the social anxiety. I was the most extraverted, outgoing person in our group quite literally chatting up anyone and everyone that I crossed paths with without any care or inhibition around it.
No other pharmaceutical has been able to cure it for me like that, and it's a bit depressing because I liked that version of myself and I'd like to be able to be that person again without an incredibly dangerous illegal substance.
Mine is similar to this. In addition the anxiety comes from me thinking that most interactions are banal and more about “trading good vibes and energy” with the other person rather than a genuine deep conversation, and I fear that my facial expressions will reflect what I’m really feeling inside - “ugh can we transition off talking about my weekend or the weather?”. And also because I’m not that witty without alcohol, but it’s almost like most of western small talk is based off of exchanging humor and wit, then laughing very loudly at the punchline. So my anxiety is more to do with not performing well enough to have this stereotypical exchange done smoothly.
You have the fear of being judged; the antidote is realizing that most people barely notice you, it just feels like they do because you’re self-conscious around new people.
I assume it can be different for everyone. This post resonates with me, but my social anxiety mixes being sensitive to negative feedback and low self-esteem.
So, you want to avoid both being disliked, but also being liked - because this puts you in novel situations you fear lead to an even bigger failure down the road.
Alcohol reduces fear.
And school produces fear.
If it wasn't for booze I'd have no friends.
Neither "wanting to be liked" or "wanting to avoid being disliked" rings true to me, at least as applied to my own social anxiety. I want to avoid being thought of at all. The idea of being liked is just as anxiety-producing as being disliked. Possibly more so. Every relationship with another person, positive or negative, is another cognitive burden to maintain. I would vastly prefer most of my interactions to just remain at the default/stranger level where I can re-use the same anticipatory model for most people I deal with.
Tangentially related, I have for some time had a desire to write short stories, but the anxiety around revealing anything that might expose my inner self is probably the biggest reason why I don't.
I was reading a collection of short stories yesterday and came upon Michael Swanwick's "Slow Life". It struck me that it shares more than a few similarities to his "The Very Pulse of the Machine": Woman astronaut on a moon in the outer solar system is placed in lethal danger, encounters alien intelligence that communicates by reading/influencing minds, she isn't sure whether the communication is genuine or hallucinated, eventually the alien intelligence provides a long-shot resolution to save her. Maybe Swanwick just had another story to tell with some of the same beats. It happens. Or maybe it's like bare feet in a Tarantino movie. The point is, the idea of someone examining my own stories and thinking such thoughts about me is extremely distressing. It's not being disliked that I try to avoid. I'm trying to avoid the baseline stress of social interaction.
I recognize the irony of opening up about this in writing. If you have something to say _about me_, please don't.
The weird thing about "The idea of being liked is just as anxiety-producing as being disliked" is that it is an incorrect prediction of reality: actually being liked would. Thinking about it is really a different thing: it overestimates the stakes involved, it mistakenly invents "ideas of people" to do the liking which do not behave like actual people, and is unable to build any self-esteem by imagining people liking you because these imagined people are under your our control; being liked by your own imagined people doesn't "count" the way being liked by real people would...
The human mind is not really designed to handle under-socialization well, and seems to fill in the empty space with imaginary figures which fail to meet its social needs. Taken outside its natural tribal operating regime, it bugs out in all kinds of strange ways.
> the idea of someone examining my own stories and thinking such thoughts about me is extremely distressing
This is a very familiar feeling to me, and in my experience it actually is a fear of being disliked, or more specifically about not being able to control others' reactions to me. But the fear is so great and unapproachable that the mind cordons it "out of sight" of conscious feeling.
It becomes better to not be thought of than to expose myself to the possibility of others seeing me poorly, especially if I'm not able to defend myself and make the case for my being seen with grace. I suspect that it is over-exposure to human meanness and judgement and under-exposure to kindness and grace which brings about this expectation of others' dispositions towards oneself; this perhaps is the reason for the Christian injunction that humans not judge one another--it guards against this particular failure mode of the social mind.
I really hope it doesn't make you too uncomfortable for me to say: amen to that.
That's it. Leaving you in peace now. Peace!
This rings true to me as someone who's overcome most of his social anxiety over the last few years. The last graph is particularly correct. It's about being authentic and being okay with people not liking you. This is especially useful in dating because then you stop being needy (which is unattractive) when you can let go of the outcome and just show someone who you are and if they reject you then you simply realize that they aren't the person you were looking for because you were looking for someone who likes you for who you are.
Is the person who wrote the post qualified to say this though? Like are these statements the result of scientific research or just his opinion like my opinion?
It's a opinion piece. But so are must attempted explanations of emotions. How would you even study this?
It seems some in the comments resonate and some disagree. So its somewhat useful.
One thing i feel missing is the anxiety part of social anxiety. The way the brain colors vague or unclear external (social) signals in default negative ways, in a feedback loop.
Not avoiding being disliked or seeking being liked, but simply being unable to quantity it correctly.
Fair enough but I still don't understand this person's relationship to the subject and why they are so vague about what they do and what their qualifications are on all of their social media.
As someone with apparent social anxiety, I don't really care about being disliked either. Being left alone is the overriding priority by far, it is not an aversion to being disliked, although being disliked is not the best since it's still attention.
If someone came to me and tried to mentor me about unlearning my discomfort with being disliked, I would feel like I'm being manipulated and I would make sure to avoid that person.
Yeah same here. I like people, I like me - what I don’t like is the expectation that I essentially perform improv for others when I don’t want to. The problem is being observed, and expected to perform. It feels bad. Being left alone, with no risk of social interaction, feels really really good. It’s a literal relief from the constant energy expenditure that is acting out socializing.
I’d prefer to avoid being disliked - or at any rate, disliked without good reason - but as you say, that’s mostly because then I’d be wasting even more of my time managing interactions with (or more likely avoiding interactions with) those who dislike me. My god what a waste of energy, how I abhor it.
I’ve never been good at banter so this speaks to me.
But it’s interesting to think that when people like you, they tend to want more from you and that leads to social obligations. And you can either go along with these social obligations or decline and come off as rude.
So in a sense, social connections give people some amount of control over your life and that can feel restricting and draining sometimes.
Even something as simple as a text message can be thought of as a task that someone gave you without your consent. And if you don’t respond within a certain time window then you’re rude and risk damaging the relationship. Or if you respond poorly that can damage it as well.
Sometimes I wonder if this is social anxiety or just being extra aware of the realities of life.
There are various types of insecurity.
A book "How to attract women through honesty" by Mark Manson (I think the only book in dating genre I recommend without some caveats, and recommend regardless on one's gender or orientation) has a lot about insecurity vs security (or: neediness vs non-neediness).
There was one passage that although most insecure people are in this "I don't want be hated" or "let anyone like/love me", there are also some people that are obsessed with everyone liking them. It has some different symptoms, but also stems from insecurity.
I guess you know friends (or maybe you are one yourself) who play too hard to be liked by everyone. Also, there is an interesting case of super-popular people, who are super-needy, even though at the first glance they don't look so. What's is characteristic, though, it is that everything starts to fall apart when they lose their spotlight. (Think about actors or musicians who, after they are no longer as popular as they used to be, drown in depression and drugs.)
I can dig it. I'm constantly and annoyingly replaying every social interaction in my head for days, and even longer when they're (in my perception) bad. Why would I want to go out, if I might subject myself to more of that? (I do go out and continue to subject myself to that, but nowhere near as frequently as my more social friends.)
This is part of it, but everyone to some degree has discomfort with being disliked and will do things to avoid it. At least in my experience, social anxiety is much more about the cognitive distortions that convince you others dislike you, when they may in fact be neutral or even have a positive view of you.
Just as one example, when I'm interacting with someone who I haven't reached a certain level of comfortability with, I'm highly aware of and sensitive to their reactions to me in terms of what they're saying, their tone, their micro facial expressions, etc., and I perceive any small negative reaction as a sign that they don't like me. This usually isn't true! But it ironically has the effect of inducing self-sabotaging avoidant behaviors in me, such as over-censoring of what I say and just general awkwardness around them, which makes it much more likely they will end up disliking me.
A person's existence is made up of what others think about the person and how the person relates to them. There is hardly anything else to make up the existence for the person. You are just a collection of perceptions about you, and your relations with the world. Even your money and assets are only as a valuable as seen by the world around you. You look trendy and stylish only because you align with the trends of the place and time. Your physical fitness is meaningful only at your place and time. A village woman in a third world can outlive many gym goers of the Western world.
There is nothing else left to be considered as your absolute existence outside of how you relate with the world.
I think the premise, backed up by a couple of random tweets, is questionable, but glossing over that, the conclusion is more or less "just be yourself and you'll have more success". Maybe. But I feel like it's pinning social anxiety purely on neurotic safety-seeking behavior, which is superficial. Surely generalized social anxiety is an unhealthy over-correction, but some personality types have inherently more success socially than others, or in blunt terms, some people are more likeable than others. If you're socially compatible with 90% of the population, it's not hard to ignore the 10% you don't meld with, but swap the numbers and the negative feedback will be overwhelming and makes the majority of social interactions anxiety-inducing. I guess that's why the anonymous Internet is full of disagreeable people.
I've been reading through the book The Courage to be Disliked recently. I'm not a big fan of the writing style of the book, but some of the ideas in the book appear in this post too.
One of the concepts in the book is being comfortable with being disliked. If instead you're trying to avoid being disliked, you're effectively subject to other people's whims.
When you look at it from that perspective, that's a pretty stressful experience!
> I'm not a big fan of the writing style of the book
OP here. I address that in How I'd rewrite The Courage to be Disliked: https://chrislakin.blog/courage
IDK, in my experience not avoiding being disliked only results in a lot of people disliking me, but hasn't brought any gains, unless a rate limit on HN is a gain (they say I'm "too ideological", whatever that means)
Social anxiety is what happens when the effort to appear acceptable to polite society feels overwhelming -- and pointless at the same time.
As a person with social anxiety and a fear of being disliked I get to be the person that people love to talk about how much they hate all of the people that don't fear being disliked and all of the ways they are getting either getting screwed by other people or are being screwed by other people. We really deserve the society we live in
That first sentence is hard to grok.
No kidding, I read your comment first and then wondered how bad could it be. Turns out the whole comment is nearly that one sentence. Sentences are like functions, sometimes you need a really long one, but oftentimes they work better in reasonable chunks.
Should be "to talk to", I think. Missing a "to". But has an extra "getting".
Astounding irony.
I like that bit about optimizing for not going bankrupt vs. windfall
Idk you hear these phrases all the time excelsior, shoot for the stars land in the moon, etc... gotta actually apply it
Tangent about drugs I wish I felt like I did when on the snow all the time damn, what a great mindset like anything is possible, same with adhd meds but I can see how it would be bad too not having fear/self doubt eg. "I'm gonna jump off this building and land over there", over confidence
Oh this was about 10 yrs ago I was partaking I'm not in that env anymore where I can easily source stuff, now it's just alochol
I find merit with the core point as well the delivery.
I wish it was more commonly accepted that choosing not to act is effectively a stand against one's own value system in favor of the value systems of those who do act.
It annoys me greatly when people say "I didn't choose [elected official] because I didn't vote at all".
Off topic, but my eye twitched at the word "agentic." This word has infested every computing and software discussion as a buzzword, to the point where I am having a visceral reaction just seeing it. Even though it's used appropriately here, I have to admit I retched a little while reading. So tired of hearing "agentic."
It's a flight instinct, it's due to danger. Isn't that obvious?
Gangs of humans are dangerous if you don't know them, historically. Murderously dangerous. Hobbes is right, society is a thin veneer.
As friends of mine who I consider popular have suggested to me “don’t give a fuck what people think about you”, and this blog says that in a much longer form.
As someone who was extensively bullied as a kid, including with physical violence, my social anxiety went through the roof and it has taken me a long time and awareness of my trauma to heal from those wounds to the point I no longer have social anxiety.
The world is sadly full of miserable cruel people who want to put me down so they can no longer have to deal with their own feelings of inferiority. I have made friends who truly love me for who I am, who give me space to talk, who do not constantly put me down in cruel ways (yes, I once had “friends” like that), and who truly care about my feelings, but it has taken a lot of work to get there. I can now sniff out someone who is starting to engage in bullying behavior, and block them from being in my life.
different ppl get different reasons for social anxiety bro. it's not tech you can't just say that mental problem Y is 100% because of X
Quote:
> Why else would someone be so anxious about how others see them?
The scientific consensus would tell the author that judgement in humans happens already the moment they see a person and it is immediate, even if the person not doing anything:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40700
>across three studies, we find that first impressions [...] made from thin slices of real-world social behavior by typically-developing observers are not only far less favorable across a range of trait judgments compared to controls
Edit:
Okay this was completely misunderstood. My point was that the "normal" people in the study immediately internally know if to like or not like a person. Hence why first impressions DO matter the most. Which is why I simply disagree with the argument in the OP that anyone has control over their perception.
You also cannot win people over if the most respected person in a group dislikes you. The others will follow boot.
This study seems to look at a different dynamic than seems under discussion in the article.
The article describes how neurotypical people, i.e. the average Joe would come up with a decision to like or not like a person based on first impressions before the person being judged even talks. Fairly sure in an article about how people are thinking how they are perceived by others this is relevant. But I get it can upset people that it is out of their control entirely.
I disagree. I think the article is about the motivations of people with social anxiety. I'd agree it makes assumptions and paints with a broad brush but it feels relevant to some of the socially anxious people I know.
I edited and rephrased a lot of my posts and the other replies and maybe my though process is clearer now. I didn't word it all too well, forgive me for not being a native, I struggled to bring my point across in an enunciated way.
Thank you for the improvements, I think it does read better now. Thank you for making the effort to converse in a second language.
I still think you are making a point that feels orthogonal to the article. The author presents (supported by public expressions of the opinion) that some people believe social anxiety is based on wanting to be liked. While to that point your study indicating that autistic people may be at a disadvantage on the getting people to like them front, the author is then rejecting that proposition (i.e. that the socially anxious are actually concerned about avoiding dislike). I suppose your point can be understood relevant there too, in that for the autistic population, the baseline "disliked" level is higher. However, the article remains about the internal focus of those with social anxiety (whether it over generalizes or not) between "liked" and "not disliked" which seems orthogonal to any baseline "likability" considerations for one or any other sub-population.
[edit: s/"liked" level is lower/"disliked" level is higher/ for higher congruence with context]
I don’t think the article is about autism.
Curious, yet the most people suffering from anxiety as secondary comorbid psychiatric condition are the depressed, autistic and ADHD sufferers.
The article is definitely a mental health topic. A little harmless stage fright before a presentation is not real clinical generalized anxiety and affects most normal people.
You can be diagnosed with GAD or social anxiety disorders without being autistic. The comorbidity isn't total.
I think there's a good question about whether people can tell you're anxious at a glance but worrying about that will make your anxiety much more visible.
> I think there's a good question about whether people can tell you're anxious at a glance
Which is why I linked the nature article? It's plain obvious an interesting point I tried to make that "normal" people will instantly perceive someone as likeable or unlikeable. Which the article in the OP goes great lengths to discuss.
I mean I can live with people immediately going against my point, I just see they didn't even gave it 5 minutes of thought. Which is not necessarily directed at you, I cannot possibly convince anyone and reply to anyone at the same time.
Social anxiety is significantly more prevalent in the general population than autism. So sure, the article may be less applicable to people with autism, who have other visible symptoms besides what comes from “mere” social anxiety.
>There's this popular idea that socially anxious folks are just dying to be liked
Really? I've never come across that idea. If fact, in my experience 'social anxiety' is almost always driven by the fear of failure, not the ambition of uncertain success.
I would counter that the opposite of 'social anxiety' - 'social vanity' - is more indicative of a deep desire to be liked.
I've struggled with social anxiety for years. Just yesterday I discovered that I am unable to visualize mental images such as faces (aphantasia).
I have always struggled in social settings where I people will be attending whom I've met on multiple but infrequent prior occasions - and I will recognize that I know them from somewhere but will be unable to place them or their name.
This has happened for 40 years when I see my wife's cousins at funerals every 2-3 years (but otherwise never see them). They are so friendly and nice. Smiling and hugging me. But they have to realize that I am never able to use their name because I can't remember it - nor am I able to make inquiries about work or life because I remember nothing about them.
The same happens when I, as a middle manager, travel for multiple day business trips to the home office.
It is incredibly embarrassing which causes me to avoid such settings which in turn makes me seem aloof and unfriendly.
Social anxiety has to be correlated with deepness, aka the more shallow a person is the less social anxiety they present.
Also some fixation with a person/ small group of people in particular and trying to win them over. The less socially anxious people cast a big net and that will cause people who'd like them and dislike them but the net is so big that they simply stick with those who like them.
social anxiety i think it is more the fear of breaking your own perception of yourself
> being socially anxious tends to make you less likeable
Citation needed.