Comment by ryandrake
15 hours ago
I don’t think it’s specifically Reddit, but more like “normal life” bleeding into HN. The tech industry (and therefore, HN) has this weird “positive thoughts only” vibe where everything negative is considered whiny and curmudgeonly (as the newest HN posting guideline puts it).
Uncritical “this is great, that is awesome, things are wonderful” posts get a pass here and are not held to some high academic discourse standard, while “things are not so great, life is not that good” posts get responses like we’ve seen in this thread.
On the contrary, there are plenty of things to complain about and I personally find HN to be a tough, even cynical, audience. The guidelines don't say you can't be negative, you just have to explain your reasoning.
One doesn't have to subscribe to toxic positivity to see the childish absurdity of a statement like "It’s difficult to keep moving knowing that we don’t have the ability to opt out of the way our whole society works."
Regarding the childish statement: I think we’ve all felt like that at some point in our lives. If you haven’t, I kind of envy you. I can admit that when I had a child I agonized over the fact that I was bringing a life into this pretty terrible world without considering whether that new life wanted to be in it. Nobody actively consented to being part of society, it’s just a default. And it is extremely difficult to opt-out. I don’t think that’s a particularly absurd belief.
I have felt like that. When I was a child.
And you totally can opt out. You can go live in a mud hut in the woods. People do it all the time. But we both know that's not what the original commenter means by "opting out of society". They mean "I want to opt out of contributing to society while somehow still enjoying its benefits". Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way, and it is indeed childish to think that it should, at least as long as those benefits come from the contributions of other people.
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