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Comment by vedaba

18 hours ago

Until you run into an A-hole whose response ruins the rest of your day when you were just trying to be sociable. I could even see getting physically assaulted for trying to talk to the wrong stranger. I like where your heart is at, unfortunately many people out there are not deserving of it.

13 comments

vedaba

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DiskoHexyl  18 hours ago

The idea of practicing these random interactions is also to get accustomed to rejections from the assholes. After all, they aren’t the majority- most people are actually quite nice and often appreciate a company (or will politely tell you they don’t need one)

  • perching_aix  15 hours ago

    This made me reflect on online interactions.

    Agreeable comments will draw comparatively fewer replies, while disagreeable ones achieve the opposite.

    But this then results in a "false experience" for the individual, where unlike in real life, the bad exchanges do not end up outweighed by the good ones, as you simply don't go on to have those. You just upvote and move on (often to avoid redundancy).

    Maybe if the two were tied together (voting either up / down & sending a reply), communities would work healthier? I don't know. Not like it's easy to have this tried out.

    I could definitely see challenges to this though, the aforementioned redundancy being one. I have some countermeasure ideas, but then I wonder if that would make the UX complicated enough to drive people away instead, which is a lose-lose.

jmye  14 hours ago

I mean, why does it ruin your day? It's just some random person - you'll likely never see them again, or you'll know to avoid them in the future. Why is the opinion of some rando weighing on you so much?

  • bondarchuk  6 hours ago

    This whole thread is about wanting to talk with strangers because it makes you feel good, if approval from strangers makes you feel good the natural corollary is rejection from strangers can also make you feel bad. It would be bit weird to go out of your way to talk to people because you'd enjoy their kindness but then when they're unkind turn around all like "oh I never cared about you anyway". Isn't it?

  • rain_iwakura  14 hours ago

    have you had actually negative interactions like that? they sting for years, even after hundreds of mild-to-positive ones. the brain focuses on risk-minimization and not reward-maximization.