Online, it feels like we're all half-performing for an invisible audience, so the incentives skew toward snark or point-scoring. In person, there's no scoreboard, just two humans trying to get through the moment together

> I also find when I have a real disagreement with someone, it's a lot easier when you're face-to-face. For instance, I have friends who are religious, in a real way, ie they actually think there's a god who created the earth and wants us to live a certain way. Being there in person keeps me from ridiculing them like I might on an internet forum, but it also keeps them from condemning me to hell.

My life experience differs: I, for example, am likely more disagreeable in real life than on the internet. :-)

In internet forums, all answers are "delayed" (since you have to put them into a coherent text). Thus you rather have to think through your arguments, and thus react less on impulse (the impulse is typically already over when you have finalized your post). On the other hand, in real life, things that you strongly disagree with might trigger a very spontaneous emotional reaction.

Also, in internet forums, you want to "win internet points". Thus, you only tangentially write your arguments for the counterpart (who you will likely not convince), but more importantly to convince the many people who read your post. So your arguments are better well-thought and well-researched.

In real life, there is often no additional audience to appreciate and be convinced by "your great arguments" ;-) so it's an "all-or-nothing" to bring the truth to this ignorant being. Since the counterpart has such as "stupid" opinion, rational arguments are likely not the best way for this (because if the counterpart was capable of rational thinking, they would immediately see how "stupid" their opinion is ;-) ), so you better "hammer" your arguments into the counterpart. :-)

There's definitely an aspect of "dehumanization," when it comes to remote communication (not just the Internet, but I think store-and-forward leaches the most humanity, compared to realtime).

It's the having time to consider responses, that I think actually makes it more difficult to accept the person on the other end as "human," more than the physical separation. You can see this in formal debates, where the emotional feedback is strictly regulated.

I've actually met a number of killers (long story for another venue), and will probably continue to do so, for the remainder of my life. I even call some of them friends. I enjoy the story, and accept it as true, because I have heard much more unbelievable true stories.

> For instance I was on a long haul flight earlier this year, and my neighbour told me everything about her divorce. Like a kind of therapy.

this gets old fast, it's like being emotionally vomited on.

> You should talk to strangers. It's never gone wrong for me.

I guess it depends on your definition of wrong.

I feel the opposite, where it has never gone right. I can’t remember any actual interesting conversations I have had with strangers. I can remember a lot of bad, awkward, and boring ones, though.

> I actually met a serial killer who did this

I don’t think this is the fun anecdote you make it out to be

Talk to strangers it has never gone wrong for me and I even met a serial killer who killed a lot of women who asked how I would dispose of a body.

So much to unpack.

You got lucky if you were a woman you probably would have had a poor outcome.

I would prefer a rude online person who is petty vs a serial killer wanting advice on how to get rid of the body.

I agree, but another aspect is what’s lost in text. Even when I don’t have negative intentions, my messages can come across as rude or brash. I feel like I get more negative responses from my friends in the group chat compared to in person, where I’ve never had a single argument with them. In person, the recipient can see my smile and body language, which makes it clear that I don’t mean anything negative by my words.

> I actually met a serial killer who did this, heh

Would love to hear the story behind this one.

> So folks, practice talking to people. Much of what's wrong in the current world is actually loneliness, having no outlet for your expressions.

If I had a penny for every bizarre theory people who ruin the world believe about who/what is actually ruining the world.

My favourite was an interview with Jerry Springer. He also had a theory of what's wrong in the current world and none of it had anything to do with what he did.

> knowing you won't tell anyone (I actually met a serial killer who did this, heh)

And why would you not tell anyone about the serial killer?

> it often descends into pettiness. When you talk to people in the real world, that rarely happens

If you are talking about one on one with a stranger, then I can see that, yeah, but if you have worked with people, then you know it is a huge mess, creation of cliques, gossip, and all sorts of crap, including heavy pettiness, greed, jealousy / envy, and so on.

Beautifully said. I believe wholeheartedly that in real life, disagreements between two people hinge on an ability to disarm each other through charm and disposition. The less you know someone, and the more they appear to earnestly try to understand you - becoming heated and firing phasers just feels unbecoming; why would I perpetuate personal loneliness or ennui in a moment that is genuinely devoid of it?

People become jaded dicks online. Rare good faith effort is punished by unassailable trolls, cynical jerks, etc. Makes it easy to become one of them because extending an olive branch is taken advantage of.

>Much of what's wrong in the current world is actually loneliness

Okay cool. How do we fix it? We don't have places to just "talk to people". Maybe some places still has a mall area, but most businesses discourage soliciting. So you're mostly asking people to pay to talk to strangers.

A part of this is behavorial, but the UX of life also kept pushing Gen Z onto the internet, the only "third place" left for them.

> Much of what's wrong in the current world is actually loneliness, having no outlet for your expressions.

A dramatic line. I made a note of it.

> There's also the interesting effect that people will give you their innermost secrets, knowing you won't tell anyone

This is exactly what David Choe says in this interview: https://youtu.be/HrBhuzHHlhQ?t=127

> Most people have a warmth and agreeableness that comes out when you are there with them, talking about stuff.

I really hate saying this, but I live in the Deep South and people here can quite repulsive under the veneer of manners. The amount of hate, anger towards people different from them, and just rampant racism is quite difficult to deal with. And these are things that get exposed when having these conversations.

I do as you suggest. But I'm always ready to just walk away from a conversation. There's no winning with these people and the moral injury you sustain by being in their presence is awful

I learned the hard way that religion is something best left aside in discussions.

I am an absolute atheist, and I believe that people who are educated in science and are religions have some kind of mental illness. This is just too set the context :) I also used to be very active on radio about science vs religion.

First, people who are hard core religious may get off their way to cure you. I had people yelling in front of my house. I never saw physicists doing the same.

But that's a perk of the "atheism job" :)

I had something much worse happening to me. A friend of mine was religions, from a very religions family. We had long discussions and she gradually realized that her while world is going to shit when she discovered the insanity of religion. She got into a deep depression and tried to commit suicide. I was with her 7 years until she somehow snapped back to a normal life.

I never attempted to turn an individual anymore. Sure, general information about rational hygiene (religion, homeopathy, ...) but not on z 1:1 basis.

Had a chat about this with a friend yesterday.

In richer societies you can afford to be alone. This isn't good for tribal beings, humans didn't evolve as lone wolves. Even something as cooking for more than one person involves so much interaction.

At the lower end of the global income scale , you can't afford to be alone in your giant house. You might need to share communal goods.

Not everyone, but just having a role in society can be a major help for many people. The biggest crime of the modern era is the disposable human. You work for an anonymous corporation, that does some nonsense you can't even hope to understand, in exchange for currency, to support the basics of your existence.

You don't get to have any real status in that, for example In many places there was just one or two bread makers for the entire community. Baking bread isn't the most prestigious job, but you matter.

Tell me, fellow techy, working on serving ads. Who exactly would be disappointed if you failed in your duties today. Would anyone in your community be upset that they didn't get as many advertisements

> loneliness is a perceptual phenomenon that represents a paradoxical component; it is not mitigated through proximity to others

It might be better described as alienation. Then we can fit it into Hannah Arendt's theory of fascism being caused by alienation.

In the modern world, that alienation is accelerated by social media and cost of living for those without assets, who pay the cost of inflation without benefiting from asset price inflation.

Everything is more hostile, more sectarian, and you also can't even afford anything, and also you are a bad person because you are a creepy 45 year old white man with a small dick, and you better stop looking at me like that.

Is it any surprise?

It's not just loneliness, it's that by being isolated you can make sweeping generalizations about other people, and fall for the hatefull narative.

When you actually and honestly communicate with people different than you, and are able yo understand them, you stop feeling that simplistic hate for them.

Argument is a great way of forming relationships. The problem in modern times is that one person, typically the person such as yourself - endlessly confident in their flawless knowledge and determined to impose it on everybody, becomes belligerent when somebody doesn't simply graciously accept their impeccably perfect argument. That doesn't typically lead to good outcomes.

More generally, I think people have forgotten that two people - no less intelligent than the other - can see the exact same thing, evidence, or whatever else, and simply come to different conclusions.

> if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected

One discovery I've made is that they really don't. Nothing terrible happens if you don't correct people.

You can really just accept that people have some flaws and appreciate their positive sides!

This is (one of) the reasons I prefer places where you can walk, bike, or take public transit to get around. It’s one of the only times of day I’ll see and maybe talk to people very different from myself. Though this is also fading as people are on their phones and have ear buds in.

Here's an interesting thing to ponder - how would we be different if not for lockdowns making work from home somewhat normal?

The overnight disappearance of those loose connections you get in the workplace had a huge impact on my mental health. Life-altering. 5 years later, I split my time between remote tech consulting from an office I rent (to make sure I don't sit home all day) and a union-protected, but completely antiquated job from a career I left behind that I returned to mostly to be with people.

By 2025, things would have probably been the same both for society and me (lockdowns coincided with me turning 30), but the abrupt change was horrible.

You have to correct people with things you believe. But the biggest problem in life is loneliness.

Not correcting people is the first step towards avoiding loneliness.

Humans are moored to their social web: having to exist amongst others continually pulls you towards the average feelings/views/activities of the people you are connected to. Change is slow.

When humans become unmoored from this web through loneliness/isolation/alienation, they can freewheel and drift further from that average. This can be liberating! But if you don't re-connect, either with your previous web or a new one, there's nothing stopping you falling off the deep end; nothing to give you a little correction that keeps you "normal". Political extremism of various flavors, or identity crises founded in over-rumination, are what we see - but also innovation and removal of constraints. Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies relates. The social isolation moonshot is to break from convention and be a hero auteur, but the risk of failure is very high. Nullum magnum dementiae sine mixtura ingenium fuit.

Who would’ve thought that hating entire groups of humans and blaming them for every imaginary problem would lead to isolation and loneliness!

In case it isn’t obvious, I’m being sarcastic and agreeing with you.

I wonder how much of this is due to social media sites and how the choice to interact that way (where the medium is geared to show off shallow facets of our achievements or amplify polarized opinions) is robbing us from traditional ways of spending time together.

>I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected.

This seems wildly incompatible with the desire to not have social isolation.

I agree with the rest of your sentiment, but that is a really anti-social idea.

> social isolation is the single great social ill

You might find this short 60-second video of interest.

https://youtube.com/shorts/XVFGEDs95MI?si=NEvRg-m2KymblwF0

> if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected.

This was something I believed when I was 21, and then was corrected by time. There are very few instances where anyone needs to be corrected in a social setting. Learning to move on without demanding they accept your argument is hugely important.

Right now the solution that makes the most sense to me is intentional communities. If anyone reading this has experience living in one, I'd love to chat. Email is in profile.

> if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected.

Why is that? I may feel that somebody is wrong, and that may be correct, but it could also be incorrect. A priori, they are not less correct than you are. Then why do you need to go to them and tell them that what they think is wrong and what you think is right?

I'm glad that people don't do that all the time. I'm sure I meet lots of people every day that think I'm wrong on something. Sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly. If every time they would feel that I "need to be corrected", that would be terrible.

All three of those links are claiming right wing people are mentally ill.

Academics have all kinds of indirect theories for why people outside of academia don't agree with their politics. Ironically given the subject of the website, one thing they almost never do is just go outside of academia, sit down with people who disagree with them and talk to them as equals. They spam bot-filled websites like Mechanical Turk with surveys trying to prove things about the imaginary people in their own minds, and then publish "findings", but they don't actually talk to people.

The most obvious and logical explanation for why right wing people exist is that they disagree with left wing politics, believing them to lead to bad outcomes. Papers like those three are a dime a dozen, but one thing you'll never find is studies that just directly ask people disagree with common academic beliefs. Instead it's taken as axiomatic that leftism is moral and correct, so anyone who disagrees must have some other deeper psychological reason to disagree (loneliness, reading the wrong websites, not getting enough sex, whatever). Lots of non-replicable studies get produced, grants are awarded, and academics give lots of interviews to the NYT about their search for One Weird Trick to convert people to their worldview that doesn't involve any actual policy changes.

The professors doing such studies should look in the mirror. If they're saying social isolation and informational monoculture leads to extremism, then it's hard to find somewhere more isolated and monocultural than universities. But of course they lack sufficient insight to consider that.

I just saw a class of kids on a train and they were interacting and yelling just like we did 30 years ago. I think there's hope, they're not all zombies staring at a phone yet

I usually agree with this, but I make an exception for Pudding because they consistently do this and it’s kind of their brand to have really immersive JS art/media. But I have the benefit of having read and enjoyed their stuff before.

It’s probably a false distinction, but it feels different to a SaaS product offering page, or product launch, where I need to get information, compared to someone using JS to create art.

This whole article could be summarised in about 300 words, but I would have had very little emotional or conceptual enjoyment of it.

Would be nice if we could disable JavaScript and just get access to the text.

I also dislike this style, plus it lags on my computer. I scrolled all the way down but all I got was that it is a story of how it's not so bad to talk to strangers.

I'll promote prefers-reduced-motion here, which I believe is the standards compliant way of signaling you want this behavior. Unfortunately, I haven't noticed many sites supporting it.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...

It's art. They did it because they wanted it to be seen exactly this way. Accessibility was not the goal.

I had NO IDEA that it scrolled until reading this comment. I was wondering wtf the page was about.

Sometimes this is indeed merely "fancy" and vacuous, but other times it is a meaningful and more engaging way to present the content. I feel like this is an example of the latter.

Even if you're not a fan and would have done it differently, it seems a bit hard to understand what could be so bothersome that you have to close it in 10s...

Yeah, that website was horrid. I don’t know why someone would opt for a scrolljacking-based animation, let alone why they’d intersperse text boxes zooming around.

It would be nice if more of these projects offered a "static" mode

This one is especially worse because it's an incoherent mess that doesn't make any sense, not trying to show you anything relevant to the content.

it's even worse on mobile for me: any time there's a full screen animation, the site lags to a crawl – as in, 500ms+ lag spikes and aingle-digit FPS

Maybe I'm using my phone wrong, but the mobile experience was barbaric and stopped reading

Yes I definitely was interested but the form-over-function of this presentation just got me to drop out and not finish reading. I ended up passing the link to a LLM and asking "summarize this for me"...

Took me a really long time to realize that I should scroll. Because why would I? There is absolutely no indication that there is anything to scroll to.

I clicked on the two avatars but that didn't get me very far and the only thing left to click was "by alvin chang" but that was about as fruitful as I imagined it would be.

So I assumed it was a podcast, re-checking that I had audio on etc. But nope, so I checked another browser. Same there... Then I read HN comments, ah ... Great design? ...

I don't mind designers overriding when they take meticulous care to craft a better tailored experience. But once I scrolled past the initial content I found the site a UI disaster. Not long after it said "Pick a person to explore", I wanted to tap a particular box to read one of their conversations, and couldn't figure out how to bring any dialog up. I wound up scrolling further down afterward to see if that was how to trigger some dialog for my selection, and all the boxes started moving around at seemingly random, performance tanked and the whole thing got stuttery. I couldn't scroll back to where I was or find that box again that I was interested in. I left in frustration. Design fail, as far as this user's encounter.

It's not great design. It's a dirty hack that might work for some people, but is a non-standard practice that abuses JavaScript to achieve a certain effect. Overriding scrolling behavior might work if you're scrolling with a mouse or trackpad at a consistent speed, that that might even work for a majority of the site's visitors, but for others it breaks. If you press the PageDown key to get to the next page, it doesn't work. If you scroll half a page down using another key combination, it doesn't work. If you use a text-based browser, it doesn't work. I didn't test it using a screen reader or other types of browsers, but I can't imagine it would work that well there, either.

I'm with you and I actually love these "special scrolling" websites. They are much closer to a truly work of art exactly because of the different design.

To the haters: why do we have churches or buildings with marble statues in the walls or column instead of a standard stone wall, which was designed to do the job in a standard way?

It's interesting but I hated this design * 1000. I would prefer a white page with purely black text than this horrible override of the scrolling behavior and images and text flying around, this sort of design makes me feel literally nauseous and I had to click away not even 5% through this page.

It's so much harder to concentrate on content like this, it's distracting, confusing, gives me brain fog etc.

I found it only slightly worse than not overriding the standard scrolling behaviour. Any time a site remains usable despite this sort of UX intervention we can consider that a win.

But here the timeline gives the scroll a clear purpose

Absolutely true.

Another angle that goes unmentioned: "the more you know someone, the less you like them."

Most strangers in 30 minutes won't show off their ugly side. It takes a lot longer for those rough edges to come out, and for the really bad parts to surface in human relationships.

For some people, we can look past that. For most others, our interactions would not be so positive.

There's also the magnitude of a negative interaction as well to consider.

If I have 99 great interactions with someone, but one REALLY bad interaction (they insult me deeply, or say something irredeemable), that can also sour the whole relationship.

It would be interesting to research commonalities amongst bad interactions -- are there patterns that emerge from certain personality types, politics, etc? What about a few "sour" people that will take any interaction and make it bad regardless of matchup -- if we removed them from the interaction pool, do the stats suddenly adjust quickly?

In my mind this would have big implications for social media sites -- not that all bad interactions need to be quelled, but if you are trying to keep conversations civil, attempt to implement X strategy or Y strategy.

Yes, we tend to remember negative experiences better than the good ones. Also, we all are so low on good emotions, we don't want to risk losing them to random strangers.

Makes me think the real challenge isn't just encouraging people to talk to strangers, but designing situations where the expected value of those conversations skews heavily positive

I think it depends on what you’re used to. If you’re in an abusive relationship or socially isolated, a single positive social interaction can feel like a breakthrough.

“If at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again”-Aliyah

I was surprised I hadn't seen it on HN and saw it had so few upvotes, so figured I'd try again. Sometimes you just need some luck.

Fair, but it's still interesting that people underestimate how much they will enjoy the conversation, even if it's with a random person on a bus who did not volunteer for an experiment.

Indeed, also the ASCII avatars look really good.

>There's 26 people marked at "very liberal", which is 14% of the sample.

> There's 39 people marked at "very conservative", which is 21% of the sample

I think these numbers are off. Where are you getting that from? Is there raw data somewhere?

I counted the people on the page and see 39 very conservative and 47 very liberal (not 26).

I did not check the other numbers. But with that its 78 liberals which is 43%. And the total liberals + conservatives are 180. So I dont think the total participant number is 180 - thats just the total of liberals and conservatives.

And if its a 56/43 (~1.3) split for conservatives that seems to actually udnerrepresent conservatives compared to the general population without moderates. Where we see a 36/25 (1.44) conservative/liberal split in terms of ideology, not voter registration, which I think aligns more closely with the "political views" label.

>The way Americans identify themselves ideologically was unchanged in 2021, continuing the close division that has persisted in recent years between those describing themselves as either conservative or moderate, while a smaller share identifies as liberal. On average last year, 37% of Americans described their political views as moderate, 36% as conservative and 25% as liberal.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/388988/political-ideology-stead...

In the US, registered liberals/Dems outnumber conservatives. However this study has more conservatives. It could be geography. Some states are more conservative than others. Or it could be that the $15 on offer is more appealing to conservatives.

what type of work environment are you usually in?

It doesn't necessarily contradict the findings. People in this study also predicted that they would hate interacting with a stranger.

I've had interesting conversations with uber drivers and not so interesting conversations. I prefer to use one of those charge-by-the-minute rental cars if they're available, because they tend to cost 1/3 as much and I'm perfectly capable of driving myself.

Not really though. When people are busy and attempting to go from A to B, they may want to eliminate variables to better focus on their friends or something else in the Waymo. This is similar to the experiment where an incredible musician played violin in the subway terminal and people 'ignored' him. It's all about intention, when people plan to talk to a stranger, they're geared for that, if they are on their way somewhere, it's not the time or place to stop and 'smell the roses' most of the time as they are in a rush, doesn't have much to do with how great the musician is in the subway. When people go to a concert, and if that's same musician in the subway, they'll most definitely enjoy it, because they're planning on enjoying music at that time.

People often prefer things that are worse for them.

I don’t really understand this viewpoint - scrolling has always been the default way to see more content on a webpage. Clicking on things to navigate is very much a secondary activity. Why would you not scroll every web page to see if there is more content that didn’t fit on your screen?

Well don’t leave us hanging. Did you figure out that you need to scroll?

Reminds me of the most upvoted post of all time on r/slatestarcodex https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

Same. However, I had a few encounters where I was scared initially that I won't know what to say, and the talk will be quiet and weird, but my freshly met partner was so into the chat that I had problems cutting into. It was fun. Remember that the other person doesn't want to be weird either and will try to maintain the chat, unless it's totally not interested.

People tend to enjoy talking about things they're not happy about, no? Complaining is a revered pastime

I wonder if the participants were American? When I moved to Ireland I had to learn to stop asking that when I met people because it was a bit rude to start off like that.

Another potential self-selection bias -- if people know they are signing up to have a conversation with a stranger, perhaps they are already predisposed to be more "pleasant" in conversations, vs a potential curmudgeon who doesn't ever want to speak to anyone, even for money.

Wasn’t there a moderately popular audio-only social media startup a couple years ago?

You need structure for this to be amazing. Talking to a random person at a train station and asking for their destination isn't a meaningful conversation, even if they divulge a bit more about their travel plans.

Instead, I've personally really enjoyed talking to strangers while having a meal in the dining car of Amtrak trains, where they will force you to sit with three other people. This gives you more time together and more structure. I've talked to a retired real estate agent who told me stories about the houses his clients bought; I've talked to an old lady who told me first hand stories of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s.

I would like to do that but I live in Sweden, talking to stranger is considered rude. Would be cool if there were a serious version of those random cam chats like omegle.

Possibly one-sided conversations where one person got to enthusiastically talk about something that the other person didn't care about.

Many HN users are always looking for an excuse to complain about the format or appearance of the linked sites. So much so that the following had to be added to the guidelines (but doesn't seem to be enforced that much):

> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Because we're used to speed-reading content and that website wouldn't allow us.

Go to an event that you have an interest in, and strike up conversations with random people who are unoccupied. You at least have one common topic to talk about, and in my experience the odds you find someone you want to grab a bite or a drink after the even with are pretty high, and at the very worst the next time you go to a similar event you might see some familiar faces.

tl;dr the journey is the destination

Claude to the rescue: This is an interactive data story from The Pudding about research showing that talking to strangers makes us feel better, despite our expectations.

The piece follows conversations from a study of nearly 1,700 video calls between strangers with different backgrounds (age, race, politics, etc.). While people predicted they'd have negative experiences talking to strangers, the vast majority actually felt better by the end of their 30-minute conversations - regardless of how different they were from each other.The story argues that we've lost "bridging social capital" (connections with people unlike us) and explores how this contributes to declining social trust.

It ends with a personal reflection on helping a bleeding teenager on the subway, suggesting that despite our fears, most people will help strangers when needed - and that these connections are crucial for tackling big societal challenges.

I wish people would read the rules of the website they are using.

I quit reading after a couple of minutes because of the scrolling.

It's not only the scrolling that isn't normal, I got dizzy when some image-like thingies starting flowing around the screen, had to close the browser tab at once. Maybe the page wanted to tell something, but whatever it is they could have done it via pure text form, that's what reading is all about.