Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/toxic-positivity

by pradpk • 7 years ago

87 73 7 years ago

glamourmagazine.co.uk

jedberg• 7 years ago

I'm constantly having to remind my wife that she's a good mother. She keeps seeing all the posts on Facebook from her groups about how some woman made dinner, built a diorama and made enough to buy a new purse from her side business all in one day! And she thinks she's a slacker because "all" she can do is feed the kids and read them a story. I have to keep telling her that she's only seeing the highlight reel of those other mom's lives, and to stop trying to compare to them.

jandrese• 7 years ago

This reminded me of the Netflix show The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell where it's an ongoing joke how she wants to get ready for guests in the evening, so she makes this outrageously detailed gingerbread house then nips off to construct an elaborate dress before returning to solve world hunger or something. My wife and I speculated that it's a subtle dig at people who post like that on Facebook like they can ignore the laws of time and space at will.

skellera• 7 years ago

Pretty sure it’s a dig at what people thought about her. I’m sure most people who follow her think they’re slackers. Granted she is very talented but coming from a wealthy family allowed her to pursue her arts completely.

freedomben2• 7 years ago

Thank you. This is a problem for my wife as well. She stays at home and is an introverted person so doesn't like to go out and socialize. Instead she sees the constant flow of amazing things that everybody else is doing, and feels like a failure.

My kids are hard to deal with. I honestly don't know how she does it. I have to remind her of that when she gets mad at herself for having started a business that failed quickly, and other things that haven't worked out.

zwieback• 7 years ago

Soon after our first was born my wife asked her moms group: 'is four in the afternoon too early to have a beer?'. They answered: 'Oh, no, we've discussed it extensively and three o'clock is fine.'

Nothing wrong with being an ambitious mom but you need to pick the right support group and it's probably not instagram.

dsfyu404ed3• 7 years ago

One of my hobbies tends to attract a fairly rural and blue collar crowd (or at least more rural and blue collar than Reddit and HN) and the requirements of the hobby mean that you probably have your shit together at least a little bit. The "everything else" sub-forum on our forum is so good at giving life advice that it's become a running joke. This sounds like exactly the kind of answer their wives would give. That said, they'll bite you back real hard if you act like a jerk.

asavadatti• 7 years ago

The book "Why we Sleep" talks about how alcohol is a REM-suppressor and how it prevents you from getting deep restful sleep. Drinking alcoholic drinks in the evening/night is much worse than drinking earlier in the day.

jjtheblunt• 7 years ago

i totally commiserate with what you describe.

pickle-wizard2• 7 years ago

This place gets that ways some times. I like reading the comments here, as there are a lot of insightful comments that I often learn more from than the article itself.

Though sometimes it feels that if you are not working at one of the FAANGs making $400k/year that you are a total loser.

throwaway123x2• 7 years ago

Yup, I feel like a total loser when I see posts like that.

DoofusOfDeath2• 7 years ago

I sometimes feel that way too.

I suspect there's a deeper lesson about what we permit to be the bases for our self-esteems, and what we see as our proper calling in life.

DoreenMichele4• 7 years ago

Though sometimes it feels that if you are not working at one of the FAANGs making $400k/year that you are a total loser.

That's the socially acceptable thing to brag about, but it's absolutely not "everyone" here. A lot of people downplay it if they don't fit that narrative.

But it's kind of a skin deep thing. HN is vastly more diverse than that.

Applejinx2• 7 years ago

What I do is take it and turn it on 'em. I make about $15k a year but it's off open source software development on Patreon plus some livestreaming, and literally everything I produce is available free.

Want to impress me? Continue to make $400k a year whilst giving everything you do away for free. Otherwise you are merely exploiting the workers and making things worse for everyone, and the more astonishing your 'score' at capitalism the worse you are :D

For all that folks like that spout on about 'making the world a better place', often that means 'cashing out on a software patent for an obscure relational database interfacing protocol'… very better, much wow. That really did a lot, and was unequivocally helpful to humanity ;P :)

rdiddly• 7 years ago

Well here's a thought that might help (and I swear I'm not doing the same thing they're pointing out in the article, because as you'll see, it really isn't even particularly positive, hahaha):

To the extent each of those companies is working against the public interest (which you can decide for yourself or debate with someone), their employees are all traitors against the people. And buying a traitor always costs a lot of money. Even Judas got 30 pieces of silver. (And even if that story is a work of fiction, that detail is still a masterful touch, no?)

So maybe you have less money, but maybe you're also slightly less fucked-up inside, less cut-off from yourself, less prone to attack people for trivial reasons, and less plagued by thought patterns cluttered with convoluted self-justifications. Think about it and... [silly comment about anticipated downvotes redacted]

pwinnski• 7 years ago

It's north of 99% likely that the posts about affording things on a side business are also lies[0], so it's an impossible standard at every level!

[0] Sorry for the reddit link, but https://www.reddit.com/r/antiMLM is instructive on this score

oceanghost• 7 years ago

Insincere positivity is toxic. Positivity itself, when pure, is what powers the universe.

jvagner• 7 years ago

Real Talk.

xrd• 7 years ago

There is science to suggest that negative talk can influence your mental health in deleterious ways. Words do create a reality to some extent, great or small.

There is no science (at least none that I know of) that indicates that someone telling you this fact helps you get out of this mode of being.

Therein lies the rub.

headcanon2• 7 years ago

Mind over matter is definitely a thing, but where it becomes toxic is if you choose to ignore problems in order to keep the good vibes going, and could lead to a worse outcome than if you kept an objective mind. Reality distortion fields only work if they actually influence reality, and not just your perception of it.

With that said, I have a friend who is in a depression rut. He hates his job but believes any other job will be just as bad (he's definitely wrong), and seems to refuse to take steps to improve his situation, because his negativity keeps him from taking action.

So ultimately its just a balance.

MockObject3• 7 years ago

Reality distortion fields only work if they actually influence reality, and not just your perception of it.

eg Billy McFarland, Elizabeth Holmes...

bena• 7 years ago

I think people think confuse pessimism with acknowledging negative things.

Being happy won't stop your house from burning down. It's fine to acknowledge that your house is burning down. What you can't do is sit on the floor and cry about it. You have to believe you can handle the situation. By getting out, getting the fire department, etc.

Optimism is the belief that no matter what happens, you can handle it. Not that everything is good. Optimism is a "short memory".

ancorevard• 7 years ago

...written by Glamour magazine.

Perhaps one of the greatest sinners in this regard actively profiting from content that leads to covetousness, jealousy, etc. leading to mental health issues and what not.

freedomben2• 7 years ago

I had this thought too, but hey, however the message gets out I'm glad it does. If we spit in the faces of those people, they'll just put up walls and go back to the old ways. I prefer, "welcome friend, today is a new day"

kaycebasques2• 7 years ago

Granted, it would have been powerful if the author had called out (or was allowed to call out) Glamour's hypocrisy on this matter, but I think the fact that they're talking about the topic at all is a step in the right direction.

AnimalMuppet2• 7 years ago

It is not wise to bite the hand that is currently feeding you. And I don't mean paying the author - I mean running your article. If Vogue will run it, let the reader notice the irony. If you call it out explicitly, Vogue (probably) won't run it. If you actually believe what you're saying, that's kind of counterproductive.

fnord123• 7 years ago

I know, right? I get my tips from Teen Vogue:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-to-keep-your-internet-hi...

(Actually a good article)

jachee• 7 years ago

Teen Vogue has actually been doing some of the best hard-hitting journalism for the last few years. I'm not even close to ashamed of consuming their content.

mpweiher• 7 years ago

For a more in-depth look at this, I heartily recommend Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America

brooklyn_ashey• 7 years ago

Thank you for this- was trying to think of that book. The positivity culture, in my view anyway, was the far-reaching soft-spoken herald of a growing fascism in our work cluture. It is not hard to see why it would need hardcore deployment in these times.

mbostleman• 7 years ago

So on the other hand there is a toxic negativity that seems to reign in pop culture where people's impression of many things in society in general are on the pessimistic side of what real data shows. I wonder if this tendency towards toxic positivity in social media is some kind of equal but opposite effect that acts as a balance.

ineedasername• 7 years ago

I don't see the dominance of negativity in pop culture. Just browsing through the top songs on itunes right now, about half appear to be in some way positive about finding love, overcoming something etc. The other half do seem negative, but that's not dominance, that's 50/50. Then there's other avenues of pop culture, like movies. Literally the most popular movies in the world for most of the past decade have been about people with awesome super powers coming together to do what's right and overcome evil. So again, not really negative.

TeMPOraL• 7 years ago

I don't think they balance out. I think they're orthogonal. Note that pop culture negativity is mostly about how society sucks; per ineedasername's comment, the protagonist finds love or some other individual positivity. Social media "toxic positivity" is also about individuals having it good, not about the society doing good.

Both phenomena taken together create this negative outlook, "the world sucks and I personally suck". But this negativity is also what drives engagement, so there's no incentive to stop it - not in works of fiction, and not in social media.

RandomInteger4• 7 years ago

I'd rather see this so called "toxic positivity" than people patting each other on the back and reinforcing their depression and mental health issues as though it were an identity or something to form a community around.

It sounds harsh, but there are so many counter productive behaviors people engage in while meaning well with regard to mental health issues on social media. One I see often is that people are effectively embracing catastrophizing as some sort of rebellious act of defiant need for other people to acknowledge their distorted view of reality.

Don't get me wrong either. I'm not looking at this from an outsider perspective. I've been there. I've been dealing with on and off depression and anxiety for the past several years. I've managed to claw myself out of it, but am able to accept that how I acted while there was not healthy for me. I have to take full responsibility for my behaviors and the bridges I've burnt.

All that being said, this article reads like someone waist deep in the throes of "Acknowledge my depressed reality!"

byproxy• 7 years ago

I definitely relate to what you're saying, but finding a community of like-minded down-n-out individuals can be somewhat therapeutic in itself. Assuming you're all able to laugh about it, that is.

http://www.mytinyphone.com/uploads/users/uzueta/387840.jpg

headcanon2• 7 years ago

This article seems more related to social media, but my experience with toxic positivity at some former workplaces took the form of "Our startup is the best! We're so much better than all our competitors. Everything they do is wrong, and we do everything better!", which is a fine attitude to have in general, until its objectively not true, and I'm afraid to even say anything for fear of being a "hater".

A "Salesperson" attitude is great when talking to the public or customers, but when your employees hear one thing from you and see the opposite happening, it doesn't exactly lend you credibility.

Fortunately, where I work now the leadership is much more objectively-minded. It probably helps we're building enterprise products and not pushing social-media hype.

pklem• 7 years ago

I honestly find that this form of complementing to be toxic in general. I've heard too often "Other people are <insert negative trait>, but you are <insert positive trait>!" I generally appreciate the complement part when a comment like this is directed towards me, but the comparison to other people is not necessary. You don't need to put others down to build others up.

itronitron• 7 years ago

While working in a startup for several years I became fairly practiced at running everything our CEO said through an internal BS meter and have found it incredibly useful in every workplace since then.

The spectrum is 'true', 'optimistic', 'possibly true', 'not quite', 'probably lying', 'lying', 'lying to themselves'. During any company meeting I would keep a mental tally of how each statement measured up and used that to decide when I should leave.

DoreenMichele4• 7 years ago

'lying to themselves'

In my twenties, I concluded that most people lying to me were actually lying to themselves. They weren't trying to make my life harder or deceive me per se. It was simply not possible to state the truth to someone else and keep lying to themselves.

It made social BS vastly easier for me to cope with.

pixl97• 7 years ago

"Bioware Magic"

seppin• 7 years ago

Silicon Valley in general has mandated positivity to the point that if you ware honest about anything, you are labeled "negative" and shunned.

DoofusOfDeath2• 7 years ago

As someone outside of SV, I too have heard that generalization. Can anyone with varied experience inside SV confirm or deny?

jbattle• 7 years ago

The next article this website wants me to read is "Literally everyone is wearing this Mango suit on social media RN". I actually don't know much about this particular magazine, but one wishes that as an organization they would have more self-awareness about the mixed messages they send.

MockObject3• 7 years ago

Literally everyone is wearing this £39 Topshop dress on Instagram right now
So many people are wearing this Zara blouse on Instagram right now
All your favourite Instagrammers are wearing this high street range right now

It's as if they're waiting for readers to notice the belabored joke.

kaycebasques2• 7 years ago

On a personal note, I find occasional honest negativity to be endearing, refreshing, and stress-relieving. Back when I had the good fortune to visit Ireland, I went to comedy clubs to get a feel for local culture. I stumbled upon this hilarious musical comedian who sang a song [1] about how hard life is, yet no one talks about it.

It's easy to overdo it, though. Negative people are draining.

[1] https://youtu.be/S59FMm2wMUk

paganel• 7 years ago

I wonder if this forced positivity thing isn’t an American thing only (which is creeping its way through to Europe, I agree). For once I’m happy (no pun intended) that I grew up and still live in Eastern Europe where you can really tell how things are and how you feel about them without having to worry about what other people might think about your thinking.

dsfyu404ed3• 7 years ago

This is definitely a cultural and social class thing. Poorer and/or more rural areas of the US are like this too. When I worked blue collar jobs you could complain about stuff to the people around you, coworkers would post gripes about stuff on social media and it was fine. Now working in a higher class white collar workplace I would never do that.

AnimalMuppet2• 7 years ago

As a blue-collar worker, you could complain to the people around you... but your boss probably couldn't. As you move into management or into the white-collar world (either one), you can still complain, but your complaining will be taken more seriously, so you can't just blow of steam any longer. You have to complain, quietly (and rarely), to the people who can actually change things, and preferably with both a reason for them to make the change, and a suggestion of how to do so. It's a cultural shift.

PavlovsCat2• 7 years ago

WALLACE: What do you mean by "the marketing orientation," Dr. Fromm?
FROMM: I mean by that, that our main way of relating ourselves to others is like things relate themselves to things on the market. We want to exchange our own personality - or as one says sometimes, our "personality package" - for something. Now, this is not so true for the manual worker. The manual worker does not have to sell his personality. He doesn't have to sell his smile. But, what you might call the "symbol pushers" - that is to say, all of the people who deal with figures, with paper, with men, who manipulate - to use a better or nicer word - manipulate men and signs and words. All those today have not only to sell their service, but in the bargain, they have to sell their personality, more or less. There are exceptions.

-- Erich Fromm, http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/from...

robocat• 7 years ago

It always feels like religious preaching to me - a sort of belief you are supposed to have and that seems to be proselytised mostly by American people, songs, wall art etc.

veryworried• 7 years ago

So much of the life coaching industry reeks of this crap. Follow any 20-something “life” coach these days and you’ll probably be treated to a stream of flowery feel good quotes that remind you to stay positive at all times.

Eventually these little hits of positivity aren’t strong enough and some seek out expensive coaching services that give you much larger dosages of the same shit while you pretend to work through your problems.

growlist• 7 years ago

I find LinkedIn/contemporary corporate culture to be horrifically infested with this pollyannish nonsense. Sometimes we still need to be able to call a spade a bloody shovel.

moosey• 7 years ago

I would propose a corollary in regards to toxic positivity: Even if you are a happy, positive person, just in general, try to be available for people that having issues like the author of the article.

I disagree with the writer of the article about how important positive thinking is. I believe the gap is in how we try to help people become more positive: a walk and letting people vent a bit is probably far superior to informing them that they should think positively, and will more quickly lead to that resilience that, I think, improves quality of life.

For some people, it can be easy to be happy, and letting people know that their negative feelings have a good reason for existing, I imagine, is cathartic. Teaching people how to have more emotional resilience would probably also be valuable.

MockObject3• 7 years ago

On the other hand, kneejerk cynicism is the easiest and most cliched method of appearing sophisticated, but even more toxic.

DaniloDias• 7 years ago

This “toxic positivity” concept is best avoided if you are a leader.

We are herd animals. Feelings and attitudes are contagious. If you want to lead, you should always ask: “Does sharing this help the herd?”

Be positive. It is encouraging and inspiring. Don’t be dishonest with your positivity.

tracyshaun• 7 years ago

The author of this article seems to be a slave to her emotions and hasn't yet realize she can choose the emotional responses to the events in her life. Endometriosis is an awful awful awful thing to experience, but she seems to be confusing her own emotional choice about that condition and the inane platitudes those around her try to give to her. "Be positive" isn't toxic... it's just annoying when you think you don't have a choice about how to feel.

MrTonyD• 7 years ago

I don't like all the toxic positivity that has been growing in the workplace. This has changed a lot since my early days in Silicon Valley. My impression is that different countries have different "power distance" - a measure of submission to authority.

As the workforce has changed, with more hiring from "high power distance" countries, there are more "yes men" enthusiastically agreeing to anything that any incompetent executive wants.

Of course, the executives like this, and promote those who are "easy to get along with" and who are happy to "implement their vision". But I think history will show that this is one of the things which has contributed to the culture decline in Silicon Valley - from producing useful products to producing maximum profit regardless of any contribution to society. Right now, for example, I'm at yet another company with several incompetent managers who are supported by technical "yes men". They know that we are making idiotic technical decisions, but they would never openly disagree.

paulpauper• 7 years ago

We've all been in situations where no amount of positive thinking will change anything, and it's unhelpful because it fails to acknowledge the trying situation felt by the sufferer at hand and comes across as preachy and moralistic, except rather than admonishing someone for not going to church, it's for not exuding 'positive vibes', but also it's sometimes perceived as insincere and a way to absolve one's guilt for not doing more to help. This backlash explains the online appeal of Jordan Peterson, who is like the anti-Tony Robbins.

ultrasandwich• 7 years ago

Great further reading on this sentiment from academic/philosopher Byung-Chul Han if you're interested. He makes a pretty entertaining case against positivity in his book "The Burnout Society."

"...Because Otherness is disappearing, we live in a time that is poor in negativity. And so, the neuronal illnesses of the twenty-first century follow a dialectic: not the dialectic of negativity, but that of positivity. They are pathological conditions deriving from an excess of positivity."

http://theorytuesdays.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Han_Bur...

werber• 7 years ago

I think there's a lot of power in telling someone that whatever they're going through sucks and you can't do anything about it, but you'll listen to them bitch to get some relief. Being told to be positive can feel like a polite way of saying shut up, I don't care, keep that to yourself.

terryschiavo22• 7 years ago

It's not that complaining is inherently bad, it's that it tends to be uninteresting and unstimulating.

Yes, I know the sky is rainy grey today. It does nothing for either of us if you point that out for the fifteenth time. On the other hand, if you compare the sky to a giant peeing elephant, then we're now engaged intellectually at least a little bit.

Personally, I don't complain unless I can come up with an interesting way to spin my complaint.

DoreenMichele4• 7 years ago

Potentially of interest as well:

Her Facebook life looked perfect. How social media masks mental illness (2015)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19691000

PavlovsCat2• 7 years ago

They next song is a playdoyer for sadness, because I think that grief or sadness belongs to the emotions of humans, and that therefore one has to have the right to display this emotion openly and publically. Sometimes I was asked after concerts why my songs don't sound really optimistic. I thought about that for a long time and then I consoled myself with the fact that we live in the age of division of labour, and the rest is made by nearly all my other colleagues. I further believe that grief or sadness in certain situations and conditions can be a very productive emotion, because when a lot of people are sad about the same things, then maybe at one point they can also get angry together, and then something can change.

-- Bettina Wegner, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZpIjg0UhxE

Social media is spreading 'toxic positivity'

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