Toxic Positivity

https://readable.com/blog/genuine-vs-toxic-positivity-in-language-communicating-with-empathy/

by vincent_s • 4 years ago

208 162 4 years ago

wrnr• 4 years ago

This article is fine and all, but maybe we should also have a warning about toxic empathy. This is all a lot of emotional work, guess it is something we can all work on but so much other stuff going on.

rTX5CMRXIfFG2• 4 years ago

Can you give an example of toxic empathy?

langsoul-com• 4 years ago

Perhaps taking someone's problems as your own instead of letting them resolve the situation.

TheOtherHobbes2• 4 years ago

I don't know what the official definition is, but I'd consider deliberate mirroring of posture, online tone, and emotional state for conscious deceptive, and manipulative ends to be toxic empathy.

Trivial example - phone services with the stock "Your call is important to us but we're experiencing an unusually high level of calls right now" message. When the truth is the company is spending a bare minimum on phone support and knows it.

Or customer service scripts that say something like "I understand you're frustrated that you're having this problem."

In reality there's no understanding. And there may not even be any interest in fixing the problem - because when you read back through other messages you see the problem has been there for years and there's been absolutely no effort to find a fix.

tmortimerhun4• 4 years ago

Seen a few pieces about how we should be prioritising compassion over empathy to save ourselves from exhaustion. Only place I remember reading off top of my head was Rutger Bregman's Humankind. Interesting to ponder

lauraekelly_8• 4 years ago

This is a very good point and I'm going to check out the book you mentioned. Thank you

lwhi5• 4 years ago

I think this should be circulated to at least 80% of the people who used LinkedIn as required reading.

retSava• 4 years ago

I can heartfully recommend the subreddit LinkedinLunatics. Agree? Thoughts?

Mordisquitos• 4 years ago

I very much agree that so-called "toxic positivity" can be a problem, but I found this article greatly lacking in any sort of substance. There are no specific examples of toxic positivity, no explanation as to why its bad other than vacuous general terms repeated ad nauseam (did she mention toxic positivity invalidates lived experiences?), and no in depth explanation as to the alternatives other than what is essentially a dictionary definition of "empathy".

groceryheist• 4 years ago

Completely agree! This was disjointed and didn't have a point. Wish I could downvote.

Veen• 4 years ago

Part of the disjointedness comes from the writer's apparent obsession with over-simple language and very short sentences made by chopping up longer sentences. It's a good example of what happens when inexperienced writers rely on readability tools like Readable (it's on the Readable blog).

throw__away7391• 4 years ago

That's because the author seems to be firmly anchored in a coastal elite bubble. In particular this phrase:

invalidate someone's lived experience

...is particularly cringe-inducing. These are code words. This is not how any normal human in the English speaking world has ever spoken prior to exposure to a particular brand of (most often quite expensive) education, and let's be clear--that's the whole point. People train themselves to use this language as a way to demonstrate their membership or desired membership in the current socio-economic elite. It is not really any different from learning to use the "correct" fork at a 19th century dinner party, even to the point where watered-down versions of both trickling into middle class.

So let's say now you've gone and learned these phrases and weaponized your speech in this manner, great on you right? Wrong! You've lost your voice, everything you say is now constrained without the confines of this language and carries connotations set by someone else that overshadow whatever you may wish to express, but more importantly, your speech is now a constant performance. Just as how nourishment was not the point of dinner, what's being discussed is not the point of conversation when using this language. People who talk this way occasionally slip up and deviate slightly and you can hear in their voice how much anxiety this causes them, usually some small nervous joke follows. Crippling anxiety is perhaps the defining trait of these folks, to the point that many many of them, a far higher percentage than you'd expect naturally, are on some kind of anti-anxiety drugs. This risk of saying something that puts you out of step with the tastemakers grows enormously as your investment increases, better to say nothing of substance at all while using lots and lots of this language and drop in as many of these code words as possible.

tmortimerhun4• 4 years ago

Indeed. Was quite excited when I saw the title, but not a great piece. Be interested if anyone's seen any better pieces on the same subject

tallanvor2• 4 years ago

There's a new book on this subject - "Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy" https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Positivity-Keeping-World-Obsess...

I also found these articles/posts to be pretty decent: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-toxic-positivity-509395... https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/tired-of-being-told-cheer-up-th...

FartyMcFarter• 4 years ago

The most common example I've seen at companies is when higher ups portray everything as a positive, even when a project isn't going well. Some execs have a tendency to cheerlead, rather than to be realistic.

In some cases this can amount to gaslighting, as people will be left wondering whether they're being too negative due to their own flaws.

xnorswap• 4 years ago

This was my reaction too, I didn't want to comment as such earlier when it would be the only comment, but it feels like this has been propelled to the top of the front-page by the title alone.

d23• 4 years ago

I would hope HN would be more immune to this general online phenomenon, but these sorts of articles get ranked highly often enough that it seems like a majority of users rush to vote and opine without taking the time to read.

BlargMcLarg3• 4 years ago

The post is also focused on content marketing. Many already are in agreement sales and marketing tends to be more positive because, let's face it, most of them are still coming in cold with products which are meh at best and terrible at worst.

For the majority of people, toxic positivity is a far bigger issue by having things invade their life to the point of having to sell themselves or others as far more positive than necessary, for reasons that do not reflect empirical evidence. Some people noted mass media culture of farming likes and internet points. Job interviews, performances and such are another, where negativity in any way is so taboo individuals now have to learn how to navigate a minefield of "give us criticism but don't you dare give us criticism". Most will even dare scapegoat it under "it's unprofessional to be negative".

The world sucks in a lot of ways. Yes, we don't have to keep rubbing in how much it sucks. No, we don't need to decorate it ad nauseam at every corner. The last bit will eventually explode into a counterculture where everyone berates the overly positive status quo. It already has online, just waiting for counterculture to catch up to corporate.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 4 years ago

One of the most amusing things, for me, is watching marketing folks struggling to say "no," or disagree[0].

It seems they are trained to never say no.

I tend to keep things positive, and rely on good team dynamics (I don't like team members competing against each other).

That's not "toxic positivity." It's just common sense. We don't all have to have kum-ba-ya singalongs, but we need to treat each other with respect, and work together. I was a manager for 25 years, and my team seemed to like the environment I fostered.

I think a lot of folks are crippled by cynicism, and that can be just as bad as "toxic anything." It can completely destroy a team. Decent managers can help to defuse that.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J34UzHo4G5w

lallysingh• 4 years ago

Can we call the article an example of toxic filler? All filler in the guise of something genuinely helpful.

For toxic positivity, I call it old-fashioned denial, mixed in with a lot of bullshit.

codingdave• 4 years ago

That is because the article is just an extended ad for their tools which they link in the middle of the article.

trqnw• 4 years ago

I agree. This paragraph might explain the lack of substance:

Readable’s tone and sentiment tools help you to optimise your content for positivity. Using our sliders, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of your language.

So the article is an ad for sentiment analysis and has probably been "optimized" by that tool. Hence the vacuous tone that ironically is an example of toxic positivity itself.

lupire4• 4 years ago

This article seems like an employee slyly attacking her employer with malicious compliance with the Brand Voice -- showing everyone how their product ruins writing.

coffeefirst• 4 years ago

Yeah, this is an ad one of those SaaS products where a computer scans your writing and tells you you're doing it wrong.

There's probably something about excess positivity that's worth talking about. This isn't it.

verisimi• 4 years ago

Come on, don't be down on it! Cheer up! :)

thenerdhead• 4 years ago

Does toxic positivity also count for those who overshare online for internet points?

I think it is brave to share the human side of our lives more often, but I feel like most platforms have people sharing a bit too much from the heart. As if every post has a meaningful insight from a lived experience of the human condition.

Almost to the point where there's a lot of narcissism in self-hatred and the realization of that in a public forum.

nicbou• 4 years ago

This article reads a lot like SEO spam. I can't really say why. Perhaps it's the title structure, or just the word count boosting?

tgv• 4 years ago

Because it needlessly mentions branding and customer success? I've seen that on so many spam pages.

mentalpiracy2• 4 years ago

The aggressively short and interruptive sentence structure.

zeroth32• 4 years ago

Airing concerns or struggles in the workplace can be really nerve-wracking. Often, we are afraid of appearing unprofessional. We fear being judged negatively. This is the perfect opportunity to practice active listening.

This ^ is toxic positivity. I am not unpaid therapist for my work colleagues. I have my own problems.

Xylakant2• 4 years ago

OTOH, it’s useful to know when your colleagues are struggling, either professionally or personally. It puts their reactions into context and helps anticipating their performance. If they’re struggling, they will not be giving their best show, as will you and as will I. We’ll all drop the ball, be slower,… and knowing I should expect that helps me, because I can try to cover some of their bases, as will they when I’m struggling. There may also be some unresolved conflict in the workplace that could be lowering everyone’s performance.

There’s no need to get into details or cross over into therapy territory, but a “hey, I’m currently not doing perfectly fine” is a much appreciated heads up for me. Showing that you do care to a certain extend helps people share those feelings.

UncleEntity• 4 years ago

Showing that you do care to a certain extend helps people share those feelings.

Unless you don’t actually care and can’t tell them “get your shit together on someone else’s time, dude” because that would be a micro-aggression since they don’t like being called dude.

cxr• 4 years ago

If you can provide those kinds of affordances to someone after they've informed you that they're "struggling, either professionally or personally", then you can do it without making them have that conversation as a precondition to your charity.

If someone is struggling, that means they're vulnerable. Forcing them to take a gamble by enlarging the "surface area" of the risk that they're exposed to (by advertising it to someone else) is shitty. It punishes people who can't take that risk (in other words, the people most in need of relief) and also (separately, possibly doubly) punishes the people who manage to successfully cover their own bases without slipping or otherwise indicating that any of this is coming at great cost.

Corollary: you should assume that anyone could be struggling at any time (or all the time), and default to giving everyone whatever latitude they've earned and deserve, whether they've had an intimate heart-to-heart with you beforehand or not.

mentalpiracy2• 4 years ago

finding common complaints and bitching about them together is perhaps _the_ quintessential method of social bonding.

goodpoint• 4 years ago

I am not unpaid therapist for my work colleagues

People are very much paid to interact with colleagues in constructive manners, including understanding and addressing concerns.

OJFord2• 4 years ago

I agree with greatly dislike this, on the surface... but this article suffers from basically the same thing itself?!

I asked our Customer Success Champion, Natasha, about this topic. Empathy is one of her many superpowers.

Groan!

... unless I misunderstood it... now I'm wondering if the 'think positive' lead image was used unironically..?

TheOtherHobbes2• 4 years ago

I don't see any evidence that the writer has that level of self-awareness.

I'm increasingly beginning to suspect that business culture is inherently hallucinogenic.

Between title inflation (everyone is an "executive" or maybe a "champion" and has "superpowers"), emotional distortions (don't be too negative, don't be too positive, never be sure where the line is or what the correct emotional state is), and perpetual overhyping ('Our incredible journey...') - it's very literally an altered state of consciousness designed to exclude reality.

lauraekelly_8• 4 years ago

I wonder if you have any self-awareness about the toxicity of making a presumptuous and insulting comment about me, someone you don't know, based only on an article I wrote about toxicity... Or maybe you are just that uncaring about the impact you may have on someone's day? I can take valid criticism and have read the critique on here with genuine interest. However, I don't believe this comment about 'the writer' is necessary. I don't see anywhere I've talked about our "incredible journey" on the post either? This is a little baffling. I thank you for your view and engagement nonetheless.

lauraekelly_8• 4 years ago

I think people in customer-facing roles should be appreciated for their empathy but yeah I get you :) nope used the cover image ironically Thanks for the feedback

OJFord2• 4 years ago

It's more the 'champion' (her job title, not your fault) and 'superpowers' language than it is recognising and valuing someone's empathy.

It comes across as inauthentic to me, though I believe that's not the case. May also be a cultural difference (well, there certainly is, but broadly applicable to our respective nations I mean) since to me it's quite like how you can't offer a simple 'thanks' (resp. cheers!) to a shopkeeper or whoever in the US without being told 'you're so welcome', and probably to 'have a great day now'.

prepend2• 4 years ago

I find it so cringy when people hyperbole praise their co-workers. Just say she’s competent at her job. Empathy isn’t a superpower for goodness’ sake.

I had a peer who constantly referred to one of their employees as a “unicorn” for doing basic tasks. I felt bad for the employee.

I try to never work for people who call me a “rock star” or who refer to their employees as rock stars. (I’d make exceptions to work in the music industry)

geodel• 4 years ago

Well after reading such a hard hitting article about toxic positivity, I am recommending job title change for a team member fixing bad data in accounts to "Account Wellness Champion".

sime2009• 4 years ago

The article here is a bit too fluffy. The ABC (think BBC, but Australian) covered the topic quite well via one of their radio programs / podcasts. The came at it from the context of illness, which makes it a more concrete example.

You can listen to it here, or read the transcript at the bottom:

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/t...

tallanvor2• 4 years ago

For actual information about Toxic Positivity, I think the following posts and articles are likely to be much more helpful:

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-toxic-positivity-509395...

https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tired-of-being-told-cheer-up-th...

And I haven't read it yet, but I saw a new book on the subject is out "Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy": https://www.amazon.com/Toxic-Positivity-Keeping-World-Obsess...

WesolyKubeczek3• 4 years ago

I feel like the whole Cheerful Fairy episode in the Hogfather has more substance than the linked article. And is fun to read.

Although shitty articles sometimes give nice topics for a better discussion here in the comments, so why not.

curiousgal• 4 years ago

Keeping it Real

Not be confused with Dave Chappelle's sitcom https://youtu.be/D3U55usfJK8

JonShartwell2• 4 years ago

I’d also add Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-sided, motivated in part by her irritation with people telling her to be positive after hearing about her cancer diagnosis https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113758...

robertlagrant2• 4 years ago

Just using the word "toxic" as a binary classifier of "things I don't like" is a problem. That includes people not being positive enough.

lwhi5• 4 years ago

To my mind, I think toxic is a byword for 'extreme behaviour'; and furthermore, extreme behaviour is often a symptom of a personality disorder at its most pronounced.

mattcwilson• 4 years ago

Except then it also becomes a label to classify the undesirable as extremist.

noodleman3• 4 years ago

I always assumed "toxic" means that it affects others it comes into contact with.

e.g. You've had a bad day at work:

Negative: Being a bit withdrawn and avoiding conversation

Toxically negative: Shouting at your wife and kids

darkerside2• 4 years ago

Like toxic skiing? Or toxic mountain climbing? Toxic marathon running?

samhw12• 4 years ago

I think this is quite a good definition. After all, it's a key principle of toxicology - courtesy of Paracelsus - that the dose makes the poison. (Any woman who's had Botox can attest to this.) It certainly seems to be used that way in this article, in being applied to 'positivity'.

WesolyKubeczek3• 4 years ago

Here it’s justified because toxic emotions poison the mind, make you oblivious to trouble, make you chase mistaken priorities etc.

galoisgirl• 4 years ago

I don't mind it that much for things, but I hate it used towards people.

I think few people are that bad that you need to isolate yourself from them. In most cases, you can learn not to take their criticism, not to give into their games...

robonerd4• 4 years ago

Toxic has become an autological word; that is to say, the figurative use of 'toxic' is toxic.

noodleman3• 4 years ago

This is quite a thin article. Not really much to go on in either direction. I'd be interested in some better reading on the subject if anyone has any.

Personally, I think I see a lot more toxic negativity than toxic positivity in the world and I've rarely heard the phrase "toxic positivity" used in a justifiable situation. Not to say that toxic positivity can't exist but quite often articles discussing it come across to me as justifying a defense mechanism people use when challenged over their toxic negativity.

BlargMcLarg3• 4 years ago

A lot of people just want to be modest and realistic. They don't like decorating things, telling half-truths or flat-out lying about the truth. Both being overly positive and being overly negative do this. However, from personal experience, most places which affect one's personal life and cannot be reasonably skipped (unless you wish to live close to a poverty wage, and even that is questionable) emphasize being more positive than need be. Negativity can more or less be skipped by just unplugging social media.

Take the classic "why did you leave your previous job" question in job interviews. Most people leave jobs over something which cannot be interpreted as anything else but negative. Bad bosses, bad managers, no growth, no opportunities, too little pay to support future goals. Yet negativity is a no-no (as is "greed" and a bunch of other things). So yes, most people are decorating or lying about the actual reason. And no, this question doesn't exactly indicate any kind of job performance, it's more like a hazing ritual. Same goes for other questions.

It's a weird kind of dystopia for people who are primarily logic driven and/or horrible at selling themselves, and don't have a skillset so in demand they can ignore those barriers. Let alone those who are vulnerable to this kind of behavior (people who are too modest for their own good and anxious to boot come to mind).

orwin2• 4 years ago

I quit my job because I was a bit bored, my new job isn't better, but at least I have 10 weeks of vacations, and my 35h a week allows me to enjoy my life without sacrificing either sleep or family when I'm not traveling.

Is this toxic positivity?

noodleman3• 4 years ago

Firstly, job interviews are difficult but they are not dystopian. Secondly, your claim that you can skip negativity by unplugging from social media is ludicrous.

While I understand the point you're making, it is obvious why negativity is a no-no. A negative disposition makes you hard to work with and if you can't find the effort to present yourself in a positive light during a job interview, then you probably can't maintain good working relationships. Greed is a no-no in a job interview because everyone wants more pay. How does "I want more pay" differentiate you from the next applicant? I do not see this as toxic positivity - just positivity.

saturnaga• 4 years ago

People can do whatever they want, I will continue to be positive toxic.

When someone asks me how I am doing I am always "great". If anything it is a form of self hypnosis to boost my own mood. Of course there is a contagion when it comes to individual mood both positive and negative.

Twitter of course is not reality. I mean this in the context of the really real world.

subroutine• 4 years ago

There was an interesting comment on HN a few weeks ago [1] where an engineer at Fast (1-click checkout) attributed their downfall [2] to "Toxic Positivity".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30947595

[2] https://www.npr.org/2022/04/05/1091077398/checkout-startup-f...

lauraekelly_8• 4 years ago

Thanks the the feedback everyone, I will take it on board. It wasn't intended as a lengthy deep dive, and by the nature of our product is more from a branding and customer success angle. But perhaps I should have had more outgoing links to more coverage on the topic like the ones some of you have helpfully provided. I appreciate the comments that have been constructive!

mlindner• 4 years ago

How about the toxicity of attacking positivity? This world has WAY too much negativity right now and it's downright harmful to human psyche. People are freaking giving up on the world and deciding that they should never have children because they think they'd just be bring them into a doomed world. That's when you know negativity has gone so far.

Some toxic positivity on the odd occasion to counteract the nonsensical rampant toxic negativity is fine with me. It's gotten amazingly ridiculous. People are even cheering for good things to fail now out of some kind of warped jealousy.

And no, for those who thought this, I didn't read the article.

HyprMusic• 4 years ago

You're exhibiting the exact behaviour that you're chastising by negatively focusing on points the article didn't even make. The article promotes genuine positivity and human emotion whilst considering the circumstances of those around you.

Please take a second to read the HN guidelines if you genuinely want to make HN (and the world) a more positive and constructive place: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

darkerside2• 4 years ago

In their defense, the headline was a pretty good summary of the article

AdrianB1• 4 years ago

Social media bragging and attention seeking is not toxic positivity, there is no positive in that.

FargaColora• 4 years ago

I consider YouTube comments to be an example of "toxic positivity".

YouTube are using AI to only show "postive" comments first, but the overall effect is a bizarre cultish "uncanny valley" approximation of how a real community react.

lupire4• 4 years ago

I assume that commenters are learning to post sarcastic comments that trick the AI.

I pity anyone who doesn't already have a big subscription list of the small segment of quality YouTubers.

robonerd4• 4 years ago

Youtube comments are useless for both criticism (generally censored, either by the video creator or by youtube itself) and praise (virtually always vacuous.) The only thing they are good for is adding context or relevant anecdotes. E.g. a video about an engine may have comments from retired mechanics who've serviced that engine before.

It really depends on what kind of content you're watching though. For wide swaths of content on youtube, there is nothing worthwhile that can be said in the comment section, either because youtube wouldn't show that sort of comment, or because there's earnestly nothing to be said.

andrewingram• 4 years ago

I know someone who's genuinely very positive, a rare inspiration; but he once said (on Facebook) that he never posts anything non-positive because he doesn't want to be seen as a downer. To me this was problematic, because I was personally coming to find his relentless positivity to be quite depressing.

Ensorceled• 4 years ago

While Toxic Positivity the term exploded in usage during the pandemic, its been a problem since before social media.

The start up I was part of in the late 90s was rife with toxic positivity, making the work place oppressive and surreal; eventually playing a large part in its failure.

dr_dshiv• 4 years ago

I just went to a massive workshop by Esther Hicks, famous for “law of attraction” and emphasis on positive emotions for manifesting deliberate creation. She presents a classic ”New Thought” philosophy—and her ideas are a big target of those espousing the dangers of Toxic Positivity.

I was happily surprised. She emphasized the value of negative emotions, the importance of noticing and identifying negative emotions, and the importance of “not beating yourself up” about having negative emotions.

But, at the same time, she unabashedly presented moods as something that we can and should consciously control. And, she claimed that positive moods can allow good things to happen that don’t happen when we are focused on negative emotions. I’d have to write more to clarify more, but I was surprised by her nuance.

“There is just one message: You create your own reality, and —-you just gotta vibe it out.” I’ve read a ton of philosophy and I just love this. It might seem vacuous, but now that I’ve seen her, I really think it is on point.

wirrbel• 4 years ago

It’s a typical phenomenon that the original message/idea is often distorted by its replication.

Usually the ideas tend to mutete to be more simple to pass on. So Balance and counterpoint is lost, but sometimes stuff is added because it helps „victims“ to pass on the narrative.

Key example is agile: key ideas are lost (continuous re-evaluation of software development and user/stakeholder interaction), while other stuff replicates under the same label like crazy (sprints, story point estimation ).

At the end of the day I find it’s totally plausible how a „manage your emotions and don’t be permanently negative, stay open and don’t reject things straight away“ can turn into something like „be positive, always, and smile at all the traffic lights on your way to work“ (no kidding)

jasperry• 4 years ago

For a more substantive analysis of how an excess of positivity is causing problems, I highly recommend Byung-Chul Han's book "The Burnout Society".

He argues that Western culture has shifted from a negative "thou shalt not" model to a positive, open-ended "you can" model, and that this is a cause of much of the depression and burnout we see today. And he says that this has happened in capitalist societies because it results in greater efficiency--it gets people to exploit themselves rather than needing to be driven by others.

adrianbd2• 4 years ago

As some other comments touch on, what this could be framed as is "Ruinous Empathy", which is what Kim Scott calls it in Radical Candor: https://www.radicalcandor.com/radical-candor-not-brutal-hone....

The crux of it is that it's more useful to give someone a harsh truth that will help them grow (in a tactful way, while conveying that you care about them personally) rather than trying to be nice but ultimately not helping them course correct.

drugstorecowboy• 4 years ago

When people are so generously out there "helping people grow" in tactful ways, much of the time the benevolent helper doesn't actually know how to do that.

People generally make what they think are rational decisions, it always feels like extreme hubris when someone decides that they know what would be best for someone else. They can't possibly know what reasoning lead to their current course of action. Thats what makes toxic positivity toxic, its people deciding that whatever lead you to have less than a cheerleader level of positivity is irrelevant, your thoughts on the matter are irrelevant, because they know how you should feel about something and want to help you "course correct"

adrianbd2• 4 years ago

Just to be clear, my comment is talking about toxic positivity in the workplace (I intended to anchor my reply to another related comment) - I agree that toxic positivity regarding other people's more general problems will just minimize their decisions and experiences.

At work however, I've definitely been helped by being given direct advice on things I hadn't even been considering I could be doing better (or doing at all, as a matter of fact). Your take implies a lack of trust in the motive of the other party, which is obviously a deal breaker, and the reason why establishing trust in the first place is required.

hubbubb• 4 years ago

This is really insightful and I love how it’s presented! The workplace is the most guilty of this in my experience and I wish my previous employers could’ve learned the darn difference. (Also the nature of these comments is the ironic cherry on the vitriol cake)

dontbenebby• 4 years ago

Hi vincent_s,

Thanks a lot for sharing this!

I actually deleted my Instagram, along with Facebook, but I've been considering setting up some kind of photo blog where I write out detailed descriptions of the set and setting for every photo I posted there during my time on The Website.

Real life is messy, and what's important is the trendline, not individual data points.

For example, if this was ten years ago, I'd be hung over, barely able to code, trying to get through some dense cryptography paper despite never having taken calculus, nearly punching someone in a cafe because I thought I heard them use a very offensive word for black people, only to have them chuckle and explain it's the name of a group of people in the region between Russia and the parts of China that are home to a different ethnic group.

Instead, I'm running a script I wrote that will help me gather data for an investment theory I'm working on (and will test) while catching up on the news from a location other than my home, because I got tired of unusual coincidences.

You don't want to be a debbie downer, but yeah, too much positivity can be a bad thing, IMHO.

- Greg.

Edit: Whoops, hit post early. I'm still skittish in public due to COVID, sometimes I post too quickly.

lupire4• 4 years ago

Is this a troll or a GPT or wrong thread?

samhw12• 4 years ago

I don't think it's a genuine spam comment, because it doesn't actually mention any identifiable 'opportunity'. I assume it's someone trying to make a point, though God knows what that point could be.

fithisux• 4 years ago

The tool of new world order to spread despair and rule by drowning opposition.

alecst• 4 years ago

Ugh, I hate to say this but this article feels like GPT-3.

I realize you can’t really defend against this accusation which makes it a logical fallacy of some kind (ad robotinem?) but I think as the technology develops we do have to become more skeptical that what we read was written by a real person.

rsyring• 4 years ago

Radical Candor by Kim Scott described something similar and labeled it Ruinous Empathy[1]. I found her insight into these conversation patterns helpful.

1: https://www.radicalcandor.com/our-approach/

layer82• 4 years ago

They recommend empathy. However, businesses trying to communicate that they care about their customers by feigning empathy (“we are sorry to hear you’re encountering this issue with our awesome product”) but not actually acting like they care (not providing useful information, not engaging with the actual problem, not actually fixing the issue) is what comes across as toxic positivity for me. At least in a business relationship, communicating empathy is a turn-off if it’s a replacement for actually being helpful.

travisporter• 4 years ago

Absolutely agree. I'd rather have a disgruntled tech support person say "sorry we can't do that." Not, "How's your day, let me pull up your info, I see you're bla bla, anything else I can help you with?"

antifa• 4 years ago

Feigning empathy isn't a good definition of toxic positivity. A better definition would be:

We define toxic positivity as the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.

https://thepsychologygroup.com/toxic-positivity/

layer82• 4 years ago

I didn’t mean it as a definition, just as an instance. The “feigned empathy” is intended to make the recipient feel better (by making them feel empathized with), and in that sense is meant to be positive, but since it doesn’t address the actual objective of the inquiry, it instead makes the recipient feel like taken for a fool, aggravating any misgivings they may already have had, or generating ones in the first place.

besus• 4 years ago

I spent several years at a SaaS which was plagued with toxic positivity. The underpinning platform was slapdash and took 4x the expected time to add features because of it. Yet the GM walked around trumpeting that we were fielding a best in class offering.

Any mention of the reality of the situation was met with replies about not being a team player and showing negativity. It was an absolute morale killer for the development and SRE teams charged with on-call rotations which resulted in exhaustion and frequent outages.

Start-up code is often naive and hastily put together. Growth pains are expected as customer count and revenue increase. Don't bullshit the situation with false positivity. Address the issues and live to fight another day.

In the end, that SaaS has slowly faded away to obsolescence due to the lack of honesty about the actual state of the union.

bsedlm• 4 years ago

I really dislike this form of content.

In this comment, I will tell you about this somewhat new way to write content on the internet.

But first, I must explain to you what is the internet.

The internet is a network of many computers in which anybody can write what they think and publish for anybody to see.

On the interent people find stuff with search engines such as google.

Eventually, marketers came up with SEO. Click here to find out about SEO.

With SEO people started to game google to get more people to read their content. Those poeple write like this. I'm imitating their way of writing because it is less annoying to me when I also write this way.

Should you write in this way too?

Studies show that wiriting like this lets you place more ads in your website.

But what about readability?

etc...

overthemoon• 4 years ago

Yeah, it's awful. It's padded out with useless preamble I assume for SEO reasons. Troubleshooting Windows issues with Google is a waterfall of this bullshit. I hate having to go to windowsitgeektuts.com to read six paragraphs about how people like to hear sound out of their computer just to be told to reinstall the driver.

annoyingnoob• 4 years ago

I've worked places where Human Resources is more like the Fun Police, and you'd better have some fun. Talk about toxic positivity.

jum1p• 4 years ago

Great article!

How are you doing? I hope your doing great, such as me.

It doesn't seem to be new but I'd prefer if people'd stop to sell emotions.

WaitWaitWha• 4 years ago

Why do we have to 're-invent' new words and present as something new for things that have been around for millennia?

I am all for exploration, but re-naming breaks the link to valuable historical material.

Sohcahtoa82• 4 years ago

Whenever I hear "Toxic Positivity", I think of the character Mr Peanut Butter from Bojack Horseman. He's the icon for toxic positivity.

Toxic Positivity

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