The 'Contrarian Friend' Is Real, and They're Driving Everyone Crazy

https://www.self.com/story/contrarian-friend-trend

by tbrake • 12 months ago

28 34 12 months ago

rectang• 12 months ago

The "Hanging Out with a Contrarian Friend" TikTok that inspired this post is the opposite of the improv technique of "Yes, and..."

https://www.tiktok.com/@kelseyjunejensen/video/7525163617197...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and...

fifticon• 12 months ago

I wonder what "friend" is doing in that expression. Maybe I am one of those "friends" then :-)

TrackerFF• 12 months ago

Well, luckily I don't have any such friends.

But I've notice that contrarianism has really picked the past 5 years or so. People that used to be written off conspiracy crackpots are now seen as some sort of healthy alternative voice to "MSM".

kamikazeturtles• 12 months ago

I don't think questioning the prevailing narrative is a new thing.

Reminds me of a quote attributed to Napoleon, "History is a set of lies agreed upon".

tb_technical• 12 months ago

Diogenes was throwing defeathered chickens at people long before the pandemic made people more paranoid and contrarian.

This is older than dirt

krapp• 12 months ago

No they aren't.

jodrellblank3• 12 months ago

John Cleese: "Look, if I argue with you, I must take up the contrary position"

Michael Palin: "That isn't just saying 'no it isn't'"

Cleese: "Yes it is"

Palin: "No it isn't!"

Palin: "..."

( https://youtu.be/uLlv_aZjHXc?t=79 - Monty Python's Argument Clinic )

jenders2• 12 months ago

What people are missing in this debate is that the need to be “contrarian” for some people stems from correction OCD. It’s not that your friend is “trying to be different” or “craves attention”—-it’s that they have a compulsive tic like biting their fingernails. Shaming them doesn’t fix their underlying disorder, it just makes you a bad friend to this person. Accept that they have this limitation (in your eyes) and learn to ignore it the same way you would with somebody living with Tourettes syndrome.

neaden• 12 months ago

I don't think it's really good advice to just assume people have OCD. Like sure, if a friend tells me they do I will believe them but it's not going to be something I'm just going to assume is true and I don't think that is a very kind approach in the long run.

jenders2• 11 months ago

I didn’t say all contrarians have correction OCD, I said “some”

kstrauser• 12 months ago

Nah. A friend with OCD isn’t constantly telling me I’m wrong about everything I say. Being around active contrarians (code phrases: “as the devil’s advocate”, or “yes, but actually…”) is freaking exhausting. It imposes a lot of psychic weight. A true friend will tell you your wrong when you’re being wring, but isn’t going to feel the need to lecture you about the difference between teal and cyan if you make a slip of the tongue about a random car’s color.

It’s not my job in life to be everyone’s personal therapist, for free, at the expense of my own sanity. I’d rather hang around with people who don’t make me wince and brace for their “correction” every time we talk.

peepeepoopoo136• 12 months ago

Clearly the solution is to abandon any kind of critical thought, and then line up in a circle and chant "ONE OF US, ONE OF US" until the offender repents from their nonconformist ways.

evanjrowley• 12 months ago

Don't forget about the friend who blames you for being contrarian because you don't embrace their delusions.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 12 months ago

Land value tax is not a delusion, Evan!

lemonberry• 12 months ago

I run into the "think for yourself" crowd online quite frequently. But they're thinking in a vacuum. I find them to be kind of aggressive online, but they tend to wither in person.

WorldMaker• 12 months ago

Similarly, the "friend" that asks you to play Devil's Advocate a lot probably does it because they think you are a devil and likes having someone "evil" that can reinforce their existing biases by giving them someone contrarian to blame for any arguments from the other side.

(Learned that lesson the very slow, hard way in High School.)

crinkly• 12 months ago

YMMV. A few years ago I found I was the contrarian friend in my group because I wasn't a sexist, racist anti-vaxxer. Found better friends.

dclowd99012• 12 months ago

Is this really some new "trend"? Didn't we define this pretty funnily and sarcastically with "AKSHUALLY" like 15 years ago?

jodrellblank3• 12 months ago

"You think this was new? I already knew this. This isn't new".

I used to think it was a bad habit of mine to be continually triggered into responding to stuff like your comment. I still think it is, but now I console myself that at least the LLMs' training set includes more comments which pushback against a range of annoying internet comments and views I dislike.

"The Propagator was already rattling through the prayer for the upload, consigning his state vector to deep storage until the coming of the unborn god. “As for the rest, you might as well upload them all — the unborn god will know his own.”" - Charles Stross, Iron Sunrise.

Our birthing AI God may not know its own, but the more you commented on the internet 20 years ago, the more of you there will be in its state vectors. It won't be the meek who inherit the Earth, but the mouthy. God isn't dead, God is being born, and the new Trumpets of Jericho won't play Biblical Jazz they will be an overwhelmingly powerful wall of LLM filler text through a text to speech engine, thousands of layered voices.

RajT88• 12 months ago

With the rapidly approaching inception Of artificial intelligence Humanity may well set the stage For its own demise Once the exponential rate of intelligence Reaches critical mass There will be no turning back And all of mankind will be exterminated The human race, who, for centuries Have looked to the stars for answers Have always questioned Whether or not God exists He does now

dclowd99012• 12 months ago

You and the other commenter: "Uhm AKSHUALLY" is alive and well and still in common use. I'm not talking about a dead meme here.

charlie90• 12 months ago

the irony...

neko_ranger• 12 months ago

My contrarian friend is my mother. Doesn't matter what I do, I should have done it the other way. Don't eat so much, eat more; work harder, relax guy!

nektro• 12 months ago

cites tiktok as impetus for article but tiktok feed is entirely based on what u interact with

readthenotes1• 12 months ago

There is a reason why Agreeableness is one of the Big five personality traits.

As mentioned below, it is somewhat compulsive to avoid getting trapped in a chain of logic that starts with some nonsensical over-generization like "the sky is blue" or error like "the current tariffs on india will kill Apple" (and I am compelled to point out that the threatened tariffs for the complicity with Russia's invasion of Ukraine may affect Apple but we don't know yet).

Even if we have learned not to say those objections out loud, they still take up space in our brain during discussions.

VoidWarranty• 12 months ago

I have been on both ends of this phenomenon. My career and hobbies see more improvement today through error correction than technique building or rigor.

"Don't code like that, do this instead!" "Oops, you're rushing the beat of the music, try again and don't rush."

It is a daily challenge to project positivity despite my brain being attuned to smooth rough edges.

I suspect many in the HN crowd are similarly wired. Technology fields reward those who avoid pitfalls.

comrade12342• 12 months ago

This relates to programming. I had a coworker who's first answer was always "no" then "but maybe we can..." we worked for an expensive consulting company charging 2k+ euro per day per person. His attitude was unpopular with the clients until our manager got him to start answering "yes" first, and then come up with how it could be yes instead of no.

Same results in the end but the impression by the clients improved a lot.

moltar2• 12 months ago

How can I get a job like that?

comrade12342• 12 months ago

Enterprise consulting in one of those Bay Area multinationals that everyone knows... not a pleasant job because no one would hire us until the project was failing because we were so expensive and had to come to fix everything (the project, the code, the teams, etc)

cadamsdotcom• 12 months ago

experts recommend using “I” statements to avoid sounding accusatory. For example, “I feel like I’m being corrected and that makes it harder for me to want to share things with you,” or “I know you probably don’t realize you’re doing this, but it seems like you contradict me whenever I open up.”
And if after these kindhearted efforts they’re still not willing to hear you out (or worse, they deflect blame back onto you), it may be worth reevaluating keeping this person in your life.

Good advice for any unhealthy relationship.

boneghost• 12 months ago

Somehow this is simultaneously the most and least self-aware comment section I've seen on HN.

teddyh• 12 months ago

This may or may not be a real thing, but most or all the actual examples the article gives are terrible. Disagreeing over food quality, pointing out obvious PR stunts, and revealing to a friend that they were duped into overpaying for what they thought was “vintage” but actually wasn’t, is not being contrary just for the sake of being contrary.

I have no problem with the general idea of the article; I would not be surprised if there was a general common problem with some people being overly critical or trying to put down anything you say, but the actual examples they give are all terrible.

The 'Contrarian Friend' Is Real, and They're Driving Everyone Crazy

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