This is right. People ask my how on earth I know what every one of my high school classmates is up to, when we were the last class of the millennium. Along with a number of old teachers and other randoms from years ago.
I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I write to everyone as if we are best buddies who just had lunch last week. People I've known since the age of 4, to people I've known for four days.
If I see someone I know at a wedding, I just go and talk to them about whatever we have in common. Normally someone we know.
I really think it's the guarded, tentative, "you don't have to talk to me" that turns people off. Of course people are free to not talk to me, but I don't lead with that. If you lead with that, people feel awkward, like "is he just being polite?". If you just pretend you are best buddies, people play along and they end up quite comfortable quite quickly.
jonahx · 31m ago
> The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me".
Yes. I do this too and wish more people would.
The qualifications, the "what have you been up to?"s -- such mind-numbingly boring conventions. Who wants to go through a "catchup" interview before talking about what's interesting. If that's the price, it's not worth it.
stroz · 41m ago
Thank you so much for sharing this! What you’re doing is honestly amazing. You skip the negotiation about whether we’re allowed to be human with each other. You just assume connection is the default.
The truth is that people mirror the energy you bring. Show up tentative, they’ll be tentative. Show up like old friends, and suddenly you are.
Just refusing to install the system default software that makes us all strangers. And teaching us that the only thing between us and connection is believing we need permission to care.
lawlessone · 3m ago
I have a friend like this, the amount of times i thought "shit he's gonna get us killed" only to see him become a persons best friend is not small number of times.
dyauspitr · 33m ago
This is tangible, easily actionable advice for a lonely society.
blindriver · 11m ago
I never had this fake sense of shame or embarrassment when it came to contacting people. Some people will keep tabs on when someone last contacted them, and hold it against them. I don't.
Just last month I had lunch with middle school friends I hadn't seen in 40 years. I literally hadn't seen once since Grade 8. I friended them on Facebook years previous but didn't really have anything to chat about, but when I was in the same town as them, I pinged them and said let's go to lunch. It was absolutely amazing, once of those moments that I will remember forever. Not because anything breathtaking happened, but it was just really really nice to connect with people I hadn't seen since the beginning of my life, and meeting them all over again as adults.
I still routinely have lunch with coworkers from 25 years ago. I have friends that I chat with on Whatsapp daily going back almost 50 years. I have no qualms in being the first to reach out, ever.
I have a friend from college that I have been in and out of contact for 30 years, who ghosted me for no reason this past year even after I contacted her a few times. Guess what? I won't hold it against her and I will give her space. I will ping her for her birthday and see if she responds and if not, then I will just leave her alone until she contacts me. But I don't feel shame or anger or embarrassment because I got rejected, that's on her, not me.
doright · 8m ago
I can unfortunately think of some fairly recent counterexamples to "why not reach out." They didn't justify keeping imaginary fences up, rather they justified cutting those people out of my life entirely, because they just don't fit into the overly tidy script of "might as well try."
Just as it is important to not deny yourself positive social experiences with people you trust, it is just as important not to hold out too much hope for change and be generous when it is not merited, as the consequences can lead straight back to maladaptive coping patterns.
btilly · 2h ago
For most of us, certainly including me, a lot of those electric fences are alive and well.
They are powered by thoughts associated with pain. Anything that triggers those thoughts, triggers that pain. We are not even aware of how our thinking has been constrained. We just avoid the possibility of triggering the thought.
A person constrained by such a fence is very obvious from the outside. We see the irrational rationalizations that they can't. Because our thinking isn't constrained by the pain that shapes their thinking. But it takes work to accept the pain of your own painful ideas.
stroz · 1h ago
You're right, we see everyone else's fences perfectly while blind to our own.
Here's what helped me most, when I hit a painful thought, I try to think about it as, "What are you protecting me from?"
Usually it's something that happened once, often years ago. Next time you feel that electric fence, just notice it. Then take one tiny step towards it (Joe Hudson talks about this as emotional fluency). The fence will beep (your emotions). You'll feel the old pain. But nothing actually happens. And slowly, slowly, you realize you're actually free.
PaulHoule · 1h ago
For horses, the electric fence is a psychological barrier. You understand the shock doesn't do real tissue damage, but they don't. [1] If they value freedom and learn that you can crash through the fence and feel just a moment of pain they will crash through the fence.
[1] I did find out though, that the fence really hurt a lot more when I was standing in a puddle with cracked rubber boots. I imagine it hurts more if you're heavy, well grounded, and standing on four big hooves with metal shoes.
mauvehaus · 32m ago
For bears, the advice we got from Fish and Wildlife was to bait the fence with aluminum foil smeared with bacon grease. That gets the bear to touch it with their sensitive nose. If they brush up against it with their thick fur, they won't notice. A good zap on the nose will teach them.
I can confirm your note about footwear mattering. I'm way too cheap (read: stupid) to buy an electric fence tester, so I just touch the fence. In dry shoes, it's noticeable. The one time I did it in wet sneakers, it definitely got my attention. For what it's worth, we have about the smallest fencer Tractor Supply sells (it just has to go around the chicken coop). I betcha a 50 mile fencer would just about make your hair stand up on end.
potato3732842 · 1h ago
It does. That's a standard "party trick". You make people see how little the fence hurts and then you make everyone hold hands and the last person touches the fence and it hurts the people closer to the fence way worse
davvilla · 20m ago
Loved the write up but it all canceled out when I realized it’s a blog for an app that’s “your social operating system”
A dog learning not to go past the porch because it will get shocked is "conditioning".
Learned helplessness is when a subject won't bother saving themselves from pain because they don't think it will make a difference. For example, if a dog is constantly being electrically shocked, but won't leave the area that is electrified because they think they will get electrified no matter where they go. This is what happens in the case of abuse victims that stay with their abuser. They stick with the abuser because they honestly don't believe their situation will get better with someone else, and at least they know this particular abuser.
barbazoo · 40m ago
Great writeup, lots of wisdom in there. Then I looked for other insightful articles and lo and behold
> Real connection beyond social media.
> Your social operating system. Get perfectly timed reminders to connect with the most important people in your life—never lose touch again.
Obviously it's another app, just another attention rent-seeker that wants to inject itself into human connections so they can make more and more and more money.
bambax · 33m ago
Some electric fences are still working but don't hurt much. Among them, laws that are weakly enforced.
Just because there is a fence doesn't mean we can't test it a little.
tshaddox · 40m ago
Funny enough, an alleged Chesterton's fence is very likely to be one of these derelict electric fences. People who advocate the "Chesterton's fence" argument (which is similar to and equally misguided as the precautionary principle) are essentially saying "whoever built this fence either didn't understand why they built the fence, or didn't manage to explain their reasoning to other people affected by the fence, and therefore it's our responsibility to either respect the fence forever or invest an unbounded amount of resources trying to discover the reason the fence was built."
barbazoo · 37m ago
Chesterton’s fence isn’t “respect it forever” or “spend infinite resources”. It’s “don’t tear it down until you understand why it’s there”. The whole point is to avoid breaking something whose purpose you haven’t yet understood, because the original builders might have had a good reason that isn’t obvious to you. Once you’ve understood it, you’re free to remove it if that reason no longer applies.
programjames · 31m ago
There is one issue where fences can arise naturally (via evolution), and no one knows why it's there. If your society doesn't even understand evolution yet, are you supposed to just stagnate forever? It's an exploration vs. exploitation tradeoff, and Chesterton's fence is asking for pure exploitation. Probably because societies are pretty fragile, so unless you're really sure something isn't loadbearing, it isn't safe to modify it at scale. But, then again, there's no reason to not experiment on a smaller scale...
nerdponx · 36m ago
Case in point: the electric fence is broken, but that doesn't mean it needs to be fixed.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 14m ago
Like border enforcement
People are here "illegally". A handful are criminals. But a lot of the farm workers putting food on the tables of citizens, are "illegal."
If they're already here and not causing trouble they should be legal. The legalization process shouldn't take as many years and as much money as it does
stroz · 2h ago
Author here: Walking past a house recently, I watched a dog refuse to leave his porch as the owner explained that the electric fence has been broken for years.
It hit me, we're all trapped by fences that stopped working long ago. The mental model that being the first one to reach out to friends keeps us isolated. There are systematic flaws in our modern social protocols that cause smart people to miss social cues, or be afraid of initiating them. After analyzing hundreds of these invisible barriers, I've found that the people who break them aren't socially gifted, they've just realized how to move past the social conditioning that keeps us stuck on the porch. The electric fence has been broken for years.
Noumenon72 · 1h ago
If you're going to post a recap of your article in the comments, which I don't recommend, preface it with "Author here" so I don't have to go through the experience of realizing "This comment has no new information to convey and only recaps the article I just read. Maybe it's by the author?"
I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message. The message doesn't have any warnings on it like "oh I know it's been a while" or "you might not remember me". I write to everyone as if we are best buddies who just had lunch last week. People I've known since the age of 4, to people I've known for four days.
If I see someone I know at a wedding, I just go and talk to them about whatever we have in common. Normally someone we know.
I really think it's the guarded, tentative, "you don't have to talk to me" that turns people off. Of course people are free to not talk to me, but I don't lead with that. If you lead with that, people feel awkward, like "is he just being polite?". If you just pretend you are best buddies, people play along and they end up quite comfortable quite quickly.
Yes. I do this too and wish more people would.
The qualifications, the "what have you been up to?"s -- such mind-numbingly boring conventions. Who wants to go through a "catchup" interview before talking about what's interesting. If that's the price, it's not worth it.
The truth is that people mirror the energy you bring. Show up tentative, they’ll be tentative. Show up like old friends, and suddenly you are.
Just refusing to install the system default software that makes us all strangers. And teaching us that the only thing between us and connection is believing we need permission to care.
Just last month I had lunch with middle school friends I hadn't seen in 40 years. I literally hadn't seen once since Grade 8. I friended them on Facebook years previous but didn't really have anything to chat about, but when I was in the same town as them, I pinged them and said let's go to lunch. It was absolutely amazing, once of those moments that I will remember forever. Not because anything breathtaking happened, but it was just really really nice to connect with people I hadn't seen since the beginning of my life, and meeting them all over again as adults.
I still routinely have lunch with coworkers from 25 years ago. I have friends that I chat with on Whatsapp daily going back almost 50 years. I have no qualms in being the first to reach out, ever.
I have a friend from college that I have been in and out of contact for 30 years, who ghosted me for no reason this past year even after I contacted her a few times. Guess what? I won't hold it against her and I will give her space. I will ping her for her birthday and see if she responds and if not, then I will just leave her alone until she contacts me. But I don't feel shame or anger or embarrassment because I got rejected, that's on her, not me.
Just as it is important to not deny yourself positive social experiences with people you trust, it is just as important not to hold out too much hope for change and be generous when it is not merited, as the consequences can lead straight back to maladaptive coping patterns.
They are powered by thoughts associated with pain. Anything that triggers those thoughts, triggers that pain. We are not even aware of how our thinking has been constrained. We just avoid the possibility of triggering the thought.
A person constrained by such a fence is very obvious from the outside. We see the irrational rationalizations that they can't. Because our thinking isn't constrained by the pain that shapes their thinking. But it takes work to accept the pain of your own painful ideas.
Here's what helped me most, when I hit a painful thought, I try to think about it as, "What are you protecting me from?"
Usually it's something that happened once, often years ago. Next time you feel that electric fence, just notice it. Then take one tiny step towards it (Joe Hudson talks about this as emotional fluency). The fence will beep (your emotions). You'll feel the old pain. But nothing actually happens. And slowly, slowly, you realize you're actually free.
[1] I did find out though, that the fence really hurt a lot more when I was standing in a puddle with cracked rubber boots. I imagine it hurts more if you're heavy, well grounded, and standing on four big hooves with metal shoes.
I can confirm your note about footwear mattering. I'm way too cheap (read: stupid) to buy an electric fence tester, so I just touch the fence. In dry shoes, it's noticeable. The one time I did it in wet sneakers, it definitely got my attention. For what it's worth, we have about the smallest fencer Tractor Supply sells (it just has to go around the chicken coop). I betcha a 50 mile fencer would just about make your hair stand up on end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
A dog learning not to go past the porch because it will get shocked is "conditioning".
Learned helplessness is when a subject won't bother saving themselves from pain because they don't think it will make a difference. For example, if a dog is constantly being electrically shocked, but won't leave the area that is electrified because they think they will get electrified no matter where they go. This is what happens in the case of abuse victims that stay with their abuser. They stick with the abuser because they honestly don't believe their situation will get better with someone else, and at least they know this particular abuser.
> Real connection beyond social media.
> Your social operating system. Get perfectly timed reminders to connect with the most important people in your life—never lose touch again.
Obviously it's another app, just another attention rent-seeker that wants to inject itself into human connections so they can make more and more and more money.
Just because there is a fence doesn't mean we can't test it a little.
People are here "illegally". A handful are criminals. But a lot of the farm workers putting food on the tables of citizens, are "illegal."
If they're already here and not causing trouble they should be legal. The legalization process shouldn't take as many years and as much money as it does