Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it.
Maybe that’s an ok tradeoff to make, but it’s worth knowing that before getting into it.
This doesn't really seem that important if your only method of knowing this was a post blasted to hundreds (or thousands) of people. Or, to put it another way: if you mattered, you would've gotten a direct message or call from them.
I'd argue that social media has normalized keeping up with people who aren't supposed to be part of your life forever. But, we should take a step back and realize that not everything should or will last forever. If you cross paths again then you can catch up, but having life updates constantly? No thanks.
That ignores the asymmetry of a lot of life events. For example, if a parent died, I'm not going to call everyone in my life to tell them, I would have more important stuff on my mind. I might post it on social media and then the onus is on other people to reach out to me. And if someone doesn't reach out, it will hurt the relationship a little even if I'm not conscience of it because when I think of people who were there for me during a tough time, the friend who never knew my parent died wouldn't come to mind.
and yet people died quite often before social media; what did we do then?
If the realtionship is built upon the foundation of social media, it's actually not that strong, absent social media. We'll be fine.
Imagine deleting your email and telephone in 1999 and saying "if they were really my friend, they would drive/fly to my house and talk to me".
Also some people back then would brag about not having a TV, the same way vegans still do today.
This is the toupée fallacy mixed in with something else I haven’t yet put a name on.
Most vegans don’t brag about being vegan, just like most TVless people don’t brag about not having a TV. Some people are assholes and brag about anything, and some of those do the things you mentioned. It’s orders of magnitude more common to see people complaining about vegans (or, for an HN example, Apple users) than the actual bragging. It’s a meme, not the reality.
That said I could have used airplane pilots for the same example (also based on personal experience).
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Toupee_fallacy
You only know about the people who let you know. You have no idea how many vegans or airplane pilots you encounter regularly who never tell you. A small sample is driving the reputation of the whole.
For people with whom you talk every day, it’s no surprise that you know. It’s bound to come up but I doubt it happened on your first conversation with everyone. If it did, you were hanging out with a weird group. If they knew each other, it’s normal that they’d talk about a shared interest. Just like people who hang out on HN would be likely to discuss tech when meeting in person.
I have no doubt you found your share of asshole vegans, just like there are assholes who make it a point to make everyone know they eat meat.
Though it is important to distinguish a true asshole from someone simply sharing an experience. Saying “no, thanks, I’m vegan” when offered a bite of a meat sandwich is not bragging, it’s context. Unfortunately, too many people take it to be a judgement when it most often is not.
I guess the thing I’m getting from you is I shouldn’t comment on my own observations because of toupee bias, and I shouldn’t comment on other people’s common observations because they are just memes an not real. Is there an acceptable threshold for situational humor short of a scientific study? If so, what is it?
I know, I didn’t say you did. In my first reply I said:
> Some people are assholes and brag about anything
And it’s that narrow definition I’ve been using throughout.
> I guess the thing I’m getting from you is I shouldn’t comment on my own observations
No, of course that’s not it. We can all comment on our own observations, but it’s also important to differentiate from what we each observe as individuals and what we believe the world to be. We shouldn’t let our limited view of the world cloud our understanding of how it is.
> Is there an acceptable threshold for situational humor short of a scientific study?
Were you doing situational humour? I reread your comments and can’t find the joke¹. Judging from the grey colour in the original comment, it doesn’t look like I was the only one to miss it if that was the intention.
Though I will say unambiguously that I don’t think you’re arguing in bad faith. From my perspective, this has been a cordial chat.
¹ I guess the newspaper comment was a joke, but calling that situational seems like a stretch.