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.
> I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message
This.
I'm spending the week in my hometown with my 9-year old daughter to give her the chance of some time with her grandparents. We live hundreds of miles (and several countries) away.
While walking along I mentioned to her that an old college friend of mine also lived in this town along with her husband and their daughter.
For perspective: way back then we shared a house, during that time we both ground through our PhDs in parallel, later she and her husband came to our wedding, we went to their wedding, all that stuff.
I explained to my daughter that we've not been in touch for the best part of 20 years and I was a bit sad about that.
I've got some sort of facial blindness. It's hard to tell exactly how it works because I've got a bunch of unconscious coping mechanisms for identifying people.
One of the times I got it comically wrong was in college where I made a friend for a semester because I thought he was someone I already knew. So I can absolutely believe that attitude and approach makes a huge difference because I've been in at least one scenario where falsely believing I was friends with someone was all it took to be friends.
Wow, this is incredible. You just proved that connection is 90% attitude, 10% history. You became friends because you acted like friends. Sometimes not knowing the "rules" is the superpower.
> 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.
> 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 I think about someone, that's exactly what's on my mind and most interesting. What else would you talk about?
Since we're talking about people you used to be closer with — presumably the same kind of stuff you would have talked to them about "back in the day", when you were already continuously aware of what they've been up to because you were up to it alongside them / constantly making plans with them / hearing what they were doing from shared other friends / etc.
A shared memory, a common friend, perhaps one who's died, their opinion on a movie, a book you're sure they've read, some current event, a funny story they, specifically, might appreciate, etc, etc.
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.
"Assuming rapport" is hugely important for developing and maintaining connections. People often are not sure how they feel about you or where your relationship stands, so they look for hints in how you feel about them. If you are polite and formal, you are telling them the two of you are not close. If you excited to see them and tell you about the hotdog you ate yesterday, you're taking the lead and setting a tone that's close and familiar.
We're basically wired to consider social cues and signals. Maybe 10% of the time we make a logical judgement of "I really do/don't want to be friends with this person because xyz" and the other 90% is just reading/sending vibes.
Wow. This is so simple it blows my mind. It’s obvious, now that I see it. Suddenly I simultaneously realize how much I make it suck to talk to me and how easily I could change that. Thanks for sharing.
Can recommend this. I have terrible memory so I make it a point to reach out and text (or even sometimes call, if it's a special occasion!) whenever people come to mind.
It can mean the world to people sometime. If you've ever had anybody making your day or week by just reaching out, remember that you can be that person too!
It's so easy for people to drift apart. Many people in my parent's generation didn't do a great job keeping in touch with folks and end up lonely or isolated. Avoiding that is as simple as taking a moment to let someone know you were thinking of them.
> 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 you just pretend you are best buddies, people play along and they end up quite comfortable quite quickly.
This can't be serious? My messages to my 'best buddies' are like "lunch?" or "https://some-link-here" or whatever. You're genuinely suggesting writing messages like those to people I met a few years ago who likely barely remember my face? Zero set-up, just "lunch?" or a random link with no context like I'd text my best buddy? Do you do that? I can't imagine this is a serious suggestion -- surely you're massively exaggerating -- so what am I missing?
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.
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.
Commenting to say that I truly admire your attitude. You are the person I wish I was to my friends and hope to be some day again. I used to strive for this kind of approach to relationships but around COVID-19 it seems like I didn't have any gas in the tank left.
COVID emptied a lot of our tanks. Sometimes the fence isn't fear, it's just straight up exhaustion. The tank refills slowly, and you're allowed to be gentle with yourself. Sometimes it just starts with noticing when you think of someone, no pressure to act.
That's my word for when I don't want to spend time judging a thought/concept/emotion but do want to point out it's not taking me where I want to go in life.
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.
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.
The problem that I had with that approach is that the pain of the painful thought caused me to shy away from what was central to it.
Instead I have found that targeted gratitude has enabled me to bear the pain, while I face the pain, understand its cause, and start doing something about it. This isn't fast, it has been a journey. But a very good one.
Absolutely love the idea of "Targeted gratitude". You're right that sometimes the pain makes us shy away from looking directly at root causes. Gratitude as a way to hold the pain while we work through it is a profound idea. Simultaneously asking what the pain is trying to protect us from and thanking the pain for what it's trying to protect us from and giving yourself some grace for the courage required to do this. Thank you so much for sharing this, it's really helpful!
I recently realized that I had lingering old pains and those were triggered by someone going through a similar experience and I literally felt their pain. It took me a lot of digging in my mind, peeling off layers, to understand even what the root pains are.
Sending a message to someone and potentially not getting any (meaningful) back is something I find very hard to accept, though I know not responding is often not on purpose.
For me, it is not so much about an electric fence, more about a feeling of rejection or abandonment that seems really hard to eradicate.
> The fence isn't there. It never was. It's just the memory of some childhood rejection, some social rule someone made up, some fear that caring more makes you matter less.
Chesterton's Fence would say that maybe there is a reason and you should tread carefully. Sometimes a relationship died because it should have. Maybe you feel uncomfortable messaging someone because they have given nonverbals that they don't like your company.
This can sometimes be the case, but barring something tangibly dangerous or concerning, talking is cheap and communication is hard. If someone really is a problem, I'd rather know and consciously decide to not associate with them than I would risk losing a potential great relationship because I was nervous about something I couldn't quantify.
That's true, but absent psychological manipulation or something truly devious and nefarious, a short text message is low risk, and is unlikely to open up a painful can of worms.
And I don't think the point of that statement was that you should be contacting anyone and everyone, just because they entered your mind. It's not saying you should get in touch to say hello to that abusive ex just because you thought about them. But firing off a quick text to someone you found interesting but lost touch with is pretty much always going to be harmless.
Yeah. I went to my high school reunion. It was a nice evening, but ultimately, I remembered why I was an outcast back then. Recently I reached out to a few old friends. I spent an hour talking to one via phone, and at the end I was like... I don't want this. I set up a meeting with another guy and the moment he walked in I knew this was going to be a very long and very boring evening. Yet another dude called me and invited to visit him and god christ I was happy when it was over because I couldn't get him to smile even once.
Dead friendships should stay dead, unless they naturally come back to life because of other circumstances.
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.
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.
My electric fence supposedly covers hundreds of miles and feels like being hit with a baseball bat. It has brought people to tears on multiple occasions. Having gotten hit a few times, I genuinely am surprised that it does not leave a visible scorch mark.
I feel bad for animals that haven’t learned about it, but anything less has proven to be insufficient for certain animals.
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
Beautiful article. I've started reaching out to friends from university or even secondary school that I lost contact with. Sometimes it works out and we eventually meet up, but other times it just fizzles out. I've only ever regretted not reaching out to people. It's scary to do every time but I want to keep at it. Perhaps I'm too sentimental but I genuinely miss some people, and from what I've experienced, sometimes they missed me too.
One of my fondest memories from only a few years ago was when a friend that I was reasonably close with but hadn't seen in a long while messaged me on birthday. Probably didn't mean much to her but it still means a lot to me to this day. I should text her.
That's amazing to hear! And it definitely feels scary every time.
"Perhaps I'm too sentimental" --> I disagree, you're just brave enough to admit you care. That birthday message that still means something years later? That's the whole point. She probably has no idea she gave you that gift.
The fizzled conversations are less important than the ones you reignite. Every reach out is worth it, even the ones that go nowhere, because you're practicing becoming the person who tries.
What if, you text her right now? Like right now. Don't wait until you finish reading comments. Tell her that birthday message still matters. I bet you'll make her whole week.
Fair point! The irony isn't lost on me, writing about breaking free from systems while building another one. Sometimes we need training wheels before we can ride free. The goal is shifting the mindset, and ultimately making the systems unnecessary eventually.
I suspect the app is a labor of love, and the article was from the heart.
It does get dicey, when what we do is mixed with who we are.
I have an app that is very useful to a lot of folks, but I don't really spend much time, talking about it, because it's frequently met with suspicion. I'm trying to figure out how to work around that.
> Think about it, when was the last time you were annoyed that someone reached out to check in? When did you ever think less of someone for being the one to text you? Never.
Apparently the author doesn’t know a certain kind of obnoxious people. ;)
I was never annoyed by people checking in for innocent reasons.
I was, though, when they immediately started asking for money or invited me to join some MLM scheme. Fortunately, that happened just three times or so.
The reaching out to an old friend example is a powerful one. In my case I missed out on a decade of two of my most valued friendships (it was both halves of a couple) because of a fight that didn't really have to be a big deal.
And one night a couple years ago I admitted to myself how much I missed the friendships and decided to send a text. They were really glad to reconnect. I drove 7 hours to see them. The reunion was one of the best moments of my life.
This gave me chills! One text changes everything. That 7 hour drive is what breaking free from old stories looks like. Thank you for sharing this, stories like yours are why I wrote this piece.
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.
I don't initiate conversation most of the time, not because of some kind of perception of weakness but because I don't really have time to hold conversations with every random person that I know. I like knowing they're there but I don't really feel the need to socialize with them or make smalltalk on a regular basis. If there's something I want to talk about I'll reach out but only if I know the conversation won't go on for days.
I don't play the stupid games "Oh so and so hasn't reached out in forever I hate them now" or "weakness vs strength" in communication. Communication is a tool.
I don't dislike having friends. I just wish everyone stopped these stupid games and stopped acting like everything needed to be a calculated action. We're animals who evolved to make a bunch of stupid over-thought games for ourselves that make us miserable. If you don't want to talk to someone or don't have time, don't talk to them. If you want to talk to them, reach out.
I don't understand why I'd need some app to solve that. I don't feel hindered approaching life this way. I either get more of the time doing the things I care about or I get to potentially have a good conversation with someone. Don't let some company or app's profit create more barriers in your head.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
For a happy minute I thought we were talking about the malloc() debugger. Such a useful little tool back in the day. Allocation was a disaster back then.
Yeah I’m a user, have been for over a year. It works for me and has helped build better habits about staying in touch. It does kind of make itself unnecessary eventually, which I supposed is kind of the point!
This resonates with me and frankly it makes me feel worse about some very specific missed opportunities when I was held back by myself. But can you teach an old dog new tricks?
The fact that you're asking means you already know the answer. Old dogs learn new tricks every day, they just call it wisdom instead of learning. Pick one person. Send one text. That's honestly it!
I got a used 1950's era Erector Set from a garage sale as a kid, which had diabolical plans for building the "ERECTOR ELECTRIC THRILLER", that used the un-plugged-in AC electric motor's coil with flashlight batteries and a crank that turned a gear to break the contact and zap pulses of electricity to the handles.
Of course I built it and attached the handle to the inside door knob of my room, then tricked my brother into holding one handle then grabbing the outside doorknob, then I turned the crank, to condition him to stay out of my room!
INSTRUCTIONS FOR BUILDING
THE ERECTOR ELECTRIC THRILLER
This amazing little device will provide lots of
fun for yourself and many thrills for your friends.
This thriiler is actually a device for giving your
friends a slight shock. It is absolutely harmless in
every respect.
OPERATION OF MODEL
If someone holds the handles, one in each hand, and you crank, they will get a thrilling shock. This happens because the three-volt circuit from the flashlight cells passes through the motor coils to magnetize the iron in the motor. As the crank is turned, the gear leaves the contact spring, the current flow through the coils is stopped, and the magnetism in the iron suddenly breaks down, generating a high voltage in the opposite direction to that of the battery. As the battery circuit is momentarily broken, this current cannot flow through the batteries, so it flows through the handles and then through the person holding the handles. The intensity of the shock may be changed by turning the crank fast or slow.
Here are two suggestions for having fun with your Erector Electric Thriller. Have a group of boys and girls form a circle, holding hands. Each person at the end of the circle should hold one handle of the Thriller. When the crank is turned, the current will pass through everyone, but with a lower intensity. Another trick you can have a lot of fun with is to place a tin pan of water on one of the handles or connect it to one of the handles and place a coin in this tin pan of water. Have a person hold one handle and, with the other hand, try to pick the coin out of the water while you turn the crank.
Edit: OMFG I found the plans for my very first robot on page 89, "The Mysterious Walking Robot Model", with tank tread feet, motorized walk, and glowing lightbulb eyes!
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."
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.
int some_old_unmaintained_code(void vector){
// the qyick bwown fox bumped over a lazy do
int i=i;
// DON'T EDIT ABOVE THIS LINE;¥n¥n;¥n;;;;
// DOING SO BREAKS CODE
> 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”.
You contradict yourself by describing exactly what I described, which is a requirement to spend an unbounded (I didn't say infinite) amount of resources trying to understand the reason the fence was built. What you just said is that if you cannot understand why it was built, you can never tear it down. This is precisely my criticism of the concept.
Of course, sometimes it might be easy to discover why the fence was built. But the problem with Chesterton's fence is that, if it were adhered to generally, it applies selective pressure for obscuring the reason fences are built.
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
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...
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.
> I just stopped having a filter. When I think of someone, I just fire off a message
This.
I'm spending the week in my hometown with my 9-year old daughter to give her the chance of some time with her grandparents. We live hundreds of miles (and several countries) away.
While walking along I mentioned to her that an old college friend of mine also lived in this town along with her husband and their daughter.
For perspective: way back then we shared a house, during that time we both ground through our PhDs in parallel, later she and her husband came to our wedding, we went to their wedding, all that stuff.
I explained to my daughter that we've not been in touch for the best part of 20 years and I was a bit sad about that.
<my daughter thought for a bit>
my daughter: "did you have a fight?"
me: "no! of course not! why do you ask?"
my daughter: "maybe you should just write to her"
I would tell you to do the same, and I am freshly 47...
I've got some sort of facial blindness. It's hard to tell exactly how it works because I've got a bunch of unconscious coping mechanisms for identifying people.
One of the times I got it comically wrong was in college where I made a friend for a semester because I thought he was someone I already knew. So I can absolutely believe that attitude and approach makes a huge difference because I've been in at least one scenario where falsely believing I was friends with someone was all it took to be friends.
Wow, this is incredible. You just proved that connection is 90% attitude, 10% history. You became friends because you acted like friends. Sometimes not knowing the "rules" is the superpower.
That's the secret with kids.
The "rules" don't really start, until we get older.
I grew up overseas (from where I am now -for some of you, it's probably home).
Most of my playmates were drastically different from me.
Or they would have been friends anyway and it was just a coincidence.
> 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.
> 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 I think about someone, that's exactly what's on my mind and most interesting. What else would you talk about?
Since we're talking about people you used to be closer with — presumably the same kind of stuff you would have talked to them about "back in the day", when you were already continuously aware of what they've been up to because you were up to it alongside them / constantly making plans with them / hearing what they were doing from shared other friends / etc.
> What else would you talk about?
A shared memory, a common friend, perhaps one who's died, their opinion on a movie, a book you're sure they've read, some current event, a funny story they, specifically, might appreciate, etc, etc.
I appreciate your edit.
I can see this being good for social connections but for business it might be considered rude? Like an old boss, or employee?
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.
"Assuming rapport" is hugely important for developing and maintaining connections. People often are not sure how they feel about you or where your relationship stands, so they look for hints in how you feel about them. If you are polite and formal, you are telling them the two of you are not close. If you excited to see them and tell you about the hotdog you ate yesterday, you're taking the lead and setting a tone that's close and familiar.
We're basically wired to consider social cues and signals. Maybe 10% of the time we make a logical judgement of "I really do/don't want to be friends with this person because xyz" and the other 90% is just reading/sending vibes.
Wow. This is so simple it blows my mind. It’s obvious, now that I see it. Suddenly I simultaneously realize how much I make it suck to talk to me and how easily I could change that. Thanks for sharing.
Can recommend this. I have terrible memory so I make it a point to reach out and text (or even sometimes call, if it's a special occasion!) whenever people come to mind.
It can mean the world to people sometime. If you've ever had anybody making your day or week by just reaching out, remember that you can be that person too!
It's so easy for people to drift apart. Many people in my parent's generation didn't do a great job keeping in touch with folks and end up lonely or isolated. Avoiding that is as simple as taking a moment to let someone know you were thinking of them.
> 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 you just pretend you are best buddies, people play along and they end up quite comfortable quite quickly.
This can't be serious? My messages to my 'best buddies' are like "lunch?" or "https://some-link-here" or whatever. You're genuinely suggesting writing messages like those to people I met a few years ago who likely barely remember my face? Zero set-up, just "lunch?" or a random link with no context like I'd text my best buddy? Do you do that? I can't imagine this is a serious suggestion -- surely you're massively exaggerating -- so what am I missing?
One of the best comments I’ve read on HN in quite a while. Good advice for us all.
Agreed, there’s so much wisdom captured so simply in this comment. I’m still thinking about it.
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.
This is tangible, easily actionable advice for a lonely society.
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.
> Some people will keep tabs on when someone last contacted them, and hold it against them.
I don't worry about this because as soon as they let me know, I just don't reach out any more. Life's too short to waste time on those types.
If they're family, then I just ignore them or mock them for being creepy. Jokingly, of course, because I'm not stuck with them, they're stuck with me!
Commenting to say that I truly admire your attitude. You are the person I wish I was to my friends and hope to be some day again. I used to strive for this kind of approach to relationships but around COVID-19 it seems like I didn't have any gas in the tank left.
COVID emptied a lot of our tanks. Sometimes the fence isn't fear, it's just straight up exhaustion. The tank refills slowly, and you're allowed to be gentle with yourself. Sometimes it just starts with noticing when you think of someone, no pressure to act.
> I never had this fake sense of shame or embarrassment
It's not fake. Just because you don't experience it doesn't mean it isn't real
Replace "fake" with "pointless", then. Or if that sounds harsh, "unproductive".
Let me suggest "unhelpful".
That's my word for when I don't want to spend time judging a thought/concept/emotion but do want to point out it's not taking me where I want to go in life.
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.
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.
The problem that I had with that approach is that the pain of the painful thought caused me to shy away from what was central to it.
Instead I have found that targeted gratitude has enabled me to bear the pain, while I face the pain, understand its cause, and start doing something about it. This isn't fast, it has been a journey. But a very good one.
Absolutely love the idea of "Targeted gratitude". You're right that sometimes the pain makes us shy away from looking directly at root causes. Gratitude as a way to hold the pain while we work through it is a profound idea. Simultaneously asking what the pain is trying to protect us from and thanking the pain for what it's trying to protect us from and giving yourself some grace for the courage required to do this. Thank you so much for sharing this, it's really helpful!
I recently realized that I had lingering old pains and those were triggered by someone going through a similar experience and I literally felt their pain. It took me a lot of digging in my mind, peeling off layers, to understand even what the root pains are.
Sending a message to someone and potentially not getting any (meaningful) back is something I find very hard to accept, though I know not responding is often not on purpose.
For me, it is not so much about an electric fence, more about a feeling of rejection or abandonment that seems really hard to eradicate.
> The fence isn't there. It never was. It's just the memory of some childhood rejection, some social rule someone made up, some fear that caring more makes you matter less.
Chesterton's Fence would say that maybe there is a reason and you should tread carefully. Sometimes a relationship died because it should have. Maybe you feel uncomfortable messaging someone because they have given nonverbals that they don't like your company.
This can sometimes be the case, but barring something tangibly dangerous or concerning, talking is cheap and communication is hard. If someone really is a problem, I'd rather know and consciously decide to not associate with them than I would risk losing a potential great relationship because I was nervous about something I couldn't quantify.
YMMV. It'd be a learning experience either way.
That's true, but absent psychological manipulation or something truly devious and nefarious, a short text message is low risk, and is unlikely to open up a painful can of worms.
And I don't think the point of that statement was that you should be contacting anyone and everyone, just because they entered your mind. It's not saying you should get in touch to say hello to that abusive ex just because you thought about them. But firing off a quick text to someone you found interesting but lost touch with is pretty much always going to be harmless.
Yeah. I went to my high school reunion. It was a nice evening, but ultimately, I remembered why I was an outcast back then. Recently I reached out to a few old friends. I spent an hour talking to one via phone, and at the end I was like... I don't want this. I set up a meeting with another guy and the moment he walked in I knew this was going to be a very long and very boring evening. Yet another dude called me and invited to visit him and god christ I was happy when it was over because I couldn't get him to smile even once.
Dead friendships should stay dead, unless they naturally come back to life because of other circumstances.
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.
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.
My electric fence supposedly covers hundreds of miles and feels like being hit with a baseball bat. It has brought people to tears on multiple occasions. Having gotten hit a few times, I genuinely am surprised that it does not leave a visible scorch mark.
I feel bad for animals that haven’t learned about it, but anything less has proven to be insufficient for certain animals.
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
Reach out to an old friend while holding onto an electric fence!
Beautiful article. I've started reaching out to friends from university or even secondary school that I lost contact with. Sometimes it works out and we eventually meet up, but other times it just fizzles out. I've only ever regretted not reaching out to people. It's scary to do every time but I want to keep at it. Perhaps I'm too sentimental but I genuinely miss some people, and from what I've experienced, sometimes they missed me too.
One of my fondest memories from only a few years ago was when a friend that I was reasonably close with but hadn't seen in a long while messaged me on birthday. Probably didn't mean much to her but it still means a lot to me to this day. I should text her.
That's amazing to hear! And it definitely feels scary every time.
"Perhaps I'm too sentimental" --> I disagree, you're just brave enough to admit you care. That birthday message that still means something years later? That's the whole point. She probably has no idea she gave you that gift.
The fizzled conversations are less important than the ones you reignite. Every reach out is worth it, even the ones that go nowhere, because you're practicing becoming the person who tries.
What if, you text her right now? Like right now. Don't wait until you finish reading comments. Tell her that birthday message still matters. I bet you'll make her whole week.
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”
Fair point! The irony isn't lost on me, writing about breaking free from systems while building another one. Sometimes we need training wheels before we can ride free. The goal is shifting the mindset, and ultimately making the systems unnecessary eventually.
I suspect the app is a labor of love, and the article was from the heart.
It does get dicey, when what we do is mixed with who we are.
I have an app that is very useful to a lot of folks, but I don't really spend much time, talking about it, because it's frequently met with suspicion. I'm trying to figure out how to work around that.
> Think about it, when was the last time you were annoyed that someone reached out to check in? When did you ever think less of someone for being the one to text you? Never.
Apparently the author doesn’t know a certain kind of obnoxious people. ;)
I was never annoyed by people checking in for innocent reasons.
I was, though, when they immediately started asking for money or invited me to join some MLM scheme. Fortunately, that happened just three times or so.
I once had an old High School friend contact me.
At first, I was glad to hear from him.
...then, he started talking...
The reaching out to an old friend example is a powerful one. In my case I missed out on a decade of two of my most valued friendships (it was both halves of a couple) because of a fight that didn't really have to be a big deal.
And one night a couple years ago I admitted to myself how much I missed the friendships and decided to send a text. They were really glad to reconnect. I drove 7 hours to see them. The reunion was one of the best moments of my life.
This gave me chills! One text changes everything. That 7 hour drive is what breaking free from old stories looks like. Thank you for sharing this, stories like yours are why I wrote this piece.
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.
I don't initiate conversation most of the time, not because of some kind of perception of weakness but because I don't really have time to hold conversations with every random person that I know. I like knowing they're there but I don't really feel the need to socialize with them or make smalltalk on a regular basis. If there's something I want to talk about I'll reach out but only if I know the conversation won't go on for days.
I don't play the stupid games "Oh so and so hasn't reached out in forever I hate them now" or "weakness vs strength" in communication. Communication is a tool.
I don't dislike having friends. I just wish everyone stopped these stupid games and stopped acting like everything needed to be a calculated action. We're animals who evolved to make a bunch of stupid over-thought games for ourselves that make us miserable. If you don't want to talk to someone or don't have time, don't talk to them. If you want to talk to them, reach out.
I don't understand why I'd need some app to solve that. I don't feel hindered approaching life this way. I either get more of the time doing the things I care about or I get to potentially have a good conversation with someone. Don't let some company or app's profit create more barriers in your head.
Fantastic article and comments on this thread.
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.
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?"
super!
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.
This is called "learned helplessness"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
No. Learned helplessness is entirely different.
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.
Good point!
For a happy minute I thought we were talking about the malloc() debugger. Such a useful little tool back in the day. Allocation was a disaster back then.
https://github.com/kallisti5/ElectricFence
Has anyone tried this soonly app? If so what are your impressions?
Yeah I’m a user, have been for over a year. It works for me and has helped build better habits about staying in touch. It does kind of make itself unnecessary eventually, which I supposed is kind of the point!
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.
AI article
Invisible fence.
An electric fence that stopped working years ago is still a fence.
This resonates with me and frankly it makes me feel worse about some very specific missed opportunities when I was held back by myself. But can you teach an old dog new tricks?
The fact that you're asking means you already know the answer. Old dogs learn new tricks every day, they just call it wisdom instead of learning. Pick one person. Send one text. That's honestly it!
I got a used 1950's era Erector Set from a garage sale as a kid, which had diabolical plans for building the "ERECTOR ELECTRIC THRILLER", that used the un-plugged-in AC electric motor's coil with flashlight batteries and a crank that turned a gear to break the contact and zap pulses of electricity to the handles.
Of course I built it and attached the handle to the inside door knob of my room, then tricked my brother into holding one handle then grabbing the outside doorknob, then I turned the crank, to condition him to stay out of my room!
I found the instructions on page 51 here:
https://www.constructiontoys.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/E...
INSTRUCTIONS FOR BUILDING THE ERECTOR ELECTRIC THRILLER
This amazing little device will provide lots of fun for yourself and many thrills for your friends. This thriiler is actually a device for giving your friends a slight shock. It is absolutely harmless in every respect.
OPERATION OF MODEL
If someone holds the handles, one in each hand, and you crank, they will get a thrilling shock. This happens because the three-volt circuit from the flashlight cells passes through the motor coils to magnetize the iron in the motor. As the crank is turned, the gear leaves the contact spring, the current flow through the coils is stopped, and the magnetism in the iron suddenly breaks down, generating a high voltage in the opposite direction to that of the battery. As the battery circuit is momentarily broken, this current cannot flow through the batteries, so it flows through the handles and then through the person holding the handles. The intensity of the shock may be changed by turning the crank fast or slow.
Here are two suggestions for having fun with your Erector Electric Thriller. Have a group of boys and girls form a circle, holding hands. Each person at the end of the circle should hold one handle of the Thriller. When the crank is turned, the current will pass through everyone, but with a lower intensity. Another trick you can have a lot of fun with is to place a tin pan of water on one of the handles or connect it to one of the handles and place a coin in this tin pan of water. Have a person hold one handle and, with the other hand, try to pick the coin out of the water while you turn the crank.
Edit: OMFG I found the plans for my very first robot on page 89, "The Mysterious Walking Robot Model", with tank tread feet, motorized walk, and glowing lightbulb eyes!
https://www.constructiontoys.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/E...
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."
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.
> 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”.
You contradict yourself by describing exactly what I described, which is a requirement to spend an unbounded (I didn't say infinite) amount of resources trying to understand the reason the fence was built. What you just said is that if you cannot understand why it was built, you can never tear it down. This is precisely my criticism of the concept.
Of course, sometimes it might be easy to discover why the fence was built. But the problem with Chesterton's fence is that, if it were adhered to generally, it applies selective pressure for obscuring the reason fences are built.
Case in point: the electric fence is broken, but that doesn't mean it needs to be fixed.
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
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...
char* strcpy(char* destination, const char* source);
and its numerous replacements and "improvements".