23 Jun 2019

cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (queen)
It's a funny experience to interrogate something about your personality or temperament as the direct result of a viral "relatable" post.

What (very often) happens to me is that a post in the "Relatable Sentiment" genre comes around like, say, "Kudos just aren't as good as comments but I'm still grateful for them because they're better than nothing," and then there will either a ton of emphatic agreement or worse, a string of eloquent and elaborate agreements.

Usually it's as I read through the agreements that I'll eventually start to wonder about what causes my preference and how rare it actually is (because I'm sure that Relatable posts by no means are composed only of near-universal experiences; by the nature of social networks, people who don't relate are far more likely to ignore them than to engage with them to disagree, not least because contradiction is always prone to being read as unwontedly argumentative or even angry and aggressive in text-only interaction).

(There are also lots of "Unpopular Opinion Time"-genre posts that contain what will strike many, or at least plenty, of people as an opinion that isn't at all controversial or unpopular, so the OPs in that case are likely influenced by memorable examples of the opposite opinion that they've experienced as more universal or popular than it is.)

Especially because positivity is so much more socially acceptable to express publicly, and because in many cases someone being a little more positive than they actually feel is a calculated choice that could be regarded as social engineering (philosophies like 'you catch more flies with honey') - and combined with the fact that one thing I can always be sure of is that I'm significantly less positive (critical, pessimistic, etc, but I certainly got chastised not to be so "negative" all the way back to early childhood) than most other people - it's difficult to guess just how genuine the positivity level is, or how dominant a positive opinion really is, and how much is due to exaggeration (and other people with more critical thoughts refraining from engaging).

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cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
Cimorene

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