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Reasons to be cheerful, part 1.
Jun. 20th, 2006 09:33 amOne thing about Livejournal which never ceases to surprise me is the number of really bad things which seem to happen to the people who maintain blogs. After all, you’d suppose that just by the law of averages bad things would be pretty evenly spread amongst the population and, whilst individual instances of unpleasantness might occur to any given person, in the main things will tend to even out.
You wouldn’t think this, some days, clicking through LJ. You’d think that some people had made a personal enemy of the fates because it’s rare that a day seems to go past that they haven’t made a post about what terrible personal Hell has befallen them now. Life is teh SuxX0r, you see, and they’re going to tell the world all about it. So it is that I got to wondering why it is that fate seems to persecute so many people who keep Livejournals. A disproportionate number of them, if statistics are to be believed.
There’s another possibility, which is that fate does not disproportionately favour tormenting the LJ community but rather that LJ has a disproportionate number of people writing within it who perceive fate as being against them and want to talk about it – to anyone who might be reading. Not over a drink to their close friends or over the phone to people who might be able to offer advice at a personal level, but to the passing random button throng, who instead offer *hugs*.
There’s a number of reasons I’m not convinced that this is a particularly healthy thing to do. Firstly is the reason above stated: that a supportive network of friends is a valuable thing in times or trouble or stress, but LJ doesn’t truly offer that. It offers a large audience of people offering *hugs*, instantly. As anyone who knows much about psychological reinforcement of behaviour would hopefully agree, instant reaction to behaviours, unless negative, is a very powerful reinforcement for that behaviour. That is, receiving a deluge of *hugs* to a post about the suckitude of life is a powerful reinforcement to making such posts and that leads me onto the second of my reasons for thinking that making such posts on a regular basis is a bad thing.
This thought is based upon Erving Goffman’s theory of Presentation of Self. What that theory states is that we will become more like the person we present ourselves to be on a regular basis and so by consistently presenting ourselves as unhappy people to whom bad things happen, we are more likely to become unhappy people, or certainly not help in any sort of recovery. Making LJ posts about how unhappy we are compounds that unhappiness and if we weren’t unhappy in the first place well, uh-oh. It might feel like release, but I’m unconvinced of the actual value especially when compared with other therapeutic behaviours such as utilising one’s network of friends at a personal level.
This is why I maintain the LJ persona I do. With any luck, the more I present myself as a wealthy philanderer the better my odds of becoming one.
But wait, there’s more. You see, not only does making regular posts about how unhappy you are and how much your life sucks affect you negatively, but it also seems that it won’t help those around you much either. It’s long been known that misery loves company and that hanging around with miserable people can drag you down until you’re standing on Battersea Bridge at 2am looking longingly at the cool, cool water and it’s promise of eternal peace yourself, but finally eggheaded boffins have come up with a theory of why that actually is and how the process works.
Recent neurological research at the University of Parma has demonstrated the existence of what are called ‘Mirror Neurons’. These are adapted brain cells with, when others do things around us, fire in exactly the same patterns as if we were doing them ourselves. As an aid to learning, they’re obviously of massive value – when you watch a video of Jackie Chan performing quite remarkable feats of physical prowess, that act of watching is firing neurons in your brain which are acting like you’re actually doing it yourself and, in so doing, actually making you better at Kung-fu - at some infinitesimal level.
Mirror Neurons don’t just fire when we’re mentally rehearsing actions performed by another. They also fire when we’re mentally rehearsing emotions experience by another, too. Research by Gallese and Rizzolatto at Parma University demonstrates that when we even read descriptions of actions or emotional states then we’re mentally rehearsing them and being influenced by them. Broca’s area – that part of the brain responsible for using language – is particularly rich in Mirror Neurons and the language used by others, how they use it and the meanings conveyed by it. When your friends list or the random button is full of people spinning tales of woe then your own emotional state will suffer. Negative attitudes on the part of others, neurologically speaking, can very quickly become a part of our own psychological makeup.
In isolation, one person telling you their problems is unlikely to have much of an effect and will probably help them in unburdening a lot. However, the problem with the internet, and it’s instant reactions to negativity, is that LJ is often full of negative attitudes and ‘woe is me’ tales – and that’s not a healthy environment for anybody.
What doesn’t help is that often happy and positive people are seen as being in some way less intelligent than the miserable, especially in the 'online community' - as if happy people just aren't clever enough to understand and if only they did they'd be miserable. I suppose that this is because the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela are too busy to make daily posts and so there aren't many good examples to offset this attitude.
With all of this in mind, I was going to ask you lot to do something. Not really a challenge, because writing about stuff that makes you happy and feel good should never be a challenge, but just something that you should do. I'm especially look at those of you out there who I know are there who read but never make posts on your own blogs. Yes, you. I'm looking at you now. You never post. Go and do it.
Write something today. make it positive. Make it about things that make you happy and about things that you think should make others veiw the world more positively.
Oh, and if you were thinking of making a 'life suxX0rs' post today, don't. Write something cheery instead. Not only will it help you, it'll help other people, too.
Go on.
You wouldn’t think this, some days, clicking through LJ. You’d think that some people had made a personal enemy of the fates because it’s rare that a day seems to go past that they haven’t made a post about what terrible personal Hell has befallen them now. Life is teh SuxX0r, you see, and they’re going to tell the world all about it. So it is that I got to wondering why it is that fate seems to persecute so many people who keep Livejournals. A disproportionate number of them, if statistics are to be believed.
There’s another possibility, which is that fate does not disproportionately favour tormenting the LJ community but rather that LJ has a disproportionate number of people writing within it who perceive fate as being against them and want to talk about it – to anyone who might be reading. Not over a drink to their close friends or over the phone to people who might be able to offer advice at a personal level, but to the passing random button throng, who instead offer *hugs*.
There’s a number of reasons I’m not convinced that this is a particularly healthy thing to do. Firstly is the reason above stated: that a supportive network of friends is a valuable thing in times or trouble or stress, but LJ doesn’t truly offer that. It offers a large audience of people offering *hugs*, instantly. As anyone who knows much about psychological reinforcement of behaviour would hopefully agree, instant reaction to behaviours, unless negative, is a very powerful reinforcement for that behaviour. That is, receiving a deluge of *hugs* to a post about the suckitude of life is a powerful reinforcement to making such posts and that leads me onto the second of my reasons for thinking that making such posts on a regular basis is a bad thing.
This thought is based upon Erving Goffman’s theory of Presentation of Self. What that theory states is that we will become more like the person we present ourselves to be on a regular basis and so by consistently presenting ourselves as unhappy people to whom bad things happen, we are more likely to become unhappy people, or certainly not help in any sort of recovery. Making LJ posts about how unhappy we are compounds that unhappiness and if we weren’t unhappy in the first place well, uh-oh. It might feel like release, but I’m unconvinced of the actual value especially when compared with other therapeutic behaviours such as utilising one’s network of friends at a personal level.
This is why I maintain the LJ persona I do. With any luck, the more I present myself as a wealthy philanderer the better my odds of becoming one.
But wait, there’s more. You see, not only does making regular posts about how unhappy you are and how much your life sucks affect you negatively, but it also seems that it won’t help those around you much either. It’s long been known that misery loves company and that hanging around with miserable people can drag you down until you’re standing on Battersea Bridge at 2am looking longingly at the cool, cool water and it’s promise of eternal peace yourself, but finally eggheaded boffins have come up with a theory of why that actually is and how the process works.
Recent neurological research at the University of Parma has demonstrated the existence of what are called ‘Mirror Neurons’. These are adapted brain cells with, when others do things around us, fire in exactly the same patterns as if we were doing them ourselves. As an aid to learning, they’re obviously of massive value – when you watch a video of Jackie Chan performing quite remarkable feats of physical prowess, that act of watching is firing neurons in your brain which are acting like you’re actually doing it yourself and, in so doing, actually making you better at Kung-fu - at some infinitesimal level.
Mirror Neurons don’t just fire when we’re mentally rehearsing actions performed by another. They also fire when we’re mentally rehearsing emotions experience by another, too. Research by Gallese and Rizzolatto at Parma University demonstrates that when we even read descriptions of actions or emotional states then we’re mentally rehearsing them and being influenced by them. Broca’s area – that part of the brain responsible for using language – is particularly rich in Mirror Neurons and the language used by others, how they use it and the meanings conveyed by it. When your friends list or the random button is full of people spinning tales of woe then your own emotional state will suffer. Negative attitudes on the part of others, neurologically speaking, can very quickly become a part of our own psychological makeup.
In isolation, one person telling you their problems is unlikely to have much of an effect and will probably help them in unburdening a lot. However, the problem with the internet, and it’s instant reactions to negativity, is that LJ is often full of negative attitudes and ‘woe is me’ tales – and that’s not a healthy environment for anybody.
What doesn’t help is that often happy and positive people are seen as being in some way less intelligent than the miserable, especially in the 'online community' - as if happy people just aren't clever enough to understand and if only they did they'd be miserable. I suppose that this is because the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela are too busy to make daily posts and so there aren't many good examples to offset this attitude.
With all of this in mind, I was going to ask you lot to do something. Not really a challenge, because writing about stuff that makes you happy and feel good should never be a challenge, but just something that you should do. I'm especially look at those of you out there who I know are there who read but never make posts on your own blogs. Yes, you. I'm looking at you now. You never post. Go and do it.
Write something today. make it positive. Make it about things that make you happy and about things that you think should make others veiw the world more positively.
Oh, and if you were thinking of making a 'life suxX0rs' post today, don't. Write something cheery instead. Not only will it help you, it'll help other people, too.
Go on.
