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Comment by neura | Hacker News Reader

"Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous."

Wow. I have problems with Instragram, but I've never tried to sum it up into a single statement and while this is rather specific and may not include all the problems I _feel_ are there, it really does bring home the main issue, for me. A little snark in there about democratizing, as some people will always put a positive spin on such things, which I feel is totally appropriate here.

Just... The comment could have stopped right there and been as or more impactful (for me). Thanks. :)

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> Wow. I have problems with Instragram

I remember that for a few months before my partner broke up with me, their IG feed was full of reels, posts, 'comedy', 'psychology tips', about people complaining about their partners. And also lots of Insta influencers posts giving relationship tips or encouraging people to break up for diverse reasons.

While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really impossible to obtain in real life. Unless of course your life consisted only of perfectly curated Insta moments.

> While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect [...]

My $0.02: We are taught not to aim for perfection at work[0], that should apply to relationships too.

[0] https://hbr.org/tip/2020/02/dont-let-perfect-be-the-enemy-of...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

>It is also known as the marriage problem, the sultan's dowry problem, the fussy suitor problem, the googol game, and the best choice problem.

The internet and the options it gives, I believes leads people to think they have far more relationship options then they actually have, and the options they think they have are not as good as they believe. A lot of people put a lot of work in selling a perfect image online, but those rarely hold up in reality for any amount of time.

Of course this doesn't mean we should stay in bad relationships either. Our society doesn't really teach us how to have good relationships, especially in a capitalistic fashion (hey, just spend more money and everything will be ok), and quite a lot of us had really poor examples from our parents generation on how to treat other people.

I just want to note one little difference. "The internet and the >perceived< options it gives, ..."

If someone is constantly projecting relationship advice social media topics on you'd I'd venture to say you're in an abusive/manipulative relationship as opposed to a healthy one. Glad you got out.

I've learned more recently that healthy relationships aren't empirically so. Instead, there's "signs" of a healthy relationship; determining the health of your relationship must be a two way conversation. It requires assessment, honesty, and participation by both parties as a qualifier as well as the ability to listen without your ego involved. That's not to say all of those aren't challenging things to do in their own right just to say that the health of a relationship will be explored differently by different sets of people.

All the ideas that the world will be perfect if you would just think thoughts like these...

"manifest what you want from the world" and "think positive thoughts and everything will be ok"

Is actually kind of true when you think about all the algorithms that run social media. If you only ever search for cats and scroll past anything political, the algorithms will learn what you like and feed you more cats.

So, if you're searching up relationship advice, and spending time on those things, that's what you get back from 'the borg'.

You do have control over what social media shows you, it's just that you need to work against your basest desires in order to get there.

Youtube occasionally, but regularly tries to show me culture war content even though I never watch it and usually tell it "don't recommend this".

From the algorithmic feed PoV it's a very high value cluster (average watchtime has to be very high, audience retention is probably quite excellent) so it's unsurprising that it'll try to get you hooked from time to time.

It's like those "drug pushers" we were told about in school but don't seem to actually exist who use weed to constantly try to get you onto more lucrative for them heroin no matter how many times you say "no thanks." Heard that so many times at school, never heard anyone encountering anything like it in the real world.

But here we are with google, facebrick et al saying "come on, just try a little culture war" because its lucrative for them, no matter how many times you say no thank you.

It's really sick but yeah, obviously lucrative and Larry, Seregey & Mark clearly need the money.

Not just the new/tech companies, but gaming/gambling companies, and really, a lot of large businesses in general.

I think this was an issue that was really only an issue for specific geographic areas, but also an easy bandwagon to jump on and look like you're "fighting the good fight". It was an actual problem in one area from my childhood, but never saw it anywhere else.

Otherwise, fully and wholeheartedly agree that it's now a global issue and is indeed real. Welcome to the "global community" we were always told was going to be such an advancement for society.

The gaps of "what do we show now" are filled with popular content, so culture war content is what you notice but there's probably other tamer things that only the algorithms know is popular.

I watched a funny video of the President of my country mis-pronouncing a word in English. The recommended videos afterward were comprised ENTIRELY of the local far-right party's propaganda.

Yeah, it's very much a game of "well, other people fit this profile, but also tend to watch this other thing, we should recommend that, as it will probably hook this person as well. With any luck, they'll be grateful that we introduced them!"

> While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really impossible to obtain in real life.

In the 4 months I dabbled with Instagram, I was shocked by how toxic and outright false the pop psychology memes were. They were stereotypical, frequently backwards, and deliberately misapplied. And all of that is before the cluster-B LARPing.

"Your partner won't give you access to their financial accounts? That's domestic violence, and he probably has Narcissistic Personality Disorder too! What's his is yours, so just use his credit card to book plane tickets without asking and remember that him yelling at you about it is verbal abuse, so get out while you still can before he starts beating you! And remember abuse thrives in secrecy-- so make sure you tell everybody how he was so aggressive that you were in constant fear for your life!"

Sorry you were on the receiving end of [whatever your case is]. Not even the strongest of relationships can withstand reinforcement of sentiments as corrosive as Instagram, where you're a useless piece of shit if you can't/won't support your partner's ambitions of joining the jet set.

You lost your partner to a cult. They're called "followers" for a reason. It starts with separating victims from their loved ones...

I saw a youtube short like this. It was a video demonstrating the "perfect" guy. It started reasonable, with him saying "oh can you check this on my phone? the passcode is XYZ"

Yeah, I would have trusted my current-wife then-girlfriend with my phone passcode pretty early on, no big deal. She didn't feel the need to know it, but casually telling it to her so she could do something with it is probably a thing that happened.

But it started to veer completely weird after that, about abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned into a giant WTF for me.

> But it started to veer completely weird after that, about abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned into a giant WTF for me.

Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's long-game triangulation, which is little more than domestic violence perpetrated by the other partner. But men are supposed to feel ashamed of themselves if they're not willing to just blindly go along with it.

The irony is, they call this sort of victim the "ideal" guy, while simultaneously deriding him as a "simp" to the rest of their cliques. It's loathesome. I pity anybody involved in the dating game these days.

> It's long-game triangulation, which is little more than domestic violence perpetrated by the other partner.

No.

Domestic violence is domestic violence.

“Long game triangulation” is manipulative behaviour. It is not domestic violence.

Domestic violence is having your mother beat your skull with one of those maglite baton torches the police use.

Saying things that aren’t violence are violence is exactly the kind of awful behaviour others in this thread are complaining about.

Domestic violence is more than one thing, and it includes psychological abuse. Not all violence is physical.

No, domestic violence is only one thing, that thing is domestic violence. All violence is physical. Other forms of abuse that are not physical are not violence.

If we have a verbal confrontation one of us has hurt feelings. If it turns violent, there is actual violence. Words have meanings.

You can care about other types of abuse. You should care about other types of abuse.

But claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence.

This is massively wrong at best and evil at worst.

> Words have meanings.

Yes. Here's the meaning of "domestic violence" according to some authoritative sources:

- - -

https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse

> Domestic abuse, also called "domestic violence" [...]. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person.

- - -

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-ag...

> Intimate partner violence refers to behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours

- - -

https://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence

> Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship

- - -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence

> It can assume multiple forms, including physical, verbal, emotional, economic, religious, reproductive, or sexual abuse.

Yes. The misuse of terms you've shown is exactly the concern I and other victims of domestic violence have.

Meanwhile, here the Oxford English Dictionary:

    violence, n.

    1. a. The exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury on, or cause damage to, persons or property; action or conduct characterized by this; treatment or usage tending to cause bodily injury or forcibly interfering with personal freedom.

You are indirectly supporting domestic violence by manipulating the definition of violence to include non-violent offences.

(separately: Wikipedia is not a source at all, let alone an authoritative one)

Again, since you didn't address this: claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, but the definition you yourself quoted plainly states:

> treatment or usage tending to cause bodily injury or forcibly interfering with personal freedom.

Domestic violence comprises more than just battery by someone who happens to be a family member.

> forcibly interfering with personal freedom.

Forcibly. If there's no force there's no violence.

Psychologically abusing someone does not involve the use of force.

> Domestic violence comprises more than just battery by someone who happens to be a family member.

Agreed, thankfully nobody defined in the conversation defined domestic violence this way.

Again: domestic violence most include violence, i.e. the use of force.

Why are people trying to hard to redefine words?

> Forcibly. If there's no force there's no violence.

I get where you're coming from but enough men figured out that when wife-beating became illegal, they could continue to torment their wives and exes through passive-aggressive, explicitly nonviolent acts enough that the laws were expanded and the definition changed.

The redefinition happened at least 20 years ago and has since propagated across multiple disciplines (law enforcement and psychology inclusive). Even publishing revenge porn falls under domestic violence statutes now.

Yes, it no longer meets the strictly-literal definition of violence. It is what it is. Rather than arguing it here, consider adapting to the times or taking your grievance to the Department of Justice (https://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence):

> Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.

Repeating for a third time so you can hopefully read it and actually respond when you hit ‘reply’:

Claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence

I’m not responsible for all of humanity: you should want a clear definition and separation of violent and non violent abuse so why don’t you handle this yourself rather than asking me?

“get with the times” is ridiculous. vague legislation is bad whether it’s new or old. Likewise a lot of progress has obviously been bad much like other progress has been good.

I’m actually not really interested in your replies any more, since you’re not actually responding.

Victims of non physical domestic violence also need money, police time, and medical attention (yes, they do!). So I'd argue that widening the definition of domestic violence actually increases the visibility of the cause. More people are concerned, directly or indirectly.

> “get with the times” is ridiculous

It's not. Language changes all the time for better or worse, and trying to change it back is just not possible. You're wasting your time if you're trying to make your definition the correct one instead of the one that's widely accepted, even if your definition made more sense (I don't have an opinion on that).

Language is a reflection of society, and whether you want it or not, society has decided that physical domestic violence and non-physical domestic violence are the same thing, which we call domestic violence. You can fight words or fight for a cause, your choice.

This is a far stretch in trying to hang on to the last thread of the definition of violence.

Why can't you just use the term "domestic abuse" and stop supporting the misuse of well defined words?

Do you think that if you and others use the term "domestic violence" to include non-physical abuse that it just magically changes the existing definition? Why would you even want to support that when there's clearly another term that's both in general use and clearly fits what you're attempting to refer to, by definition?

You saw a weird video on youtube. Parent saw some weird stuff on instagram.

What is the point here?

That algorithmic feeds inject weird stuff into people’s brains

Even still, the fixation on the passcode thing is insecurity.

Literally

I would like to see that; what should I search youtube for?

I have no clue. I mostly get warhammer, video game, and programming videos. It showed up in my shorts one day so I took a look. I have long since purged it from my history because I want to minimize the chances of getting something like that again.

It's funny, I am married with a child, do my best and my wife too, but sometimes she gets dragged into meme-expectation that take her a long time to recover from. I cant see nor understand much of the source of these: Im an immigrant and I cant read her native language, and I dont know if it s a girl thing or if it's actually me not fitting reasonable expectations, but damn I wished everyone could look at their own relationship without trying to copy the appearance of others.

What seems to help is when an idolized version of relationship is suddenly broken into pieces and you discover your model was actually completely miserable and whatever you expected became trivial relative to that.

I had an ex that did this based on fantasy novels. "Why can't you be more of a man's man?" "What, from your romance novels?" "Yes!" "Ummm..."

Ironically, the thought never even occurred to me to respond with "Why can't you be more of a <insert stereotypical sought after characterization here>?"

Oh well, we haven't been together for a long time. :)

Point being, it's not just instagram or even social media at large. They've just made the situation worse. This is deep rooted in most of society and isn't going to end any time soon. Just need to find people that are strong enough to not fall victim to this (even if they don't bring it up, like our partners did).

The joy of exploitative recommendation algorithms. I had a discussion with my daughter about TikTok's Glamour Filter the other day and now my whole feed is full of glamour filter posts. This is so unhealthy (mentally).

At least on TikTok filters are explicitly marked as such.

Observe how this amounts to crime. The platform has motive: -newly single users attract more views -newly single users are worth more to advertisers because they’re likely to spend on appearance, travel, new hobbies, and big ticket items formerly shared with a partner. The platform also has opportunity because it has data on exactly what content has highest probability of nudging a particular user to break up. (Perhaps the “you are being abused by a narcissist” stuff others have mentioned works nicely.) (See also Shoshanna Zuboff)

Crime as in algo crime; there are not humans pulling a lever labeled “trash this relationship.”

> A little snark in there about democratizing, as some people will always put a positive spin on such things

Let's try this:

"Instagram makes pandemic the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous."

Is that any more accurate though? I agree that the headline is snark, but... content creators are a large part of the problem, though it's such a complex problem that I'm not sure how to even guess at which is more liable unless you simply take the "whoever is the last in the production line has the ability to prevent this kind of content" view, in which case it's pretty obviously ... well, I was going to say obvious the content provider, but no... it's you. The problem is likely you, and your inability to avoid this kind of content.</more-snark>

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