But I now understand that it is just that: different. They do not conform to what the norm thinks.
Seen in that light: lonely people are lonely because they are weird. Right. Good to know.
I was also a clinical psychologist for a few years, and could say more on this, but some other time.
Jewish humor, gay humor, autistic humor… they’re all more similar than they are different. You learn, from atypical experience, to see everything one degree off and you have a story that people will listen to and eventually they might even like you. You see things three degrees off and you shut up so no one else knows. You get six degrees off and even you don’t know, but everyone else does.
The need to become funny for literal survival is among the worst of all humiliation rituals that most of us will be forced to do. I want people to be funny because they like being funny - not because they will literally not breed or be killed without it!
For a lot people this lack of a feedback loop started as children. In the worst cases, where there's child hood abuse and neglect, any seeking out of positive feedbacks either goes unheard or punished
The feedback loop reinforces itself in the short-term because being lonely and staying in the "hell you know" is better than dealing with the social failure, which might "prove" you don't belong in society and it will never change
Breaking the negative feedback loop is the hardest thing to do especially being born into it
And it doesn't happen overnight. It's taken myself five years just to be at a level where by you can defensively stand for myself and look at myself in the mirror and be pleased at where I am. The only support being my mother.
Sure.
> Maybe the world should try being nicer to them.
That's hard because of negativity bias. 90% of the world can be nice, but that 10% will stick out like a sore thumb. That strategy of "be nice" works on a micro level, but not macro.