The electric fence stopped working years ago | Hacker News Reader

The electric fence stopped working years ago

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363 pointsstroz146 comments

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.

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.

This is tangible, easily actionable advice for a lonely society.

> 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.

I can see this being good for social connections but for business it might be considered rude? Like an old boss, or employee?

Yes it’s not always appropriate. It’s for friends.

> 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.

I'm thinking how it would work. What should I talk about - programming frameworks and techniques I don't care about anymore? Rock bands I don't listen to? Shared friends I don't know now? Current school/uni things? Magic the gathering cards? Anime? Rock climbing? I don't know about anything I have in common with my old friends. But maybe, just maybe, it we catch up we can talk about kids or best back pain medicine. Or rock climbing, because that's one of the few things I still do.

It's so easy to overthink the content when it's about the contact. What if it's just "saw this and thought of you"? Could be anything. The connection isn't in having the perfect topic, it's in remembering the connection exists.

I don’t know about y'all but most of the fun of catching up with someone you haven’t seen in a while is to catch up on the stuff that’s new, not the same old things we used to talk about in high school. We’re (hopefully) all progressing in life, wouldn’t you want to hear about that?

> 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.

But like, "what have you been up to" is useful because it gives them a chance to mention something interesting that you can then have a conversation about.

I'd say it's a "know your audience" question. It can work well for more extroverted people that enjoy an opportunity to talk about themselves.

But it's also low-effort and asks the other person to do all the conversational work. For me, personally, if I saw an old friend's number pop up on my phone and magically knew "what have you been up to?" was going to be the first question, I wouldn't answer. Otoh, if I knew the opener was going to be "You're gonna love this story..." I'd be excited to pick up.

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.

My cousin is like this. He can make buddies with the car in the next lane while driving over a simple bumper sticker. I’m sitting cringing while they are exchanging numbers going 40.

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.

Or they would have been friends anyway and it was just a coincidence.

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.

I've seen videos where adults try to act like children and even there where they're trying really hard they'll get it hilariously wrong.

A great example is that little children have no protocol, they won't walk up to someone and say things like hi, how are you, how's the weather, etc.

Instead they'll just walk up and either stay mute, or just talk directly about what's currently happening, without any introduction or pre-amble.

Now I want a college study about middle aged adults going up to people and saying “we’re playing pirates now!”

My coping mechanism for interacting with people who approach me is: 1. Act friendly and open when they start talking to me; 2. centre the questions on them, hoping that they reveal information that might clue me in on who they are. It's only in recent years that I've learned step 3: if I haven't recognised them in the first 10-20 seconds, mention that I'm face blind (usually as an apology) and ask them who they are. Most times that is enough to stop the encounter turning sour.

My coping mechanism for approaching a person I think I might know (usually in spaces where I wouldn't expect to encounter them) is: don't. At least not immediately. Rather, watch and observe (if possible) to see if the voice/gestures/body positions/etc firm up enough to bring the certainty levels up and the risk levels down.

I think I'd make a good spy, if only I didn't suffer from this face blindness nonsense.

I'm deaf-blind (as in, totally blind with cochlear implants) and a lot of what you're saying reminds me of myself. Any time I encounter someone new, I usually tell them right off the bat that I have major hearing loss, because it's like 95% certain that I'm going to mishear something they say and respond with something that doesn't make sense, and I figure that's the best way to try and avoid confusion. It's much worse if there's even a bit of background noise or echo, and more often than not I can't even tell someone is talking to me unless they go out of their way to get my attention, or we're the only people present. Totally relate to the 'asking questions to figure out who people are' thing, especially now; with the implants it's even harder to distinguish voices than it was with natural hearing. This has caused me to develop crazy social anxiety over the years, and I'm reading this thread with interest. Apologies if you didn't care to read all that, but I find odd social dynamics like ours super fascinating, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of info online about coping, or maybe I just haven't looked hard enough.

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.

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.

> 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: "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...

Kids see through our nonsense so clearly. Your daughter just gave you the permission you've been waiting 20 years for.

"Did you have a fight?" "No!" "Then write to her."

That simple. The fence only exists in your head. Twenty years of silence ended by one message. What are you waiting for?

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.

"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.

> 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 don't get why are you downvoted, because I feel similarly and I don't get it too. My only explanation is maybe other people communicate with friends wastly different than we do?

I suspect not literally this, but the point is one doesn't need to treat reaching out to an old friend with overtures and formalities. Probably you need a bit more context if you haven't seen them in years, but you don't have to make a big deal out of it (e.g. the 'oh I know it's been a while...').

Did you like you classmates. What if you didnt. One of the great freedoms is you can pick your friends.

Then you do not go to talk to them. You do not have to. But you can, if you want.

I'd be deeply annoyed if someone I haven't seen or talked to in years did that to me.

Like dude... if I was important to me you'd have talked to me long ago. I am obviously not - that's totally fine. Then at least start with some minor small talk pleasantries before you get to what you actually want.

Would you say that, or would you play along? Would you hold your "deep annoyance" as a permanent grudge? If you'd play along and not hold the grudge indefinitely then from their perspective you'd appear just like the (in my opinion more reasonable) friends who appreciated it, and so it's probably better to assume that situation.

I forgive everyone once by default

but if I won't hear from him again for years and all of a sudden he texts me without any care then yea I'd hold that grudge and try to get him out of my life

I'm autistic, and what you describe doing sounds impossible to me. I live in constant fear of inconveniencing others. I personally find it inconvenient when someone outside my close circle wants my time.

It's expensive for me to perform socialness, so I tend to assume it's not free for others as well and avoid placing that burden on them.

You're right, socializing has different costs for different people.

Some fences are boundaries, not barriers and that's ok!

Not every fence needs to come down. Honor what serves you.

I learned from my therapist to stop trying to change my behavior based on how I predict other people will feel. If someone has expressed a clear boundary that is one thing, but otherwise I will not assume “I texted too much already I don’t want to bother them” or “I shouldn’t say the thing that’s on my mind they probably don’t want to hear it.” I still need to keep track of when I am genuinely talking too much around people sensitive to that (I check in with people, and it varies per person based on conversational styles) but now I allow myself to express what I want to express and I have a lot less anxiety about what other people think. My therapist describes the tendency to modify our behavior based on the predicted comfort of others as codependency or people pleasing, which might be useful things to research. Changing yourself is not easy or trivial, but over the course of time, we can change and grow a lot in life. Doing so has been a decades long effort but I am so much better with social interactions these days, and it has been quite rewarding to get here.

I learned to do this a few years ago and it is easily one of the most freeing things I’ve ever done. Funny thing is, before I had thought of myself as someone who was just really empathetic and justified my behavior as being concerned about the well-being of others. But now it’s clearer to me that I wasn’t actually paying attention to how others actually felt but was mostly making a ton of assumptions in efforts to avoid my own discomfort.

Why not just start making conscious decisions?

Like "Here's my path to statistical victory/social success/meeting needs. Chances are, it'll be in some small degree inconvenient for others, it'll be rude to them, it'll make them angry, and it'll put a burden on them. Will it worth my chances on victory/social success/meeting needs?"

That's how I do it, but my needs socially are mostly already met, so the incremental gain for being outgoing serves no practical need, but has some notional risk and cost.

That’s great and all until you have a stalker that uses your social network to figure out new and inventive ways to make your life hell.

I’ve had to stop telling anyone anything about where I’m going to be, where I’m working, or who I’m seeing or in a relationship with. Because people have gotten repeatedly stalked and attacked themselves in attempts to get to me, or ‘punish’ me for being happy.

I really wish it was paranoia or something I was imagining too.

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.

> 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.

"Nonoptimal" is my preference.

> 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!

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 fear of no response is real. It's not about logic, it's about old wounds. What helps is sending messages with zero expectation. Treat it like throwing paper airplanes. Some fly, some don't. And that's completely ok!

The ones that don't fly aren't rejections, they're just physics.

Thank you stranger, for this valuable metaphor! I'm on it!

Worth looking at the book the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

And that is exactly how it is in that dog's brain. In his mind, the electric fence is alive and well.

That is the whole point of the article.

You only have to be zapped a few times to be shy of it.

I tried reaching out to a bunch of folks from where I used to live a few years back, and got unanimously ghosted, until eventually someone responded telling me I was a vile piece of shit for what I did to X, who it transpired in my absence had brewed up a full on horror story about me, involving battery acid and violence - entirely fictitious, but apparently people thought little enough of me to believe it.

Now, I’m content enough to not go lick the fence voluntarily.

> 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.

Chesterton's Fence applies to institutional/societal structures with unknown origins, not personal relationships where the history is known to you. The principle encourages understanding before removal, not perpetual inaction when reasons are already clear.

Tread carefully doesn’t mean inaction

I dont like chesterton's fence. I think we should revalidate these structures. In a low risk situation of course, but still prod at them a little. Its very dangerous to lose intitutional memory because of a dogma of never questioning things

To be fair, in the analogy Chesterton wasn't saying we shouldn't question things but rather that we should understand why things are the way they are before assuming that we can change them for the better, and a lot of tragedy in the world comes from people who think we can just tear everything down and make it better without consequences.

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.

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!

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.

I once lived in Moscow on a compound with an adopted rescue dog. The compound had a shock collar and invisible fence setup.

Moscow’s street dogs are renowned for their intelligence. I have seen street dogs taking the escalators on the Metro. This dog worked out not just that the beeping + discomfort was worth the freedom, but also that he could wear out the battery faster by going up to the very edge of the fence - where the chirps became an uninterrupted beeeeep - and as soon as the beeping stopped, whoosh he was gone.

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.

Vaguely alluding to whatever it is you do as "too suspicious-sounding to talk about" surely isn't helping the matter.

Yeah, you're probably right.

Have a great day!

> 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 once had an old High School friend contact me.

At first, I was glad to hear from him.

...then, he started talking...

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.

This is such a timely article. It was a HUGE electric fence for me as a founder. I was hesitant asking for introductions, help and advise. It took a lot of internalization that I would always welcome asking for help and others would think the same. One fence I still struggle with is following-up. Usually people don't respond the first time and my fence natural thinks that they read and were not interested. But the reality is that most people are bad at following-up. Even me, many times think I will write back to them and I forget. So same thing happens to others. Reaching out multiple times - at least twice - usually works. It still takes a lot of energy to remind them the second time when they haven't responded.

Thanks for saying this! Following up is the invisible fence that kills more opportunities than anything. You're completely right, sending the second message isn't pushy, it's just acknowledging we're all drowning in notifications.

I now assume everyone needs 2-3 reminders. Not because they don't care, but because life is chaos. Keep following up!

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

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.

super!

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?"

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.

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.

I don’t initiate much conversation with most of my friends. I love my friends and have many of them but I can’t keep up with everyone’s lives.

I keep up with a few people who are easy to contact.

One group of friends have a discord server and twice a week voice calls I can drop into. This works great.

I also have older people in my life who actually do phone calls. So when I go out for a walk, I might call one of them.

Anyone who has expectations of me will be disappointed. I pop up where I can and my friends are happy to see me. They know I care and we always pick up where we left off.

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!

Thought it was about electric fence the malloc debug library, and was surprised to see so many comments. Turns out it is not mentioned at all in the comments, so correcting that :)

The article asks when the reader was annoyed by someone checking in and it answers, “never.” Not so for me, I truly dislike people checking in on me, including my family members. It makes me uncomfortable. I’m an introvert, and my condition is my own business. Now and then is okay but not frequently. I also don’t answer calls on my birthday. It’s MY birthday after all, it’s a day for just me.

Do you not think that maybe those people care about you and would like to know how you are? I appreciate that you have your boundaries, but it doesn't sound like you're considering their point of view. Or maybe you are but it isn't conveyed in the post well.

I'm a different person, but maybe: Their family is where they got zapped. And that fence is probably still working.

Same for me...

You're correct, I'm not considering their point of view. Bukowski said it best - your life is your life. Don't let it be beaten into dank submission.

You're not wrong. Some of us need space more than connection. Your birthday, your rules. There's a difference between healthy boundaries and unnecessary barriers, and it's very personal. The key is knowing which is which.

My quality of life improves significantly whenever I allow myself to leave behind the idiots. By idiots, I don't mean people I dislike or disagree with, I mean people that can't afford to make any more mistakes in their life without directly compromising mine. (Exceptions will be made for little children that don't know any better.)

Keep the electric fence up for those idiots.

> "They haven't reached out, so they must not care."

At some point I think it is a reasonable conclusion that they don't care much if they haven't reached out. The article's point doesn't really hold up when you have many reliable data points of reaching out and experiencing a negative outcome. Sad but there's no rule that things have to work out.

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.

I really thought the metaphorical electric fences were going to be more profound than "you can text old friends". You can radically change the world for the better if it weren't for that broken electric fence.

I was gonna make a broader point about survivorship bias and how sometimes the fence is indeed on and trying again and again will just end up with you being charred, but it was perhaps a bit too negative sounding.

The example of reaching out to people will seldom go all that badly (though sometimes people aren’t who you think they are and you will have to block them), but there are definitely decisions in life that shouldn’t be made lightly.

As someone who is 48 and could stand to do a bit more of this myself; I find myself alarmed and shocked at the extent to which younger folks appear to have normalized "social fear."

I remember being younger in college and me and friends were talking about dating and whatnot, and I'm just like -- look, you'll have a much better time, you just gotta get over your fear of rejection. And I was surprised then to the extent that people looked at me and got genuinely offended, like "how dare you not take how TRAUMATIC this can be seriously."

And this generation feels a lot like that. Most of those friends ended up agreeing with me, and I do get that it FEELS bad to, e.g. look stupid or whatever in such a situation -- but the fact that it's an "intense feeling" doesn't mean I'm at all wrong here -- if better socialization is what you actually want.*

*edit, and so I suppose what might be useful is to better hit this head on in our public discussions? Love this article for that.

I worked through most of my fear of rejection in the 20s and then spent some time giving other people advice about approaching people. My phrase was, "She's already not dating you. What is she going to do, not date you with a vengeance?" The worst has already happened! Just ask.

I've been living inside an electric fence for so long as a child, that I never learned the rules of life outside. As an adult, I really struggle, because even though I'd want to connect with people, I just have trouble words that could reconnect us. I rely on other people to start/keep conversations. I've been trying to overcome that somehow, but the learning process is so slow.

Growing up inside the fence means never learning there was an outside.

Learning as an adult is like learning a new language, slow, often awkward, but possible.

Start tiny. One word texts. "Hey!"

No pressure for conversation. Just practice existing in someone's inbox. The fence gets weaker with each send.

Invisible fence.

An electric fence that stopped working years ago is still a fence.

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.

just remember that checking the electric fence is very similar to a prisoners dillema.

if you check it, youre in the right and if the fence no longer works its a win situation

but if the fence still works you're not only experiencing the immediate pain, there will also be long term consequences to how you program yourself

You're right, it's definitely a prisoner's dilemma. Except in this version, the punishment is usually just awkwardness, and the reward is sometimes igniting life changing connections. It's asymmetrical reward.

AI article

The whole site has that look, doesn't it?

But the article seems somewhat better than typical AI-generated slop, so .... ??

It's sad that now whenever I read something I am like... wait, was this really written by a human?

I wonder how much of human culture and creative expression we are losing to algorithmic manipulation and AI dilution.

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!

Surely the leading anecdote is contrived? Am I too cynical?

Yeah, I stopped reading there, because I see that kind of contrived pablum on LinkedIn constantly. Heart-warming folksy anecdote ... business lesson etc. That, the *bold* and the cartoon are flags.

I have learned to stop paying attention to "content" based on those cues, much like with ad breaks on TV or youtube. It's mostly not even conscious, I just skip over it.

Fantastic article and comments on this thread.

If the fence is gone why would it hurt?

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...

> un-plugged-in AC electric motor's coil

an important instruction, perhaps

> It is absolutely harmless in every respect.

There is probably an argument here both for and against toy safety standards.

> When was the last time you were annoyed that someone reached out to check in? ... Never

How dare he invalidate my experience like that xD

Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Insanity is also assuming the electric fence that shocked you a hundred times is still turned on.

So no matter what you do it is wrong unless it works, then you are a genius. I am not sure how to use this advice.

You captured the human condition perfectly. We're all walking contradictions trying to guess which fences are real.

One way to look at it is to just test one fence. Just one. If it shocks you, now you know. If it doesn't, now you're free. And either way, you're now no longer guessing.

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.

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...

> 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.

  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

^ this is an illustration of a Chesterton's fence

char* strcpy(char* destination, const char* source);

and its numerous replacements and "improvements".

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