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Comment by burnt-resistor | Hacker News Reader

Don't engage in a parasocial relationship with your employer. They're not your friends.

> They're not your friends

Your co-workers can be your friends. But we're not obligated to be. If you're my friend and colleague, sure, vent to me. If we're not, I don't give a flyig fuck about your views on geopolitics or gender or whatever, particulalry if you owe me a deliverable, doubly so if you've chosen a hot-button issue nobody actually has any new takes on other than blind agreement or condemnation. (And unless they’re voiced outside work in a way that affects me, I don’t have a right to care about it either.)

I only become real friends with my peers at a company AFTER one of us leaves the company. Oh I'll be friendly, grab lunch with you, talk about tame hobby stuff.. but that's the end of it. I'm not coming to your summer bbq, I'm not inviting you to my birthday party and the only time I'm seeing you on the weekend is if we're both in the office trying to get something done.

Prrreeeeeach. Not quite on topic here, but when I started working at Big Co., they sent 3 weekly Teams invitations each for hula hooping and desk yoga sessions. That infuriated me to no end because I knew how ineffective so many of my new coworkers were there and that they were making more than some of my coworkers who were actually providing value. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have infuriated me because the people attending those people were probably having less of a negative impact doing that rather than re-opening a solved issue or whatever the fuck useless thing they were doing.

People need to stop abusing "parasocial." It meant forming a one way "connection" with people who don't even perceive you, like TV hosts on the other side of the screen. This case is by definition not a parasocial relationship because obviously the employer heard him saying things!

Fake news! Communism! Literally!

I dunno, ketamine treatment for depression isn't that weird.

Announcing your medications at a public work function is kind of weird though, regardless of what they are. Is that just me?

Yes but getting fired for it is grounds for a big juicy lawsuit. So if you've got a rainy day fund why not?

Yeah, that's just TMI.

I don't think anyone ever pressed for more details after a coworker said "I had some issues with my health".

People show empathy, and move on. No need to ask for details.

In day-to-day work life or a meet-and-greet, yeah. But this was an executives-only retreat where they were apparently encouraged to drink and made a big deal out of getting everyone to open up to each other.

Why stigmatize what should be routine?

Mental health discussions, especially among men, should be less fraught. Like “I have a cold”

seems to be ok to talk about if you're elon musk.

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