People Aren't Meant to Talk This Much

[Nevilledog]

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Ian Bogost's Monster
@ibogost
For ages now, an idea has been echoing through my brain: People aren’t meant to talk to one another this much.

That, I think, is the fundamental problem with the internet today.

I finally wrote about it.

People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much
Breaking up social-media companies is one way to curtail their bad impacts. Shutting their users up is a better one.
theatlantic.com
5:07 AM · Oct 22, 2021

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/fix-facebook-making-it-more-like-google/620456/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/lFvLB

Your social life has a biological limit: 150. That’s the number—Dunbar’s number, proposed by the British psychologist Robin Dunbar three decades ago—of people with whom you can have meaningful relationships.

What makes a relationship meaningful? Dunbar gave The New York Times a shorthand answer: “those people you know well enough to greet without feeling awkward if you ran into them in an airport lounge”—a take that may accidentally reveal the substantial spoils of having produced a predominant psychological theory. The construct encompasses multiple “layers” of intimacy in relationships. We can reasonably expect to develop up to 150 productive bonds, but we have our most intimate, and therefore most connected, relationships with only about five to 15 closest friends. We can maintain much larger networks, but only by compromising the quality or sincerity of those connections; most people operate in much smaller social circles.

Some critics have questioned Dunbar’s conclusion, calling it deterministic and even magical. Still, the general idea is intuitive, and it has stuck. And yet, the dominant container for modern social life—the social network—does anything but respect Dunbar’s premise. Online life is all about maximizing the quantity of connections without much concern for their quality. On the internet, a meaningful relationship is one that might offer diversion or utility, not one in which you divulge secrets and offer support.

A lot is wrong with the internet, but much of it boils down to this one problem: We are all constantly talking to one another. Take that in every sense. Before online tools, we talked less frequently, and with fewer people. The average person had a handful of conversations a day, and the biggest group she spoke in front of was maybe a wedding reception or a company meeting, a few hundred people at most. Maybe her statement would be recorded, but there were few mechanisms for it to be amplified and spread around the world, far beyond its original context.

*snip*

[The Magistrate]

1. The Man Has A Point, Ma'am

[lagomorph777]

2. 150?

That's a couple of orders of magnitude over my limit.

[ret5hd]

6. No shit!

[Kaleva]

3. I have one. My spouse.

I have very productive bonds with my step children, their spouses and with the grandkids but no one outside the family. I get along well with quite a few people but none of them I'd consider friends.

[cilla4progress]

4. Totally agree -

we aren't meant to know this much about one another.

The internet is cover for letting out our ids!

[lagomorph777]

7. The Monster From The Id

[Midnight Writer]

5. There is an old saw that if we only knew what was going on in other people's minds,

we would understand each other and all get along.

Well, now we have a real world test of that.

We can see what is in other people's minds, and it is often disgusting and terrifying.

[LakeArenal]

8. Mr Lake and I thought it's weird we don't talk much

Of course we’ve known each other 50 years. Plus, we do have that marriage language that no one else understands.

We thought we are just boring.

[cilla4progress]

9. Never boring!

[LakeArenal]

11. Thanks.

[JanMichael]

10. I agree with that. I can usually have one two or three close friends.

And that includes spouse. After that it's acquaintances. And generally not more than 30 or 40 in my life at any one time related to work or school or something else. And yes I don't like talking so freaking much.

[Steelrolled]

12. This reminds me of those email chains that sometimes happen in big organizations.

Someone sends out an email and (usually) accidentally has an enormous To: or Cc: list. Someone does a "reply all" telling the sender not to blast the email to so many people. Then other people reply to that person and say "stop doing a reply all!" but of course they do a "reply all" themselves. Hilarious.

[Wingus Dingus]

13. So, meaningful relationships are people you know, whom if you run into

them someplace, can greet them without feeling awkward? LOL, that makes maybe a handful of meaningful relationships for me then. I feel awkward when I run into practically anyone, outside of our usual circumstances.

[tanyev]

14. Sort of a modern day Tower of Babel?

It’s an interesting observation, but I don’t know if it’s a justified conclusion.