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540 points drankl | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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parpfish ◴[] No.44485690[source]
Decades ago in my first abnormal psych course, the prof warned us that there was an almost iron-clad law that students will immediately start self diagnosing themselves with “weak” versions of every disorder we learn about. In my years since then, it has absolutely held true and now is supercharged by a whole industry of TikTok self-diagnoses.

But there are a few things we can learn from this:

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves that makes them feel unique, they’ll take it.

- if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

- most mental disorders are an issue of degree and not something qualitatively different from a typical experience. People should use this to gain greater empathy for those who struggle.

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Aurornis ◴[] No.44485973[source]
> - if you give people the chance to place a label on themselves to give a name/form to a problem, they’ll take it.

This one is widespread among the young people I’ve worked with recently. It’s remarkable how I can identify the current TikTok self diagnosis trends without ever watching TikTok.

There’s a widespread belief that once you put a label on a problem, other people are not allowed to criticize you for it. Many young people lean into this and label everything as a defensive tactic.

A while ago, one of the trends was “time blindness”. People who were chronically late, missed meetings, or failed to manage their time would see TikToks about “time blindness” as if it was a medical condition, and self-diagnose as having that.

It was bizarre to suddenly have people missing scheduled events and then casually informing me that they had time blindness, as if that made it okay. Once they had a label for a condition, they felt like they had a license to escape accountability.

The most frustrating part was that the people who self-diagnosed as having “time blindness” universally got worse at being on time. Once they had transformed the personal problem into a labeled condition, they didn’t feel as obligated to do anything about it.

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1. TheOtherHobbes ◴[] No.44488820[source]
This has been the worst thing about my experiences on Threads. A lot of people make what they - and the US mainstream, apparently - defines as a heterodox personality their entire sense of self. So almost everyone is some combination of queer, "neurospicy", a witch, "creative", and so on.

This often seems to come with some assumption of moral superiority.

But under the label many of them are absolutely mainstream people. Their posts aren't genuine spontaneous comments - they're calibrated and calculated as a marketing exercise for "engagement" and to promote a product, course, Insta lifestyle, and so on.

I realise it's tough out there and everyone has to hustle. But there really aren't many who acknowledge the gulf between the vocabulary of rebellion from the reality of "Please buy my course on how to be anticapitalist." (Actual example - not made up.)

If I looked I imagine I'd find a mirror image of hustle conformity and superiority culture on far right boards, only more so.

It's all quite weirdly Social Media™.

Edit: to add, I'm not criticising specific subgroups. I'm very aware the US is a dangerous place and being certain kinds of person significantly decreases your life expectancy.

It's more how social media has somehow distorted the online experience of those subgroups away from straightforward human exchange into commercial opportunity without people being aware of it.