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Nobody has a personality anymore: we are products with labels

(www.freyaindia.co.uk)
540 points drankl | 3 comments | 06 Jul 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.671s | source
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parpfish ◴[07 Jul 25 01:05 UTC] 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 ◴[07 Jul 25 01:52 UTC] 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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imetatroll ◴[07 Jul 25 06:29 UTC] No.44487322[source]▶
This is simultaneously funny and sad. I wonder when alcoholism will get a front row seat during zoom meetings (or even IRL meetings). "Can't help it hick I'm an alcoholic".

I think a lot of societal change these days can be summarized by the idea that self-labeling is seen as transforming something into "everyone else's problem".

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kingkongjaffa ◴[07 Jul 25 08:35 UTC] No.44488040[source]▶
This is interesting point.

Western society has basically built a hyper capitalist system that creates individualistic consumers, but has failed to hold individuals accountable to minimum standards.

The bar has never been lower and we just sort of amble on as a lonely, isolated society so long as the stock market grows quarter to quarter.

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samdoesnothing ◴[07 Jul 25 12:38 UTC] No.44489759[source]▶
No that is ridiculous. Stop blaming capitalism for every problem in the world, it just makes you look childish.

Especially when it comes to alcoholism. As if the soviet union was a bastion of soberness with a high bar or something.

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1. const_cast ◴[07 Jul 25 19:43 UTC] No.44493932[source]▶
> Stop blaming capitalism for every problem in the world, it just makes you look childish.

Economics is intertwined with every other study. We can't pretend socio-economics isn't real, social interactions fuel the economy and the economy influences our social interactions.

Also, making connections to way capitalism might fuel addictive disorders, such as, say, talking about advertising of alcohol and tobacco, does NOT mean that we are saying communism is perfect. Communism fuels disorders in other ways. It's actually quiet childish to take any analysis of capitalism as a praise of communism. It's the sort of "team sport" mentality you see in politics among the most uneducated and reductive among us.

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2. nradov ◴[07 Jul 25 22:35 UTC] No.44495290[source]▶
If you want to criticize capitalism on a website run by literal capitalists then the onus is on you to propose a better alternative. So far none of the other economic systems that humans have applied at scale have worked out better. I mean Islamic fundamentalist theocracies have lower rates of alcoholism but that advantage comes with some pretty severe downsides.
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3. const_cast ◴[08 Jul 25 04:20 UTC] No.44497051[source]▶
But nobody is trying to prove or show a better alternative, that's my point. A critique of capitalism doesn't mean we should dismantle capitalism.

I don't get it, because we do this with other stuff all the time. I program in C#, guess what? I have plenty of critiques of C#. That doesn't mean I want C# to go die, I love C#. It seems to me everyone understands this... until it's capitalism. And then, suddenly, it's our first day on Earth.

Also capitalism, like everything, is not just one thing. It's a complex beast and there's infinite possible implementations of a capitalist economy. Nobody actually wants raw, unregulated capitalism because that sucks major ass. Yes, that's a technical phrase.

Meaning, we can, and should, be looking to progressively improve our economic system. I mean, it's what we've been doing since forever.