Are happy people boring?

Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
entertainment said:
Same here I think. This thread spawned from browsing a dating app and being confronted with this endless stream of genuinely smiling people who love travelling and cooking and dogs and maybe there's a funny picture with a drink.

I should go outside but it's raining.
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I mean this might be stating the obvious but people on dating apps are trying to appear attractive, which means looking happy, looking adventurous, looking active and all the rest of it. I wouldn't say that any social media, let alone a dating app, gives you an insight into the fullness of a person.

I have found that the people I get on best with usually turn out to have been unhappy to the point of getting therapy. It makes sense, because that's what I'm like. But everybody suffers in one way or another.

I'm 35, and I'm still battling my own nature, my own unhappiness. Some days I feel as depressed as I did when I was 25 and nearly suicidal. So I can't really speak from a position of having conquered anything but - be wary of romanticising unhappiness. I think a lot of people who are naturally quite pessimistic and shy are forced to romanticise and lionise unhappiness as a compensation for not being happy. I've done this for a long time. It's a trap.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
This reminds me. Corpsey has a theory that 99% of dissensus is profoundly ahedonic which is why they don't like Mariah Carey.
 
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Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
"The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings."
Anton Chekhov
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
I've not used a dating app and I feel this has given me a huge blind spot when it comes to trying to understand the world. Like if I hadn't of been using Facebook in the tail end of the '00s
 
shiels

shiels

_
You aren't missing much. People are bad at selling themselves is the main insight. Generally, people don't know what makes them interesting. Or they're at their least interesting when they think they know who they are and what everything is about. It's a different thing than just happiness this boring wholesome thing, it's about a bland self-assuredness or a lack of curiosity. Needs more doubt.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
You'd think there would be mileage in signposting yourself as a freak in that environment
 
shiels

shiels

_
There are more niche apps for that. But on the more mainstream ones you'd be shocked how much the same tropes are repeated.

You notice the effect because you spend so much time on these things. It's kind of comparable to much of the chat you see on Twitter. And that conformist internationalist internet humour, a way of speaking shaped by the pressure of massive audiences, potential virality. Template personalities, template jokes.
 
yyaldrin

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
add make-up, filters and plastic surgery to it and it feels like you're just seeing the same person repeated a million times. as if they all feature in the same shampoo commercial.
 
yyaldrin

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
men usually have a picture of themself posing with a slimy fish they caught or a selfie with a lion they took on a safari in africa.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
shiels said:
You aren't missing much. People are bad at selling themselves is the main insight. Generally, people don't know what makes them interesting. Or they're at their least interesting when they think they know who they are and what everything is about. It's a different thing than just happiness this boring wholesome thing, it's about a bland self-assuredness or a lack of curiosity. Needs more doubt.
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this is why brands hire ad agencies to promote their products, they don't get an objective outside perspective and tough questions when it's done by in-house yes-men.

also, at a certain point, most people tend to figure out what they like and where they want to focus their time and attention. we should never lose a sense of curiouslty or doubt, but it's a natural process that some of that doubt subsides.
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
Some people on this forum are young enough/4 chan enough to use the word normies, only semi ironically
 
shiels

shiels

_
It’s an awful word, oppressively dull. But yes it’s a mistake because you can never know and a mistake because it’s a bad way to assess what’s valuable

Don’t think entertainment is doing that though. As I understand it what’s obnoxious is a cosy resignment. Don’t think anybody here is saying knowing what you like is bad! Stable mental health is bad!
 
shiels

shiels

_
The pressure to be happy is boring. Watching people pretend to be happy is boring. And sometimes very funny.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
I tend to be quite happy but I think that's more because I'm shallow rather than boring. Although I guess the latter is not for me to judge. I'm generally not bored although I don't believe the "only boring people get bored" thing so that doesn't mean anything here (er and it's the inverse of what I need to prove me not boring in fact).
But who knows who is happy by looking at them? I'd guess that a lot of people described above who are scared of not conforming are probably not that happy if they live in fear. And how do you know if someone is boring by looking at them? OK, you can probably have a better stab at that one but my thought is we don't know enough about which people around us are happy and/or boring to start making this kind of link.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
entertainment said:
that's true, maybe I'm talking about happiness as sold in this standardized package
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Then the question is really "are boring people happy?", I think.

I'm reminded of teachers who'd say things like "Only boring people get bored", which is not only untrue but, I think, the exact opposite of the truth. Interesting people get bored very easily because they require constant mental stimulation to be happy, while boring people are never bored because they're easily amused by mundane things.

Edit: I see Rich has mentioned this rusty old saw already.
 
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