<story><title>Impoverished Emotional Lives</title><url>https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/impoverished-emotional-lives</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>CliffStoll</author><text>Slightly paraphrasing Donald Knuth:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  The Internet is a great way to stay on top of things.  

  But I want to get to the bottom of things. 
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Understanding, compassion, and emotional depth require reflection, concentration, and time ... a quiet walk in a garden does more for me than an hour of social media.</text></comment>
<story><title>Impoverished Emotional Lives</title><url>https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/impoverished-emotional-lives</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>PuppyTailWags</author><text>I think the essay does not share my understanding of emotion. Emotions are a complex but transient physiological+psychological state in conversation with and reacting to events and thinking. The essay describes months of mourning as if people don&amp;#x27;t still grieve for months; the performative aspect of mourning constantly for months has gone out of fashion. People still grieve for months and years after the death of a loved one and the thought that somehow the internet has caused a shortening of grieving is a claim that would require much more than a substack essay for me to believe.&lt;p&gt;All emotions generally last at most 10 or 15  minutes. An emotional state can refresh due to rumination, current circumstances, etc. Losing my dog causes me to weep over multiple days, but it&amp;#x27;s not like I&amp;#x27;m crying constantly. Instead, I cry when I would normally walk him. I cry when I would normally feed him. I cry when I go to bed by myself, without the sounds of my friend settling in too. On the same day I feel happy when I hit a new high at my gym. I feel hungry when I skip breakfast. I feel annoyed when a car booming music passes me by. It&amp;#x27;s not like I&amp;#x27;m sad all the time even though I am grieving.&lt;p&gt;There is a conversation to be had about how social media affects the rhythms of the multiple transient emotional states humans go through regularly as part of normal behavior. But I don&amp;#x27;t think they &lt;i&gt;shorten&lt;/i&gt; emotions specifically, because emotions are already pretty short phenomena. I would speculate they instead add in additional stimuli that affect what emotional states humans enter and how often they enter them.</text></comment>