(2023-06-26) Chapin What The Humans Like Is Responsiveness

Sasha Chapin: What the humans like is responsiveness. What do the humans like? Apparently, they like this woman ordering food in a slightly flirtatious manner at a food truck... What sets this person apart? It’s simple: her insane responsiveness...Talking with her is like dancing lead with a really good follow. And dancing with a really good follow is fantastic. They make you feel like their endless marvelousness is a product of your actions.

I knew we would be friends when we were at the same perfume store, and I pointed out that she’d said five separate perfumes were her “favorite,” and she said, smilingly, locking eyes with me, “I’ll fucking kill you.”

unless you genuinely love people and are comfortable in your own skin, it’s a really hard trick to pull off.

I know a few not-entirely-handsome men who have the same gravitational pull

I think we all know, actually, how to be liked, it’s just that it’s hard. It takes attention and openness, and the confidence to present your character like it’s a fun mask you’re wearing rather than a lesson you’re desperate to teach someone. If you have that, it’s simple: when people put energy into you, attune to it, and give them harmonious energy back.

I would argue that responsiveness is a core human need/desire. It is, perhaps, required for happiness. People are happy enough rich, and people are happy enough poor. But it’s hard to imagine anyone happy without a feeling that their actions have some impact. (feedback, agency?)

usually, people talk about burnout as if it’s a result of being overworked. But that doesn’t seem accurate

What if it’s partially a failure of responsiveness? Emmett Shear thinks something along these lines. He says that a major factor in burnout is “broken steering”

This feeling sucks even if you’re not working hard. For instance, once, in college, I had the cushiest job imaginable....I was tasked to be the useless extension of someone else’s uselessness. (bullshit job)

Whenever I’m in a new chapter of my life, and I’m trying some ambitious project, usually I fall into a brief spell of video game addiction. Why? Trying an ambitious project usually requires temporarily leaving clarity behind, and entering into a period when reality is unevenly responsive.

My friend DR MacIver calls video games “clarity porn,” a beautiful phrase.

Grasping for responsiveness is responsible for a lot of chaos. When relationships are locked in a seemingly unbreakable pattern, paramours cause drama. When people feel imprisoned by an impersonal environment, they vandalize

The present day exhibits an unusual combination of high and low responsiveness

For most of us, saying that we’re cogs in a machine would significantly over-credit our influence.

We could have a more responsive future.. But it could go the other way... A frictionless (friction-free), unresponsive life is simply not a human one—we are born troublemakers who need to make marks.