[vedaba]

Until you run into an A-hole whose response ruins the rest of your day when you were just trying to be sociable. I could even see getting physically assaulted for trying to talk to the wrong stranger. I like where your heart is at, unfortunately many people out there are not deserving of it.

[DiskoHexyl]

The idea of practicing these random interactions is also to get accustomed to rejections from the assholes. After all, they aren’t the majority- most people are actually quite nice and often appreciate a company (or will politely tell you they don’t need one)

[perching_aix]

This made me reflect on online interactions.

Agreeable comments will draw comparatively fewer replies, while disagreeable ones achieve the opposite.

But this then results in a "false experience" for the individual, where unlike in real life, the bad exchanges do not end up outweighed by the good ones, as you simply don't go on to have those. You just upvote and move on (often to avoid redundancy).

Maybe if the two were tied together (voting either up / down & sending a reply), communities would work healthier? I don't know. Not like it's easy to have this tried out.

I could definitely see challenges to this though, the aforementioned redundancy being one. I have some countermeasure ideas, but then I wonder if that would make the UX complicated enough to drive people away instead, which is a lose-lose.

[johnnyanmac]

It's not the majority, but one black eye will make you rethink everything regardless.

[jmye]

I mean, why does it ruin your day? It's just some random person - you'll likely never see them again, or you'll know to avoid them in the future. Why is the opinion of some rando weighing on you so much?

[rain_iwakura]

have you had actually negative interactions like that? they sting for years, even after hundreds of mild-to-positive ones. the brain focuses on risk-minimization and not reward-maximization.