Cultures of Sadness (first in an intermittent series)

[drwex]

I'm posting this here in part to remind myself to write it more fully later. However, commentary is open and welcome.

Adults repress joy. Children have the freedom to express it, but we try to repress it, in part to protect ourselves from being hurt. We fear the consequences of expressing anger, or sexual feelings. We are afraid that if we let ourselves love freely we'll be opening ourselves up for tremendous hurt. Joy and expressions of love are therefore repressed.

LJ creates/enables/encourages (I'm not sure which, maybe all) a culture of sadness. Observation: when a friend posts about her illness or depression or unhappiness, she receives many encouraging comments. The readers chime in, and participate in the expression, validating the feelings of sadness or depression. Observation: when a friend posts about his happiness, his readers complain and even stop reading his journal. Observation: when a friend posts about her sexual feelings, she is expected to label it "TMI" and put it behind a cut, lest someone be offended.

The social norm is that feelings of sadness or depression are supported; feelings of joy, sexuality, happiness are ignored, trivialized, or even draw negative feedback. I do not think this is unique to LJ; I think there are many Cultures of Sadness in modern life. I just happen to be participating in this one with roughly 120 of my closest friends.

Comments

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Sadness: 100% accurate. I find myself, when I do a health-vent, saying "no net-*hug*s", because *hug*s are insipid and content-free.

when a friend posts about his happiness, his readers complain and even stop reading his journal.

Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen this happen. I'm silly and happy a lot in my LJ, and if I lose readers, it's generally because I post too often, not because I'm talking a lot about how much my kid rocks (people seem to really like happy Elayna stories, actually).

when a friend posts about her sexual feelings, she is expected to label it "TMI" and put it behind a cut, lest someone be offended.

Hm.

Hm, I say.

I don't cut/filter all of the sexual content in my LJ. It's obvious to the most casual reader of my public posts that I enjoy sex quite a lot - also that I am kinky and poly and yay sex! *ahem* Yes.

I do filter very explicit things - detailed descriptions and photos - but that's because I have *lots* of people reading me. I don't know most of them all that well. And I'm fine with saying publicly that I had wonderful sex last night, and even what toys I used, but I'm just personally not comfortable with 800+ people seeing a detailed writeup of "and then he...".

(The other reason for the filtration: I have people reading me who see me as a big sister figure. farren would run screaming if he knew anything more than he already does. He already knows a bit more than he probably wants to. *laugh*)

As for cut-tags and "TMI" - I don't personally consider anything TMI. But I know that some things can be TMI for others. I tend to cut-tag detailed posts if, say, my partner's other partner is on my sexfilter and might not want to read said posts, or their friends or roommates or whatever. I also cut-tag when anything edgy's involved. And I slap a detailed label on the cut-tag - a typical one might say "Tom: caning, knifeplay, breathplay". So if someone is triggery about knives, or someone doesn't want to think about Tom That Way, they don't have to read it. *shrug*

(Want to be on the sexfilter? *laugh*)

But I do post a lot of sexual stuff openly. And I've never felt that cut-tagging, filtering, hiding it was expected of me. It's pretty clear that I'm a very sex-positive person, and if people really really don't want to hear about sexual feelings, they probably won't have friended me in the first place. :)

[drwex]

If you would like to put me on the sexfilter, then sure, I'll read it.

I agree that the case I cited, of someone publicly signing off another's friends list because too much happy my-life-is-wonderful stuff was posted is an extreme case. But it really did happen, and I've seen more than a few people self-censor against posting "too much happy stuff".

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

it really did happen, and I've seen more than a few people self-censor against posting "too much happy stuff".

That's really unfortunate. :( I don't disagree that there is a bit of the "culture of sadness", in that people tend to post more often when things are rough than when they're not - but I think that makes it doubly important to balance that. Sense-making?

[drwex]

It is unfortunate. I think it happens in the real world, and LJ is acting only as a mirror or lens for it. I don't think it's an LJ-created behavior.