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Comment by vertline3 | Hacker News Reader

I've never had that trait, but I suspect it is caused by a resentful feeling of being treated like an infant.

Nah it's not like that at all.

My girlfriend does this all the time. She sees puppies and shit like that on Reddit, and always does this like "growl" and says how she wants to "squeeze the shit out of them." It's not like she really wants to squeeze them and kill them, and it's not actually anger.

It's just a really intense feeling of joy and wanting to take care of them and play with them. If there's any true aggression there, I feel like it's a result of being protective. It's probably a very biological reaction to seeing a small cute creature or person who needs care.

It seems likely to me that it's an expression of L'appel du Vide, or The Call of the Void. You ever stand at the edge of a tall building or bridge and feel the urge to jump? It's that feeling. One hypothesis is that our brain does this as a way of making itself more aware of the risk. It makes sense then that when we see a small and fragile thing we wish not to damage, it would trigger this mechanism.

I've never really bought that "Call of the Void" explanation. You can imagine fairly easily what will happen if you jump from a tall building without having the urge to do it. I've always viewed it as a legitimate momentary urge, just one that conflicts with almost every other urge we have to live, so we don't do it and don't even acknowledge the urge as legitimate (most of us, anyway).

"Call of the void" isn't an explanation. It's just a definition and a label for an observed behavior/thought. There's nothing to buy.

Perhaps some poor grammar on my part. I was responding to the post with a hypothesis as to why some people experience the "call of the void": to make us more aware of the danger of doing an action that would kill us. My opinion is, this makes no sense. You can imagine what would happen quite easily without having the urge to do it. This is the "call of the void" explanation which I do not buy.

Right. Probably evolutionary instinct to protect human infants. And marketers try and exploit this all the time. Perhaps most successfully in Japan.

Yeah that's what I noticed, used in marketing a lot. I was thinking we had some feeling we were being manipulated but I guess not.

My girlfriend does it too, it was very confusing to me for a while.

It's like a seething rage of joy.

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