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Comment by darkerside | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that sometimes humility and compassion are not what's needed. Sometimes a person needs a kick in the pants. A close friend willing to tell you to stop impulse buying furniture, or get a fucking job, or get off your ass and work out.

The tricky part is knowing when which tactic is called for.

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Have you ever told a friend that and them respond with something along the lines of, "You know, I'd never thought of that. I'm just going to go get a job. Thanks!"?

Me neither.

You don't tell your friend to get a job. You tell your friend they sound like a miserable fuck and some of their problems are of their own making.

I'm glad I'm not your friend.

Right back atcha.

I have given hard truths to friends before. If you care about someone, there's a point where you need to. Even if they don't respond well in the moment, truth once heard cannot be unheard.

If your friend is screwing up their life and you are enabling them by validating their bad choices, you're not being a good friend to them. Close friends are pretty much the only ones who are in a position of trust to be able to deliver harsh truths to someone in a way that actually gets through (unlike internet strangers, media, authorities and in many cases also family), so it's the duty of friends to actually do so when needed.

Nobody's making the case for enabling bad choices - I just don't think being an asshole is the only alternative.

I also don't know anyone in a similar situation who isn't acutely aware of the situation - they don't need their friends constantly giving them the most obvious advice in the world, they need support.

If you're going through a tough time and need compassion, don't mistake that for thinking everybody in every situation always needs compassion

Counterpoint: Literally nobody needs 'darkerside' from hackernews to tell them to "get a fucking job".

I can read between the lines... Get a job Brad! :-D

I'm overburdened with employment already, unfortunately, but duly noted.

I don't think I said that. Likewise, though, if you're too blind to notice your own bad behavior, don't mistake that for everyone else being too blind to notice their own behavior.

I'm also not really sure why you're playing this card, since I referenced other people in my previous comment... but oh well.

I agree you didn't say that. It just felt relevant to share my perspective there.

Your friends may very well all fall into the category you describe. There exist nonzero scenarios where people don't.

Its fairly obvious that an anonymous stranger on the internet, or a politician proselytizing for their punative economic policies is _not_ that type of friend. But it seems some people derive a great deal of satisfaction out of imaginging themselves as knowing better how people should live their lives.

It may not be a much better approach than pandering and patronizing their feelings, but it's probably at least a little bit better.

Unsolicited internet judgement and condescending advice is worse than nothing and significantly worse than compassion. Too many people on the internet are way too over confident in their assessment of others' situations, and I dare say that with your 'tough love' position on this, you may be one of them.

Ha! I'm not telling anyone (else) on here to "get a job". I'm saying there may be someone in your life that needs to hear something painful. Maybe just once, at the right time.

Sure, but it requires a relationship and deep knowledge about their situation. I think we're talking about different things. Talk to your friends however works for the situation and your relationship with them.

However, If some rando tells me to do something either obvious or pointless in a condescending way (which is pretty much what the article is talking about, and very common even in this comment section talking about it) it is 100% of the time way more harmful than helpful.

> The problem is that sometimes humility and compassion are not what's needed. Sometimes a person needs a kick in the pants. A close friend willing to tell you to stop impulse buying furniture, or get a fucking job, or get off your ass and work out.

> The tricky part is knowing when which tactic is called for.

That was my original comment. I'm not sure when it got twisted into that straw man, but it seems like we agree.

>an anonymous stranger on the internet, or a politician proselytizing for their punative economic policies is _not_ that type of friend

You replied to the above with

>It may not be a much better approach than pandering and patronizing their feelings, but it's probably at least a little bit better.

It's not better. That's all. If you missed that and were never talking about unsolicited advice from strangers, then I'm sure we agree.

Fair. I think I got confused by the split thread. Although, I stand by my response there. They're both crappy ways to respond, but I have a particular repulsion for patronizing, cloying false empathy that contributes to the ubiquitous feeling of victimhood that is natural to human beings but seems to be supercharged in the modern era.

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