Just a mild passing thought and curiosity to mull over
Validation is one of the things on maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s essential for people to feel belonging and connection with other humans. We’re hardwired for it and the lack of it leads to poor outcomes almost always.
Social media is not a good source of validation. If social media were limited to just the people you knew and communicated with at least semi-regularly it would be very useful for receiving validation. However once you branch out to people you don’t know, healthy validation becomes more difficult. It also introduces a number of unhelpful facsimiles of validation (parasocial relationships, internet points).
100,000 likes/views/upvotes/retweets does not replace respect and acceptance from your peers for your emotional wellbeing, it’s not even a good substitute.
No social media platform has figured it out yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible to build one that could be a good source of validation. It’s unlikely though so long as roi is important to the people that build social networks.
Validation is their way of figuring out that they’re “normal” or a good human being.
- They’re afraid of being an outcast + they’re anxious that they can’t take care of themselves
- They don’t know what is “right”, so they rely on others to tell them that what you’re doing is “right”
Social media crowdsources the feedback that you did this right, you did this wrong, etc
This is so simple but put so well. Seeking validation is a perfectly normal human behaviour we need to normalize. Especially in the west where talking shit behind people’s backs is so normalized nobody ever knows what anyone really thinks of them.
I take it one step further in tangent. Anyone that complains to you about everyone else, is complaining about you when they are talking to anyone else. It is their form of social bonding, or just a lack of any self awareness filter. These types of people are not your friends. They are not bad people, but they can give an impression of comradery that is only an illusion.
Massive agree. If anyone here is one of those whipper snapper youngsters with their iPhones avocados, put down the Fortnite dab and the Ohio rizz because this man speaks da tru-tru and it’ll help you the most in the workday.
Thanks! I’m validated by your response.
As someone who has never really cared about validation, from being an outcast since I was a child, the way much of social media is designed in an attempt to seek validation drives me nutts. I just want to see interesting things that people want to share, and engage in discussions with types of people that I wouldn’t normally meet in real life.
What types of persons do you imagine might feel differently about validation?
Can you think of a type of person that feels a need for validation that is not emotionally driven and why that might be the case?
Nope, divining the inner workings of the minds of others is beyond me. I can only tell you about the world that I see.
I’m very abstracted in my thought process. It is kinda like I see statistical probabilities in everything and am open to inference about them. I don’t see absolutes or facts in much of anything.
Another way to look at it is that I make assumptions about everything I perceive, but those assumptions are not concrete or absolutes. They are embedded in layers upon layers of logic and experience.
All that said, I’m always aware of how that, many ideas and observations I make are kinda floating in mid air and not well grounded. I’m often unsure about extra perspectives or elements I may have missed or misread in my surroundings. I’m always interested in, and open to corrections. However, my assumptions are layered in such a way that I am looking for any corrections that mesh with all of my other observations and experience.
I’m content with the insecurity at the edge of my understanding. That is where my veracious curiosity resides. However, I have a deep need to ground the edge of my curiosities in the thoughts and experiences of others. It has nothing to do with popularity or emotional reinforcement, although there are some emotional side effects. I am primarily looking for validation of my abstractions on many levels and mostly indirectly.
I do not learn well conventionally. I can maintain above average scores, but retain less than an ideal amount of information from such structured schooling. Learning primarily by curiosity and abstraction makes my perspective angle very… unique. It also makes communicating the edge of my curiosities challenging.
Anyways, that is just one type of functional thought and approach to validation.
I think one of the biggest pros of social media is the connectedness outside of one’s community and social network IRL.
People seem to self select for information bubbles in ways I find interesting and concerning on social media platforms.
One of the biggest negatives is understanding the scope and depth of the demographic present at any given point in time or place.
Back in grade 9 I had trouble showing my work in math because I did it all in my head. My teacher, not believing that was possible, challenged me one day after class to do a tough problem in my head, in front of her. Upon writing a number down, before I could double check myself, she started yelling at me for being a cheat and a fraud… because I “forgot the negative sign.” That was the day that I stopped caring entirely whether or not others gave me validation, because it’s really more about whether or not they like you rather than whether or not you’re actually right about anything. It’s a decision that perhaps made my life harder for a while, but has resulted in the development of talents which I am quite grateful for, and eventually a near perfect score when I re-did grade 12 math later on to get into STEM.
Seeking validation from others can just as easily steer you wrong, as they are anything but an impartial indication of whether or not you’re doing things right. If the person doesn’t like you, there’s nothing at all in the world which will be good enough for them, and if they do like you, they’ll gloss over and sugar coat everything to the point you can’t even tell if they’re being honest with you.
I’d try to do tasks with some sort of reasonably objective testing system or I’d go crazy.
If that’s not possible for a task, then minimise the time spent; try to spend a bit more time doing the other type of thing.
I don’t mind doing something artistic as a passtime/hobby. But no way could I do only tasks like that as my sole contribution to society - I’d probably have to do as much drugs as a stereotypical rock-star.
I’m kinda the inverse. I have two careers for context. My day job is in tech, my second is as a professional sideshow performer
My day job is often soul crushing and drains me of energy, but it pays the bills. Performing is what keeps me going. I have a deep need for art, community, and self expression, and while I’m grateful that I do make side money from performing, I don’t mind taking a small financial hit for the fulfillment it provides (eg, when producing a show)
To the original topic, validation does play a role in that. If we didn’t get some sort of validation, we wouldn’t continue to create art
