This is why people moved en masse to suburbs. You go to your car and drive away, rarely even see a neighbor. I’ve spoken to a neighbor once in the last year and it was because we were both shoveling snow (it was yesterday). We shoveled for an hour in silence but we kept getting closer to the street (she’s across the street). At some point we were only about 20 feet from each other and the silence was awkward. At least it was just a 30 second convo.
Wtf? I live in the suburbs and we talk regularly to the neighbours. Is this some weird US-specific dystopia?
It’s automatic garage door culture. You pull up to your house and hit the garage open button and when you leave it’s the same, you just drive away and never see anyone, you close your garage remotely and you’re gone. Maybe if you do your own lawn care you’ll see neighbors but many people hire lawn care professionals. I don’t have a garage to park in. But my wife likes to do the lawn care. So I’m only outside while walking to or from my car. My wife hates the cold so snow shoveling is on me. I’m about to be shoveling more in five minutes :)
Community is hard to come by here. It’s bad.
I need this explained. Is this a bathroom?
I think it’s her front door and her neighbors are talking in the hall outside her apartment. (The keys doesn’t really make sense with her wanting to ‘go’)
In Europe you often have doors that lock with keys from inside as well. And no knob/autolock.
The good part is that there is no “I forgot my keys and locked myself out” because either you couldn’t leave without your keys or you left your door unlocked.
The bad part is when you are late to your engagement because you can’t just leave the apartment unlocked/you are locked in and your room mate Julia misplaced her keys and borrowed yours to go out for an hour and she’s an hour late already. Fuck you, Julia. Also fire safety.
Yes. Their violent neighbor broke in earlier and is currently using their bathroom, much to the embarrassment of the protagonist
That’s why I don’t leave the house. 😎
This is real.
It is and the peephole is the gateway to false negatives. It seems like they’re gone, and then they’re not! They were just out of spy range!
The fuckers forgot their car keys and had to dash back in!
Thats why you have pinhole cameras above your door pointing down the hallway in each direction as well.
People who say Lemmy is not a social media site might just be right.
Because apparently the people here do not want to be social they just want the media.Finally
Asocial media
discussion =/= socializing
I think lemmy and reddit are super different from social media. you can use some of their tools to socialize but most if not all people don’t use their real names, most don’t even have a proper profile, most people don’t follow each other or try to get followers, etc. there’s just no “relationship” aspect that is distinct to social media sites.
if anything lemmy feels a little more social just because of the small size, and how you start to recognize the same bunch of people in the comments. but I’d expect that to go away if it ever gets really big one day.
I don’t get it. Are they afraid of possibly having a brief interaction with a neighbor?
Yes, we are.
…why though?
Reminds me of a favorite line from a song, “I don’t want you to romanticize falling the fuck apart”
Just going to stick my reply on the top comment here, but may touch on some of the lower comments to help out.
Answering yes to the question “Are they afraid of possibly having a brief interaction with a neighbor” is going to be unique to the individual. I saw some mention of anxiety disorder down there, and while that may be the case for some, I wouldn’t label myself with that and I see this as a good opportunity to caution against over generalization for these grey areas of life.
For me personally, I have a full time career that primarily involves interacting with people 95% of the time. When I get done working for the day… I’m all interacted out. So yeah I may not enter a room or exit my apartment when I know it’s going to require more social interactions. I’m just tired. It’s honestly easier for me to just wait a couple minutes so that I don’t have to restart my decompression.
This was a useful perspective for me. Thanks.
Also while I dont have social anxiety, I do have Autism and was diagnosed more specifically with Aspergers. This means that I really dont like dealing with people in general, not in an anxiety wag but in a let me do my own thing type of way.
Because then you have to make pointless small talk and pleasantries, and I need to save all of those for the boring people I don’t want to talk to at work.
Ya but, you don’t have to do that. Nobody cares if you walk by them in the apartment corridor without acknowledging them
Come to Germany. We don’t talk to each other in public. Ever.
Smalltalk with the cashier? Hell no. It’s just "Card or Cash? " “Card.” “Receipt?” “Nope. Bye.” “Bye”. Every time.
Walk past each other on a tail. Maaaaaybe it will be a “Hello”. That’s it. Every time.
It sounds like a magical land.
“sorry, I’m in a rush”
…why though?
Anxiety disorders are a group of mental disorders characterized by significant and uncontrollable feelings of anxiety and fear such that a person’s social, occupational, and personal functions are significantly impaired.
Expressing your struggles is not the same as romanticizing them. You should self interrogate why you assume they are the same
Because a lot of people I know and see are like “lol I’m a mess” without seeming to do anything to address the situation.
Though that’s aggravated by the capitalist hellscape that makes getting health care difficult.
But also I’m less generous about this because it’s frustrating to be on the receiving end of someone’s crippling anxiety.
And this comic is a cutesy, romanticized if you will, representation of it.
interrogate harder because “I feel impinged on by people with anxiety” is not it lmao
No, it’s “I don’t think you’re doing enough to deal with your problems” first.
This is a pretty common mentality we have to deal with. Someone that doesn’t have our problem, downplaying how big of a deal it is because they have never had to put much thought into it. It’s a physical difference in the structure of our brain. While we can learn ways to cope with it, we can’t ever “get over it”. We find ways to minimize triggering it, and ways to ride it out with the least amount of stress. And one of the ways that helps is sharing our struggles with the rest of our community for support, and trying not to care about outsiders shitting on us as we do so.
without seeming to do anything to address the situation.
seeming
A lot of the struggles and progress in this area isn’t going to outwardly visible unless they decide to share that with you.
I’m aware but worth pointing out. It’s easy to forget. Also to forget that our personal experience is not universal.
I had really bad anxiety in my youth. I’d get nauseous. Staying inside alone made it worse. So much worse. Taking the plunge and actually going out, talking to people, engaging, regularly, that lead to progress. Even if it meant throwing up in the bathroom sometimes. But that probably won’t work for everyone.
But I guess some part of me has a visceral reaction that’s just like “you’re making it worse! You’re just hiding from the problem and it’s never going to get better this way! Just go outside and nothing bad will happen, and you’ll stop freaking out eventually!”. But that’s not everyone.
But yes, to your point, a lot of the time it seems like they’re not even trying, and I can’t know their inner world. Sometimes they’re not, sometimes they are.
I don’t think it’s an accurate assessment to say “everyone is doing their best” though because some people certainly are not.
They likely have high anxiety, possibly an anxiety disorder. It’s just a relatable representation of that in comic form
People with anxiety are valid and deserve to have their problems taken seriously
Yes, but this situation isn’t necessarily anxiety. It can just be social awkwardness, not wanting to have to say hi, etc.
of course it’s a comic with fake characters with no objective truth to be found…
but the artist is a vocal mental health advocate
…it’s 100% about anxiety 😅
Social awkwardness can be a part of anxiety.
Did I say otherwise? I only said anxiety is not the only possible cause
Your comment, it’s probably not, it’s probably something else, really doesn’t lend itself to allowing it.
Please don’t misquote me, I said nothing of the sort.
*Isn’t necessarily means >0% chance *Probably means >50% chance
They are not the same
That’s not what they said though
They said
… this situation isn’t necessarily anxiety
“Probably not [thing]”.
That’s equivalent to “isn’t necessarily [thing]”.
No? First means less-than-50% probability of thing, second means less-than-100% probability of thing
They are and they do, but this example is extreme. Having been on both sides of this, I’d say no one should have to live their life in fear of every little interaction. It’s exhausting, and you will never succeed in getting every person to leave you alone anyway. But this doesn’t have to be “the way it is.” You can actually change and make your life easier. Sometimes it takes help and a long time, but I believe most people can do it if they really want to.
But where does the comic state or imply that living like this is healthy? The character doesn’t seem happy.
I don’t even have anxiety and I think this is relatable. It’s not even necessarily fear, but maybe not having the bandwidth to be social in that moment.
Spoons, etc
Even worse when you’re really hungry but your flatmates are hanging out in the kitchen
Just stroll out as casual as possible and act suprise when they see you. “oh shit, hey” without any clothes on. Repeat this until they relocate their usual hangout spot to another building.
E: or discover your like exhibitionism and your fear of socializing drops (but your horniness rises when you can hear them congregating)
Every fucking time I want to leave some other neighbour comes out first and I have to wait for them to clear out before I can leave.
And they are so slow! Clear the public area swiftly you inconsiderate buffoons!
Wow you hate people more than I do. Just say that.
The old people always want to talk and I’m too nice to cut them off. There is no other choice but to avoid them at all costs.
So you guys hate eachother?
It’s just normal social anxiety.
To actively avoid interacting with anyone outside of your specific social circle??? Doesn’t seem like that would be “normal”.
Come visit Finland! Then you can be the weird one 😂
There was a joke here that they were telling us to stand closer together during the height of Covid for example
well, you suffer from social anxiety, than yes, it’s normal
I suppose it depends on your definition of normal. But I specifically didn’t say it was normal for everyone, I said it was normal social anxiety. Which only affects around 10% of people. Still a pretty large number, that’s about the same as being left-handed. And yet you likely know more people that are left handed, because the odds of meeting someone with social anxiety are, of course, much lower even though just as many exist.
That would be “normal social anxiety symptoms” or even “normal for social anxiety” where normal applies to the symptom discussed. Here your use of normal supplements the “social anxiety” which I do understand is more prevalent than people would really acknowledge but isn’t exactly normal.
Even more so for zero contact, no coping mechanism social anxiety that has you saying rude things about others existing in shared physical space.Is “normal social anxiety symptoms” really meaningfully different than "“normal social anxiety”? Isn’t that implied?
It is not implied. In fact I doubt most people would consider social anxiety to be even a clinical term and it is often used a catch all for minor anxiety towards social interactions that can be difficult.
Following up someone saying they hide inside when neighbors are around and that they think they are buffoons for not moving at the speed you want because of a lack of self control with “well that’s just normal social anxiety” validates and normalizes behavior that is neither valid nor productive.
My grandmother was an English teacher and she would tell you it’s not ok to leave things implicit as you leave the comprehension to the reader when that is the purpose of you as the speaker.
Undiagnosed anxiety sufferers who think it’s normal to be terrified of human interaction downvoting you
Who is speaking in the last panel?
A Portal turret.
are you still there?
Without checking other comics in the same storyline I would have to guess roommate(I don’t know this chatacters living situation), the keyholes in some appartments are on both sides, she is inside her apartment trying to leave, and has been trying for long enough that the roommate is surprised.
Flat mate or partner or family?
For me, it’s my roommate and the never-ending rant about ‘stupid’ things going on at work.
Hm, I’m kind of in between. I do this fairly often, not wanting to go out right when someone else is there. But I don’t know why, since as far as I can tell it doesn’t make me feel anxious to run into someone like in the cartoon.
It doesn’t bother me at all to cross paths with someone and I’m fine with saying Hi or just nodding to acknowledge their presence. Rarely does anyone actually try to start a conversation or anything. If they do say anything it’s probably just a one-liner and move on. And it’s easy to tell if someone doesn’t want to nod or say Hi as you pass because they stare at the ground the whole time, and I’m fine with that too, but I don’t do that.
But now I’m wondering, so why do I tend to wait until they’re gone? Is it really social anxiety? I don’t think so? I’m a loner but I have no problem or anxiety talking to people either. 🤔
I’m usually rushing out somewhere when I leave the house and a few of my neighbors are talkers, which I normally don’t mind at all. But sometimes it makes more sense to just wait inside for a minute rather than get stuck in a 5 minute conversation.
Maybe we should seriously stop normalizing anxiety.
Yeah, just stop normalizing talking with people who don’t want to socialize.
The problem in the comic isn’t the neighbor, it is talking to the neighbor.
Just walk past without saying a word. What are they going to do? Move?
Just say “Hi !” if you’re not an asshole
Only if they say “hi” first. There’s no reason to engage if they don’t.
You are their neighbor and they are yours. Why should they say hi first and not you ?
It is normal social behavior to at least acknowledge other people
Completely depends on culture. Even in the US, I like working in the northeast because people ignore each other and it’s fantastic. In the south it actually impedes my work because it seems like everyone wants to have meaningless conversations all the time.
This is true. Denser populations tend to be more antisocial. Europe and much of the US northeast is crowded, most of the US south is not. It’s also why a lot of people from small-town US think most “city folk” are rude, and that includes many Europeans. It’s really just culture.
There is no problem in the comic. We live in a society, democracy is based on the idea that we want others to be treated fairly, we should start to act like one.
Greeting your neightbour is a good, easy, positive thing.
democracy is based on the idea that we want others to be treated fairly
I think the last few months have more than proven that is not the case.
Democracy, in its most common implementation, is based on the idea of the tyranny of the majority. This often runs counter to the concept of treating others fairly.
People who suffer anxiety are in the minority - and they are forced to navigate a world of people who expect them to conform with their social norms.
We should just live and let live.
We normalize everything now.
Yeah, that’s honestly the future of humanity at this rate.
Normalizing everything left and complaining about it not being normal enough and for it being normalized at all.
expressing struggles with a common disorder is not normalizing the disorder. this is a mean comment.
It’s not about this comic, it’s about the pervasive rappresentation of these struggles as cute quirks instead of crippling issues stemming from a dysfuntional society that needs to be changed.
That’s in a never ending amount of webcomics.
Should I also call them out as being low hanging fruits as well?
“it’s not about this comic” responds to this comic
listen i agree with some of your goals but you can understand my confusion at you using mean language under a post you deem acceptable, no?
I’m sure you will master connecting a thing to a related concept in a matter of weeks.
you made a hurtful comment. just explaining your downvotes. :)
Thanks, I’m aware of how this may sound to the people struggling in that way. I sympatize with their struggle, I’m part of it more often than not.
I’d like it to not be the case and I don’t think it’s completely healthy to celebrate it.
Leave, wave “hi” at them and continue on.
Your the guy I’m hiding from.
Never really got this myself. Maybe it’s not a rational thing since who gives a fuck?
deleted by creator
