Ah, @karaidl... He to this day is my favorite commenter of all time. I was quite heartbroken when he started nuking all his witty quips. (That is why we added a time limit on editing your own comments. Alas, it was too late to save all his gold.)

Were he still here he'd be #1 Silver Tongue like fer shur. I just hope he ended up using that big brain to do good.

Quite looking forward to the next in the series. Every time I see the word "Siftpocalypse" I get insta-anxiety. That to me is like TechCrunch to @dag methinks.

*promote

I got an anxiety attack just watching his!

I like the discussions, but don't lose your heads now.

Quentin had the same weird fit when he was interviewed on NPR. I'm sure he's got good reasons for doing the things that he does, but he always get all crazy and uncomfortable describing the reasons. I don't know, maybe he's doing drugs or deep down he knows that things are way over his head.

He's not comfortable revealing himself out in public, yet he's constantly out there revealing his private self and gets an anxiety attack each time he is asked a private question. It's Quentin's job to know his way around this charade. He's in charge of his own reigns. You can't blame every jokester out there who shoves a microphone to your face if you've agreed to be a public figure making internationally well known movies.

The interviewer is no champion of journalism, that's not his job. He's just some douche with well connected parents to have made it that far up the social ladder to have a seat on Channel4-BBC. Emotional interviews by public figures like these are amusing to watch, and that's exactly what the interviewers want. Amusement translates into ratings quite nicely.

If he's not feeling comfortable getting the same questions over and over, just prepare an answer for them that would satisfy them. Or stop revealing your real self that gets you uncomfortable in the first place. It's all games, gotta play it well.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Wil Wheaton, depression, anxiety, mental health' to 'Wil Wheaton, depression, anxiety, mental health, hank green' - edited by xxovercastxx

I think this article sums up what Penn is trying to say here:

Mentally ill doesn't equal evil

"One in five Canadians will deal with some form of mental illness in any given year in Canada. And most of these periods of suffering, whether it's a bout of acute anxiety or depression or an eating disorder, goes untreated. One in five Canadians equates to roughly 400,000 Vancouverites, or almost seven million Canadians nationally.

To think of all of these people as dangerous or homeless, or to see them as incapable of employment or a relationship, is ridiculous.

These numbers tell us that the vast majority of Canadians afflicted with a mental illness are wonderful, functioning people. They are our teachers, lawyers, waitresses, bus drivers; they are us, not "them."

My concern is how we dismantle the stigma that surrounds mental illness so the Canadians who are affected can feel no shame in getting the help they may need and deserve.

I am concerned about the layperson who reads the sensationalistic headlines after incidents such as the Connecticut shooting and then thinks of mental illness as a lifelong sentence of being feared and ostracized."

http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/story.html?id=7730704

Holy fuck.

Watching that gave me so much anxiety. If that child was a little bit lighter he would have been eagle food.

DUDE! LALALALALA I"M NOT LISTENING! You cant say that shit out loud. It gave me anxiety when i read it. Don't you know i'm fragile.

So did anyone complain about having 10 vids promoted on the front page? It certainly never bothered me.

Is this a fix for a problem that only dag and lucky had?

I'd like to hear if others were bothered by 10 or so promotes. Anybody?

As for how effective promotes are.... there was a vid in "featured" mode for ELEVEN HOURS and still hadn't gotten 10 votes.

As for wanting us to police it ourselves -- we have to click into the vid to see how long it had been there. We have to decide if 2 hours or 3 hours or 4 hours is enough. If we promote a vid, we have to worry if it will fall off in 5 minutes if someone else isn't being attentive or if it is a high traffic time and 5 people promote in quick succession.

I just don't see that the promote as it is currently designed is effective or workable or anything other than anxiety producing (for us badge whores and cheapskates who want our power points to have a return on our "investment".)

I love you guys, dag and lucky. I love the look of the site now (except PLEASE use black for text and get rid of/tone down the crosshatch background to the right -- there just isn't enough contrast. The sizing up helped, thanks for that.) I suspect that some of the design elements are necessitated by having to service mobile devices and regular computers, but I don't know enough to know if that is true or not.

Overall, the design is clean and pretty. There are pangs as certain things have gone away and some fumblings as we learn new things.

But I haven't seen a single positive comment about the way promotes are now working. As near as I can tell, there was a single goal -- keep the number down -- which is fine. I think the Sifters would be better served if:
1. the time limit was brought back
2. the promote area was treated like a pqueue, and if three were already there, no more could be added.
3. the old Promote presentation be brought back, so they looked like regular vids instead of like ads. (I did find myself squinting at them, with the eye slide that someone else commented on.)

So I asked a question way up in this post -- did anyone have a problem with 10 promoted vids on the front page? Any sifter?

Thanks for all the good work, guys. Really.

Haha, I actually tried that for a little while because yeah, it bothered me how insincere the whole thing can be and I hate doing that whole dance. Thing is if you unload fully on your partner then it puts them in an awkward postion because they feel they have to reciprocate your full disclosure when perhaps they don't trust you sufficiently. At least thats the way I see it (and its why I stopped being a dick to people who were just trying to be polite )

The worst small talk? 1st year of university. You meet a lot of new people which I was mostly fine with. What bothered me endlessly was the same few questions. Where are you from. What course are you on etc etc. Maybe its selfish of me, but first I got bored of asking them and then I got bored of answering. Eventually I started asking people what their favorite flavour of icecream was (lemon sorbet btw) just to, you know, break routine. I guess you might call it an ice(cream)breaker and tbh, it worked quite well. Oh, and if somebody answers vanilla then you need to keep that person close. They are the best kinds of people (and there aren't very many vanillas). Maybe I don't really have a problem with small talk, I just have a problem with boring small talk

Interesting to note that "How do you do?" is traditionally reciprocated with another "How do you do?". I mean, its seems totally absurd, its almost like the question is rhetorical - it certainly doesn't expect an answer. Its just a polite courtesy and to do anything but show the same courtesy back would be considered rude - how self absorbed of you to actually answer! The conversation might evem bloom into discourse on the state of the weather (the last refuge of the unimaginative .

Oh, and it kind of is stupid though SveNitoR. Don't worry, I don't consider myself stupid or somehow broken in this regard, but I really can't see how anxiety serves any purpose. Obsessing over the tiny details of a conversation only serves to make me look stiff and robotic, like some sort of psychopath trying to remember how to smile with their eyes. I've heard theories that the reason alcohol is so embedded in our society is because on some level we actually sort of need it to overcome this inhibition. Unfortunately I don't drink, although I have found a sort of vicarious empathy - I inherit the same hibition if I am with people who are a bit buzzed, just none of the memory loss (a blessing ang a curse). Anyway, thats quite tangental. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm quite comfortable being an introvert and while anxiety certainly bothers me and stresses me out more than I'd like I don't let it paralyse me.

No it's not stupid (and you are not stupid for thinking that it is stupid). Social anxiety is a spectrum, and it is a normal, healthy reaction to be careful around strangers. Most humans are especially anxious around people we know only a little, since we think the first impression is important and the relationship is fragile and new. Total strangers don't matter as much and people we know well we often trust not to judge or hurt us.

That said I do not mean to come of as condescending and to belittle your fear (I know from personal experience how crippling it can be), but rather that nothing constructive comes from judging yourself and adding self-criticism to your anxiety and shame. You can not control your emotions directly, since they are a basic, instinctual, almost immediate reaction to a perceived (potentially deadly) threat. What you can do is try to change how you react to them afterwards, what you see as a potential threat, what you assume are truths about yourself and others in social situations and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Being shy or having social anxiety is not inherently good or bad, it just is the way it is.

A lot of text to answer a few words, but it's just that I hear a lot of people call themselves stupid because they can't do what is more or less superhuman feats (in this case to directly control emotions). Try to be kind to yourself, and to forgive yourself when you fail to be kind to yourself.

Sorry if I assumed too much and interpreted what you wrote in a wrong way, since a lot of what I wrote assumes a whole bunch of stuff about you.

Personally I'm a mix depending on mood and need both social situations and solitude to recharge. I don't much like bars, but I love to be on a sparsely populated dance floor when I'm drunk enough.

Tried the mysterious enigmatic loner thing. Wasn't much fun, because everybody knows that the mysterious kid that hangs out alone is either shy and wants to hide it, or a possible serial killer waiting to happen.

Its also my dating strategy. Brood in some dark corner, look deep and thoughtful. Attract a girl that wants a puzzle project "I wonder what is under that strangers multiple shells/walls/defences". This has worked about twice in all my years.

Anywai, I have a lot of social anxiety. I really care what people I've just met and might never see again think of me. And its stupid. I actually like being with people though. I discovered this after an extended period of solitude and I went pretty stir crazy. The trouble is being with people I dont already know very well is exhausting. Maybe everybody is like that and they just do a better hiding it, but needless to say I am jealous of those that seem to be able to swan around socialising effortlessly.

ps. Does anybody actually enjoy smalltalk? I was under the impression that the whole world accepted it as some sort of necessary evil. It never occurred to me that some might actually like it. Its just probing for a commonality and once you get there its like bam, now we can start a real conversation.

Quite true, it's particularly chic for some people to go around telling everyone how much of a "Geek" they are these days, but both the video and the book it's based on (I've read it) state that nobody is 100% one or the other. There are probably lots of people out there who manage to function like an extrovert much of the time but in reality are pretty introverted in nature and maintaining that extroverted facade can be very exhausting.
I'd consider myself to be an introvert and I also suffer from social anxiety or even shyness in certain social circumstances, and I certainly don't consider myself "special", at least not in a good way.
The book does a pretty good job of not making judgements about either one being good or bad but does outline the pros and cons of each personality type.

Just fantastic. As a long-time anxiety battler, this is wonderful. Upvote!

I feel like web-communities like this one attract people with anxiety issues. It provides a safe haven to post and comment with the mask off, free from the pressures of flesh and blood interaction. But, it's a double edged sword, in that it encourages you to further isolate yourself from the real world, which can make things more difficult.

Thanks buddy!
In reply to this comment by Lann:
*quality