Everyone is Talking and No One is Listening

When was the last time someone listened to you? I mean really listened, in a way that made you feel understood and valued. When you could say "I feel heard" and really mean it?

If you're as online as I am, you might have said "I feel seen." A funny phrase, "I feel seen." It says more about where we are as humans than almost anything else. We see each other all the time, everywhere and anywhere. We see more of each other than we've ever seen before, even people who feel invisible in their daily lives. We're posting online, sharing videos and selfies, faving and sharing and doing god knows what else. Everyday when I go outside I wonder how many photos and videos I'm in without even knowing it, walking through tourists' memories or making an awful face in the background of a teenager's OOTD update.

When I go online and see all of us, I see something else too. I see endless streams of comments. I see post after post on Bluesky, often with tens or even hundreds of responses, many of them unacknowledged. Zero response. I see people fighting, arguing, spamming. I see a lot of people talking, not a lot of people listening.

Of course, it's not all bad. Sometimes – occasionally! – I see conversations in which people offer advice or a useful perspective, come to a deeper understanding, maybe even apologize for misreading or assuming bad intent. There are pockets of absolute delight out there too, in which someone gets a question answered or a fossil identified, or they get help and support when a pet is sick and there's no emergency vet for miles. And I see comments like "this subreddit is so nice, it's such a haven on the Internet" or "this conversation gives me hope for humanity."

Social media, which is what a lot of us use to connect with each other, wasn't designed for listening. Even chat rooms and private spaces like Discord or Slack weren't designed for listening. They're built for chatting, texting, talking, whatever. Sometimes I wonder how much all these tools have influenced us by encouraging us to talk and talk and talk, while making it harder to hear anything.

Listening tends to be much harder than talking, even when technology isn't getting in the way. If you know me in person, then you know how funny it is that I'm saying this. I am the world's chattiest person and my nervous tic is: When I realize I am talking too much, I get nervous and talk more. Because I talk so much, I have worked very hard over the years to get better at listening and at truly hearing someone, which is even harder. I do it because I don't want to be a total asshole, but also because I know how incredible it feels when someone listens and gets me. I also know how bad it feels when I put something out there and know no one is listening.

In April, I wrote about the way being online can make us so angry. If you want to know the truth, I wrote it because this year I've felt angrier online than ever. Multiple times this year, someone has said something online that has set me off so intensely my blood pressure would skyrocket. Literally: I have a blood pressure monitor and used it whenever this happened. In each of these instances, I'd inevitably respond to the person and either have an all-out spat or a conversation that ended with me befriending them. When I told a friend about this, he said, "It’s to your credit that you take each individual you interact with online so seriously, but it’s so hard to do that and not lose your mind!" It is not sustainable, nor is it scalable.

You'd think that as someone who lives in New York City, I would be better at this. I do not leave the house and engage with every single person on the street. I do engage with almost anyone who interacts with me, even if only to acknowledge them. (There are exceptions, because I am not totally foolish. Sometimes you know when to not engage.) When I think about how many people feel invisible or unimportant, I think about how acknowledgement or a small act of kindness can change the trajectory of someone's day, so I try to put that energy out into the world. It's hard. And if it's hard in New York, it's impossible on the Internet, where the number of unacknowledged, unseen, unheard responses or posts or comments or photos is unfathomable. Everyday that number grows higher.

But now there's a tool that seems to give us its undivided attention. It focuses on you, and only you, offering to help, for free and without limit. It asks you if you want to keep sharing. When was the last time another person gave you that gift?

We're all so worried about people using ChatGPT for advice and even for therapy, but it shouldn't surprise us. Sure, I wrote about this two weeks ago. Then I had lunch with a dear friend I hadn't seen in a long time, and as we were talking I realized I'd missed something vital. We've spent all these years online sharing into the void, waiting for people to respond. Even in private spaces like Snapchat stories or text, there's no guarantee someone will get back to you, let alone tell you what you need to hear. We're so overloaded with messages, content, and information that it's hard to pay attention to the important stuff, but all this connection hasn't lessened our need or desire to connect more deeply. In other words, it's almost as if we've been primed.

When I was doing my dissertation research 15+ years ago, I spent a lot of time in medical offices interviewing doctors and staff. One day I walked into an office and one of the doctors shouted, "The therapist is here!" Later another told me, "You're the only person who listens to me when I talk about my work. My patients don't listen, my assistants don't listen, my family and friends definitely don't want to listen." That was the moment I realized how much people are willing to share when you let them know you are willing to listen. I don't think this realization is going to escape Sam Altman's notice.

I don't think this was the intention of tools like ChatGPT. Last week I told you most tech "gurus" don't have some big evil overlord strategy, or much of a strategy at all. So I don't think ChatGPT was built to gather more of our information than we've ever dreamed of sharing. But even if many tech leaders might not recognize a strategy even if ChatGPT gave them one, they do know a goldmine when they see it. This is one reason it all feels like a trap to me.* We know what happened with social media, which was built by the same guys, or at least guys grown in the same hothouse. How could anyone think this will be any different? Before you say "people know that already, they're wary of it and know it's bullshit," you need to listen more. People don't know. Or if they do know, what alternatives do they really have? In a world in which we find it challenging to focus on any one thing, how equally challenging is it to find another person who can focus on us and our needs? Our attention is so fragmented and fractured that sometimes it's hard to give anything our full attention, least of all each other.

I know a lot of people think the old Internet was great because of the technology, or that computers used to be better and more fun. My mind doesn't go there. I think about how it was smaller and less overwhelming. I think about how it felt to join a chat room and feel less lonely and overwhelmed for a time. There was space and time to connect, to talk, and to listen. This feeling didn't entirely disappear after the '90s, or after I stopped using chat rooms. I still felt that sometimes on Flickr, Twitter, Reddit, even on Substack. As the Internet has grown, the feeling has dwindled. The technology we use, as fun and connective as it can be, isn't built for meaningful human connection. Technology can facilitate connection, but that part is ultimately powered by humans. I worry what ChatGPT will do to it.

What I want to do is figure out how we can reclaim this. Maybe even claim it for the first time. Have we ever been good at giving people the attention they need, or at listening to them and hearing them out? Was there a time in history when we excelled at this? Maybe we were better than we are now. I don't know. As soon as reclaim our attention, we might want to figure it out.

Until next Wednesday.

Lx

*There's another reason ChatGPT feels like a trap, which the friend I lunched with today explained to me. He's going to write about this, because it's extremely important and terrifying, and I will share it when he does. If he does not write it, I will publicly shame him until he does.