Musical Interlude: The Police - So Lonely & Facebook precaution

Here's one to give your self-imposed loneliness a catchy feel to it.
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To ramp up your loneliness quotient, consider modern day communications as a potential mood inducer. In the post-post-Industrial world, most human interaction is now done online via sites like Facebook, Hyves and Twitter (TM). Farming is now enjoyed with electronic coins and push-button animatronics, with a virtual free economy and false ego inflation by meaningless awards mixed in with the most personal of announcements.

In addition to providing 'meaning' the 21st century life, it appears that social media is now possibly helping people get out of desperate situations. Getting depressed and heart- (and head) broken humans to turn their lives around with the aid of others. Thus, if you are on the long-term end of sadness exploration and wish to continue along the tear-strewn path, you may want to avoid expressing anything but a cover story to all friends and colleagues.

A more elite scheme (for both online and offline conversations) would be to avoid really saying anything to anybody & keeping as much bottled up inside. Never reveal your true feelings to anyone; if for some strange reason you've become happy, pretend to be sad. From your root mood of sadness - lie and say you're alright, chose a random mood for when you feel neutral. If simply excluding your regular associates from real communication doesn't work, make yourself see & ruminate on how often and 'well' other people stay in touch.

Whatever you do, don't write on face book that you're in trouble. That just gives do-good busy-bodies like the woman described below more opportunity to feel good about themselves. To ruin one's own sadness attempt and also provide another with happiness is not a recipe for success in the exclusive school of sadness studies.

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Stu Bykofsky: Can Facebook help save lives?
Stu Bykofsky - Philadelphia Daily News
Daily News Columnist
May 13th, 2010

HOW FAR would you go to save someone's life? How hard would you push?

Jennifer Domal did what her Christian faith called upon her to do, even though the person was a stranger, no more than a name on Facebook.

Some people reveal the most intimate details of their lives on Facebook, maybe more than they should, out of loneliness or fear or ego or other urges I can't imagine.
Article Continues

Loneliness Makes You Cold

"When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets (slightly above 0 degress Kelvin? -ed). It is an air in which men perish utterly." - Hilaire Belloc

A (relatively) new article in Psychological Science reports that when thinking about a situation where you were socially excluded, it makes you estimate the room temperature as colder.
A second study excluded or included participants in a computer ball-tossing game. When excluded, participants preferred hot drinks and food over cold, suggesting a need to "warm up".

Reversely the authors speculate that cooler temperatures could make you feel sadder, lonelier and socially excluded (a valid assumption but pure speculation nonetheless as this bidirectionality was not explored).

An interesting side note was the surprisingly large variaton in estimated room temperature (from 12C to 40C). Another indication that context and other subjective factors steer perception of reality more than factual conditions (bringing us to the question of the existence of factual conditions itself).

Additionally, this reasearch could potentionally shed light on seasonal disorder as partly caused by variations in temperature. Makes me wonder if dressing warmly could help shield you from depression.





Useful Materials:
-Ice cream
-Snow
-Cold pizza
-Siberia
-Documentaries on North Pole
-Winter rain
-Ice baths
-Dog sled expeditions

Topic Tip:
Turning down the heat in your home will result in stronger feelings of sadness, loneliness and social exclusion. We'd suggest you open all windows, take a shower but don't dry off. Subsequently pull out some Ben and Jerry's (preferably their depressingly fitting "Socialice") and start reading "The Terror"*.

* An all time favorite historic fiction on two ships stuck in the ice somewhere in north-east Canada while supplies run out. While the crew fights for survival The Cold starts creeping into every aspect of their lives. I constantly kept upping the thermostat while reading.

Lnk: Article by Zhong & Leonardelli in Psych. Science
Lnk: Book "The Terror"
Lnk: Movie: "The Frozen Dead"
Lnk: Depressed Hamsters Shed Light on Seasonal Disorder

-Matthijs