u/drunksocks

hello, I've been building an app where conversations start with open-ended questions. there are different archetypes of question-makers, one of them says things like: every spaceship is a prop trying to outrun its own cue. It's a social app with no feeds.

Questions don't come out of nowhere, they're based on the mix of your interests and those of others at a chat table. Come have a look: Pollen

In art, framing is not only about enclosing an object. It changes the conditions under which something becomes visible.

I've been thinking about whether questions can operate similarly.

A question does not solely request an answer; it establishes a field of attention. It highlights certain relations, excludes others, and can make something previously unnoticed become perceptible.

In that sense, I think some questions are closer to artistic gestures than to information requests.

A question like:

"What would a city look like if designed around memory rather than movement?"

is not really asking for a factual answer. It creates a temporary perspective from which the world can be reimagined.

I'm interested in whether this analogy has any resonance in art theory: are there examples of artworks where the central "material" is not an object or image, but a question, instruction, or conceptual frame?

(I've been exploring this idea through 🟡Pollen , a social network built around conversations that begin with questions generated from the combination of people's interests.)

Artwork by Michael Cheval

What's a good way to get closer to another person's experience? I've been thinking of questions as vehicles for connecting us to others, but also as a way to facilitate experiences of serendipity.

Many interesting ideas happen by crossing boundaries where we face different “languages” or concepts that expand our reality-decoding toolkit.

I've been thinking about serendipity and wanted to know about others' experiences with it, or if there's any good research you stumbled upon. I've read Pek van Andel's work, however, he doesn't come from phenomenology.

Someone who's into botany, someone who studies the mind, and someone who studies society will encounter the same thing and notice completely different things. But what kind of space or question can put those worlds into productive contact and exchange?

Not all questions are created equal, I believe some questions are better at eliciting good exchanges, so I've been in the search of questions that open these kinds of doors, and putting them together in a social project.

Instead of matching people by profiles, conversations begin with questions generated from the mix of interests in the room. If this kind of encounter interests you, I'd love to have people from this community try it.

What question would you ask someone if you wanted to understand their experience of reality?

What kind of question could make strangers feel comfortable to skip the surface, and talk about something that creates a nicer memory of having met someone?

I've been thinking about this, I believe there are questions that achieve it, allow for self exploration, and even feed curiosity.

So I'm working on a project to connect people this way, through questions that start good conversations.

What's a question you've been asked that you wish was the first thing you talked about with someone you appreciate?

This is where my project lives: Pollen

I have always known it in my heart.

But I find it relieving that it is now public knowledge.

My hypothesis: Cats are actually guardians of curiosity.

Evidence in favor: these cats traveling the world carrying surprise questions to their destinies, no cat has ever died upon opening.

Evidence against: there never will be!

If you have never received a visit, maybe soon you will!

A recent post about Jung in his infancy pointed at the loneliness in his eyes. And although I agree he didn't show a particularly pleased face in the Pic, it is not true that he was lonely.

Carl Jung's total written correspondence is massive, with ETH Zurich University Archives cataloging data on over 32,000 letters to and from him. The exact number of letters he personally sent is unknown, editors selected over 1,000 from an estimated 1,600 surviving letters he wrote between 1906 and 1961 to compile his published collections.

The C.G. Jung Letters: This two-volume set published by Princeton University Press contains 935 selected letters written between 1906 and 1961 to people like Freud, James Joyce, and Erich Neumann.

Look, for example at this fragment of a Letter he sent to Joyce:

" I must tell you that I’m profoundly grateful to yourself as well as to gigantic opus because I learned a great deal from it. I shall probably never be quite sure whether I did enjoy it, because it meant too much grinding of nerves and of grey matter. I also don’t know whether you will enjoy what I have written about Ulysses because I couldn’t help telling the world how much I was bored, how I grumbled, how I cursed and how I admired."

To Karl Kerényi:

"Dear Colleague,

10 March 1941

Many thanks for kindly sending me your Labyrinth book, which I found extraordinarily interesting. The labyrinth is indeed a primordial image which one encounters in psychology mostly in the form of the fantasy of a descent to the underworld. "

And to Hermann Hesse:

"Dear Herr Hesse,

19 August 1950

Among the many messages and signs my 75th birthday brought me, it was your greeting that surprised and delighted me most. "

---

These letters are a testament that he had intellectual company.

His perspective was certainly unique, but it wasn't built in isolation from contemporary thinkers.

He nurtured others and refined his own ideas through what others had sent him. He had his brain tickled by his contemporaries.

Connection is possible even when you see things differently.

Saying repeatedly that you feel lonely is not, the road to feel connected. In fact, today we have evidence for this.

Jung had a lot of people to communicate his ideas and inspired writers such as Herman Hesse. If he really felt lonely it's because he wasn't aware of his own impact. But I believe at some point he came to be. Especially in his later years.

Jung celebrated both his 75th and 85th birthday under a massive avalanche of global congratulations from the world's intellectuals, and he spent months personally replying to many of them.

Having a different world view can be costly but it also has high rewards, sometimes they're obvious, sometimes you have to look carefully, but they're there.

I bet on connection, especially connection that emerges through curiosity.

My bet is live on this app I am building, it's called Pollen and it aims to connect people through curiosity. You can meet strangers around ideas in a fun and relaxed way, starting from what you're interested in, whatever it might be.

Hello! This is Pollen. An app for temporary conversations based on what you're interested in or curious about.

Each time you join a chat table, an AI host poses a question for the people involved based on what everyone at the table is interested in.

You can add your own interests, being interested in cheese design is valid.

The chats are temporary, there are short and long tables.

There is also an endless forest where you can drop your pollen and if someone finds it, they can message you :)

🟡 Pollen

I've been working on a platform called Pollen that generates conversation starters by combining people's interests. Each chat table starts with a unique question. The screenshots are a couple of examples.

The types of questions it generates are like interdisciplinary invitations. People are not matched by shared hobbies or geographical proximity, and it doesn't include likes, upvotes, or followers.

The goal is to create conditions for conversation across difference, for each person to participate in an open and relaxed way, but importantly, conditions that enable the emergence of connection. The kind that happens when people have conversations that are good, fun, or worth remembering. We are currently surrounded by connectivity, but connection can be rare. There's even a term circulating for this problem, in case you haven't heard: epistemic loneliness.

The process demanded wrestling with the very question of "What makes a good question?" And for a platform like this, a good question is minimally one that enables participation.

Early testing showed that different types of questions were necessary, (the screens show 2 different types).

But it also became clear that curiosity is expansive. People can be curious about anything and everything!

Now however, I'm curious about how people in digital humanities think about this. Can a digital tool foster connection without turning it into something extractive? And what would you want to see/not see in a platform like this? Any type of feedback or comment is welcome.

I come from anthropology, I'm interested in cognitive science and ux research.

Here's a link to Pollen

Hello! Glad to be here to talk about interfaces, interaction and connection.
I made a platform that instead of matching you through pictures or proximity Aims to create connection based on interests, BUT hear me out, people are not paired on whether they have an interest about the same thing. Much less a shared interest in "craft beer".

Having created a profile where they state their interests or areas of curiosity, upon joining a chat table, they get a question exclusively posed based on everyone's interests. There, a temporary conversation starts and if people 'vibe' they can befriend others. There are longer format tables where people can respond through the day or so across timezones.

Questions come in different flavor formats which enable different conversational moods.

I started this because I noticed often people, adults, have problems finding others to talk about the things they're into, experience epistemic loneliness for whatever reason, or simply want better conversations that enable exploration with others through a wide range of topics.

Of course, good conversations can happen anywhere, but that doesn't mean they will or that they're not overruled by performative aspects, such as talking to an audience on reddit for the sake of votes and have it evaluated by how much of those it gets.

What do you think? Would you use such an app? What platform do you think currently is at the forefront in housing or enabling actual connection?

I come from anthropology and cognitive science is a strong interest of mine

The platform: Pollen

According to some of the posts I've seen here, I think this is a thing. In case you haven't heard of the term:

Epistemic loneliness is a distinct cognitive form of isolation that occurs when you are profoundly unable to share, explore, or mutually develop complex ideas with others, even when you possess the requisite communication skills.

I've experienced this and also know people who have.

Maybe social difficulties are more of an environment thing rather than a personality trait, day by day I lean more into the environment hypothesis.

Sure some people could use a boost in their social awareness or confidence, but it takes time especially if you're stuck in an evironment that feels unstimulating or draining, or if you feel alone in how you see the world.

Also of course, people waste a lot of time in small talk missing opportunities for connection based on the things that make life a strange and precious adventure.

Following the environment hypothesis I think this demands an architectural solution rather than addressing the problem psychologically or individually.

So I came up with an architecture for good conversations based on interests (you'd say this is very intj?).

The strucrtural answer I reached is Pollen. People's topics of interest are taken, then, a question that connects them is posed to start a temporary group conversation.

So what do you think, through your life have there been environments that made you feel comfortable, like people cared to get into topics that were interesting to you and moved away from small talk?

What made them work? What was missing?

It happens to me. Even if I'm related to academia. Epistemic loneliness they call it:

Epistemic loneliness is a distinct cognitive form of isolation that occurs when you are profoundly unable to share, explore, or mutually develop complex ideas with others, even when you possess the requisite communication skills.

I'm also geographically isolated, so finding people to talk about things with in a relaxed way becomes trickier.

But I have the hypothesis that good connections can happen easily given the right architecture, so I constructed one. It became this thing called Pollen that works like an Omegle for curious people who want to have interesting conversations in a cozy setting.

You enter a chat table and a question is generated from participants' interests, as a conversation starter. Where you can add whatever custom interests you have. Here's the link if you want to give it a try, 🟡 Pollen or leave a note in the forest 👀🌲

What do you think? Have you experienced epistemic loneliness? Has the podcast made you feel more connected?

#Hello, I've built Pollen a space for people to talk to about the stuff they're interested in.

After a relationship with someone who was surprised at the quality of conversations we had, and the absence afterwards, I realized we couldn't be the only ones with this problem.

So I started thinking of a solution and Pollen came up. Reading comments of a podcast, I noticed others had this problem. 80 people agreed on this:

"I have no one to talk to about these things" 

and

"As someone with a broad range of interests and curiosity, I want nothing more than to share something cool I learned and have someone do the same to me..."

Pollen is for these people. And for anyone who wants to have good and fun conversations.

Idk if magic happens, or whether people want to come back.

It's free. I have some monetization plans but I want to see people using it first.

I'm not a developer. But this is a solution for people who want to connect through curiosity in a more intimate way.

I believe curiosity based conversations are among the best things we have as a species. Curiosity is sacred.

I'd love for you to try it and tell me what you think ...good, bad, and ugly. I want to get it right.

If you have a friend who could like this, tell them!

And tell all your friends with the right amount of weird !

➡️POLLEN

What's one thing you find positive and one thing you'd suggest improvement?