u/drunksocks

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?