The New Yorker:

How to survive when provocations are a natural—and inescapable—part of life.

By Joshua Rothman

Along with three quarters of a million other people, I’m a member of r/AmIOverreacting, a forum on Reddit devoted to the problem of potentially freaking out too much. It’s a thriving community that’s full of surprises. Recently, a woman posted a screenshot of a text-message exchange with her boyfriend in which he appeared to be accusing her of sabotaging the mayonnaise in their refrigerator. “Funny how all the Hellman’s is liquid,” he writes. “Ideas?” When she expresses confusion about what, exactly, he’s implying, he clarifies, “Thus far you haven’t been able to poison me.” Is she overreacting to this bizarre conversation? The consensus, across nine thousand responses, is that she is “nor”—not overreacting. “This guy is so obviously unstable,” one poster replies. “You need to get as far away from this dude as possible.”

I haven’t done a quantitative study, but my sense is that the members of r/AmIOverReacting rarely conclude that their fellows have overreacted. Maybe they’re all following the lead of an overreactive age, in which everyone can seem to be on a hair trigger about what everyone else does or says. My own intuition, though, is that the opposite is true. If anything, r/AmIOverreacting is a kind of reactivity buffer zone—a place where reactions can be mediated, and so slowed down. In that sense, it’s part of a larger, society-wide effort. In an increasingly provocative world, many of us seek to manage our emotions. Bros immerse themselves in Stoic philosophy; parents-to-be take mindfulness classes. Online life offers both a forum for our reactions and a way of channelling them. If somebody does something crazy in real life—maybe it’s a rude customer, or a “Karen” from the homeowners’ association—you can pull out your phone and coolly record the exchange, then upload it so that others can react in your stead. Reaction is postponed; restraint in the moment is rewarded with likes later on.

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