What We’re Really Doing When We Socialize

He began by talking about a post that had recently gone viral online — its title was provocative: “Ten Online Hookup Havens Every Loser Must Know.”

He chuckled when he said it. His own platform, Zhihu, had somehow made the list. Friends had tagged him all over the place — “Hey, Jixin, look, Zhihu got shot!”

He went to check, expecting something unpleasant, but ended up feeling oddly pleased. The description of Zhihu read: “The platform where women are most likely to meet China’s most educated and cultured elites.” He laughed and called his colleague to confirm they hadn’t paid for the article. They hadn’t. “Perfect,” he said. “This kind of ignorant praise — we need more of it.”

But that wasn’t really the point. What amused him more was how familiar the other names on that list were. Every site people used every day — Weibo, Douban, WeChat — all supposedly “hookup havens.” It made him think: were these really about dating? Were we truly using them to “make friends”? Or was something else happening under the surface?

Before answering that, he brought up a question he often got from young men:

“How do I make a girl like me?”

He always laughed at that one. “I can’t teach you how to make someone like you,” he’d say. “But I can tell you what kind of person women tend to feel good around.”

Then he turned to the audience — and to the women there — saying that most would probably agree that many men just seem awkward. The main reason, he said, was simple: they didn’t know how to give compliments.

He asked for a small survey. “Raise your hand if, in the past year, you’ve said even one of these simple things to a woman who wasn’t your girlfriend — ‘You look nice today,’ or ‘That color suits you,’ or something like that.’”

A few hands went up. “Good,” he said, smiling. “You’ve preserved the last sparks of civilization.”

He wasn’t mocking them. He knew why it was hard. Chinese culture, he said, had always valued restraint and understatement. Combine that with the poor quality of emotional and aesthetic education most boys received, and it was no wonder that few of them learned how to genuinely appreciate or acknowledge women.

“I’m not teaching you how to flirt,” he added quickly. “In fact, I hate that phrase — ‘picking up girls.’ It turns women into objects. What I’m really saying is that we’ve forgotten how to recognize and express admiration — for anyone.”

Then he looped back to his central question: Why do we socialize at all?

We post photos, share our thoughts, write little essays online — but for what? What do we hope to gain from all these connections, old and new?

His answer was straightforward: it’s the same impulse behind complimenting someone. “Everyone,” he said, “wants recognition.” We crave acknowledgment, appreciation, proof that we’re seen and valued. When we make friends, that’s what we’re truly searching for. We gravitate toward people we admire — and those who stay in our lives long-term are, without exception, those who recognize something in us too.

That desire for recognition isn’t modern. It’s ancient.

He traced it back to our ancestors — social creatures living in small tribes, terrified of being ignored or forgotten. To be abandoned by the group meant exposure, danger, and hunger. “If your tribe left you behind,” he said, “you’d be more likely to die from predators, or starve, or fail to reproduce.”

He showed a picture of a monkey — isolated from its group. “Monkeys,” he said, “are our closest relatives. This one has been ostracized by its troop. Being excluded means even its most basic goal — passing on its genes — might fail.” Loneliness, he said, was once literally deadly.

Then he moved to a more familiar image — a screenshot of WeChat. “No one understood this better than Zhang Xiaolong,” he said, referring to the app’s creator. “He built WeChat around that primal fear of loneliness.”

Recognition, he said again, was the true engine of all social behavior.

Every click, every share, every post — conscious or not — was an act of seeking acknowledgment.

He gave more examples. Why did girls post eight pictures at once? Because they wanted to be seen — from every angle, in every version of themselves. “We want others to notice our charm,” he said. Boys were no different. Dating apps like Momo weren’t about lust alone; they were about being seen, being validated. “Before Momo,” he said, “no one could imagine how many handsome men or beautiful women lived nearby.”

Even seemingly trivial online behaviors, like “threading” comments on news sites or forums — those endless chains of replies — were the same thing. “Why go to the seventeenth floor of a comment section just to leave a single emoji?” he asked. “Because you want to feel part of the crowd. You want to see yourself among them and think, I belong here.”

He mentioned another phenomenon — people submitting their photos to “Liu Jishou,” a Weibo account famous for mocking users’ selfies. “It looks like self-sabotage,” he said. “But really, it’s still a cry for recognition. You’d rather be insulted than ignored. You don’t want to vanish into four hundred million anonymous accounts.”

He paused before saying he disliked the phrase “attention-seeker.” It was meant as an insult, but even those who used it were, in a way, seeking attention themselves. “The ones who shout ‘show-off’ the loudest,” he said, “are often doing the same thing.”

In the end, the social internet, he explained, was built entirely around two functions: first, giving you more chances to be recognized; and second, making it easier for others to recognize you.

He gave an old-school example: QQ’s “sun badges.” To earn two suns and three moons, a user had to stay logged in for over 2,000 days — nearly six years. “Crazy, right?” he smiled. “But that little sun next to your name makes you stand out in your friends list. It tells everyone: I’m different.”

Then came Weibo. Before social media, expressing yourself publicly was hard. “Writing well is hard,” he said. “But Weibo made it easy. One hundred and forty characters — the length of a text message. Anyone can do that.”

It wasn’t about the content — current affairs, feelings, pet photos — it was about being seen.

Instagram worked the same way. Taking good photos was difficult, he said. But filters made anyone look like a professional. “It’s a beautiful trick — an illusion of mastery. It lets you present your world attractively, and others recognize you for it.”

Even the simplest feature — the “like” button — was revolutionary. “Facebook invented it,” he said, “and it changed everything.” Before that, reacting to a post required thought, time, words. “Language is limited,” he said. “We can’t always find new ways to say, ‘Nice post!’ or ‘That’s great.’ So Facebook said: forget words. Just click once.”

Likes, retweets, shares, matches — they were all the same thing: easy ways to give and receive acknowledgment. The barriers kept getting lower. And every reduction fed the same ancient hunger.He began by talking about a post that had recently gone viral online — its title was provocative: “Ten Online Hookup Havens Every Loser Must Know.”

He chuckled when he said it. His own platform, Zhihu, had somehow made the list. Friends had tagged him all over the place — “Hey, Jixin, look, Zhihu got shot!”

He went to check, expecting something unpleasant, but ended up feeling oddly pleased. The description of Zhihu read: “The platform where women are most likely to meet China’s most educated and cultured elites.” He laughed and called his colleague to confirm they hadn’t paid for the article. They hadn’t. “Perfect,” he said. “This kind of ignorant praise — we need more of it.”

But that wasn’t really the point. What amused him more was how familiar the other names on that list were. Every site people used every day — Weibo, Douban, WeChat — all supposedly “hookup havens.” It made him think: were these really about dating? Were we truly using them to “make friends”? Or was something else happening under the surface?

Before answering that, he brought up a question he often got from young men:

“How do I make a girl like me?”

He always laughed at that one. “I can’t teach you how to make someone like you,” he’d say. “But I can tell you what kind of person women tend to feel good around.”

Then he turned to the audience — and to the women there — saying that most would probably agree that many men just seem awkward. The main reason, he said, was simple: they didn’t know how to give compliments.

He asked for a small survey. “Raise your hand if, in the past year, you’ve said even one of these simple things to a woman who wasn’t your girlfriend — ‘You look nice today,’ or ‘That color suits you,’ or something like that.’”

A few hands went up. “Good,” he said, smiling. “You’ve preserved the last sparks of civilization.”

He wasn’t mocking them. He knew why it was hard. Chinese culture, he said, had always valued restraint and understatement. Combine that with the poor quality of emotional and aesthetic education most boys received, and it was no wonder that few of them learned how to genuinely appreciate or acknowledge women.

“I’m not teaching you how to flirt,” he added quickly. “In fact, I hate that phrase — ‘picking up girls.’ It turns women into objects. What I’m really saying is that we’ve forgotten how to recognize and express admiration — for anyone.”

Then he looped back to his central question: Why do we socialize at all?

We post photos, share our thoughts, write little essays online — but for what? What do we hope to gain from all these connections, old and new?

His answer was straightforward: it’s the same impulse behind complimenting someone. “Everyone,” he said, “wants recognition.” We crave acknowledgment, appreciation, proof that we’re seen and valued. When we make friends, that’s what we’re truly searching for. We gravitate toward people we admire — and those who stay in our lives long-term are, without exception, those who recognize something in us too.

That desire for recognition isn’t modern. It’s ancient.

He traced it back to our ancestors — social creatures living in small tribes, terrified of being ignored or forgotten. To be abandoned by the group meant exposure, danger, and hunger. “If your tribe left you behind,” he said, “you’d be more likely to die from predators, or starve, or fail to reproduce.”

He showed a picture of a monkey — isolated from its group. “Monkeys,” he said, “are our closest relatives. This one has been ostracized by its troop. Being excluded means even its most basic goal — passing on its genes — might fail.” Loneliness, he said, was once literally deadly.

Then he moved to a more familiar image — a screenshot of WeChat. “No one understood this better than Zhang Xiaolong,” he said, referring to the app’s creator. “He built WeChat around that primal fear of loneliness.”

Recognition, he said again, was the true engine of all social behavior.

Every click, every share, every post — conscious or not — was an act of seeking acknowledgment.

He gave more examples. Why did girls post eight pictures at once? Because they wanted to be seen — from every angle, in every version of themselves. “We want others to notice our charm,” he said. Boys were no different. Dating apps like Momo weren’t about lust alone; they were about being seen, being validated. “Before Momo,” he said, “no one could imagine how many handsome men or beautiful women lived nearby.”

Even seemingly trivial online behaviors, like “threading” comments on news sites or forums — those endless chains of replies — were the same thing. “Why go to the seventeenth floor of a comment section just to leave a single emoji?” he asked. “Because you want to feel part of the crowd. You want to see yourself among them and think, I belong here.”

He mentioned another phenomenon — people submitting their photos to “Liu Jishou,” a Weibo account famous for mocking users’ selfies. “It looks like self-sabotage,” he said. “But really, it’s still a cry for recognition. You’d rather be insulted than ignored. You don’t want to vanish into four hundred million anonymous accounts.”

He paused before saying he disliked the phrase “attention-seeker.” It was meant as an insult, but even those who used it were, in a way, seeking attention themselves. “The ones who shout ‘show-off’ the loudest,” he said, “are often doing the same thing.”

In the end, the social internet, he explained, was built entirely around two functions: first, giving you more chances to be recognized; and second, making it easier for others to recognize you.

He gave an old-school example: QQ’s “sun badges.” To earn two suns and three moons, a user had to stay logged in for over 2,000 days — nearly six years. “Crazy, right?” he smiled. “But that little sun next to your name makes you stand out in your friends list. It tells everyone: I’m different.”

Then came Weibo. Before social media, expressing yourself publicly was hard. “Writing well is hard,” he said. “But Weibo made it easy. One hundred and forty characters — the length of a text message. Anyone can do that.”

It wasn’t about the content — current affairs, feelings, pet photos — it was about being seen.

Instagram worked the same way. Taking good photos was difficult, he said. But filters made anyone look like a professional. “It’s a beautiful trick — an illusion of mastery. It lets you present your world attractively, and others recognize you for it.”

Even the simplest feature — the “like” button — was revolutionary. “Facebook invented it,” he said, “and it changed everything.” Before that, reacting to a post required thought, time, words. “Language is limited,” he said. “We can’t always find new ways to say, ‘Nice post!’ or ‘That’s great.’ So Facebook said: forget words. Just click once.”

Likes, retweets, shares, matches — they were all the same thing: easy ways to give and receive acknowledgment. The barriers kept getting lower. And every reduction fed the same ancient hunger.