Hi everyone! Thank you so much for your appreciation for the site (except that one guy who hated it). Pretty awesome to see this little side project make it to the front page on here.
I'm working on a new project called Feel (https://www.feelapp.io) which is an app that helps you feel all emotions on demand. It goes beyond just crying and helps you navigate and shift your mood in real time. It can make you cry too though. Or feel joy, awe, confidence, serenity, or even process difficult emotions like anger or fear when you need to.
This isn't an ad or shameless plug I promise - I'm actually looking for a creative developer to join the team and help us take it to the next level. Please reach out if this resonates with you or share with your creative coder friends: johnny@feelapp.io
Not gonna lie, this whole "Feel - Emotions on Demand" thing sounds like a slightly dystopian scifi concept. Maybe like a Black Mirror -style parody of how even emotions can be manufactured nowadays.
I get that reaction and see how it could sound a bit Black Mirror ish. It's literally just art and curated audiovisual experiences designed to help you feel and process your emotions though.
We’re already living in a scifi dystopia where our emotions are constantly being manipulated by social media, algorithms, ads, etc. Feel is an attempt to offer an intentional alternative. It's not about manufacturing emotions. It's about moving through them more consciously with greater awareness and emotional intelligence.
I appreciate the comparison and feedback though. I welcome it all.
Not a psychologist, but I have doubts that this is a more conscious and aware way of going through emotions. If you're so stressed about something that it makes you cry, this is a signal that there is something wrong that you need to change or takle/face in some way. If you're inducing cry once a week to relieve your stress, you're instead trying to silence the signal telling that something might be wrong. Like taking a painkiller after breaking a bone, but without taking care of the fracture that is causing the pain.
Thanks for your feedback. I'm not a psychologist either but we have top psychologists and neuroscientists on the team and the project is grounded in leading psychological and scientific research. cryonceaweek.com was actually inspired by a Japanese research project that found crying can relieve stress for up to a week.
I would argue that releasing your emotions isn't comparable to taking a painkiller. A painkiller numbs the problem. Letting yourself cry and feel and release your emotions brings them to the surface. I've actually received a lot of responses from people who have told me the site has helped them confront emotional issues they have been avoiding or unable to face.
The app goes a lot deeper than you're describing by helping you understand what you're feeling and identify/label your emotions, receive insights on why you're feeling something by identifying triggers and patterns, and then helping you shift your mood when you need to. It could maybe be considered a painkiller in the moment, but it's also a vitamin that improves your well-being and emotional intelligence over time.
There was actually a new study that came out recently called The Big Joy Project that found that just a few minutes per day of intentional emotional shifts can improve your well-being in a week.
It's super important to me that the project so grounded in sound research so this is a big focus of ours. Appreciate you sharing your perspective and feedback.
Thanks for your reply. I indeed missed tha part that helps identifying emotions and their root cause, that's a crucial functionality that significantly changes the picture.
Of course, but a lot of therapy in North America nowadays becomes needed not because the patient can change fundamentals variables in their life (job, family situation), but as a coping mechanism for these variables being out of wack with no discernible path to change.
Its far from ideal and indeed borderline dystopian, but to borrow your metaphor, it's the difference between a fracture, and a fracture with some painkillers available.
Sounds like the "Penfield Mood Organ"[0] from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Characters "dial" emotions, from basic to extremely specific (e.g. "481. Awareness of the manifold possibilities open [...] in the future", or "888 [...] The desire to watch TV, no matter what's on it")
It could be considered similar to this. In a way the Penfield Mood Organ could be seen as something that gives people emotional autonomy and optimization, not too different than choosing the right music for the moment to shift your mood.
Of course with something like this there are also concerns about emotional conformity and losing authenticity. And questions about what is considered a real authentic emotional experience vs a manufactured one.
Some might consider what we're building "manufactured" emotional experiences. But are emotions elicited from music and movies manufactured? Just because something is happening on a screen or coming through speakers doesn't make it any less meaningful. Our brains don't know the difference and the feeling is real.
Media influences our emotions probably more than anything right now and for the most part is currently being fed to us by algorithms designed to prey on our most vulnerable feelings. What we're building gives you the ability to regain control over your emotions and inner world. It's more about using art, audiovisual, media, storytelling, and guided practices to move you through something real. It's about emotional awareness, exploration, and transformation more than artificially induced control. Of course like any tech it's up to people how they choose to use it. But we are trying to design it in a way that prioritizes the emotional benefit and personal growth of each user.
It's an interesting philosophical conversation that could go much deeper. I appreciate the feedback and reflection.
That is… nothing new? At least for me, music does the same. It can make me cry, make me happy or make me angry. I can spin up a CD and get in each mood I desire. Or, and that’s the great thing about it, get out of it.
Would be a shame if someone picked those up and surreptitiously inserted them in feeds of their social network to manipulate the users' emotions- I mean, "maximize engagement"...
When my cat passed away I wept like a baby. He was my friend and companion when we travelled across the country for 10 years. It’s been 5 years since and I still tear up whenever I think about him.
Well, I was reassured I'm just a cynical old bastard, so that's worth something, I guess. To me all the videos I saw, around a dozen, were all (by accident?) emotional cheap-shots, the low-hanging fruit of manipulation. For example: When I see a clip of Brooks Hatlen, the elderly librarian from The Shawshank Redemption, make his final voyage after being released, I get shown an old man take his own life (spoiler! but the movie is 30 years old now, so c'mon). That itself is somewhat sad, yes, but the feelings come from the context of the movie and what the viewer is shown before. So the clip falls flat, even with knowledge of the movie/book. Simply getting shown sad things does not make me cry, especially in short clips out of context.
I've been collecting videos for years that make me shed tears. I don't easily shed tears if it feels a little too manufactured. Usually what works best for me is just seeing actual genuine unprompted emotion, though sad scenarios without any emotion can do it if the sentimentality is balanced well.
Tried maybe 5-6 videos on the site and none of them worked. :/ Just watched one of my old videos, boom, instant tears.
Don't know about the health implications of crying once a week or anything, but sometimes if I'm feeling a little out of touch with life, watching something sad does help.
I cry every time I see the movie Coco. I've found that things that have to do with grand parents makes me cry the most. I've losed my grandfather on covid's because they stopped treating him to focus on younger people.
Sorry it didn't work for you! Everybody is different and I tried to include a variety of universally tear-inducing videos. But of course it won't work for everyone. I've found it works for about 90% of people.
What videos make you cry? Curious to see how they compare. Also, not all the videos on the site are sad. Some are happy tears.
Basically anything absolutely genuine and authentic, especially where I have enough information to understand the context of their emotion so that I can relate better.
I probably do need a good cry since my breath does that repeated-hesitation thing when I breathe in sometimes (not sure if there’s a name for it yet, but you also do it for a while after you’re done crying, I call it “aftershocks” then… but this is like, all the time for me now…)
Yeah. If it isn't actually accompanied by emotions that suggest a cause, you really might want to see a doctor about that. If you also sleep on your side, go for the home sleep study if offered, it's worlds more convenient.
verb
move (something) into a different position with a jerk.
travel by hitch-hiking. informal
obtain (a lift) by hitch-hiking.
fasten or tether.
harness (a draught animal or team).
noun
a temporary difficulty or problem.
a knot of a particular kind, typically one used for fastening a rope to something else.
a device for attaching one thing to another, especially the tow bar of a motor vehicle.
an act of hitch-hiking. informal
a period of service. informal
Slanguagely: "There is a hitch in your get-along", implying "there is a difficulty with your system/process/activity"
I won't argue that the usage can change, and I could see how it could also be used to imply that one's posterior moves in a pleasing manner, but in my experience it has only been used to indicate an issue:
Marjorie Kimmerle & Patricia Gibby, "A Word-List from Colorado," in Publication of the American Dialect Society (April 1949) has this entry for the term hitch:
hitch: n. A crick ; a limp. Used only in the expression "He's got a hitch in his git-along." Said of horses and people. OED, A limp, a hobble, an interference in a horse's pace.
Which experience would this be? That is a Stack Overflow link you posted. But I would expect such a footless prescriptivist to behave in just so ill informed a manner; excuse my short patience, I understand this actually is your best that you're showing.
I'm working on a new project that goes deeper and helps you identify the root causes of things like this so you can better process and release your emotions. Would love for you to test it out when it's ready if you want. You are kind of who I'm building this for: https://www.feelapp.io
oooh. wow. yeah, I am the target market lol. I'm looking now! Just signed up for the waitlist.
Not sure if related, but I had kind of a miserable childhood (authoritarian parents, difficulty in fitting in due to being an insecure runty nerd, being a late bloomer due to late-onset hormones caused women to not be interested until much later, etc.) and I used to cry, I'd say, a lot, and then one day I suddenly stopped (not sure why, but just kind of got fed up with doing it?), and I basically haven't had a good cry since. Not through relationship breakups, not through my mom passing away, not through pet losses. I'd tear up a little, maybe while listening to a song that touched me, that's it. I reckon I haven't had a good, long, sincere cry in almost 40 fucking years.
My parents are German and pretty stoic, not sure if related. When my dad's parents and brother and sister died, I didn't see him cry. The ONLY time I saw him cry (which was jarring, as a kid) is when his beloved sailboat washed up on the rocks during a hurricane. He did kind of wail when he was walking the dog that got away from him and which then got immediately run over, but...
Thanks so much for signing up and sharing this with me.
When you say "not sure if related" I would say most probably yes. Most emotional issues come from our childhood. It's interesting that your parents are German too. There have been a few other Germans that said the site didn't work for them and they have trouble crying. Seems like definitely a cultural thing there.
Many of us as kids are told things like "don't cry, cheer up, calm down" etc, etc by our parents and other adults who we are desperately seeking approval from and reliant on for care and survival. So we may not even realize it at the time, but we conform and change to please them. We feel like we need to be a certain way in order to receive their love and care and attention.
I think the answer could be in that one day you suddenly stopped crying. It's interesting that you say you're not sure why. Sometimes we can forget moments like this because they can seem insignificant at the time but they actually are meaningful. Sometimes it can be more difficult than people who experienced something super traumatic and are able to pinpoint that that was when things changed.
What often happens is we either experience or suppress an emotion without much awareness, and rather than letting it pass or move through us, we ruminate on it and get caught in emotional loops. Then that emotion or the suppression of it becomes a mood. Then that mood becomes a personality trait. Then that personality trait becomes who we are. And years later we can find ourselves wondering why we feel the way we do or how the hell we ended up this way, because it was something that started when we were kids and we didn't understand how all this stuff works and unfortunately no one really told us or guided us.
I'm really excited for you to try the app. We are designing it so you can input things like this and it can help guide you to deeper understanding while processing and releasing necessary emotions. I'm building it for people like you where you are now, and also for younger people so they can catch these issues before 40 years fly by without shedding a single tear. It's never too late though. It's great that you are recognizing all this and I hope the app is able to help you.
Hey, really appreciate it! I will keep an eye out for the invite. If you're feeling generous, my email that I signed up on the waitlist for is lumbergh@gmail.com
Oh I was bawling during the Pa Kent scene in the theater yesterday, it was so good. I also cried at the way Superman was distraught over the treatment of the monster, and then also the scene with the kid and the flag.
I haven't investigated the site because I don't want to cry right now, but I think it's a great idea! A good cry can be cathartic, and once a week sounds about perfect. I have a 'songs to cry to' Spotify playlist for precisely this reason.
Made me laugh, thank you! Laughing is healthy, though should be taken more often than once a week.
For the record, it gave me
https://player.vimeo.com/video/994963176
Crying once a week is great but as Charlie Chaplin said, a day without laughter is a day wasted, which I agree with. Happy I was able to help regardless.
The first video I got didn’t have the vimeo logo in the controls. I guess the play size was too small? Others have had it, but I can’t seem to find that first one at all.
Bandai Namco made a (Japanese-only) DS / Mobile game that did the same thing, 99 No Namida. Got a tiny bit of western media coverage due to the absurdity.
Interesting. I haven't heard of that before. The idea for the site was actually inspired by a Japanese researcher who teaches people how to cry once a week.
Works for me. Most reliable SaaS (Sadness as a Service) I've seen in the past years.
I have a collection of clips that worked on me specifically which I used to gauge my state - not crying is a cause for concern, but over the years I got desensitised to them.
I'm almost afraid to ask: are Japanese Toyota ads in there?
More like going to a massage parlor. I used to work opposite one of those. Believe me, whatever you think you can imagine on the faces of men as they walked out that door, you really have to have seen it. Even I couldn't find the heart to catcall abuse, not even at the men who'd already put back on or never taken off their rings.
I actually launched it like a year ago. I'm working on a new project now called Feel (https://www.feelapp.io) which I've grown to over 40k followers on IG and tiktok
I thought about making that but there are so many comedy sites and platforms already. Funny or Die, Comedy Central, comedians on youtube, memes on social media, etc.
I've been in SWE in non-enterprise for decades and right now I'm seated with IT and operations because our two teams total less than 15. The amount of users who open tickets with "I have this issue" and then send a screenshot of some error in a browser with absolutely no context... Not even the full browser image, just a small snapshot of the completely meaningless error... As though they expect the IT support people to just know what they were doing? My twin todlers who haven't learned to speak yet are still somehow better at telling me what is wrong when something is wrong.
I'm always amazed at how friendly the IT support people manage these things.
What am I meant to think the experience of providing IT support shares with that of the bodhisattva nature, such that quoting the ever tiresome Watts at paragraph length is meant to aid understanding of either? It's just a lot of self-aggrandizing humblebragging nonsense, "look whose name I drop and you don't." Good grief, in this millennium having had an encounter with Watts doesn't even really qualify anyone as being familiar with the literature.
If one means to say it's not people's fault that computers suck to use and they shouldn't be blamed for exhibiting some emotional dismay when forced to do so anyway, then one may say so clearly and concisely, and without insisting on oneself even by implication.
Your reading comprehension seems to be lacking. Maybe you should read more books?
What I meant to convey, seven years ago, when writing that comment making the analogy to Zen Buddhism (as described by Alan Watts at least) was that there are those who come to understand technology and immediately go off and despise and belittle all the people who don’t understand it. There are also those who come to understand technology and can explain the relevant parts to those who don’t understand it, and help them handle technology to help them in their lives, without belittling them or even secretly/silently looking down on or feeling superior to them in any way. This dichotomy seemed to me to be very similar to what Alan Watts once described about Zen Buddhism.
But sure, you keep berating people for daring to quote something by someone so plebeian as Alan Watts, in a seven year old comment. I’m sure it will help you get along with people.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I certainly did not bring up Alan Watts again; you did. It also takes a lot of words to convey my thoughts accurately to someone who seems bent on misunderstanding them.
I restated them yesterday in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44757634, assuming at the time that if you found any error there you would say so. Here's another chance to explain where I've actually failed to grasp your thesis, rather than that I'm pointing out you have overdressed a triviality with pretentious overcomplication.
But it's less interesting to me that you brought up Alan Watts seven years ago than that you did so again yesterday. What do you need from him? Why bring him up if you don't want to talk about him? Or is it that no one is allowed to have an opinion that contradicts yours, including when that involves looking askance at needless reference to dead prophets?
> you have overdressed a triviality with pretentious overcomplication.
Well, possibly. What is interesting and subtle to some is obvious and clichéd to others. Much like how technology is mysterious and ineffable to some, but obvious and plain to others.
> But it's less interesting to me that you brought up Alan Watts seven years ago than that you did so again yesterday. What do you need from him? Why bring him up if you don't want to talk about him?
Now you’re being delusory. You brough up Alan Watts again, after I quoted him seven years ago. I simply responded to you.
> Or is it that no one is allowed to have an opinion that contradicts yours, including when that involves looking askance at needless reference to dead prophets?
I think that, outside purely literary criticism, criticizing a “needless” reference is useless unless the reference itself is incorrect in a way which invalidates the point which the reference is meant to illuminate.
I just checked again, and it does look like you posted [1] the relevant links. Are you seeing something different? My experience has been that people who use apps or scripts which purport to "improve" on HN's interface do sometimes run into such bugs.
I bring it up because I feel like if we're not working from similar sets of facts, that would be a reasonable explanation for what otherwise is seeming very much like you doing everything you possibly can to avoid acknowledging I called bullshit, on the naked appeal to authority to which you resorted, in order to try to lend your words a weight you lack the ability to give them yourself.
Three days ago, I did post the link to an seven-year-old post of mine, which in turn contained two links to other old posts of mine (ten and seven years old, respectively), where only the second of those linked posts contained a quote from Alan Watts. I do not count this as “bringing up” Alan Watts again three days ago.
Especially since I certainly did not use the quote of Alan Watts as a “naked appeal to authority”. Alan Watts does not describe anything in my point directly, and I do not, in the seven year old post, use the quote as an authoritative argument. It was merely an analogy. I claimed no knowledge of whether what Alan Watts describes is true or not. I used his description to explain what I thought was a similar phenomena to his description, nothing more.
> you doing everything you possibly can to avoid acknowledging I called bullshit, on the naked appeal to authority to which you resorted, in order to try to lend your words a weight you lack the ability to give them yourself.
I think you’re coming dangerously close, if not past, the forum guidelines, here. Please argue the point, not the person. I have asked you, repeatedly, why the Alan Watts quote is wrong, and why this fact would invalidate the point I was making. I even restated my point without referring to Alan Watts at all, to allow you to criticize it directly. But you have ignored all this, and your entire parent comment is instead about me, not about any point I was making, or even any point you are trying to make. Your entire argument seems to lack any point or counterpoint, and is instead only attacking me, personally.
All of them can but I don't think they are equal. Back before I deleted twitter about a year ago, no matter what I did, how many accounts I blocked, I'd get a feed of AI generated ragebait. Meanwhile TikTok and Youtube seem to respect my preferences more. There is ragebait on those platforms but it isn't shown to me. Facebook just seems to be entirely Boomers and Gen Xers angry at the news.
Reddit has historically respected your subscriptions but it does look like they are drifting away and making the home page just whatever they want to show you.
The amount of javascript I had to allow made me cry. Unfortunately browsing with No-Script seems to block much of the functionality. But otherwise a cool project!
Yeah they showed me ET, which I first saw at a very young age. While it might have been a tearjerker for some, it was one of the first horror movies I watched and just watching the clip was a trigger. What kind of sick bastard designs a horrifying alien instead of a cutesy one for a kids movie?
Ep 10 has reliably gotten the tears going 3 out of the 3 times I've seen it from 2019 on, but if I watched it any more frequently, nah. I find this site distasteful.
Emotions aren't so black and white and I think both can be true. Sometimes letting yourself feel and release your emotions, even with something unrelated, opens up your capacity to confront something. The site is based on scientific and psychological research. There are plenty of studies but here is one if you want to check it out: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/benefits-of-a-good-cry-crying...
Yes, of course. Russians are, in fact, not people and do not deserve to view Western sites, media or actually any web service hosted by Western nations.
What kind of a take is this? If you strategically block an entire nation from viewing our sites and media, you're handing the state-run media there more power.
Xenophobia is good because our NATO/US overlords which don't engage in propaganda tell us to hate our enemies. Then in X years they stop being our enemies and we point our irrational hate to someone else. It's also useful because you can label any dissenter as "pro Russian".
The McCarthy strategy/red scare is very effective.
We're the good guys though. Remember that. If we admit any wrongdoing ever, that's just history and now we are good. Or else.
I'm currently in Russia trying to get a US visa for my CS PhD. Because I do CS, I got into a thing called administrative processing. For 95% of people, it takes days -- weeks, tops. Because of the colour of my passport, it has already lasted for 3 months. I know people who are waiting for 2 years to pass it.
Why do you think I shouldn't have access to this website in Russia?
I mean the projects are connected. If you enjoyed cryonceaweek.com you will probably like https://www.feelapp.io. I guess it could be considered a funnel promotion but it's more me just trying to share a new project with people who use the previous one. It didn't always link to the app - I added that later after we launched the app page and waitlist.
"Furiko (Pendulum), a Japanese short film about the passing of time."
Well that was fun.. :)
Didn't make me cry, but came close. I don't know if i feel stress relieved. It made me feel even more aware of my own mortality and mistakes i made/make in life. Don't feel particulary happy or relieved.
So i clicked again
"A scene from the movie Steel Magnolias (1989). A woman mourns the loss of her daughter. (6:44 min)"
Oh hell no..
Third and last attempt
"A scene from the movie Bambi (1942). Bambi mourns the loss of his mother. (02:47 min)"
Stress doesn't exist? Hundreds of thousands of people have used the site and I receive tons of messages from people it has helped with not only stress but also things like grief, C-PTSD, etc. But thanks for sharing your feedback.
I'm an artist and not a psychologist, but the project is directly based on real psychological and scientific research and we have top psychologists and neuroscientists on the team who have been advising. I've also had clinical psychologists reach out in support of the site. One was featured in a USA Today article about it.
This is bad. If you want some emotional art therapy, go actually watch something, whether it's something you already appreciate or something new that you are willing to try. Content poaching wrapped up as pseudoscientific wellness product is just exploitative.
I'm not arguing against having a good cry, I'm arguing for doing so by actually watching a whole movie or listening to a whole song instead of a an extract, kinda like the difference between eating some fruit and taking a shot of high fructose corn syrup.
I'm actually a filmmaker and highly value full length feature films. I'm not arguing against watching whole movies. But there is also value in short films, short form videos, and even just watching specific scenes of a film at times. If it makes you feel something meaningful that's all that matters. There is room for all types of experiences, no matter the length. Emotions only last for around 90 seconds so sometimes that's all you need in the moment. If you want a deeper or longer experience by all means please watch a full movie, I am not trying to stop you or anyone from doing that.
This is just scientifically false. Emotions only last for 90 seconds and short-form content can indeed be beneficial. Studies show even a two minute experience can break the cycle of negative rumination.
Look I get it. You hate social media and what it is doing to people's attention spans. I do too for the most part and I'm sure we agree on many things regarding this. But there is value in short form content. It's the type of content that matters, not the length. Short films, short stories, 2-3 minute songs, etc. These things can and do evoke meaningful emotional experiences. I actually made the site as an antidote to the doomscroll which many have found it helpful to be.
