Beyond Toxic Positivity: Lane Moore's New Approach to Life Advice
Beyond Toxic Positivity: Lane Moore's New Approach to Life Advice
The creator of "Tinder Live" launches a newsletter that tackles life's anxieties with honesty and humor.
In the world of advice columns, it's rare to find a voice that manages to be both brutally honest and deeply empathetic. My friend
, the multi-talented creator behind the award-winning comedy show "Tinder Live" and author of books like "How To Be Alone" and “You Will Find Your People” has launched a new newsletter that embodies this unique balance.
Titled "Are You Mad At Me?", Moore's newsletter dives into the anxieties and self-doubt that many of us experience but rarely discuss openly. It's an exploration of the question that has likely crossed all of our minds at some point, often spiraling into unwarranted worry.
In this interview for The Present Age, I chat with Moore about their approach to advice-giving, which refreshingly steers clear of toxic positivity and oversimplified solutions. I delve into her thoughts on neurodivergence in creative fields, and how it shapes her perspective on communication and relationships.
Moore's insights challenge conventional wisdom, offering a nuanced take on self-help that acknowledges the complexities of human emotions and experiences. Whether she's flipping problematic advice on its head or sharing her own struggles with the constant "Am I doing life right?" question, Moore's authenticity shines through.
Join me as I explore the mind behind this thought-provoking new newsletter, and discover why Lane Moore's voice is one we should all be paying attention to in the often overwhelming landscape of life advice.
Parker Molloy: Your newsletter is called "Are You Mad At Me?" — a question I think we've all asked ourselves at some point. What's the wildest "Are they mad at me?" spiral you've ever sent yourself down, and how did it turn out?
Lane Moore: There have been so many, they've blended together to form a super "Are you mad at me?" I worry about it a lot, even with strangers. Like, "Is this waitress mad at me? Did I ask too many questions about the menu?" It can be the littlest interactions. "Is my librarian mad at me because she has a stern tone today?" It's this internalizing of other people's moods as indicative of your behavior.
The interesting part is that I'm getting better at realizing it's almost never the case, but that doesn't change the feeling when it happens. It's a constant feeling of, "Am I doing things normally? Am I doing life correctly?" I think it's a stress that a lot of us have.
When I announced this newsletter, a couple people mentioned something I also face: sometimes you worry someone's mad at you when you're actually mad at them. It's like, "I have to make sure they're not mad at me first, and then I can be mad at them." Because if they're mad at me, even though I'm mad at them, I have to make sure they're not mad at me and then we can address how mad I am.
Parker: That makes sense. You've got to make sure you're not on equal ground here.
Lane: Exactly! We can't just have like, you know, I'll see this on sitcoms where they're both kind of pouting in different ways and then they can just talk it out. But that doesn't feel safe for me because I guess I feel like if this other person is mad at me, I can't tell them that I'm mad at them because they won't be able to hear it because they're just seeing me as wrong or bad. So then whatever my emotions are, are negated by their anger at me. This is all very hypothetical, but it feels very real at the time.
Parker: Your approach to advice-giving seems to flip a lot of the standard self-help tropes on their heads. What's a common bit of advice that you think deserves to be thrown into a dumpster fire?
Lane: The first one that comes to mind is toxic positivity. I hate advice like, "You got this, girl! Just stop being the way that you are and be another way." It's like asking you to just stop feeling things physically in your body, stop experiencing things in your brain. It's so dismissive.
There's so much advice like that and people love it. It's the equivalent of going to an exercise class and them calling you fat and ugly to get you to work harder. That doesn't work for me. And I think that's harmful to all of us. Even if it quote-unquote works for you, you can't doubt that it's damaging your spirit.
I'm also tired of hearing advice from people who've never struggled with the things they're talking about. I want to hear from people who have had a really hard time and worked through it.
I also hate when people talk about "victim mentality." It has bullying energy. Whenever someone's like, "I don't know why you want to talk about this thing that you experienced. Stop being a victim. Put it in the past and move on, girl." That's part of the toxic positivity.
For men, it's often, "Just be more powerful than your emotions. Learn to dominate them." The implication is don't be weak, essentially don't be "a woman" about this. Don't be in touch with your feelings at all.
I want more for people. It's vulnerable to ask for advice, and I think it's really gross that so many people who give advice are just like, "Just don't be yourself at all. Stop feeling your feelings and then they go away." If that's not a cry for help on the part of that advice giver, that's an intervention. Don't get that person a job. Get them a therapist.
Parker: You've talked about being neurodivergent and how that impacts your work. What's something about neurodivergence that you wish more people understood, especially in creative fields?
Lane: I think one is that I had a lot of shame about the way I learned things or understood things. But now I look at it and you have to acknowledge that a lot of neurotypical behavior is weird. It's a lot of "Well, everybody knows that when you say this, you secretly mean this third other thing that no one's saying." That is so passive-aggressive and indirect.
I think a lot of people who are neurodivergent are like, "They said this, so they mean that. I say what I mean and I mean what I say, and surely all the people around me do too." So sometimes people look at neurodivergent people dismissively, as though it's this "Why can't you just assimilate? Why can't you just be like everybody else?"
But a lot of really neurotypical behavior is not the healthiest or the best for even neurotypical people. Is it not exhausting for everybody to navigate that nobody really means what they say? If somebody says, "If you need anything, call me," but they don't mean it. That's horrible. And then you have to negotiate like, well, I really need help. So I'm gonna call this person, because they said to call them and then they're dismissive or act like you're a burden.
When I first told people I was going to be doing this advice column, a couple of people were like, "I never think that anyone is mad at me. That's so weird. If someone's mad at me, they can talk to me like an adult." But if your brain doesn't work that way, you're going to be kind of dysregulated until you know that you're safe.
I think it's really weird to hear that someone struggles with something a lot, hear that there's a ton of people who struggle with this, and for the first thought in your head to be, "I don't struggle with that. That's really weird. You guys should fix that about yourselves." If you're actually fine, you're not belittling people who aren't fine.
Lastly, I want people to know that this is an advice column about anything, not just "Are you mad at me?" It's about everything. But I think it felt good to focus on that because it's something that I and so many people wonder about for so much of their lives. It's really just an advice column about the things that stress us out, which might be different for people, but I think the "Am I doing life right?" is a very real question for most of us.