Being vulnerable

Shannon said:

It's rare still

for somebody to get up there and be completely vulnerable.

I'm always looking for that

real unraveling.

Not that you want somebody to be

what Brené Brown calls "floodlighting".

It does happen occasionally

and those moments are deeply uncomfortable

Carapace is a place where people can tell stories they don’t tell anywhere else. But storytellers can be too vulnerable and that can be an unpleasant thing for them. Shannon gets at this balance of unraveling but not floodlighting.

Shannon continued:

but I think

because of the trends towards stand-up comedy

and The Moth and all of that,

a lot of times people will get up

and tell a story just

for the laugh.

Is there an equivalent to laughter for vulnerable stories? Tellers are rewarded with applause at the end of their story, but humorous moments are rewarded immediately with laughter. This may be part of the reason tellers will favor comedy. They get an immediate and unambiguous reward. When audience members are just listening intently their facial expressions don’t always make their attention or enjoyment clear.