Appreciating vulnerability

From September 21 memos:

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.

It is harder for audience members to hold up their end of the conversation when stories are more serious. They can perhaps give the storyteller appropriate facial expressions. Lance said that the audience sometimes wonders if they should clap:

But there were a few of them that were hard to digest.

And you would see people

kind of shuffling a little bit,

and with those stories.

It was funny.

Most people

they would finish up and everybody would start clapping, cheering and we'd move on.

Those stories where the audience really--

they would finish up and it'd be

dead silence for a couple of seconds.

You could see--

If you think back you might remember of few of them,

but you could see

our mental wheels going,

"shit, do we really

clap at that?"

Ultimately, everybody would

start clapping a little bit.

And I'd be like, "Oh yeah, yeah, we do."

What we're clapping for

is not--

at that point what we're clapping is not

the story,

we're clapping

at the courage,

and at that person sharing it

for us.

They can clap for the storyteller at the end. But still, during the story, that feedback of “I hear you and appreciate what you’re saying” is harder to get.

Actually, I’ve heard people call back with one word statements at other events (Stories on the Edge). I heard “Mhm” and “Hello?” This kind of response could work with more serious stories. There doesn’t seem to exactly be a culture of this response at Carapace, although people do call things out every once in a while.