[HN Gopher] My life after quitting social media
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My life after quitting social media
Author : durmonski
Score : 168 points
Date : 2021-09-13 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
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| brightball wrote:
| > Social media is like cigarettes and alcohol. Toxic. Addictive.
| Yet widely accessible.
|
| I never thought I would say this...but I have to wonder if
| cigarettes and alcohol may be healthier options than social
| media, simply because they usually accompany real social lives?
|
| EDIT: To be clear, any addictive substance is a bad choice.
| Please entirely disregard this analogy in that sense.
| addicted wrote:
| Also, tobacco and alcohol have pretty much the same chemical
| and social impacts throughout (although there are changes in
| intensity, for example, ABV in beers have been increasing).
|
| Social media changes its addictive by tailoring it over time
| for every individual user.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Its like comparing mental health and lung cancer.
| mariodiana wrote:
| I forget what magazine carried this essay, and it was from
| maybe about 10 years ago, but a journalist decided to take up
| smoking (temporarily) at the age of 30-something or
| 40-something, with the idea of writing a story about it. One of
| his takeaways was the sociability of it, especially since
| everyone nowadays is forced to exit the office building to have
| a smoke.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| Early in my tech career I realized pretty quickly that,
| despite not being a smoker, I needed go outside with the
| smokers during their smoke breaks because that's where a lot
| of ideas were discussed. It was where I could continue
| learning from guys who were almost all senior to me at the
| time in a more relaxed, informal setting.
|
| The smoking was terrible--don't get me wrong--and I'm glad
| its much more rare now than it was 25 years ago.
| jhickok wrote:
| Same here, but I took up smoking outside with them and it
| put me in the inside group on projects/tasks. I never
| picked up smoking outside of these little daily excursions
| and I realize it's playing with fire, but at least for my
| career it was one of the best things I could have done.
| system16 wrote:
| I was a smoker for many years and the sociability is a huge
| factor that doesn't get much attention, and is the only thing
| I miss about it.
|
| The relationships I established with fellow smokers, whether
| it was at work while stepping out from the office, standing
| outside a pub, stepping outside on a balcony at a party, etc.
| were almost always stronger than with my non-smoking friends.
| You immediately become part of a social circle with people
| you at least have one thing in common with, and are standing
| around with a limited number of minutes to chat about almost
| anything.
|
| I haven't had a cigarette for nearly five years and the
| thought of lighting one up disgusts me, but I miss the
| carefree banter during smoke breaks with other smokers.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| > I was a smoker for many years and the sociability is a
| huge factor that doesn't get much attention, and is the
| only thing I miss about it.
|
| The best part about having to go outside for a smoke is you
| end up standing next to people outside of your normal work
| hierarchy. You get to have 1v1 conversations with OTHER
| managers, and people higher than you - whoever at a very
| casual level. The benefits of this is enourmous. I
| certainly talked more to our director of IT by smoking than
| I ever did with my own boss.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I usually pride myself on my google-fu, but this one has
| eluded me. I also remember this essay.
|
| Do you remember anything more about the essay that would help
| me find it? There is so much information and blogspam about
| their for the {nicotine, addiction, cigarettes, voluntary,
| chooses, sociability, constraints} results.
| fossuser wrote:
| I also remember it - I'm pretty sure he was 42?
|
| Some other things:
|
| - might have been the Atlantic
|
| - he talked about etiquette around things like flicking ash
| and smoking circles
|
| - he talked about asking his doctor about starting smoking
|
| It was definitely an interesting one
| lolpython wrote:
| I also remember the article. I think he smoked in an
| airport and said nearby people overreacted (his words
| paraphrased) like a woman clutched her child. And maybe
| the airport security came too?
|
| I really want to read it now. But can't find it by
| Google.
| fossuser wrote:
| I found it:
| https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/a4263/learning-
| to-s...
|
| Search terms I used were: starting smoking at 40
| cigarettes
|
| It was the sixth google result for me.
| chaoticmass wrote:
| I remember this essay as well.
|
| During a period of high stress due to major life changes I
| was experiencing, I took up smoking. It became a habit. I did
| experience the social aspect that the essayist described. I
| found that the best way to meet new friends at anime or
| gaming conventions is to find out where all the smokers are
| and hang out there. I've found a few new very good friends
| this way.
|
| PS: I don't smoke cigarettes anymore.
| piyh wrote:
| I had a smoker friend in college and I'd join him outside.
| Pretty soon all my friends in the group were those social
| smokers.
| Benjammer wrote:
| There was a whole Friends episode about this where Rachel
| starts smoking so she can be privy to the conversations out
| on the smoke deck at work.
| eplanit wrote:
| No, you're spot on. That's been my conclusion of the past few
| years, that Facebook, Twitter et al. are the tobacco companies
| of our time. They act very much the same as the tobacco
| companies did: misleading their 'customers', and corrupting the
| politicians who would otherwise regulate them.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I'd wager alcohol is healthier (within reason) since it
| promotes reducing your inhibitions which might open you up to
| learning since you are more open to new experience and ideas
| under that influence.
|
| Social media, untamed and untempered, tends to influence in the
| other direction: piping you into a predefined ideological box--
| and largely dominated by materialistic influences to boot.
| hall0ween wrote:
| I like the comparison, granted it must be different for
| different people (ie, individual relationships to
| tobacco/alcohol). Social media repulses me, but with the other
| two I enjoy but am suspicious of.
|
| I'd rather have someone tell me about the last cigarette they
| had than the last social media post they wrote.
| m90 wrote:
| You can drink a lot when alone.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| ^ This.
|
| In a cursory survey [1] of the alcoholics I've known (both
| recovering/acknowledged and not), for 80% social drinking
| hasn't been the problem. The problem was what they did when
| they were alone with a bottle.
|
| [1] Not an SRS, clearly anecdotal and entirely in my head, so
| all caveats apply, etc.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If you're not going to go cold-turkey, the best thing you can do
| is turn off _all_ notifications from apps like facebook and
| twitter on your phone. Android 9 and 10 provide very good
| features to block all notifications from any specific app.
|
| You should only see messages and notifications when you
| specifically choose to open the app.
| legrande wrote:
| I quit social media for a year and nothing magical happened to
| me. I think it's because I never really had a problem with it,
| since all my feeds were heavily curated and I didn't scroll
| through mountains of noise. The content I consume is _always_
| high quality, because I made social media work for me. I avoid
| Instagram since it 's too visual and full of posers. Twitter is
| more real and authentic. Facebook is mostly for the family group
| chat which I enjoy more than the timeline. You have to make it
| work for you.
| biztos wrote:
| I quit Facebook about a year ago and don't miss it at all, but
| I think I'd really miss Instagram, because about 90% of my feed
| there is contemporary artists, galleries, curators and critics.
| At the moment there is (sadly) no other platform that lets you
| see the latest work by your preferred slice of the
| international art world -- ranging from the famous to the
| mostly unknown.
|
| At least in this area, I've encountered very few posers. I
| don't know if there are other subjects where the same holds
| true on Instagram, but it seems like there probably would be.
| gear54rus wrote:
| How can you call twitter more authentic when it seems pretty
| clear (to me ofc) that their stupid length limit is ideally cut
| out to stir controversy and create confrontation out of nowhere
| (by virtue of people assuming the worst when there's not enough
| info presented to them).
| cercatrova wrote:
| Depends on who you follow. I follow people like patio11 or
| different startup founders, they have good thoughts and
| insights. I don't use it to follow random people who stir up
| drama.
| gear54rus wrote:
| You could say it depends for every platform. It's just some
| of them employ formats that are cancerous to begin with.
|
| Formats and patterns is pretty much the only things you can
| judge a social media site on since there's no real way to
| say that content is universally worse somewhere than other.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's easier to ignore bullshit on Twitter.
|
| With Facebook, unless you actively block lots of people, your
| high school buddy's uncle will show up with some valuable
| information to share.
|
| With Twitter that crap is buried unless it hits some internet
| celebrity. Twitter is also less manipulative of the stream,
| while Facebook is focused on driving engagement.
|
| I just opened up Twitter, the top 5 items are
| SwiftOnSecurity, my city's mayor chief of staff, my little
| league, and a post about Roman artifacts. 100% signal.
|
| Just opened up Facebook, and the top 5 are: somebody's new
| curtains, a pitch to friend more people, an ad for noom, a
| colleague sharing his opinion about Texas abortion law, and a
| post from my favorite baseball team. 40% signal.
| satellites wrote:
| This is a good point, but just to be the devil's advocate, I
| will point out that most social networks are starting to
| implement features where they fill your feed with content you
| never signed up for. They'll call it something like "suggested"
| posts. Granted, I think Instagram is the one I've noticed it on
| the most, and you said you don't use that. But I could see that
| feature catching on to the point that feeds are harder and
| harder to maintain control of as a user.
| legrande wrote:
| > social networks are starting to implement features where
| they fill your feed with content you never signed up for.
| They'll call it something like "suggested" posts
|
| Well Twitter has lists which I make full use of. I created a
| few private lists that I browse at my leisure, with different
| topics, like 'Tech', 'Design', 'Politics', 'Thought Leaders',
| 'Memes', 'Current Events' etc
| heavyset_go wrote:
| At least for me, Twitter sneaks in sponsored content into
| my feeds and the profiles of the people I follow.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| I'm at almost a week since looking at Facebook. Like you, I
| curated the content pretty well, but also wanted to avoid it
| being an echo chamber, so I don't think I unfriended more than
| 5 people in a decade because I disagree with them politically.
| Those were only because they were _constantly_ posting
| inflammatory memes, always picking fights, and full of
| negativity. I don 't need that in my life or in my feed.
|
| A few weeks back, Facebook changed their algorithm
| significantly for me. Suddenly I'm getting tons of pages you
| may like, random comments from friends on pages that are
| completely useless (stuff like "What street did you grow up
| on?", "Only 17% of people can remember their kindergarten
| teachers name. What was yours?", "What do you think about this
| Manhattan loft?"), etc. No matter how many times I marked I
| want to see less content like this, it kept feeding me that
| crap. I don't want reactionary stuff force fed to me.
|
| I'm sure I've missed a couple life events among friends I'd
| find value in seeing, but I haven't missed it enough to login.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > I still haven't deleted my social media accounts. I still have
| Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I don't need to delete them. I
| don't feel that I need to delete them. I simply don't open them
| because I simply unfollowed everyone there.
|
| You're not really quitting if you still keep all your accounts.
| It's like stopping drinking but leaving a bottle of whiskey in
| the cupboard just in case.
| throwaway20371 wrote:
| I quit _most_ social media (I 'm still here, aren't I?) and I
| found a lot more peace. I ended up working a lot more, which
| stressed me out, but I finally identified my lack of work-life
| balance, and now I'm back to a healthy state. No outrage at
| irrelevant trivia, no other people's lives being a distraction in
| mine. If anything I just have too much personal stuff to do now.
| Life feels a bit more meaningful, healthy. I recommend it.
| prox wrote:
| This discussion reminds of this brilliant quote by Strongbad
| (back when the internet was still a cool place to hangout):
|
| _James, the Internet is a place where absolutely nothing
| happens. You need to take advantage of that._
| ceronman wrote:
| I don't use Facebook or Instagram. But I use Twitter, YouTube,
| Reddit and Hacker News.
|
| I used to think that this is not that bad, after all, I'm
| consuming actually good content, not silly stuff like in those
| other networks. But then I was shocked to see how much time I'm
| actually spending on these networks. This is easy to see in the
| "Digital Wellbeing" section of modern phones. It was hours,
| several each day.
|
| I was having trouble keeping up with my chores or exercising. I
| blamed work. I work the whole week and then in the weekend I want
| to rest, not to do chores. So I was falling behind. It took me a
| while to realize that the actual problem is that I'm spending so
| much time on social media. It's consuming all my free time. I
| don't watch TV anymore, I rarely watch movies or read books. Most
| of my free time is being devoured by social media.
|
| The key word here is "addiction". It doesn't matter if you think
| that the content you consume is actually valuable. These are
| short doses of dopamine that make you feel good for a very short
| time and leave you wanting more. You start with a nice video of a
| guy building an 8 bit computer from scratch and you end up
| watching a girl watching dogs. And you keep scrolling because you
| want more dopamine. And if there is nothing more, you switch to
| Twitter or Reddit. And all these sites are being constantly
| optimized to keep you on the dopamine rush for as long as
| possible.
|
| I used to think that the content I was consuming was actually
| good and valuable. And some of it is, but it was much less that I
| thought. One day I realized that I can barely remember anything
| that I have consumed on social media a week ago. Forget about a
| month ago or a year ago. It's because most of this content is so
| unimportant that it doesn't stick in my brain. Other slower
| sources of dopamine aren't like this. A good movie or book leave
| you with something to remember. Social media rarely does.
|
| I now understood that I have an addiction to social media. I have
| yet to overcome it though (after all, I'm here on HN). But at
| least I know that I have a problem.
| throwawawawy wrote:
| This resonates with me as I am consuming content on these four
| social media platforms as well with the same thinking. It's
| always interesting to get to know some ingenious engineering
| detail about constructing bridges from Youtube, or a first-hand
| opinion from some analyst on some niche on Twitter or like in
| this case a discussion about drawbacks of a certain digital
| lifestyle.
|
| However I also always wondered whether one of these is better
| than others, and how I would curate it in a better way. Is
| actively commenting on HN better than passively watching
| engineering videos? What about active engagement on YT, and
| passively reading on HN? Most stuff will be forgotten in a
| couple of days/weeks anyway as you said, but some will stick or
| add up to your overall knowledge/behaviour and similar to
| sifting mud for eventual nuggets of gold this is what keeps me
| doing it.
|
| I just recently read something about using your consumption
| time for productive work (not necessarily job-work, but hobby-
| work) and I'm thinking about more stuff I could create to
| overcome the consumption trap. Ironically however I probably
| read it on HN as well.
| taylodl wrote:
| Maybe I'm the outlier - but everybody I am "friends" with on
| social media I'm friends with IRL (save for Twitter, but that's
| more blogging than social media). We just post what we did this
| weekend and stuff like that. Post stuff that the kids are doing
| (and for some of my friends what the grandkids are doing). No one
| is trying to impress anyone else. People just staying in touch.
| Maybe we older folks have a better feel for how to integrate
| technology into our everyday lives than we're given credit for.
| mr_cyborg wrote:
| What generation do you fall into?
|
| I've noticed some groups of people are better than others. Most
| of my baby boomer relatives are really bad about social media,
| sharing tons of political things (often nasty and offputting)
| and seem to liken social media to spending time with people or
| catching up with them a bit inappropriately.
| taylodl wrote:
| I'm a Gen Xer. The majority of my friends are Gen Xers and
| Millennials. I have a few friends who are Boomers, and a few
| who are Zoomers.
| mr_cyborg wrote:
| I think it's wildly interesting how different generations
| _appear_ to have totally different relationships with
| social media
| marbletimes wrote:
| What makes the real difference is curating followers and
| avoiding mindless "reel type" scrolling. As always, it's being
| intentional rather than setting hard limits (e.g., being
| friends only in real life, limiting the number of follows after
| some weak sociological studies) that makes the difference in
| the quality of the experience.
|
| I've learned a lot from Tiktok, Reddit, Twitter, certain
| corners of Facebook, etc., and met a lot of interesting people
| on dating apps. And I hope people have learned from me. Sure,
| I've wasted time too, and waited too long before I muted people
| who made me angry, and it took me some unnecessary time before
| I realized they weren't talking to me, but my world has gotten
| a lot bigger and more interesting and more adventurous than
| before.
| squeebie23 wrote:
| I agree - Instagram and Facebook I only follow / friend people
| that I'm actually friends with and would normally speak with.
| Limiting it this (1) makes it less frustrating / argumentative
| content, but also (2) makes it run out of content faster, which
| means spending less time on it.
|
| My biggest complaint about Facebook (besides the obvious shitty
| company stuff) is that I don't want to see what other people
| are sharing (meme posts, etc). I wish there was an "only show
| me OC" filter.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Who your friends with changes a lot during our younger years.
| School, college, job changes, neighborhood changes, ...etc, all
| bring new friends and old friends you can't find time for.
| These changes are rarely reflected in social media.
|
| In addition, younger people do follow a lot of "influencers" -
| the worst kinda people to follow in social media.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > Maybe I'm the outlier
|
| A good sanity check of this is to use Dunbar's number (usually
| considered at ~150)[0] and see how many of your friends and
| friends of friends have a number of social media "friends" that
| reaches or exceeds that number.
|
| In case you are unfamiliar: Dunbar's number is a proposed
| cognitive limit to the number of real social relationships we
| can have based on brain size.
|
| The total number of real, stable social relationships you can
| have is physiologically limited, so having 200 facebook
| "friends" that truly are your friends is impossible.
|
| Because we do have connections with people outside of social
| media (hopefully!) even 150 friends is nearly impossible unless
| you are friends with literally every social relationship you
| have.
|
| So if you want to see, I would first establish that you are
| really in the group you think you are. If you are only
| connected with true, irl friends you likely don't have much
| more than 30 "friends". Then sample the graph of that network a
| bit and see where you are in the distribution of "friends".
|
| 0.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
| taylodl wrote:
| I have roughly 70-80 social media friends, discounting
| Twitter which I don't engage with my friends at all but
| instead engage with other computer science, mathematics,
| physics and beer enthusiasts. These are people having similar
| interests to me, but they're not my friends. Sort of like HN
| - you can think of HN as a professional community where we
| all have like interests, but we're not friends. Like this
| conversation, we're just strangers who've met and are talking
| for a brief moment.
| adflux wrote:
| On a similar note, I quit watching the news and reading the
| newspaper. It doesn't make me happy. It really doesn't make me
| "informed", it only makes me capable of parroting some soundbites
| my favorite pundit said. Lastly the news is terribly politicised
| nowadays and tends to focus only on the bad.
|
| Plenty of research proving the link between anxiety/depression
| and news consumption. What is there to gain by watching the news
| anyways...
|
| If I want to find out more about something, i'd rather listen to
| a long form podcast by a professor, than read something a
| journalist copypasted. Or maybe read an article here and find
| comments by so many people from so many different viewpoints and
| cultural backgrounds.
| yusuke242424 wrote:
| I tried to quit clubhouse but couldn't. We are suffering from
| loneliness in this world.
| winternett wrote:
| It's almost impossible to promote art and music organically these
| days without being involved in social media. It's different than
| traditional sinful addictions in that way...
|
| Product designers don't realize that each user has a different
| purpose for using social media, and totally different goals,
| while the basic narrative is that all of social media is
| dedicated towards selling products and building online celebrity
| status.
|
| The real problem is that social media sites try to dominate the
| world without creating sub-communities for specialization, and
| they have also devalued and underestimated the value of being
| able to build followers in hopes of a focus on engagement and
| paid ad revenue. Social sites usually focus on one front page,
| and one script/method for success on them, and that's a massive
| failure to the different reasons users use them.
|
| Social sites start out fair, with orderly time lines and
| visibility of individual accounts, but as year over year profit
| and user base increases becomes their focus, they grow corrupt
| and too big to change. They stop developing useful features and
| turn towards profit.
|
| It's a cycle they repeat until their user base wakes up to the
| reality of it all and realizes all of their content will be
| deleted if they quit. It is a cycle of abuse and loss compounded
| by lost time... More like the year I spent wound up in GTA4 than
| like drinking Tequila and smoking Newports.
| aarchi wrote:
| > instead of refreshing like a lunatic for new information all
| the time during your day. You simply search for a solution only
| when you are experiencing a problem.
|
| > You treat social media like any other website online. You visit
| it only when you need something. You don't visit it to find
| something to need.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| The thing that drives me crazy is how hard it is to avoid it. I
| have plenty of real life friends, a busy career, a family. Still
| an old friend said "reach out to me on whatsapp". I can't even
| use the thing without agreeing to import my contacts. Or my
| Oculus headset-- which I really enjoy-- demands I have an
| account. Bummer.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Important things - news, events, etc. - that we think we'll
| miss will come to you either way. Either a friend will tell you
| about an upcoming concert or you'll read it somewhere else.
|
| This is what bugs me about out current state. Sure, I ended my
| addiction to social media but I often still rely on my friends
| telling me about events that THEY saw in their feed. I wish
| business and artists would stop using social media as their
| primary platform for engagement. Use a website instead, an RSS
| feed or email.
| [deleted]
| cool_scatter wrote:
| I've never understood this. I think if you have a relationship
| with social media that elicits a desire to "quit", it's not
| because social media is terrible, it's because the relationship
| is bad.
|
| I wonder as well if there's a difference between people who use
| it to catch up with their real-life friends vs. people who use it
| to communicate with online friends. I deleted my Facebook account
| last year simply because I had never used it; most of my friends
| on there were people I was acquainted with in real life at some
| point but I have no desire to talk to them. I never used it so I
| just deleted my account. However, I use Twitter, and I'd never
| dream of deleting it; most of my interactions on there are
| between me and friends I initially met online, and social media
| is one of the main ways we communicate. These are real friends -
| I've met several of them in person now - but I'd be losing a huge
| channel of communication with them if I went dark on social
| media.
|
| Which, when worded like that, almost sounds like they're trapping
| me on there, but I also have no desire to quit. I've never felt
| Twitter negatively impacting my life. I go on it daily, I usually
| have it open in a tab while doing other things on my computer,
| but I don't spend hours just scrolling, and I don't follow people
| who say things that will only make my day worse. I don't see it
| as wasting my time any more than watching TV or doing crossword
| puzzles, which are also things I spend a reasonable amount of
| time doing.
|
| The comparison to cigarettes and alcohol is ridiculous in my
| opinion. I don't buy the premise that social media, by default
| and for most people, makes your life worse. Maybe I'm just the
| exception? I have no idea.
| throwdecro wrote:
| It sounds like you're basically using Twitter as something like
| email, which never occurred to me (my friends and I do "group
| comms" via actual email).
|
| Do other people use Twitter in this way? Maybe you are the
| exception :)
| jcun4128 wrote:
| There was a time I used to have fun just building things for
| myself (rc planes) then it transitioned to this thing where I had
| to share it (forums). Eventually I would share just
| concepts/drawings/ideas and not the real thing. I now try to
| finish something before I even mention it.
|
| There's also a flood of people's ideas/works/projects (Hackaday).
| I guess having personal goals is nice to pursue/not compare
| against.
|
| As they say talk is easy
|
| I used to be active on FB and unfortunately I started to post
| like crazy/cringe things on there, thankfully I became self
| aware/cleaned up my public trail. Now I avoid it. One main reason
| is I have over a hundred friend requests of random people
| (indirect family/acquaintances from 20 yrs ago) trying to get to
| know me/ask me for money (people from a third world country).
|
| I'm not completely against social media, I use Reddit to look at
| certain subreddits related to technology, check the news
| sometimes, and then for brain-dead time, look at meme sites. I
| have had to stop myself a few times just due to how much time...
| that's the thing it's captivating/paralyzing the few seconds of
| media constantly changing (scrolling memes). But on the days when
| my brain doesn't function anymore, this low effort content is
| nice to pass the time till I fall asleep/ready to function again.
|
| I want to get back into the groove again, isolate myself, pursue
| something with time. There's also that sense of being a producer
| vs. being an audience like the person making the videos on YT vs.
| the people commenting.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Just taking all social media apps off your phone and having a
| complex password that makes it difficult to sign into their
| webapps are a huge step. Not having your social media of choice a
| finger press away helps a lot. It's easier to get off them if you
| start with that. I did that years ago and replaced my favorite
| app with the kindle app. I read a lot more (books) now and I
| don't get the addicted feeling.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I quit Facebook (2019) and Twitter (2021). My general mood has
| improved, those platforms really are a cesspool that promotes and
| rewards the most hateful people and you can't help but get dirty
| from them and their attacks on anything and anyone they don't
| like. But I am quite a bit more isolated as an individual. And I
| noticed that HN serves me as kind of a surrogate.
|
| We are slowly forgetting how to interact in the real world.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I think there are only three types of modern social media:
| Facebook, Pinterest, and then virtually everything else. (I don't
| consider Reddit to be in this conversation because it's a
| glorified forum, and those have been around since BBSes).
|
| Facebook was conceived and still largely operates as a social
| network in the community aspect: you are in touch with your
| friends and family members for the most part. Facebook has of
| course tried to deviate from this path in the last decade, but
| that's still strongly what the site is.
|
| Pinterest is probably the least interactive social media platform
| in terms of communication between people, but it's probably the
| most useful, even if it's nothing but a collection of bookmarks.
|
| All the other social media platforms are basically centered
| around groups of people yelling at influencers in a desperate
| attempt to be noticed. They are giant dopamine sinks.
| [deleted]
| roamerz wrote:
| I did quit Facebook for about 6 months. What made me login after
| that period of inactivity was to find information on a local
| forest fire that was threatening my house. It was and is the best
| source of up to date information for that.
| nawgz wrote:
| "My life after quitting social media - I post to my private blog
| and share it to HN. Totally not social nor media" - durmonski
| karaterobot wrote:
| I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside
| in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days
| later than everyone else in the family, because it was only
| announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things.
|
| The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot
| of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar
| at all. In practice, I don't find that closely following breaking
| news is all that useful to me, since I'm not in a position to do
| anything about it, and it just makes me anxious to worry about
| things which are out of my control.
|
| Instead, I read longform articles about major events when they
| get written a few weeks later, and supplement that reading with
| Wikipedia. This alternative seems to work well enough. If someone
| wants to talk to me about current events, I just ask them what
| their opinion is, which is usually what they want to happen
| anyway.
| dv35z wrote:
| One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring
| calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link
| to the Wikipedia current events page
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events). Tab-
| open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox
| (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the
| news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass
| media headlines. "Aged news"
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I am a big fan of weekly digests. Early news reports so often
| get it wrong, and good summaries can't thrive on hype.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| low effort post: I've been thinking about a (real time) 3D
| point-cloud (news articles) NLP-summation visualization of
| the news, seeing it skew towards certain directions like war
| or something as the "absolute worst case".
|
| My data source would be for example Reddit's API for
| worldnews/news top rated.
| dv35z wrote:
| This sounds interesting. Seeing a map, the dots of interest
| - you could even have "related wikipedia pages which
| reference this data point, and which have a sudden influx
| of view/edit activity".
|
| As a result, a user could explore a map, and could see the
| most relevant wiki pages (or even extracted insights) on
| the sidebar. Date range slider could explore the past (eg
| previous wars in Afghanistan, and which articles are most
| relevant), and zoom to the future (many Wiki pages
| reference dates & plans - it would be interesting to zoom
| to 10 years from now, and see planned initiatives,
| construction projects, trade agreements, and so on)
|
| A true spatial news explorer.
| manuel_w wrote:
| That would be very interesting.
|
| Some other data researcher has dipped into this a bit:
|
| SpiegelMining - Reverse Engineering von Spiegel-Online
| (33c3): * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YpwsdRKt8Q *
| English version:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYviBstTUwo
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Working my way through this, wish they lowered speaker's
| voice on the English version so it's easier to focus on
| the English one for me/don't know German.
|
| But it's better than nothing, certainly better than the
| auto-translated captions ha.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| I read Wikipedia's current events via RSS:
|
| => https://www.to-rss.xyz/wikipedia/current_events/
|
| It has a much higher signal-to-noise ratio for "serious" news
| than most "serious" news outlets seem to.
| jlpom wrote:
| I also does this. The main problem IMO is info duplication:
| sames infos are duplicated on different websites/sources &
| sometimes inside sources (eg Twitter) and some is missing on
| individual one. I'm thinking of an aggregator that would
| group info (preferably free of rights) per individual news
| and summarise it.
| ourguile wrote:
| I've found myself browsing the current events page every
| morning and I think I would prefer your method much more. As
| emerging stories are verified and context is added, I've
| found I'm revisiting the same pages over and over.
|
| I'm going to set up a calendar event right now. Thanks!
| dv35z wrote:
| When there is breaking news, and there are not sufficient
| details yet, one option is to get the Wiki URL of the news
| event, and add that URL to your calendar's recurring "Read
| the news" event's description field. As a result, in
| several weeks you will have a backlog of news articles to
| read, and you will be confident that you're tracking the
| article and that it will have more value over time. As you
| mentioned, if there are evergreen topics you want to keep
| track of, you could include those links in the calendar
| invite - easy to tab-open & catch up.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Before coming down with anxiety (it's health anxiety and not
| really social anxiety or anything like that), i wasn't always
| teh most aware of my emotions. But since, I'm pretty sensitive
| and aware and always kinda checking-in with myself.
|
| And one thing I've noticed is that after years and years of
| online interaction, much of it on Reddit, Twitter, a little
| Tumblr, and a tiny tiny tiny bit on Instagram - is that the
| more i interact on these things, the more anxious and just
| generally stressed that I am.
|
| I feel increasingly alone in the world - i feel that when i
| lean left, when i lean right, within fandoms of this or that,
| within FOSS communities, or just in general.
|
| But then I talk to the people in my actual life - wife,
| parents, neighbors, and sure - we're all different in a variety
| of ways, but the in person evokes more of a connection even if
| the people around me aren't all rubberstamping my views and
| tastes.
|
| I'm very addicted to the dopamine rush of the upvote. It feels
| like i'm a petty or a small person to admit that, but I am.
| Quitting social media has been harder than giving up tobacco
| (smoked for 15 years), or energy drinks (drank for almost 20
| years). I've given up most recreational drinking - no problem.
|
| But the rapid fire nature of social media.. that hole that it
| fills when you in these moments where you're bored but don't
| really have time to ramp up into anything important.... for
| instance - i have a hard time just stopping/starting books or
| long form articles. If i watch a video - i want to watch it all
| the way through. If i want to listen to a record - all the way
| through. If i get into a project, i want to make some kind of
| headway. Social media fills up the 10 min here, 15 min there
| and by the time you're sucked back in you're devoting time to
| it that you COULD devote to something worthwhile.
|
| The thing that sucks is i feel disconnected from what's going
| on - with entertainment, with politics, with everything. I
| always go back and say "this time i'll be more balanced" but i
| never am. It's like an alcoholic saying "ok, but just one
| drink".
| vmception wrote:
| I ran into this out of touch out of place person at a party
| recently, good conversation, he asked if I had a business card
| (no), then he tried to be trendy and asked if I had a Facebook
| (don't have that either)
|
| He didn't know how to find himself on LinkedIn
|
| We aren't in touch
| tomjen3 wrote:
| >I just ask them what their opinion is, which is usually what
| they want to happen anyway.
|
| I might steal that. I usually just say I don't know and let
| them explain what is going on, but yours is much smarter.
| ArtDev wrote:
| I quit sometime last Spring. I don't know what happened but I
| finally was able to.
|
| I think I feel happier because I have lower expectations and my
| small successes feel big in my mind because I am not comparing to
| others.
|
| For example, a few minor home repairs over the weekend feels huge
| to me. I really feel great about them. One of my best friends is
| a carpenter and I know shouldn't compare.. but I think I do it
| unconsciously.
|
| I still have social media accounts. I posted a last message once
| I knew I wasn't going back to social media.
| tfandango wrote:
| I still have my accounts and browse through them once every day
| or two in order to see what people are up to, but I consciously
| made a decision to stop posting a few years ago, and then to
| stop commenting on contentious threads maybe a year or so ago.
| I agree life has been much better, there's no lingering
| obligation to respond to someone who disagrees with you N
| times/hour. I see some of my friends posting things to "make
| people think" or whatever but somehow the discourse is never
| constructive.
| unemphysbro wrote:
| small victories, right?
|
| :)
| suketk wrote:
| > You are no longer used by social media, you start to use the
| tool.
|
| This is the key. Either you use technology intentionally or it
| uses you. You don't have to quit altogether, but it's important
| that you use it as a tool.
|
| I wrote about this from a different angle - in my view, the
| problem can be isolated to feeds[0]. They encourage consumption
| over action, take you in unwanted directions and induce FOMO
| through overchoice. If you can eliminate them, these services
| magically become tools rather than escapes.
|
| [0] https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful
| durmonski wrote:
| Or if I can put it in one sentence: I don't want to consume the
| life of others. I want to create a life worth consuming.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I don't think that is the summary, because a main focus of the
| post is that social media makes you do things that others thing
| are "worth consuming", so you can post it for others to
| consume.
| criddell wrote:
| In this context, is _consume_ the same thing as _follow_?
|
| There's something about the use of _consume_ in this way that
| has always bugged me.
| xwdv wrote:
| A life worth consuming on social media?
| NortySpock wrote:
| A life worth living. It doesn't have to be Instagram worthy.
| scollet wrote:
| Merzbow has an ironicly titled song name: "Become the
| discovered, not the discoverer"
| accraze wrote:
| +1 for Merzbow
| Leparamour wrote:
| There goes my evening...
| eplanit wrote:
| Well put. My only social media connection was via Twitter,
| which I quit a month ago. This states the motivation, and the
| resulting benefit, succinctly.
| dt3ft wrote:
| What exactly is this Social Media the author is referring to?
| Does HN fit the definition? Is he only talking about Facebook and
| Twitter? Is there even an agreed upon definition of Social Media?
| prostoalex wrote:
| I recommended it in a similar discussion before, but Cal
| Newport's "Digital Minimalism" offers reasonable ways to
| introduce intermittent fasting patterns into your social media
| consumption vs quitting cold turkey.
|
| Some sample strategies to adopt:
|
| 1) Mobile sites only, never apps. Always log out when done to
| increase the friction of subsequent logins. The most insidious
| pattern of mindless engagement is when you're bored at the
| checkout line, waiting in-between meetings with nothing to do,
| sitting on the toilet.
|
| 2) Even better: computer access only, never mobile. Your phone is
| always around, unlike your PC. Set a time slot (20 min or so)
| when you know you're around your computer. Social networks
| _really_ excel at this pattern of usage. You 'll get the most
| important stuff, fluff relegated to the bottom of the feed, which
| solves the FOMO and shield you from the rest. This can be daily
| first and then cut down to whatever pattern you feel like
| (Newport himself claims he catches up on social media once a
| week).
|
| I am sure I am butchering some of his advice, so worth reading
| the book.
| nuclearnice1 wrote:
| What would Cal have us do on the can, if not doom scroll
| Twitter?
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I'm not Cal, but it seems like the real fix to that isn't
| finding another attention-consumer, but instead fixing
| whatever is causing excess can time.
| valbaca wrote:
| > The most insidious pattern of mindless engagement is when
| you're bored at the checkout line, waiting in-between meetings
| with nothing to do, sitting on the toilet.
|
| Just curious, why is this considered the "most insidious"?
| Isn't that time wasted anyway? Before cellphones you would just
| stare off into space (you're not getting any deep thinking or
| deep work done waiting in line) or would just browse the gum or
| trash magazines.
|
| > computer access only, never mobile
|
| This one definitely makes sense. It was interesting time when
| Facebook was around but smartphones weren't fully ubiquitous.
| You would only see your feed on the laptop and had to text
| friends to stay in touch in real-time (even if async)
| haswell wrote:
| > _Before cellphones you would just stare off into space (you
| 're not getting any deep thinking or deep work done waiting
| in line) or would just browse the gum or trash magazines._
|
| The key is that the "before cellphones" behavior often
| involved a greater connection to one's immediate
| surroundings, or being "present". The risk/concern with
| browsing a phone in these moments is that it promotes
| disconnection and feeds our brain's need for that next
| dopamine hit. Some hypothesize that this constant
| disconnection from "here/now" is part of society's broader
| problems and people increasingly look at the real world
| through the lens of social media, which we know to be a major
| distortion of reality.
|
| Disclaimer: anecdote, sample size of one, etc...for me
| personally, I've been working hard _not_ to fill those idle
| moments and instead focus on being present and stay in the
| moment. This could literally be as simple as noticing the
| variety of gum options in the checkout line. I already have
| dissociative tendencies due to PTSD, and one of the most
| effective ways for me to dissociate is to lose myself in the
| endless scroll. Conversely, staying present /connected to my
| surroundings helps my mental state immensely.
| jefurii wrote:
| Don't know about anyone else, but I've gotten some good ideas
| and had some nice a-ha! moments during those "default mode
| network" times.
| 100011_100001 wrote:
| You could think and self-reflect. There is a reason why
| shower thoughts are a thing, in a society dominated by things
| that illicit emotional reactions it's hard to have time to
| just be.
| valbaca wrote:
| Shower thoughts are great b/c you know nearly exactly how
| long a shower takes, you're relaxed, doing something
| basically automatic, and can take longer if you need to.
| You can also talk to yourself.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is I find other moments in my day
| (shower, sipping my coffee in the morning, the few moments
| I take after I close my work laptop but before I start my
| evening, journaling, jogging or walking) to be much more
| effective and rewarding for thinking and self-reflection.
| Those times give insight and clarity. Not out in public
| with the cacophony of other people.
|
| Obviously one can do both and more power to them/you.
|
| I personally find the worst mind-scrolling is when I could
| be doing anything else (opportunity cost) not when I'm
| literally just waiting around.
| 100011_100001 wrote:
| Mowing does it for me as well. It's why I carry a pocket
| notebook and a pen with me. I avoid apps because
| distractions can pull me, like an unread text message and
| I lose my flow of thought.
|
| Occasionally I even write pseudo paper that I wrote in my
| head while doing something else.
|
| I think you identified an important part, it's the habit
| of doing something, while your mind doesn't have to use a
| lot of horse power. I never thought about it from that
| perspective, but it rings true.
| haswell wrote:
| When out and about, I think it's less about finding some
| meaningful insight in that moment, and more about
| cultivating a habit of being present.
| kylegalbraith wrote:
| Interesting and insightful read. But the Facebook and Twitter
| share buttons at the bottom were....ironic.
| Zamicol wrote:
| Also, is Hacker News social media?
| martin_a wrote:
| User generated content, comments, ratings. 3/3 would say so,
| yes. :-)
| Nicksil wrote:
| >User generated content, comments, ratings. 3/3 would say
| so, yes. :-)
|
| That's not great criteria for determining if something's
| "social media". All those things you listed were part of
| websites long before social media came along.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| My litmus test for what is and is not social media
| depends on how many people use their real name as
| handles, and how actively the platform promotes real
| names. Facebook, nearly 100%, Twitter, less so; reddit
| and HN, pretty low. Real names transform the old
| forum/IRC chat room into social media.
| Nicksil wrote:
| No, it's a forum.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| There is no way to intentionally follow specific users or
| customize your view of the site depending on who is a part of
| your personal network. There is no personal network at all.
| Those seem to me to be the defining features of social media.
| Hacker News is just a crowd-sourced link aggregator with
| comments that requires persistent accounts so the links and
| comments can't be easily spammed.
|
| Of course, so is Reddit, but I personally don't think Reddit
| should be considered social media, either. You can
| personalize your content view there, but the personalization
| is based on content topics, not the following of specific
| users.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| The closest I came to "social media" was Reddit - I quit it and
| have never looked back nor missed it.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| "Perished on commenting under posts about social change or doing
| something meaningful instead of actually doing something
| meaningful. "
|
| You know, I think we'd all be better off if everyone took a break
| from that one for a year or two.
| aquir wrote:
| I was able to dodge it. Recently, I was thinking of joining
| Facebook because of Groups. I don't have friends and I'm missing
| to have conversations with similar minded people but I just can't
| make myself doing it. The sad things is that probably there are
| no alternatives. All platforms are almost equally bad.
| thom wrote:
| This post is suspiciously long for someone who seems to charge
| money to summarise books (reading books being another unworthy
| use of one's time on this planet, presumably).
| emptyparadise wrote:
| I find myself replacing it with other garbage, sadly. Bad
| brain...
| devmor wrote:
| I feel like these types of posts are only made by the socially
| inept, who've never managed to make a friend over the internet.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| I quit FB and Instagram by making it very difficult to login by
| changing my password and not saving it. However I still use
| Twitter with one useful trick: I make lists of Subjects I care
| about: COVID research, Real Estate, etc.
| billfruit wrote:
| Sometimes I feel HN also is a similar attention sink, even
| Wikipedia as well. They also can draw you in for information
| snacking, and before you know hours have gone. Commenting and
| reading responses in HN is also another attention consuming loop.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I use HN and Twitter in between builds and deploys. Not sure
| what else I could do during that time, it is too small to focus
| attention on most other things. I wonder if this time is really
| "wasted" since otherwise i'd be looking at the docker progress
| monitor.
|
| Perhaps I could take a walk, which would be good.
| vymague wrote:
| "HN comments are terrible. On any topic I'm informed about, the
| vast majority of comments are pretty clearly wrong."
|
| From https://danluu.com/hn-comments/ . I happen to agree.
| city41 wrote:
| But if you keep reading he then makes the argument that
| despite that, there's still quality content to be found and
| gives some nice examples.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| All true, but in both cases I control what I look at. I am
| the filter. If I waste my time or learn the wrong things, it
| is on me.
| randomdata wrote:
| Stands to reason. The purpose of commenting is to be wrong,
| so that someone will correct you, allowing you to learn more
| about the subject matter. Cunningham's Law.
|
| If you are well versed in a topic there is no reason to talk
| about it. You are already well versed in it and gain nothing
| from discussing it further.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| The Gell-Mann amnesia effect: "...In any case, you read with
| exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and
| then turn the page to national or international affairs, and
| read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more
| accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You
| turn the page, and forget what you know."
|
| https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
| coding123 wrote:
| And checking to see if your comment stays near the top, how
| many up votes, reading the replies to see if you're a smart
| person or not.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This is what made me delete my Reddit account. I realized I
| was putting an inappropriate amount of effort into impressing
| people I'd never meet.
|
| Not sure if that treadmill is just built into my personality
| or if it was specifically caused by the site. I don't feel it
| here as much, although it could just be that the account
| there was older, so it felt like it'd developed more of an
| 'identity' (silly as that is).
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I have a couple Reddit accounts and that is a game you can
| get caught up in. The trick is that you can always score
| more points by making a stupid in-group comment on
| /r/politics or /r/funny than you can being smart. Once you
| know this the number matters a lot less (at least to me).
| bee_rider wrote:
| My best comment was a dumb in-joke for quite a while. But
| eventually I beat it with a comment was reassuring people
| who didn't excel as much as they'd expected during the
| pandemic. I actually feel pretty good about the comment
| itself, there were some people who followed up that
| really did seem to be relieved by the sentiment. But it
| still is, essentially, this bizarre fleeting interaction
| where we just see one comment from each other, and no
| real attachment is made. Then then afterwards, it is
| like, "am I playing some weird gamified thing where
| expressing actual human empathy is how you get a high
| score" which didn't feel good really.
| philangist wrote:
| I'm not the only person who never feels like they're one of
| the "smart people" in these threads, right? After close to a
| decade on this forum I've just learned not to fight that
| feeling and instead to find the humor in it.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Hmm. I've never cared about that. For whatever reason. I
| generally don't care what other people think - especially
| after I read Feynman's book of the same name decades ago.
| marbletimes wrote:
| Feynman certainly cared a great deal about what others
| thought of him, and he has been known to embellish many
| stories to appear as the common genius in the situation. In
| short, he was a genius, but he also wanted it to be known
| very well by others.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| It is. There's a lot more than hacker news on here. And the
| rules aren't always followed, which makes it a bit more social-
| media-y, but the mods do a great job keeping it tidy. I guess
| there is more non-hacker news stuff appearing because it gets a
| little tedious to see "New programming language X" or "CSS
| tricks you never heard of" every week.
| paganel wrote:
| > even Wikipedia as well
|
| In my case at least browsing Wikipedia is an assumed guilty
| habit, just like coffee.
|
| What usually happens is that I browse /r/soccer or something
| similar and I get to the wikipedia page of a specific (mostly
| European) football league, like the Dutch Eredivisie or the
| Norwegian first league. Once on that page I click on a specific
| team (let's say Utrecht, Molde or Groningen) and before I know
| it I end up reading about the Hanseatic league or about the
| Spanish dominions in the Low Countries in the 1600s.
| rchaud wrote:
| I stopped using FB and IG a long time ago. The "likes and
| followers" appeal didn't apply for me, as I rarely posted.
|
| But I did feel the FOMO and when I closed the app, I would get
| this feeling that my life is boring, like a web page with the
| default Wordpress theme. Feeling as if nobody would be interested
| in clicking around and getting to know anything about me.
|
| Yet, despite abandoning these apps, I am somehow still constantly
| on my phone (not during work), trying to find something new to
| distract me from the boredom I feel in the evenings after work.
| Reddit or Youtube are my biggest addictions.
| luxurytent wrote:
| I love Twitter but recently removed Instagram from my phone and
| as a result, my usage dropped to near zero. I found I was
| watching the same updates (here's my baby doing this fun thing!),
| which was nice, but I wasn't really connected to this individual,
| and for most of my Instagram it was old friends and colleagues
| who no longer live near me or share much similarities.
|
| Twitter, Instagram, Hacker News, etc. are all attention sinks but
| I realized I wasn't getting much value from Instagram beyond a
| minor wholesome feeling to see (old) friends living their life.
| Reels were kind of fun sometimes but mostly a waste of time,
| though.
|
| The joy I get from Twitter is being able to consume topics highly
| relevant to me, and I aggressively curate through
| blocking/muting, grooming followers, and interacting with very
| smart people in their respective fields.
|
| The pain I get from Twitter is a feeling I'm never good enough. I
| make a good salary which pays for my entire family of four's
| well-being, but ... there's always someone on there making more,
| or creating something cooler. During parental leave I spent more
| of my time with neighbours, volunteering at the community garden,
| and it felt more whole, but I still had a part of my brain
| thinking about the missed opportunities in building value /
| wealth. Hm.
| stevofolife wrote:
| > but I still had a part of my brain thinking about the missed
| opportunities in building value / wealth. Hm.
|
| I think this was your main point right? I also feel the same,
| but not because of Twitter. I think Twitter is an amazing
| social platform but it takes certain type of people to succeed
| on it. I'm sure there are tons of people who are very smart and
| is making more or creating something cooler but not
| broadcasting it on Twitter. Maybe you are one of those people.
| marbletimes wrote:
| Let's not forget the lies that are broadcasted left and right
| on social media, in which thousands become millions, and
| trite tropes are sold like congress-worthy insights.
|
| You are right, it takes a certain type of people to succeed
| on Twitter and, jealous as I am of my private life for
| example and unwilling to interact or share much online, I am
| definitely not among those.
| retro64 wrote:
| A couple thoughts here. I was an adult before social media was
| a thing, or even the web, and I sometimes wonder if I would
| have even attempted much of the experimentation I did -
| doubtful, at least at that age. Why bother when now it takes
| only a few minutes searching to find someone who already solved
| the problem, and better than you (think) you could have. But
| now I understand I would have missed out on so much had I not
| even tried. Who knows what fresh angle you'll bring to the
| table? It happens.
|
| The second thought is at some point you come to terms with your
| own limitations (and strengths!), and you realize, yes this
| person is great at such and such, but am I able to do what I
| want in my life with my talents? Am I happy doing my thing,
| even if it's not "as good" as them? Yep. So good for them. And
| good for you.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've noticed that I did a lot more theorycrafting in games
| prior to the easy availability of game streams. I think I am
| finally coming around to the idea that these videos should
| inspire me to do _more_ theorycrafting instead of letting
| other people do it for me, but it 's been a long journey.
|
| The safety lectures in videos for some hobbies probably would
| have let me get farther along in them as a child, if I had
| bothered to participate instead of just spectate.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| I've had the same reaction to watching videos about
| strategies and combos in fighting games. What I started
| doing was asking myself how I could have discovered this
| idea and taking it back to the lab to reconstruct the
| discovery, so to speak.
|
| What I've found over time is that I got better at
| discovering what I needed, but that it was still worth
| looking over some theorycrafting type videos to see
| anything I might have missed.
|
| This brought me full circle to the point where, even though
| I was still watching a video, I felt like there was a
| dialogue going on ("yeah, I know A, B and C, but D is a
| neat trick. You seemed to have missed E though.").
| cortesoft wrote:
| I always find these "quitting social media" blog posts a bit
| ironic... "social media is addictive and encourages doing and
| posting things just for the attention and to make other people
| think I am interesting... so I wrote this blog post about
| quitting social media, and am posting it to hacker news and other
| sites... I hope lots of people read it and think I am insightful"
| jancsika wrote:
| If the point of the attention-seeking is to encourage others to
| leave the attention-seeking platform, then it belongs in the
| set of special self-subverting cases.
|
| Same logic applied to Stallman using a proprietary compiler to
| build a free-software compiler that obviated the need for said
| proprietary compiler. He really did do that. (Unironically, at
| that.)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I write a blog too, but I do not want people to become addicted
| to it and spend hours on my site. I do not even want to track
| them, so Jetpack was uninstalled promptly.
|
| Blogs are like books or newspapers. We can live with books and
| newspapers, they have been around for centuries. Social media
| are like fentanyl.
| jslakro wrote:
| Same feeling. Additionally, the author stands he felt used by
| social media, but you find a properly newsletter subscription
| at the end of the article. Of course, if you create a writing
| piece which implied some time to produce, you're looking for
| something in return.. same than social media. The difference is
| that usually behind the last ones there is a corporate logic.
| lrobinovitch wrote:
| The internet is for sharing. Social media is for driving
| engagement from users, mining their data, and encouraging
| unhealthy social comparison (as well as, you know, organizing
| events and messages and stuff). Nothing wrong with sharing a
| blog post on an experience you had that you think may be of
| value to others.
| haswell wrote:
| To dive a bit further into this, I was very socially active
| on the Internet 20 years ago, and it was a magical thing. I
| made friends that I still communicate with today, and I
| credit the amazing community I aligned myself with for
| helping me become the person I am today (in a good way).
|
| Social media today is nothing like those early communities,
| and I rarely participate for that reason. Some of the core
| motivations (e.g. desire for connection/community) exist in
| both places, but the similarities pretty much end there.
|
| The closest modern day equivalent (for me) is HN and some
| very niche subreddits.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Ditto. The important thing about the forums of yore were
| that they were largely composed of users who self-selected
| into it, and were oriented around a particular topic. They
| didn't have the thing were tons of people latched on and
| then just hung around for no reason other than their own
| boredom.
|
| I think there's a fundamental difference in how forums are
| used vs social media. The catch-all nature of social media
| molds it into a device which people use to construct an
| idealized representation of themselves. Forums seem to head
| more in the direction of discussing/arguing about focused
| topics, rather than identity-creation.
| dayjah wrote:
| I understand your POV on this, I quit social media relatively
| silently[1]. From my POV, ex-social-media-addict now "clean"
| for 838 days[2], there is a strong degree of FOMO attached to
| not being on SM. Here are a few examples of where I wish I had
| "told folks" that I was quitting:
|
| * For the first 9 months folks would often say: "I missed you
| at my such-and-such event last month", and I would reply:
| "email me next time". Perhaps if I had quit loudly I'd have
| felt less FOMO-y and been invited to more events.
|
| * Births / Deaths / Marriages; I'm completely out of the loop,
| which is almost always a worse off situation. I've come to
| learn that I want to know sooner rather than later when folks
| have died because going through grief a week or two after other
| folks absolutely sucks. I wonder if I quit loudly folks would
| reach out more proactively in these situations?
|
| * Generally feeling connected: a "personal talent" of mine is a
| relatively strong ability to remember what I read about folks
| on their FB timelines. Without that I feel pretty disconnected;
| and there are a lot of folks I "miss" as a result. Would this
| have been different if I quit in the open? Would folks have
| said: "oh you can follow my photo stream and see what I'm up
| to?"
|
| That final example, when coupled with deaths, is particularly
| acute. You're left wondering whether you could have helped
| prevent self harm, etc.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/ossareh/status/1133957584153694214
|
| [2] I mean this jovially, apologies to anyone that struggles
| with a more manifest addiction if this phrasing comes across as
| trite.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Leaving social media really helped me evaluate who my
| _actual_ friends are, and who were just names on a list. If
| someone is only willing to communicate with me if it 's
| through a single corporate-mediated ad/promotion machine, and
| will just stop contacting if I'm not on said machine, are
| they really my friend? I've come to the conclusion "No" and
| honestly, I feel my life is better off interacting with fewer
| real friends than awash in the feeds of numerous names-on-a-
| list.
|
| At the end of the day, I realized I don't care about such-
| and-such events, births, deaths, etc. of people who will only
| talk to me if it's through Facebook.
| tristor wrote:
| I feel the same, for the most part. I quit social media during
| the pandemic early on and didn't even post to say I wouldn't
| respond anymore. I didn't delete my account, I just deleted the
| apps and I no longer visit any of the sites. I never blogged
| about it, and while I'm open about it and have told a few
| people directly so they would use alternative paths to contact
| me, it just doesn't seem like a story I need to share widely. I
| realize the irony in saying that while writing this comment.
|
| Point is, I found that social media was mostly feeding a need I
| had to be "on display" or "performing" that I used to get in
| person pre-pandemic by "holding court" in group settings and
| leading interesting conversations. After making that
| realization, it caused me to rethink the behavior altogether. I
| still comment on HN and read HN daily, but this is basically
| the only site I go on now that's akin to social media. Blogging
| about quitting social media would have just been me doing this
| same behavior in another pathway. To a large degree, I feel
| like that's the "point" of social media. To make us crave
| attention and to act out specifically to get attention and it's
| bled into everyday life and in-person interactions.
| system16 wrote:
| > so I wrote this blog post about quitting social media, and am
| posting it to hacker news and other sites
|
| I'm not sure if the fact that the author includes "Share to
| Facebook/Twitter" links at the bottom of the blog post is more
| comical or downright insulting to the reader.
|
| They spend several paragraphs describing all the harm social
| media causes to themselves and society as a whole, then
| describe their epiphany and the joy of freeing themselves from
| its psychological chains, and then ask you to contribute to it.
| At very least it's extremely insincere.
| [deleted]
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