[HN Gopher] Quitting Twitter? What People Say About Life After S...
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Quitting Twitter? What People Say About Life After Social Media
Author : prostoalex
Score : 27 points
Date : 2022-06-02 22:20 UTC (39 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| spicybright wrote:
| Seeing people frame not using a website as something massively
| life altering change says a lot about social media in general.
|
| But I'm definitely going to bite my tongue calling these articles
| silly as long as it has a chance of "unplugging" people from the
| toxicity.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| Considering just how important social media has been in the
| last few years, I don't see how suggesting people should quit
| social media is silly. The US has had a president who largely
| communicated with his constituents through Twitter (one-way as
| that communication may have been), celebrities get their
| careers re-ignited because Twitter rallies behind them,
| influences are... a thing?, social media management is a full-
| on career for people!
|
| At this stage, the world is actually quite stuck with social
| media and, honestly, I can really believe that something as
| seemingly minor as quitting Twitter can change someone's
| demeanor, quality of life and so on. Social media is a bloody
| juggernaut, sometimes it's best to move out of the way.
| bsnal wrote:
| > Seeing people frame not using a website as something
| massively life altering change says a lot about social media in
| general.
|
| No, it says a lot about those people.
| sexy_panda wrote:
| I did and my mental health thanked me for it. I feel less anxious
| and stressed.
|
| Nothing happening there is important in any way. Who cares if
| Musk buys Twitter.
| [deleted]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I deleted Facebook the day of the Snowden leaks and haven't
| looked back. LinkedIn is the only social media network I still
| have an account on, and I only use it when I'm on the job market.
|
| It's been fantastic to not have to worry about all the drama for
| a decade now.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I can definitely think of at least one other social media site
| you have an account on!
| drunkpotato wrote:
| Hah! You beat me to it! I do agree with the overall sentiment
| however. I think it's important to see whether your
| relationship to a given social media is healthy or not. For
| me, my relationship to reddit, facebook, and twitter were
| unhealthy, so I deleted them. That's not going to be true for
| everyone; I definitely know people who use them in a
| positive, life-improving way, that's just not what was
| happening to me.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like as a hard core engineering type, social
| media doesnt appeal to my brain. Same with TV shows on netflix,
| movies, gossip, hollywood, fashion, common trends. None of them
| "stick". Coding alone in the dark does, and sometimes I recognize
| I need to step away and talk to people. But I keep getting drawn
| in to the next abstraction. Must be how it feels to use social
| media
| notjustanymike wrote:
| On Instagram, someone else is always having a better day than
| you.
| mdanger007 wrote:
| I talked some s. to a guy blaming the teachers for a school
| massacre and twitter suspended me. told them to where to shove
| their little bird. it's been a good week post-twitter.
| shrimpx wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned, you used Twitter correctly. From what
| I can tell by browsing, enabling people to tell other people
| where to shove it is the platform's raison d'etre.
| madrox wrote:
| I've worked in social for over a decade and even attempted a
| startup in the space. If we're taking the dopamine hit mention in
| this article seriously, then the western world has completely
| fried its dopamine receptors. I've observed people are craving
| serotonin as a result. You get that through actual community and
| connection. You can't get that on massive networks. You get that
| on small ones, but finding small ones can be hard.
|
| If social media is a walled garden, then I believe the next wave
| of social media will be "social fences." Ways of creating silos
| within a platform so that you only interact with specific
| communities, much like how subreddits, discord servers, or twitch
| channels operate.
|
| Even if I'm wrong about where it's going, I think everyone feels
| that the wave of the last decade is cresting. Catching it will be
| tricky, but if you manage it then you'll ride it far.
| sk8terboi wrote:
| I'm thinking of quitting HN, what have they done lately?
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| What do you mean "what have they done lately?" I guess you
| could go over to lobsters if you're looking for a more heavily
| moderated/focused tech disussion website. But eventually
| they'll reach eternal september too.
| greyface- wrote:
| https://archive.ph/9y0hq
| version_five wrote:
| There is some irony that posting the kind of feigned outrage and
| clever swipes that are being directed at Musk are exactly the
| kind of things that Twitter is for. No doubt people want to quit,
| but then where would they tell people about how they quit and how
| mad they are?
| Retric wrote:
| Here for one thing. I have seen a lot of posts about quitting
| Twitter, Facebook etc.
| 0des wrote:
| On outrage: I'd be worried about where that aggression would be
| directed without twitter as the whipping boy. It seems as if
| those that are most persistently caustic derive from twitter a
| sense of regaining control, and a fleeting ability to
| internally re-balance their lack of power they experience IRL
| hprotagonist wrote:
| alternative: it just goes away.
|
| for a long time the thought was that most suicides would find
| a way, so specific countermeasures weren't useful; turns out,
| it's not true.
| version_five wrote:
| To some extent that may be true, but I think there is some
| truth to the whole algorithmic promotion thing that makes
| sure Twitter keeps your attention by riling you up.
|
| So say I'm mad about something Elon Musk did, and I go to
| Twitter to post about it, I'll get fed a bunch more tweets
| reinforcing how bad the thing was and get even more outraged,
| and keep scrolling. Even without a Twitter account, I find
| clicking on seemingly benign Twitter links on HN quickly gets
| me into threads of political discussion that rile me up.
|
| Contrast that with going to e.g. HN and sharing a story or
| commenting on a post about something I don't like. It's
| definitely still possible to get into an argument that pisses
| you off, but at least its actual people provoking you, in a
| community that has a pretty low tolerance for that, so it's
| not going to go to far.
|
| If you're pissed off enough, you'll find another outlet,
| though I think twitter is less an outlet than a place to make
| you even madder
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