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Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

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Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#551

Post by dakull »

Why not to use FB in one classic line: you are the product being sold, everything else is just an illusion. Case in point: in FB. ads you can even target specific individuals.

The only problem is that like every social illusion it creates a social contract which makes it hard to get out of it - mostly because it will feel like being isolated from the "world" and in losing that perfectly crafted new "self/identity" will shatter the ego (we all know the ego doesn't enjoy being messed with).

Even if one is using it "just" for the messenger part, one is still part of all of this.

I'm not sure why would anyone use FB. to get new opportunities, FB. et al should not be taken seriously since most create their own persona on it akin to an MMORPG where one can literally choose to act like an Apache helicopter.

Moreover FB. is pure evil at its core: it's a global scale psychological experiment that future generations will refer to as: "those decades where everyone diluted their identity online, forgot about their "real" selves and thus slowly became clinically insane".

Some of the other arguments in the article are so broad that one can apply them to the Internet as a whole e.g. "distraction free work: just unplug your cable or disconnect your wi-fi"

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#552

Post by wallace_f »

thex10 wrote: post #493
wallace_f wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>More importantly social media is bad for your mental health. [...] Being social is a good thing. This is all that I need to have learned to quit* social media. *I still use a Facebook, but I don't post anything, and I don't read anything. It is handy for the messenger though to keep in contact with friends that you might see again, such as when travelling.

You can 'deactivate' your Facebook account and remain active on Messenger, FYI. I did this.

Interesting, I actually didn't know that. I'd still need to be able to add people, I'll check that out thanks.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#553

Post by swah »

WA wrote: post #334
diegoperini wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. HN is addictive, but also insanely useful in some cases which makes it hard to leave like any other mentioned site there. I literally owe many of my succesful professional decisions to researches that initally started here. I find some interesting article, read the comments first, then the article, then the comments again. In the middle of this flow, I decide whether it is worthy to save to my Pocket accou…

Have you checked if the articles in your Pocket share something, for example upvotes or number of comments? Because then you could browse the top posts only once per week. Either via Hckrnews [1] or use the curated Hacker Newsletter [2]. [1]: http://hckrnews.com/ [2]: http://www.hackernewsletter.com/

This doesn't help because the rush comes from typing and news.ycombinator.com looking for getting early into stories that are trending! :)

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#554

Post by swah »

splintercell wrote: post #456
hashtagMERKY wrote: post #31

This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit…

> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work and I genuinely think this might be the reason. I find myself compulsively opening twitter and tumblr and scrolling through for ages before realising that literally none of it is interesting. I'm just scrolling past brightly coloured images and auto-playing videos while completely distracted and detached from the real world. I recently solved this…

Great story, I like his book as well, but since I suck at putting ideas to work, they are only text for me :(

One thing that I haven't seen anyone commenting is that nowadays Facebook becomes the place where you test ads, write content, become an expert, and get clients... so many folks can't just quit. Heck, I still want to get started on it...

But maybe carrying a dumb phone during the day and coming back to the smartphone during the night is a way to try unplugging for a couple hours.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#555

Post by swah »

mihau wrote: post #19

Great article :). Cal Newport has some reaaaallly important ideas. I encourage you to read his book Deep Work in which he explains how to create deep, complex stuff.

Great book - but instead of applying the ideas I'm surfing reddit, facebook and twitter even more :(

Maybe I should re-read books more, and at some point the content ends up being used.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#556

Post by marttt »

hashtagMERKY wrote: post #31

This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit…

> Maybe deleting the native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them.

+1. I have found that switching to the Dillo web browser (with CSS and at times even images disabled) has considerably decreased the time I spend on Facebook. There was also a command line client for FB, but iirc it's not maintained any more.

So, yes, use an "ugly" browser and you're good. :-)

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#557

Post by wuschel »

wuschel wrote: post #447
greggman wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've blocked HN in my /etc/hosts on my laptop. I also recently blocked it on my phone. I can still read it in a VM on my laptop but at least I have to make a conscious decision to view it where as before I blocked them I'd literally type `n` and chrome would auto complete to `news.ycombinator.com` and I'd be 20-30 minutes in before I realized I never consciously decided to start reading. I have similar problems with…

To me, this loss of control looks like a very classic addiction pattern. As a suggestion, try to get in touch with a Internet/computer addiction specialist.

Not sure why the downvotes. It was an opinion, and actually not a disinformed one due to experience in my circle of friends. I did not want to sounds paternalistic in any way.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#558

Post by lelawlol »

bitwize wrote: post #461
sean_patel wrote: post #460

> I would take a 45 minute dump just catching up on stuff ROFL. That's 1 long helluva a Dump. Hope you don't have roommates or a large family.

Word. Your plumber be like "she's overloaded, Captain, she cannae hold out much longer!"

Hating systemd is like hating Hillary Clinton at this point. It's well past time to suck it up and make peace with your next init system/President because the only viable alternative(s) are far worse. - bitwize

haha she lost and so will your beloved init++

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#559

Post by pault »

dang wrote: post #502
erichocean wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hilarious that HN conflates popularity with "best". So even at HN, the most addictive content is considered to have the highest value. Seems…topical.

The name of that page goes back close to ten years, when HN was created. That was a time when lots of people had more faith in social forum upvoting than they/we do now.

Hi dang, I could swear I once saw a list of front pages with different algos, but now I can't find it for the life of me. Also, is there a "most commented" or "controversial" page?
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