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Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

nytimes.com

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Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#71

Post by k-mcgrady »

sarcasmic wrote: post #53

As my Facebook cohort aged up into their mid-20s, my feed is all baby photos and overchurned memes that have been re-shared across 5 different sites, interspersed with relentless posts from artists I forgot I liked long ago, and ads that are trying hard to be local. Its utility is increasingly not defined by the Feed, but by being a contact list of Everyone You Ever Met Who You Don't Want To Unfriend, which has some…

Interesting take on Instagram. I'm mid-20's and I find that I don't care at all how many likes I get on Instagram, I'm much more concerned with likes on Facebook. This is one reason I prefer Instagram. As most posts are by 'celebrities' rather than my actual friends I don't feel jealousy or other negative emotions when I see cool photos. I don't pay much attention to likes on Instagram at all actually. I've recently made the decision to delete Facebook from my phone. I find my main use of Facebook is photo sharing and I can do that through Instagram (and those can be sent to Facebook/Twitter automatically without me having to pay attention to those platforms too much). I haven't been doing this long but I've found a noticeable improvement in my happiness. I can't remember the last time I saw something really negative on Instagram, whereas on Facebook every public post is littered with horrible comments. Maybe that's it.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#72

Post by makecheck »

I liked Facebook early on when it was set up in a way that was pretty easy to customize (even with plug-ins). It felt easier than creating a custom web page — even as someone with the skills to do so — and it was more likely to actually be seen by people that I knew.

Then they started compartmentalizing everything. After awhile, if you wanted to mention something that didn’t have a field in their form, there wasn’t really anywhere to put that. All the plug-ins went away.

Then I started to realize that if I learned too much about things by reading a feed, I had no idea what to talk about in person because I already “knew” everything. Ironically a social platform was making real social behavior more difficult.

Eventually though, knowing things was not exactly beneficial because it was like dirty laundry. Paragraphs and paragraphs of stuff that I didn’t want to see. Oh, great: didn’t know that co-worker was actually super-religious and was going to start posting every possible religious thing that crossed his inbox [hide]. Oh, great: friends that go to the same places every single weekend and post the same maps of those places and the same pictures every single time [hide]. Oh, great: pages of the latest political diatribes [hide]. Oh, great: 50 things I have already seen on Reddit [hide]. These days if I do log in, I can scroll for quite awhile and see nothing interesting at all, even after being gone from Facebook for a week.

That means it’s become a glorified address book, which is kind of where we started and perhaps where we should have always remained. What is the multi-billion-dollar “value” of Facebook now?

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#73

Post by wutbrodo »

majewsky wrote: post #54
feocco wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment thread hits the nail on the head for why I deactivated my social media. But I haven't found a good alternative "productive" time waster for when my mind needs a short break.

"When my mind needs a short break" sounds like you should give meditation a shot.

Yea, but for a lot of people who are just starting to get better at practicing mindfulness, it's not a 100% solution yet and you end up doing things like FB anyway, just more rarely. (I know that was the case for me at least)

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#74

Post by scrps »

scrps wrote: post #42

If a Facebook post of a photo of a friend sitting in their new BMW, sipping 30 year old single malt next to a 19 year old bikini model whist reading Grant's Interest Rate Observer on a beach in Nice captioned with a Kurt Vonnegut quote is making you miserable then I suspect there are larger psychological issues at play then social media usage that might be remedied with a walk in a park, physical interaction with ano…

Oh, I've triggered some segment. takes a bow

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#75

Post by mattnewton »

kahoon wrote: post #63
spacelizard wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed Facebook seems to be really good at spamming me with useless notifications, it even somehow manages to do it after I've unfriended 90% of the people that I am not close friends with and blocked most notification types. Yeah I could prune my friends list even further and only check it passively, but then all I'm stuck with is basically an incredibly bloated email/chat service that is loaded with ads. Then…

Can't you just disable notifications from the Facebook app? Android allows it, and I reckon iOS does too. I found this to be a nice solution to deal with obnoxious apps because you remove the annoyance but can still use them should the need arise.

Or uninstall the app, the mobile website works well and doesn't slurp your battery in the background.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#76

Post by H4CK3RM4N »

pavlov wrote: post #45
aleyan wrote: post #32

Perhaps we should take NYTimes advice a step further and stop letting them make us miserable either. There is nothing actionable in the news; next to no utility. News is simply a time sink that depress your spirit. Whenever I think of reading "legitimate" news like the NYTimes, I am reminded of this quote from a Soviet novel by Bulgakov. In it a doctor gives advice: If you care about your digestion, my advice is [sic…

I like reading the newspaper -- print, rather than online -- specifically because it comes out only once a day. It's not an endless stream of pretend-immediate attention-grabbers, but a curated collection of the important stuff that happened yesterday. If the print newspaper were invented today, it would grab hundreds of millions of VC money in Silicon Valley as the cure for news overload. (I guess the pitch would ha…

You could replace the AI bit with 'reporters' who are trained to collate and edit the news, in order to give it a human touch.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#77

Post by H4CK3RM4N »

artifaxx wrote: post #28
geppeto wrote: post #6

Outside of Silicon Valley, people are marginally bewildered when you tell them you don't have Facebook. Inside Silicon Valley you'll quite often run into someone that works at Facebook and they'll switch to a psych analysis algorithm to understand how their service is not catering to you, while trying to mask their offense. It must be good because of the daily active user number! Yeah well Tobacco has a high DAU too.

I remember a professor who equated smartphone use with smoking, he told people to go outside with the smokers if they wanted to use their smartphones/Facebook.

I once saw those behaviours described as "idle animations"(on Reddit of all places).

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#78

Post by 5thaccount »

feocco wrote: post #34
brightball wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually why I deleted my account. The constant anger about everything was just unnecessary in my life.

This comment thread hits the nail on the head for why I deactivated my social media. But I haven't found a good alternative "productive" time waster for when my mind needs a short break.

> But I haven't found a good alternative "productive" time waster for when my mind needs a short break.

Hacker News? I mean, you posted this right here!

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#79

Post by amiga-workbench »

kstenerud wrote: post #16

It's interesting how the vast majority of responses to this post are from people who have either left facebook entirely, or severely crippled it. Are the majority of HN folks off facebook, or is it just the vocal ones?

Still on it, but only for the memes.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#80

Post by jsemrau »

sarcasmic wrote: post #53

As my Facebook cohort aged up into their mid-20s, my feed is all baby photos and overchurned memes that have been re-shared across 5 different sites, interspersed with relentless posts from artists I forgot I liked long ago, and ads that are trying hard to be local. Its utility is increasingly not defined by the Feed, but by being a contact list of Everyone You Ever Met Who You Don't Want To Unfriend, which has some…

We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact.
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