Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

Post by chrismealy » Sun, May 07, 2017, 4:20 AM UTC

abalashov wrote: post #116

nradov wrote: post #113

I don't get it, where is the misery? Are people really so fragile that they get upset seeing some old classmate in a luxury car? I put off creating a Facebook account for a long time but eventually gave in. And I was pleasantly surprised to find how well it works for sharing photo albums with my friends and family.

I don't get it, where is the misery? Are people really so fragile that they get upset seeing some old classmate in a luxury car? I don't think it's any particular, discrete thing like that in itself, but rather the accumulated impact of the social media heuristic described over a period of years. For a more extreme example, look at LinkedIn. Judging by the posts, one can easily be led to believe that all of one's con…

Post by suneilp » Sun, May 07, 2017, 4:34 AM UTC

MilnerRoute wrote: post #86

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…

Some time last year Facebook began giving me notifications within the application that... "Your friend uploaded a photo" or "your friend updated their status." Maybe this is because I stopped using Facebook for so long, there weren't any real notifications to give me. They wanted it to seem like I'd missed something.

Post by j2bax » Sun, May 07, 2017, 4:38 AM UTC

treehau5 wrote: post #117

tsm wrote: post #5

Facebook doesn't make me miserable because I feel like I'm having less fun and being less glamorous than the friends on my news feed—it makes me miserable because it's an addicting timewaster with minimal utility and I'd much rather be [reading a book, playing music, writing software, hanging out with friends IRL, working on a project, sleeping, watching TV…]

Facebooks your current fixation for your procrastination, but if it wasn't facebook, I'd venture to guess it would most likely be something else that is an addicting timewaster with minimal utility because that's the exactly the kind of thing we seek out when we want to get away from things we think are more important. For you, facebook. For me -- videogames, particularly online competitive style. For someone else? B…

Post by nojvek » Sun, May 07, 2017, 4:49 AM UTC

leggomylibro wrote: post #106

tsm wrote: post #5

Facebook doesn't make me miserable because I feel like I'm having less fun and being less glamorous than the friends on my news feed—it makes me miserable because it's an addicting timewaster with minimal utility and I'd much rather be [reading a book, playing music, writing software, hanging out with friends IRL, working on a project, sleeping, watching TV…]

I completely agree. I cut Facebook out of my life and got 2-3 hours a day of focus back, easily. It's actually made a huge difference, because now I have time to waste time, while still being high-energy and invested in all of the projects that are important to me. But I also think that a lot of what has made me happier and calmer day-to-day is more to do with a change in attitude that came with dropping Facebook. No…

Post by RobSim » Sun, May 07, 2017, 4:53 AM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #115

pavlov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I read an app that updates once a day with 6 short news items. Takes less than 5 minutes to read when I'm on the pot and I'm done with news for the rest of the day. Works pretty well, I don't think I'm less informed than other people I interact with.