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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

#211

Post by notmarkus »

harryf wrote: post #168
thewhitetulip wrote: post #160

I cut facebook out of my life three momths ago when I realized a pattern of my activities. Something hapened and I ranted there about my thoughts, others were offended ao they commented & we would fight not understanding each other. Then I used to ignore them and continue. Then one fine day, I sat on a bus, there was something going on about Kashmir and Indian military and I found that the guy next to me was also pos…

Been free of Facebook for more than 3 years. There's never been a single moment where I felt I was missing out. Even the staying in touch - for those that matter we found other ways to stay connected. The final straw for me was actually a girl from my elementary school who wanted to friend me. The chat went like this... Me: I have to ask you something. So we haven't seen each other for decades, the last time being wh…

Maybe she had a little crush on you at the time, so her memory of you holds more weight in her mind than your memory of her does in yours.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#212

Post by lamby »

yoasif_ wrote: post #209
lamby wrote: post #194

Is "I don't have Facebook" the new "I don't own a TV"?

Probably not, because I'd guess that most people on Facebook still have TVs, and most people not on Facebook _also_ have TVs. (clearly this doesn't include areas where most people don't have TVs.)

(I meant more in terms of it being a meme/posturing, rather than a literal truth)

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#213

Post by treehau5 »

j2bax wrote: post #125
treehau5 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

TBH though, I can't think of many things less fulfilling than wasting time on Facebook. The adrenaline from winning an online game, a show or film that makes you think or gives you a new perspective... then there's the Facebook feed.

I mean this in no offense, but you might be disillusioned or biased towards your particular vice. It's like an alcoholic telling me "well at least I am not doing heroin. Beer at least cleans out your kidneys!"

I struggled from video game addiction, and continue to struggle (it takes a lot of mental energy for me to simply not play). I used to tell myself, "well at least I am playing online and interacting with real people" or "at least I am sharpening my reflexes!"

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#214

Post by pavlov »

coldtea wrote: post #204
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 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 that was true, newspapers would have variable length. But they don't. They fill in the same BS arbitrary number of pages day-in, day-out. Edit: Downvoting as if t…

Newspapers do vary the number of pages on a daily basis, so I don't really know what you mean.

(If they were set to a fixed number of pages, they wouldn't have the flexibility to sell more ads when there's a busy occasion such as an election...)

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#215

Post by bigbugbag »

teddyh wrote: post #94

I have never used Facebook, so I can’t chime in in these threads to say “I quit Facebook because…”, since I’ve never used it. The reason? Even if we disregard the admittedly huge walled-garden and privacy issues, it just seems to be an extremely time-expensive and constantly distracting hobby, with not much to really recommend it.

I'm also part of those who never registered an account on facebook because it was obvious from the get-go what this was gonna be about.

There were only one major difference from the previous similar services namely the shift to having people carelessly use their actual names which is something that was unthinkable until then. And a minor difference in the large use of tricks from the dark book of anti-patterns and dark patterns to get more and more unsuspecting people on board.

To be 100% honest I did use facebook for a little while as I was employed in the shady business of uncovering online users identities and tracking them in the real world. The emergence of facebook made my job a breeze at first, then before long made the whole job position entirely expendable, clients would simply use facebook themselves to conveniently find all the info they were after in one place.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#216

Post by bigbugbag »

ziikutv wrote: post #109

Totally unrelated to the article, so I understand this might be down voted... If I used a bot to delete all of my posts (and literally everything else) after which, I deleted my account... is that actually deleted? Edit: It's been a year or more since doing this. It was such a time waster, and I felt that... if I remove some of my data, it might be a good idea. It is a bit tinfoil-y, I admit but the less data that is…

Chances are that none of this is actually ever deleted but simply made unavaible, in the realm of the shadow profiles facebook is reported to have on people that are not yet registered.

Even if you probably can't achieve actual deletion, what you did probably didn't hurt and removed information for other public or API access.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#217

Post by bigbugbag »

nissehulth wrote: post #13

I did leave FB for awhile. But I realized that there are groups on Facebook that I do find interesting. I do get the occasional event invite on FB, sometimes personal, sometimes even work related. And, there are some people I enjoy communicating with, on Facebook. But, I really don't have much interest in what most of my friends post. Luckily, it's easy to just "unfollow" them to declutter my feed. They are still on…

It's funny how what you say in line with what others often say.

To me it seems that you remove almost all of what facebook offers to keep instant messaging, contact list and email. Things one can achieve outside of facebook but for some reason people still insist on using facebook for these even though they admit they dislike it.

Just leave the damn thing already and build your networking outside of it instead giving more momentum to something you don't like and know is bad at the global scale.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#218

Post by ionised »

I check Facebook maybe once a week now (via the Tinfoil app), for perhaps a minute or two. This is just to check messages that my friends sometimes send out when trying to organise meet-ups.

This is the only utility I get from Facebook now. Anything else is just akin to endless spam, except it's from people I know (some well, some not so well).

I made the mistake when I first opened an account of adding all my family and colleagues. Man, that was quickly realised as a grave mistake.

Re: Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable

#219

Post by ionised »

jehlakj wrote: post #158

Seriously? Who says that we have no choice but to compare ourselves with others? Facebook is a great way to stay connected with old friends. There's a pleasant feeling about seeing how the people you once knew are doing these days. If you do inevitably end up focusing more on the Maserati, the million dollar wedding, etc., then that's your problem. Your insecurity. Whenever I scroll past those things, I simply say, "…

> Who says that we have no choice but to compare ourselves with others

Human nature

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