Live data from Hacker News

Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

iafrikan.com

81–87 of 87 posts

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#81
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And what's more magical than to pull some Latin American station out of thin air? Pulling the entirety of Wikipedia and Youtube out of thin air? That being said, I totally agree - I love books, my manual film camera, dream of owning a typewriter (but have no use for it) and love records.

I nearly broke myself at some point because I started to realise that just by typing on a computer I was broadcasting things through space, hammering rays of light under the Atlantic, and getting a reply back in miliseconds. If I think too much about it, I almost can't do anything because that is magic, made real . Another good way to break yourself is to go into any reasonably sized supermarket and look, really look…

Fair enough but that part of the magic is so beyond what a young kid can understand without all the context involved that it is magic that can't be decomposed. The elements involved are closed off to inspection.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#82
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitler promised a lot more and did not arise to power in the situation of good economy. He promised new land under theory that Germany is overcrowded, he promised power and went up as capitalism/democracy seemed to be failing. Hitlers popularity went down when economy was better and up when it crashed. Another thing that played against socialists in Germany was knowledge of purge in Russia. Germans were scared that s…

My wording was unclear by positioning it as "the appeal" as opposed to "one of the appeals". Hitler promised a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The Nazi party was extremely cynical in its application of promises and even ideology. One of the the most interesting and disturbing pieces of Nazi propaganda was a poster of a banker and a communist holding hands, with the caption, "Marxism is the guard…

> What Orwell is referring to is not the totality of Nazi appeal, because they positions themselves to have many, often conflicting with each other, but one particular appeal to a certain segment of society.

What I want to say is that the amount of people who were throwing away comfort, safety and short working-hours in exchange of struggle was smaller then the quote implies. Their choice dont speak for humanity. German history does not give us reason to worry that alienation from having too good life leads to such catastrophe.

Struggle seeking segments of society had their own reasons to accept that deal and it was not that their all basic needs were well met. It was not collective identity crisis due to all problems being solved. A lot them were hurt, scared, damaged by WWI experiences, used to violence and inside country that was breaking down. They did not believed the comfort can be gained unless Germany gets to power again and destroys enemies.

And the wish for militaristic values did not came out of nowhere either - the boys were raised to be that way. There was a lot of social status to be gained by being in military plus guaranteed state employment (and whole state institutions being all ex-soldiers).

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#83
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I nearly broke myself at some point because I started to realise that just by typing on a computer I was broadcasting things through space, hammering rays of light under the Atlantic, and getting a reply back in miliseconds. If I think too much about it, I almost can't do anything because that is magic, made real . Another good way to break yourself is to go into any reasonably sized supermarket and look, really look…

Fair enough but that part of the magic is so beyond what a young kid can understand without all the context involved that it is magic that can't be decomposed. The elements involved are closed off to inspection.

I think you may be underestimating your kid here. Try to walk him trough the steps and see if he can't grasp at least some of the magic.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#84
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough but that part of the magic is so beyond what a young kid can understand without all the context involved that it is magic that can't be decomposed. The elements involved are closed off to inspection.

I think you may be underestimating your kid here. Try to walk him trough the steps and see if he can't grasp at least some of the magic.

As good as we can, consider it done. But that's still not the same as being able to trace the wiring or to follow the mechanical linkages.

What I found really interesting is that they have no problem understanding vacuum tubes but fail at understanding transistors which are essentially the same thing only going from a literally transparent glass tube with inner bits that you can see to a little black piece of plastic with three metal legs sticking out.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#85
post #34
post #31

I've deleted my facebook account a decade ago, the last time I logged in when facebook revived the account and told me it was hacked. I don't think I've ever really had the desire myself to reactivate it, my fellow students started posting into some shared group there but eventually everyone moved to whatsapp as that was more widely deployed and direct. FB, for me, has no actual value other than capturing users like…

everyone moved to whatsapp Maybe the distinction is worthwhile to make if you try, but in general “I don’t use Facebook, I use [thing that is also Facebook]” is not really a convincing argument.

Whatsapp is a much different product and atm everything is end-to-end encrypted, so I trust that more than facebook itself.

There is also little binding to the service, the entire semester could switch to a new service within a week (we've played out the scenario "what if whatsapp goes belly up" as part of a course)

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#86
post #65
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on both points. Human population spends less time in aggregate playing games that on social media. I don't have a quote from somewhere but just from the monthly active users from various social networks it is quite safe to say that almost everybody is on at least one social network. The second thing is, that people do talk about the addictiveness and bad effects of games all the time , and have been doing…

Monthly active is nowhere near any kind of problem. I know no one who would flunk the school cause he can't glue out of Facebook. I know multiple people who had huge problems in school due to being unable to stop playing or woke up multiple times during night to care about kingdom.

I mentioned the MAUs only to give some importance to the scale. Social networks affect an order or two magnitudes more people than games. Social networks lead to anxiety, depression and have been instrumental in many disastrous cases of mob justice and harassment.

People do get influenced by games and it can lead to problems you have mentioned. However, I do not think that gaming can transform the society as a whole. Social networks have already done it, both in bad and good ways.

Re: Claiming our lives back from social media addiction

#87
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is sad that public spaces are now full of people doing private things. Yes, they're often being social in a way, but in most of those cases they're interacting with people they already know at the expense of getting to know the new people around them. That impedes the formation of the broad and diverse web of relationships important to civic community. I don't think there's a simple answer to this. There ju…

That is one social norm. My norm is that I don't owe people my time, which you may consider rude.

If there wasn't going to be any social interaction anyway, there's nothing to detract from. I read books on my phone in public places - e.g. subway stations and trains - all the time. But some places and times are intended to be more social. If you're at an explicitly social gathering, at a party or happy hour, dining with friends, etc., and your face is buried in your phone the whole time, that's rude. You don't owe others your time, but neither do you have the right to turn a shared social space into something else for your own benefit. If you want to be alone, get to a less social space. Everyone including you will be happier for it.
Post reply on HN