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Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

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Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#181

Post by npsimons »

jacobkg wrote: post #69
RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "North Korea moves one step closer to nuking Western US" or "Bacon Gives You Cancer". Facebook heavily encourages people to write and share headlines like this (true or not) and then promotes them prominently in your news feed. This can take a heavy emotional toll…

> This can take a heavy emotional toll on people over time and gradually make them more unhappy.

This is precisely why I stopped paying attention to news and am not on social media.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#182

Post by otachack »

turc1656 wrote: post #166

"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 of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom." While I do not use social media (have FB but don't use it, never had Twitter, Instagram, etc.), and have taken steps to minimizing distractions like using the browser add-on Distraction-free Youtube (which is gre…

HN totally is one of the sources. But it's ultimately up to you, the consumer, to limit your intake.

I ran into an article, either supplied by HN or not, that went over how we do not allow ourselves to be bored anymore. Any downtime we encounter is attacked with interaction with our smart phones. I think we need, as a favor to ourselves, curb that behavior.

One thing I've done was disabled ringtones and vibrations for notifications on my phone. For calls I used to have my Pebble alert me of them but the app has stopped being maintained. This allows me to check my phone when I want to, not when it tells me to.

Good luck!

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#183

Post by whatyoucantsay »

jancsika wrote: post #114
RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

> If I wouldn't do something in public, I wouldn't post it to social media. Maybe I'm unique in being able to restrain myself. Another possibility occurs to me: you are on a path in your life where, for whatever reason, you rarely engage politically with the world. Or at least you rarely engage politically in a way that would bring a substantial risk to your career, personal, or political life. Or you are lucky enoug…

You're shaming someone for having low stress, bland social media habits.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#184

Post by sergiotapia »

RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

Regardless, there's very little to gain by having public profiles; and everything to lose.

Go anonymous, it worked in the 90s and now it's like we've been spellbound by corporations to go personal.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#185

Post by npsimons »

kragen wrote: post #155
jacobkg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "North Korea moves one step closer to nuking Western US" or "Bacon Gives You Cancer". Facebook heavily encourages people to write and share headlines like this (true or not) and then promotes them prominently in your news feed. This can take a heavy emotional toll…

The bacon thing is maybe a good example of Hamming's Closed Door Paradox: I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do i…

First and foremost, what evidence is there for Hamming's claim?

> is worth a single disrupted morning.

We're not talking about a single "disrupted" morning. We're talking about chronic depression, which can lead to suicide.

Many people I tell that I don't keep up with current events like to claim I'm ignorant. At which point I ask them to name the most important thing they learned from news two weeks ago. Haven't had someone come up with anything substantial yet.

Knowledge is valuable, it is a form of wealth, and there are many ways to get it. I do not believe we receive knowledge from modern mainstream media today. Most of it is ephemeral drama that does not matter in the least.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#186

Post by bazzlexposition »

"Demographically speaking I should be a heavy social media user, but that is not the case. I’ve never had a social media account."

And I am supposed to spend the next 10 minutes reading your opinion, about something you haven't even experienced firsthand.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#187

Post by tjr225 »

RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

You can do all of those things without Facebook. I'm not saying one way is right or wrong...I'm just saying.

I haven't had a Facebook since 2011 or so and I don't even remember why I got rid of it...but there has been no compelling reason for me to use it since.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#188

Post by _mrmnmly »

jacobkg wrote: post #69
RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "North Korea moves one step closer to nuking Western US" or "Bacon Gives You Cancer". Facebook heavily encourages people to write and share headlines like this (true or not) and then promotes them prominently in your news feed. This can take a heavy emotional toll…

when I receive even single information like this, I see after the author (a.k.a. person who shared it so it is visible on my timeline) and mute his account (or remove it from my contacts).

I even take struggle to mark EVERY SINGLE advert on facebook as a spam or inappropriate - I think that may make me a facebook user with most unrelated adverts to my actual interests - and I recommend everyone to do the same.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#189

Post by sverige »

jacobkg wrote: post #69
RandallBrown wrote: post #62

Am I the only person that has a healthy relationship with social media? I use Twitter to follow interesting celebrities and industry professionals. (Adam Savage Mythbusters fame, pro climber Alex Honnold, several notable iOS programmers). I rarely interact with any of them, but I find out about lots of interesting things. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends around the country. I can keep my dad updated to wh…

For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "North Korea moves one step closer to nuking Western US" or "Bacon Gives You Cancer". Facebook heavily encourages people to write and share headlines like this (true or not) and then promotes them prominently in your news feed. This can take a heavy emotional toll…

While I agree that pretty much all news media is toxic, the reason Facebook makes people unhappy is that 1) people put on their best show there, and 2) others compare themselves and become discontent. It's the constant comparing of your life to the perception that others have it better that causes all this unhappiness.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-out-your-mind/20...

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)

#190

Post by DanielBMarkham »

npsimons wrote: post #185
kragen wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bacon thing is maybe a good example of Hamming's Closed Door Paradox: I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do i…

First and foremost, what evidence is there for Hamming's claim? > is worth a single disrupted morning. We're not talking about a single "disrupted" morning. We're talking about chronic depression, which can lead to suicide. Many people I tell that I don't keep up with current events like to claim I'm ignorant. At which point I ask them to name the most important thing they learned from news two weeks ago. Haven't had…

Spot on. It used to be when the feedback cycles were quite long that newspapers were forced to use a shotgun approach, hitting all sorts of topics in the hopes that one or two them would interest the reader. If they failed? No big deal.

With instantaneous feedback, and click-based advertising? All that crap is out the window. (Although you can make a good argument that things got really out of hand with the rise of cable news and the 24-hour-news cycle.)

It's all emotional manipulation now. Nothing else. It looks like for a lot of folks, it doesn't even matter if it's true or not.

50 years ago, if you didn't the paper, you were ignorant. Today, if you consume a bunch of online media, you're not ignorant, you're stupid: you are purposely filling your head with emotion-laden content in lieu of actually learning anything. If anything, you're most likely making yourself emotionally ill.

The best source I have for learning what's going on is the opinion columns. The format drives more honest out. As an opinion-writer, you're expected to have a thesis, an argument, and supporting data. Your bias is direct and up-front. It's a much more tractable way of evaluating information sources.

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