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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)

#231

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…

Twitter you can carefully curate what you want to see. Facebook , you don't decide to curate what you want to see ( exclude ads )

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen stuff like that, but then again I heavily control my fb feed by only following "close" friends and select family members. I don't follow any news sites, and pretty much only follow art pages/ and a few programmers that have public profiles. This has more to do with people who have family/friends who enjoy stuff like that, but it's easily possible to never run across articles like that on fb. I sure ha…

Not everyone is lucky enough to have thoughtful relatives, yet not horrible enough to completely shun.

Isn't that what "unfollow" is for? For people who are obnoxious and you don't want to hear from, but you don't want to actually go all the way to unfriending (which would make it impossible to interact with them at all, basically, and also be noticeable to them). That's how I use it anyway.

I've also noticed that FB now has a "snooze for 30 days" option that you can select, instead of just unfollow/unfriend. Not sure how long this has been around (I'm a very casual FB user) but it seems designed with those people who can't help spouting off over and over about a particular current event in mind.

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

#233
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…

I don't understand your argument... These headlines are all over the news. It's not like not logging to facebook will magically prevent one from seeing them. All you need to do is turn on a local news channel and voila..

That's a pretty good argument for never turning on local news. It's garbage, just the video version of clickbait "journalism" in most cases.

(There is some good investigative journalism still being done on TV, but it's overwhelmed by "gotcha" stories and naked if-it-bleeds-it-leads sensationalism.)

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I have a degree in philosophy and was trained in my formative years to argue with folks. Interestingly, the way we often teach debate is: Someone can argue either side of an issue, and be judged on the approach, successful influence or tactics used, with insufficient weight on the merits of the position. I suspect this helps promote the climate that is reflected in your followup statement: >I can't really get ou…

To a great extent, I see people formally arguing well (or, at the very least, trying to signal that they are arguing well) but so many argue for absurd propositions and hellish conclusions. Much of my thought over the last couple of years centers on how much of our rationalist skills are honed around developing resistance strategies. I believe that we have far more and better mental tools at our disposal for telling…

It may be helpful or even liberating for you to read outside your field a bit, in linguistic anthropology on the topic of language ideologies.

For me, I have realized people are often not simply ‘unskilled’, but instead just do not follow the script of your specific language ideology. They might be saying interesting or smart stuff if you know how to interpret it.

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

#235

> In my own professional life, for example, as I improved my standing as an academic and a writer, I began receiving more interesting opportunities than I could handle. I currently have filters on my website aimed at reducing, not increasing, the number of offers and introductions I receive....My research on successful professionals underscores that this experience is common: As you become more valuable to the market…

I've found social media (Twitter and FB) just so incredibly valuable both personally and financially I usually don't even bother arguing about it.

Random examples: Sold some website classification tech after a SM conversation, got company funded after being introduced on SM, met customers and partners on SM etc.

I'd strongly, strongly dispute the tag of social media marketer though. I just post what I want and interact with whoever I want. If something great comes of it then great, but otherwise I feel better after complaining about random issues in Javascript libraries or some crazy thing I did wrong in a Kaggle competition.

I'm very aware of the trade-off of social media. But they are trade-offs.

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

#236
post #155
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…

As someone who honestly does not desire to live an extra 5-20 years, I disagree. I’d rather have the pleasant morning now.

Mostly, I refuse to clutch and cling to life out of some sentimental attachment to the world around me. Also, there’s the cliche of preserving one’s self during the worst period of old age, and prolonging that portion of life. But then, there’s also the degree of enjoyment one derives from life.

Most people are stuck in some shitty rut. There’s a lot of obvious self-help schlock to tell you that a rut is your own fault, but I can look out at the rest of the world and anticipate outcomes for people who will never ever ascend beyond a certain ceiling of success, and I can take that same degree of qualitative assessment and point it in the mirror.

Some of us have obvious limitations, and would prefer to cut to the chase.

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

#237
post #155
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…

Using lung cancer fatalities to generalize to everyone in the US is fallacious, because most lung cancer occurs in high risk groups (primarily smokers). If you are not a smoker, looking at total fatalities from lung cancer including smokers is looking at numbers that just do not apply to you. It's bad info.

Really not sure how lung cancer figures into this anyhow. I don't see anything about lung cancer in your NIH link. Nope, not in the full article either.

In any case, the numbers you spitballed about eating bacon are definitely off.

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

#238
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 rarely engage politically with the world Why do you think arguing on social media is the only or even best way to engage politically with the world? > So I'm left confused by your apparent inability to do the same. Inability to do what?

> Why do you think arguing on social media is the only or even best way to engage politically with the world?

If Facebook is one of the primary ways you interact with a set of people, then it is natural you would exchange political ideas with them on Facebook. Having to take any political (or other potentially controversial) discussion to a separate communication medium makes Facebook rather bland. It's requires a form of self censorship.

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

#239

I'm not sure I buy that not using social media is the linchpin of my career, but I take his point that it's largely a waste of time to be reasonable. I have all the major social media services and I use them occasionally (for example: I don't install the apps, I just login from a browser). I think the bigger message that I take from this: 1. Some people are probably "addicted" or at least habituated in a way that mak…

This site is my social media, and I'm addicted to it, and I can't concentrate. This is a cry for help.

"Hi, I'm shrimp_emoji and I'm a hackaholic."

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

#240

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. I've been thinking about this a lot lately in calling and sending emails to my government representatives, attending marches and protests. By definition, these are done in public; there's no point otherwise! But there's nothing preventing my employer from deciding they don't like what I'm putting out there and doing .. something about it. I d…

It's not just about keeping potentially embarrassing things off social media. Everyone has biases. If you post something political, religious, etc. that really isn't controversial, that may still lead a potential employee who sees it to pass you over, intentionally or not.
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