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Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

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Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#101

Post by freehunter »

oftenwrong wrote: post #30

Hacker News addiction linked to staking your self-worth on...

I came here to say this exactly. I'm only a hobbyist programmer even though I'm pretty darn good in my niche technical (non-programming) field. But almost every time I jump into the comments section my self-worth goes down a bit and I feel just a bit worse because really this is a community of programmers. And even though I'm not a programmer, I do write computer programs occasionally, and quite often I see people calling out my style of programming as the worst thing in the world.

I have a side business, but I haven't created fifteen startups with successful exits, so I feel less important than a lot of people here.

I don't have a Dell XPS 13 Developers Edition running Arch, so I'm not as pure as a lot of people here.

I use Facebook and not Mastodon, so I'm a sheep contributing to the downfall of society.

I live in the Midwest, where nothing happens and land is worthless and colleges are even worse and we don't even have the Internet here do we?

If you think Facebook or Snapchat or Instagram are damaging to the self-worth of its consumers, try being someone who doesn't live in SV and 10x some Phoenix/Elixir at an AI-owned biomed non-profit stealth-mode VC-backed startup collective. I've never even wheeled a suitcase into Paul Graham's office! I'm basically worthless.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#102

Post by TAForObvReasons »

themagician wrote: post #100

Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than they way they are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one cared about “likes”. I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts…

The problem is that the numbers obsession is what drives KPI. Without the "internet points" people wouldn't spend as much time on those sites grinding points, leading to less ad revenue. The economics are fully aligned with the user behavior we see now, and many psychologists and others warned about this over the years

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#103

Post by aswanson »

DenisM wrote: post #99
MrLeap wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misinterpret me, I'm not asking what the world needs, I'm asking what it's possible to give them for profit. If wondering if we could create a social network that offers 50x the social validation (fentanyl is like 50x the potency of heroin). Maybe machine learning can find the right combination of color flashes to cause people to have a social bliss seizure. Maybe while simultaneously reading their rapid eye move…

The answer is sort of yes, digital fentanyl is in our future. It’s a simple ML model that tells you what you want to hear based on your previous reactions and cross-person prior training data. Whatever your hidden insecurities are, that’s where it will bind. Once it becomes variative enough to keep you on your toes and precise enough to strike in yout heart you will no longer care that’s it obviously failing the Turi…

Sounds like the basis for a good novel/movie. Even suggests a title:"Turing Incomplete".

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#105

Post by MrLeap »

mindgam3 wrote: post #92
MrLeap wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misinterpret me, I'm not asking what the world needs, I'm asking what it's possible to give them for profit. If wondering if we could create a social network that offers 50x the social validation (fentanyl is like 50x the potency of heroin). Maybe machine learning can find the right combination of color flashes to cause people to have a social bliss seizure. Maybe while simultaneously reading their rapid eye move…

See, your attitude is exactly what is wrong with Silicon Valley culture. You’re joking about technology to give people social bliss seizures for profit, hahaha hilarious. Meanwhile millions of people are actually dying from addiction, and not just heroin. A member of my immediate family died by suicide recently. She suffered from massive self esteem issues as a result of chronic childhood abuse. She turned to Faceboo…

Please accept my sincerest condolences for the death of your family member.

In some ways I followed a similar path to that of your relative, in part because I often obtain validation by publicly satirizing elements of society I think are wrong. I've found satire the best tool in my toolbox at sparking conversation and even changing minds.

I've considered your proposal, and respectfully choose to continue the path I'm on. Whether or not you agree with it, I hope you'll believe that my motive is to cast a negative light on the victimizers and not the victims.

Best regards to you and yours

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#106

Post by themagician »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #102
themagician wrote: post #100

Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than they way they are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one cared about “likes”. I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts…

The problem is that the numbers obsession is what drives KPI. Without the "internet points" people wouldn't spend as much time on those sites grinding points, leading to less ad revenue. The economics are fully aligned with the user behavior we see now, and many psychologists and others warned about this over the years

In the short term I agree with you. But it decreases the long term value and utility of the platform IMO.

Take Instagram. It used to be a platform for posting pictures. It was a digital version of Polaroid—an “instant” camera. When you look on Instagram now it’s core functionality and differentiation is basically gone. When you look on the explore tab you are hard pressed to find any photos at all, let alone ones that were taken with the camera itself.

Instagram now is no different than Facebook or any other generic network, it’s just the biggest. The content is nonsensical and people will eventually get bored of it. At some point I think it occurs to every user, “why am I even doing this” and they bounce, so it always requires new users coming in to grow the userbase.

IG is now easy, from a technical standpoint, to replace as it has no real identity. Just let people post whatever for internet points. Socially it’s hard to topple, but that’s hard to defend long term and somewhat out of your control.

I just don’t see how or why IG exists ten years from now. For what? At least in its original incarnation it had a purpose, however niche, which might have had some long term viability.

I think the best example of this is probably looking at the Chinese social apps like YY, Inke and Meipai. A billion people who don’t give a shit about Kylie Jenner and are developing apps with far more interesting features than anything we have.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#107

Post by ohnoesmyscv »

themagician wrote: post #106
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the numbers obsession is what drives KPI. Without the "internet points" people wouldn't spend as much time on those sites grinding points, leading to less ad revenue. The economics are fully aligned with the user behavior we see now, and many psychologists and others warned about this over the years

In the short term I agree with you. But it decreases the long term value and utility of the platform IMO. Take Instagram. It used to be a platform for posting pictures. It was a digital version of Polaroid—an “instant” camera. When you look on Instagram now it’s core functionality and differentiation is basically gone. When you look on the explore tab you are hard pressed to find any photos at all, let alone ones tha…

IG content isn’t nonsensical IMO. The content on IG is generally of higher quality and visually curated. It’s also a better platform for showcasing your brand if you’re in the ecommerce space than FB Pages for example.

Granted, there are accounts that are dedicated to memes and other ‘nonsensical’ content, but you get much more of that on FB. Putting IG in the same trash pile that FB is in is unfair.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#108

Post by amag »

themagician wrote: post #100

Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than they way they are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one cared about “likes”. I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts…

> I see people browsing through IG tapping to like for 20 minutes at a time and think to myself, “why are you even doing that?” It’s a compulsion that does nothing.

This. If nothing else scared me away from social networks the mind-numbing scroll-like-scroll-like behavior I see the users/addicts exhibit sure does.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#109

Post by atmosx »

technobabble wrote: post #85
iamben wrote: post #8

Pop science, but this probably helps explain why Facebook/Snapchat/etc are so popular with the teen demographic. I'm kinda glad we didn't have any of that when I was that age. Remembering back to how insecure I felt personally, I can't really begin to imagine the pressure of being on a 'social' platform at that age.

Anecdotal note (I'm in my early twenties) What personally amazes me is how many people treat their social profiles with the same rigor and attention as a large PR conglomerate. Everything photo took dozens of takes, every post rewritten to maximize the number of keywords. Personal Branding has taken the 'social' out of social media a la Black Mirror (nosedive).

I came here to point out nosedive. I searched just in case and voila!

Black Mirror is amazing ofc. But specifically this episode, Nosedive, should be studied and analysed in public schools.

Re: Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance

#110

Post by DanielBMarkham »

themagician wrote: post #100

Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than they way they are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one cared about “likes”. I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts…

Also sharing.

Taking the time to save a link/picture, go to another site, and typing in a description and comments on material? Great. Seeing a cat picture and instantaneously clicking "share"?

Screw that. That kind of behavior is in the website's interest, not mine. It creates an endless stream of slightly-interesting material from people I know, just enough to keep me watching but not enough to feel like anything got done.

Spending time doing something compulsively that later you realize was a waste of time, then doing it again? That's addiction. I don't know what kind of addiction it is. It's certainly less addictive than opiods. But it's no doubt addictive -- and it is currently affecting billions of people worldwide.

It's an amazing amount of societal damage that nobody will ever be able to quantify. We'll never know the books that weren't read, the inventions that weren't made, or the people that weren't helped because somebody was watching social media.

(And before somebody talks about how great it is to have the planet connected, it is! Being able to communicate and research is nowhere near the same thing as having your head stuck in your phone eight hours a day)

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