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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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, Snapchat doesn't seem to have this particular downside. It has points/scoring, but they were always somewhat hidden away and I'm not sure if anyone took them very seriously. Like the rest of the app's UX, and sort of ranking cryptic and obfuscated (like the emojis signifying how your friends compared to you) and not made into an emphasis.

I had the impression some people were obsessed with the "streak" feature on Snapchat.

I know people who are obsessed with maintaining streaks on Snapchat, but I see the effects of a streak as different from the effects of the likes and shares mentioned above. While both mechanisms encourage users to use their platform more, keeping a Snapchat streak with friends puts an emphasis on actually communicating with individual people instead of blasting content across the platform.

Whether or not that communication between individuals is high-quality will vary from person to person, though.

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

#132

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 g…

Most people in the US spend an amazing amount of time watching TV. The average for adults is about 5 hours a day[1]. Not sure if I really believe these numbers, as many people have the TV on when doing something else (I hope), but most people don't choose to do something "productive" with their free time.

Is social media better that TV? I would say social media has more value and is more likely to cause damage, but avoiding both is probably a good idea. I try not to eat much ice cream either.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption

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

#134
Considering the number of GoFundMe's I see for basic medical care, staking one's self-worth on social acceptance is not some weird psychological delusion. In this economy and country, social acceptance is the difference between life and death.

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

#135

Considering the number of GoFundMe's I see for basic medical care, staking one's self-worth on social acceptance is not some weird psychological delusion. In this economy and country, social acceptance is the difference between life and death.

Somewhat ironically, the higher up you get on the socioeconomic hierarchy, the less true that is. Both in the obvious way (rich people have these little tokens called "dollars" that will make a surprising number of people and organizations do your bidding, particularly institutions like hospitals, colleges, and politicians), and in a much less obvious way: the most effective approach to acquiring these dollars is to become the monopoly provider for a good that lots of people need, and if you don't have lots of capital to buy up real estate and such, the most effective way to do that is often to seek out psychological desires that people have but don't want to admit they have (for example, being liked by everyone) and provide that.

Yes, this is part of what makes social mobility hard. To move up the socioeconomic strata, you often have to abandon values that were essential to survival or self-worth at lower levels.

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

#136
the real question is, is it intentional as a means of social control? I noticed that the messenger app intentionally delays messages at a rate that is linked to dopamine ups/down -- when another person sent me a message, and I went to another area of the website, and paused, there message would "appear" right when I lost interest, re-engaging me into facebook -- so there is some kind of thought put into creating a feedback loop to stay addicted to the platform. That, and the facebook scientists who were caught screwing with people's minds via social experiments years back and actually openly published their results, with zero ethical considerations, leads me to be concerned that this might also be some kind of sinister plot to control dehumanize subjects on their platform.

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

#137
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, now you’re claiming that your original post was satire? Perhaps you should clarify that to the multiple people who have responded with comments in earnest. Regarding your claimed motive to cast a negative light on the victimizers, uhhh... yeah. That might be believable, except that you’re doing the exact opposite in this thread. I hate to break it to you, but leaving insensitive comments about addiction which y…

Yikes! I get that you don't believe me, but I sincerely was trying to be respectful of your opinion and your grief. I've had quite a lot of death in my family, so I empathize with the grief people experience during similar times. A lifetime of things, good and bad made me this way. I don't agree that I have any particular pathos I need to nail down, but being better is always the goal, right? This whole thing just tu…

This dispute isn't about my grief, despite your manipulative comments, nor does it have anything to do with Poe's law.

It's about you pushing buttons by making insensitive and disrespectful comments, then continuing to feign ignorance, avoiding responsibility for your hurtful words and finally trying to shift blame for the situation onto me.

The technical term for what you're doing is emotional abuse and gaslighting. This behavior is typically observed in those who have had it done to them. If you were paying me to be your therapist, I could help you fix the bugs in your psyche. But I'm not your therapist, and you seem to recognize nothing odd about your behavior, so there's no point in continuing the conversation at this time. Be well.

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

#138
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes! I get that you don't believe me, but I sincerely was trying to be respectful of your opinion and your grief. I've had quite a lot of death in my family, so I empathize with the grief people experience during similar times. A lifetime of things, good and bad made me this way. I don't agree that I have any particular pathos I need to nail down, but being better is always the goal, right? This whole thing just tu…

This dispute isn't about my grief, despite your manipulative comments, nor does it have anything to do with Poe's law. It's about you pushing buttons by making insensitive and disrespectful comments, then continuing to feign ignorance, avoiding responsibility for your hurtful words and finally trying to shift blame for the situation onto me. The technical term for what you're doing is emotional abuse and gaslighting.…

I mentioned Poe's Law because you took for granted everyone who responded to me, responded in earnest. I took their responses as sarcastic. Poe's Law. You think my condolences were insincere, I'm asserting that they were not. Also your name is MindGam3 and you're leaning on the hostility and remote diagnosis pretty hard, so that could be a thing, I'll take for granted that it's not. Also, you find it hard to believe my original comment was satire, implying you believe I intend to bring a seizure machine to YC2019. There's so much Poe's law at play right now that this thread could be used as an example in schools.

I downshifted from jokes to (an attempt at!) sensitivity not to manipulate or gaslight you. Perhaps I was trying to manipulate you into feeling less upset.

I thought I pushed your buttons with my original insensitive and disrespectful comments because of the death of your family member. If that's not the case, I don't know. I've nearly forgotten what the point of all this is.

Perhaps what you consider feigning ignorance, gaslighting, and manipulation stems from me not meeting your hostility with hostility, I understand that the mere suggestion of that is probably like 4th or 5th dimensional gaslighting.

I'm happy to acknowledge some of the things I say are offensive to some people, I'll continue trying to talk to people I offend with respect, until cynicism gets the best of me and the glib persona takes over completely ;)

I'm not willing to censor myself because you want me to though, I think I spelled that out clearly enough without feigning anything.

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

#139

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 g…

> 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.

Individuals have a right to recreation; they don't need to spend every waking moment being useful to society. The alternative is dystopian.

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

#140

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…

Funnily enough, Snapchat doesn't seem to have this particular downside. It has points/scoring, but they were always somewhat hidden away and I'm not sure if anyone took them very seriously. Like the rest of the app's UX, and sort of ranking cryptic and obfuscated (like the emojis signifying how your friends compared to you) and not made into an emphasis.

The toxicity in Snapchat comes from its filter culture, and how they're abused to create a fake and frankly disturbing and disgusting standard of beauty
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