Facebook addiction linked to staking your self-worth on social acceptance • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by ponderatul » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 5:26 AM UTC

MrLeap wrote: post #138

mindgam3 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dude just don't worry about it. A lot of people take offense at just about anything in 2018. They victimize themselves and then just try to shift the blame on you for lack of emotional development.

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

#142

Post by celdon25 » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

bdz wrote: post #14

Social media is the new smoking. Cancer destroys you physically but these sites destroy your mental health. Not just Facebook but Instagram too for example, it's even worse. And don't forget Twitter.

And when one's mental health diminishes, it affects everyone around them, virally.

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

#143

Post by mng42 » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 7:05 AM UTC

Social media knows how to play the game. It knows how to keep the herds hungry, happy, and most importantly loyal to the system. It strikes where it matters most --into the heart and mind of users. Poking the ego of 'self-worth', counting likes of social acceptance, sharing ego driven personal stories or unmattered opinions to get more and more attention and standout above the rest of the flock. Everything is a contagious fabricated reality that could be a slow poison to a naive.

The bigger picture is it doesn't matter that much because that's the purpose of the business and it is sure succeeding. But we all have our own choice, we can use it either to advantage or disadvantage. Still, somehow it is fortunate for us present generation that we are now living in a complex system that makes things simple, it will keep on progressing and we must keep up so we can enjoy the minimum substantial benefits. I think we just need to understand the rules and we'll be OK.

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

#144

Post by mng42 » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 7:10 AM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #112

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'm one Facebook a lot and even on the rather leftward side and I don't experience any extreme toxicity (though I hear a lot about it). Some of my friends care about likes but mostly when they feel they're being ignored. I administer a large-ish group where respectful discussion is non-negotiable. It works, it serves it's purpose. I think "good moderation" is basically the answer for toxicity.

Agree-> 'good moderation'

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

#145

Post by MrLeap » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 10:05 AM UTC

ponderatul wrote: post #141

MrLeap wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dude just don't worry about it. A lot of people take offense at just about anything in 2018. They victimize themselves and then just try to shift the blame on you for lack of emotional development.

Eh, I don't really want to paint him with any broad ad hominem brushes, nor do I believe that mindgam3 is feigning offense here.

It's feels icky to get autobiographical, but the major reason of why I leaned into the conversation at the expense of my pretty funny joke is because of May 22, 1998. It was the day my brother succumbed to a gunshot wound to the head inflicted by his roommate.

For a while after that, whenever a kid would allude to shooting someone in the head while talking about videogames or playing, it felt like a punch to my gut. I remember lashing out at people once or twice over it. It never brought any satisfaction, or helped with my grief. Trying to dominate the forms of communication between 5th graders to shield my heart was a silly, tyrannical proposition. If it had even worked, it would have taught me all the wrong things.

Fortunately the mere idea of not talking about headshots was well beyond the capabilities of an entire school playing goldeneye. Haha

It's good to let someone stir your tanks every once in a while. Last night I got to try striking a balance between kindness and conviction, normally it's just sarcasm and conviction.

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

#146

Post by adrianN » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

bdhess wrote: post #139

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't like when "recreation" is something that is aggressively optimized to be addictive, err, I mean to "increase engagement". Billions are spend to keep people scrolling through their feeds as long as possible. That's different from taking a walk in the park or playing a game of cards with your friends.

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

#147

Post by sridca » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 12:46 PM UTC

1sttimeposter wrote: post #26

What about TV addiction, video game addiction, addiction to foods laden with high fructose corn syrup, or an other number of “addictions”? Point here is anything can have a good effect or negative effect. Everyone on HN has an addiction to talking negatively about things people have built or are building. Very rarely is anyone speaking about the good that results from what people are working on. People have and will…

> People have and will always gravitate towards staking self worth on social-acceptance regardless of the communication channel.

Indeed.

Incidentally I always scroll further down to look for comments that acknowledge the problem at the profound level.

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

#148

Post by sreyaNotfilc » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 12:47 PM UTC

Wow, this topic is so relevant to me.

I felt that I've became obsessed with "likes" recently on Reddit. Well, they call it karma. But, same thing.

Karma points are kinda hard to get. Mainly because there are 3 things that has to happen -

1. Write your comment early enough 2. Write something witty enough 3. The thread needs to become somewhat popular

Sports threads, mainly Game threads, are a gold mine for karma. I found, recently that I wrote things there partly because I loved the team and atmosphere (Braves fan), but also because I love refreshing and seeing all 'dem karma points.

I've became so obsessed that I realized I had a problem. Each time I go onto Reddit (the new version), my eyes immediately darts to the top right of the screen to see if I went up or down. It became distracting that I looked for ways to turn it off.

Reddit's user settings, from what I saw, doesn't have anything that will hide those points. Luckily, I could revert back to the old Reddit layout.

Funny thing is, I'm barely on the Game threads now that I cannot see those points.

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

#149

Post by kristofferR » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 12:50 PM UTC

incompatible wrote: post #117

Apocryphon wrote: post #113

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.

https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834

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

#150

Post by jokoon » Mon, Aug 20, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

I remember using Facebook in 2008, and creating a group for my class. I advertised so that people could join it.

It went horribly and a couple of student started insulting me for stupid things in the Facebook class group. It scarred me psychologically and emotionally, and I stopped using Facebook altogether and removed my account.

Until there is true and real accountability for things you say online, using real names should not be a standard. Facebook is a real example of murky online behavior. It's a haven for bullies and other tough playing egos. It's going to poison the internet for a long time.