Live data from Hacker News

I Quit Social Media for a Year

joshcsimmons.com

1–10 of 380 posts

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#4
The thing I have found to be extremely helpful is to very carefully curate who who I follow - in particular I don't friend/follow anyone I have any sort of regular f2f interactions with - family, coworkers, neighbors. I use it exclusively to keep up with out-of-state friends, others involved with the same sort of niche hobbies, that sort of thing. Avoids sooo much drama.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#5
I quit Facebook for a few years, it didn't do anything to my life one way or another, except maybe put me in a group of people others had to reach out "out of band" to invite to things, which practically meant I had to hear about events second hand or not go to things.

The emotional vitriol inspired by social media is completely unfounded. You can make it whatever experience you want; people just like to complain.

This article should be titled, "I don't know how to use social media so I gave up on it."

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#7
> the sole reason I have taken photos is to share them via social media

That's quite a realization. I think it's true for a lot of people though and it's part of why people experience the best times of their life through a 6" display.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#9
> The only logical reason I could figure for why this is done, is to make you feel bad about having a lower number than other people, otherwise why would they bother broadcasting this number, proudly at the top of your profile page, to other users?

The reason probably is so that people connect more and see more stuff from other people, and stay active on the network.

partialrecall: Of course it's motivated by profit.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#10
I think this posts discussion of “why do we take photos” is really great and deserves more consideration. I’ve not had any form of social media account for over 8 years and something I notice is that I just take waaay fewer photos than everyone else I know. A few on vacation or when I see something stupid I can turn into a pun or a joke. Seriously maybe 3-5 photos per month.

I love living this way and consider it healthy and normal for a wide variety of people in most modern life circumstances. I think the need to take dozens of photos of vacation/meal/baby/lifestyle is seriously a universally bad mental state for humans, and one that people will stubbornly try in vain to argue is somehow acceptable or ok.

If sitting is the new smoking, then social media photo sharing is the new vaping.

Post reply on HN