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I Quit Social Media for a Year

joshcsimmons.com

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Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#251

Post by blankcheque »

bradlys wrote: post #154
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think your peers were able to purchase homes through means not accessible to you? Not to speculate on your circumstances, but it's truly something how many people I know making six figures that choose to rent these days (in competitive, expensive housing markets). One possibility might be, we become so accustomed to renting. I can't imagine developing my career further, and then all of a sudden in 5 years, hav…

Banks will definitely loan out crazy stuff. But it's not very common, from my knowledge, to buy a $1m+ home with less than 20-30% down. (You have to pay PMI and a really high mortgage then anyway) To have a few hundred thousand dollars lying around before you're 28 is pretty remarkable. Especially if you aren't at FAANG. The means they were able to do it through were likely rich family (no one here of course will say…

I was able to amass ~$500k+ in liquid assets before 27 with a combination of attending a top college, not having any college loans when I graduated (worked hard all through college to make sure this was the case - parents are not wealthy), working at a startup that grew significantly for several years (significant equity upside), and investing everything I possibly could into the stock market over the past few years (greatest bull run in the country's history).

I also paid $2.5k-$3k to have their own spot. I was keeping expenses low and aggressively investing the difference in companies whose trajectories were all but inevitable in my opinion (+ some broad market index funds which have also done extremely well).

The weird thing about money is that once you get the flywheel turning (not easy), it compounds like magic given that you've made some good decisions.

My intent here isn't to boast. I figured you might appreciate a specific example of circumstances leading to building a modest level of wealth as a 20-something software engineer.

Involved was a lot of hard work, luck, timing, right place (SF), right company, good decisions, help from others, sacrifice, obsession, and a bunch of other things but I'll spare you the boring details. You could boil it _all_ down to luck if you'd like - but that's a bit too cynical for my tastes.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#252

Post by blablabla123 »

tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

Yes and even if you might have made the mental leap to overcome the need to compete, you might still have some sense of desire you need to have this and that as well. Like a benchmark metric.

I've quit Facebook and I can only confirm: nothing magical happens. At least I feel a bit better and feel less social pressure to accord to certain standards/do certain things.

For a long time I thought LinkedIn is super essential and it would be complete non-sense to quit it. But I'm barely in contact with people I connected with there. Especially I rarely connect with recruiters because this would just be too much noise - of course I write them though. But now I start wondering, there are dedicated career websites and it's anyhow much better to apply for jobs one actually likes - instead of just saying yes or no to what recruiters think is the best idea.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#253

Post by buboard »

young_unixer wrote: post #27

I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy. I deleted Twitter. Political news still frustrate me but I rarely see them anymore. Ignorance is bliss. I've effectively created a safe space where political idiocy can't cognitively harass me. Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I don't know. I think a lot about it and I haven't c…

you can just unfollow politics on twitter. I don't see any in my feed and i aggressively unfollow people who think it's funny to retweet their political opinions to my face. Twitter also insists on telling me to follow random politicians but no, i resist! But yeah, if you take social media so seriously that they affect your mentah health, better quit

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#254

Post by ksahin »

foldingmoney wrote: post #127
T-hawk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to compensate for this is to realize the perception bias you're applying to yourself. If you have 52 friends on Facebook, and each of them takes a vacation for one week out of the year, then every week you see someone broadcasting how they're having a more awesome time than you. That doesn't mean they're doing any better than you. You just don't see the 52 reactions for the one week that you've got the vacati…

I realise this isn't the point of your post, but it's exceedingly unlikely that they all take vacations on different weeks... like 4.73 * 10^-22 unlikely if vacation choice was random, which it isn't.

I love HN!

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#255

Post by buboard »

tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

In real life you also compete with people on just about anything - that's what gossip is about and it's what these services captured.

The most problematic thing imho is that all of these online "competitions" are relatively easily hackable.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#256

Post by rendall »

toasterlovin wrote: post #225
FussyZeus wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that Western civilization as in the minds of it's inhabitants likely wouldn't have existed without the subjugation and exploitation of those other societies, including but not limited to: China, India, the Middle East, most of Africa minus Ethiopia, and even some parts of Europe, and much more recently, South America. The West has largely won because it won a lot back in the day, and that inertia builds up and…

> The West has largely won because it won a lot back in the day, and that inertia builds up and continues to favor us. FWIW, Japan went from a feudal society to a world dominating power in the span of like 60 years. China has done something similar in the last 50 years. Whereas countries right next door in SE Asia have not made any similar progress. I'd say that's all pretty contradictory evidence for the hypothesis…

>> The Arabs conquered most of the Middle East in the late first millennium and later colonized part of Europe... Then the Turks took their place several centuries later and almost successfully invaded Europe (actually, they successfully invaded Constantinople, which was part of Christendom; present day Turkey used to be Christian territory).Indeed.

Moreover, the Maghreb, the Levant and Asia Minor (North Africa, East Mediterranean coastal countries and Turkey today) were inarguably "Western" (Roman, Greek, Phoenician and Judean) before the Arab and Turkic invasions.

Bantu peoples were sold as slaves for millennia, until late into the 20th century, from the east coast of Africa by Somalis to Arabs and Indians. Muslim Barbary piracy (from the Tunisian and Moroccan coast) terrorized and devastated European coastal towns for centuries. There are entire extinct populations from the Baltic region who were literally sold down the Volga River to Muslim Turks and on into the Middle East, who were particularly valued for their blond hair and pale skin. There are surviving populations of pale people (whom most Americans would classify as "White") still suffering from the effects of their ancestors having suffered genocide and slavery, some at the hands of slavers who would be considered "People of Color" today.

No. The idea of slavery and genocide being a sin, of being morally wrong, is a recent Western idea that is not even today a universal, global cultural value. If "sins of the Father" is actually a thing, then it spectacularly makes no sense to divide the world into "White" (descendants of slavers and colonizers) and "People of Color" (descendant of slaves and colonized).

While such a division might arguably be a reasonable case to make given specifically US History, attempting to impose this racial world view on other cultures and nations is yet another example of the very American cultural imperialism that these same people decry.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#257

Post by kccqzy »

tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

Curiously I don't feel that way. There's very little competition involved in the way I use social media.

On Instagram, I rarely if ever look at other people's stories or posts other than a few close friends whose happiness can make me feel happy. But I do post my own and receive psychological validation when other people react positively to them.

LinkedIn isn't even a social media for me. It's a place to dump facts about my career. I don't read the feed.

My Facebook feed is just various memes trying to be funny. I look at them and laugh occasionally.

There's just no competition aspect for me on social media.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#259

Post by saberience »

oarabbus_ wrote: post #213
GhettoMaestro wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is all shit. Everywhere you go it will be shit, just a different flavor. That is what I have taken away from life. Social media is simply white-washing shit experiences and pretending they are gold. Life is not always positive, otherwise you are fooling yourself. I am not cynical. I am just a realist. We need to drop this total farce of a behavior and stop conning each other if we hope to rise above it. Life is ha…

Yeah and before that damn social media it was the cell phone, and the god danged TV, and that freakin radio accelerated the downfall of society, but it's really the telegram that ruined everything I tell you! What absurd and ridiculous claims. Go speak to someone who has receieved life-saving healthcare in the developing world because of social media. Talk to someone who found their spouse through social media. Talk…

Social Media also got Trump elected, someone who has radically changed the most powerful and rich country in the world for the worse and potentially started a trend towards a breakdown of Western Liberalism and an increasing fragility in idea of a democracy being the best option for future growth and prosperity. Social Media is responsible for the rise in nationalism and the crisis in the UK over immigration and Brexit and the associated violence and racist attacks and abuse.

Social Media is responsible for the massive viral spread of people believing in conspiracy theories, antivaxxers, flat-earthers, anti climate-changers, etc. so social media is responsible (indirectly) for people dying due to not being vaccinated.

Social Media is responsible for the escalation in political rhetoric and the gradual ratcheting of tensions in America and the development of the "alt right" and also indirectly responsible for the increase in mass shootings in America due to the propaganda and "fake news" spread on Facebook and Twitter.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#260

Post by justforfunhere »

buboard wrote: post #255
tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

In real life you also compete with people on just about anything - that's what gossip is about and it's what these services captured. The most problematic thing imho is that all of these online "competitions" are relatively easily hackable.

>> In real life you also compete with people on just about anything - that's what gossip is about and it's what these services captured.

You cannot compare the scale at which real life interactions work to that of social media interactions.

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