Being financially independent is a choice.
Wow thanks, I'm now financially independent!
Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
51–60 of 74 posts
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
More like, the house guest is a sweet talker who cajoles you into letting them stay every time despite them not doing much for you in return. Let’s not pretend like technology isn’t vigorously A/B testing its way into being as psychologically addicting as possible.
To me this analogy just underscores the absurdity of blaming the houseguest for this situation.
Why? It's not as if you spontaneously invited the house guest. Your guest arranged it so that you met them, then over time manipulated you into believing they would be a good company. Only thus conditioned, you agreed to have him over.
And that's why I consider most advertising a malicious act.
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#53Lots of blaming the victim here.
There's plenty to go around. You turn off notifications.
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are just supposed to magically reject these things that, thanks to the efforts of some of the brightest of our generation and unlimited amounts of money, have managed to penetrate every single aspect of our lives. But of course it’s as simple as “just get a dog!”. And climate change can be solved by just recycling more I guess!
Speaking as someone who tried to cut tech out of my life outside of work as much as possible... there's also the chance that your circles slip away as a result.
This is where it rises to society-level problem. If Facebook was a single-player game, leaving it would be as simple as getting a dog. But because most of the value you derive from Facebook comes from everyone else you know communicating with you through Facebook, the act of leaving becomes a big social sacrifice. This turns it from an individual issue to a collective action issue.
FWIW, I haven't been using Facebook much for the past couple of years. But - beyond unfollowing a bunch of pages and killing notificaitons - it didn't come from a conscious decisions. Over time, my feed became mostly ads and news articles, as Facebook tweaked their algos; meanwhile, most people I know retreated to other social networks. Too many to track at the same time. I also got more busy and focused on my immediate family. Some time ago I realized that I derive near-zero value from Facebook. My part of Fb's social graph pretty much dissolved on its own. I think this is going to be ultimately the fate of the entire graph.
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#55Being financially independent is a choice.
If you inherited money, it is not a choice. If you have to work for several years until you get the FI, it is not a choice either, since many people don't have the health, technical ability, or environmental conditions to do it.
The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils."
Diogenes replied, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king".
There are trade-offs. The possibility may exist.
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#56The author, Anne Helen Petersen, has published a book, Can't Even, on Millennial burnout. I ran across this from a recent NPR interview:
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/19/914715440/helen-peterson-talk...
She's been making the rounds on podcasts, listening to a few of the longer-form interviews gives some depth to the story.
This specific article may not be the best introduction, though it definitely illustrates one element of the problem.
As with many essay-to-book expansions, there's aa succinct poetry to the original piece:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/mille...
Discussed at the time on HN:
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. What is the DFW being referred to?
When you list three acronym expansions, and two are incapable of feeling pride, you're not actually serious.
David Foster Wallace is pretty obscure, though, at least to me. I know it's the only human I gave, but I had no confidence that it was actually the right answer. Still don't, for that matter.
[Edit: I was also trying to point out the ridiculousness of blasting out those initials and expecting that everyone would understand what they were supposed to represent.]
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#58I literally couldn't come up with a better example of False Dilemma fallacy: > Moving to the woods and going full Thoreau, for most of us, is simply not an option. The only long-term fix is making the background into foreground: calling out the exact ways digital technologies have colonized our lives, aggravating and expanding our burnout in the name of efficiency. Technology didn't colonize anything, you invited ove…
More like, the house guest is a sweet talker who cajoles you into letting them stay every time despite them not doing much for you in return. Let’s not pretend like technology isn’t vigorously A/B testing its way into being as psychologically addicting as possible.
And sweet gas-lighting guest clones are on every corner, so you get accustomed to this new reality.
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#59The problem is far beyond this scope, but one thing that made a huge difference for me was Android introducing the (mandatory) idea of "Channels" to notifications. Totally up to the developer how they want to use the feature, but the idea is that there's bunch of different channels & that users can pick & choose from among them gives the user some control, some ability to decide for themselves what is important. I in…
> In general though things are a mess.
That's because we're dealing with malicious actors. They actively fight any attempt to make things better.
> Websites used to prompt for adding notifications, which was a pain, but now they put some HTML on screen instead to prompt for notifications, since to be friendly/secure it was decided user-interaction would be required to bring up the prompt for notifications.
The popups for adding notifications have an additional reason for being: it's because if you deny the request that's displayed by the browser/system API, the site can't ask you again. Meanwhile, if you deny their in-site/in-app popup, they get to try again. And again. And again.
> So websites still have harassing notifications prompts, just on the page instead of in the browser.
That's because they want to harass you. That's the whole point. And that's why I call these actors malicious.
> And cookie and gdpr notifications.
These are another cases in point. The way cookie laws and GDPR are structured, if you're not doing anything shady or malicious, you don't have to show any popup! You only need the popup if you really badly want to do something most of your users would prefer you don't.
The problem boils down to: most sites and apps you encounter want to abuse you in one way or another (most commonly, funnel you into a deal that's good for them but not necessarily for you, learn everything they can about you and pass it on to third parties, and/or shove ads in your face). This is not solvable at a protocol, or web standard level. It's, unfortunately, a cat and mouse game.
Re: Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
#60The author is self-aware enough to realize the issue with all of it, but not enough to know that boundary setting is what comes next? Either they can manage their boundaries an prioritize their life or maintain the status quo. Establishing boundaries requires actual effort. I guess it could be worse. They could be completely unaware which is what makes jokes about this kind of lifestyle land so well[1]. [1] https://w…
The author (Anne Helen Peterson) actually writes extensively about burnout and work-life balance; I think in this particular article, she’s perhaps overemphasizing her “helplessness” with these boundaries for the sake of the point.
Although, like you say, setting and enforcing boundaries is much easier said than done.