I always find these "quitting social media" blog posts a bit ironic... "social media is addictive and encourages doing and posting things just for the attention and to make other people think I am interesting... so I wrote this blog post about quitting social media, and am posting it to hacker news and other sites... I hope lots of people read it and think I am insightful"
My life after quitting social media
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Re: My life after quitting social media
#22Or if I can put it in one sentence: I don't want to consume the life of others. I want to create a life worth consuming.
I don't think that is the summary, because a main focus of the post is that social media makes you do things that others thing are "worth consuming", so you can post it for others to consume.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#23> Social media is like cigarettes and alcohol. Toxic. Addictive. Yet widely accessible. I never thought I would say this...but I have to wonder if cigarettes and alcohol may be healthier options than social media, simply because they usually accompany real social lives? EDIT: To be clear, any addictive substance is a bad choice. Please entirely disregard this analogy in that sense.
Also, tobacco and alcohol have pretty much the same chemical and social impacts throughout (although there are changes in intensity, for example, ABV in beers have been increasing).
Social media changes its addictive by tailoring it over time for every individual user.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I forget what magazine carried this essay, and it was from maybe about 10 years ago, but a journalist decided to take up smoking (temporarily) at the age of 30-something or 40-something, with the idea of writing a story about it. One of his takeaways was the sociability of it, especially since everyone nowadays is forced to exit the office building to have a smoke.
I remember this essay as well. During a period of high stress due to major life changes I was experiencing, I took up smoking. It became a habit. I did experience the social aspect that the essayist described. I found that the best way to meet new friends at anime or gaming conventions is to find out where all the smokers are and hang out there. I've found a few new very good friends this way. PS: I don't smoke cigar…
I had a smoker friend in college and I'd join him outside. Pretty soon all my friends in the group were those social smokers.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#25Re: My life after quitting social media
#26Re: My life after quitting social media
#27It's almost impossible to promote art and music organically these days without being involved in social media. It's different than traditional sinful addictions in that way...
Product designers don't realize that each user has a different purpose for using social media, and totally different goals, while the basic narrative is that all of social media is dedicated towards selling products and building online celebrity status.
The real problem is that social media sites try to dominate the world without creating sub-communities for specialization, and they have also devalued and underestimated the value of being able to build followers in hopes of a focus on engagement and paid ad revenue. Social sites usually focus on one front page, and one script/method for success on them, and that's a massive failure to the different reasons users use them.
Social sites start out fair, with orderly time lines and visibility of individual accounts, but as year over year profit and user base increases becomes their focus, they grow corrupt and too big to change. They stop developing useful features and turn towards profit.
It's a cycle they repeat until their user base wakes up to the reality of it all and realizes all of their content will be deleted if they quit. It is a cycle of abuse and loss compounded by lost time... More like the year I spent wound up in GTA4 than like drinking Tequila and smoking Newports.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#28Sometimes I feel HN also is a similar attention sink, even Wikipedia as well. They also can draw you in for information snacking, and before you know hours have gone. Commenting and reading responses in HN is also another attention consuming loop.
"HN comments are terrible. On any topic I’m informed about, the vast majority of comments are pretty clearly wrong."
From https://danluu.com/hn-comments/ . I happen to agree.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#29The thing that drives me crazy is how hard it is to avoid it. I have plenty of real life friends, a busy career, a family. Still an old friend said "reach out to me on whatsapp". I can't even use the thing without agreeing to import my contacts. Or my Oculus headset-- which I really enjoy-- demands I have an account. Bummer.
Re: My life after quitting social media
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I forget what magazine carried this essay, and it was from maybe about 10 years ago, but a journalist decided to take up smoking (temporarily) at the age of 30-something or 40-something, with the idea of writing a story about it. One of his takeaways was the sociability of it, especially since everyone nowadays is forced to exit the office building to have a smoke.
I usually pride myself on my google-fu, but this one has eluded me. I also remember this essay. Do you remember anything more about the essay that would help me find it? There is so much information and blogspam about their for the {nicotine, addiction, cigarettes, voluntary, chooses, sociability, constraints} results.
I also remember it - I’m pretty sure he was 42?
Some other things:
- might have been the Atlantic
- he talked about etiquette around things like flicking ash and smoking circles
- he talked about asking his doctor about starting smoking
It was definitely an interesting one