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My life after quitting social media

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Re: My life after quitting social media

#41

Post by paganel »

billfruit wrote: post #20

Sometimes 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.

> even Wikipedia as well

In my case at least browsing Wikipedia is an assumed guilty habit, just like coffee.

What usually happens is that I browse /r/soccer or something similar and I get to the wikipedia page of a specific (mostly European) football league, like the Dutch Eredivisie or the Norwegian first league. Once on that page I click on a specific team (let's say Utrecht, Molde or Groningen) and before I know it I end up reading about the Hanseatic league or about the Spanish dominions in the Low Countries in the 1600s.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#42

Post by lxm »

I recommended it in a similar discussion before, but Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism" offers reasonable ways to introduce intermittent fasting patterns into your social media consumption vs quitting cold turkey.

Some sample strategies to adopt:

1) Mobile sites only, never apps. Always log out when done to increase the friction of subsequent logins. The most insidious pattern of mindless engagement is when you're bored at the checkout line, waiting in-between meetings with nothing to do, sitting on the toilet.

2) Even better: computer access only, never mobile. Your phone is always around, unlike your PC. Set a time slot (20 min or so) when you know you're around your computer. Social networks really excel at this pattern of usage. You'll get the most important stuff, fluff relegated to the bottom of the feed, which solves the FOMO and shield you from the rest. This can be daily first and then cut down to whatever pattern you feel like (Newport himself claims he catches up on social media once a week).

I am sure I am butchering some of his advice, so worth reading the book.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#43

Post by calvinmorrison »

system16 wrote: post #37
mariodiana wrote: post #6

Earlier 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 was a smoker for many years and the sociability is a huge factor that doesn't get much attention, and is the only thing I miss about it. The relationships I established with fellow smokers, whether it was at work while stepping out from the office, standing outside a pub, stepping outside on a balcony at a party, etc. were almost always stronger than with my non-smoking friends. You immediately become part of a soc…

> I was a smoker for many years and the sociability is a huge factor that doesn't get much attention, and is the only thing I miss about it.

The best part about having to go outside for a smoke is you end up standing next to people outside of your normal work hierarchy. You get to have 1v1 conversations with OTHER managers, and people higher than you - whoever at a very casual level. The benefits of this is enourmous. I certainly talked more to our director of IT by smoking than I ever did with my own boss.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#44

Post by lapetitejort »

Nicksil wrote: post #34
martin_a wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User generated content, comments, ratings. 3/3 would say so, yes. :-)

>User generated content, comments, ratings. 3/3 would say so, yes. :-) That's not great criteria for determining if something's "social media". All those things you listed were part of websites long before social media came along.

My litmus test for what is and is not social media depends on how many people use their real name as handles, and how actively the platform promotes real names. Facebook, nearly 100%, Twitter, less so; reddit and HN, pretty low. Real names transform the old forum/IRC chat room into social media.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#45

Post by Benjammer »

mariodiana wrote: post #6
brightball wrote: post #4

> 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.

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.

There was a whole Friends episode about this where Rachel starts smoking so she can be privy to the conversations out on the smoke deck at work.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#46

Post by luxurytent »

I love Twitter but recently removed Instagram from my phone and as a result, my usage dropped to near zero. I found I was watching the same updates (here's my baby doing this fun thing!), which was nice, but I wasn't really connected to this individual, and for most of my Instagram it was old friends and colleagues who no longer live near me or share much similarities.

Twitter, Instagram, Hacker News, etc. are all attention sinks but I realized I wasn't getting much value from Instagram beyond a minor wholesome feeling to see (old) friends living their life. Reels were kind of fun sometimes but mostly a waste of time, though.

The joy I get from Twitter is being able to consume topics highly relevant to me, and I aggressively curate through blocking/muting, grooming followers, and interacting with very smart people in their respective fields.

The pain I get from Twitter is a feeling I'm never good enough. I make a good salary which pays for my entire family of four's well-being, but ... there's always someone on there making more, or creating something cooler. During parental leave I spent more of my time with neighbours, volunteering at the community garden, and it felt more whole, but I still had a part of my brain thinking about the missed opportunities in building value / wealth. Hm.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#47

Post by city41 »

vymague wrote: post #28
billfruit wrote: post #20

Sometimes 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.

But if you keep reading he then makes the argument that despite that, there's still quality content to be found and gives some nice examples.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#48

Post by haswell »

lrobinovitch wrote: post #32
cortesoft wrote: post #21

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"

The internet is for sharing. Social media is for driving engagement from users, mining their data, and encouraging unhealthy social comparison (as well as, you know, organizing events and messages and stuff). Nothing wrong with sharing a blog post on an experience you had that you think may be of value to others.

To dive a bit further into this, I was very socially active on the Internet 20 years ago, and it was a magical thing. I made friends that I still communicate with today, and I credit the amazing community I aligned myself with for helping me become the person I am today (in a good way).

Social media today is nothing like those early communities, and I rarely participate for that reason. Some of the core motivations (e.g. desire for connection/community) exist in both places, but the similarities pretty much end there.

The closest modern day equivalent (for me) is HN and some very niche subreddits.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#49

Post by Zelphyr »

mariodiana wrote: post #6
brightball wrote: post #4

> 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.

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.

Early in my tech career I realized pretty quickly that, despite not being a smoker, I needed go outside with the smokers during their smoke breaks because that's where a lot of ideas were discussed. It was where I could continue learning from guys who were almost all senior to me at the time in a more relaxed, informal setting.

The smoking was terrible--don't get me wrong--and I'm glad its much more rare now than it was 25 years ago.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#50

Post by aarchi »

> instead of refreshing like a lunatic for new information all the time during your day. You simply search for a solution only when you are experiencing a problem.

> You treat social media like any other website online. You visit it only when you need something. You don’t visit it to find something to need.

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