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My life after quitting social media

durmonski.com

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Re: My life after quitting social media

#111

Post by gear54rus »

cercatrova wrote: post #104
gear54rus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you call twitter more authentic when it seems pretty clear (to me ofc) that their stupid length limit is ideally cut out to stir controversy and create confrontation out of nowhere (by virtue of people assuming the worst when there's not enough info presented to them).

Depends on who you follow. I follow people like patio11 or different startup founders, they have good thoughts and insights. I don't use it to follow random people who stir up drama.

You could say it depends for every platform. It's just some of them employ formats that are cancerous to begin with.

Formats and patterns is pretty much the only things you can judge a social media site on since there's no real way to say that content is universally worse somewhere than other.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#112

Post by TremendousJudge »

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.

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect: "...In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Re: My life after quitting social media

#113

Post by walrus01 »

If you're not going to go cold-turkey, the best thing you can do is turn off all notifications from apps like facebook and twitter on your phone. Android 9 and 10 provide very good features to block all notifications from any specific app.

You should only see messages and notifications when you specifically choose to open the app.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#114

Post by adflux »

On a similar note, I quit watching the news and reading the newspaper. It doesn't make me happy. It really doesn't make me "informed", it only makes me capable of parroting some soundbites my favorite pundit said. Lastly the news is terribly politicised nowadays and tends to focus only on the bad.

Plenty of research proving the link between anxiety/depression and news consumption. What is there to gain by watching the news anyways...

If I want to find out more about something, i'd rather listen to a long form podcast by a professor, than read something a journalist copypasted. Or maybe read an article here and find comments by so many people from so many different viewpoints and cultural backgrounds.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#115

Post by prox »

throwaway20371 wrote: post #105

I quit most social media (I'm still here, aren't I?) and I found a lot more peace. I ended up working a lot more, which stressed me out, but I finally identified my lack of work-life balance, and now I'm back to a healthy state. No outrage at irrelevant trivia, no other people's lives being a distraction in mine. If anything I just have too much personal stuff to do now. Life feels a bit more meaningful, healthy. I r…

This discussion reminds of this brilliant quote by Strongbad (back when the internet was still a cool place to hangout):

James, the Internet is a place where absolutely nothing happens. You need to take advantage of that.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#116

Post by marbletimes »

stevofolife wrote: post #74
luxurytent wrote: post #46

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 at…

> but I still had a part of my brain thinking about the missed opportunities in building value / wealth. Hm. I think this was your main point right? I also feel the same, but not because of Twitter. I think Twitter is an amazing social platform but it takes certain type of people to succeed on it. I'm sure there are tons of people who are very smart and is making more or creating something cooler but not broadcasting…

Let's not forget the lies that are broadcasted left and right on social media, in which thousands become millions, and trite tropes are sold like congress-worthy insights.

You are right, it takes a certain type of people to succeed on Twitter and, jealous as I am of my private life for example and unwilling to interact or share much online, I am definitely not among those.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#118

Post by legrande »

satellites wrote: post #108
legrande wrote: post #99

I quit social media for a year and nothing magical happened to me. I think it's because I never really had a problem with it, since all my feeds were heavily curated and I didn't scroll through mountains of noise. The content I consume is always high quality, because I made social media work for me. I avoid Instagram since it's too visual and full of posers. Twitter is more real and authentic. Facebook is mostly for…

This is a good point, but just to be the devil's advocate, I will point out that most social networks are starting to implement features where they fill your feed with content you never signed up for. They'll call it something like "suggested" posts. Granted, I think Instagram is the one I've noticed it on the most, and you said you don't use that. But I could see that feature catching on to the point that feeds are…

> social networks are starting to implement features where they fill your feed with content you never signed up for. They'll call it something like "suggested" posts

Well Twitter has lists which I make full use of. I created a few private lists that I browse at my leisure, with different topics, like 'Tech', 'Design', 'Politics', 'Thought Leaders', 'Memes', 'Current Events' etc

Re: My life after quitting social media

#119

Post by marbletimes »

xyzzy21 wrote: post #98
coding123 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And checking to see if your comment stays near the top, how many up votes, reading the replies to see if you're a smart person or not.

Hmm. I've never cared about that. For whatever reason. I generally don't care what other people think - especially after I read Feynman's book of the same name decades ago.

Feynman certainly cared a great deal about what others thought of him, and he has been known to embellish many stories to appear as the common genius in the situation. In short, he was a genius, but he also wanted it to be known very well by others.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#120

Post by Leparamour »

scollet wrote: post #54
durmonski wrote: post #2

Or 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.

Merzbow has an ironicly titled song name: "Become the discovered, not the discoverer"

There goes my evening...
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