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My life after quitting social media

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Re: My life after quitting social media

#141

Post by tomjen3 »

karaterobot wrote: post #107

I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…

>I just ask them what their opinion is, which is usually what they want to happen anyway.

I might steal that. I usually just say I don't know and let them explain what is going on, but yours is much smarter.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#142

Post by jonnycomputer »

dv35z wrote: post #127
karaterobot wrote: post #107

I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…

One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…

I am a big fan of weekly digests. Early news reports so often get it wrong, and good summaries can't thrive on hype.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#143

Post by haswell »

valbaca wrote: post #91
100011_100001 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could think and self-reflect. There is a reason why shower thoughts are a thing, in a society dominated by things that illicit emotional reactions it's hard to have time to just be.

Shower thoughts are great b/c you know nearly exactly how long a shower takes, you're relaxed, doing something basically automatic, and can take longer if you need to. You can also talk to yourself. I guess what I'm saying is I find other moments in my day (shower, sipping my coffee in the morning, the few moments I take after I close my work laptop but before I start my evening, journaling, jogging or walking) to be…

When out and about, I think it’s less about finding some meaningful insight in that moment, and more about cultivating a habit of being present.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#144

Post by 100011_100001 »

valbaca wrote: post #91
100011_100001 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could think and self-reflect. There is a reason why shower thoughts are a thing, in a society dominated by things that illicit emotional reactions it's hard to have time to just be.

Shower thoughts are great b/c you know nearly exactly how long a shower takes, you're relaxed, doing something basically automatic, and can take longer if you need to. You can also talk to yourself. I guess what I'm saying is I find other moments in my day (shower, sipping my coffee in the morning, the few moments I take after I close my work laptop but before I start my evening, journaling, jogging or walking) to be…

Mowing does it for me as well. It's why I carry a pocket notebook and a pen with me. I avoid apps because distractions can pull me, like an unread text message and I lose my flow of thought.

Occasionally I even write pseudo paper that I wrote in my head while doing something else.

I think you identified an important part, it's the habit of doing something, while your mind doesn't have to use a lot of horse power. I never thought about it from that perspective, but it rings true.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#145

Post by grey_earthling »

dv35z wrote: post #127
karaterobot wrote: post #107

I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…

One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…

I read Wikipedia's current events via RSS:

=> https://www.to-rss.xyz/wikipedia/current_events/

It has a much higher signal-to-noise ratio for “serious” news than most “serious” news outlets seem to.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#146

Post by loudtieblahblah »

karaterobot wrote: post #107

I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…

Before coming down with anxiety (it's health anxiety and not really social anxiety or anything like that), i wasn't always teh most aware of my emotions. But since, I'm pretty sensitive and aware and always kinda checking-in with myself.

And one thing I've noticed is that after years and years of online interaction, much of it on Reddit, Twitter, a little Tumblr, and a tiny tiny tiny bit on Instagram - is that the more i interact on these things, the more anxious and just generally stressed that I am.

I feel increasingly alone in the world - i feel that when i lean left, when i lean right, within fandoms of this or that, within FOSS communities, or just in general.

But then I talk to the people in my actual life - wife, parents, neighbors, and sure - we're all different in a variety of ways, but the in person evokes more of a connection even if the people around me aren't all rubberstamping my views and tastes.

I'm very addicted to the dopamine rush of the upvote. It feels like i'm a petty or a small person to admit that, but I am. Quitting social media has been harder than giving up tobacco (smoked for 15 years), or energy drinks (drank for almost 20 years). I've given up most recreational drinking - no problem.

But the rapid fire nature of social media.. that hole that it fills when you in these moments where you're bored but don't really have time to ramp up into anything important.... for instance - i have a hard time just stopping/starting books or long form articles. If i watch a video - i want to watch it all the way through. If i want to listen to a record - all the way through. If i get into a project, i want to make some kind of headway. Social media fills up the 10 min here, 15 min there and by the time you're sucked back in you're devoting time to it that you COULD devote to something worthwhile.

The thing that sucks is i feel disconnected from what's going on - with entertainment, with politics, with everything. I always go back and say "this time i'll be more balanced" but i never am. It's like an alcoholic saying "ok, but just one drink".

Re: My life after quitting social media

#147

Post by jcun4128 »

manuel_w wrote: post #134
jcun4128 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

low effort post: I've been thinking about a (real time) 3D point-cloud (news articles) NLP-summation visualization of the news, seeing it skew towards certain directions like war or something as the "absolute worst case". My data source would be for example Reddit's API for worldnews/news top rated.

That would be very interesting. Some other data researcher has dipped into this a bit: SpiegelMining – Reverse Engineering von Spiegel-Online (33c3): * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YpwsdRKt8Q * English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYviBstTUwo

Working my way through this, wish they lowered speaker's voice on the English version so it's easier to focus on the English one for me/don't know German.

But it's better than nothing, certainly better than the auto-translated captions ha.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#148

Post by jslakro »

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"

Same feeling. Additionally, the author stands he felt used by social media, but you find a properly newsletter subscription at the end of the article. Of course, if you create a writing piece which implied some time to produce, you're looking for something in return.. same than social media. The difference is that usually behind the last ones there is a corporate logic.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#149

Post by bee_rider »

tomjen3 wrote: post #101
bee_rider wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what made me delete my Reddit account. I realized I was putting an inappropriate amount of effort into impressing people I'd never meet. Not sure if that treadmill is just built into my personality or if it was specifically caused by the site. I don't feel it here as much, although it could just be that the account there was older, so it felt like it'd developed more of an 'identity' (silly as that is).

I have a couple Reddit accounts and that is a game you can get caught up in. The trick is that you can always score more points by making a stupid in-group comment on /r/politics or /r/funny than you can being smart. Once you know this the number matters a lot less (at least to me).

My best comment was a dumb in-joke for quite a while. But eventually I beat it with a comment was reassuring people who didn't excel as much as they'd expected during the pandemic. I actually feel pretty good about the comment itself, there were some people who followed up that really did seem to be relieved by the sentiment. But it still is, essentially, this bizarre fleeting interaction where we just see one comment from each other, and no real attachment is made. Then then afterwards, it is like, "am I playing some weird gamified thing where expressing actual human empathy is how you get a high score" which didn't feel good really.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#150

Post by jimmygrapes »

jcun4128 wrote: post #131
dv35z wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…

low effort post: I've been thinking about a (real time) 3D point-cloud (news articles) NLP-summation visualization of the news, seeing it skew towards certain directions like war or something as the "absolute worst case". My data source would be for example Reddit's API for worldnews/news top rated.

You might be interested in http://news-explorer.mybluemix.net/?query=Current%20Events&t...
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