I don't much like sharing personal fun life events with pictures and a lot of detail on social media. As an example, my family just went on a cruise to celebrate my Dad's 100th birthday (yay Dad!). I posted a very short text message on Facebook and Twitter after the fact. What I did do was create a private photo and video slideshow that I shared with about 15 family members and about 25 friends. In comparison my Brother was frequently posting pictures and text to Facebook during the trip. To be honest, a few friends in real life mentioned that they liked seeing pictures of my wife and I that my brother posted. Anyway, to me, sharing means more when done directly, and instead of getting Facebook likes and a few comments, I had about 15 people respond with more meaningful emails, with a few private conversations starting.
Reasons to Quit Social Media
201–210 of 283 posts
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#202I don't much like sharing personal fun life events with pictures and a lot of detail on social media. As an example, my family just went on a cruise to celebrate my Dad's 100th birthday (yay Dad!). I posted a very short text message on Facebook and Twitter after the fact. What I did do was create a private photo and video slideshow that I shared with about 15 family members and about 25 friends. In comparison my Brot…
This is why Google+ Circles were cool
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#203> After the habit of scrolling and liking wears off, you suddenly find yourself in a joyful place. A quieter, calmer, less demanding place where you don’t want to know what others are doing. You focus on what you want to do. But what if you don't know what you want to do? I feel like this post was written from the perspective of someone who already has their own life goals sorted out, and social media was clearly act…
You won't find yourself by seeking distraction. You need to eliminate distractions and feel the pain of boredom, which will motivate you to try things.
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#204Once the current regime let us go back to church, I deleted my Facebook. It's much better at church. Firstly, they feed me. Secondly, I can say what I think without being censored. It's not even that people all agree with me at church. It's that they treat you like a human being. Those who are unvaxxed are just some guy down the street, not someone who we are supposed to target in our hour of hate and wish death upon…
I was raised by fundamentalists, and that was not my experience. Wrong kind of opinions got me surrounded by elders who would attempt to brow beat me in to submission. Towards my late teens I'd spend the entire hour and a half of every Sunday hiding out in the kitchen/dining hall in the back of the building, tending to the pot of coffee, until I was old enough to leave and strike out on my own. I still get panic atta…
The nice thing about being an adult and going to church is that if you don't like it... you don't have to be there? There are many competing churches in the United States. The same cannot be said realistically of social media.
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#205> After the habit of scrolling and liking wears off, you suddenly find yourself in a joyful place. A quieter, calmer, less demanding place where you don’t want to know what others are doing. You focus on what you want to do. But what if you don't know what you want to do? I feel like this post was written from the perspective of someone who already has their own life goals sorted out, and social media was clearly act…
That void is important because it allows you to find what you really want. Social media is better than drinking.
It's not a void though. It's a distraction.
And as much as I dislike the evils that come with alcohol (not in a religious sense, just the problems it causes), at least you get out and interact with real people.
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#206Once the current regime let us go back to church, I deleted my Facebook. It's much better at church. Firstly, they feed me. Secondly, I can say what I think without being censored. It's not even that people all agree with me at church. It's that they treat you like a human being. Those who are unvaxxed are just some guy down the street, not someone who we are supposed to target in our hour of hate and wish death upon…
If this weren't HN, I'd assume this comment is satire. Churches certainly aren't immune to censorship, hours of hate, death wishes (explicit or otherwise), or dehumanization. Social spaces are all vulnerable to the weaknesses of humanity. While I do think the mechanics of the medium play a role in how those weaknesses surface, the source is and will always be us.
Absolutely, but the difference is that no one church is dominant in the United States. Even if we were to claim that Catholicism (the largest faction, although not a majority by any means) were the dominant one, within that church there is also a lot of diversity of thought. As an adult, you can realistically pick and choose with whom to associate at these churches, unlike say Twitter or Facebook where are beholden to whatever religion they follow.
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#207Once the current regime let us go back to church, I deleted my Facebook. It's much better at church. Firstly, they feed me. Secondly, I can say what I think without being censored. It's not even that people all agree with me at church. It's that they treat you like a human being. Those who are unvaxxed are just some guy down the street, not someone who we are supposed to target in our hour of hate and wish death upon…
Meanwhile, here you are using words like "regime" in your post here.
What other word should I use to describe a de facto government of America that blatantly, and loudly, refuses to follow the American constitution? This is not my opinion. The courts have agreed with me that religious service is an essential activity, despite many governor's and the federal government's attempts to ban it. Moreover, the current federal regime has unequivocally said that although the Supreme Court itself has ruled its eviction moratoria illegal, it would enforce them anyway (despite the SC ruling unequivocally that this constituted a violation of the takings clause). That is a constitutonal crisis, that was only glossed over because the media decided it didn't exist.
My use of the word regime befits the current US government.
The American heritage dictionary says that regime means:
A usually heavy-handed administration or group in charge of an organization.
That is exactly what the current federal government and many state governments (including my own) are by the admissions of our own courts.
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#208All things in moderation!
As others on here have said, I think social media use has various benefits - I've discovered lots of interesting papers and researchers on Twitter, come across life updates on FB, scroll through cool photos on Instagram. Yes it can be bad, so like many other things that can be bad, it's a matter of using it mindfully. This binary use/don't use mentality seems rather simplistic to me.
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it the like/upvote mechanism? Hacker News would constitute harmful social media in that case. The way I've started to look at it is that all social media has some harmful and some beneficial aspects, but the nexus of identity-based (vs topic-based like HN) social media with upvote/like functionality is the most problematic for people struggling with identity and self worth. Even as someone established enough not…
Hacker news is not social media. I have never recognized a user/username in between two sessions. And I would probably miss the mythical PG if he showed up in a thread. I don't know his handle anyways. Sometimes I'm made aware that a relevant "celebrity" is present in the thread but that's when people act obviously star struck like "oh thank you for that seminal paper back in '15". So nothing social going on here, ju…
It isn't? It seems to me like it is. We have groups of people discussing issues in these online forums. Isn't that social media? And although we don't seem to have "clout mechanics" for users, we do have the upvote/downvote mechanics for posts and comment count per post. Admittedly I quickly scan all posts for these numbers to help me decide where to click.
So it seems like what can make social media a positive or a negative in a person's life is pretty complex. What each person brings to their interactions with the media varies a lot and the ways mechanics are used in the different sites and apps vary a lot.
So it seems like a lot social is going on here on this site. The social group here is responsible for all of the content, I think? Right? It wouldn't be the same if it were posts selected by an elite group and we were just allowed to comment on them.
So I think the article's suggestion to "quit social media" is too simplistic and lacks the nuance it would need to be helpful advice.
Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media
#210I think part of the problem today with individuals trying to figure out how to moderate their social media usage is that it's not clear what specifically within social media constitutes harm. Is it the like/upvote mechanism? Hacker News would constitute harmful social media in that case. But what might be lost is a powerful lever for democratic input in terms of content curation and moderation. My vote for what's mor…
I'm not sure it's anything mechanical. Facebook is a wretched hive of scum and villainy for sociocultural inertial reasons. You may as well ask why Detroit is a crappier place to live than Madison. Facebook succumbed early on to echo chambers, disinformation campaigns, and marketing of snake oil and pyramid schemes. Hacker News set rules and followed them consistently, moderating the discussion in accordance with tho…
Facebook was PAID to carry disinformation campaigns. It's just another sort of advertising to a certain way of thinking, and they probably figured they were acting like a common carrier and waited to see if counter-disinformation campaigns coughed up any money to retort.
I don't think it was happy times at Facebook when they figured out what they'd collaborated with, but it put them on the defensive. And Mark Zuckerberg isn't really wired to play defense. He is not a natural diplomat.