The benefits of staying off social media • Hacker News Board

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#121

Post by elliekelly » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

shtopointo wrote: post #34

Another day, another person telling you how to live your life... Sorry, but even though we know social media has its downsides, it also has advantages: keeping in touch with friends, socializing, a way to stay up to date with your community, new recipe ideas, exercise ideas, time management ideas, maybe even the occasional envy that someone's success triggers more ambition in you to succeed etc. It's a tool, like any…

> Sorry, but even though we know social media has its downsides, it also has advantages: keeping in touch with friends, socializing, a way to stay up to date with your community, new recipe ideas, exercise ideas, time management ideas, maybe even the occasional envy that someone's success triggers more ambition in you to succeed etc.

Alcohol is useful for helping me sleep but it’s not healthy to use alcohol to help get sleep and there are other, less harmful, ways to achieve the same end.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#122

Post by amonedude » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

This is why I setup OpenDNS and started blocking certain sites - including Reddit. Quality of life improvements are real.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#123

Post by cpach » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #113

ipdashc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where people consider talking to someone a chore. This bit in particular really hit me. I've noticed a rising trend around the Internet (or maybe I was just blind to it before), mostly on Reddit, of people who really do seem to consider any sort of real-life social interaction a chore and an attack. I forget the exact context, I think the conversation that stood out to me was about someone in a gas station or somet…

> Most of us consider (or used to consider; and I'm not even old) that enjoyable. Eh, I’m 50 years old and don’t really use social media (certainly not Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, twitter, etc.). I don’t even really text other people. But, I don’t agree with your sentiment. I’ve never understood people who want to have small talk with strangers. It is the opposite of enjoyable.

To each their own. To me it can definitely be enjoyable. Yes, I’m an extrovert (most of the time).

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#124

Post by chartpath » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #77

civilized wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the challenge for creators is less the "social media Orwellian dystopian hellscape etc" and more that virtually everything you can contribute has been done better by someone else before you.

Vonnegut wrote about this a few times. It seems to have been something that bugged him. The short version of his complaint is that mass media, generally, have wiped out the social value of all kinds of moderate artistic talent—for example, fewer people may learn to plink out some holiday tunes on the family upright for everyone to sing along with, because you can just put on the radio, or Spotify. Live storytelling,…

This resonates with me a lot as someone who gave up music and university for programming in my early 20s.

And yet, mediocre content abounds in the media. How should that be explained?

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#125

Post by handrous » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #116

handrous wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vonnegut wrote about this a few times. It seems to have been something that bugged him. The short version of his complaint is that mass media, generally, have wiped out the social value of all kinds of moderate artistic talent—for example, fewer people may learn to plink out some holiday tunes on the family upright for everyone to sing along with, because you can just put on the radio, or Spotify. Live storytelling,…

> Some folks have responded to the problem by digging hard into a niche Earlier today we had https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society , which I think ties into what you're saying here. And I think yours is a good observation. Day-to-day small scale entertainment has been reduced to zero or even negative value.

Yes, exactly that. Though the niches don't fully solve the problem of people being unable to fulfill any in-built need—assuming there is such—to express themselves artistically and be socially rewarded for that, because there still aren't enough "slots" near the tops of these various niches to let even 5% of the total population be fulfilled that way. Probably not even 1%.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#126

Post by snide » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

For those interested in dystopian works on this subject I always recommend Super Sad True Love Story[0] by Gary Shteyngart. It's a little closer to the "Her-style" near future that is a lot more mundane.

What if you walked into a bar and everyone was pre-ranked on your phone?

What if news was replaced with streamers, and every friend group had a person who was streaming non-stop?

What if economy and finance stopped being about making capital and instead became about managing debt, at both the micro and macro level?

What do relationships look like in that world?

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Super-Sad-True-Love-Story-ebook/dp/B0...

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#127

Post by hi_im_miles » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

shtopointo wrote: post #34

Another day, another person telling you how to live your life... Sorry, but even though we know social media has its downsides, it also has advantages: keeping in touch with friends, socializing, a way to stay up to date with your community, new recipe ideas, exercise ideas, time management ideas, maybe even the occasional envy that someone's success triggers more ambition in you to succeed etc. It's a tool, like any…

There does seem to be a rather large "anti-social media" current here on HN and in tech spaces in general. I find it a bit odd how common that sentiment is, since for me it has been relatively easy to tailor social media to my interests in a way that regularly enriches my life.

I use Facebook for finding and registering to IRL events, and Instagram / Tiktok / Twitter almost exclusively for consuming tech, programming, and gaming content. With exes of mine, they seemed to mainly be scrolling through either comedy content or content related to their interests.

I'm sure it's very possible to engage with social media in unhealthy ways, but for the issue of modern life feeling isolated or empty, I wonder if social media has become an easy scapegoat for deeper societal problems. (some possibilities: work that doesn't feel meaningful or rewarding, insufficient leisure time, car-centricity / hostile urban planning)

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#128

Post by mattowen_uk » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

Is this article satire?

...described by Ernest Cline in his masterpiece Ready Player One

I stopped reading at that point, as RP1 is turgid 80s-fan-boy scribblings and hardly a 'masterpiece'.

But, maybe I didn't get the joke?

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#129

Post by streamofdigits » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

We are stuck in the twilight zone. I have never seen a serious defense of the dystopic status quo of current tech. I would have loved to. If you read an honest, intelligent argument (that comes from a recognizably human psyche, not a lawyer, or a cynical, amoral capital accumulator) it can "open your eyes". It can convince you that your view is missing an important angle. That can be liberating, exhilarating even as it enlarges the "universe".

Alas there is no such position because the status quo is essentially... evil. Deceit, greed, exploitation is baked in so deeply in the dominant business models it is impossible to square with what one might term "common morality". There is no other legal industry that is predicated on so much ignorance and impotence of its peculiar class of "users-consumers-products". Tacitly the actual argument is: "the world sucks and you can do nothing about it. Wear those goggles and joint our happy metaverse or live as a poor and socially awkward pariah".

Countless people have sketched what "good tech" looks like. It is as distant today (Aaron Swartz memory day) as it was in 2013. But I will never accept that this distorted reality is somehow our natural or deserved state.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#130

Post by trutannus » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #107

tumblewit wrote: post #105

I deleted FB 2 years ago, Twitter 2.5 years ago and Instagram 1 year ago. Most close friends found zero problems connecting with me. That’s cause they call, text or we just meet. It’s almost like I started to live in the ‘real’ life rather than a made up one. It felt weird and underwhelming at times but it is horrifying how much we can get sucked into social media without even knowing most of the times. The withdrawa…

I mean I'd rather not arbitrarily cut off friends for frivolous reasons like what means they like to use to contact me.

I don't think that's what they're getting at. My understanding of this was that "people who actually care about you will find a way". Someone who does not actually care about you won't bother. So chances are, if the person was only in contact with you because you're on Facebook, they don't really care about you in the first place. Cutting off someone who can't be bothered to get in touch with you is pretty normal.