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I Quit Social Media for a Year

joshcsimmons.com

141–150 of 380 posts

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well a problem is that lgbtq doesnt belong together anyway because what are you fighting for? sexual orientation or gender identity? those are really different and are people really being fired for it?

> what are you fighting for? Simple: Freedom to be who the fuck you are. I don't know why that's so damned difficult to understand.

Wow. Was that really needed?

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#142
post #20

When I quit I ended up reading books and watching TV for entertainment. I literally read over a million words of fiction (Worm) in one month with the spare time. It was a lot more fulfilling, and I'll remember that time. While in contrast there are few social media moments I'll miss. I had to actually force myself to get back into social media. I'm not sure what the author here means by withdrawal; there was maybe a…

"I'm not sure what the author here means by withdrawal"

An attention-getting pull quote, I guess. I found the physical symptoms claim hilarious. "non [sic] unlike those seen in individuals quitting opiods"? Ha!

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#143

I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy. I deleted Twitter. Political news still frustrate me but I rarely see them anymore. Ignorance is bliss. I've effectively created a safe space where political idiocy can't cognitively harass me. Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I don't know. I think a lot about it and I haven't c…

I would argue you're potentially better informed. Better to be ignorant than know a half truth devoid of context skewed for an agenda and that's what most of politics on social media is anyways.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#144
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think newspapers are the best—say you get a daily or even weekly summary of events. That’s been good enough for centuries. The problem today is all the rehashing of events. Professional journalists honestly do a better job than all the rest of us. Internet information is mostly garbage (where social media is concerned). Don’t get me wrong the quick access to information is nice—but ”quick” means “less thought out”…

Does anyone do weekly news summaries? A weekly digest might be something worth paying for, even the nightly news bulletins on TV seem to assume you've watched the morning ones and won't tell you about something that happened at 3AM. Back when I was still reading newspapers even the weekend ones were pretty much only reporting the news of the day and not a weekly summary. Annoyingly news is also stuck in the document…

I've genuinely wanted to launch this for myself. For what it's worth my wife has The Skimm and it does a reasonable job of being unbiased and presenting many sides of a story with plenty of context.It's daily but I still think it accomplishes most of what you're probably looking for.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a minor correction: Nobody is telling you that you specifically are the problem. The problem is that as a white male, what is called "western society" was built with you as the presumed default, and that confers to you tons of small benefits that fall into one of two categories: 1) Unfair advantages that allow you certain freedoms other groups don't have, that one could argue no one should have 2) Advantages…

If you're going to say that Western society was built with white males as the presumed default, you might want to also mention who the builders were. And as a broader point, it also might be worth considering how Western society stacks up against all other societies to ever exist.

Slave labor built this country.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#146
post #93
post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

I feel like Hackernews is more distracting to be honest, it's like crack, I just cannot stop looking through all these interesting posts.

Question: how many of the articles do you read in their entirety? Do you spend 1 or 5 or 20 minutes thinking about the content? I’d like a comparison between, say, a library where you can find a nice book and sit-and-read for a good 2 hours.

I think HN is more of a news aggregator with comments than social media platform. But it has the same problem as anything compared with “crack” and that’s a quick information fix.

I like a lot of the stuff on here too but I often book mark things and don’t necessarily go back to it. Some things yes but mostly no.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#148
post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

Upvote mad on this. This is exactly what I have been saying to all of my friends who quitted social media. One of aspects was also the narrow view social media creates for bipolarizing spectrum of one's opinions using extremistic news and probably fakes news.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#149
post #45

I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy. I deleted Twitter. Political news still frustrate me but I rarely see them anymore. Ignorance is bliss. I've effectively created a safe space where political idiocy can't cognitively harass me. Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I don't know. I think a lot about it and I haven't c…

IMO it's better to read real-time Reddit threads when something is happening; it's usually unfiltered and you can get raw data, not the curated ones from mainstream news once propagandists from all sides plug in and offer only selective evidence.

I would argue against this, especially if you're in specific subreddits, it's usually heavily biased. Even if you're reading articles from /r/worldnews or /r/news, there's usually a general sentiment, and popular opinions that validate those sentiments get upvoted.

I personally can't stand reading the comments, since every comment is either a meme or something irrelevant.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#150
post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like social media and I’m capable of controlling my usage. I’ve developed some ground rules to ensure a good healthy experience. To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day. I pretty much only use Facebook. After the timer is up that’s it for the day. I honestly enjoy seeing picture of my friends, their kids, their vacations, and the…

> To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day.

But when you open the app at minute 8, there's a prominent "Ignore Limit" button right there. Are you relying on mere self control? Or do you have some way to actually prevent app usage?

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