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The benefits of staying off social media

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Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#141

Post by agumonkey »

croutonwagon wrote: post #2

This may not be terribly popular, and its admittedly just conjecture, but I'm of the opinion that its less about the quantity of social media, and more how one interacts with it and even more so consumes it. Some platforms are clearly more toxic than others, though I'm increasingly of the opinion that they are all pretty toxic, just different flavors of "world outlooks" to choose from. I feel that those that actively…

I think the whole underlying theme is virtual is shallow. At least more so than reality. You don't think or feel the same behind a keyboard. Gravity imposes a tax on your brain activity, requires a bit more dirty work, keeps things balanced. You're less jumpy, less entitled about simple principles to get scandalized. I also think the web caught some kind of fever. It feels quite puritanistic around data and science hashtags.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#142

Post by lotsofpulp »

pkdpic wrote: post #60
systemvoltage wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We desperately need new companies emerging and taking over FAANGs. It’s been too long. I think about big tech same as what we thought of HP, Oracle and IBM 20 years ago. Time to conquer them and make them obsolete. If we don't, we're guaranteeing absolute stagnation of the society in many insiduous ways. Always watching, always controlling Big Tech dystopia.

Agreed on all counts. Responses like this are why I continue to find HN an inspiring community. I wonder sometimes why there arent more grassroots non-toxic (?) social platforms for more localized communities. For instance what is preventing there from being a community-funded simple instagram-like app for individual arts communities in non LA/NY cities given that its never been easier / cheaper to build this kind of…

>The answer my be that it still isnt easy to build reliable / scalable apps that people actually want to use. But sometimes I wonder if theres not something more sinister going on...

Why would there be anything more sinister? It obviously takes a ton of work and money to operate a service like Instagram. And if 99.9% of people are happy using Instagram in exchange for being tracked and/or giving another entity the power banish them from the network, then the community funded app is going to have problems competing.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#143

Post by GDC7 »

ipdashc wrote: post #90
pkdpic wrote: post #12

> A futuristic dystopia. A place where the real world sucks. Where people consider talking to someone a chore. Connection, closeness, ambition are replaced by detachment and dogmatic slumber. Society is satisfied with shallow thoughts and the pursuit of artificially created stimuli in an imaginary world. Beautifully written top-notch orwellian poetry. Seriously inspiring. Also as someone who has only ever used social…

> 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…

> Guys... we're humans. It isn't a crime to make small talk. It's not a chore to open your mouth. Most of us consider (or used to consider; and I'm not even old) that enjoyable. What happened?

We are humans, but we are also ambitious. Most people have, in their mind, a clear idea of the profile and type of person they want to be having a conversation with.

Inevitably the person making the small talk is never that type and profile of person.

So there is the double whammy of the disappointment with one's social status and a feeling of missing out on something else (or in this case someone else) which kicks in .

And with all this psychological shit going on in the mind of the person on the receiving end of the small talk....no wonder that a conversation doesn't organically ensue.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#144

Post by alehlopeh »

chartpath wrote: post #124
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,…

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?

I think it’s because content by definition is mediocre, otherwise it would be called art.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#145

Post by tqi »

karaterobot wrote: post #103
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…

> 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. In what way are these advantages over not using social media? They're all things you can do — provably — without social media. In fact, the problem…

> They're all things you can do — provably — without social media.

People who hold this opinion, when asked to define what counts as social media, will invariably draw the line based on "what do I like/dislike." Facebook, Snapchat: social media. HN, WhatsApp: not social media.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#146

Post by tumblewit »

trutannus wrote: post #130
emodendroket wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly! Most people now just text me if they want to know about me. I realised so many of these ‘friends’ only cared enough to like pictures or make a comment on them. Beyond that they weren’t interested. It’s better to not have such friends than have them as you are getting a false sense of friendship not a real one. I can’t believe people don’t see this problem yet. Not to mention the fact that if I actually meet them maybe by coincidence for example, they have nothing to talk about themselves but still have a profile full of photos. I already know a few people who have completely lost it due to Facebook and Instagram. I hope the damage isn’t beyond repair. This is a very serious problem in my opinion. I don’t think everyone is addicted but I think most of them are and it’s not good.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#147

Post by jimbokun »

etothepii wrote: post #87
Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this won't happen unless something or someone takes actions. If governments is not going to bother to do the enforcement of the laws, then nothing changed until they do it. If there is a new player in the field, what or who is going to stop FAANGs from buying the competitors (even it violated the antitrust law)? Sure we do have Sherman Antitrust Act for this... but no one bothering to do the enforcement…

This seems like a hard to substantiate claim, IBM, HP and Oracle didn't become "also rans" due to government intervention. I'd like to hear the pitch for why FAANG is "different".

Microsoft arguably did.

The anti-trust action against them did not cost them a lot of cash directly, but it did lead to heightened scrutiny on further anti-competitive practices. And it wasn't too long after that the FAANGs came to displace Microsoft as the dominant technology companies.

Could be a coincidence, but I personally feel like there was a connection.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#149

Post by trutannus »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #42
CapmCrackaWaka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played around with different methods of interacting with these websites and found one that works for me. With Reddit, I deleted my account and simply visit the site on the mobile browser. I just have the subreddits I like bookmarked. Eventually, a little screen pops up and says "get the app or get off", and that's usually about the time I should get off Reddit anyway. It's a shame, I used to be an active contributo…

I also used to have a Reddit account but, like Facebook, more often than not, when I left it I would feel worse than when I logged in. Once that starts happening with a site, I stop going and delete my account. I'm not exactly sure when it happened with Reddit, but it's been about a year and a half to two years since I've logged on, now. The site just got angrier and angrier, regardless of the subreddit. I tended to…

Reddit is uniquely toxic, even (sometimes especially) in small communities. Whenever I bring this up, I almost always get a few people telling me to "stick to small communities", but those can be even worse since you can't really 'hide in the crowd'.

There's a lot of alarming behaviors there that are considered normal. There's also real-world stalking, doxing, and violence that happens on Reddit. I've seen people get followed across alt accounts by folks who have a bone to pick with them. Some of the stuff I've seen happen, and have experienced, on that platform is frightening.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#150

Post by jimbokun »

handrous wrote: post #85
systemvoltage wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We desperately need new companies emerging and taking over FAANGs. It’s been too long. I think about big tech same as what we thought of HP, Oracle and IBM 20 years ago. Time to conquer them and make them obsolete. If we don't, we're guaranteeing absolute stagnation of the society in many insiduous ways. Always watching, always controlling Big Tech dystopia.

We don't need new companies, we need open protocols to become A Thing again. For open protocols to develop and succeed, we need to modify the business environment so capturing users isn't the #1 goal of online megacorps. That probably means passing really, really strong privacy laws, and the death of mass individually-targeted advertising. I don't think we'll do that, but it's what it would take. Replacing the compan…

Technology companies were really the ones to drive new protocols, and beat the proprietary protocols in the open market.

There were a lot of proprietary "information superhighway" projects by various companies, that were all made irrelevant by the success of the web.

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