151–160 of 272 posts
I do get the point of the author and I share it's thoughts and values, but for me it went quite different. I have never been a really social person. I have never had many friends. No one really asks me ever where I have been or what I have been doing or whatever. I used facebook to shitpost. To shitpost a lot and MAYBE get a few likes. It worked. It worked for way too long. Then someday i literally fell on my head, m…
I quit social media for a long time too. And then I noticed how disconnected I was from all my old school friends and contacts. Even close family that still uses Facebook but I otherwise don’t talk to much directly (brother’s wives posting about their kids and stuff like that, maybe even more extended than that). Really, I’m starting to think that opting out of social media altogether is a bit like opting to be a her…
I wish there were ways to distinguish between periodically checking FB and essentially being addicted to it (several times daily use). Perhaps we could employ language like "I use FB" versus "FB uses me". Only half-joking...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't conflate the medium with the quality of interaction. Not on FB != hermit, that's just what Facebook wants you to believe. I prefer deep personal relationships with few over hyper connectivity. Others may want a broader, shallower network; neither is wrong just define happiness for yourself.
I gave up facebook in 2014. It was a good decision. Some contacts I've lost. Others I picked up on email. My sister now posts her baby pics to me via whatsapp (yup: facebook owned) and email. Mom SMSes me when she wants to contact me. Dad emails me from overseas bi-weekly. Other people, I meet over a beer, or a coffee. And the best of it all? You have actual stuff to talk about. No! I did not know you had a second ch…
I quit social media for a long time too. And then I noticed how disconnected I was from all my old school friends and contacts. Even close family that still uses Facebook but I otherwise don’t talk to much directly (brother’s wives posting about their kids and stuff like that, maybe even more extended than that). Really, I’m starting to think that opting out of social media altogether is a bit like opting to be a her…
I don't think the solution is to your ailments is to reconnect on Facebook. I think there's pressure to keep people in your lives that are not involved, partly to do with tradition and partly to do with the way social media now works. Instead of browsing Facebook, why not make the time to actually see these people in real lives, call them on the phone, facetime them, write them a letter? What I am trying to do for my…
I've noticed the most active commenters on my Facebook stuff these days are all family members, so I have a ton of extended family that stays aware of what I'm doing through that. And of my ~850 connections on Facebook, I could probably delete 80% of those and it would be a more realistic picture of either 1) family or 2) people I actually know and have talked to in the last 3-5 years.
I quit social media for a long time too. And then I noticed how disconnected I was from all my old school friends and contacts. Even close family that still uses Facebook but I otherwise don’t talk to much directly (brother’s wives posting about their kids and stuff like that, maybe even more extended than that). Really, I’m starting to think that opting out of social media altogether is a bit like opting to be a her…
I understand where you're coming from, but in my opinion the benefit you're describing isn't worth the privacy concerns for me. I do wish there were a service that allowed for event organizing that didn't try to track me around the web and that didn't sell any information they could find on me to third parties. There is also the idea of "quality of interaction". My relatively nearby sphere of family that posts update…
I deleted my facebook back in 2015; I was afraid I'd have some kind of withdrawal, but bizarrely after about two days I sort of forgot that I had ever even used Facebook.
I used to excessively post on Facebook. I started to worry that it was unhealthy- why do I need the constant validation from strangers? What is wrong with me psychologically that I crave that more than my own privacy? So I quit last year and I've felt good about that choice. Now I have 17000 HN points and I'm starting to feel like I gave up meth and replaced it with cocaine. Maybe better, but still not good. Going to…
I've gone the same way with Twitter -- from massive amounts of tweeting to posting fairly regularly on here. Though not to the 17,000 points scale... I was around the 700 mark last time I looked (I don't look at the number very often). The difference for me is, on Twitter you get people quote-RTing you to ask their friends to hate you. Here... it's a relatively polite reply explaining why I'm wrong (and I often am!)…
Whereas FB is more "flat"; I see what people who I actually care about post. Nice vacation, hey, your kid did something unremarkable, cool, you got a new dog.
If your usage pattern is to try to game the system and gather likes and shares, you're probably not someone I'm interested in, hence my distaste for twitter, or, generally, 'following' anyone I'm not personal friends with. Twitter seems to be setup for the latter; I keep trying to like it and use it, but I get uninteresting shit from the "public" figures I try to follow; eg, race drivers I'm interested in, cybersecurity figures, etc.
I quit social media for a long time too. And then I noticed how disconnected I was from all my old school friends and contacts. Even close family that still uses Facebook but I otherwise don’t talk to much directly (brother’s wives posting about their kids and stuff like that, maybe even more extended than that). Really, I’m starting to think that opting out of social media altogether is a bit like opting to be a her…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have more HN points than you, but a couple of things makes me feel like it doesn't matter: The lack of any visible sign of new replies removes a lot of compulsion. I only stay engaged with the conversations actually interesting enough to get me to keep reading them. Compare with Reddit where the best thing I learned to do was to decide when I was 'done' and open the list of unread messages while looking away and cl…
I use a user script in chrome to hide my HN karma count from myself. Super helpful for focusing on what is important when contributing (along with a lot of constructive feedback from the mods over the last 8 years).
I quit social media for a long time too. And then I noticed how disconnected I was from all my old school friends and contacts. Even close family that still uses Facebook but I otherwise don’t talk to much directly (brother’s wives posting about their kids and stuff like that, maybe even more extended than that). Really, I’m starting to think that opting out of social media altogether is a bit like opting to be a her…
I think the problem is that social media usage is on a continuum, and you can find yourself at a local maximum that is well below your global maximum. For example, if you check FB once a day, then maybe you would be somewhat happier if you increased to 2x or 3x daily. But if you decreased your usage to once weekly, then you'd actually be much happier. The problem is that you'd have to go through the "valley" of once…