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The benefits of staying off social media

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Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#171

Post by bally0241 »

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…

We all became Finnish?

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#172

Post by FuckedCompany »

streamofdigits wrote: post #129

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…

Well we tried this whole “open your eyes” thing in a different way. We tried, and still do to some degree, to highlight who is in charge of these companies, what their backgrounds tend to be in the great majority of cases. To look for patterns and agendas. How is it orchestrated, these sorts of things. But then we get deplatformed and ostracized.

The end result of which is that some people, having been burned, who once would have defended a better internet than the one we have now, are perfectly fine with watching it burn.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#173

Post by Cycl0ps »

twothamendment wrote: post #88
ronnier wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm of the opinion Reddit is the most toxic and hateful website on the internet. It's also the most influential.

I bet that depends on the sub. The few that I'm active in are helpful and informative - nothing short of awesome. I'm sure some are awful.

I agree with smaller communities being helpful. Because of Reddit's massive userbase and breadth of topics I frequently append 'site:reddit.com' to my searches because I have much more confidence in a dedicated subreddit answering my question than some random blog or webpage that usually ends up being some SEO scheme.

That said, these communities don't represent Reddit as a whole. Looking at r/all, and in theory seeing the most trafficked pages on Reddit, gives an entirely different view than my niche group of subreddits. I think the biggest reason for this is that the thing that get promoted on r/all are the most engaging post of the most engaging subreddits. Sometimes that's something apolitical like a post from r/eyebleach, where people generally agree that cute things are nice. Other posts are things like this one [0] which are meant to inflame you regardless of your side in the matter. If the post's score is anything to go by, this one post gets more engagement then some of the subreddits I visit do in a month.

When someone says Reddit is toxic I usually assume they mean r/all. The platform itself isn't inherently toxic, but it's desire to funnel everyone into the same threads is.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/qpcaeh/just_your_...

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#174

Post by q1w2 »

streamofdigits wrote: post #129

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…

Calling it "evil" is too simplistic.

I prefer to think of current tech much like genetic diversity on a highly accelerated scale. The evolution of what survives has little intelligent design.

What works; works. What starves or causes damage to attract gov't regulation; dies or mutates.

What we are seeing is the chaos before an equilibrium is formed. We see the complex interaction of governments, corporations, cryptos, social media, AI, and humans - and as stable power structures form that can survive the tumult endure, so they evolve and become more "fit" than other elements in the ecosystem.

Think of it like a jungle, not a religious quest.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#175

Post by tomjen3 »

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…

It is perhaps not a chore to you, but if you have social anxiety it can be a big deal.

Social Anxiety isn't the same as being an introvert. For an introvert it can still be a great experience, it is just that it drains him of energy.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#176

Post by notacoward »

afavour wrote: post #43

Not to dispute anything the article says, but a reminder: Hacker News is social media too. Which is fine! But I often see comments on here (typically under any article about Facebook) where the poster says they’ve deleted all social media and their life is much better for it, etc etc. No you haven’t because you’re still on here. No problem with that as long as you’re getting value from the time you spend here, but it…

> Hacker News is social media too.

Had to remind people of the same thing on a popular blog with a (hyper)active comment section recently. Social media is like cooking: everyone thinks their own tastes better than anyone else's. (Yes, I know the other analogy. Gross.) Or maybe it's like driving: everyone thinks they're above average. Too many people relentlessly bash social media they don't like, while ignoring any flaws in the social media they're using to do it. Maybe it would be more productive to look at how they're different, and how to accentuate or replicate the good parts.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#177

Post by Barrin92 »

I feel like I have the opposite problem, my social media is simply dead. And I'm only 29 years old so I'm supposedly in the prime demographic for it.

My Facebook timeline is basically someone posting holiday photos every few months and annual birthday wishes. Everything is happening in personal WhatsApp groups with friends these days and it seems like my family/work/friend circle isn't on any 'newsfeed' type media at all.

And mind you it's not just introverted coders. A while ago when these posts came out about Facebook pivoting to private communication away from its traditional format that made perfect sense to me. To me social media these days is too boring to spend hours on.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#178

Post by undistracted »

I wrote an android process to automatically uninstall all social media apps every 2 hours (if they exist).

My "social media experience" is now amazing. No notifications, much fewer distractions. I literally download just download, pop in to see whatever it was I wanted, then don't think about it (no notifications either), until the next time I REALLY want to use it.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#179

Post by GDC7 »

ketzo wrote: post #153
GDC7 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 typ…

And, to wrap around to the original topic, I think social media can really enforce a particular vision of what that ideal conversational partner “”should”” be like, making the disappointment stronger.

Oh for sure, but social media doesn't enforce anything, it just shows rare shit that has always been there. Point is it was hidden or not as visible.

It's a very rare thing for Victoria Secret's models to be the ones start making small talk, and yet Brad Pitt or Leonardo di Caprio are on the receiving end of that.

That would happen regardless of social media, but somehow a paparazzi or a photographer is there to immortalize the moment and then the content gets on the platform which again makes money showing very rare shit to the public.

The combination of rare shit being thrown in the public's face and the unprecedented amount of free time that the public has on their hands to absorb the aforementioned rare shit causes unhappiness with the not so rare shit happening during the mundane daily life of the populace, like Joe Average complimenting your hat at the gas station.

Re: The benefits of staying off social media

#180

Post by germinalphrase »

FuckedCompany wrote: post #172
streamofdigits wrote: post #129

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…

Well we tried this whole “open your eyes” thing in a different way. We tried, and still do to some degree, to highlight who is in charge of these companies, what their backgrounds tend to be in the great majority of cases. To look for patterns and agendas. How is it orchestrated, these sorts of things. But then we get deplatformed and ostracized. The end result of which is that some people, having been burned, who on…

The internet expands; it’s our young people who will keep the score.
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