Still I'm glad Mr. Newport has a comments section on his youtube videos. He doesn't always explain things that clearly.
Quit Social Media (2016)
191–200 of 281 posts
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not much since it’s moderated to the point of being a boring headline aggregator, with a heavily biased, toxic community of vain Americans ignoring anything outside the HN RDF May as well disable comments and treat it like a user updated RSS feed, discuss links elsewhere.
And yet here you are!
Only long enough to disperse a particular mind virus.
STEM degrees and 20+ years in Eng; hardware then software
This community isn’t really peddling anything that hasn’t been done before; just like the story mode politics and economics often complained about
What’s that? You have a new state manager or a machine and some math euphemisms that translate cleanly to other math objects known for a century? WOW!
…There’s no beating physics and it doesn’t care humans exist. No matter how much symbolism we write down to represent it, it’s not imbuing us with magic powers. We just meat suits like everyone else. Get over yourselves; this a momentary social bubble that will vanish like all the ones they say came before
Really look forward to ML generation of new math built on the same old axioms so we can light a bunch of PhDs hanging on walls on fire
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#193Quit social media if you cannot maintain a healthy relationship with it. But please do not just pull the plug because someone on the Internet told you it would improve your life. This is far from a guarantee.
I quit Facebook a few years back because of enough conversations on HN convincing me it would be a positive choice. It was not, and I regret it. I've since rejoined FB but my network of friends did not completely recover.
People here will tell you that FB friends you don't go out of your way to contact via not-FB methods aren't really friends. They are full of shit. That may be true for them.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#194I was one of those security/privacy people in the 00's who declined to join facebook or do any of the social media stuff. Feels like it was the right call. Meta was the best possible company name for the social media machine, because when you turn it all off, you really do become less meta. I'd suspect it's a bit like being a vegan, where it's a self-imposed constrant that makes you aloof from others and makes them t…
I’ve been saying for a while that I expect the next big “veganeque” movement to be some kind of modern luddites. Maybe not as detached from modern society as the Amish, but a more 90s-like tech scene.
No cell phone on them at all times (but maybe some equivalent to a car phone/pay phone), placing the restriction to consciously “log on” to the internet, no (at least ad-based) social media, and maybe keep their online persona to appearances on mostly decentralized forums.
Personally, I know it would benefit me to detach from the one social media platform I have left and am fully addicted to (YouTube), but it’s hard when that is the platform that videos are stored on (though if I really cared, I would only subscribe to channels via RSS and watch them or individually search for things I wish to see instead of infinitely scrolling.) It’s also hard to keep up with group activities or the best classifieds listings or local music/arts events without Facebook.
I don’t believe that there will ever be a true competitor for services that can operate at scale like Facebook and YouTube (especially the latter), but I expect these modern luddites to accept this and reject those platforms even if it is socially ostracizing (much like veganism). To fill the void, they’ll create platforms and devices for them specifically. I imagine the goal of the platforms will be to avoid unnecessary bloat and keep hosting/maintenance costs low, which seems relatively easy if sucking every last second of retention out the user is not financially incentivized like it is in ad-based platforms. I expect the hardware to prioritize cost-efficiency, repairability, and a minimal feature set that doesn’t require frequent upgrades.
Then I imagine for a time, the movement will become trendy and people will begin flooding those platforms. The challenge then becomes to avoid capitalizing on the influx and keep the initial morals in mind and not start showing ads/trying to increase retention time. I think those projects may need to be decentralized and/or established as nonprofits with stated non-retractable tenets from their creation (“We shall never serve advertisements”, “We shall prioritize the distribution of useful information above all else”, etc.)
It’s a utopian view of the future, but I think it is possible. I think we’ll hit a day when we realize that spending 10+ hours a day staring at glowing rectangles is not bringing us closer to real fulfillment. I expect that as long as capitalism is the dominant economic force, businesses will always embrace the newest technology to avoid a massive gap in their output when compared to competitors, and the tech companies will always be pushing new addictive technology as long as it isn’t globally regulated, but after work, the people will wake up to the fact that they at least have a choice on whether or not they spend the rest of their leisure time staring at glowing rectangles.
Yet I still haven’t woken up myself.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#195I use social media merely for distraction. Over the years I gained nearly zero benefit from using it. Shallow connections, useful looking useless content.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
A dating app subscription is super cheap, like 40 bucks a month. I think it makes more sense to pay that then try and circumvent the system by messaging people through Instagram
Why would you willingly pay the scamming middlemen?
How is it a scam? They are running a service to connect you to other people looking for a relationship. The service works - I found my last 3 girlfriends through dating apps.
I'm not going to message random people's Instagram unsolicited, I would find it annoying to on the receiving end of that. My mother and girlfriend have both complained about receiving unwanted attention from unknown men through social media.
Honestly trying to understand your point of view, do you think dating apps should be free? They definitely aren't free to run.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not much since it’s moderated to the point of being a boring headline aggregator, with a heavily biased, toxic community of vain Americans ignoring anything outside the HN RDF May as well disable comments and treat it like a user updated RSS feed, discuss links elsewhere.
And yet here you are!
That doesn't actually refute any of the points in the comment you are replying to.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you willingly pay the scamming middlemen?
How is it a scam? They are running a service to connect you to other people looking for a relationship. The service works - I found my last 3 girlfriends through dating apps. I'm not going to message random people's Instagram unsolicited, I would find it annoying to on the receiving end of that. My mother and girlfriend have both complained about receiving unwanted attention from unknown men through social media. Hon…
Presumably your mother and girlfriend don't have their Instagram profiles listed on their dating app profile that say to message them there. Just like there's a very critical difference between a solicited and unsolicited dick pic, if someone is literally asking to be messaged on Instagram, it's different than messaging random people that didn't actually ask to be messaged, especially about crypto scams.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#199Less "social" media, more social research paper / life hack resharing makes the world a better place.
PS: Always hide the best meme in endnote 14 so your fellow meme scientists know exactly where to find the real discovery.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet here you are!
Only long enough to disperse a particular mind virus. STEM degrees and 20+ years in Eng; hardware then software This community isn’t really peddling anything that hasn’t been done before; just like the story mode politics and economics often complained about What’s that? You have a new state manager or a machine and some math euphemisms that translate cleanly to other math objects known for a century? WOW! …There’s n…
Bruh... it's Friday. And this is a post about social media participation. Not your existential waxing. You don't see any irony whatsoever in what you're spouting?