My thoughts exactly. Let's be honest, most people share stuff on FB/Twitter to show off, they project an idealised picture of their life - photos from parties, trips, concerts and so on with one clear message: "Look at my awesome life!". Who cares? Why is it so important to know everything about everyone, all the time? Why share every bit of your life with hundreds of people you barely know?
Stop externalising your life
21–30 of 160 posts
Re: Stop externalising your life
#22> It’s not sharing, it’s bragging.
Some would call it "narcissism", which (with an appropriately nuanced meaning) I think is more accurate than "bragging".
I strongly agree with the article. Sharing your experiences with social networking isn't necessarily about needing to get validation from others on your experience in order for the experience to feel complete for you... but for some people, it is. And I have to wonder, the more prevalent social networking becomes, are more and more people going to use it as their image-of-self crutch? And I have to wonder, what does such a society look like after a few decades? It's a bit like Warhol's "15 minutes of fame", except minutes are the wrong unit of measure. Everybody's a 15 milligram celebrity...
Re: Stop externalising your life
#23Stop complaining about opt-in social media.
Re: Stop externalising your life
#24>The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look attractive to other people. Your experience of something, even if similar to the experience of many others, is unique and cannot be reproduced within the constraints of social media. So internalise that experience instead. Think about i…
>> "Social media sharing enhances my experience rather than detracting from it, precisely because it is so artless: I'm not thinking about how to describe where I am or what it looks like, I just check in or send a photo." How does checking in somewhere or posting a photo of something to your followers enhance your experience of something?
Because I enjoy doing it.
Re: Stop externalising your life
#25My parents' generation would share holiday snaps or even host slide show evenings for neighbours after traveling somewhere. I think that photo sharing on Facebook etc. is just the modern version of that and as back then, we have people who find this obnoxious, interpreting it as a form of bragging. I believe it may be a little bit bragging, but is mostly validation-seeking. Many people just seem to be wired in a way…
Are you sure these slide evenings were as entertaining and impressive as your remember? I've never heard anything positive about them until your comment, up until now they've always been the subject of boredom jokes.
Spot on. I may have expressed myself unclearly - I am indeed referencing that trope of boring slide evenings, and likening them to the photos which flood our social newsfeeds, showing e.g. Asian Fusion cuisine, rock climbing, and pouting in nightclubs.
The point I'm making is that the boredom joke about the slide evenings was social etiquette and care for other people's feelings preventing intelligent, well-mannered people from being anything but polite. The joke was indeed always on the slide-shower, and it was a bitter-sweet empathic one. I see a modern parallel.
Re: Stop externalising your life
#26Waiting for the pope: http://i.imgur.com/sNTmp4s.jpg In my opinion you miss a lot around you when you are constantly staring at the screen of your device. Two days ago I was sitting at a birthday party. The guy next to me constantly took pictures sending them with Watsapp. I never spoke a word to him because he was busy with his phone all the time. I'm still not sure what to think about that but I don't think I like…
Not be demeaning, but there is an alternative way out of that - become a power user. I frequently continue programming/typing, slip in an audio note to self or search the web via Google Now, while holding a normal conversation. And people with whom I interact got used to this to the level of requiring me to have the data from Wikipedia ready for the continuation of the discourse. :) This is not a comment on the exter…
"witholding" means the opposite of what you think it does, it means "preventing" or "holding back" in this context :)
Also I suspect a lot of people, certainly myself, would find this behaviour quite unsociable, and hard to bear during every conversation. The reason I think, is because it is so easy for someone doing this to slip into focussing on social media, or some news article, privately. It's also hard to tell whether you were temporarily ignoring me or just refreshing your memory on something we are talking about.
Re: Stop externalising your life
#27I also feel its the modern day version of 'keeping up with the jones's'. I have my startup, which I've been working on for the past few years. After being inundated with images of new babies, houses, cars etc, its hard to resist trying to show my life in a better light.
Re: Stop externalising your life
#28Yeah, kill the growth model for most "social" companies. The amount of noise is really counter-productive. I know one can just turn it off, but I don't want to live in society where most don't turn it off and focus on presenting life to others instead on life itself.
Have we ever lived in any other society? As far as I'm concerned, we just have better presentation tools.
Re: Stop externalising your life
#29I've had a facebook account since 2006. I never post anymore. The only reason I haven't completely deleted it, is because it's a decent way to stay in touch with old acquaintances. I don't tweet. I don't check in anywhere. I don't post to instagram. It's just not an appealing to me. Other than close friends/family, people don't really care what you are doing.
Facebook and other social outlets are a way for people to humbly or not-so-humbly brag about what they are doing, and for those people consuming the content to be envious or critical of it.
I enjoy the fact that I can step away from the computer at any moment and not feel the urge to repeatedly check Twitter, Facebook etc.. and just enjoy life. I don't think I'm missing out on anything by not socially sharing my life on the internet.
Re: Stop externalising your life
#30Noble Silence:
"Before you speak ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?"
http://chandana.blogspot.com/2011/04/noble-silence.html
s/speak/(share|post|tweet)