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I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

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Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#211

Post by achenatx »

celticmusic wrote: post #146
fhbdukfrh wrote: post #49

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.

yeah, I've never understood myspace or FB. I remember when myspace was first blowing up, people were talking about having 100 friends, which always blew me away. I couldn't imagine trying to keep up with that many friends. I had a brief 1-2 year stint on FB where someone finally convinced me to get on it, and I had 13 friends on there. All of them people I know and hang out with regularly in real life. All I ever did…

I dont need facebook for my closest friends as I see them often enough. But there are 200-300 friends and family that I dont see often and it is great to see what is going on in their lives.

I only tend to post once every few weeks, but I enjoy reading about what people I know are doing.

Facebook groups have been a great way for neighborhoods and communities to come together.

Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#212

Post by johnfactorial »

sdan wrote: post #58

I think with social media's goal of "connecting everyone" and "bringing everyone together" has brought us too close. So close that we're like a village -- blasting out clickbait and accusations with rare repercussions and making sure we say "hi" to all our neighbors in the village while also maintaining our "social status" within this village: i.e. reputation. I'm glad I took off from there a while back.

Social media promised to connect people. It connected avatars instead.

People are physical. We have bodies and brains. We have thoughts and opinions. We have friends.

Avatars are conceptual. They have representations, not bodies; "profile pics" that are edited and changed constantly, never bearing much resemblance to the human it claims to represent.

Avatars have agendas, not opinions or thoughts. They seek to convince you of something. To buy, to vote, to protest, or simply that the anonymized human behind the avatar has a life full of wonders and happiness. Agenda.

An avatar has followers, fans, not friends. Social media avatars have little to no interest in you as a human being. Your body's eyeballs are an avatar's currency. It wants your them to see its agenda so it can win.

A social network that brought humans together would fulfill the promise of social media. Meetup.com might be the closest thing to that. For now, social media does not connect people, it connects avatars--personifications of agendas which are built, almost always, to serve its master without regard for others.

Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#213

Post by hestipod »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #174
mumblemumble wrote: post #69

I think that it's going to turn out that social media is like coffee: It's fine, even healthy, for some people, and harmful to others. And I would think that's fine, except that I fall into the latter group, and social media has come to consume so much of the online world that it means that I can't avoid it without excluding myself from large swathes of public life. I don't volunteer at my kids' school because coordi…

Speaking as someone who can't drink caffeine without a painful pins and needles sensation (thanks levofloxacin!), I'd say the analogy works quite well.

Off topic but can you expound? I was "floxxed" with joint pain etc long ago...but have never heard of the caffeine related effects. Is it all caffeine? ie chocolate/pills too?

Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#214

Post by bumblebee4 »

92ace7830f00029 wrote: post #210
92ace7830f00029 wrote: post #148

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…

Fuck, I pressed way too many times F5 on this to see if anyone replied or upvoted. That's why I got rid of my HN account. I guess I should press logout on this one, too.

You are almost there. You have stopped worrying about attention. Now count the number of 'I's in your comment: you still worry about yourself.

What do you like doing? Whatever you do, you will meet people once you stop looking for yourself.

Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#215

Post by [deleted] »

rconti wrote: post #157
philpem wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)…

Twitter is a toxic cesspool and I can't fathom the value people get out of it. I don't CARE about influencers think, I don't WANT to see the most re-tweeted comment. 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…

[deleted]

Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#216

Post by intopieces »

“Perhaps at the root of this anxiety over being forgotten is an urgent question of how one ought to form a legacy;”

This is an interesting question, and one that I have to admit has never been on my radar. I don’t intend to have a legacy at all. Do others worry about this?

Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#217

Post by SubuSS »

iikoolpp wrote: post #50
philpem wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!)…

> Here... it's a relatively polite reply explaining why I'm wrong I've never found this. It's generally a three hundred word roundabout way of saying "You're an idiot" to fit in the faux civility guidelines.

I have always been curious about this: Are you for real saying you can take an "You're an idiot" comment with the same equanimity as the 300 word option? Email/Forums etc already loses a ton of context. Merge that with semi-anonymity - I don't know how you can do it better with a short form answer.

IOW - Your comment is ignorant :D

Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#218

Post by pawelduda »

mabbo wrote: post #4

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 did the opposite, I left a very toxic environment after over 4 years, which caused a lot of people whom I used to consider mates, or even friends to cut off any contact with me (I suspect they might have been influenced by some bad actors but this is outside of my control and will to be controlled anymore).

I started being more active on social media (only to an extent - for example I use the built-in Instagram timer to only allow up to 15 minutes of usage a day) to cope with the lack of interactions I used to have at work and around it. Some of the old 'friends' found and started to add/follow me but there was no other meaningful interaction from their side. Before they would call and ask to go out and do something after work - not anymore. I reached out to some of them a few times but felt that there is an imbalance in both quality and quantity in communication from their side. Since I found that to be very shallow, I started regularly wiping my contacts who are there just to leech on my private life and give nothing in return.

Some people aren't your friends, they just happen to spend time with you because of common activities in your and their lives - they're simply stuck with you in the same place and time. I cut these people off from my life and trust me, it has been over 2 months and I have less relationships but only the high quality ones survived - it makes me much happier, less drained on a daily basis and more content knowing that they're the few good ones.

There is no need to be attached to people who aren't attached to you. And there is no need to force anything - it will only cause harm.

Re: I used to fear being a nobody, then I left social media

#220

Post by halleonard »

vonseel wrote: post #21

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…

> Really, I’m starting to think that opting out of social media altogether is a bit like opting to be a hermit in today’s society

Perhaps this is what the network wants you to think? Or how your behavior has been modified by too much reliance on this technology?

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