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I Quit Social Media for a Year

joshcsimmons.com

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Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#231

Post by rjf72 »

FussyZeus wrote: post #60
Aloha wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disconnecting from people trying to push a so called 'culture war' on the general populous seems like a rational choice - as a white male, social media seems to tell me emphatically that I am the problem. Similarly social media pundits from the other side are trying to blame all measure of economic and social ills on brown people/gay people/trans people. Both narratives are patently false. To touch very lightly on po…

Just as a minor correction: Nobody is telling you that you specifically are the problem. The problem is that as a white male, what is called "western society" was built with you as the presumed default, and that confers to you tons of small benefits that fall into one of two categories: 1) Unfair advantages that allow you certain freedoms other groups don't have, that one could argue no one should have 2) Advantages…

Doesn't it strike you as odd to suggest that society was built for "white" males when such classification, as a meaningful indicator, didn't even exist until extremely recently? Irish, German, Italian, and many more are all groups today you'd just often just refer to as "white males." In times past? People who were very much second class citizens. And it went well beyond just national origin. Protestant vs Catholic was a huge deal and this also persisted until extremely recently. For instance something lost to history is how monumental JFK's election was because of the fact that he was a Catholic - the Obama of his time. Incidentally the first and last Catholic elected, even though more than 20% of America is Catholic.

Even when you get into things like slavery, Africans were not enslaved because they were black. Slavery was global and of course always began as in group - whites enslaving whites, browns enslaving browns, blacks enslaving blacks, etc. The big reason that "white" on "white" slavery ended was because of a shared religion and Christian church declaring it illegal for any Christian to enslave another Christian (in times before the schisms, such as 'Christian' was reasonably encompassing). The "problem" this posed for those seeking slaves is that tremendous empires were starting to form around the world.

For instance in the ~18th century you're looking at the Qing dynasty in China, the Mughal Empire in South Asia, the Ottoman empire in the Mideast, etc.. The world was rapidly unifying under incredibly powerful empires who were more than capable of protecting their borders and people. But Africa was a major exception. It not only lacked both meaningful unification and technology, but also had a thriving domestic slave trade. This made them a prime target. It had nothing to do with the color of their skin. Had Africans happened to have had a bit less melanin, but the situation remained otherwise identical, it's extremely improbable that things would have changed in any way whatsoever.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#232

Post by bashwizard »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #10

I think this posts discussion of “why do we take photos” is really great and deserves more consideration. I’ve not had any form of social media account for over 8 years and something I notice is that I just take waaay fewer photos than everyone else I know. A few on vacation or when I see something stupid I can turn into a pun or a joke. Seriously maybe 3-5 photos per month. I love living this way and consider it hea…

Last photo I took was over a year ago. It was of my brothers dog licking its balls.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#233

Post by Kiro »

GhettoMaestro wrote: post #131
tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

It is all shit. Everywhere you go it will be shit, just a different flavor. That is what I have taken away from life. Social media is simply white-washing shit experiences and pretending they are gold. Life is not always positive, otherwise you are fooling yourself. I am not cynical. I am just a realist. We need to drop this total farce of a behavior and stop conning each other if we hope to rise above it. Life is ha…

You're buying into the stereotypical myth that social media is always like this, a glamourised facade. My social media feed is anything but positive. People are very real about their problems.

Just the other day I read an article that being open about your issues is the new hotness on social media. I would even say it's the other way around now. People fake problems in order to get followers.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#234

Post by toasterlovin »

istjohn wrote: post #145
hyperdunc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to say that Western society was built with white males as the presumed default, you might want to also mention who the builders were. And as a broader point, it also might be worth considering how Western society stacks up against all other societies to ever exist.

Slave labor built this country.

No it didn't. When it was legal, most inhabitants of the U.S. had no personal experience with slavery. It was critical to agriculture in the Southern states, but the North was the industrial powerhouse. And the states that constituted the North continue to be the most dominant region in the U.S. to this day.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#235

Post by Beldin »

scanny wrote: post #93
tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

I feel like Hackernews is more distracting to be honest, it's like crack, I just cannot stop looking through all these interesting posts.

HN is a form of social media, though: users submit content, comment on content and each other, and can upvote content and comments.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#236

Post by anigbrowl »

tempsy wrote: post #55

My biggest issue with social media is less that it's distracting (IMO not necessarily an unhealthy thing) but that it has, for me, more than anything else seemed to make all aspects of my life a competition with others. On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life. On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory. Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in c…

I think it's you, and I don't mean that in a snarky way. Of course I'm happy if I make a post (here or on Twitter) that gets a the occasional huge response with lots of engagement, but mostly because it's brought attention to whatever issue it was that I cared about. I have a relatively small number of Twitter followers but I don't really care. The only thing that annoys me is that Twitter's algorithm does a bad job both at supplying posts from the people I most want to follow and at getting my posts to the people who want to follow me for whatever reason; when a post of mine blows up, it seems to be due to the number of people looking at the topic rather than because I can consistently expect it to reach most of my followers.

Thing is I'm just not a very competitive person, or a very social one. I have a small clique of quite close friendships and a larger pool of people I know and like but relate to in a pretty casual manner. Maybe my lack of competitive instinct is inherent, or maybe it has to do with having been 'extremely online' for ~30 years and just not caring as much. I'm far more preoccupied with understanding the dynamics of social media interactions than I with exploiting them (in conventional ways).

tl;dr I think people relate to social media in quite different ways depending on personality type.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#238

Post by scanny »

bjornjaja wrote: post #146
scanny wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Hackernews is more distracting to be honest, it's like crack, I just cannot stop looking through all these interesting posts.

Question: how many of the articles do you read in their entirety? Do you spend 1 or 5 or 20 minutes thinking about the content? I’d like a comparison between, say, a library where you can find a nice book and sit-and-read for a good 2 hours. I think HN is more of a news aggregator with comments than social media platform. But it has the same problem as anything compared with “crack” and that’s a quick information fix…

Probably about 50% of those I read are done in full, the rest skimmed. Usually not much reflection happens after reading most articles unless they seem rather poignant.

I recently started bookmarking things and reading them in full later, but honestly what gives me the biggest kick are the comments. I also really dig the ask and show sections.

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#239

Post by scanny »

joshgachnang wrote: post #98
scanny wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Hackernews is more distracting to be honest, it's like crack, I just cannot stop looking through all these interesting posts.

The noprocrast setting is really helpful, personally. I wish every site had this.

I didn't even know this existed, thanks! Hopefully this will curb things a bit

Re: I Quit Social Media for a Year

#240

Post by sbmthakur »

young_unixer wrote: post #27

I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy. I deleted Twitter. Political news still frustrate me but I rarely see them anymore. Ignorance is bliss. I've effectively created a safe space where political idiocy can't cognitively harass me. Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I don't know. I think a lot about it and I haven't c…

> I used to use Twitter. My country's political news and related commentary usually got me into a mental state of frustration and misanthropy.

For this same reason, I've separate accounts on Twitter. I'm not averse to political stuff but mixing it with things you like can make Twitter extremely toxic. From my primary account, I don't follow any Politician, Celebrity etc. I just follow developers and few other people who are doing what I'm interested in.

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