241–250 of 281 posts
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Urg, so American. It's Saturday.
Where? Definitely nowhere in the Western Hemisphere (excepting Chukotka and whatever else is floating out in the Pacific west of the IDL), and in maybe only half of the Eastern Hemisphere as of this very moment. And that's 'ugh' in English. ;)
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If the company you work for REALLY does behave like that, you SHOULD DEFINITELY advertise it. Companies like this must be acknowledged and celebrated. The owner must be a really good person.
No form of advertising is good, I don’t want your advertising assaulting my senses. I don’t care if you piss gold or if you’re the pope or king, don’t advertise to me
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Media used to be few or one entity speaking to many Social media is many people speaking to many HN is social media
Then wouldn't public access TV, call-in radio shows, or the news be social media as well since they typically involve many-to-many interactions? Or is there more to it?
HN is definitely on the social media end of the spectrum. For example, all your listed examples have very hands-on and comprehensive, opinionated editorial control. HN has moderation, but not really editorial control per se.
Quit 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 completel…
Can you please tell us why leaving Facebook was not a positive choice for you? Also why it is important that 'your network of friends recovers'?
Did we interact every day? Nope. Just casually. But we have a shared history going back 50 years, and had enjoyable low key interactions periodically.
Turning off FB killed all of those connections, and not all of them came back when I got a new account a year later. Heck, a couple thought I had unfriended them and felt slighted.
And to top it off -- I didn't actually have a problem with FB. It didn't ruin my life. I did (and still do) visit about once or twice a week. I don't doom scroll, I don't get all jealous of someone's vacation pictures, new house, new car, whatever. I did not actually have a social media problem that needed solving. I gave too much value to what randos on HN said.
> why it is important that 'your network of friends recovers'?
Because I enjoy the casual contact with all of these people I've known over the years. Even if I don't share enough current interests to spend a lot of time hanging out with them, I get positive feelings from staying connected.
> “I decided, after 15 years, to live in reality.” This is the crux of the matter. Social media isn’t real; it’s a type of video game for adults. The unreality fosters the growth of so many other things which are even less concerned with truth: fake news, engagement bait, daily outrages, chasing followers in a vain attempt to “build a personal brand.” The vacuousness of influencer culture has only accelerated these t…
Unfortunately, it can be worth it. Having a social media audience can be very valuable to entrepreneurs. Someone who lives online with a personal brand can replace tens of thousands of dollars in ad spend with a single tweet. As someone who hasn't had a social media presence for most of my adult life, and happy about that, I'm now seeing the downsides. I don't have Ivy League connections like some of my peers. Social…
In that way social network is more meritocratic, as many people have come from very humble backgrounds and succeeded with skill and charisma.
Quit 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 completel…
I think you're hinting at a hidden problem: our vocabulary has not caught up with the way social media has evolved, and we need new terms. People actually LIKE, perhaps even need, the social aspects of social media. But that's become such a small part of the experience for many people- the ads and attention-hacking with cheap stimuli burying the positive interactions. I don't want to quit my connections, as you say.…
100% agree on that. A couple months ago I got caught up in reels and spent like two hours watching videos. And then I thought ... what the hell did I just do? I don't feel fulfilled, I didn't learn anything meaningful, I feel like I just binged on candy and want to throw up.
Now I avoid reels like the plague. I just log in a couple times a week to see pictures from friends and family. As soon as I see a really attractive reel preview, I remind myself that it isn't nearly as awesome as the preview looks, and close the page.
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In other words, people are returning to how online communication worked before Facebook. Offline, people have always tended to come together around common interests and values. My wife and I, for example, are part time performing magicians and we're a member of a local magic group that meets IRL. Prior to what we have come to call "social media", existed forums. Forums were this wonderful utopian paradise of yesterye…
> people are returning to how online communication worked before Facebook. Except now it's all on Facebook and it's incredibly hard to leave Facebook, because all communications with any type of group happens on Facebook. I have friends who can't leave Facebook, because their kids soccer team holds them hostage. Leave Facebook and we'll kill your child's social life. I can't even join the parents group for my child's…
It's very enlightening to fast from social media for an extended period of time (say about a month). If you return after that, you can almost feel the shift in your head. It's something I've experienced first hand.
As someone who’s strongly considering just this, could you describe the changes you felt? And — if you again returned to social media for a prolonged period — whether and how quickly those positive changes reverted?
At the end of the day that's what Google wants. They want you to spend as much of your time as possible watching as many advertisements as possible. Most social media platforms are adversarial. Once I saw this I could not unsee it. Warning others is pointless. They'll be annoyed or just think you're weird. Not one person I know has taken my advice, so I've stopped giving it.
Tangent aside, for me the benefit of not using social media has been that I can invest the time into what I find fulfilling. The quality of the entertainment I consume has gone way up. The downside is that it's isolating. No I can't follow you on platform X, no I cannot view the link you've sent me to platform Y. Everyone, especially in my age group, considers it strange.