261–270 of 272 posts
One way to gradually lessen your facebook usage is to use this addon (chrome version available on the chrome web store).
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/news-feed-era...
I think most people have been conditioned to keep themselves plugged in so to speak, gradually minimizing interactions rather than going cold turkey may prove more effective at re-framing your perspective.
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…
As some have pointed out below, It is more like a new drug that essentially has billions of people prescribed and now addicted to. Its creators (Zuckerberg, Dorsey and Spegiel) have invented the Like, Follow, Heart tools to give us the equivalent of a dopamine hit to manipulate us to stay and continue to get more of them. It then becomes a livelihood to do extreme things just for more attention and followers which dangerously merges social media into the real world and makes it difficult to distinguish on what is real or fake, which is very unhealthy for the mind.
Imagine if FB was a drugs-manufacturer and they are selling drugs called "The Facebook" or "Instagram", etc to you. To use it, just "Post/Like/Follow". Advertisers are also the drug dealers. When we are talking about billions of prescribed users and 100m daily active users, that sounds as if Zuckerberg has become one of the most successful drug kin-pins in history.
If this analogy doesn't sound terrifying, then perhaps its time for some social media therapy then.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
On the upside, I've discovered a great decaf: Slow Motion from Counter Culture. So hard to find high quality decaf, and I'm glad I was recommended this one. I actually drink more coffee now than before because I've been able to switch to decaf.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 don't understand people who don't understand Facebook :-) You know what a blog is, what photo-sharing is, and RSS too. You know how people are social, a little bit vain, and like to brag. I'm sure you know about ad-tech, data-mining, EULAs nobody reads and dark patterns. I'm sure you've used email and chat, and you know deep down all email clients suck anyway. Mix it all together, put it on phones with push notific…
Trying to keep up with 200-300 people sounds fucking exhausting to me, yet this is the reason most people have given in response as to why they use FB.
I just have to question if these people actually do anything in life besides socialize.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand people who don't understand Facebook :-) You know what a blog is, what photo-sharing is, and RSS too. You know how people are social, a little bit vain, and like to brag. I'm sure you know about ad-tech, data-mining, EULAs nobody reads and dark patterns. I'm sure you've used email and chat, and you know deep down all email clients suck anyway. Mix it all together, put it on phones with push notific…
obviously I understand the business model intellectually, what I don't understand is the draw. Trying to keep up with 200-300 people sounds fucking exhausting to me, yet this is the reason most people have given in response as to why they use FB. I just have to question if these people actually do anything in life besides socialize.
To add more information, FB doesn't actually connect you to 200-2000 people literally. When you think of RSS, you think of seeing every single article that you subscribed to, but FB doesn't do that. It shows you only some of the what others publish, and it uses its dark algorithms to make sure those are the most engaging and addictive stories (reposts of click-bait titles, trending gossip, politically divisive arguments, etc.). And then it pads the feed with ads and more click-bait.
Actually the "genius" of FB is to tap into the social-reward centers of the brain by letting you inflate the number of friends, the number of followers, number of notifications, while still trimming down the firehose of pictures of your second cousin's roommate's tacos. Conversely, it lets you post your food pictures into the void and feel that others care about it, without actually bothering too many people.
To answer your question directly, yes these people spend inordinate amount of time doing this, but I believe they feel it is a good thing, to have a big social circle and feel connected to all those people--without always seeing how they were manipulated into being addicted to something that is not real socialization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Coffee is really the only caffeinated thing I consume. I learned after my (relatively mild by some stories I've read) floxxing that caffeine + flox drugs are a bad combo, and I was very much a coffee person, so of course I combined them. My skin has been more sensitive in general ever sense, and attempts to drink regular coffee usually lead to that pins and needles sensation. On the upside, I've discovered a great de…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
obviously I understand the business model intellectually, what I don't understand is the draw. Trying to keep up with 200-300 people sounds fucking exhausting to me, yet this is the reason most people have given in response as to why they use FB. I just have to question if these people actually do anything in life besides socialize.
How is this not a caricature of HN readership and geeks in general? Some/most people might even tell you that the purpose of life is to socialize--and all the games/power plays around that. To add more information, FB doesn't actually connect you to 200-2000 people literally. When you think of RSS, you think of seeing every single article that you subscribed to, but FB doesn't do that. It shows you only some of the w…
I get more value out of being useful than socializing. That's just the way I'm built.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want trade the cocaine that is HN with a weed variety, you should blog. It's really fufilling. I blog publicly but also journal privately using git and vim. I have been on and off for about 5 years. The raw thoughts rarely show the light of day, but sometimes I synthesize my journal entries as blog posts or HN comments. I refine my true self for the public. This saves me from letter downvotes sway what I belie…
> you should blog. It's really fufilling. In what way? Do you write for yourself then make it public not caring if anyone sees? That doesn't sound fulfilling; I have blog posts over the years which I have no idea if anyone ever saw and it feels a bit of a waste. Do you write as if you're trying to contribute to the world? Then doesn't that depend on feedback to know if you are succeeding or failing, and put you in th…
I write primarily for myself, but I do put my words into a form that others could digest, understand, and learn from.
The words on my blog may be the butterfly flapping her wings.
I do not and likely cannot measure how much my writing changes the world and trying to do so often discouraged me from writing. Do book authors really know how much their work changes the world? To me, it seems like an infinitely complex relationship.
I can tell you I have saved many people time on their research and learning and I'm sure I've swayed some to think differently, more like me.
My blog is the storm, ans is cast out to the world and left to chaos and entropy to find who it must.
Links in my profile.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Coffee is really the only caffeinated thing I consume. I learned after my (relatively mild by some stories I've read) floxxing that caffeine + flox drugs are a bad combo, and I was very much a coffee person, so of course I combined them. My skin has been more sensitive in general ever sense, and attempts to drink regular coffee usually lead to that pins and needles sensation. On the upside, I've discovered a great de…