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I deleted my social media accounts

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Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#411

Post by oblio »

watwut wrote: post #369
anxoo wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also in the old days, your friend bob would have told cory, "hey, did you hear alice's dad died? we should all go out for drinks". but we live in the bowling alone era, where we're increasingly isolated. quitting social media is not, on its own, going to fix your social life. and being on social media can make you more connected, or more miserable. the responsibility is yours

> but we live in the bowling alone era, where we're increasingly isolated What I see over years is that, especially in developers online groups, any usual and normal way of socializing is stigmatized. I remember reading comments about how lazy people who socialize with friends are and how we are better if we code every evening. I remember people being proud about spending christmas coding supposedly being superior to…

> What I see over years is that, especially in developers online groups, any usual and normal way of socializing is stigmatized.

Developers are not typical of regular people. They're, basically by design, outliers.

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#412

Post by oblio »

nkrisc wrote: post #357
austin-cheney wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would have more important stuff on my mind. I might post it on social media and then the onus is on other people to reach out to me. That seems so bizarre. Just 20+ years ago this sort of sympathy seeking broadcasting action was associated with mental health illness, like Munchausen Biproxy. Yes, back in the day if tragedy happened people would take deliberate effort to call each other.

I’m not on social media but people have been posting obituaries publicly in newspapers and such for centuries.

It's very country specific. I'm from Romania and I think there were obituaries in newspapers, but I'm having a hard time thinking of people I know that did it.

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#413

Post by TheCapeGreek »

upghost wrote: post #359

A few strange things you will miss when deleting social media that are nonobvious. 1. Some companies will not look at your resume or do business with you unless you have a LinkedIn account, especially in the age of AI. Fine by me. 2. If you go to start a business, you will find most of these social media companies require you to have a personal account in order to make a business/marketing account. This is very annoy…

For point #2, I've started evaluating business ideas by how much I can either outsource social media posting or not need it at all. Preferably the latter.

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#415

Post by noncoml »

Social media is for our generation what news and political shows on tv were for the previous. Brain rot.

I hate to promote Reddit, because it’s not worth it, but I have a pretty nicely curated home page of just “good things”, cats, pics, etc that I love to browse when I want to jeep my mind idly occupied. If I make the mistake and go back to popular I get filled with rage, feeling of injustice and hopelessness.

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#416

Post by TheCapeGreek »

fredzel wrote: post #7

> Once the accounts were finally gone, I realized just how much of a grip these platforms had on me. The number of times I reflexively typed "t" or "f" into my browser bar (which autocompletes to twitter.com or facebook.com) was honestly terrifying. Waiting for assets to build? Hit Twitter. Software update running? Quick Facebook check How many different accounts do you have to delete though? For many of those people…

I've felt this too - in the end, especially if you're distraction or addiction prone (e.g. ADHD), you'll mostly find something else to fill that void.

But, some options are better than others. I used to be on Twitter a lot, and had that reflex for a time after deleting it. Now... it's just not there. I did replace it with a handful of communities and some other forms of content, but it still feels better than before.

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#417

Post by maigret »

Over2Chars wrote: post #154
2024user wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Losing touch with old acquaintances is just part of getting older. fwiw, my experience is that I stayed on social media (although I don't post anything, I just keep the account) and still missed huge life updates. I reckon about 80-90% of my FB friends don't post to FB or Insta anymore. They just don't post anywhere.

I'm sure the new FB AI will generate synthetic life updates that will seem just as convincing.

One more reason to leave

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#420

Post by prmoustache »

watwut wrote: post #374
prmoustache wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these really friends though? Or just some people you met and appreciated in the past?

People you met and appreciated in the past evolve into friends and friends evolve into people you met and appreciated in the past. Each person can change "the status" multiple times, depending on circumstances. However, if you decide that weaker relationships dont matter, they will never grow into friendships. They will die out. And to large extend that is what is happening with "loneliness epidemics". We dont care t…

> People you met and appreciated in the past evolve into friends and friends evolve into people you met and appreciated in the past. Each person can change "the status" multiple times, depending on circumstances.

Agree with that.

> However, if you decide that weaker relationships dont matter, they will never grow into friendships. They will die out.

I don't think putting thumbs up on social media posts count as "growing into friendship".

> And to large extend that is what is happening with "loneliness epidemics".

I am not even sure a _loneliness epidemics_ exists but if that is true it is mostly self induced and artificial relationship pretense on social medias do not help. Quite the contrary. If you get out of social medias you actually realize your only chance to make relationships is by going outside and meet people that are close to you. And this is how you build relationships that matters and prevent loneliness.

> We dont care to keep relationships and see it as negative. Then we dont have relationships and act all shocked.

I am an expatriate and moved countries several times. I have lost touch with a lot of my old friends as well as a huge part of my larger family because I don't use facebook and instagram. That doesn't mean I don't have relationships. I made new relationships locally, and am keeping in touch with people who are not in the same country but that are as eager as I am to travel once in a while to see me.

OTOH last few years I have called a number of friends who are living abroad or several hours of train/plane/driving away from me at least once a year. Some gave unsolicited apologies and promises that next time they will be the one calling, or that they have plan to visit my area. They never called back, nor visited me and I didn't prioritized them enough to try to visit them either. This year I didn't even try to call them. I just moved them from the _friends_ mental drawer to the _acquaintance_ mental drawer. This is very likely what they passively did 2 years ago already while I was still actively trying to stay in touch.

If for some reason I travel close enough to their last known place, I may try to contact them but it is very likely that I may never see most of them. But I don't need to follow what they are posting on social medias nor publish stuff I am living and pretend that I or they care because really we do not, or not enough for it to matter.

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