51–60 of 272 posts
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…
I felt similar, except in creater scale. There used to be forums and portals, where people share their experiences and knowneledge. Now many forums are almost dead, some are spam towns, some are closed. Few weeks ago was closing party for biggest local music community website. There was heathy forum but owners saw bigger picture and didn't want wait, until place dries up. Facebook seems taken over all kind communicat…
Facebook (et al.) has done an incredible job (for better or worse) at changing the way people in society interact with and perceive others. It really is staggering when you think about it,.
One giant learning experience. We're adapting. It's kinda gross, but hopefully we'll all come out the better for it.
It was always a pretty poor way to communicate, imo. At last for my use case, which was wanting friends to hear about interesting / exciting things going on in my life.
I had like 300 friends on there -- a good mix of family, old coworkers, old school friends, people from a local sports league, etc. -- and I happened to have a fairly successful startup at the time, so I'd post about that... and got back crickets.
For whatever reason, at least back then, the algorithm would only show my post to a few people at first, and if none of them liked or commented, it wouldn't show it to anyone else. At least that's my assumption.
So I was like 26, pulling in $1k / day in AdSense revenue, and trying to tell my family and friends how exciting it was, and every post I'd submit would just get totally ignored. Out of ten posts that actually had a bit of depth, nothing super dense or overly intellectual, just describing some of the challenges and successes, (like a $12k hosting bill from Rackspace), I probably got around 2-3 comments total. The vast majority of things I posted were ignored completely.
Then I'd see the most banal and superficial crap get put on my feed with tons of comments, so eventually one week I posted, "TGIF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Out of my last 10 posts that actually mattered to me, that one immediately got tons of traction and something like 60 replies, etc. I quit right after that.
Facebook forced me to confront how boring my passion for startups really is to normal people... so why waste my time sharing it?
Or their algorithm was just really poor and my posts weren't being displayed to my friends, either way, what's the point?
I gave up FB and Instagram posts because my political view (conservative) and got 2 banned and harassed by relatives and strangers. Life is way better without FB/Insta
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meh. HN points are pretty meaningless. I have way more than 17000 and I am still a nobody. I wouldn't put much stock in it.
I'm a nobody and I have 35,000 HN points (please don't check)
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…
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.
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 post not for points. I post because I have something to say. Expressing my self is validating, who cares if others read or agree.
Too many people.
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.
Point is: Sarcasm works best when writing somewhat snarky. But probably most HN readers don't understand sarcasm and that's the problem. (See what I did there?)