My life after quitting social media • Hacker News Board

Re: My life after quitting social media

#71

Post by 8ytecoder » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #61

Maybe I'm the outlier - but everybody I am "friends" with on social media I'm friends with IRL (save for Twitter, but that's more blogging than social media). We just post what we did this weekend and stuff like that. Post stuff that the kids are doing (and for some of my friends what the grandkids are doing). No one is trying to impress anyone else. People just staying in touch. Maybe we older folks have a better fe…

Who your friends with changes a lot during our younger years. School, college, job changes, neighborhood changes, …etc, all bring new friends and old friends you can’t find time for. These changes are rarely reflected in social media.

In addition, younger people do follow a lot of “influencers” - the worst kinda people to follow in social media.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#72

Post by 100011_100001 » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

valbaca wrote: post #66

lxm wrote: post #42

I recommended it in a similar discussion before, but Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism" offers reasonable ways to introduce intermittent fasting patterns into your social media consumption vs quitting cold turkey. Some sample strategies to adopt: 1) Mobile sites only, never apps. Always log out when done to increase the friction of subsequent logins. The most insidious pattern of mindless engagement is when you're bo…

> The most insidious pattern of mindless engagement is when you're bored at the checkout line, waiting in-between meetings with nothing to do, sitting on the toilet. Just curious, why is this considered the "most insidious"? Isn't that time wasted anyway? Before cellphones you would just stare off into space (you're not getting any deep thinking or deep work done waiting in line) or would just browse the gum or trash…

You could think and self-reflect. There is a reason why shower thoughts are a thing, in a society dominated by things that illicit emotional reactions it's hard to have time to just be.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#73

Post by mattgreenrocks » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

haswell wrote: post #48

lrobinovitch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is for sharing. Social media is for driving engagement from users, mining their data, and encouraging unhealthy social comparison (as well as, you know, organizing events and messages and stuff). Nothing wrong with sharing a blog post on an experience you had that you think may be of value to others.

To dive a bit further into this, I was very socially active on the Internet 20 years ago, and it was a magical thing. I made friends that I still communicate with today, and I credit the amazing community I aligned myself with for helping me become the person I am today (in a good way). Social media today is nothing like those early communities, and I rarely participate for that reason. Some of the core motivations (…

Ditto. The important thing about the forums of yore were that they were largely composed of users who self-selected into it, and were oriented around a particular topic. They didn't have the thing were tons of people latched on and then just hung around for no reason other than their own boredom.

I think there's a fundamental difference in how forums are used vs social media. The catch-all nature of social media molds it into a device which people use to construct an idealized representation of themselves. Forums seem to head more in the direction of discussing/arguing about focused topics, rather than identity-creation.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#74

Post by stevofolife » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

luxurytent wrote: post #46

I love Twitter but recently removed Instagram from my phone and as a result, my usage dropped to near zero. I found I was watching the same updates (here's my baby doing this fun thing!), which was nice, but I wasn't really connected to this individual, and for most of my Instagram it was old friends and colleagues who no longer live near me or share much similarities. Twitter, Instagram, Hacker News, etc. are all at…

> but I still had a part of my brain thinking about the missed opportunities in building value / wealth. Hm.

I think this was your main point right? I also feel the same, but not because of Twitter. I think Twitter is an amazing social platform but it takes certain type of people to succeed on it. I'm sure there are tons of people who are very smart and is making more or creating something cooler but not broadcasting it on Twitter. Maybe you are one of those people.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#75

Post by mr_cyborg » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

taylodl wrote: post #61

Maybe I'm the outlier - but everybody I am "friends" with on social media I'm friends with IRL (save for Twitter, but that's more blogging than social media). We just post what we did this weekend and stuff like that. Post stuff that the kids are doing (and for some of my friends what the grandkids are doing). No one is trying to impress anyone else. People just staying in touch. Maybe we older folks have a better fe…

What generation do you fall into?

I’ve noticed some groups of people are better than others. Most of my baby boomer relatives are really bad about social media, sharing tons of political things (often nasty and offputting) and seem to liken social media to spending time with people or catching up with them a bit inappropriately.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#76

Post by haswell » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

valbaca wrote: post #66

lxm wrote: post #42

I recommended it in a similar discussion before, but Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism" offers reasonable ways to introduce intermittent fasting patterns into your social media consumption vs quitting cold turkey. Some sample strategies to adopt: 1) Mobile sites only, never apps. Always log out when done to increase the friction of subsequent logins. The most insidious pattern of mindless engagement is when you're bo…

> The most insidious pattern of mindless engagement is when you're bored at the checkout line, waiting in-between meetings with nothing to do, sitting on the toilet. Just curious, why is this considered the "most insidious"? Isn't that time wasted anyway? Before cellphones you would just stare off into space (you're not getting any deep thinking or deep work done waiting in line) or would just browse the gum or trash…

> Before cellphones you would just stare off into space (you're not getting any deep thinking or deep work done waiting in line) or would just browse the gum or trash magazines.

The key is that the "before cellphones" behavior often involved a greater connection to one's immediate surroundings, or being "present". The risk/concern with browsing a phone in these moments is that it promotes disconnection and feeds our brain's need for that next dopamine hit. Some hypothesize that this constant disconnection from "here/now" is part of society's broader problems and people increasingly look at the real world through the lens of social media, which we know to be a major distortion of reality.

Disclaimer: anecdote, sample size of one, etc...for me personally, I've been working hard not to fill those idle moments and instead focus on being present and stay in the moment. This could literally be as simple as noticing the variety of gum options in the checkout line. I already have dissociative tendencies due to PTSD, and one of the most effective ways for me to dissociate is to lose myself in the endless scroll. Conversely, staying present/connected to my surroundings helps my mental state immensely.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#77

Post by barbazoo » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

> I still haven’t deleted my social media accounts. I still have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I don’t need to delete them. I don’t feel that I need to delete them. I simply don’t open them because I simply unfollowed everyone there.

You're not really quitting if you still keep all your accounts. It's like stopping drinking but leaving a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard just in case.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#78

Post by TuringNYC » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

billfruit wrote: post #20

Sometimes I feel HN also is a similar attention sink, even Wikipedia as well. They also can draw you in for information snacking, and before you know hours have gone. Commenting and reading responses in HN is also another attention consuming loop.

I use HN and Twitter in between builds and deploys. Not sure what else I could do during that time, it is too small to focus attention on most other things. I wonder if this time is really "wasted" since otherwise i'd be looking at the docker progress monitor.

Perhaps I could take a walk, which would be good.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#79

Post by bee_rider » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

coding123 wrote: post #31

billfruit wrote: post #20

Sometimes I feel HN also is a similar attention sink, even Wikipedia as well. They also can draw you in for information snacking, and before you know hours have gone. Commenting and reading responses in HN is also another attention consuming loop.

And checking to see if your comment stays near the top, how many up votes, reading the replies to see if you're a smart person or not.

This is what made me delete my Reddit account. I realized I was putting an inappropriate amount of effort into impressing people I'd never meet.

Not sure if that treadmill is just built into my personality or if it was specifically caused by the site. I don't feel it here as much, although it could just be that the account there was older, so it felt like it'd developed more of an 'identity' (silly as that is).

Re: My life after quitting social media

#80

Post by barbazoo » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

> Important things – news, events, etc. – that we think we’ll miss will come to you either way. Either a friend will tell you about an upcoming concert or you’ll read it somewhere else.

This is what bugs me about out current state. Sure, I ended my addiction to social media but I often still rely on my friends telling me about events that THEY saw in their feed. I wish business and artists would stop using social media as their primary platform for engagement. Use a website instead, an RSS feed or email.