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Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

stevepavlina.com

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Re: Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

#81

Post by Estragon »

vertr wrote: post #32

There was a twitter meme going around yesterday: "not having facebook is the new not owning a TV." I think that this phenomenon is mostly a bandwagon of Guru's who want to have something new and 'revolutionary' to present to their followers. Pavlina's always telling people to quit something. First it was regular sleep, then monogamy, etc. While he purports to be anti-consumption, this really just makes us focus on ou…

  A better strategy for a balanced digital life is to
  pragmatically audit your useage on an ongoing basis.
That sounds interesting. Can you be more specific?

Re: Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

#82

Post by whatusername »

jdminhbg wrote: post #80
zacharycohn wrote: post #63

I don't know why more people don't use the "hide" feature. I was rapidly becoming sick of Facebook. I only friended people that I'd met before, but even so it was polluted by people who I went to middle school, etc. with who I really didn't know that well even then. Then I found the "Hide" option. I hide probably 95% of my "friends." After I did this, I LOVED using Facebook again. Every time I logged in, I was able t…

I tried doing the "Hide" thing for a while, but there are two problems: 1) It's a pain in the ass to hunt down and hide various people and apps, and you have to keep up with it. Consequently, your friends who are likely to say interesting things but not spend a ton of time tweaking their FB settings tend to drift off, driving your signal down. 2) Hiding people is a blunt instrument -- you hide someone who's 98% noisy…

Hide Applications.

Add people into lists.

Re: Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

#83

Post by zacharycohn »

jdminhbg wrote: post #80
zacharycohn wrote: post #63

I don't know why more people don't use the "hide" feature. I was rapidly becoming sick of Facebook. I only friended people that I'd met before, but even so it was polluted by people who I went to middle school, etc. with who I really didn't know that well even then. Then I found the "Hide" option. I hide probably 95% of my "friends." After I did this, I LOVED using Facebook again. Every time I logged in, I was able t…

I tried doing the "Hide" thing for a while, but there are two problems: 1) It's a pain in the ass to hunt down and hide various people and apps, and you have to keep up with it. Consequently, your friends who are likely to say interesting things but not spend a ton of time tweaking their FB settings tend to drift off, driving your signal down. 2) Hiding people is a blunt instrument -- you hide someone who's 98% noisy…

It took me about one week of using facebook + filtering people to get to the point where I enjoyed using facebook again. No adding people to lists, no hunting down people, nothing.

Re: Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

#84

Post by baguasquirrel »

apotheon wrote: post #39
sudont wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience here, as soon as I dropped out of facebook, I was immediately blacklisted in every social circle that used it, even if the primary mode of communication was texting/email. Some op-ed considered dropping out of facebook as a radically anti-social act, and I'd have to agree: you're not considering the group's views on communication, and you're forcing them into a personal world. When the entire social c…

There's nothing antisocial about assessing your use of a service and deciding its benefits are less significant than its costs.

It is antisocial to forsake speaking with your friends. Speaking directly is a medium of communication, as is Facebook. You can argue about the cost/benefits of each, and claim your way is the better one, and this would constitute a lack of empathy, a lack of sympathy, or both.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't claim to have been much better.

And FWIW, I've observed the same effect for quitting WoW. Once I did, a whole class of friends stopped talking to me.

Re: Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

#86

Post by jschuur »

Somewhat related, Steve made a great post 5 years ago about news addiction and how he doesn't watch/follow the news anymore.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/overcoming-news-add...

Highly recommended, even though I fail completely at the advice and am glued to Al Jazeera English right now.

And don't get me started on tech news ;)

Re: Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

#88

Post by phreakhead »

No wonder he didn't like Facebook: he has no real friends! 5000+ friends and he never met any of them face-to-face? What is the point of that? I only friend someone if I've met them before in a real-life situation. If the relationship never goes past that in real life, then I usually just end up hiding them from my news feed and forgetting about them. I'm sure they do the same for me and I don't give it a second thought.

However, I do get tremendous value out of my real friends on Facebook, since we share event invites, photos of our trips, news articles/videos that we share interest in, etc. I am a performer and all my performer/musician friends are on Facebook, and that is the main medium for getting news out about a show. The days of posting flyers on telephone poles and cafe windows are over - if you are not posting your upcoming shows on Facebook and inviting your friends, then your band is going to struggle to sell tickets.

Re: Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

#89

Post by holygoat »

Estragon wrote: post #78
nollidge wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hacker sees facebook as personal, and email/phone public. The average person sees facebook as a public place, and email/phone as a personal channel. Upvoted just for this. Not sure if it's true or not, but it's a provocative thought.

Sorry, I don't understand how email could be seen as public, let alone the phone. (Except in as much as they're not secure channels, but neither is facebook.) Could someone explain what this means?

I think the poster means that for the average person Facebook is the channel you maintain for people you know publicly (i.e., weak social interactions) to contact you, and email/phone is for your inner circle.

For some of us it's the other way around: email and phone is how people we don't know well contact us, reserving Facebook and Twitter for closer interactions.

Re: Steve Pavlina: 30 days since I quit Facebook

#90

Post by kleevr »

zacharycohn wrote: post #83
jdminhbg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried doing the "Hide" thing for a while, but there are two problems: 1) It's a pain in the ass to hunt down and hide various people and apps, and you have to keep up with it. Consequently, your friends who are likely to say interesting things but not spend a ton of time tweaking their FB settings tend to drift off, driving your signal down. 2) Hiding people is a blunt instrument -- you hide someone who's 98% noisy…

It took me about one week of using facebook + filtering people to get to the point where I enjoyed using facebook again. No adding people to lists, no hunting down people, nothing.

Honestly I don't mind keeping FB as a Rolodex of people I may only tangentially know, but I don't necessarily want to know what they had for breakfast. Hiding totally solved this problem for me too.
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