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Comment by overcast | Hacker News Reader

This isn't surprising at all. Social media permeating every inch of our souls, just drowns people in everyone else's seemingly perfect lives. When people view Facebook feeds of everyone on vacation, eating amazing food, taking amazing adventures. It makes you feel like you're missing out on all of that, and that your life can't possibly compare. While in reality, it's many cherry picked snippets of potentially hundreds and thousands of lives. I've certainly caught myself being worried about not being at my maximum potential, why didn't I go to an Ivy league school, why didn't I work harder and play with the big boys Silicon Valley, why am I not out traveling the world living carefree. However from any outsider, I'd be viewed as incredibly successful. It's a sad state to be in, and you just have to distance yourself from it. It's awesome to have goals, but you can't expect to be able to achieve the goals of hundreds of people simultaneously.

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I know it's anecdata, but as someone with a history of depression, social media doesn't bother me one bit. In fact in some ways I'm rather addicted to it, always looking for a new article to read, or a cool picture to see.

When I'm on vacation, I happily post photos of said vacation. Then when I'm back at work, I happily look at photos of my friends' vacations and wish I was there with them instead of stuck at work!

I guess it depends on what sets you off -- or maybe my ability to cope with internal issues means that external things simply don't bother me -- you bought a cool car, wow, I wish I had one! But I'm able to be grateful for what I have, and I've recognized what kinds of material things make me happy what what don't.

About social media - all I really use Facebook for, primarily, is to stay lightly connected to "friends at a distance" for fear of losing them and not being able to find them again. Something that a contact book could easily solve, as long as you verify the contact methods were still valid from time to time. At least for me, the novelty of sharing/comparing of social details has long worn off.

Not sure the cost of being data-mined is worth the value in the end.

And that makes me wonder... how many people out there feel like an object to be used, mined and sold or sold to, rather than valued as a human being, or find their struggle to be recognized, powerful, wealthy, whatever too overpowering?

The book "Bowling Alone" [1] is an interesting take on much of this from around the year 2000. In theory, social media must have helped with the problems outlined in that book. And yet, I wonder, has the real solution been hijacked by commercialism? Maybe. And what would that book say if written today?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

This, coupled with the incredibly mean people on the Internet, I'd expect. Who wants to reach out when everyone's just a jerk all the time? I'm very guilty of this, too. Reddit, Twitter, and other similar forums are cesspools of hate just as much as they're wells of love. For every Arnold post on /r/fitness encouraging someone, there are 20,000 posts calling OP a fag and deriding someone for asking a simple question.

I feel like the Internet is in its High School years, now. The 90's were like grade school, and prior to that it was kindergarten (70's, ARPANET). Now, we've got gang fights, drugs, ineffective leaders/teachers, lowered expectations, and above all, teenage angst.

Last year I closed my Facebook, and various other social accounts. This year I've stopped using Reddit. They really are just toxic, and incredibly wasteful. I agree, this Internet can be so much more than stupid memes and bullying. Even the concept of the "downvote", should never have existed. Certainly it was started with good intentions to weed out trash articles, but it's never been used properly outside of making someones voice disappear. I don't know what's next, but it's certainly not going to be another social network.

>This year I've stopped using Reddit. They really are just toxic, and incredibly wasteful.

I have to disagree about Reddit. Reddit is a huge site, with over 250,000 subreddits. Some parts of it are indeed toxic, /r/politics is a good example of this. But there's tons of subreddits for various obscure things, and they're nice places to talk to like-minded people. For instance, there's a subreddit for my car, and there's no toxicity there, just people asking questions about stuff and exchanging tips ("has anyone else experienced this problem?"). Or there's subreddits where people just post pictures of stuff and comment on them (/r/earthporn is a good example if you like pretty nature photos).

The toxicity comes when you have a forum where there's wildly divergent views, so naturally something like /r/politics is going to be filled with nastiness (and for good reason: people who support that other candidate are idiots!! :-) But in someplace like /r/earthporn, what is there to fight about? "This picture of the Grand Canyon at sunset is gorgeous!" "No it isn't, you're a moron!" Some things just lend themselves to conflict a lot more than other things. It's pretty hard to get into an ideological fight about a nature photo. So if you restrict yourself to those subreddits, you can avoid any toxicity I think.

What if I want to talk civilized politics? You can avoid toxicity if you find some really niche subreddits. However if it is an /r/ for anything significantly popular, it quickly divulges it toxic garbage. In your example sure, /earthporn/ is neat, but forums dedicated to just reposting pictures, are just another wasteful time sink for me. I get what you're saying, I do. I've just given up on wasting my time there.

>sure, /earthporn/ is neat, but forums dedicated to just reposting pictures, are just another wasteful time sink for me.

You could say the same thing about a lot of things, including playing video games, posting here on HN, spending time with your family or kids, or anything else that doesn't directly make money.

If someone enjoys it, it's not a "wasteful time sink" any more than playing a crossword puzzle or watching a movie with your spouse.

>However if it is an /r/ for anything significantly popular, it quickly divulges it toxic garbage.

I disagree; /r/earthporn is significantly popular, and /r/aww is extremely popular. They aren't full of toxic garbage. When it's just pictures of cute cats, it's pretty hard to have a serious argument.

More focused groups, like the one for my car, aren't nearly as popular, but not everyone has the same interests, so of course a particular car-based subreddit isn't going to be nearly as popular as something that affects everyone, such as /r/politics.

Politics is especially bad because it literally affects everyone (there's no one now who doesn't live under some government), frequently in a rather profound way (the laws that are passed will directly affect your livelihood, and could put you in jail or get you killed), and our leaders are mostly a bunch of sociopathic, corrupt, evil people, and on top of all that, none of us (assuming you're an American, as /r/politics caters to American politics) can remotely agree on how our country should be governed (some people want outright communism, others want corporate fascism, others want democratic socialism, others want a theocracy, others want near-anarchy).

So in summary, if you want to avoid "toxic garbage", it's pretty simple: find a forum that's full of very like-minded people, and avoid anything that delves into politics. Or if you want to talk about politics but avoid nasty arguments, make sure to find something close to an echo chamber for your preferred candidate/party/orientation.

I totally understand. When I comment on Reddit, if it's not in agreement with the masses, I end up being downvoted and argue with people. Then I quickly realize - WHY!? A total waste of my time.

It's exactly the same here on HN. I get downvoted all the time, and usually for rather innocuous stuff too.

"You can't expect to be able to achieve the goals of hundreds of people simultaneously." -- great quote, thank you!

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