Hacker News Reader

Comment by 65827 | Hacker News Reader

The alternative increasingly is to simple delete facebook and live a more offline life. Starting to see it become more and more trendy nowadays, especially among teenagers. It's considered retro and hip to just schedule social time and disconnect completely

View on HN

Here's one bit of anecdata in response. I've tried to disconnect from social media and get out in the real world. I took an improv class in NYC with about 15 other people, a range of ages & backgrounds. On the last day of the class, a number of the students were asking around for Facebook profiles to keep in touch. When asked, I replied that I didn't have a Facebook account anymore and it was...awkward, to say the least. Like, giving someone an email or a phone number seems much more formal and/or like more of a commitment, I think. Anyway, I came out of it feeling a little disillusioned about the viability of an offline social life. Though this was a group of mid-20 to 40-something people, without the teens you mention.

I have had similar experiences, more than once, but it wasn't awkward. Most of the time, people just say OK, and go on with their life. A couple times, we talked about it, and they commented that they wouldn't be able to get in touch with me again. We talked about whether being connected on Facebook vs. never talking again really would amount to much of a difference in the long run, and agreed that it really would not.

At the end of the day, a Facebook connection from someone that you otherwise don't communicate with, or run into in the real world isn't important. So those conversations are only awkward if you make them so.

Well said, similar experiences myself. If someone is worth being a friend then I get their email or phone number. If it's at a professional level then LinkedIn is more than enough.

I think Facebook is sad, very sad, and the majority of people waste their lives away on it.

The fact that exchanging a phone number or email is more formal is a feature, not a bug. Very few people's Facebook "friends" are actually so. That's why it's an annoying time sync.

They are not friends, but when you post "I am looking for a job" they will still respond if they know about one. They will also respond if you post "I am going to Barcelona for weekend anybody there"? Or sometimes they post invitation to interesting activity and you have general idea what is going on with their lives if you accidentally meet them.

Things like that.

Interesting. In my experience Facebook as a way of connecting has been replaced by WhatsApp. People seem to be exchanging numbers for that purpose. This also deals with the issue of adding someone you don't know on Facebook and then feeling too awkward to delete them a few weeks later when you don't hit it off.

I wish this anecdote were true, but I bet this is a rose-glasses thing where the metrics show things getting worse. While a minority of Americans might avoid Facebook, places like Fiji have been completely colonized where everyone has zero-rated Facebook on their mobile devices and so the development of anything outside Facebook has been sabotaged and Facebook is the new AOL with network effects destroying the potential for an open internet.

If Facebook is the new AOL, the analogy fares poorly for Facebook's future.

Becoming a global media monopoly, Facebook is going to have trouble. They may be able to skirt US anti-trust authorities at home, but not abroad. More local jurisdictions will demand global jurisdiction over what Facebook chooses to do. The bigger they become the more targets are painted on them. They are already far too large to escape scrutiny. At some point, the damage will be done and Facebook will cease to be effective.

Here in the US, I have almost zero need to anything Facebook provides. The people I am friends with on Facebook are the ones I see once every 2 to 5 years. I don't miss anything besides pictures of someone's latest baby. Google, however, is a whole other monster.

I wish that Facebook as new AOL would just have the same outcome and give way to a free and open internet. BUT Facebook gets to be AOL2 in a world where they have far far far more clout (order of magnitude larger user base and many orders of magnitude more significant impact on real life — not just an online diversion but central to politics, life, work, business, etc) and are smart enough to learn all the lessons from AOL's history in order to not repeat the same mistakes. Facebook's internet.org lost in India but won elsewhere. We're talking major power struggles where it's not clear that Facebook will lose in the end.

Google is indeed a whole other monster with a different set of issues. It's more of a blob with tons of parts, some more benign than others. Some parts comparable to Facebook, some more legitimate.

I think that Facebook is going to be like drinking, some people refrain and claim to be the better for it, most people enjoy drinking in moderation and then there are the 10% who get hooked.

I don't use Facebook as it allegedly does not make people happy if they spend forever on it. I believe it is as bad for your brain as a high sugar diet, no good for concentration spans.

> It's considered retro and hip to just schedule social time and disconnect completely

2 years off Facebook here, and while I didn't do it to be hip or retro, once I quit I started to rediscover... snail mail. I've kept in touch with some of my Facebook friends who are far away via handwritten letters, and gifts. It's been awesome to get unexpected parcels in the mail full of random items & gifts, candy & CDs (!) from overseas etc, usually with stories behind why the items were chosen. We could have done that while still on Facebook too, of course, but there wasn't the impetus to do so.

I've lived in four cities in two different continents in the past five years. Sure I have peoples' phone numbers, but many friends already have established group chats on Hangouts/Messenger.

Disconnecting from Facebook would mean disconnecting from a huge base of friends I don't want to lose track of.

I never read status updates. When I go to Facebook, I always go straight to my profile page. I pretty much just use it for the chat. If I like something a friend has posted, they usually know I specifically went to their page to look. For people who have blogs, I'd rather add them to my RSS reader and encourage RSS use.

I sometimes consider it, but I would miss keeping in touch with friends from around the world and, truthfully, I'm not good at keeping in touch with people by email. Facebook lets me drop in for a few minutes at a time and see what people are up to.

Even an online life without facebook and twitter is still fun. I think we're at a point where social networks are kind of pointless. At best, they're an easier to use alternative to the rolodex/black-book and email client. At worse, they make it harder to keep tabs on actual friends and family. So, I think everyone should weigh the effectiveness of their utilization of such products rather than being driven by fear of not being fashionable (leave that to the teenagers and celebrities).

I deactivated it for more than a year and don't even have time giving a shit to permanently delete it because IIRC there were no a dead simple way to do it currently.

I'm not sure where's life going but at least the old problem space has gone. New problem space more worth it.

I live all over the world, and have friends and family all over the world. If I want to stay involved in the lives of a large number of people who are not local, a social network is the most efficient way.

I did that for 5 years but I ended up being really lonely because it's hard to find people with similar interests and tastes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com