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Comment by Chathamization | Hacker News Reader

> If we're going to be totally honest, then first, let's call social media primarily talking to your friends and family. Which is one of the most deeply and fundamentally human things you can do.

I disagree. Pre-social media, people would talk with friends and family using e-mail and programs like AIM, and there would actually be deep and meaningful conversations. This has been supplanted by social media, which is often simple banal comments on an article/rant that someone threw up for everyone to see.

If someone told you 15 years ago that people would stop having conversations by e-mail and communicate by LiveJournal posts/comments instead, it would have seemed like a hilariously terrible idea, but that's more or less where we are.

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> I disagree. Pre-social media, people would talk with friends and family using e-mail and programs like AIM, and there would actually be deep and meaningful conversations.

This seems hilariously false.

Of course I can only speak from personal experience. But in my experience, long personal e-mail (several paragraphs) from friends to catch up used to be relatively common, and now they've all but disappeared (I don't think I've gotten any in the past couple of years). Likewise, long chats of the old AIM/MSN variety - spend an hour or two chatting with a friend sharing ideas and news with them - seems much rarer than before (where it wasn't uncommon to have them every few days).

This is true for me too. It's funny that we can now literally connect to thousands of people in social media, but through likes and short comments. Sometimes I get the impression that long threads of discussion is not encouraged, that it's polite to just keep it short and sweet (example, when Instagram introduced the "like comment" button, I sometimes find myself using it rather than thanking directly.)

So our connecting is more like lines crossing over briefly, but never more than that. Sometimes this is fun - because where else can you encounter other people different from you - and sometimes it's just a little sad.

Where as we have F=m•a in physical reality, in hyperreality it seems as though the rule is inverted, F=m÷a.

It seems the less "mass" a message contains the more "force" it seems to exert. A long response is ignored and carries with it very little persuasive power compared to the pithy response of a mere binary form of approval.

Yes it is false.

But the op is oriented correctly.

The issue isn’t the depth of conversations- the issue is the availability of addictive alternatives.

I’m on a phone surrounded by family - who I will see only a few more times in my life.

And that’s entirely because of my choices.

But by that criteria being in bad relations, junk food, bingeing, gambling addictions are all “choice”.

They are not.

These tools are designed to be as addictive possible within the confines of law - laws made to prevent even worse excesses.

If you have Joe Schmoe, vs me and my ability to data mine their lives, to put reminders that “hey you are on your streak! Log on again!” While they are on the pot, to “leverage” their network to get more people onto the game and then put them on leader boards “to catch those people with competitive impulses”; to gamify their life and to put triggers to run dopamine and seratonin triggers - then joe schmoe doesn’t have a snowballs chance in hell.

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