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Comment by bufferoverflow | Hacker News Reader

A lot of it is just so fake. Pretty much everyone I know does the fake smile for the selfie, and then they immediately stop smiling.

Many people I know, when traveling, have a check list of the selfies they want to make to show everyone else how great their life is, when I know it isn't. And they miss the actual fun of experiencing traveling - to them it's just a series of selfies.

This was 99% of my Facebook, and that's why I quit. There was only one guy who was regularly posting interesting articles (tech, space, futurism). I ended up deciding a diamond in a pile of sh#t wasn't worth it, and HN/Reddit are better.

As for the social aspect, most people's lives are boring, and most people are boring, they only look at what's happening today, worry about what other people think of them, and other boring drivel.

/Rant over

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Let me add to your rant. Regarding my children, and school functions such as plays and recitals - the number of parents watching their kids through their smart phones recording video [1] instead of just watching it naturally and taking the moment in.

[1] video that is horribly underexposed, un-viewable, that they'll never likely watch again.

I went to my first Christmas recital this year (2 yr old) and remember thinking what a favor the school would have done everyone to film the performance themselves and sell the video.

Instead everyone was rushing for better filming positions whenever a new group got on stage. Miserable.

It seems like most schools in Los Angeles do this for plays and recitals. What is strange is that people still film stuff. I think it gives them something to do.

Uggh, reminds me of people who take videos of fireworks and even worse post that garbage online.

I guess (tape) camcorders back in the day at least had sort of good HDR? :)

Saying this because obviously (also my) parents recorded plays 10 or 15 years ago.

Yours maybe, but most didn't. Now it's like its mandatory for 200 parents to simultaneously record their kids.

This seems to be the case with pretty much every event I go to lately. Concerts, firework shows, etc. All being experienced through a phone display just so people can "show off" the fact that they were there and earn internet points. It's incredibly sad what social media has done to society, and incredibly obnoxious trying to see past hundreds of smart phone displays just to see the stage at a show.

Have you asked them why? Maybe they're taking the video so they can share it with family members that couldn't be there: dad had to work tonight, grandparents love the grandkids but live on the other side of the world, etc.

I talked to a Facebook employee about how he handles all of the crap on FB as a user, and he said most people there make heavy use of the filtering tools, so they're only seeing the stuff that they care about. That always sounded like a good strategy to me, but maybe not for your case since it's literally one guy.

I tend to overexaggerate my smiles in some group pictures to make it looks scary/disgusting. People tell me to stop fake smiling but I respond “at least I am honestly faking it” unlike others who are deceptively trying to make it look natural.

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