Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gavanwoolery | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like there is a legitimate market for "the old ways" (TM).

Social media is "great", in the same way that the invention of alcohol was "great" - the bad part of it is that it is literally designed to drive clicks and addict us, and we have no way of turning it off (temporarily) that we can't just switch right back on (yes, I have seen all your handy scripts and tricks).

You know what was awesome about walking into a brick and mortar building and buying a piece of software? It almost certainly would not contain a virus due to the prohibitive cost of getting it on a shelf, and it was not flogged to a state of near-death by app store restrictions. Yeah we killed some trees, and we liked it that way! (shakes fist at sky).

Writing impressive code used to be a highly valued skill, limited to the few who put in the time to piecing together arcane knowledge. Now we are just surfing on the backs of giants and locked into their ecosystems. So long as you can write a laggy javascript app and google how to do something you are safe in this world. (shakes fist at sky again, why not)

...continues muttering/ranting...

> It almost certainly would not contain a virus due to the prohibitive cost of getting it on a shelf

Boop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

Edit: But yes, I too miss "the old ways".

"almost certainly" does leave room for some cases.

Also, that was a music CD with malware, not a software application. I'm sure the DRM for many games was comparable, but they still had to mind their manners somewhat.

I miss when my money mattered.

I got a bootsector virus from a VGA driver diskette.

> ...and we have no way of turning it off (temporarily) that we can't just switch right back on...

i solved this problem by convincing myself that i don't actually want to turn it back on

I tried this, but then my friends convinced me to keep it on. :/ May at some point turn it off regardless...

I deleted all of my social media profiles, i.e., unfriended and unfollowed everyone and then deleted my account. It's been a huge plus for me.

What I've done to replace it is email and call people. I'm 42 so many of my friends are receptive to calls that younger people may not be so ymmv.

I'm sure you know this, but your true friends will be there offline whether you see them online or not.

Good luck!

I'm a 30s fellow and I do this as well. I'm all calls/text message + video calls via Signal/Wire/Skype.

I don't understand the desire to publicly broadcast things and none of my friends have had an issue with it. Of course, my friends are mostly technical or privacy-oriented folks.

A broadcast may be worthwhile when it carries measurable value and: produces unsigned side effects [0]; produces manageable signed side effects [1].

I’m 24, deleted Facebook at 18, WhatsApp last year, and I too am all calls (and emails for longform or bit sharing). I still observe HN, Twitter [2], domain-specific newsletters for value, and occasionally share when there’s value to be added.

While I might have to manage debris, I see value.

[0] https://arxiv.org/rss/cs

[1] https://twitter.com

[2] A meticulously curated, filtered stream.

Texting and callung are very different, sync vs. async.

They are indeed. I prefer to act within the boundaries of bare reality and leverage technology for value-oriented scenarios. I feel business-driven, cognition-altering escape palaces are wrathful, detrimental environments.

What is the problem your friends have with you not being on Big Social Media? Is it that they want to be able to message you over those platforms? Or do they want you to see things they post? Or something else?

My only form of contact is Twitter for many people (they do not have my email). I posted my email publicly though when I tried to leave Twitter. Twitter is (to its benefit) an extremely low-friction form of communication that is not quite the same as email or a phone call. For example, I can say something on Twitter without demanding a given person's attention - rather, they can read it if they want to.

Anyhow, it was more a philosophical problem that brought me back. I said, in so many words, that I wanted to be more "zen" (whatever that means) and eliminate distractions. They argued that I was not in a "zen" place if I let distractions bother me in the first place. So I took it as a challenge (which I failed). I think it easier to turn things off permanently than to master one's own willpower.

Sounds like a fallacy. If I choose to not play a TV in the background on full volume in my office all day while I work, is this a result of my lacking willpower?

Also, different people have different sensitivities. Don’t be so quick to write sensitivities off as weaknesses. To illustrate: the nervous system (and most other things) depends on sensing, and would simply fail if it were rendered too insensitive. Your sensitivities are often strengths when managed accordingly. Practicing and challenging them has it’s benefits, but we want to be strategic with this rather than simply withstanding to no end.

thanks, good points :)

> I think it easier to turn things off permanently than to master one's own willpower.

That's one reason I left Reddit; too much coming down the pipe, even when my subscriptions were pared down to a few technical groups. It was easiest just to completely stop going.

For what it's worth, here's my take: turning off social media is far and away more "zen" than having it, no matter how infrequently you use it. Being unplugged from that culture has helped me spend more time thinking about and doing things that have lasting impact on my life. Like learning and building. In my experience, caring about staying up to date on pop culture keeps people from actually doing things they say they want to do.

Are you really telling us, here of all places, that you’re NOT ON FACEBOOK?!

Can you please not post unsubstantive comments here?

Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note that they also ask you not to use uppercase like that; it's basically yelling.

I'm old enough to remember when a 'blog' was called a 'zine' and was traded for stamps in the mail. Then the 'aggregator' was the awesome Factsheet Five. Can you imagine trying trying to do a FF for blogs? It's almost enough to make me go out get a mimeograph machine.

I was talking to a colleague tonight about Dishwasher Pete:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dishwasher_Pete

hah, awesome stuff. One internet star for you.

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