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Comment by jraby3 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not on social media aside from Reddit. But what I notice with my wife and others is a simple reason why I dislike it. If you have 400 friends, and they each only take one vacation a year, that means 8x per week, you're looking at other people taking a vacation. Even if you travel 4x per year, you'll still feel like you never do anything and everyone else is always celebrating their life.

I realize this is a simple example, but it's valid and wears you down over time. Also, even having a handful of very wealthy friends can eventually lead to feelings of envy.

In past times, most people grew up surrounded by people similar to them in terms of wealth and status - but in today's world that's no longer the case.

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>Also, even having a handful of very wealthy friends can eventually lead to feelings of envy.

I.. huh. I really don't get this. Maybe it is because I am doing better than I thought I was going to for the first half of my life? or maybe I'm just less jealous than most people? but yeah, there are a few people I follow who you could say I am envious of; people who are super successful in all the ways I want to be successful, but I think it's good rather than bad, because I feel a connection to what I want and admire, and there's this person I really admire who is talking with me. That is... kinda neat, you know? Like showing up at your buddy's weekend board game party and finding the inventor of a famous programming language was also invited.

I guess I don't see how seeing people who are more successful than you on facebook could possibly be more distressing than seeing those people at work (and you will and always have seen those people at work. We've always had bosses.)

Even in person, I've always found being around people that are better than I am (better by my standards) to be fun and exciting. I don't think this is uncommon, really.

If you are perfectly content with your life, then Facebook probably won’t be an issue at all. But if you have _any_ area where you don’t feel fulfilled - like bad life/work balance, insufficient funds, loneliness, unfulfilled baby wish - then Facebook is going to rub it into your face, daily, that others have what you desire, and does it in a misleading way.

Let’s say you can’t have a baby and you have a colleague with 4 kids at work. In real life, you talk to them, get a grasp of their situation, and might realize the caveats - Eg they also had an unfulfilled baby wish at first (which gives you hope), or you can offset the perceived „unfairness“ with the areas they are lacking in (eg they often feel overwhelmed by the kids or are sick a lot). On Facebook, you have an army of super-happy baby making machines, posting Instagram filtered of happy smiles in the sunny park, kids cuddling with a dog, birthday candles... the bad moments are very rarely reported - and when they are, lots of people flock to the post and comment, making that person their center of attention (= socially important). But they won’t write next to that happy picture „right after, baby cried for 45 minutes and I almost had a nervous breakdown“ because you don’t appear to be in a favorable position when writing that.

[As a father of two, I was never directly affected by an unfulfilled baby wish, but a friend of ours was.]

>If you are perfectly content with your life, then Facebook probably won’t be an issue at all. But if you have _any_ area where you don’t feel fulfilled - like bad life/work balance, insufficient funds, loneliness, unfulfilled baby wish - then Facebook is going to rub it into your face, daily, that others have what you desire, and does it in a misleading way.

I am super amused that in the middle of a heated debate on the internet, a stranger is implying that I am a happy, well-balanced person with a full life :)

Interesting argument :) Do you mean that a happy, well-balanced person would not engage in discussions on Hacker News?

> But if you have _any_ area where you don’t feel fulfilled then Facebook is going to rub it into your face, daily, that others have what you desire, and does it in a misleading way.

Reading this, I'm very happy that I don't really use Facebook.

Your comments in here really resonate with me too, I think social media might be pouring gasoline on the fire of jealousy, but if you're not jealous to begin with all I think about is: "Oh wow, here's a photo of Kristy in mexico with a monkey, ha!" and that's it, no jealousy, no inner dialogue of "I wish I was there and not her" or anything. I could look at pictures like that all day and not be affected, but when it's someone I know personally I'm actually a little happy _for_ them.

Perhaps there's a difference if you meet someone who is already successful or who's past accomplishments you admire versus that idiot in high school who barely passed chemistry by cheating off your answers, exibited the worst of the sexist jock/bro mentality, skated by on his good looks and is now driving a lambo and married to a supermodel.

I'm still not seeing how that is any more distressing than seeing, say, your boss' boss, who once took obvious relish in firing one of your friends, continue to be successful in the office every day, you know?

You are going to encounter your financial superiors at work quite often, in ways that are a lot more directly impactful and a lot harder to ignore than pictures on facebook, and this is not new.

I can't understand why someone over 25 that has a decent career (assuming you are a programmer since it's HN) would still care about what some chad from high school is doing. Worrying about how "unfair" life is is an energy and time black hole.

because your life isn't just your career.

This is shocking to me, too. I mean, I don't care what Chad is up to today, but the general trauma of high school is still with me in a way that I don't think is reasonable, considering that my experience wasn't unusual, and that it happened twenty years ago.

See also Dahl's "galloping Foxley" for a literary take on the phenomena.

> I guess I don't see how seeing people who are more successful than you on facebook could possibly be more distressing than seeing those people at work

I think you're hoping over a few categorical issues that create the social media dysthymia. It's not about seeing people who are more successful. It's not about "better" or "worse". It's about social regulation in formative egos.

From your posts you are coming off like an aspergersy male adult engineer -- I'm one of those myself, so I mean that with love -- dealing in concrete world value from the perspective of a fully formed ego not used to internalizing the external. Equating the discontent with rational motives jealousy or envy or desire, instead of judgement and personal failings implicit in habitual social comparison.

Fundamentally social media habits can create two major areas of discontent: comparing your behind-the-scenes life with other peoples highlights reels, and the comparability of the elevated personalities. To take your "boss" example: that's generally not someone I identify with deeply because my daddy wasn't as rich, and I didn't inherit the company, and blah blah blah. To our primate brains `bosses` tend to be `others` and not `us`. If that boss were your childhood buddy, OTOH, you'd have a different take on things... And that different take, and the implied reflection of being less than or worse than, that you would have with a familiar person having that role is what social media does with vacation pics and such. You're not seeing someone in another group, like someone famous, doing something fun. You're seeing someone in your group doing it, causing an implicit comparison. And this comparison is based on purpose-selected content made to project a happy image, is non-stop, asymmetrical, and always worst when you're at your lowest.

These contexts and framings are fundamental to how marketing works on us, and are a shared facet of human representation of the world around them. What you're not getting here is what a 15 yo will feel like after 3 hours a day of staring at a crappy feed that you, and most people on HN, would find deadly boring. We're also old enough and self respecting enough to avoid that crap when/if it starts to hurt. I bet HN readers are highly active online and suspiciously inactive on social media...

I... really enjoyed your comment. I'm drifting off, so I probably won't respond to all of it, but thanks. that was pretty insightful.

>From your posts you are coming off like an aspergersy male adult engineer

Yes, and even more so in that I've put myself in a world where I'm surrounded by people who (I believe) are even more aspergersy (if you are using the word how I think you are using it) than I am, which I actually really enjoy, but in many ways I'm very insulated (and comfortable) within my bubble.

>To our primate brains `bosses` tend to be `others` and not `us

This is one of those things that all the evidence points to being true; I mean, I read leadership books, and I read about how militaries are structured and I agree with you... but this doesn't feel true in my life. I don't feel like my boss is an 'other' and I didn't feel like my employees were others when I had employees[1]. I mean, unless it's a non-technical boss; the business side of the house is entirely "other" in my book. I can get along with those people okay, but yes, it's different.

>You're not seeing someone in another group, like someone famous, doing something fun. You're seeing someone in your group doing it, causing an implicit comparison.

Huh. But... I like it when people in my group succeed. I feel like I've put a lot of effort into getting into a group that values the things I value, and where most other people in that group are better at those things I value than I am. When those people succeed, it shows that my group is a strong group that can get things done. Also, more successful friends means more good job leads :)

[1]of course, I don't think I was a particularly good boss... if you consider all business people to be "others" -- perhaps you should figure out how to change that before starting a business. but, I mean, I have been the boss, and while I was a weird boss, it wasn't unnatural to me, and perhaps more importantly, the idea of being the boss wasn't unnatural to me, it was just a job that it turns out that I'm not very good at.

I specifically cut out Reddit entirely. Subreddits quickly end up being insular groupthink echo chambers, thanks to the voting system and biased moderators.

The noise:content ratio is simply skewed way towards pointless noise. It's not worth it.

I've found that Reddit improves dramatically as you move away from the huge default subreddits and into smaller, more focused subs -- for hobbies you're involved in, for instance. For that sort of thing it's not half bad.

Until you realize ALL subreddits are almost entirely gamed by marketers.

Why do you think the reddit hive mind in small hobby subreddits conglomerates on a few devices / items?

Reddit is literally the most shilled platform. Easy botting + the up vote down vote system

Do you have an example? I don't observe any bias in /r/vaporents, for instance.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong with your ALL.

Some of the country subreddits I know, /r/France or /r/Belgium, or misc. interests like /r/gardening /r/dwarffortress are definitely not "gamed by marketers". For those that are about topics that are more easy prey to advertising, competent moderation usually works fine.

It's really not that difficult to find interesting and genuine subreddits.

Not really. The small city-based subs are alright and the hobby based subs are pretty good, bots don't really waste their time in the 'long tail' as of yet, but that will be changing in the next 5 years.

You’re absolutely right. For anyone who wants to test this, try searching for “State Farm” in Reddit and you’ll see the results almost never have anything to do with whether Statefarm actually pays claims, is fair priced, or a good value to the customer. The posts are all from their internal marketing department doing shit like posting a false AMA request for Jake from State Farm as some kind of low-quality joke to shy away from the points that actually matter.

I never visited the huge default subreddits, I stuck to the niche subjects, like audiophilia, underground metal and the like.

It was all shit.

> wears you down over time.

You might also want to look at why other people's happens or success makes you feel bad. It's a very common feeling but it's unhealthy and a sign that you have poor self-esteem.

That may be true, but poor self-esteem is dramatically more common among young/developing people trying to figure out their place in the world. There are plenty of exceptions to that in both ways (young people with great self-esteem, older people without it), but I think that kids/teenagers will always be uniquely susceptible to ego "body blows" of the sort that social media makes very easy to receive.

> If you have 400 friends

Wait. Stop. What? I have 82 friends on Facebook. Probably half of those I could easily drop. I'm completely baffled where anyone would find 400.

still, 40 friends would work out to a little less than 1 vacation/week. I think his general point still stands.

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