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Comment by cols | Hacker News Reader

I just passed my two year anniversary with no FB, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat and I've never been happier. I convinced my wife to cut the cord about a year ago and she completely agrees. For me it was an addiction. I was compulsively checking FB many times an hour to stay caught up with people. This was after culling my friends list multiple times. Turns out, life goes on just fine without a constant water hose of relationship/political drama.

Ultimately, it is no more difficult to stay in touch with my real friends than it was with FB. I rely on text, phone calls, and emails. Occasionally, I will use LinkedIn to touch base with people, but primarily, I just text/call. And honestly, it's great.

I highly recommend cutting the cord.

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This is great for you! Keep in mind though that some of us never fell in to the trap of compulsively checking FB constantly. I am quite certain that dropping FB wouldn't move my happiness barometer in either direction, it's just not a big enough part of my life to matter. I would lose touch with some people that I'm not keeping very closely in touch with anyway, and that's about it. This is like a recovering alcoholic recommending that everyone who drinks at all should stop immediately and entirely - it's not that it's bad advice, but not everyone is in the same situation.

Same here. I use messenger occasionally to speak to some friends who use Facebook almost exclusively for that - I stopped posting anything or paying attention to the feed thing years ago.

Same here, moreover: I've got friends and acquittances in Serbia, Bulgaria, Germany, UK, US, Spain among other countries, as well as through several states in my home country. Given that I have lived in 6 different cities around the world, and have made good relationships on each of those, I really like maintaining a "thin" contact thread with them.

Facebook does this really well for me. Before Facebook, I would have to "remember" to send an email, a MSN chat or even a postcard (around Christmas) to some of them. And the typical conversation through chat went "q: hey, anything new", "a: no.. no really". With FB I see when this people have had a noteworthy moment, and I can interact with them on that, even if it is just to say a quick hello.

Instead of cutting off those social media, we should post as many fake stuff as possible to mess around their big data, AI/machine learning algorithms.

Same, but I can attest that you can do it without deleting your accounts too - just delete the apps and remove bookmarks. I have family that still use social and removing myself would make it difficult for them since they like to post about us.

I don't think Woz's payment solution to "light" social interaction is not really feasible though.

> removing myself would make it difficult for them

this is exactly why I deleted all my friends before I deleted my account.

I personally never got on; life is fine without. Do yourself a favor and just get rid of it all. You can communicate personally with people fine over other methods; the idea of "broadcasting" your thoughts is better accomplished by a blog (where you have freedom to express your thoughts rather than cramming them into small snippets); the idea of sharing every moment of your life (e.g. what you had for breakfast, accompanied by a photo) is unnecessary and psychologically unhealthy.

One notable exception I'm considering making: a read-only twitter account to follow security professionals. I have seen most people with lists of recommended security pros to follow, and I figure it could serve as a sort of free, meta-bulletin for security. Haven't done it yet, but considering.

Likewise. My husband and I have been off Facebook and Twitter for over two years and aside from missing some birthdays, we’re much happier for it.

Twitter in particular has become a toilet, and there’s nothing about it I don’t miss.

Get back in touch with the real world, you’ll be a lot happier.

I would do the same but I have a board games club which is organized via Facebook....and I have one or two friends who still organize events through FB. Otherwise I would certainly shut my account.

I do not post photos or interact with others except occasionally through messenger. I have started unfollowing everyone although I do enjoy Humans of NYC.

Have you tried just asking people to move a group chat off of fb?

This is pretty antisocial behavior to force others to use a service that you deem acceptable.

asking is not forcing and others may share the same sentiment and may already use the same suggested service, so that was a pretty bad conclusion

Going on 8 years for me. Suddenly this feels like an AA meeting or something. "Got my 8 year medallion!"

You can use Facebook messenger without having a Facebook account.

Congratulations! It's soon to be my first anniversary sans FaBIGWA.

(only exception was the Go I recently sold and the Quest I might get in near future)

If you or a loved one is suffering from FaBIGWA...

Ask your doctor if happiness is right for you.

Searching FaBIGWA just sends me to this thread, and I'm struggling to decipher what is in there. Looks like Facebook... And a whole lot of other stuff I can't glean.

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp? I’m just guessing.

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