I Quit Social Media for a Year
joshcsimmons.com
joshcsimmons.com
On Instagram, you're competing with others on who has the happiest life.
On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory.
Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in certain jobs or industries, it seems like you're competing with other in gaining professional influence.
It creates a lot of anxiety that stems from a feeling like you're constantly on the verge of falling behind others.
Plenty of scholars/thinkers/philosophers have said something to the effect of focusing on just being a better version of you. Social media enables the exact opposite i.e. forcing you to constantly evaluate how you compare to others.
Blind seems more like 4chan parading around as linkedin, and I haven't found much substance there at all. It seems like a bunch of recent college grads trying to one up each other even while being anonymous. Just a lot of thinly veiled humblebrags pretending to be questions like "I got an offer for $350k at google, but I like my current position making $320k at Apple. Should I take it?", along with extremely simple questions that would be better answered by google like "what does company xyz do?". I've only poked around for about an hour, so if anyone has suggestions for a better experience I'm all ears. My initial exposure did not leave a good taste in my mouth.
It seems like it’s more that social media has made the playing field 10^9 instead of 10^3.
Bill Maher had a good "New Rule" on this very phenomenon a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGp-omDD3V0
I was thinking more "10 to 20". I suppose from person to person and at different stages of life the filter of who is appropriate for your playing field might change. . but even 10^2 seems high. I can barely name 20 critically important people in my life let alone those which are on my playing field. I have managed this, a bit unconsciously. Generally when my field is managed in line with my conscious values I'd only regard a person who I know and respect professionally. Further filtering on whether I actually feel like I personally (not just professionally) know the person.
curious what a different playing field mechanism might be described as
The monkeysphere is "how many people you can comprehend as people with their own full lives", and is on the order of 150-300.
"Critically important" in your life is a far higher bar, so 10 to 20 makes sense.
"Playing field" is a far lower bar where only the relevant metric matters, which widens the range to a far larger number of people.
A strange side effect is that the digital world also amplifies the outliers and makes the others in the large group of people seem non existent, leaving you to feel like you are majorly behind, when the reality is you are likely closer than most.
Back in the day, you might have felt those social pressures, but only in limited settings and ultimately you could control the situation by removing yourself from anxiety invoking situations. There was ample room for getting a mental break from these situations.
But social media completely destroys any respite anyone could possibly have. They exploit the FOMO feeling as best they can to essentially guilt their users to constantly "engage" on their platform, which leaves the end user pretty helpless in being able to seek respite from these negative social pressures. I'm only 35 and I haven't used social media in any meaningful way for 5+ years and it has been the best decision ever. I don't really miss out on much and I definitely am much happier than when I had to wade through all the crap people post on social media just to keep up appearances in the social media rat race.
If you have 52 friends on Facebook, and each of them takes a vacation for one week out of the year, then every week you see someone broadcasting how they're having a more awesome time than you.
That doesn't mean they're doing any better than you. You just don't see the 52 reactions for the one week that you've got the vacation 'advantage' over them. You only notice the comparison when you're on the worse side of it.
For the past ~2 years I've only been looking at HN through this link. This limits the amount of listings I can see, while at the same time ensuring "higher quality" dopamine rushes. It's worked out for me quite well with giving me what I want to see, while wasting less time sifting through uninteresting stuff. Pretty much like reddit's top vs. hot functionality, just changing my defaults.
You could also subscribe to HN on feed reader with such limitations, https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/ and http://hnapp.com/ are two that I have used in the past. e.g. https://hnrss.org/newest?comments=100 and http://hnapp.com/rss?q=comments%3E100 creates a feed limited by number of comments.
In the end I decided RSS wasn't ideal way to follow HN though, and for quite some time I have been using https://hckrnews.com/ almost exclusively to skim through top 10 posts for each day. Or top 20 or top 50%, if you have more free time. Plus I like the table layout, with comments/points in their respective columns.
I think HN is more of a news aggregator with comments than social media platform. But it has the same problem as anything compared with “crack” and that’s a quick information fix.
I like a lot of the stuff on here too but I often book mark things and don’t necessarily go back to it. Some things yes but mostly no.
I recently started bookmarking things and reading them in full later, but honestly what gives me the biggest kick are the comments. I also really dig the ask and show sections.
I don't read anything on Medium. I brush it off as marketing bs. Github pages though I do read. I read documentations of software frameworks on HN that I find intersting. Sometimes source code too (if I can understand it).
>I like a lot of the stuff on here too but I often book mark things and don’t necessarily go back to it. Some things yes but mostly no.
I use Firefox for this, but their bookmarking system is awful.
In the off chance that commentors say it's good enough to read, I skim it, and very rarely, I will read it in depth.
And there is "but there are people WRONG on the internet!" effect, which means demonstrating domain knowledge and winning arguments drive their interest -- something that seems strikingly more common with knowledge workers (e.g. lawyers, programmers, professors), than, say, construction workers. People wanna feel smart, esp. in their areas of proficiency and dominance.
I'm sure someone will post the relevant XKCD any minute now...
It also has no notion of relationships between users.
Interestingly, as someone who uses Twitter for a purely anonymous psychological outlet, I do not feel this at all. Instead, I find it a place of earnest concern and solidarity—when not plagued by trolls.
Before Instagram, you could be a loser but not feel it because the winners weren’t always in your face. Even the most mundane post of avocado toast in a hipster coffee shop sends the message “I’m having fun and you’re not.”
Not it's in your face 24/7.
To start, I have an iOS rule that prevents more than 7 minutes of each social media app per day. I pretty much only use Facebook. After the timer is up that’s it for the day.
I honestly enjoy seeing picture of my friends, their kids, their vacations, and the fun things they are doing. I don’t have FOMO and I’m not depressed seeing people doing something more fun than I am in that exact moment. In some cases I’m inspired to go somewhere or do something because I know my family or I would enjoy it. I rarely post myself, even if I’m doing something FOMO worthy (okay, maybe sometimes). I’ll share some photos from big occasions like birthdays or weddings since I think other people may want to see them, especially if they are in the photos.
I generally use social media when I’m waiting for a train, sitting in a doctors office, or going to the bathroom. I never itch for it during the day and rarely find myself reaching for the app robotically. One thing that’s definitely help to curb constant dopamine hits and addiction is disabling all social media notifications. I’m never pushed content, I only pull it. Actually, I’ve disabled almost every single notification on my phone with the exception of imessage, slack, citizen, and photos. My phone never buzzes from email, social media, or anything else that I find distracting.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do but never do is clean up my Facebook friend list so it’s only the people I care about. For what it’s worth Facebook seems to do a decent job of filtering it. But one day I’ll do it right.
I think people who blame their life problems on social media have deeper underlying issues. Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent envy in 2004.
Essentially I have two options if I feel a bit envious:
1) Feel envy and get depressed because I start thinking I have a worse life.
2) Share in their joy - send a like, write a positive comment or sometimes just do nothing except focus on being excited for them . By sharing in their joy, I get to experience a bit of their happiness for myself. If I write them a comment, even if it's just 'Congrats!', then there's a chance I might even make them a little happier too - which in itself makes me happier.
This did not come naturally to me at first. I've worked on cultivating this attitude for many years. It's one of the best investments I've ever made in myself.
The thing is I feel like maybe you get more out of those 15 minutes than me, or others who feel like it's too much time. Those telling people not to use social media are probably the ones that don't have good experiences with social media. To each their own, I suppose. It's important to remember different people are going to have different experiences and that is going to paint your feelings about it. As much as it seems that social media does have a general negative impact on people, I'm sure there are people for who it is fine. Should we chastise everyone to stop? Probably not, just let others know it could be affecting them and how to stop, etc.
It reminds me of people who get anxious on marijuana and then always go anti-drug on other people because they think "this stuff is terrible, no one should do this" yet for a lot of other people they had great experiences, and so the reverse is true "this stuff is great, everyone should try this". They're sort of both wrong there.
Either way personally, I don't get much out of social media and so I don't use it. If you feel like you're getting something out of it worth those few days a year spent on it, go for it, although just be mindful that it's something that feels good, but might not actually be good itself.
That's not necessarily a bad thing though is it? I speak to my parents on the phone 1-2x per week for ~30 minutes at a time. That's 1-2 days a year just on the phone.
I (edit: think I) should because it seems like a good way to stay updated.
For some reason Facebook never clicked with me.
I waste some time on the rest of the Internet though.
I think the same happens with social media. There are people who are more prone to addiction than others. People close to me have claimed to have felt much better after deleting/deactivating their social media accounts.
Personally it's been more than 10 years without Facebook, and I never had an Instagram, so there's not much I can say about the topic from my own experience.
I don't know if it's true that many more people prescribed opioids become addicted than not, and spreading such information harms people who do need them.
Just checked and I spent 7 minutes on it on Sunday, nothing since, and the most I've used it in a day in the last three weeks is 5 minutes, at least on my phone.
Similar for Twitter but with a peak at 40 minutes a couple weeks ago (how?!). And Reddit I probably use about twice as much, which is still not bad, I don't think. Is it "social media", really?
That's really all I've got, if we're excluding group chats. Those, I use probably an unhealthy amount.
I routinely bounce back and forth between Reddit & CNN to get updates.
It's designed from the ground up to be addicting and attention getting -- envy is just one of the buttons they press to trip that addiction.
But when you open the app at minute 8, there's a prominent "Ignore Limit" button right there. Are you relying on mere self control? Or do you have some way to actually prevent app usage?
The limit was a choice I made up front to be a reminder not to waste too much time and to stop and do something else. But honestly, I try not to put too much thought into it. If I’m really enjoying what I’m doing in that moment I’ll give myself an extension for a few minutes. But it’s rare I do that more than once.
I don’t think about it as an addiction that I’m trying to break or a habit I’m trying to avoid. I’ve made the conscious that social media is something I enjoy but don’t want to spend too much time on. So I put an arbitrary limit that reminds me to stop and do something else. My general mindset about most things is that doing it to excess isn’t good. Is wasting your day on social media that much worse than binging Netflix all day? Sure, if social media is causing anxiety, depression, or [enter any other issue here] then it’s something that should be managed. But if you are using it responsibly, not in excess, and are healthy about it, it seems fine to use from time to time with it without arbitrary limits.
Much as we hate them, this is one way that detailed timesheets help. The very fact that you're writing down what you were doing for each half-hour or whatever is enough to keep you focused because even if there are no further repercussions, you really don't want to write "hacker news 3.5 hours".
Speaking of which... closes tab
Any reasonable definition of social media would include any site whose main content is user-contributed, and allows users to comment and vote on content and comments. For example: reddit, youtube, imgur, .....HN.
You may be consuming a lot more social media than you thought.
On Linkedin I just keep my profile and ocassionaly get inquires. My last few jobs were all result of someone reaching me on the Linkedin.
On Facebook I just filter out anyone who posts stuff what I deem not interesting.
And Twitter… I just do not get it. Looks like continuous noise.
I did this. Now I don't follow anyone. This was not done consicously it just happened. Turns out, most stuff on FB is stupid nonsense. I just have weird ads and FB auto notifications like celebrate your 2 years of knowing this person whom you just unfollowed.
Don't get me wrong, I understand you, I too don't feel the competition when using them, I disabled almost every single notification (I constantly keep my phone on DND), but I aknwoledge that they are bad for a number of reasons, among the others:
- they put the "normality" bar too high
- they are too fast to follow
- they promote content consumption over slow ingestion
- they promote throw away content over curated lists of what we like
- they promote the "sugar rush" of immediate reward over rational, slow and often tiring discussions
- they tend to cause depression
- finally, they favour dividing, inflammatory content because their metric is engagement
If you admit you're force-limiting yourself from using them, you know they are problematic per se.
I used to smoke cigarettes when I was waiting for the bus or the train or someone late.
Now I don't anymore.
I don't smoke during the day, I don't smoke home, I don't make cigarette breaks, I never hitch for them during the day, but I smoke when I'm out with my girlfriend doing aperitivo, because we're both social smokers.
I'm limiting myself, it wasn't even hard, I don't have to use an app to not smoke, but cigarettes are bad anyway, zero is the right amount of them.
The same goes for social networks: you can resist them, you can be a responsible user, you can force yourself to not fall into their dark patterns (or you're naturally good at avoiding time) but zero is the right amount of time to spend on them.
We must understand that until social networks will be private held and under little or no control from public institutions, they can't be considered good.
They are to be considered as adversaries of our wellness at the best, if not enemies or even villains.
Take for example IKEA, their shops are beautiful but I don't think it's good to go there, from time to time, maybe with your kids, just to see what's new.
I think it's good to go if you __have to go__ and really need something.
Recently I was indefinitely suspended from Twitter.
The reason is laughable, I had a "fight" with a well known Italian far right supporter, but I forgot they have a network of very active trolls, I made a mistake, I felt into a trap and they signaled me en mass and deleted all their messages and now I'm out.
What's so funny about it?
Firs of all I was using Twitter mainly to keep in touch with the updates of the programming communities I follow, mainly Elixir/Erlang.
Secondly, I never felt better! I'm out from the daily background noise of complaints and after just a couple of weeks their networks have been finally identified and Facebook/Instagram banned them all (https://www.thelocal.it/20190910/facebook-shuts-down-italian...).
On the bright side, when Dorsey released to interviews saying that "you don't simply ban nazis from your platform because it's hard to identify them" Twitter’s share price fell as much as 4 percent.
You might think this is all avoidable, but if I follow a programmer who's also an activist (doesn't matter which part they support) I'm almost certainly forced to see the content they post/like/share.
So to defend myself I must take action, actions that after a while become a job, it is tiring, it forces you to make decisions that you usually don't have to take when dealing with people in person or on different communication platforms, HN as well, even though it's not my favourite, the interaction is certainly better than on any social media out there.
I'm glad you enjoy the experience and are able to control it, but isn't it telling that you have to put a timer on it to prevent it from being a negative experience? It's like a drug you have to heavily regulate so you don't OD.
For me, the timer is just there to remind me X minutes have passed. Losing track of time while doing something, anything feels natural to me. It happens in real life when I stumble upon a friend on the street and we start chatting and it happens in social media when I scroll too much.
If I'm reading something and my time is up, I just extend that and able to close the app afterward.
This is what made the biggest difference for me. Last year, I deleted both my Facebook and Instagram accounts for about 4 months. I found that I didn't miss my Facebook at all. My Instagram had been a decent way of staying in touch with a group of friends and family. I ended up creating an Instagram account again, but now that I was starting from scratch again, I was pretty mindful of who I followed. At this point I have about 40 people I follow, all of whom are people I know quite well and aren't particularly prolific posters. This is in comparison to the 200 or so I had amassed through college and beyond. I find that I don't even use Instagram for an average of 5 minutes per day, as thats about as long as it takes to actually see everything new since the day before.
Its much more of a tool for informally keeping up with a handful of people I wouldn't otherwise than the time-sucking, attention-hijacking bloat of weak and non-existent relationships that it had become. And it basically makes other social media like Facebook and Twitter unnecessary.
Deleting all social media is great, but for many people, it may be just as effective to simply do a Marie Kondo-esque purge of the social media junk you've accumulated over time.
Has it been the case that so many ~innovations things become quickly a problem, that you need another thing to use it safely, and when you happen to stop well, you don't miss it.
Social media is simply white-washing shit experiences and pretending they are gold. Life is not always positive, otherwise you are fooling yourself.
I am not cynical. I am just a realist. We need to drop this total farce of a behavior and stop conning each other if we hope to rise above it.
Life is hard. Social media pretends like life is not hard, mind-fucking everyone. Social media is garbage.
I agree with your broad premise about social media frequently being a poor representation of day to day life. The it's all shit part probably implies you're at least somewhat cynical. It's clearly not all shit, plenty of it certainly is. People frequently live different quality of lives vs their peers in fact; some people live amazing lives, some people live horrible lives. In a developed country, by far the largest distribution is likely to be a mixture of good and blah, with some occasional amazing and some bad thrown in.
> We need to drop this total farce of a behavior and stop conning each other if we hope to rise above it.
That behavior has always existed, it will always exist, so long as humanity does. Nothing can change it short of altering humanity through technology (and then we're something else), forced evolution (which we have begun, first pitch of the first inning; but it will probably take hundreds of years before we very substantially alter what we are; and we may make these things even worse, sharper). It's hard wired signaling and competition built into human nature, all the way down to the most fundamental aspects of what we are, including the pursuit of reproduction. Social media is nothing more than an aggressive, in your face, projected expression of it. It's the expression of many of the driving forces of human nature, amped up: sex, lust, attraction, status, materialism, greed, competition, envy, jealousy, pride, fear, validation, anger, inspiration, with some awww kittens & puppies thrown in. And that's also why people are drawn to it so intensely, it's a drug rush.
You missed an important checkmark on realism: 'we' can't rise above these things, humanity is these things. That's the actual reality. And it isn't going away, people will be complaining about all of this stuff in exactly the same way 20 or 30 years from now, except this will all seem tame compared to what will occur in the future: it will get worse yet.
The reason this is relevant is because the dates for these things start in the mid 1800s. Vin Mariani was made in the 1860s, Coca-Cola was inspired by Vin Mariani and came a decade or two later. Suffice to say the coke craze spread pretty quickly. And it's not like this was coke-lite or anything like that. It was genuine cocaine, same as we have today. And you had similar mental and physical consequences atop raging addiction.
It wouldn't be banned until 1914 and even that was due more to racism than concern for its effects. The New York Times ran a story in 1914 decrying "negro cocaine fiends" [1] which is what finally started the push to it getting banned. The only reason it took so long is because people were addicted and tried to ignore or set aside the negative consequences of it all, or even deny they existed. And that was pretty easy to do - Edison and Grant don't exactly rank near the top of your list of famous druggies. Nonetheless, the consequences were real and widespread.
The point here is that if you go back to the times before 1914, it'd be easy to imagine a future full of an ever larger chunk of the population degenerating under the influence of an ever increasing number of cocaine driven products. And in fact it would have seemed odd to predict anything else. Because when you're predicting the future you never predict 90 degree turns, because they sound absurd. Yet it's paradoxical because one of the few things you can guarantee about the future is that there will be countless more of these 90 degree turns.
[1 raw text] - http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/Negro_cocaine_fi...
[1 New York Times paywalled version] - https://www.nytimes.com/1914/02/08/archives/negro-cocaine-fi...
-- George Bernard ShawWhat absurd and ridiculous claims. Go speak to someone who has receieved life-saving healthcare in the developing world because of social media. Talk to someone who found their spouse through social media. Talk to someone who left their home country to travel across the world for a better life and only in the last 5 years have they been able to easily reconnect with their loved ones back home.
What an utterly, comically backwards take on the matter. It simply takes 5 seconds of not assuming you are the center of the universe to realize that that social media has provided value to the world.
Social Media is responsible for the massive viral spread of people believing in conspiracy theories, antivaxxers, flat-earthers, anti climate-changers, etc. so social media is responsible (indirectly) for people dying due to not being vaccinated.
Social Media is responsible for the escalation in political rhetoric and the gradual ratcheting of tensions in America and the development of the "alt right" and also indirectly responsible for the increase in mass shootings in America due to the propaganda and "fake news" spread on Facebook and Twitter.
Surely propaganda existed long before Social Media.
Or cars? Modern computing, yes the one you're criticizing technology on right now, exists in large part because of IBM, who quite literally brought cutting-edge technology to mass genocide during the Holocaust.
But social media is the villain here? What an absurd take.
Sounds like an unfair situation to me: the one with the most likes on Facebook gets the best healthcare?
> Talk to someone who left their home country to travel across the world for a better life and only in the last 5 years have they been able to easily reconnect with their loved ones back home.
As in: just look at their holiday pictures but never really talk?
https://www.fastcompany.com/3057869/how-social-media-is-tran...
There's one of a million case studies.
And there are hundreds of case studies like the one I linked to, and sure, it was "possible" in the days of internet forums the same way it was "possible" to send text messages in 1995.
Just the other day I read an article that being open about your issues is the new hotness on social media. I would even say it's the other way around now. People fake problems in order to get followers.
No, I'm laughing at memes and seeing pictures of friends that I can't be with.
> On LinkedIn, you're competing with others on who has the steepest career trajectory.
No, I'm keeping in touch with colleagues and advertising my skills.
If you're using those services as you describe, you should stop now.
On the other hand, I do see people who are otherwise very closed using it to express themselves and grow. It’s easy to say “yes, but at what cost? That’s not ‘growth’ to me” but who am I to judge?
Some people smoke or drink to deal with their anxiety. Some people binge TV shows to avoid their problems and worries. There’s a lot of poison to be had in our world. There’s a lot of holier-than-thou attitudes about what vices are “ok”. It’s a lot of shallow moralizing in the end, IMO.
Thing is I'm just not a very competitive person, or a very social one. I have a small clique of quite close friendships and a larger pool of people I know and like but relate to in a pretty casual manner. Maybe my lack of competitive instinct is inherent, or maybe it has to do with having been 'extremely online' for ~30 years and just not caring as much. I'm far more preoccupied with understanding the dynamics of social media interactions than I with exploiting them (in conventional ways).
tl;dr I think people relate to social media in quite different ways depending on personality type.
I've quit Facebook and I can only confirm: nothing magical happens. At least I feel a bit better and feel less social pressure to accord to certain standards/do certain things.
For a long time I thought LinkedIn is super essential and it would be complete non-sense to quit it. But I'm barely in contact with people I connected with there. Especially I rarely connect with recruiters because this would just be too much noise - of course I write them though. But now I start wondering, there are dedicated career websites and it's anyhow much better to apply for jobs one actually likes - instead of just saying yes or no to what recruiters think is the best idea.
The most problematic thing imho is that all of these online "competitions" are relatively easily hackable.
You cannot compare the scale at which real life interactions work to that of social media interactions.
On Instagram, I rarely if ever look at other people's stories or posts other than a few close friends whose happiness can make me feel happy. But I do post my own and receive psychological validation when other people react positively to them.
LinkedIn isn't even a social media for me. It's a place to dump facts about my career. I don't read the feed.
My Facebook feed is just various memes trying to be funny. I look at them and laugh occasionally.
There's just no competition aspect for me on social media.
Did you just say you like seeing pictures of other people's babies ?
I think we can all agree, that happy people of Instagram are very very sad. Else they will be busy being happy not hunting likes.
>Even on Twitter, perhaps more acutely in certain jobs or industries, it seems like you're competing with other in gaining professional influence.
Unless its some useful info like a new research paper or some official announcement, I would reject everything on Twitter as some ill-thought opinion.
> It creates a lot of anxiety that stems from a feeling like you're constantly on the verge of falling behind others.
Try teamblind. Worst of the worst. On a serious note, a bit of competition is not really a bad thing. So you can simply choose how anxious to feel about it.
“Rule your mind or it will rule you.” - Horace
For example extreme political and religious opinions. I've seen long term real life friendships broken because someone said something extreme about Brexit on facebook. I have a very religious friend who berates me constantly on facebook for being an ex-Catholic, she tells me I need to save myself etc - but she would never say that to me in real life.
Social media is so good at making people say stupid things.
Doesn't that start with schooling very early in life though. What does that specifically do with social media. Maybe schools are different in America.
I deleted Twitter. Political news still frustrate me but I rarely see them anymore. Ignorance is bliss. I've effectively created a safe space where political idiocy can't cognitively harass me.
Is it wrong to be so uninformed? I don't know. I think a lot about it and I haven't come to a satisfactory conclusion. By being uninformed I'm somewhat unable to fight against the "wrong" opinions, but maybe if I was informed my opinions wouldn't change a thing anyway.
My mental health is better off just accepting any idiotic laws my country passes instead of trying to "protest" (in the most useless sense of the word: tweeting about it) against them, for the most part.
I choose not to see it as uninformed, but informed in more focused ways. Most of the news we see doesn't actually matter, there is no action to be taken by the individual. By filtering that out you can focus on things important to you, where you can take action. Family, work, local community if you're inclined.
I wouldn't say it's wrong, but I would say it is an expression of privilege. People who don't find their race, gender or identity regularly being touted as either some up and coming new social fad or the boogeyman to a given group that oppose them and the source of everything evil in the world or what have you can pretty safely disconnect from the discourse with no real ramifications to their lives.
So again, no I wouldn't say it's wrong, and hell, I have to disconnect occasionally too simply to keep my sanity. But I also say that from a similar position of privilege. I don't have lawmakers attempting to restrict my rights, my gender and race aren't an oppressed group. But, exercising privileges doesn't make you a bad person in my book so long as you're not fighting to maintain those privileges at the expense of others.
and youre showing the problem with the news because theres really not that much going on. who is losing their rights? what oppression are you talking about?
Twitter can make you feel like you are making a difference. If you can only share this with one more person maybe my rights won't abused. It is distracting you from making that difference.
Making a difference takes hard work.
Both narratives are patently false.
To touch very lightly on politics, we blame the poor for being poor, and the marginalized for being marginalized - the so called 'culture war' (and the outrage on both sides) is just another round of 'circuses and bread' to distract us from real issues and prevent any real change from happening.
1) Unfair advantages that allow you certain freedoms other groups don't have, that one could argue no one should have
2) Advantages that everyone should have, but due to being ethnic or female, they don't.
The best example I usually have for this is that when I'm pulled over by a cop for speeding, I'm annoyed to be sure and it's going to be a really bad inconvenience and probably a fair financial burden too. But I don't fear for my life. I'm not panicking on whether or not my vehicle will be searched or if the officer might plant something on me. That's not to say those things can't happen, but it's intrinsically not on my mind at all, even though it could. And those things happen to other groups all the time.
It’s funny to me that you’re treating white here as the “presumed default.” White people have ethnicities, just like midwestern newscasters have accents.
And as a broader point, it also might be worth considering how Western society stacks up against all other societies to ever exist.
Slave labor was only one component of practically all great countries/empires. The West was the first to outlaw it.
The US in particular was built upon the hard-earned lessons of the past, including the moral worth of individual liberty.
This just sounds like more American exceptionalism that most of the world is tired of, and that includes many Americans.
Got an answer to my first sentence?
Louis XIV: "I am the state." US Constitution: "We the people...secure the Blessings of Liberty"
That's no cosmetic difference.
North America's use of slavery was relatively low compared to many other places in the world. Even within the United States itself it's interesting to compare the states where slaves disproportionately ended up to those where they did not. And the Confederate/Union states works as a pretty solid proxy there.
- Confederate: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas
- Union: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and many others.
Suffice to say, slavery does not seem have had a lasting positive effect for the states that most actively utilized it. Ultimately I think the reason slavery is more of a focus for the United States than other countries is not because of any unusual usage of slavery, but because of an extremely unusual outcome.
For instance Brazil alone ended up taking on about 5 million slaves yet, like much of the south, has little to show for it. The point of this is not to say 'what about other countries' but to emphasize that the relative impact of slavery in the US was smaller than in many other places, yet we achieved vastly more than those places. So to attribute the exceptionalism of the United States to slavery, in any meaningful way, seems driven more by bias than logic.
https://www.theroot.com/how-many-slaves-landed-in-the-us-179...
The West has largely won because it won a lot back in the day, and that inertia builds up and continues to favor us.
Macro-history is fundamentally about the rise and fall of civilizations - the undesirable elements of this are consistent, but Western tradition and enlightenment has also given us democracy and science, and put us in a collective position where we are so relatively prosperous that we can look at the past with an inflated sense of shame.
Maybe you’re arguing that if the enlightenment never happened we wouldn’t have the set of egalitarian political values that cause us to give a shit about that. But even if that argument were true: the enlightenment did happen and we do care. And you’re not really articulating any reason we shouldn’t.
To address the idea of white privilege directly: - It's increasing racial awareness and conflict. - It's a blunt instrument that doesn't take into account the myriad of circumstances each individual faces (such as financial wealth, mental health and physical height).
To provide a counter example to parent's, I'd rather be a rich ethnic minority unfairly stopped by a cop, than an ethnic majority person living in a trailer park and addicted to meth. The ethnic bigotry in this example isn't excused, but it's not the main concern.
Perhaps, all else being equal, one could argue that 'white privilege' matters.
But all else will never be equal. And the one place where equality really matters, it already exists - the law.
Notions of privilege could at least attempt a full accounting at the individual level, rather than dictating in broad strokes.
FWIW, Japan went from a feudal society to a world dominating power in the span of like 60 years. China has done something similar in the last 50 years. Whereas countries right next door in SE Asia have not made any similar progress. I'd say that's all pretty contradictory evidence for the hypothesis that the reason the West is doing well now is because it has done well in the past.
Also, your focus on European colonization is extremely Eurocentric and kind of strips non-Europeans of their agency. The rest of the world existed and had stuff going on before the Europeans became sea-faring nations. The Arabs conquered most of the Middle East in the late first millennium and later colonized part of Europe. Then the Turks took their place several centuries later and almost successfully invaded Europe (actually, they successfully invaded Constantinople, which was part of Christendom; present day Turkey used to be Christian territory). The Chinese have been a civilization for something like 2500-3000 years. The Indian subcontinent has an extremely ancient civilization and parts of it were colonized by Muslims well before Europeans even knew it existed.
And, finally, how does this theory of European Colonialism being the most important world event that ever happened explain differences in outcomes between the U.S. and Canada on one hand and, say, Brazil and Mexico on the other? All four countries were colonized by Europeans, after all.
Indeed.
Moreover, the Maghreb, the Levant and Asia Minor (North Africa, East Mediterranean coastal countries and Turkey today) were inarguably "Western" (Roman, Greek, Phoenician and Judean) before the Arab and Turkic invasions.
Bantu peoples were sold as slaves for millennia, until late into the 20th century, from the east coast of Africa by Somalis to Arabs and Indians. Muslim Barbary piracy (from the Tunisian and Moroccan coast) terrorized and devastated European coastal towns for centuries. There are entire extinct populations from the Baltic region who were literally sold down the Volga River to Muslim Turks and on into the Middle East, who were particularly valued for their blond hair and pale skin. There are surviving populations of pale people (whom most Americans would classify as "White") still suffering from the effects of their ancestors having suffered genocide and slavery, some at the hands of slavers who would be considered "People of Color" today.
No. The idea of slavery and genocide being a sin, of being morally wrong, is a recent Western idea that is not even today a universal, global cultural value. If "sins of the Father" is actually a thing, then it spectacularly makes no sense to divide the world into "White" (descendants of slavers and colonizers) and "People of Color" (descendant of slaves and colonized).
While such a division might arguably be a reasonable case to make given specifically US History, attempting to impose this racial world view on other cultures and nations is yet another example of the very American cultural imperialism that these same people decry.
They very much are. I'm guessing you don't live in a coastal city or read the newspaper of record?
Even when you get into things like slavery, Africans were not enslaved because they were black. Slavery was global and of course always began as in group - whites enslaving whites, browns enslaving browns, blacks enslaving blacks, etc. The big reason that "white" on "white" slavery ended was because of a shared religion and Christian church declaring it illegal for any Christian to enslave another Christian (in times before the schisms, such as 'Christian' was reasonably encompassing). The "problem" this posed for those seeking slaves is that tremendous empires were starting to form around the world.
For instance in the ~18th century you're looking at the Qing dynasty in China, the Mughal Empire in South Asia, the Ottoman empire in the Mideast, etc.. The world was rapidly unifying under incredibly powerful empires who were more than capable of protecting their borders and people. But Africa was a major exception. It not only lacked both meaningful unification and technology, but also had a thriving domestic slave trade. This made them a prime target. It had nothing to do with the color of their skin. Had Africans happened to have had a bit less melanin, but the situation remained otherwise identical, it's extremely improbable that things would have changed in any way whatsoever.
I find this comment overtly dismissing that there might be very real, legitimate reasons to be keyed into social media and the news.
I’m sure there are people for whom it’s valuable (e.g. if immigration raids could affect you directly), but for members of most groups, being plugged in all time probably does more harm than good.
I’m saying the high proportion of button-pushing click-bait and the low probability that I need any particular info in real time means i’ll be better off getting news through other sources.
You don’t win a war by maximizing fear, outrage, and low quality info on your own side (which, IMO, social media does).
YMMV, obviously. What do I know?
Yes. I removed any involvement with LGBTQ organizations off my resume.
So far, I haven’t run into any “shit, if only I had known that five days ago!” situations. I doubt I ever will, no matter how hostile the current administration is to women. But who knows; you pays your money and you takes your choice.
Simple: Freedom to be who the fuck you are. I don't know why that's so damned difficult to understand.
literally nobody is stopping you
maybe you should try protesting in saudi arabia then?
If you're doing something productive, though, good on ya.
I wouldn't care about politics at all if I didn't think I and/or other people were being fucked over.
If you have any political opinion at all, then at some point you'll think that you or others are being treated unfairly by society or by the state. Isn't that the whole point of expressing political opinions?
There are many rights under attack. They are rights all of us share and with them being stripped or changed we all lose. The GP is avoiding discussions about those rights as well.
I've also done what the GP has done. It's not because the decisions that are made don't affect me, but that past experience has shown me that what I think is irrelevant to the outcome. Yet paying such attention to these topics just weighs on me and negatively impacts my life.
I personally can't stand reading the comments, since every comment is either a meme or something irrelevant.
The problem today is all the rehashing of events. Professional journalists honestly do a better job than all the rest of us.
Internet information is mostly garbage (where social media is concerned). Don’t get me wrong the quick access to information is nice—but ”quick” means “less thought out” for the majority of readers and writers.
It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's very handy in scenarios like mass shootings where seemingly every one has initial reports of "multiple gunmen" only to have that evaporate within a few hours.
Annoyingly news is also stuck in the document model from newspapers, every little update has to repeat all the background information under the assumption that people didn't read the previous articles. Even worse is when they update the same articles so you have no idea of what you've read and what you haven't.
On a related note, I've removed the distraction of personal email notifications from my life recently and become more organised as a result. When I check every day or two it's at a convenient time where I can actually pay that bill or at least move it to the bills folder, or unsubscribe from that piece of spam instead of just swiping it away. Turns out one of the killer apps that made me get my first smartphone a decade ago has been making my life worse.
Edit - I did some googling of weekly news and it seems like just about everything with weekly in the title is live updating and/or not news.
Edit 2 - for Australians I found a twice daily news subscription from the ABC: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/alerts/ . It's not exactly what I wanted but with an email filter it might be workable.
Are you sure that you are uninformed? Do you think that trends on twitter reflect meaningful news that you wont pick up through other means? Could it be possible that by spending time on twitter you might not be becoming informed, but rather misinformed?
and far right really? did your life change at all? whats that make china then? what about the far left policing everyone on what they can say and do?
youre getting caught up in the news narrative
"I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed."
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business"
For this same reason, I've separate accounts on Twitter. I'm not averse to political stuff but mixing it with things you like can make Twitter extremely toxic. From my primary account, I don't follow any Politician, Celebrity etc. I just follow developers and few other people who are doing what I'm interested in.
It was a lot more fulfilling, and I'll remember that time. While in contrast there are few social media moments I'll miss.
I had to actually force myself to get back into social media. I'm not sure what the author here means by withdrawal; there was maybe a period of 1 week trying to get back in, but it was over quickly.
One big thing that happened was the number of consulting contracts went down significantly and never recovered. I'm quite Facebook active and used to get two interview offers a month. In fact last month I got a huge opportunity that I would have gladly accepted if I wasn't committed to anything else.
I'd be happy if social media was just wiped out and we went back to socializing on forums and IRC.
The HN crowd would probably really like Worm in general. Basically a sci-fi superhero story with realistic uses of powers and complex characters. The protagonist has the powers of insect control and scalable multitasking.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worm_(web_serial)
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-chapter-synopsi...
You can skip the Glow Worm part of Ward if you want, it's bonus chapters for people who like reading really deeply.
For reference, Worm is divided into 30 arcs, of roughly 50,000 words each. I divide this into a few major sections.
Arcs 1-3: Taylor (the main character) gains her superpowers, learns to use them, and joins a team. She struggles a bit with hiding her new powers from her family. This is the only part of the story I thought was any good. By the end of this section, Taylor completes her metamorphosis from awkward teenageer into standardized rationalfic protagonist, and generally stops being an interesting character.
Arcs 4-20: Taylor and her team do typical cape stuff, mostly fighting various superpowered opponents, finding allies, and building influence in their home city. This was tolerable until I realized that the author is constitutionally incapable of letting his protagonists take any kind of meaningful loss. This section is a million words long and has no substantial consequences.
Arcs 21-27: I may have gotten the exact cutoff wrong, but somewhere around arc 20, there's an event that looks like it's going to cause a major shift in the story. Unfortunately, those major changes generally fail to materialize. This section is more of the same, though a bit more tolerable due to the novelty of having a bunch of new characters running around.
Arcs 28-29: Again, I'm probably off by an arc or two, but around arc 27, there's another big event. This time, there are some big changes to the story, but they're largely for the worse. All logic goes out the window, and the consequences of the big event are almost entirely ignored, in favor of buildup for the big finale.
Arc 30: This is hands-down the worst ending I have ever read in any piece of fiction. The climactic fight scene is largely told, not shown, and the author utterly fails at conveying the intended epic scale. The worst part of all, I'll omit due to spoilers, but in short, certain details of the battle make the previous 6,000 pages look like a complete and total waste of the reader's time.
There were two reasons I stuck with Worm for the full 1,600,000 words, in spite of its main plotline being dreadfully repetitive and boring. First, the interlude chapters, which explore backstories of side characters and the nature of superpowers, I thought were generally decent. And second, I was expecting all of Taylor's team's politicking and base-building to pay off eventually. (I had previously read Austraeoh, where I slogged through the million words of books 2-4, and it was worth it due to the excellent book 6.) But I was utterly wrong on the second point, and the first alone is not sufficient to make Worm worth reading.
Vague spoilers ahead ->>>>>>
People die, others get debilitating PTSD, her heroes and inspirations turn out to be terrible people, her relationships fail. Not to mention all the negative things that happen to her city and eventually the world. I think you are not picturing/feeling the desperation with which she tries to save what she thinks is meaningful. I think Taylor loses a lot and consequently grows as a person in many different ways. You can check this by reading her dialogue and though process in the first few arcs and then in the last few arcs.
Besides that, I forgive a serial author from a lack of depth and such into their novel. I think if and when someone pays the author some money to edit and publish the book, the final product will be a marvellous read.
An attention-getting pull quote, I guess. I found the physical symptoms claim hilarious. "non [sic] unlike those seen in individuals quitting opiods"? Ha!
Presuming that you aren't the type of person who spends all their time out in public giving talks or something, how are you expecting people to "discover" you? By chasing links from your work? By just bumping into you in the grocery store?
I'm pretty sure I'm a worthwhile human being, but, y'know, I'd like to have friends, and I'd especially like to have friends that share interests with me, and are doing interesting things themselves. And I don't live in a place where those type of people are. So it'd be great if those friends found me... probably through the Internet. And how do I encourage that to happen? Well...
(None of which is to say that there's any reason to consume social media. Only to publish to it. Though that creates a funny Nash equilibrium...)
I would consider this magical.
But 1.1x? That's possible and still quite substantial.
Unless you're building a personal brand or selling something the work required to achieve growth it doesn't make sense for most people.
You're better off making group chats and using private iCloud Photos albums to be _social_ than posting on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
I'm using social media to build a personal brand and raise my professional profile. None of my personal life makes it into any of the channels I publish to.
But this is an honest way to live, I used to just sit there and scroll through other peoples lives peering through them as if I was somehow a part of whatever they were doing. It was a fake reality.
I need to work a lot due to job circumstances, so I thought I could not afford screen off time.
But one thing I picked up is writing in a notebook. I realized that a lot of work, regardless of where you are on the totem, is planning ahead. Writing in a notebook for both work and personal introspection is very therapeutic and really helps me to focus and crystalize my thoughts. I've also bundled this with my work out sessions to pre-plan what I want to pontificate about. The general process has both helped decrease my screen time, increase my work productivity, and help me sleep better because I know that my frayed thoughts are on paper.
I love living this way and consider it healthy and normal for a wide variety of people in most modern life circumstances. I think the need to take dozens of photos of vacation/meal/baby/lifestyle is seriously a universally bad mental state for humans, and one that people will stubbornly try in vain to argue is somehow acceptable or ok.
If sitting is the new smoking, then social media photo sharing is the new vaping.
I take so many for a few reasons. One, I think they are crazy cute and want to take pictures and videos when I see them doing cute things. Two, my 4 year old loves looking at them... she wants to see videos of herself all the time, and cracks up seeing herself as a baby.
Three, I don't do a baby book but want to be able to remember how they were at these ages when they are older. It is already trippy/fun to look at pictures and videos of my daughter at 4 months and compare them to her baby brother now. It is fun to watch old videos and see the first bits and pieces of the kid I love now.
99% of the pictures and videos haven't been looked at by anyone but me and my daughter, but I am SO glad I have them.
At the same time though, I think a ton of people use the excuse “because KIDS” to justify all manner of things. Just because kids enjoy something doesn’t in any way endorse it as constructive, healthy or a good or worthwhile habit or activity.
I also periodically upload archives of my photos and videos to Amazon glacier
I totally agree that the former is toxic and damages our mental health in many ways, like a digital version of smoking and vaping.
I recently launched a tool for our generation to manage and maintain a healthy relationship with social media - it moves away from the current trend of superficiality that exists on FB and IG right now.
I'd super appreciate if you all checked it out and let me know what you think! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20933272
Personally, I've used tons of social media services growing up - AIM, MSN Messenger, GChat, G+, Blogspot, FB, IG, etc. I think all of them have positive traits, at least had positive traits when they started out. I've also experienced a healthy balance between online relationships and in-personal relationships. I just think it's super critical for our generation to move back to platforms that are healthier and better for our mental and social wellbeing.
I don't think it's harmful for me to try to preserve some of that, since I don't have the neurological wiring to use my brain for that job.
Taking dozens of photos of “instagram-worthy” restaurant meals or “lifestyle achievement” vacation photos has utterly nothing at all to do with an imagery recognition photo journal. These are the sorts of totally discardable, consumer excess images that even people without aphantasia cannot recall mental imagery or visual memory of since it occupies such a “one time use” or “share it and throw it away” position in social media behavior.
Apologies for my misinterpretation.
a lot of good things happened. 1. Never bothered about taking photos for everyshit I did. 2. A lot of white space and time I got, to be empty. Not sure if I used them enough. But white space yes! 100% 3. I never grazed useless info off the feed.
in the middle of the year, i tried an experiment. created a twitter/fb accounts and followed some of the useful accounts. browsed for 1 hour. and then closed twitter/fb and tried to recollect all the info I gathered in this 1 hour. And trustme, it was huge. really huge.
X got married. Y had a job change. Z disappointment about something. A's vacation. B's witty remark on C.
then i immedietly deleted my account, coz none of these were useful for me. I was never interested in what other poeple's life about.
Another 6 months passed. I realized only thing I missed was the option for events, and groups where u can post.
coz i play fifa on xbox one. to find teammates.. ofcourse the best place is on fb. To sell something. Even to reach out to somebody for help at sometime, fb is the best.
so finally after 1 year, I created twitter/fb accounts. and I never posted any photos or my personal stuff.
Just add 30 friends in fb. the most important ones. u know.. and no more. but i can unfollow some of them. ANd posted all info in groups, and got teammates right away for Fifa.
and also, if I want to reach out someone, its just one step away.
Twitter, follow all useful ppl mostly tech/football/humor
and now i dont feel overwhelmed at all.
Everytime i open fb, i ll not get enough updates.
The key idea, how to be in it and not get overwhelmed. How to be in it an use it the way u want it.
P.S Insta -> never felt like going back. absolutely boring and useless for me personally.
I've definitely been in situations where I had to pretend to care about people I don't give a shit about. They have been 100% in my face-to-face real life. On FB I'm perfectly allowed to care only minimally about the people I want to care minimally about, and unfriend or hide or block the people I actually don't give a shit about, and pay attention to the people I want to keep up with. At a party or an art opening or standing in line or whatever? It's harder to escape other people.
(Which is fine, of course, and good for us to sometimes engage in that way; it's just diametrically opposite from the author's pithy claim.)
"You know what else is exhausting? Pretending to care about people you don’t give a shit about. Maybe you’re just a better person than I am and you genuinely and deeply care about everyone you are ‘friends’ with on Facebook. I didn’t. "
Social media is a bit like the news but on the opposite side of the spectrum. "Yes, yes, I get it. The world is ending." I care but I don't care to where I need to have it shoved in my face where I'm going to do things to make the world even worse. (What good is a world that survives if it is full of anxiety?)
I'm not reading the general news generally anymore when I can and maybe I'll transfer that to social media soon. (Today was a bad day - a peer of mine who is younger than me just bought a place in SF; I'm struggling to make it in a 400sqft in-law unit) I notice I feel better and it's not like anything I missed is of real substantial importance to my daily life. It's just filler. I know my core political philosophy - so it's not like it'll affect my voting decision much. Reminds me of the article someone posted in response to the 8 year old dying. Something about ignoring the bullshit in life because you don't have time for it. You don't have time for bullshit and most of social media and the news is full of bullshit. I think it could be really great but most of the time... it's just bullshit. Here it is - life is short: http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html
I also wouldn't discount the number of people who might be house poor: banks will give you loans for far more than a financially savvy person would suggest taking (e.g, only borrow up to 2/3rd's of the maximum amount a bank will give), to keep flexibility in your budget.
To tie this to social media: what we see isn't reality. You're "competing" with their curated self versus your own. You may see the purchases, but certainly not the debt coming with it. The people with the best-looking lives on social media probably don't have the healthiest of finances, unless you're following truly wealthy people.
The means they were able to do it through were likely rich family (no one here of course will say their family is rich) and high paying job ($300k+/yr). Both of which I am not in (for my position in my region). I'm at a startup. Watching my peers, who are not in companies like mine, just skyrocket in wealth is rather discouraging. It's even more harsh because it's usually a couple who are sky rocketing and I'm just sitting here with a SO who will never make anything substantial. Love them to bits but the lack of financial contribution is practically suicide here.
I know everything isn't perfect. It's curated. But the point is that often their highs are way higher than mine. I already know their lows are nothing like mine because I know a lot of the people well enough to know that much.
Side note about home buying: a lot of statistics online about homes being bought for x and what kind and where and all that. But there's very little information on who is buying and what they're doing with the home!
I only recently discovered that all the homes being bought under $1m in the Bay area aren't being owner inhabited. They're all being converted into rentals and as investment property. It explains why East Palo Alto hasn't gentrified.
I also paid <$1500 a month for rent in SF for many years by living in converted rooms or having room-mates to keep costs low (relative to market rates). Many of my peers were paying >$2.5k-$3k to have their own spot. I was keeping expenses low and aggressively investing the difference in companies whose trajectories were all but inevitable in my opinion (+ some broad market index funds which have also done extremely well).
The weird thing about money is that once you get the flywheel turning (not easy), it compounds like magic given that you've made some good decisions.
My intent here isn't to boast. I figured you might appreciate a specific example of circumstances leading to building a modest level of wealth as a 20-something software engineer.
Involved was a lot of hard work, luck, timing, right place (SF), right company, good decisions, help from others, sacrifice, obsession, and a bunch of other things but I'll spare you the boring details. You could boil it _all_ down to luck if you'd like - but that's a bit too cynical for my tastes.
My story isn't far different from you. It just lacks the happier parts. Just want to show how similar we are and how much those happier parts matter. Which some could perceive as luck. I attended a "top college" (by program at least). I worked through college on top of having a full ride (government). After college, I slept on an air mattress to save $$$ (don't do it) and then a 25 year old one because I got it for free. I chose the cheapest possible everything forever. Drove my $4000 car into the ground until it was crashed into. Never paid more than $50 for a piece of furniture. I spent maybe $100/month on food. I lived very cheaply for 8+ years with minor splurges on things. (I still live in a 400sqft in-law unit that used to be a workshop ffs - I definitely don't live lavishly) But - in the end, I can't save enough because my income isn't high enough. I gave up on penny pinching because I realized it was futile for this area. No one is buying the <=$1m homes that I could afford with years of penny pinching and saving and then living in them. (It's all investment property) Therefore, the neighborhoods never gentrify and are crap. My SO says even if I buy one - she won't move into it because we'll get stabbed, robbed, or, worse, have to live there without it gentrifying. So, homes that are actually gentrifying or nice are closer to $1.5m+. Therefore - I'd have to save about $700k+ in order to be able to qualify for the mortgage (decade+ of penny pinching saving then). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that's a terrible move financially. (Putting basically all of your money into a house - not a very diversified portfolio...)
But ya know what - I see my peers who are living lavishly (buying brand new Porsches - living in luxury 2-bedroom apartments by themselves - buying all the new things - going on ski trips and whatever vacations)... It doesn't affect them. They're still buying the damn house! It's cause they're at $400-500-600k+ and not the <$200k I'm making.
Gotta join FAANG or some startup that's about to go public. The income disparity is just massive.
I don't see what is the problem here. That you'll buy a house a couple years later than some of your peers? That's life. Some people have cancer at two - not THAT's shitty. Waiting a couple years more to buy a house is just hilariously insignificant in comparison to anything serious.
My point is more that - I will never be able to buy a house.
I've been questioning whether I should even buy my options when I quit. I really have no faith in my current company.
JOMO saved my mental health when I realized I'd never be invited to every get-together. You learn who really cares about your once you dip out of the world's easiest connectivity network... when people actually have to put in just a bit more effort to get a hold of you.
Group SMS never gets old and I don't feel like big-brother is always watching, when in reality, they very well could be but it feels far less invasive.
Removing these (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) were nothing and easy for me. I just logged out and never bothered to log in. I haven't bothered with these in years.
Now, not visiting places like Reddit, maybe Hacker News, and consider removing other similar like internet communities for a year as well was a lot harder and still is at times. So, I have delegated to limit myself for now and not make an account. At least I try.
I found myself having trouble of finding something to read while I eat dinner every night, so I try to only limit myself to reading and browsing Reddit while I eat dinner each night for example.
However, my Hacker News addiction continues.
Edit: Now that I think about it, HN is the only social media that I don't find it delivers enough value compared to my time spent on it (it does deliver value - it's just that it's a big time sink). I'm pretty happy with the time/value ratio of Facebook and (more recently) Twitter. It's probably because the ability to carefully curate what you see on FB and Twitter.
This, along with the general hiding of points, reduces the amount of comparison to others that occurs on HN. That's different from conventional social media. There's still some comparison ("People on here know so much!"), but the impersonal aspect makes it reasonable to just shrug off.
this also is mirrors the lack of discussion and engagement often associated with social media.
I'm less anxious and stressed out, and generally less annoyed at people around me. My initial reason for avoiding FB was because I was tired of being bombarded by rageful posts about politics and social justice issues (regardless of whether or not I agreed with those posts) day in and day out.
On occasion, after asking a friend a specific question about their life, they're surprised I don't know the answer already because they'd posted about it on FB. I then have to explain that I haven't checked FB (aside from events) in a year. No one has even come close to complaining about having to tell me something separately; people generally enjoy talking about themselves, especially when prompted, so that shouldn't be a surprise.
I still take a similar quantity of photos, even though I don't post them anywhere anymore. I do share photos taken during a group activity/trip/outing, but privately, through Google Photos, and only to the people who were there.
When I flip through Instagram, I'm definitely less engaged than I used to be. I don't really comment anymore unless I have something substantive to say/ask, and I usually don't bother to "like" anything.
I have several healthy in-person friend groups, and some remote ones. I hear about what's going on with my friends in person, or via smaller group chats or one-on-one texting. I certainly don't see all the other things my random FB "friends" (at ~1100, of course the majority of them are acquaintances at most) are posting about their lives, but I find I don't really miss it. While it might be a novelty to see what some random old high school or college classmate is doing day-to-day, I'd much rather turn that limited energy and brain space toward my closer friends.
Regarding news, I get a daily politics newsletter in my email inbox, so I can restrict that to a small chunk of time and only pursue things further if I want to. For other types of news, I have to seek it out specifically, which works well for me.
I had my phone die years back on my way to a social event after a combination of a facebook app bug that sapped battery and leaving my charger in other vehicle. I was so aggravated with the app that I deleted it. Never installed it again. Think this was 2016/17? After a few weeks I also deleted my instagram. Then again, I wasn't into the social media thing so I only had those two accounts and didn't post much. Never had or saw a need for twitter or whatsapp. Deleted instagram and facebook account was slimmed down to just a few pictures and I keep in touch with some family through it. I maybe visit facebook via web once or twice a month.
We've painted ourselves into a social anxiety corner as we removed the actual social aspect and replaced it with a poorly designed html implementation. You want to be social and have friends? Then call and hang out with people without feeling the need to post about it or sit in front of someone scrolling and endless sea of nothing.
> I don’t see myself ever going back to social media. I don’t see the point of it, and after leaving for a while, and getting a good outside look, it seems like an abusive relationship – millions of workers generating data for tech-giants to crunch through and make money off of.
And I visit my facebook account weekly, via desktop browser, only to see what's up with my friends hanging up there.
I very seldom do likes, as I know that my likes could show up in my friends' feeds. There are NO notifications from social network or media on my phone. I call it "information hygiene".
And yes, like others mentioned, I've got A LOT of spare time for books, hobbies, movies etc.
Besides being a software engineer I have a custom motorcycle shop. We use Instagram/Facebook and also my personal account gets more updates since I have the shop. If I wouldn't have a business that uses these platforms as lead generation I wouldn't' be using them either.
Between these two Instagram sucks. People just scroll through it and don't interact that much. Mostly other Instagram channels re-use motorcycle builds from the actual builders without attributing. They are more popular as it's easy to follow them as they post builds daily and people need their fix.
Our facebook is growing fast and interactions grow on it too. As platform its a bit better and people coming to our shop most of the times know us from facebook.
Software engineer AND owner of a custom motorcycle shop? Now THAT is a cool set of livelihoods!! As far as jobs go, you are my new hero!
That's quite a realization. I think it's true for a lot of people though and it's part of why people experience the best times of their life through a 6" display.
In the US my experience is that tail end millenials and gen Z are gravitating to group chats too. Pretty much just millenials and older and the subset of those with no international friends are the people stuck on the public oversharing train. And some women that could pass in a forever 21 catalogue.
In fact, I've been working on this idea for a while now and just launched on HN a few hours ago! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20933272. It's definitely a response to current trends of people leaving social media due to negative effects on social and mental health. I saw this happening to my friend groups first hand and knew something had to change.
So maybe I disagree with this a bit, but then we all have different motivations.
Do I feel like I missed anything about the people I care about? Yeah I kind of do, but mostly it's FOMO from seeing all my friends continue to do backpacking trips while I'm working in southern Ontario, so that's circumstantial. But on the whole? I couldn't care less. I had to turn off the localhost rule to sell some stuff on Marketplace, and I browsed my news feed for the first time in over a year, and it was a nightmare hellscape of stuff I just couldn't care less about. Better off with the filter.
If you have to send mail or message to people you want to interact with, it's more personal and works better.
I know this is anecdotal, but HN is the cause of a lot more of the bad things from social media in my life than Facebook is. Because I only use Facebook to organise events, meaning I log on two or three times a month. On the flip side I’ve just wasted five minutes of my life replying to you. I mean no offence by that, but there is fair chance we won’t even talk here because you may not see my reply (and I might not see yours if you do), and we’ll certainly never speak to each other again.
I think this blog-entry is insightful and well written, but are we going to remember it in two hours, or is it just another “baby picture” on the HN news feed?
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20190911012911/https://joshcsimm...
16 year old me is so disappointed in 45 year old me.
http://www.jaruzel.com/blog/how-i-erased-5000-facebook-comme...
Having time to stop, think and/or have a conversation with another human being is a magical experience nowadays.
I don’t really care to passively consume what my friends are doing, or broadcast to them what I’m doing; I want to interact with them.
Thus could be a millennial issue though - the next generation seems to use Snapchat and iMessage for much more direct interaction.
The reason probably is so that people connect more and see more stuff from other people, and stay active on the network.
partialrecall: Of course it's motivated by profit.
Since then I've made friends with people that I know, but no one beyond that. So I don't fall into the trap that a lot of other people seem to fall into (including the author).
That said, I think social media is something all of us can use a lot less of.
most people I have witnessed start to use very poor arguments of why they want to stay on social networks ... very similar to people with "un-noticed" alcohol problem.
But yes, nothing magical happend without it. Just maybe realization how stupid it is.
Wouldn't that qualify as something magical happening?
This about sums up my experience in deleting Facebook. It seemed like a shallow form of communication at the time, now as an outsider it feels even more so. I do feel less stressed and emotionally burdened by constantly being exposed to everyone else though.
This is me and cable TV.
I'm curious what arguments you've heard that you think are stupid.
I like having a way to contact old class-mates, etc. I've moved a lot and feel very sentimental about a lot of old friends. On the other hand, there are other people I'd just as soon never hear from again. I'm torn on this. But it doesn't require me being active on social media anyway - just maintaining the friends list and occasionally messaging people.
I like it as a convenient way to share photos with people who give a crap - siblings like to see their nieces & nephews growing up, and my wife uses ChatBooks heavily. And I get a lot of positive feedback on my humorous posts - which I continue to do for my own ego and because I know other people get value from it.
But beyond that I find Facebook just makes me angry, and I rarely scan my feed and have unfollowed a lot of people who just post crap. I'm curious to hear other reasons I should use it less :)
This is a good question, and imo an underrated answer is to use them for digital journaling. I use an app called Journey which lets you make entries and attach photos to them, and this justifies taking photos to sort of help spur memories of fun events and such.
Haven’t looked back and I’d like to think I’ve spent that time doing something better.
In reality I probably just filled that time with Netflix...
Edit: it seems like that was a typo in the article if he says he was off for a whole year. Pretty big typo, though.
I have like 1, or 2.
In my job, I'm required every day to consume a lot of information from many different platforms.
It turned me into Content Junkey
And that was just in the first few paragraphs.
But, can't be a Luddite. It's here to stay, like smoking, and I tolerate it as such.
good start.
But thanks for posting this so I didn't feel obligated to.
The emotional vitriol inspired by social media is completely unfounded. You can make it whatever experience you want; people just like to complain.
This article should be titled, "I don't know how to use social media so I gave up on it."
The rest of us use Facebook or Messenger to organize events because there's a lot of us and it's the most convenient mechanism for organizing group activities. If people choose to opt out, it's up to the organizer whether they want to go through the additional mental effort of communicating everything to the Luddites through whatever special communication method they require.
Mostly, we just require the Luddites to find out about events and updates themselves. (Usually they find out by overhearing the rest of us talking about upcoming stuff as its being planned.)
The end result is usually that the Luddites get themselves back on to Facebook after 6 months of missing out on shenanigans.
I might miss an awkward BBQ with an old friend I never see but I'll be doing something else worthwhile, often with someone I have a more meaningful relationship with. And all the big events in life like weddings, funerals and major milestone birthday's are handled by personal invitations anyway.
I mean what you focus on is what has power. Social media doesn't deserve the power or respect that academia has, nor will it ever.Enforce social media to be purely academic and I might feel differently.
This is the same for you aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews
You’ll keep in touch with the ones you actually care about and vice versa