Now I have 17000 HN points and I'm starting to feel like I gave up meth and replaced it with cocaine. Maybe better, but still not good.
Going to stop posting here now too. Thanks everyone for the good times.
The lack of any visible sign of new replies removes a lot of compulsion. I only stay engaged with the conversations actually interesting enough to get me to keep reading them.
Compare with Reddit where the best thing I learned to do was to decide when I was 'done' and open the list of unread messages while looking away and closing the tab...
This is so true. I'll often delete a reddit comment a few minutes after writing it if I think it's potentially inviting some troll or person with shit reading skills to respond back negatively. Even the so-called "good" small communities have a couple people like that, which is enough.
Apollo has had a bug the past few days with iOS 13 where the mail icon doesn't light up. This has honestly been really nice.
.pagetop {
visibility:collapse;
}
.pagetop * {
visibility:visible;
}
.score {
visibility:hidden;
}news.ycombinator.com##.pagetop
I started being more active on social media (only to an extent - for example I use the built-in Instagram timer to only allow up to 15 minutes of usage a day) to cope with the lack of interactions I used to have at work and around it. Some of the old 'friends' found and started to add/follow me but there was no other meaningful interaction from their side. Before they would call and ask to go out and do something after work - not anymore. I reached out to some of them a few times but felt that there is an imbalance in both quality and quantity in communication from their side. Since I found that to be very shallow, I started regularly wiping my contacts who are there just to leech on my private life and give nothing in return.
Some people aren't your friends, they just happen to spend time with you because of common activities in your and their lives - they're simply stuck with you in the same place and time. I cut these people off from my life and trust me, it has been over 2 months and I have less relationships but only the high quality ones survived - it makes me much happier, less drained on a daily basis and more content knowing that they're the few good ones.
There is no need to be attached to people who aren't attached to you. And there is no need to force anything - it will only cause harm.
The difference for me is, on Twitter you get people quote-RTing you to ask their friends to hate you. Here... it's a relatively polite reply explaining why I'm wrong (and I often am!) in their perspective. Or that I've missed some key point which utterly skewers my argument.
Maybe it's more like giving up meth and replacing it with codeine...
I've never found this. It's generally a three hundred word roundabout way of saying "You're an idiot" to fit in the faux civility guidelines.
Point is: Sarcasm works best when writing somewhat snarky. But probably most HN readers don't understand sarcasm and that's the problem. (See what I did there?)
IOW - Your comment is ignorant :D
Whereas FB is more "flat"; I see what people who I actually care about post. Nice vacation, hey, your kid did something unremarkable, cool, you got a new dog.
If your usage pattern is to try to game the system and gather likes and shares, you're probably not someone I'm interested in, hence my distaste for twitter, or, generally, 'following' anyone I'm not personal friends with. Twitter seems to be setup for the latter; I keep trying to like it and use it, but I get uninteresting shit from the "public" figures I try to follow; eg, race drivers I'm interested in, cybersecurity figures, etc.
Also, if you care at all what your "score" is on a social media site you will grow to hate it. No matter what the site is remind yourself it always has Who's Line rules: The points don't matter. If you're not an asshole they tend to just come naturally with time. If you're being hidden because your score is too low then you should probably step back and ask if you really want to be part of that community, since you seem to be so at odds with it.
I blog publicly but also journal privately using git and vim. I have been on and off for about 5 years.
The raw thoughts rarely show the light of day, but sometimes I synthesize my journal entries as blog posts or HN comments. I refine my true self for the public. This saves me from letter downvotes sway what I believe.
By the time I post on HN I've already collected my thoughts in my other journals.
I do feel very disconnected from people these days.
It's been about a little over a year since moving my of my status updates to Mastodon from Twitter where I follow exactly one IRL friend from high school, a friend from two jobs ago, a person who found me randomly, and a customer for Remarkbox.
When I do post on Twitter it's often a link to my Mastodon post, or a link to my blog, or side project I'm working on.
It's sort of selfish but I only read tweets on my timeline up to the first ad, which is typically a scroll and a half on my phone.
In this way, I sort of use Twitter as a broadcast, like updating a RSS feed with something I'm proud of. I rarely digest the tweets others put on there. This seems selfish, but really it's not.
In what way? Do you write for yourself then make it public not caring if anyone sees? That doesn't sound fulfilling; I have blog posts over the years which I have no idea if anyone ever saw and it feels a bit of a waste. Do you write as if you're trying to contribute to the world? Then doesn't that depend on feedback to know if you are succeeding or failing, and put you in the mind of "I have to create something good" as a competitor in the world of content-creation competition?
We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to
the kind of look we wish to live under.
The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other
words, for the look of the public. That is the case with the German singer, the American
actress, and even the tall, stooped editor with the big chin. He was accustomed to his
readers, and when one day the Russians banned his newspaper, he had the feeling
that the atmosphere was suddenly a hundred times thinner. Nothing could replace the
look of unknown eyes. He thought he would suffocate. Then one day he realized that
he was constantly being followed, bugged, and surreptitiously photographed in the
street. Suddenly he had anonymous eyes on him and he could breathe again! He
began making theatrical speeches to the microphones in his wall. In the police, he had
found his lost public.
The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by
many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are
happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the
feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all
of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always
come up with the eyes they need. Marie-Claude and her daughter belong in the second
category.
Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly
before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation
of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the
room will go dark. Tereza and Tomas belong in the third category.
And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the
imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers. Franz, for
example. He traveled to the borders of Cambodia only for Sabina. As the bus bumped
along the Thai road, he could feel her eyes fixed on him in a long stare.I write primarily for myself, but I do put my words into a form that others could digest, understand, and learn from.
The words on my blog may be the butterfly flapping her wings.
I do not and likely cannot measure how much my writing changes the world and trying to do so often discouraged me from writing. Do book authors really know how much their work changes the world? To me, it seems like an infinitely complex relationship.
I can tell you I have saved many people time on their research and learning and I'm sure I've swayed some to think differently, more like me.
My blog is the storm, ans is cast out to the world and left to chaos and entropy to find who it must.
Links in my profile.
It's really healthy to have people challenge your ideas sometimes, which happens a lot more on the internet than in real life in my experience.
And there is obviously some degree of benefit in being a software developer who is tune with his fellow tech dorks.
Whatever stigma exists online with people who have the "incorrect" opinion- I haven't really seen reflected in real life.
The logbook of my opinions is actually really interesting for me to look back on. See how I've reevaluated some opinions, or take a critical look at older arguments that I hadn't considered recently. Of course- I do some sanitation as well, removing certain things that may have been particularly dumb.
Did look something like this: https://serendipitygreece.com/wp-content/uploads/comforting-...
To me, this is the problem with seeking validation through these systems. You are rewarded for saying pleasing things and for conforming to group think.
Why don't you spend down your points by playing devil's advocate? Then, when you run low on points, you can fill-up-the-tank by saying nice things that everyone wants to hear again.
HN can be too, and I like to think that I am asynchronously contributing stuff that may lay off the typical radar of the Venn diagram of typical HN readers.
The problem is our mindsets, our shallow culture and our lack of resilient thinking. We’re being provocative about the wrong things and we’re focusing our creative wonder on only the superficial.
I'm wondering if Hacker News is better or worse than Facebook/Instagram.
At least on Facebook and Instagram, you usually interact with your friends, right?
Here, I feel like I read a lot of insightful posts and stories and have good discussions. But I'm not making any friends or strengthening any friendships.
Is it worth the time? I don't know. I'm definitely addicted.
Suggestion: give up your 17000 HN point mabbo account and start from scratch. Only with moderation this time :-)
Too many people.
So I've made it a conscious decision to constantly be getting rid of things I accumulate.
For HN and other such sites, I regularly open new accounts. This is both for ego reasons, as well as doxing: rotating through accounts and usernames helps leave less of a trace.
It's a useful feature for those of us working on discipline + distractibility issues.
The alternative view is that you are perfectly normal and that craving validation from strangers is what built human society.
You can remove all externalities but then it becomes an internal barometer. “Did I do enough? Was what I said funny/insightful/smart? Do they like me?”
The voice is always there. It just doesn’t have a number assigned to it.
FB tends to be a net negative while HN is the opposite (at least for me) because of the content and engagement.
As someone addicted to checking my upvotes on hacker news, please don't upvote those of us that admit that to you ;D
I'm not saying that the way social media tries to suck you in doesn't make you unhealthy, or their ideal patterns of engagement won't make you miserable, but in my mind that's like saying that Smirnoff's ideal of your consumption will make you an alcoholic, therefore alcohol is bad. Alcohol and social media are perfectly able to be consumed responsibly; perhaps not by everyone, and I would never begrudge someone not partaking if they don't want to. I just get tired of the drumbeat that "social media bad, delete your facebook, don't post on instagram" when I've had and have Facebook, Instagram, Hacker News, Reddit, on and on and they don't make me miserable because I don't obsess over them.
Just saying.