Being Alone | Hacker News Reader

Being Alone

ankit.fyi

267 pointswallflower88 comments

Hi there! Ankit here, the writer of Being Alone. Thanks so much for sharing this on HN. Appreciate the kind comments and thoughtful reflections here.

Honestly, I didn't anticipate that my writing would find its way to HN—and certainly not the front page—so this is really a pleasant surprise. (By the way, if OP is seeing this, I'd love to know how you found the essay + also thank you directly for thinking to post it here.)

If I can answer any questions about the essay, loneliness and connection more broadly, the practice of being alone, the website, Tea With Strangers (or anything else, really, I'm here for it :).

I'm also reachable at by email (ankit@teawithstrangers.com) and twitter.com/ankitshah. More about me and my background here: https://ankit.fyi/about

I really enjoyed reading this article. Many of the ideas in it were already familiar to me, but the act of reading it was like a meditation, and putting those ideas all together in that beautiful form created a different frame of mind for me. Thank you.

When I got to the very bottom, I read the postscript, which led me to your About page. I was shocked to learn that you work at Facebook.

How is this possible, I wondered. Facebook is continually pouring enormous resources into getting us all to keep scrolling, to generate "that hollow feeling" you refer to, billions of times every day. It's a strong contender for the most effective destroyer, at planetary scale, of the consciousness and ability to connect with ourselves to which Being Alone is an ode.

What a strange mystery this is!

> the act of reading it was like a meditation

What a beautifully put comment. Means the world to me that you felt so.

RE: Facebook

I too have many feelings about what FB's position in the world is, and I know that there's lots of work to be done in steering the (very large) ship in a direction that is more generative and also less destructive.

I also know that if the right people aren't doing that steering, well, then the right people aren't doing the steering. It may be hard to imagine a reality in which the employees of a social media giant sincerely care for creating deep, meaningful interactions online, but, indeed, it's true. There are a lot of people who are working hard to create the infrastructure for connection that is both deep and wide.

Of course, there's plenty of nuance to be dissected here, and a Hacker News thread is probably not the best venue for that conversation, but I will share this about my own vantage point:

I think of what I might be able to contribute to the world through the lens of 3 levers/inquiries:

1. How can I make it easier for people to get in touch with themselves, to understand and act on their agency?

2. How can I bring people together to see one another more wholly, with greater understanding and generosity?

3. How can I create systems that enable more people to find their people, to bring them together across similarities and differences, and in so doing, systemically increase the likelihood of #1?

"Being Alone" might move the needle on #1. The work I do at Facebook may move the needle on #3. Building Tea With Strangers (http://www.teawithstrangers.com) hits #2 on the head.

Just my 2c. Might not work or make sense to everybody, but it's how I've leveraged myself to do something that I feel is meaningful in the world.

I'd be happy to discuss more directly. Feel free to email me, text me (my number is available on the essay itself), or stay connected over Twitter (where I talk more about these nuances often).

Facebook helps in #3 only for similarities, I see no feature of facebook which allows people to come "together across similarities and differences". In fact I would say by optimizing over similarities it contributes to creation of information silos and actively discourages even acknowledging anything different as valid. Thus, by partially helping with #3, it actually does more harm than good.

FWIW, I don't believe that any feature explicitly designed to help people come together over differences would be one that would see much use, despite its positive intentions.

It's a well trodden hypothesis that Facebook optimizes for similarities, but I don't know if it's that straightforward.

Something that might be worth considering is what kinds of interactions are enabled by Facebook for any given person—who they are between, what the substance of the interactions are, etc. For example:

- I communicate with my friends, family, and extended network of people I've met over the course of my life (college, work, travel, projects, etc.) with my profile, News Feed, and Messenger

- I buy and sell random products on Marketplace

- I engage with communities of people over shared interests, identity, causes, initiatives, etc. on Groups, with Fundraisers

- I read news and updates from publishers I subscribe to on Pages

- (This list isn't exhaustive, but you see my point...)

In a way, it's a wide ranging social infrastructure—like a digital city. In some of those interactions, you meet people who are similar to you (and you _want_ that). In others, you meet people who you wouldn't ever imagine yourself communicating with, but you've found a context that you share some kind of edge that brings you together. By exposing yourself to people different from yourself on vectors that actually bring you together, you also expose yourself to their perspectives, worldviews, and lives.

Of course, I'm not naive into believing that every person's experience on Facebook mirrors this diverse, multi-faceted exposure to people both similar and different from oneself. For some people, the experience might just be a big reflection and validation of their worst instincts, but this isn't actually as frequent as people think. There _are_ ways to build product that enable people to find an experience that is expansive to their lives instead of constraining of it, and as much as it may not seem to be the case, I do think Facebook consistently moves in that direction as it continues to grow and evolve.

> By exposing yourself to people different from yourself on vectors that actually bring you together, you also expose yourself to their perspectives, worldviews, and lives.

Your premises do not lead to this conclusion. In fact it leads to the opposite. Facebook does its best that people I meet today are exactly the people I already know and like (pun intended). I don't see a single initiative where facebook even attempts at bringing together people who have only 20% shared views. In fact, at least from what I gather in the news and conferences, facebook wants to match people who have 100% shared views. Because that will drive engagement. People like to see their beliefs repeated and to be frank most social media sites prey on that. The algorithm is matching me to stories which I would like to hear, to people who I would most likely be friends with and groups where I am by default in the in-group. I fail to see how any of this helps me have a diverse exposure.

Didn't mean for this to turn into a back and forth or debate about FB, but I don't get the sense that you and I are working off of similar bases of information. I do think the matter is a little more nuanced than you're suggesting though.

I was infact mostly going by the premises you established. By selectively feeding you information, and optimizing over information you want to see, coupled with the inherent human bias of deriving enjoyment from getting your views repeated, I don't think there is any other conclusion we can lead to apart from silos. Which has happened and I don't see it stopping. You can't just insert nuance by claiming it, if you intend to, present the nuance.

That's a bit too black-and-white, though, isn't it? Facebook (the company) is not just bad. I made some real friends through Facebook (the website) which I now meet offline, Instagram let's me keep up with friends on the other end of the world I can rarely meet in person, WhatsApp let's me talk to my family two countries over...

If we want to not think in black and white we will have to think on balance. Just because facebook allows some people to derive some value, it does not make it a value adding thing. In fact, it destroys more value by creating information silos. If you think on balance, at least the way I see it, facebook is a destructive force.

Wow. I came here to write the exact same thing after following the same path.

You call it a “strange mystery,” I call it cognitive dissonance.

It's possible the author is experiencing cognitive dissonance, but you should consider that maybe they've thought about the issue for a while, and come to conclusion that working at Facebook really is the best to achieve the goals they care about. They've worked on Tea With Strangers for 6 years, so I think it's very unlikely they haven't thought about this consciously, and just "deluding themselves", as another commentator suggests.

Now, I'm guessing that it's an obvious conclusion to you that working at Facebook goes against the goals the author suggests, and hence you dismissed it as cognitive dissonance fairly quickly. So then question becomes, why is obvious to you while not to the author? My suggestion is the author is starting from a different set of axioms than you are, which leads to a different conclusion.

I was able to come up with multiple axiom sets[0] that allow coming to the conclusion that working at Facebook is a positive way to achieve the author's goal, within about 5 minutes of thinking, so I think your conclusion is far from obvious.

[0] - I don't necessarily agree with most (or any) of these. My point is more that these sets do exist.

Thanks for jumping in here Neil (and for doing your homework on my background :)

I wrote a little bit more about this in these comments:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23597561

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23601253

Cognitive dissonance, in addition to self-delusion.

money and ego

Nice write up Ankit. Keep on writing and we'll keep on reading. Btw, thank you for posting this on the open web and not on Facebook.

Thanks so much. I have a little email list on the site if you'd like to stay in touch. Haven't used it for much just yet, but hope to make it a starting point for good email conversations.

I think Facebook is great for posting specific kinds of thoughts/content. I think a blank canvas worked best for Being Alone though.

You might enjoy these thoughts I wrote some weeks back about personal sites: https://twitter.com/ankitshah/status/1263129158386765824

Loved the essay. You captured a lot of specific sentiments and emotional instances that I was pleasantly surprised to read because I related to them so deeply. Thanks so much for the piece!

Do you have more questions you like to use for tea with strangers?

I tried working through what my answer would be for them, and it felt like a good jumping off point for forced introspection. The one about a lie you tell often was particularly good lol.

One of my favourite conversation-deepening questions is "What's something you like about yourself that other people usually notice, and what's something you like about yourself that other people rarely notice?"

Plenty more. I've written maybe 200-300 questions over the years (and asked thousands more).

I'm thinking to publish more of them in a neat and useful format soon for easy access and use. Should be ready in the next 2-4 weeks.

If you'd like to be notified when I do, my email list on the site might be the best bet (or just following me on twitter @ankitshah). Not sure I'll remember to come back to this thread to post.

You might enjoy the Authentic Relating Games collected by Sara Ness at https://www.authrev.org/. I've played a few and they have been deeply connecting.

This really resonated with me – thank you for sharing, Ankit :)

I've been spending a lot of time alone lately. Partially because of COVID, and partially because I have "suddenly" become single.

Sitting alone when emotions are running is so hard. I've spent a large portion of my life trying not to get trapped in the background noise of TV or headphones or social media. And now all I want is to run into those things.

I understand avoiding those emotions is unhealthy. But being alone can hurt. A lot.

Same situation for me. I am single for a long time but recently many friends also break up contact more or less. They are founding families, building houses. I cannot really blame them.

I am alone at home very often, most of the times it is okay, i don't really need someone in these times for talking and such. I'm not the big talker anyways. But there are some moments, especially in the evening, where the loneliness is just crushing. I always try to find a logical reason for this. In these moments i do not really feel the need for talking or meeting someone. It's a kind of fear to miss something because of the lack of friends. I'm for sure it's highly irrational and to this day I didn't find a definitve answer.

Another observation i made is that these feelings are stronger when i'm hungry or thirsty. Sometimes, if i feel lonely i eat (i'm a twig, no worries). It seems to produce forgetti stuff in the body and the worries often go away.

Browsing social media and stuff has the opposite effect. It raises the question "Why are the others having fun and friends and stuff?" Wouldn't recommend that (subjective)

I'm sure there is a chemical explanation for all this, or an evolutionary, but for all ppl that feel like this: get your pizza!

Of course this is all referring to the "negative" type of loneliness. There is another type which we may crave: "I want to go on top of that lonely mountain with nobody around me", "Let's go into the forest where no humans are going onto my nerves". This selective loneliness is a good one and should be looked for from time to time.

Can relate to most of things above.

BTW: re: food, it's been well-studied that what the balance of gut bacteria heavily influences one's mood:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/gut-feelings-how-food-af...

There are good online services where you can find someone to talk to. I'll go look for links I've used or recommended in the past and write back shortly. I hope things are ok with you.

I am well enough. I have family and a few new friends I talk to on a regular basis. I pray almost constantly now. I've changed and grown a lot, so the pain has not been useless.

When you fall over and graze your knee it hurts. But it heals. The brain is no different. You just have to give it time to heal. The good thing is you'll also come out stronger. You'll be better equipped for the next time someone hurts you, which is good because people are generally selfish and will hurt you. You can find communities of men online who will help you more.

Maybe I make it myself too easy with that, but often when I read about loneliness and how to deal with it, it comes from people who have friends and a relationship. So it seems they are just missing that tiny little bit til perfection. Maybe my scale is a different one, but for me loneliness is when you don’t have all these social “basics“ to start with. It’s not about struggling to deepen existing connections, it’s having none at all.

Yep, and all the solutions they can offer is "go to a meetup with like-minded people ROFL"... I guess it is that simple for them.

I'm fine with being alone. Having to be alone for a year is kind of wearing, but not devastating. Beats dying.

I really do miss land-line voice quality, though. Too many of my friends are into hands-free phoning, and hands-free plus cellular plus VOIP is only marginally understandable.

Complete silence apparently bothers some people, but I've always found it restful.

  > Complete silence apparently bothers some people

I think this is related to the point the author makes: You need to find connection with yourself.

I think that being in the silence, alone is where that connection is being made. And some people are so not used to it, that this scares them. I cannot otherwise explain people's desire to be constantly surrounded by some noise, be it TV, radio, music in their headphones, whatever. How about just sitting ten minutes in silence? Or even better, half an hour in the nature, without boomboxes and headphones?

My other idea, which I cannot prove, that the state of the mental health in US is correlated to the point above. When introverts are looked upon as some sick weirdos, when there is a culture of constant superficial socializing, when deep discussions are replaced by knee-jerk reactions, profile picture frames, and putting on labels on things, and when you are still affraid to know yourself—surely this should come out sideways somehow. I single out US because I know no other country with so much push for the extrovert behaviour.

I've spend a lot of time being alone while growing up and in my university days. It came at a cost, and I wish I had socialized a bit more back then, but overall I consider it to be enormous net positive thing.

Beautifully put.

I wrote a little about this on my website [here](http://ankit.fyi/about). You might enjoy this passage in particular related to your idea that you cannot prove:

> I think misunderstanding as an epidemic is rooted in how we’ve learned to consume information and how we haven’t learned how to digest it. This is one of the reasons I’m excited about the Internet, social media culture, and how we choose to express ourselves and connect with one another.

> I also think the best way to consume and digest information is through real human interaction. Even better if it’s with a non-judgmental lens of curiosity in understanding why people are the way they are, but it’s still pretty great when it’s just shooting shit about a common interest or sharing an experience.

> I have a dream that one day, Internet interactions will fuel more human interactions. That our default behavior will be to use this amazing access to information that we have to learn more, connect dots in constructive ways, understand others more deeply, and maybe even to grow more open minded to who each of us can become.

> Right now, though, the Internet feels like a place where people are throwing food at each other and taking shits on the sidewalk. I think we can do better.

I like to be alone, but I've found that it can cause health problems, particularly anxiety that fades away when I spend time with others. It's strange because I really prefer to be alone.

I'd say it's not strange. Evolutionary we don't enjoy being alone (we're social animals). What happens is that through bad experiences/trauma etc we develop social anxiety and phobias, and prefer avoiding the unknowns of being with others - which is not a positive preference but rather a rationalised retreat.

Try and get them to use headphones for their hands free. If they have iPhones the default Apple ones work pretty well.

I wonder how many HNers ever experienced landline phone quality. Mobile phone quality seems to have become even worse lately. I wonder if this is partly due to handsets being optimised for use as a mini tablet rather than a telephone. Internet based voice communication is as bad as ever in terms of latency. Landlines provided just enough clarity but most important low enough latency to actually feel like you're talking to someone. I often think internet based voice would be better if we used half-duplex talking protocols (like a walkie-talkie).

This process of observant conversation with others seems good for noticing the context and shape of yourself as a social human. I wonder if this kind of purposeful activity can be applied to spending time outdoors, with non-human things, to gain self awareness of what a human is. My musician friends tell me that if you think classical music is relaxing, you're not paying enough attention. Perhaps the same can be said about going for a walk.

I think you're onto something here ;)

An earlier draft of this essay had a whole section about communing with nature and what it meant to go for a quiet walk by yourself.

At its core, this whole essay is an ode to paying attention to yourself, and part of paying attention to yourself is paying attention to the environment that you are a part of—the space around you, the sounds you hear, the stimuli affecting your thoughts, etc. etc.

You might enjoy this little idea I've started called the Silent Hike Society. It's exactly what it sounds like, but here's an explainer: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/180405719200378...

You may also resonate with this meditation on walking that I made a while back: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/178469900116070...

This is a great idea.

A walk is just another way to medidate, at least for me. I've discovered long walks four years ago and they became my one of my favourite hobbies in a blink. There is some paradoxality in this: many of the walks are organized events where thoudsands of people take part. I however always go alone and do not take my headphones. So it is just me, dozens of kilometers of the road and some nice volunteers at checkpoints. Hours and hours of me being with myself. I think for the brain is kind of like the sleep, time to reorganize, recconect and clean-up, just while being awake.

Our most popular organizer of such events, Trenkturas, come up with an idea during COVID lockdowns (going out was not forbidden, but public gatherings were and are still restricted): solo hikes. You select a route, a time slot, pay a couple of euros and get the link to the route, so you can follow it on your phone. This idea proved to be very popular.

I went for a two day solo walk at the end of April. I took the same path I had taken the same time the year before. At the hight of pandemic uncertainty it was a reprieve from the constant worry(even though there were no local cases). Being conspicuously foreign I had a few interesting reactions from people along the way. Some old folks just telling me to be safe from animals, some kids dutifully guiding me to the village bus stop on the way back wanting to see inside my pack, and trying to remember social distancing, and one couple on an abandoned walking track being completely surprised to see me and rushing past with towels held to mouth. My big takeaway was how wide and imposing roads are, how noisy cars are, how much people miss when they drive from place A to B, how much things can change year to year, how far away the next town really is if you're using human energy, and how so many peoples experience of the landscape is buy all the right gear from the magazine and then go somewhere to kill something.

You might like this address by Nipun Mehta called, "Paths Are Made for Walking": http://www.dailygood.org/story/236/paths-are-made-by-walking...

I can't listen to classical music and do something else at the same time. It has to be onw or the other. Minimal techno, on the other hand, I can work to that.

This might be described as "a blog post about mindfulness". That description would lead me to expect something trite and bad, but fortunately I enjoyed reading it. It reminds me of the following snippet from Within A Budding Grove:

> And yet one did not find in Bergotte’s speech a certain luminosity which in his books, as in those of some other writers, often modified in the written sentence the appearance of its words. This was doubtless because the light issues from so profound a depth that its rays do not penetrate to our spoken words in the hours in which, thrown open to others by the act of conversation, we are to a certain extent closed to ourselves.

(Also, I'm getting some SSL error from the "Tea With Strangers" website.)

:) Happy to know that this exceeded your expectations.

The passage you shared is beautiful, but it's not quite registering how the essay evoked it for you. Can you say more?

Btw - thanks for the flag on the SSL error. Fixed the URL and it should be properly pointing to http://www.teawithstrangers.com now

> The passage you shared is beautiful, but it's not quite registering how the essay evoked it for you. Can you say more?

One thing I take away from the excerpt is that the person we present and feel ourselves as during interactions with others is not exactly the same as the person we are alone. There isn't necessarily an element of deceit to this. Instead, we should pay attention to both selves -- and to me much of your essay is about paying attention to the person we are when we're alone, and being aware of differences between the two selves, without necessarily needing to reconcile them.

We are like a beam of light which changes depending on the lens through which we project ourselves. The final form changes based on the situation (lens).

I think I would say we project different aspects of ourselves into lower dimensions (thoughts and words) depending on the transformation function (context into which we are projecting ourselves).

You get a twofer of analogies today!

> I think I would say we project different aspects of ourselves into lower dimensions (thoughts and words) depending on the transformation function (context into which we are projecting ourselves).

Such a great way to articulate this. This is why I love HN.

Thanks for explaining! I entirely agree. We all have many versions of ourselves, and they are all still us! I'm of the mind, however, that who we are when we are alone serves as a starting block around which our many other facets form.

I'm guessing you're familiar with the concept of mindfulness. Just out of curiosity, why didn't you mention/discuss it in this essay?

FWIW, I enjoyed the essay.

Great question (and thanks for commenting!)

I think I hit on the point in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23596448

I aimed to make this essay as easy to digest as possible, and part of that effort involved eliminating labels, ideas or phrases that might have a lot of inconsistent associations across different readers' minds (e.g. "mindfulness")

This was an incredibly positive and deeply important read. This is something that I've dealt with all my life, but of course have felt more acutely these past few months.

Thank you for writing this; I won't soon forget it.

Means the world to read this Jack. Thanks so much for the kind comment. I'd love to know what parts of the essay resonate with you, what stuck, etc.

Please feel free to reach out to me on email (ankit@teawithstrangers.com) or twitter.com/ankitshah

Thanks for posting this - I wrote about solitude/loneliness in the past (and published the essay here, too) - I will add this to my page (http://pa-mar.net/Lifestyle/Solitude.html) and also try to contact the author of the article.

Wow, this is a really thoughtfully written page. Thanks for sharing it Pamar. I'll want to take some time to really digest your writing and synthesis of others' perspectives on the topics.

Thank you! The most important resource is the book itself: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo26... - I only ruminated on it and provided some extra links at the end.

I'm really interested in the "Tea With Strangers" idea and looking forward to finding one, when lockdown is over, in the distant future.

Semi-related, lately I've been looking for resources on how to have better and deeper conversations. I wonder whether anyone has any books that they've found helpful. I come from a very sort of buttoned-down sort of people who have trouble moving beyond surface-level small talk, and I've been trying to find ways to get people (and myself) to be comfortable opening up in conversation.

You're a great writer. That was long but super engaging.

What blog platform are you using? The visual breaks are nice.

Really kind of you. Thanks for saying so.

Echoing bobbiechen — it's Squarespace, and this essay was designed as a page, not a blog post, which provided increased flexibility in the design, etc.. It's super robust if you break out of the standard templates.

The site is Squarespace - a few giveaways are the favicon, the  comment in the head section, and the fact that hitting escape opens the Squarespace login.

This looks pretty different from the usual templates, so I would guess there's a lot of custom code for the visuals.

To me it seems like many are just rediscovering Dharmic religions but in a modern context.

You're right! So much of this essay can find a mirror in Vedic, Jain, Buddhist and Taoist philosophies (and numerous other schools of thoughts and philosophies). I don't think my ideas here are original.

My hope was that this essay would find resonance amongst those who might have difficulty connecting with these ideas in more religious, spiritual, or philosophical contexts. It was one of my goals while writing this to make it as accessible and plainspeak as possible.

How to be alone https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs

Thanks for sharing!

Since this is a tech forum, perhaps we can model "being alone" as an introspective state machine that has limited I/O.

It is also interesting to see how apps want to be alone. A social network app like Facebook is useless when off-grid. But an immersive app like kindle can offer you hours of solitude.

Great article. In isolation, I learn a lot more about myself and develop an understanding. It becomes easier to see what I really need... and it is not much. Unfortunately there is always the pressure to go back to work, to fulfil obligations and participate in debt pressure of society.

the topic is interesting but I found the article too lengthy. I do like the tea with stranger setup and get to know thyself concepts... but I feel the article could have had twice the impact if it had been half the length.

I'm sure you'll find many articles and essays on solitude, connection and self knowledge that are efficient enough for your taste.

I don't know that reading 6000 words on the subject suits everyone :)

Great write up , I was hoping for more information on how to connect with yourself. Btw your site tea with strangers seems to be down at the moment.

My hope with the essay was primarily to provide a language, articulation and case to support the exploration of a relationship with self, but I definitely think it could use more substance in the area of "how to."

Would love to know more of what you think though!

What else do you think would be helpful that's missing from this? I've been thinking about writing something to supplement the essay with further resources, frameworks, and more tactical support for people who want to dig deeper into the essay.

(Also thx for the heads up about the link! The site is up, but the link was bad. Fixed it. Should be properly pointing to http://www.teawithstrangers.com now)

I think I may be looking for you or other articles to hand me the easy way out to help with connect myself. It may be that I need to spend more time with myself in solitude and figure it out.

I felt the same way. Arrived at the end, thinking... "an articulation that clear most come with some very concrete conclusions with advice." But I found the essay more an apt description of reality, with only hints of escaping towards improvement: "Does this resonate with you? Think about 'why' before grabbing your cellphone. Ask yourself some hard questions. Reflect. Respond.

I'm alone and don't feel bad at all. Actually, I prefer to be alone. There are so many interesting things to do, so many interesting books to read, etc, I don't understand how someone can be bored. It's really strange to me that so many people suffer from being alone and feel lonely.

I'm curious about how you spend the working day? (Office or remote? Alone the whole day?)

While this is all sweet and positive stuff, my friends mostly are jerks who "Can't talk. WhatsApp only."

haha stop being alone by investing in relationship with your friends and having conversations with your friends !

wow thats brilliant insight

If happiness comes from within, we should not care about any forms of injustice. Who cares if your people are being murdered or put in concentration camps, inside you can still be happy.

All true at the same? Not mutually exclusive.

For a non-technical text about a basic, broadly-appealing topic, this has disappointingly high level of mentions of something called “FaceTime”.

I have not yet read it all but I already have doubts it's worth reading further after second mention if author just expects all readers to be on Facebook or be familiar with a particular program to connect to others, or with an experience of usage thereof.

I'm sorry you're disappointed by the fact that I said "FaceTime" three times in a 6000 word essay about connection with oneself.

The essay is not predicated on you using Facebook, having an iPhone, using FaceTime, Zoom, or any specific program, but I think that'd be pretty clear to you if you read it before commenting.

If you are still skeptical about reading it, this twitter thread has thoughts and reviews of dozens of people who have actually read it: https://twitter.com/ankitshah/status/1264982479489732608

FaceTime is not a complicated concept. It’s a phone call but with video. I’m sure you already know this, even if you’re pretending not to (to look “cool” I guess). If the author explained every single word used, he’d be writing a dictionary and not an article.

There may be different aspects to programs like this. They may provide calls, they may provide some other features that are significant to understand their influence on users but non-obvious to non-users.

I never encountered FaceTime and I have avoided Facebook since I firnt saw it. Also, curiously, I've recently observed a group of like-minded people divided, in a fairly confrontational manner, unable to listen to each other, with one side being, according to my observanions, overrepresented on Facebook, compared to another, and the other overrepresented on Twitter.

This can be attributed to “echo chamber” phenomenon, or to platform preference by leaders of opinions. But my null hypothesis now is, Facebook actually changes its users to being worse communicators, unlike Twitter, and it contributes to users' feelings of isolation, significantly. I'm sure details of means of communication matter.

FaceTime is not a Facebook product. It's also bad form to accuse others of being poor communicators while ignoring all obvious social cues to continue on with a preformed rant against an unrelated entity to the topic at hand.

I think you might gain something from this article for its actual content. If it helps, replace Facebook/Twitter with Hacker News and FaceTime with whatever video or phone calls you use. Or engage in some suspension of disbelief to get to the real point. The author talks about ways of really connecting with people.

Most of your points in this post apply directly to your own previous post.

Your computer can help you look up the definitions of words you don't understand.

e.g. in FireFox, double click to select the word, then right click and there is "search DuckDuckGo for 'word'" in the menu. Dictionary extensions are available for in-browser definitions, and searching DuckDuckGo or Google for "define:word" will usually bring up a definition in the search results page, or if not then in the top few result links.

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