I don't want to quit social media
What I want is for interactions with other people in online social spaces to be less destructive.
What I want is for interactions with other people in online social spaces to be less destructive.
This kind of setup imposes a cost for rude, nasty, aggressive and destructive behavior - since you can simply be excluded from the group in that case.
This is how most of the world works on a day to day basis; you don't let random people into a corporate strategy meeting or an academic council meeting. You only admit people who agree to abide by civil society rules.
Something like that can be incredibly useful, but it requires a lot of up-front organizing effort. Also, malicious types have been known to sneak into say, a closed mailing list, and leak the internal discussions to Twitter or whatever, so...
I have the exact opposite opinion, let’s confront them: real-life social spaces are toxic to me, and I seek refuge in computers, where you experience me. If we were a little less toxic to each others, maybe online wouldn’t be a high concentration of people retired from real life?
- Real life has a dump of major problems that “social people” constantly refuse to fix.
- And each time we bring them up, it’s the bane of your life, we get all the names, downvotes, exaggerations, parody, “we’re in $CURRENT_YEAR”, “Have you tried to man up?”, “You’re frustrated”, etc.
- And the problem continues. Online, are you are just meeting with the people that are invisible to you in real life.
The status of the scientific understanding today of gender imbalance in programming (excluding improper studies with doubtful scientific process) is that little boys end up in programming because it’s the only thing in the family which behaves expectedly, doesn’t sulk, calls mum, gets angry for expressing things as they are, retributes effort, etc. Making a little more room for boys in real life would also correct gender imbalance in IT.
It may even make that fewer people in general go to IT and science in general, because they would be more satisfied with real-life interactions. Science would go slower, but people would be happier.
It’s a tough path, but really one that upgrades the lives of millions.
Do you want to take it?
We're pretty bad at social systems level thinking, but this precise lack of skill is an opportunity for exploitation. In the same way that hobbyist day traders over-estimate their ability to turn a profit by not understanding the skill level of who they are losing against, social media participants over-estimate their ability to check out because they don't understand the skill level of players who want them to engage. This disparity in the games being played isn't spelled out and why would it be? At least there is hope in that social media systems while ubiquitous, are not yet hegemonic. As long as that holds, there is still hope.
Think about it this way, if you have a good job, fantastic relationships, and other great things going on are you really going to be arguing on Instagram with strangers ?
Unfortunately, social media by its nature is going to be harmful. It was never designed to consider the world we live in now.
We decided we wanted to derive cars, but without the harmful effects of being in crashes, so we decided to create safer vehicles. I like some drugs, and a lot of them are okay in some situations with some boundaries... even if a lot of the users are using them for unhealthy reasons in situations that make the drugs problematic.
I like social media-- I'm literally using it right now to communicate with you. But I do that because I value your thought (even though I disagree with it) and I am able to interact with you in a space that both moderates my behavior by giving up/down vote feedback and which doesn't have a lot of tolerance for poor discourse habits.
If you apply those same rubrics to other social media and don't tolerate them when it violates those boundaries, I believe it's possible to use them in healthy ways.
If you're extending the definition of social media to include sites like Hacker News, you may as well categorize the entire Internet as social media
I feel that the sine qua non of "social media" is user generated content conducted between specific users, tied to specific accounts.
Not even wikis meet that definition, and certainly not most of the author-generated content-based site like blogs or market sites such as amazon, or news sites where the discussion isn't the putative content.
I understand the point that literally any website could be thought of as "user generated"... I've personally made quite a few websites. But the level of interaction and the modalities of how I and a lot of folks use things isn't as interactive as, say, twitter.
So, perhaps for some user populations a Wiki is a social experience, especially for the folks who edit them. Though from my perspective, it feels entirely possible to use it without engaging in that social aspect.
I don't feel the same about Hackernews and/or reddit in general.
I feel like "user generated content conducted between specific users, tied to specific accounts, where users have one-to-one public conversations and those conversations are foregrounded as the site's content" is reasonable.
So, if that's my definition Wikis aren't social media and HN would be.
But I also feel like HN is just a flavor of Reddit, and I feel that most people understand Reddit to be "social media".
I could be worng about those feelings.
I disagree. Social media has never harmed me, I just realized it wasn't worth my time. I've never had issues with self-esteem, confidence, popularity, whatever. I used social media as a photo diary for myself, shared pictures and videos with friends, kept up with what my friends are doing. To this day I check in on social media once in a while just because it's more effective than texting 100+ people to see what they're up to. That being said, I don't think social media is worth more of my time than a few minutes every few weeks or months
How do you know that? This isn't something you can typically know for your self with any degree of confidence.
> To this day I check in on social media once in a while
You've got a lot of recent comments on HN for this to be true. I think you use social media a lot more than you think you do, and it could be impacting you in ways that you don't notice.
Ah so you're that kind of user.
Semantics. I don't consider HN social media, when I say social media I mean instagram, facebook, etc. I consider HN a forum like reddit or other places. My usage of forums is a way to kill time when I'm at work.
> How do you know that? This isn't something you can typically know for your self with any degree of confidence.
Speak for yourself. Maybe you can't typically know this for yourself, but I can. And more importantly, if you're not coming into this exchange in good faith and willing to trust my claims, then any chance of reasonable conversation is gone. I'll be wrapping up my end of our conversation here, thanks.
The drunk driver contradiction. Drunk people are terrible and assessing how drunk they are.
Is wasting your time not a harm?
Somehow coffee is completely different.
Somehow coffee is on the same tier as tobacco or cocaine.
It's not.
Relax.
Enjoy a cocoa.
"I don't want to stop eating food, I just want food that is not going to harm me while I eat it"
"I don't want to stop breathing air, I just want air that is not going to harm me while I breath it"
I don't want to cease all contact with other people. I want to interact socially in non-harmful ways.
But I'm not the only one,
I hope someday you'll join us,
And the world will live as one"