If this would be your genuine reaction, congratulations. You belong to the 0.001% of the population that would feel this way.
I've mostly quit social media because the majority of active people are not interesting, it's full of ad-garbage and heated up debates about dis-interesting topics.
I guess I'm also in the 0.0001%. Though, I do think it's much higher than that. The dissatisfied people are just the most vocal.
Do you believe there is a fundamental difference between these sites, and something like HN (despite both being social media)? I feel like there is. I know this might come off as "I use the superior, intellectual site" or something like that (even though I use the other sites occasionally). But reading tech-related news and comments about it feels very different than scrolling through funny videos on TikTok.
I don't mean to say HN is any better in terms of mental health than either of the others - I spend more time on it than I really should. But I never leave it feeling depressed or jealous like I do on more common social media: I always feel like I learned something rather than watching a meme I'll forget in 30 seconds.
Where do you get your assumption that only 1 in 100,000 people are happy for others? The fact that there are at least two people who feel this way commenting in this chat seems to imply your numbers are off. I don't think the percentage of depressed people in the world is that high.
I never really had a problem with FB, just the constant cringy posts made me leave!
But dumping Twitter a couple of years ago was the best thing I ever did - it was just making me angry every time I started browsing it!
And how is it in any way different from the same people telling me this stuff at a pub? I don't think social media has anything to do with this.
As opposed to a real life social interaction, I can simply hit Unfollow on Facebook (so we stay Friends but I don't see your posts unless I look for them)...
And if you have to resort to unfollowing, you’re basically agreeing that it’s a problem.
Now I wonder whether you're pulling my leg.
I can understand the scale argument, but I can't see why it's a problem after I've unfollowed the problematic accounts.
At one point in my life, I unfollowed literally every FB friend I had - because I wanted to follow my groups but my friends' posts were too political and this kind of talk had a bad effect on me. I can't see why people just don't do that when social media makes them sad.
Let's say seeing a certain type of post makes someone sad, and that this causes that person's mind to wander, slowing or stopping their feed-scrolling for a moment now and then when they see such content. This means they're now stopped on the feed at a potentially vulnerable moment. There is now a monetary incentive for the feed curation algorithm to continue doling out the kind of posts that make the user sad, as well as placing targeted advertisements right with them - ideally ones that exploit the negative emotion in some way.
I realize not everyone reacts the same way. Maybe they speed up their scrolling instead. The kinds of behavior that social media feed curation algorithms track and act upon is opaque, and I think that lack of transparency and accountability can easily have unfortunate consequences.
And being "the lord of your destiny" is already not applicable to most people, except in an abstract, meaningless sense that a person can always decide for themselves. That doesn't mean they can wish reality away. (E.g. "Yeah, I have $200K in student debt, no job prospects after looking for 10 months, and my spouse got sick, but I can do whatever I decide").
And rationally being aware of this doesn't help either: you still get the raw first experience at an emotional level.
Envy. You can be genuinely happy for them, but then be sad that your life isn't going as well. I think this compounded by the idea that a lot of people don't feel like the lords of their destiny, more leaves in a river unable to fight the currents.
Which of course adds to the stress of "Why can't I be better and more like [friend]?". Which may or may not lead to productive self-reflection (more likely not in my experience)
>And how is it in any way different from the same people telling me this stuff at a pub? I don't think social media has anything to do with this.
Scale, I would imagine. If it was one or two friends I think it's easier to rationalise, but when you see friends-of-friends and celebrities "living their best life", every day, while you struggle to keep your head above water, it takes a toll.
I think the disagreement here mostly stems from a different definition of "friend". For most ppl, the friends they see on their FB/IG feed aren't actually "friends"... but more like acquaintances. Often times they're people that you've only met a few times and haven't seen in many years.
Though, even with close friends, sometimes one can't help but compare. And since social media only highlight the highlights, you'll naturally feel bad when comparisons happen.
Seems that with apps like BeReal/Locket taking off in the GenZ market this is starting to shift a little.
“Damn. Matthew has changed jobs 3 times in the past 5 years already, each time to a better paying job. Look at you. You’re still stuck in this shitty job because you suck.”
This is literally the kind of thought I have had in the past.
[*] Are you “happy” in a polite way? Or are you genuinely happy?
Fortunately, empathy and epistemological pluralism can make your life bearable.
I kind of find that hard to believe.
that was all OP was referring too and it's well documented. Honestly you come off as dishonest in this convo as it's quiet a normal emotion to feel and it's not negative per say, it can lead to negative actions but can also push people to do better.
"It doesn't matter if the slight is real or not, its the perception of the person that matters" -- Jimmy Hoffa
I never said I don't feel envy. You jumped to conclusions based on a very little sentence I wrote.
I currently have a very severe skin condition, and I live in a country with 'free' healthcare. I am envious that some people get medical treatment for it and can live a normal life again and some people do not (such as myself).
I don't give a shit if you think I'm dishonest, you do not know me.
Why? Feeling envious is just human nature. Sure, one can argue that in our current society that kind of feeling is "bad", and we should "fix it". I tend to agree, but that you find it bizarre, it's bizarre to me :D
Oh well, maybe you are a machine (based on your nickname), so yeah, machines do not have imperfections (just kidding).
Or maybe it's not and that's just something you tell yourself to feel better about being an asshole.
To me, simply feeling envy (or any negative emotion) doesn't really say anything about the person. Actively stoking negative emotions or acting on them moves the needle in the direction of asshole, though.
Let me tell you how I had envied my cousin when he had a Super Famicom (a.k.a. SNES in North America) with a stash of great games and I didn't (not even the base machine), when I was a kid. He never wronged me. In fact, we were really good buddies when we lived next to each other more than 20 years ago, but I still envied.
I guess you're a saint and the rest of us are just dirty sinners haha.
Envy, as I stated, is just an emotion. What the person does with it is where the moral and ethical sides come into play.
If it pushes me to do better in my life, I'll almost certainly mature past that emotion.
Someone else mentioned meditation and I heartily agree, mindset is how you approach the emotions.
"Anger is a great servant but a terrible Master" -- some guy in a fantasy novel
Or maybe your brother and you have a crush on the same woman. He asks her out and they start dating. You aren't jealous.
Or just suppose you always wanted something at home, a hot tub, a big screen tv, a walk-in closet, a home office, whatever, and you find out your friend has the thing - you'd be envious right?
It seems like you're confusing being envious of someone as a negative feeling towards them, which is why you're getting caught up on the friends and family aspect. It shouldn't matter if it's friends and family - they are often the people you know the most about so you'll find out if they do/have something you want. If you let your envy turn to anger and contempt, that's the negative part, but you don't have to - that's just having a healthy perspective and self-control
- This would absolutely make me jealous, but I've never been in that situation
- No, this is the weirdest one. I have friends who own huge houses (multiple!) and sports cars. I'm happy for their success, I find it genuinely mental that you would be (are? surely you have more successful friends) jealous because your mate has a better car than you. Jesus.
And I'm not "stuck" in the friends and family bit, that's been the whole context of the thread.
It’s an ambivalent feeling. I was definitely stressed for months thinking about how much worse my life is as a consequence of comparing myself to someone else. But at the same time, I’ve lifted myself up to a higher standard since that stress turned into motivation. That friend who I felt envious of is also happy for my success, and I’m also happy for his.
It's great that not everyone struggles with that, but different people struggle with different emotions. Maybe we can all agree that whatever their nature and whatever we call them is beside the point, (I think) that social media engagement optimizations have notoriously exploited these effects as they relate to our attention and habits, taking many people on an unwanted emotional roller-coaster ride for arguably unhealthy amounts of time.
We can feel happy (for them) and unsatisfied (with ourselves) at the same time. Multiply that by N, and well, that's a recipe for disaster (at least for me). I know, I know, we shall not compare ourselves with others, but hey, I'm not a machine, I have my imperfections which I am polishing from time to time, but in the meanwhile social media makes everything worse in average (for me).
Seeing people conspicuously consume extravagant leisure travel – and the associated resources – brings to mind global warming and how few people actually give a damn about it in any meaningful way.
It also reminds me of what brazen liars many people are. In cases where I've known the people posting Facebook/Insta content about their amazing trips, in about half of those, the reality is that the trip was far less than amazing than their posts would suggest.
As an example, one woman I know took her family across the Pacific to Thailand on a two-week vacation. By their accounts, they had a pretty rotten time, even considering moving their return date forward. But, the Facebook narrative was glowing. Four years later, the woman's Facebook cover photo is of a Thai Buddhist temple from that trip. (She's not a Buddhist. The photo is purely for aesthetics and social signaling.)
It seems to me that this kind of behavior feeds into a loop that encourages other people to consume finite resources and then post about their "amazing" (though often non-amazing) trips. And so the cycle continues.
And that really gets me down. I don't go on Facebook very often.
This is not a rare feeling.
Does that mean we have to be slaves to our genes? I hope not. People like Sam Harris and others offer all kinds of methods to detach and "win" over our biology.
So it's just a feeling. What you do with it (actions) is up to you, most people don't act upon those feelings in any noticeable way.
But if we are being honest with ourselves constant feelings of envy often do lead to a deteriorating relationship (usually in the form of the person feeling envious choosing to distance himself from whomever he's feeling envious of), simply for the fact that feeling envious feels like crap - and when you are feeling envious of a person you actually care about it feels double crap (you feel envious and guilty at the same time).
Is the answer generally just "it is what it is?" That's so dark.
It's an end sum game of who can acquire more money/resources if we break away all the bullshit.
I don't share my wins because the majority of people are jealous creatures