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Comment by brachika | Hacker News Reader

The best thing I did for my mental health was my gradual decline from interacting and using social networks. I was scrolling through my IG feed mad and jealous because people there seem to have a lot more going in live than I have, until by pure chance one girl who seemed the happiest person on her IG travels randomly outed herself to go to therapy for her depression and suicidal states. This happened almost 5 years ago, and I never looked back.

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Do you not feel jealous of the people here who write a Rust compiler over the weekend, make a 7 figure salary at their first job, give lectures on quantum physics at their local community center, sell their bit toggling SaaS so they can retire early, work out every morning, and who are able to save the world from hunger by promoting nuclear energy?

In other words, it might be wise to start avoiding Hacker News as well, because it is also a social network.

The very first example resonates strongly. Here I am struggling with the simplest bugs, all of Sunday wasted on something oh so obvious. Proud of the effectively 7 lines of code produced.

Then looking over HN in the evening, yet again “everybody else” seems to have implemented their third Haskell compiler for fun. Boring at this point really, to them.

Yet I am scratching my head over how there can be such huge gaps in performance and productivity. It’s the same principle. As a physicist you wouldn’t compare yourself to our darling, Feynman. Physicists are too smart to be doing that (or at least quickly stop doing it). I am apparently very dumb.

Sorry for the late answer, and the answer is - I actually do! The difference IMO is that the person who wrote a Rust compiler over the weekend actually worked hard to arrive at such a point in their life, and instead of jealousy I feel a drive or a motivation, thinking 'Well, if I code/learn hard enough, maaaaaaaaybe I could do that at one point in my life'

Alot of people use travel to try to fix their lives or escape their problems. It never works.

Most people's travel isn't something to be jealous of anyway when you pry into it.

Travel did make me happier in the middle of a depression though. Doing it regularly is great for the mood.

I do recommend a good, hard journey in your life though. Take your shoes, or a bicycle, and go somewhere. One week, two weeks. Enough to be tired and want to go back home really hard. Enough to have to deal with a problem without a credit card (good example: bike broke down 10 miles from the closest city, not a soul around to help you).

But most importantly, enough to enjoy the moment despite the hardship.

Once you discover that it is possible, that it is logical, then a new life awaits.

For you, what is a main difference between social networks as facebook and HN?

Not the OP. I was thinking about this the other day in relation to social networks like Mastadon and Bluesky vs HN and Reddit.

I have found Mastadon and things like it to not be sticky at all. I wanted to be involved in the community because it seems like its growing, but when I open the app nothing grabs my interest.

I think it is because social networks like Mastadon, Bluesky, Twitter... are "people" or "stream of conscious" oriented, while sites like HN and Reddit are "topic" oriented.

I am really interested in engaging with a topic, and want to read have have long conversations on that topic. However on "people" oriented networks there is no broad coherence to what people are talking about, and I lose interest

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