Hacker News Reader

Comment by captainclam | Hacker News Reader

I've never used social media or had a "problem" with my phone. So I used to read articles like this a little smugly, but I'm growing increasingly discomfited by the notion that I'm...out of touch..?

Yeah, it's probably overall a positive thing that I've never been hooked on instagram, but it's also a language/shared experience with which I have no point of contact. I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird.

And it's great to be weird! I just hope that it doesn't impact potential connections in the future.

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>I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird.

Well, I have some good news: here you are, on social media, having a presence. Admittedly, it's a bit more niche than Instagram.

Haha, good point. I'm not a hopeless case after all.

National borders and most romantic dates won’t ask for your HN profile but they will ask for all the other major social networks. Not everything with an account and a comment system is a Social Network to lay-people and first encounter authorities.

Before the abused and tired notion of "social media" was coined, this was called... a forum. Nothing "media" about it.

I think it still is. A discussion forum like this lacks a number of features we'd commonly associate with social media.

No personalized feed or “watch next”? Not “social media”.

These are not necessary for social media, you can be in social media without these (it sometimes requires browser extensions but not necessarily).

The term doesn’t have to mean what the literal words on their own do, or apply to everything that the individual words might, taken in their own.

[edit] and in this case the term is far more useful if it is not as expansive as you suggest. We’d just need another term, then, to describe the kind of thing people usually mean by “social media”.

I think the disctintion should be:

Is the person (their face, their personality) more important, or the content of what they say is more important?

HN falls much closer to the "content" end of the spectrum.

Yeah, there are lots of other little aspects that push something closer to or farther from being the kind of thing we usual mean by “social media” (“so it’s a fuzzy category?” yes, like approximately all other categories and labels). Downplaying personal or account identity (which HN does to a more extreme degree than even most forums et c) definitely counts as moving something toward the “not social media” side.

It has the most important (and most addictive) feature though: an endless feed

Link aggregators was what site like this, digg, and reddit were called when they started. They introduced a social aspect for upvoting content into a dynamic feed. It’s something more than a forum, and something less than what later became social media.

But before that, forums existed that let you subscribe to threads in your forum account. It's just that the mundane masses used them a little less than the geeky folk. All Reddit added was stealing the upvote/downvote thing from Slashdot and Digg.

And combining all topics under a single umbrella, so you interact with them all as the same persona.

Hypermedia?

I don't agree. I made friends and noticed other cliques of friends on forums like GBATemp over a decade ago.

Regular visitors knew each other after seeing the other users' posts, there are in-jokes, and it's not so different. I would say HN is less self-centered (we don't have unique avatars or signatures) than many old-school forums were. Friendships are less likely to be formed here.

> I don't agree. I made friends and noticed other cliques of friends on forums like GBATemp over a decade ago.

And I ran a forum, over a decade ago, in which people from all locations/walks of life participated, and I met more than a handful of them in real life. I don't understand what point you're trying to make.

I should have specified that, to me personally (but apparently not for you), those old forums were very much like social media. I don’t see a categorical difference between them because the same behaviour is displayed on both of them.

I’ve been to both a bar and a church with the same people. They act the same both in a bar and in church. Are bars and churches equivalent?

Bars and churches have different purposes and people's behaviour in each of them should change because of that. The person acting the same and doing the same things in both would be considered to be behaving very strangely otherwise.

I don't know of any ills with social media that weren't present on forums for me. The difference seems to be one of scale.

I know my intention for joining both was the same (human connection over common interests).

While both have been coined "social media", I think there's a huge difference between content aggregation/discussion sites, and content creation sites. I think, deep down, everyone knows HN and its ilk are not "social media". It's a merely discussion forum at most.

This is media (web) that we are social on (discussion). It’s these folks own definition of social media that needs fixing so they don’t feel isolated. I don’t use instagram not bc I’m weird but because it’s a shit experience.

The social in "social media" doesn't mean discussion. It means sharing personal media and creating bonds with people. i.e. socialising. Hacker news has no means to do so.

We have pseudo anonymity which allows for reputation. I am not sure how much more of a bond you are looking for, but conversation and rapport is about all you need for socializing — both are here.

this is just a cope. sites like this are still social and still addictive, if you don’t believe me then try to stop coming here for a while.

in fact try to stop going to all “slot machine” sites where you can constantly refresh and get new interesting things

It’s really not the same by matter of extremity. Hacker news has maybe a small fraction of the addictive mechanics at play in instagram or twitter. Personally, I only come back to this site because I don’t have other, far more addictive social media to scroll when bored.

I thi k one if the damaging things about social media sites like Instagram, Facebook etc is that everyone displays their best life on it. You visit these sites and see these photo that make you feel bad because you ask "Why is my life not exciting? Why don't I have those things?"

Hackernews and other forums don't really hit that nerve with me. Yes, it's easy to just keep scrolling and reading more but at least I don't feel like shit afterwards. It's addictive but only but for me in that I waste time on it when I could be doing other stuff. It doesn't make me depressed though.

A decade or slightly less so ago, maybe because this site was smaller and close-knit and interest rates were lower, you could get a similar effect from seeing Show HN threads about this person launching some amazing technical project or impressive startup. In this uncertain economy not so much. Also, blogs are increasingly less fashionable so you don't see nearly as many "wow what a trenchant and witty thinkpiece" posts from devs playing thought leader.

There is still a similar vein of productivity and hustling. Ask HNs are often about side project, productivity hacks, and income streams. Show HNs and blogs are the same topics, but actualized. It’s the same treadmill, but instead you feel bad about not being hyper productive, elite haxxor skills, or cashing out.

I think a big thing about social media is having people or personalities that you follow. I don't use HN in a way where I notice who is commenting or posting and there's nobody I "follow" on this site. Every story and comment is like a new anonymous person to me.

When I was heavily into Reddit I'd use RES and get to know people so it felt more like social media. Now that I've deleted my account and sporadically read Reddit it doesn't feel like social media or something I'm addicted to.

It's same problem as social media. It's why this site has a noprocrast

People that tend to procrastinate do not need a reason to do so, and the things they get addicted to are not necessarily engineered to be so. Social media is strongly engineered to be addictive, HN is engineered not to be addictive (though it still is, as I should definitely be aware by now).

HN might not have the built-in quality to be addictive, but it certainly has the quantity. Infinite content produces infinite ways to be addictive.

You're confusing addictive websites and social media as one and the same? They're not.

Hacker news isn't social media. Facebook and Twitter are. It's pretty easy to see why.

By this definition then people who read the personal ads in the paper everyday in 1995 were addicted to social media.

Ironically to me, "this is just a cope" is exactly what I can't stand social media.

Just large groups of people puppeting the same dumb language and ideas back at each other, ad nauseam.

I think there's a huge difference between content aggregation/discussion sites, and content creation sites.

Are comments and discussions separate from "content creation"?

A movie you made, a book you wrote, an article you wrote -> content.

A comment you wrote, or a link you posted -> meta-content.

I think hacker news is way better, but Reddit is very much like social media

HN isn't technically social media, but it's close. The little vote buttons, the karma, the constant feed of "hot" articles, are designed to fuel the dopamine push that creates addictive engagement.

What it lacks to be true "social media" is engagement around a social network. There are certainly "social networks" at work on HN, but most of the users don't know each other and aren't focused on each other's statuses, pictures, videos, relationship statuses. Instead they're mostly focused on intellectual competition via comments. (when you're not allowed to compete for jokes, like folks do on Reddit, you compete for whatever else defines your identity, which on HN is intelligence).

Ironically, HN's always wanted to be a social network, in that they want to build "a community of users" where the users all recognize each other (they claim that's necessary in order to build a community). Once HN introduces personal blogs or tweet-like status updates, it will 100% be a social network, with all the same health concerns.

Note that there’s an anti-social element right in the algorithm. Stories that have more comments than upvotes are actively pushed off the front page.

Probably has the unintended side effect of always keeping new stuff on the front page like other social media does.

Forum participation is a bit different than social media in that it is first and foremost about the discussion and not so much about 'you' which seems to be the main focus for social media, furthermore you can't follow people and there are no push notifications so it is impossible to create 'an audience' other than whoever is there.

Those are distinguishing factors that are strong enough to differentiate otherwise the BBS I used to hang out on would have been social media and IRC would be as well. I don't buy that broad categorization. Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter -> social media. Reddit not and HN definitely not.

Though the quantity of 'meme' content may have to factor in there somewhere and then we have a continuum of online participation with on one end personal messaging and on the extreme other IG, TT, FB etc.

Hacker News isn't social media. No matter how much you want to claim it is.

I think there are important differences between news forums like this one and social media:

- HN doesn't have notifications

- HN doesn't provide affordances for virality: you can't "retweet"/"subtweet"; you can't start trends like #ProtectTaylorSwift; you can't brigade people; etc

- HN doesn't have a personal algorithmic feed

- HN doesn't have DMs

- HN links elsewhere (mostly) for the main content

- HN's moderators are available directly, and they also participate in discussions

- You can't be an influencer on HN: you might be a patio11 or something, you might even get jobs from your HN karma or posts, but hawking products based on your clout for a kickback is astroturfing/shilling and the community is pretty good at snuffing it out

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I guess overall my argument is that if forums--even forums like Reddit or random vbulletin forums--are social media then the term kind of loses meaning. It opens the door to questions like "are blogs social media, after all there are accounts and comments sections".

I know people highroad social media and its users a lot (I'm guilty of this haha; finally my misanthropy is good for something!), so there's something attractive about an argument that cuts holier-than-thou HNers back down to size (trying to be generous and lighthearted here, again I'm a member of this crew). I just think the shoe doesn't fit in this case. There are good things about social media! Black Twitter! Queer/Geek Mastodon! But I really feel like those services are meaningfully different than forums--especially this one.

Having gone the other way, can comment slightly. Tried FB, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Vimeo, Imgur, LinkedIn, and Slideshare. (Plus several forums/newsforums like Reddit, Slashdot) Mostly found out I was not humanity's demographic. I don't really like posting exercise photos. I don't really want to take pictures of my pets. I don't watch sports all that much. I don't follow celebrities much. There go most of the 10k+ categories. (re: Instagram's unlinkable explore page https://www.instagram.com/explore/ )

From my own experience, you don't actually feel very "in touch" unless you're successful. Instead, you end up making a lot of posts into the void that maybe get 10-20 views? 100 on a ++ post. Spend a month on a demo and get 1 comment. Watch nobody ever read what you wrote, while others post "does sugar go in spaghetti?" and get 60 million views and 4 million comments. [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58270497

what's your demo?

Here's a couple recent ones:

Game I made for the Library of Congress' Game Challenge this year. Combination of a match-3 game, and a society simulation, such as the Civilization series. Part I thought was neat was Tetris style swap powers you earn with trominos and tetraminos, as well as pentaminos for structure criteria. Note: LoC wanted "simple, easy to start"

http://www.forsako.rf.gd/AmericanCities/LibOfCongressGame.ht...

Spherical planetary erosion (quick gif, video's on Twitter, I just left after the strobing X on the roof episode.)

https://i.imgur.com/ry7s6JY.gif

Least squares curve fitting with semi-arbitrary equation matching and visual points you can move.

http://forsako.rf.gd/JAMA4JS/JAMA_Test_Visual.html

I think you're the 21st century equivalent of the people who "don't own a television."

It depends on what your social circles are like. Given that you're not attached to social networks, it seems likely your associates aren't super connected either. So you might miss out on a few inside jokes, but those are fleeting in the moment anyway. Probably nothing truly long lasting. Because of the broadness of the social network experience, it's not the same as missing Dallas or Game of Thrones in prior decades. And you might not have a water-cooler to talk at anyway...

> it's not the same as missing Dallas

tell me how old you are without telling me how old you are :)

Personally, I don't use tech to interact with people. I use it to interact with information, data, etc. I can live without it, but prefer having it because there is always something I want to know more about.

When I was a kid, the source was an over-priced encyclopedia. Now, it's a search and to me, that's the magic.

Also, you can't Ctrl-F search paper, and that's a huge downside, imo.

YMMV.

> Personally, I don't use tech to interact with people.

I am a person. You have interacted with me using tech.

How are you defining "tech" exactly? I use messaging apps all the time to organise things with friends or talk to distant family members. There's no better way to do it, I can't meet everyone in person and if plans change, it's better to know sooner.

Maybe they meant to interact with people they know*

Not quite.

I have 2 accounts that anyone could argue are social media and this is one of them. The other is so specialized that I'm fairly sure no one here uses it and I mainly use it for reference. An account was needed to search. Since I have an account, I will occasionally provide an answer to someone that has a question that I've had in the past, but even that's rare.

Otherwise, I use Teams at work, but that's not social media.

> How are you defining "tech" exactly?

The better question may be: How are you defining an interaction?

This may be a hot take, but I don't consider HN to be personal interaction. We post content individually. We read it individually. Replies are about the content, not about the person. I am replying to something you wrote, but know nothing about you as a person, so it is hard to claim we have a personal interaction together just because of this comment.

This is what most interactions are like.

I've seen on many long-term forums, or even sub-reddits on Reddit, people really get to know each other.

I never claimed we had a personal interaction, I only claimed you interacted with me, a person. I define it the same way any dictionary defines it: you acted and it has an effect on me.

I agree that personal interactions are hard to come by online, but this is different to interacting with people at a surface level online.

User ID you're responding to is not the same user ID you first responded to.

I never said I never interact with people, but it's definitely much, much less than I interact with data and really, it's incidental and not the point of me and the tech.

No worries, the line near the top of the article about needing a phone in the search of a partner is so absolutely foreign to me I had to stop and reread the sentence to be sure I was comprehending correctly. And I'm more than a decade younger than the author!

I’m in my 40s, how would you expect to court a partner without a phone?

There is already plenty accounts out there that even the relatively small barrier of iMessage -> SMS is a large enough of an inconvenience to stop a lot of casual relationships from moving to the next level or even continuing.

Having no phone means you are basically unreachable for most of the day. A much more significant hurdle to get over. It’s possible to find another like minded person but that is a very tiny minority of people looking for a partner. It’s not the 90s anymore and people are accustomed to living in this constantly connected world. Look at most sitcoms from the 90s so many of the situations they find themselves in just aren’t relatable because of the easy communication we have with everyone at all times.

Random interactions at a third place can happen without a phone, but eventually you'll want to meet somewhere else, and unless you're comfortable with the old school "meet me at the clock" style meetup and all the failure modes that could occur, you're going to need a way to communicate

I guess we need to agree exactly what "not using a phone" means.

I send >85+% of my sms or sms-like messages from a laptop/desktop. So no, I don't see a phone as an important part of my communication besides the fact it gives me a number serving as an ID that could just as easily be provided many other ways.

I primarily took this line to mean dating apps, facetime, and other social media like functions; which I would argue are mostly worthless for developing and maintaining friendships or partnerships.

If we're taking it to the extreme and saying that not having a phone somehow disallows you any digital communications; then yes it will be significantly more difficult without a phone, perhaps to the point that some would feel it's a necessary device.

I installed TikTok for a couple weeks to try it out. It wasn't as interesting as people acted like. I don't think you're missing much.

My experience with Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts and Facebook stories (and all the other things that compete with TikTok) is that it can still get its hooks in, but you have to invite it in. That is, if it doesn't immediately grab you, its not enough to open TikTok and idly doom scroll for 2 minutes. You have to consciously watch for 15 minutes before it starts to alter your brain chemistry.

I did that (scrolled for 15+ minutes) around a dozen times. I kept waiting for the algorithm to serve me that really great addictive content, but I only found a couple actually good creators.

Most of the best videos I saw were Vine compilations

you're really not missing out; social media has its benefits but I'm not sure they outweigh its detriments

I deleted my FB account ~8 years ago and twitter ~1 year ago and have not regretted it one bit. IG is the only one I have left and use that to share/keep up with family/friends' photos.

As long as you don't overspend on weird. Being weird is great until it isn't.

I dunno if it’s that weird. It can help if you want to be more social of course.

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