Fast Food for the Mind: Why I Don't Have a Facebook or Twitter Account
forbes.com
forbes.com
I was watching a show about the addictive nature of junk food, and how it works. Many food items, especially zero calorie ones like diet soda, trick your mind into believing it has received something it needs. However, by tricking your mind but denying your body, you come back again for it later (and again, and again). Unfortunately, this applies to high calorie foods that are largely nutritionally empty. You sense a need, you go to the food for that need, and it provides a mental signal that you have received it without actually filling the need.
The recommendation was - every time you find yourself reaching for a salty bag of chips or a diet soda, ask yourself, what is my body actually telling me it wants? While it may seem more expensive, try to fulfill that need as low on the "processed" chain as you can. This way, you'll fulfill the signal and the need.
That was kind of long winded, but I realized, at that moment, how I was using social media. I'm in a state of life, for better and worse, where I have very, very little time (kids, mortgages, work, and so forth). Many relationships are starting to fade, or rot.
My mind was sending me signals that I needed more social interaction, and I was fulfilling these signals with social media rather than real human contact. To me, this is the aspartane of social interactions. You have a need, you use something that satisfies the signal but not the need itself, and so you keep coming back.
Very specifically, I was replacing something that used to be a big part of my life - playing music at jams and with friends, with youtube clips and other videos.
Now, this is a little complicated, in that videos have actually been a good thing in some ways. For instance, because of youtube, I've been able to learn a lot of bluegrass songs well prior to going to a jam, which has certainly enhanced my experience at those jam sessions. And if all I have is 30 minutes after the kids go to bed to learn a new song, well, at least I got to learn a new song.
So I'm not sure total abstinence is a good idea here. There's an interesting continuum of these addictive things. You can quit cigarettes completely, just walk away. You can (and probably should[1]) quit junk food completely, but you can't quit food. And lastly, I'd say you probably shouldn't quit social media completely. But this does make it much more complicated, and you need to be careful about it - and of course, keep in mind that a corporation that seeks to maximize ad revenue from you is something you need to be particularly cautious about.
Personally, I am glad I quit facebook, for all kind of reasons, not just the one above. Occasional fast food is pretty much harmless. I'd also guess that the risks of a once in a blue moon cigar are vanishingly low. The difference here is that you can tolerate some of a bad thing, whereas I'm not sure all social media should be considered a bad thing. But I'd put it in the category of food, there is definitely junk social media that you would want to avoid.
> You can (and probably should[1])
Did you forget to add the [1] footnote?
Exactly.
I'm not sure who coined it, but I've taken to the term 'infosugar' to describe the knowledge analog of this.
I don't want to take the analogy too far, but I expect there's a whole range of behavior we easily slip into that evidence this same sort of pattern - bad behaviors as the result of an unfulfilled subconscious desire.
For example, I wonder how much the assorted aggressive nastiness you find online is basically a burst valve from sedentary people who really just need to go hit a ball or run hard for an hour?
Physical venting/channelling seems like a very temporary outlet for general misanthropy.
It seems to me that anything short of death would be a temporary outlet for 'general misanthropy'.
It feels empty. I vastly prefer chilling out in person, even if there isn't a ton of conversation, its preferable to texting on my phone or whatever.
That's a valid reason not to quit Facebook if you're both 14 year olds.
It is immensely valuable that relevant people that you know get update on your what you are building and any insightful information that you have. Rarely do people keep up with their LinkedIn.
We're blind to it here at HN; we worship success and accept that contributing to the noise of it all is a necessary evil so we can build our brand. Meanwhile, everyone's doing the same, hawking e-books/courses/OSS/products/consultancies. It's not communication, it's typing at each other. Now that we're supposed to maintain an online identity, it's utterly exhausting at times.
Disclaimer: I'm an old soul. I much preferred the non-social web because we didn't all seem to be pushing something.
All that being said, I don't use Facebook or Twitter either, but mostly because I find them tedious.
Not every way of communicating and experiencing the world is psychologically equivalent. If my choice of "experiencing the world" is lying in bed and watching pictures on reddit for 50 years (let's say I'm rich), without going outside even once, and my idea of "having a relationship" is FB chat - It's likely that this is going to make me a very miserable person. There are limits to the amount of behavioural changes you can make without causing psychological damage.
That's why there are actual studies on the matter: does Facebook make us feel good? Is it psychologically healthy? Some of those studies are mentioned in the article. A much better line of criticism would be to address those studies directly, rather than making very general comments that can be used to justify anything.
It's hard when I have lived in three continents and while I could go back to an era when we got by with phone calls and the occasional letter, I really think my life would be poorer if I do that.
It takes me minutes to catch up on what everyone has posted, and about the only thing I'll ever post are funny images of the variety that you would normally send around in an email for everyone to get a kick out of.
I don't get using FB for more than that, honestly. I just can't take it seriously as anything other than a play area where I'm able to communicate in a non-intrusive way with a small group of people.
I just don't understand having 100+ 'friends'. Who can keep up with all of that?
> I feel like people always talk as if the trade-off is between wasting hours of time on the newsfeed or being harder to reach, but this is a false dilemma.
I've often argued the same when friends of mine closed their facebook account and became harder to reach. Then I realized that this choice of 'moderation' can be very difficult for many people, in the same way that for some people it can be really difficult to stop drinking once they start, and in the same way that for me it's really difficult to start watching a new show without binging on it.
That said, ideally I'd propose your solution. On mobile this is easier if you just install the messenger app without the facebook app (assuming that's possible).
I've considered the messaging app but given the immaturity of app permissions and Facebook's abysmal record, I figured I'd stick with the incognito login thing.
Some people continue to use it as a way to keep in touch with distant friends and relatives, but I cut ties pretty easily. You just have to deal with being haggled at every family reunion when some distant aunt asks why you didn't see the pictures of her new dog.
But as a social media tool? People always keep saying that there's plenty of interesting information to be obtained from following technical individuals. I just don't see that. What can I get that I won't obtain from blogs attached to my RSS reader, or even just by going to high-profile communities and message boards like /r/netsec, HN and Slashdot/SoylentNews/AltSlashdot to use as digests?
Finally, even if you do find golden nuggets, they're buried between layers of inanity and mundane content. Who would've thought a communication medium limited to 140 characters would suffer from that?
I guess the only real benefit is that I can directly speak to tech figures, although in a highly constrained format. I don't think I'd want to, though, especially considering plenty of those people would likely see you as a Luddite for still using email and IRC. Twitter's very webdev-centric, I find.
I waste enough time on the web as is. Adding Twitter to the mix would offer no benefit. Though I'm assuming employers insist on it?