The privacy issue doesn’t exist here, at least not unless you decide to share, but if you do, you actually won’t be able to delete your posts unless you contact the admins.
Facebook actually adds a lot more value to my life than HN does because Facebook is the place one of my friend groups arrange our 4-6 yearly weekend retreats. This is the only thing I use Facebook for though, I don’t have any of their apps and I only log on a couple of times a month. Don’t get me wrong, I wish we could do it on some other medium exactly because of facebooks evil history, but unfortunately Facebook is the only place everyone is.
I used to use Facebook differently, I used to follow things and interests, but one I removed all my likes and follows it became a pretty harmless address book that sells my information to advertising. Hacker news on the other hand is where I waste the most of my online time, and mostly it’s on feeling inferior because I’m not learning X and Y or starting some side project company. This is anecdotal like I said, but I don’t think HN is any better than FB from a purely psychological point of view. Facebook is obviously still more evil due to the privacy issues, but this article is about the cigarette side of social media.
In real life we have very different inputs and outputs and sense for anonymity. All of the internet has turned us into a different creature. All technology seems to. We make tools that change us.
Seems like the best we can do is understand as many social spheres as possible.
"If node is so fast why does my PHP site feel way faster than this React+Redux+Node thingy? An inquiry into what 'fast' means."
"Why GUIs in things other than webtech are actually not hard at all and work way better."
Exactly.
This is how we find out about events in the strength athlete community, it's how we can best follow our friends and their victories at competitions in their area, it's how we can see how training is going for other people and be an umpteenth set of eyes on their form or training issues and be able to go "hey, I had that same problem and this is what worked for me" or even find new programming ideas for ourselves.
Similarly, we use it multiple times a week for my local congregation. We have a private Facebook group where we post so and so needs help, the young men are meeting at so and so, we need volunteers for this still, etc.
And of course I can see what is going on in the lives of my friends that either distance or adulthood prevents me from interacting with regularly. "Wow, Meg is pregnant again!" "Hey, their wedding looked awesome!" "Oh, your mom died, she didn't even tell me she was sick, I'm so sorry Aaron".
I don't get this whole "Facebook is the devil, it makes me wish I too had a private jet and 6 lambos and had all the sex with all the women with my champagne parties!" thing. Uh, hi, unfriend people you don't actually care about or barely know... you don't need to be friends with 2173 "cool" people and you certainly don't need to compare yourself to them.
For me Facebook is a constant source of laughs and "hey I'm happy for them, they won their division/got married/are having a baby/are doing so great with their weight loss/passed the bar exam!"
If you don't get it then that line of thinking is not for you. Different people like different things. I left FB a few years ago now and do not miss it one bit, whatsapp groups became more important for social stuff at some point and FB loss significance. This is not for everyone, not everyone is the same.
You could literally replace most comments here, yours included, with "different things for different people". What's the point in bitching about how I DONT GET PEOPLE THAT THINK X!!! well I don't understand how you think either mate.
My non-tech parents still organize their meetups over email, it works more than fine for them.
Facebook allows this. So does twitter, reddit and every single other website that allows posts and comments from users. Why doesn't HN?
In fact, how do I delete my HN account at all? This isn't visible in the settings page, as far as I can tell.
I’ve always wondered if they’d cooperate if I asked them to mass-delete all of my posts, in case I ever became a politician.
We have gotten to a point where people are set off by the information a standard http request sends to the server because it’s common practice to log each http request.
It sadly all has become a unproductive privacy extremist conversation
I don't trust the opinions here anymore. The most I can hope is to see a range of opinions.
Leaving Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and other networks gave me automatic anxiety relief. I no longer care what anyone close to me thinks and I don't get into discussions with close relatives.
My life as a conservative is much better without social networks where they censor me non-stop, just Twitter and being very careful with what I write and how I write it I can more or less start conversations. Sooner or later I will leave Twitter too, it is a matter of finding another social network, free and open and nurtured by people.
I do really think Twitter is the most stressful of all. Nowadays there's no longer a sane discussion without this or that party injecting politics into even the most meaningless of debates.
Quitting social media and focusing more on the literature (books) that I want to read has gotten rid of my daily anger issues.
The right seem to be mostly bigots that can't think critically whereas the left mainly seem to be a bunch of idiots that can't think critically.
Maybe I'm the asshole because I think everyone else around me is?? Not sure.
> Leaving Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and other networks gave me automatic anxiety relief. I no longer care what anyone close to me thinks and I don't get into discussions with close relatives.
Do you still value face to face discussions/interactions with friends/close relatives? I think the medium (limited means of expression) and the disconnected nature can impact discussions negatively.
> My life as a conservative is much better without social networks where they censor me non-stop, just Twitter and being very careful with what I write and how I write it I can more or less start conversations. Sooner or later I will leave Twitter too, it is a matter of finding another social network, free and open and nurtured by people.
Mmm...is it just conservative leaning posts that are shot down? The other camp might possibly say the same thing. Although from I'm inclined to agree with you. The problem I see with this approach is that we begin to censor ourselves to ensure we don't say anything that might accept anybody. Given the range of people one finds on social media and the modern sensitivities it seems to be very difficult to say anything of note without someone getting upset. Back to your point...should we not welcome people challenging our ideas? Do all interactions have to be nurturing? Could there be some value in locking horns (figuratively) with people who hold different views?
Face to face, yes. It's different. But when I did it online, close relatives and friends get outraged easily and they called me all kind of things, just because it's easier to do it through facebook or instagram, than face to face. The ideal place to show everyone you can insult others.
I doubt you have high enough conservative clout to be targeted for censorship. What examples do you have of Facebook, Google and Instagram specifically censoring you for your views?
> Sooner or later I will leave Twitter too, it is a matter of finding another social network, free and open and nurtured by people.
"Free and open" means a place where people of all views can have civilized conversations.
I wish you luck finding that bubble you're looking for. It probably does exist somewhere, just have to locate it.
I would have thought that it's the best time ever to be a conservative.
Seems to me that we are awash in conservative views, and that conservatives have had much more success in framing the debate than 'liberals' have.
As evidence I'd cite the fact that we are debating each and every issue that keep social conservatives up at night.
Because I have a bunch of fiscal conservatives on my Facebook and the only thing they post about is monetary policy. Nothing about abortions, marriage, immigration, or policing - the things social conservatives tend to drive themselves red in the face with.
It might be worth examining your own discourse to understand why you were being censored (or felt you were being censored). I’m not saying you’re doing anything wrong, I’m just wondering if you’ve ever reflected on what you post and how people react to it.
I lost 10 Twitter accounts because I argued with facts, without ad hominem. It's hard to state the truth if it goes agaisn't their bias. It's ok, it's their business.
I use social media to keep in contact with friends and can't relate to posts like this at all. I don't check often, rarely see the point in posting and generally feel bad for people that boast all the time about how great their life is.
It echoes my personal experience. I’ve gone without social media for extended periods - years. But I’ve always filled the boredom void with something else: HN, work, other websites.
Now I have a Facebook account but I have a very small number of friends and family I keep up with and I follow a small number of interests. I run out of things to scroll often and that’s okay.
Quitting Facebook changed basically nothing. Now I don't get done with a Facebook binge and feel like I just wasted 10-30 minutes of life. Alcohol was a totally different experience.
The one thing that I regret about not having Facebook is organizing events. I've missed a couple with good friends, because I simply don't have Facebook. As a software developer, I wonder if this is something I can change. Perhaps couple Facebook's API with Twilio's API and convert events into text messages. Perhaps a completely separate system that I have to urge my friends to adopt, simply for my inclusion.
Not sure what the solution is, but the problem itself isn't worthy of luring me back into Facebook.
Toying with facebook's api like you mentioned seems like an interesting idea though. I might play around with that when I get some free time.
A few weeks after, I got a call from my mom asking why I wasn't going to a party at my sister's. Turns out my sister only sent out invites to her party via Facebook.
If you don't do something about the background suffering that's leading you to the distraction, you'll just fill that void with something else.
In other words, if the social media companies are doing every trick in the book, it's not really amounting to much. If you were spending 5 hours a day on Facebook, it probably had a lot more to do with the general shape of your life and opportunities for actualization and socialization, than it had to do with intermittent reinforcement schedules.
And fundamentally what I'm saying is correct: it is mundane daily suffering that creates the void filled by social media and other distractive addictions, giving them a foothold in your life. This is orthogonal to any claims about whether social media is "actually" "addictive".
a) What kind of blanket has a zipper? I don’t think I have encountered any.
b) As the kind of person with several thousand unread emails, I don’t know why people bother? I can easily search for the important stuff, and visually scan the new pile a few times a day. I have better things to do with my life than manage my inbox, I don’t need that stress. Family, video games, basically anything else. It’s way more work than reward. I know a number of people this drives absolutely nuts, but I don’t get it.
This most probably refers to the "hole" which is used to insert the insert of the blanket, which, for most people at least, means that it should be at the "feet" end of the bed. It's just some blankets have zippers to cover the hole, others have buttons etc.
I have certainly never been duvet levels of fancy.
We used sleeping bags as blankets growing up because we were weird I guess.
... I've never seen a blanket with a zipper or buttons...
Some folks just aren't bothered by such things.
Or have better focus than I do.
I would add: Besides, it tastes awful when you start, but you do it anyway until you get familiar with it.
Just like the first days when discovering a social media without understanding it and doing dumb things such as posting the wrong stuff etc.
Go join a hobby club of some sort. Even if you're introverted. A structured "social" activity makes it super easy, approachable and everyone (in my experience) is welcoming.
Meetup.com is a pretty good place to start. Even the generic social groups are fun too. Try your local library and rec center too for get togethers near you. Or if you do have a decent friend circle already, do the leg work to coordinate something. Doing a structured social activity helps a lot. Even everyone bringing a random bottle of whiskey and watching a movie while you all try different whiskeys is better than being home alone.
Having a real social network you meetup with, makes it real easy to cut back on the addiction of social media.
my approach was to keep my facebook account, but strip it of everything except my name and a profile picture that says "i don't use fb, please text me". that way, people can still be reminded that i exist and they know i'm always a text message away.
I think we're on the cusp of an explosion of ad-free subscription sites. An ad-free subscription Facebook could provide all of the actual benefits of Facebook at a fraction of the cost. No need to employ hundreds of PhD machine-learning experts to analyze mouse movements if you're not trying to hyper-optimize ads.
The reality is that a subscription Facebook would take your money and sell a profile of you for ads on other sites.
Are ads the problem, or is mining and selling your personal information? I'm more afraid of the latter, and even if you're paying to remove display ads, your data is still going to be mined.
I'd like it to work, but I really don't see how it will.
She removed the FB app from her phone, so she only takes a stroll through that feed at night, while we're watching TV or whatever. She left Twitter entirely (well, her account is there, but she neither reads nor posts anymore).
I still participate in Twitter, though I've moved some of the prolific accounts I enjoy to Feedbin so my feed isn't impossible. It's about evenly split between "people I actually know" and "entertainers / writers I like who are clever." I don't go in for rage-Twitter or whatever.
I wish I could abandon FB entirely, but the network effects keep me there. The biggest one is cycling. I'm an avid road rider, and in my city pretty much ALL the coordination for cycling events (group rides, out of town trips, even happy hours) is on FB. If you leave FB, you're out of the loop.
So in a real sense, FB is both healthy AND unhealthy for me.
I still check it every other night on my computer/ipad at home, or I'll login from my phone if something big is happening. But not having the app on my phone has made a huge difference.
A minor aside, but it was almost pathetic how the first day after I deleted the app, without thinking, I would open my phone and click where the Twitter app used to be. It took me about 2 days to get over that habit. It truly is an addiction.
(edit: speling)
Sample size is small and it's anecdotal anyway, etc., but I do think the quality (of all of them) is much higher than the average I get through LinkedIn. I think it's certainly worth doing.
(And if you want to or have already written it in LaTeX, feel free to use the Docker image & CircleCI config I created for the purpose.)
Granted I do have other distractions and I'm not aiming to be a perfect productive robot but social networks do affect us in at least some negative ways.
Nevertheless there are cases where balanced usage is possible and you can reap many benefits while experiencing fewer drawbacks. I couldn't use it in a smart way though.
It only takes about a pack of cigarettes to get addicted; but it takes awhile to realize you're addicted.
I'd say the same thing is true with Facebook. It took me about a decade to realize I was addicted.
It'd be interesting to see the writer expound on his expectations for "good" and "bad". Speaking for myself, I go into social media with much different (i.e. lowered) standards than I do for other media, because the energy of consumption/opportunity cost is so low. I couldn't stand consuming 10 bad books/movies for every good one, but for tweets it's no problem. And of course there are ways to increase the signal-noise ratio (trimming the list of users you follow), but I generally like the serendipity of seeing what people are randomly tweeting. I don't feel the pressure to consume my timeline feed more than just a few swipes. And I find the Twitter default non-chronological sort does a decent job of surfacing interesting content for me.
Why are these articles so popular here?
If you think something you are doing is harmful, just stop doing it and don’t worry if it counts as Social Media. It is highly personal and will be different for everyone. For some people their WhatsApp usage is a net negative and they should stop. For other people it might not be.
I don't consider those to be social media either.
Yet many people have convinced themselves that no, twitter is the real world.
Once I realized the unfollow/mute button was there (not knowing it was, realizing it was there), it was a no-brainer to just unfollow toxic people.
And while there's FOMO, sorry, don't turn your social posts into a political propaganda piece/disgrace curating panel and I wouldn't have muted you
Follow the right people and it will be a much more smoother experience.
Also don't forget that it's not that interesting to blog about "I use social media moderately every day and I'm fine". Posts like this however are not the norm and thus they grab some attention.
Twitter is more for following music makers, labels and things like Boiler Room. Just for a daily doze of music and music news. I guess that's another form of addiction though...
Everything else, I just don't understand what people are complaining about and why it would require such an effort to quit. Don't like what you see, or don't find it useful? Just unfollow!
Most of the people are addicted to something and it might not be the worst thing in the world if you somehow keep it balanced
it's probably widely healthier on every metrics
Via private groups: our local Atari group does and we similarly have one for regional vintage computer gatherings, my Church does, one of my Lodges does, one of my gyms does and I know of several others in the area that do.
Via pages/events: some local tattoo shops that regularly have events, several local venues, numerous gyms and their various strength competitions will have all communication/announcements through an event page associated with the page of the gym hosting the event, etc.
It's effective because people know to go check Facebook for an update about the group/event, you don't have to worry about an email ending up in a spam filter or someone not seeing a flyer posted, you can post real-time updates like when our meeting place for the local Atari group was closed due to the weather instead of needing to text 2 dozen people, or when snow/ice necessitates a Church event being cancelled or when there are storms in the area and we can post what members need help.
Not that the thing they're talking about might not be a real effect, but holy hell
The thing is, he often operates pretty engaging interviews, and the Murray Gell-Mann amnesia is in full effect for all of them. He's basically talk radio, and despite the subject matter, he refrains from sophomoric shock jock goofing off, unlike Howard Stern.
He is willing to meet most guests in the middle, and he's got the gift of gab, but infrequently waxing blow hard, with a few exceptions. Most notably: gender identity politics. But other than that, he's plays pretty fair with everyone across the political spectrum (he's had more than a few gay/lesbian gender bending guests on), even if head count favors hypermasculine tropes, and satellite ideologies.
But while having serious pop-science guests on the show, fringe UFO theories are bread and butter among pro-wrestling enthusiasts that enjoy the art of kayfabe. And if you think it's all in good fun, hey that's fine, but Joe Rogan certainly seems to eat up junk science all the time.
His recent show with Bob Lazar, discussing Area 51 was filled with "what-if" tales of anti-gravity and synthetic Element 115, which was futuristic when it emerged in the 1980's but hasn't withstood the test of time. He talks of cyclotrons shooting anti-matter at government synthetsized Moscovium fuel pellets to produce free energy and, then by turns, anti-gravity, concluding in time travel and teleportation. Joe just gobbles it up like a wide-eyed Joe The Plumber, and the rest of the bullshit artistry piles up. Now, faster than light travel across megaparsecs is an open, probable reality, and so too, alien races from Zeta Reticuli. The Grays are really androids. They're at war with The Reptilians, which is why an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. Riiiiight...
But it's all faces and heels in an MMA match, nothing more. Unless you're not in on the joke.
Most people don't grok particle physics enough to be dismissive of the premise of magical (or rather, unstable) element 115. They don't get that it's just another blob of the usual nucleons that we're all so familiar with, no free gravity, no free lunch. That lights in the sky do not, a spaceship, make. Oh well...
There’s also an argument to be made about his “platforming” of arguable kooks and so on, though it’s clearly preferable to entertain unconventional ideas than to dismiss them out of hand, the cumulative payoff of an unconventional idea being so very great.
Flying saucers are always good entertainment, though not good enough to paper over the fact that half of that Bob Lazar “documentary” was footage of a tattooed guy shouting into his smartphone for the benefit of like three different GoPros.
The open secret of physics is that nobody really knows WTF is going on. Particle theory is obviously a rough approximation, and string theory and quantum theory have been effectively stalled for long enough that it’s increasingly apparent that the complexity of the Universe has more moving parts than the working memory of the human brain. Humility is called for. “We know” ... yeah, okay.
E.g. coding until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and only then running code and testing.
