> I wish I had a clever idea for a solution to this because I really think the world deserves an open social platform that not only engages people socially, but provides the social lubricant to enable people to form online/offline clubs and interact with each other in a high-bandwidth so we can use the internet to teach each other and create fun things with each other.
It's called a coffee shop.
We need to get off the curated online experiences and back to interacting with people physically. It's vital. A therapist friend of mine says that most of the clients he sees that are teens or in their 20s have poor interaction skills in person and social phobia. Those lead to incredible rejection anxiety. I know from my own experience that some of the best conversations I've had with strangers have been people in their 50s and above who know how to engage in casual conversation and find joy in it rather than angst.
Go to a coffee shop and talk to a stranger. We should all do more of that. It's healthy.
And now everything is much more addictive, and mobile wasn't even that common in 2010. And now we have virtual reality, which when you read the research some scary side effects surface - stuff like "derealization" - basically having a consistent feeling that real life isn't real. Or stuff about ads having deep brainwashing like power.
And almost nobody is working to solve those issues.
[1]https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/born-love/201005/shocke...
Thanks for the article. It gives me a lot to think about (after fact checking, of course).
I think you underestimate the anxiety people experience when they go out. I see it when people come out to my meetups, so I make it a point to introduce myself and introduce them to other people.
When I say I wish I had a clever idea to offset the effects of Facebook, I really mean to say, I wish I had a clever idea encouraged people to go out, talk to strangers and make lifelong friends on a Facebook scale.
Worse, the more you connect in the real world the less interesting passive browsing becomes. Sure, you can still use FB to IM, but that's far less profitable for them.
<click><click><click><click>...
The onus is on you to call them, which is already hard enough when both people could initiate the call. It becomes a much rarer event unless concerted effort is made.
So until 'the next big social thing' comes along, I'm essentially out in the cold in many respects. But it's a price I'm willing to pay. I simply can't bring myself to support them in any way. The veneer of goodwill is very easy to see through with their constant manipulation tactics. And besides, it's not all bad; it hasn't stopped me from being invited to major events in my social circle. It's nice not to feel beholden to a website, which was the case when I was a member.
The psychological effects are yet to be studied in depth, I'm sure.
The most damning thing about the Facebook plague is that it's causing most of it's users to completely forget that other means of communication exists. The friction to send an email to, or god-forbid actually call, your non-Facebook friends is now simply too high that most people no longer do it. Email is now just a place where all those unread eBay and Amazon receipt notifications go.
Personally, I know I can walk away from FB any time I choose, however right now the cost of the social disconnect is too high.
Maybe the answer is to just accept we have no real friends any more, and just log out.
A quick explanation: immediate family, you would have known without FB's involvement. Closest friends, same. Wider friends you see less often, maybe might have been mentioned at some point during the pregnancy, you can mark it off on a calendar and guesstimate arrival of baby. Friends you never see who've had a baby? Your definition of friend is stretched very thinly at that point, even if you were once close friends. Knowing/not knowing at that point makes very little difference to your ongoing relationship, particularly if it wasn't mentioned once during the previous 9 months.
I agree that email has become a second class citizen to social media sites, despite it being completely open and able to conduct group chats (albeit slightly painfully) for events etc.
The only thing many people are waiting for at this point is a suitable replacement for private, widely-used social comms that encourages more human interaction, without the manipulation and monetisation of relationships.
Didn't take a "hiatus", just straight up closed my account about eight years ago.
People who matter still make the effort, and I find the personalized interaction much more rewarding.
I always go back to the example of some friends of mine. They got engaged. Everyone else found out on Facebook. They got that news while they were pooping, sitting on the couch watching TV, etc.
I found out a few days later than everyone else... when they told me in person. And I got to be excited with them. And hug her and shake his hand.
I like that way better.
That a person's social activity should be dictated by a single website, in this world of ubiquitous social media, portable phones with hours of pre-paid talk-time... The effect may be more pronounced in the generation who've grown up solely on social media, but it certainly exists as a phenomenon.
Whether the 'social contact' referred to by your friend is genuine in-person social contact or vague 'online contact' will probably depend on their age.
Us pre-80s/90s kids had phonecalls, 'knocking on the person's door to see if they were in', postcards and 'meeting at the usual spot at the usual time' social habits. Now a lazy click to 'like' something posted to boost the poster's ego counts as socialising. That would be fine if we actually met up and spoke from time to time but that sadly is not the case.
I thought at one point the younger generation had started to push back against screentime, but I seem to have been mistaken for the moment. Perhaps in another few years, with a bit of luck.
Now, if Facebook manages to release a successful augmented reality platform, they will have no qualms with you going out in the real world. If you're camping in the woods, that's just a nice opportunity for a singalong app to place an ad for you and your buddies. If you're going to the movies, that's an opportunity for Coke to subtly remind you that you can get Coke points on your way.
It would be that Facebook has an incentive to get you out into the real world if they can influence where you go and spend your money. There are many ways you can do that without augmented reality.
Based on eating out, I can say that groups of people still use their phones to connect to Facebook, even with large groups of "Friends" IRL.
1) Log in to Facebook to look at picture of friend's new baby. This is nice.
2) Start browsing around, seeing what other friends have been up to. Oh neato. ... an hour later
3) Looking up people I knew in high school but haven't kept up with. ... another hour later
4) Holy crap, where'd the morning go? I can't do this. Shut it down.
5) Wait ~12 months for next event that draws me to the site. Repeat.
And then once every few months, I decide to dig in to someone's FB page/photos since I haven't thought about them in a long time and what to see what they've been up to.
I get enjoyment out of it. I don't understand why the people who hate it, hate it so much.
It's principally designed to profile people. This makes it extremely dangerous and a powerful weapon against you. Got nothing to hide? It doesn't matter if someone has something to gain. In the future, someone could easily generate a list based on your political party of preference. I can think of many scenarios how I could aggregate and abuse such information.
Facebook is also one of the least sincere communications I can think of. Many comments here reflect it .. "friends didn't know I was gone". They're not true friends. My friends all speak in person or on the phone. We catch up for coffee, lunch, dinner or as a social outing. I can't even imagine how people equate the synthetic "had a baby" tag (or whatever FB uses) even constitutes worthy communication. You didn't know a friend had a baby? Not a friend. They don't want to send you photos if you're not on FB? Not a friend.
It's fascinating to watch FB users chat online or see them in real life. It looks synthetic and there is a significant emphasis on minutia "[chuckle] my brother just had KFC for lunch".. To which I reply "aaannnnddd??" "Oh, he normally eats Subway".. "Aaannnnddd?" "Oh, you just don't get it!". That's true, I don't.
It is odd that we make so much noise about secret courts and encryption impacting privacy, yet, we give our privacy away freely on FB. To quote OMC, "how bizarre". I don't think I'll ever get it.
[0]: I really struggle with faces and figured Facebook would be perfect for practicing.
[1]: If anyone knows if someone has made a game out of names and faces on the social graph I'd be interested. If not gøfeel free to steal that idea.
I do agree it'd be a useful app.
It's a "novelty addiction". They weren't the first, it's just its content is closer and more relevant to you since it's people you know. The feeling when you find something new gives you a pleasurable dopamine hit, so you're constantly looking for more.
Same can be said for people addicted to reddit, HN, Twitter, etc.
I'm now placing the onus on going back in and actively going to the feeds of friends and family that I care about; as opposed to the mindless thumbing through the feed.
However, I still think you're onto something. Social media has figured out how to really, at a deep level, grab our attention and keep it.
But it doesn't work on me because I'm not a very social person. I'm pretty far on the 'recluse' spectrum.
For me the beginning of the end was when Facebook created the Newsfeed and started "optimizing" it based on your behavior. Suddenly, content was no longer chronological (including photos in a single post!), all articles were click-bait, and most posts were "on behalf of the user". For example, "So-and-so has liked Pepsi!", "So-and-so has expressed interest in this local event!", etc. All content seems designed to provide the illusion that everyone is always on Facebook. And you should be too!
Luckily, I've found a workaround that fits my workflow well. I'm still a pretty avid RSS (GNU Emacs / Gnus) user, so I added the people I care about to my "Close Friends" group, subscribed to the RSS feed, and read it on my own time. Posts maintain chronological order and are 100% text (unless I choose to click on them). Most importantly, when I'm done sifting through the notifications, I'm done. Since I'm not on the website, Facebook can't manipulate me into wasting my time.
With my luck, they're shut down this feature in the near future.
I stopped using it a few months ago, don't really miss it at all. If you find you're missing someone whom you normally interacted with on Facebook, give them a call.
It looks like someone tried to log into your account on April XX at X:XXxm using an unknown device. Your account is safe; we just wanted to make sure it was you who tried to log in from somewhere new.
If you don't think this was you, please log into Facebook so we can walk you through a few steps to keep your account safe.
Haha nice try Zuck!
So like Meetup but with a stronger online discussion platform?
I strongly agree.
I also believe that it is very easy to disturb their black magic.
Ever since I started using Stylish to customize the interface, I find myself less compulsively drawn to it. My version of Facebook remplaces all the blue for red hues and adds a wallpaper. I find that this makes Facebook more tiring to use.
This must be why Facebook is so against browser apps that change their features even when it's only minimally.
Ever since I added the following entry in my /etc/hosts file, I find myself less compulsively drawn to it:
127.0.0.2 facebook.com www.facebook.comEdit: Also, Hacker News has built-in features to do this. Look up "noprocrast" in your profile! You have "maxvisit" and "minaway" you can use to keep you from coming here too much!
I've always explained the phenomenon of gossip rags as a surrogate for our innate need to be social. Rather than engaging in actual social scenarios (which can carry social risks), many people have fulfilled our social needs with television shows and gossip rags. Celebrities have become a surrogate community members for many people, and I suspect Facebook ups that by one by creating a platform where you can interact with friends, celebrities and strangers in an environment that mitigates most (not all) risks.
I wish I had a clever idea for a solution to this because I really think the world deserves an open social platform that not only engages people socially, but provides the social lubricant to enable people to form online/offline clubs and interact with each other in a high-bandwidth so we can use the internet to teach each other and create fun things with each other.
Maybe it's only a matter of bandwidth, transistors and time.