a) I don't need to know about the project my distant friend is working on, or the food anyone is making or eating* .
b) A solution that existed before Facebook were X-Mas cards. So, I think that's what I'll be doing when I no longer see my parents and close friends daily.
* On a side note, my mom calls my grandma for an hour or so weekly and they frequently talk about what they cooked and exchange recipes, but that's more personal than a Facebook/Instagram post.
If most of your friends only post once a week or so you might just see 5 or 10 posts in a day. And usually it's somewhat interesting.
Not having the app and staying logged out by default also helps. I'll just scroll through facebook once every couple of days now, instead of the old "10 times a day". And I don't feel like I'm missing much except for being a bit late to reply to event invites.
Facebook is just a never-ending stream of shit I don't really care about or need to hear about. The time I don't spend on Facebook is vastly better spent than the time I spend on Facebook, even when that time is just watching whatever dumb TV show that helps me unwind (as opposed to reading nonsensical commentary from random people I don't know uttering all the manner of stupidity)
I haven't quit it per se, but I the only thing I really use it for anymore is organising my monthly board-game night with friends.
As such I find the things Facebook does to try and pull you in to be extremely annoying. Pushing a notification at me claiming I have all kinds of "new" shit I need to look at when in reality it's just a recycling of shit I ignored months ago is, frankly, pretty hideous.
You know what, posting this has actually inspired me to go in and do a nice big ol purge...
Edit: corrected geographic confusion
Really, what is the point of a post like yours other than to negate the post that came before it by articulating why you don't care about the issue raised?
I have to agree, as someone that quit many years ago and hasn't looked back since. I still communicate with my long distance relatives, just not publicly. I use a combination of Google Hangouts, email, and just plain old phone calls to keep up to date with their lives. I share photos daily, via google photos, directly to those that I want to see them. And my family, who happen to use Facebook, know to send me photos using other methods.
This way, I only get information/photos that is meant for me to see. Not just every day stuff that's going on in everyone's life. To me, that's not important to my relationships, and is really a waste of my time that I can be using with my family in my house. The interactions I do share, though, is extremely important to me.
This seems like an inconvenience you impose on everyone else to do things Facebook handles natively.
I suspect over time we will learn that Facebook and the like is actually poor at maintaining social relationships in a meaningful way. It seems like it works but I maintain my social network dine without it. And yes I am fine having far fewer, but quality interactions. I don't think I impose any cost on my friends and family. If we can't chat once in a while via voice or video we just aren't that important....
Most people are familiar with Dunbar's number, which expresses the size of a total community. That's not the number of important relationships, but essentially the number of total relationships you can juggle.
In your life, should it be a reasonably long one, you'll experience about a half-million waking hours. If you get to know 10,000 people in your life, the total time you can dedicate to any one of them is about two days (48 hours).
In The Mythical Man Month, Fred Brooks notes the dynamics of team communications, which rapidly develop complexity after about 5-6 members. Programming teams, unless the work can be modularised to the extent teams have full independence generally lose effectiveness as they're scaled above this level.
The Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China -- effectively the inner cabal of government -- has ranged from 5-9 members, and is presently 7. (Each of them represents the interests of about 185 million Chinese.) Again, tight working groups simply do not scale past a large size.
I've been digging at various elements of this question for a few years, largely informally. But the clear point is that your relationship time is limited, that close relationships take time and investment, and that as attention is spread, the nature of those relationships tends to deteriorate.
(I'm not aware of specific literature on this offhand though I'm certain it exists.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
From the wiki: Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships.
If you're important to them, then people will do whatever they need to keep in touch with you. Inconvenience is when they don't care enough to keep in contact with you. While in a perfect world everyone would accept your impose line of communication, in your case Facebook, everyones preference is different.
don't misunderstand i log in about once a month but because i have other platform (and because i'm terrible at keeping in touch), but other than political or idelogical reasons why not use it for your family convenience?
Put another way, if your family/friends can't be bothered to actually communicate with you one-on-one about things in their lives because it's less convenient than posting to everyone, then those relationships must not be very valuable. To those of us who care about maintaining quality relationships, convenience is a non-factor. I would much rather have lunch with a friend a few times a year than read their stream-of-life facebook posts on any kind of regular basis, even though the former is several orders of magnitude less convenient.
Moreover there is a great difference in motivations and convenience; facebook is convenient for many people as a fact and there is nothing wrong with keeping contacts with acquaitances
Yes, but isn't it a bit ironic to say you don't use Facebook because it wastes your time, and then expect others to spend extra time communicating with you?
Surely the question is not about what you absolutely need or not. You could strip you life back to only necessities. Some people might find that fulfilling, but I suspect many wouldn't.
I think the question is more of cost/benefit. Do the benefits of something sufficiently outweigh their costs.
I've come to the conclusion that this round of social media is possibly the worst incarnation of technology in the past 30 years. Hopefully the next version is less shitty.
You're literally doing a cost/benefit analysis.
You seem to be assuming that such an analysis implies there there has to be substantial benefits, or something like that. (I'm not commenting here on whether they do or don't exist in the case of Facebook)
1. Take person literally to a fault in order to create a counterpoint.
2. Say obviously true, yet embarrassingly vague things to defend that counterpoint.
3. Respond "I'm not talking about that" when any possibility of nuance would enter the discussion.
I'd even be tempted to speculate that those of us who aren't Facebook addicts are the ones who are able to socialise just fine without it, thank you very much, if it weren't for the fact that I know plenty of good-living, fun-loving Facebookers too.
Weekends, we went to someone's house and just hung around all day. Which house was a rotating thing, so nobody was stuck hosting all the time. Adults sat around in the kitchen drinking wine or whatever, and kids ran in feral packs through the neighborhood.
I was born in Australia in the late 70s and the picture you paint of pre/post Facebook doesn't ring true to my experience.
* Yes, I know that I can set the target group but I never set it up and is too much work for just a small posting
- Tag a friend who ...
- Quizzes
- Inspirational quotes of any kind
- Social game results of any kind (or invites for that matter)
In my own feed I had a few culprits who were largely responsible for this noise. I think only in one case did I have to resort to unfollow (although it's an option). It seems that less than 20 sites/pages are responsible for the vast bulk of these. Or perhaps that's just the case out of my friends. I really don't know. Either way after hiding these posts and choosing to see no more posts from whatever the source page was, my news feed is pretty clean.
Others post a lot of BS politics, which I kinda hate. The more ignorant ones (we're talking family here) I've even baited when bored. But I know people who have started using Instagram to avoid the nonsense politics (even though some of these same people like to share inspirational quotes /sigh).
If you're interested in say family photos and updates then Instagram may be a purer experience for you. Assuming who you're interested in posts to Instagram that is.
As for your stuff not getting shared/liked, well that's a whole other thing. Disclaimer: I work for Facebook. Only for a short time thus far but long enough that I've been involved with a bunch of research on groups. A lot of people take groups pretty seriously. One admin I heard speak was talking about how he always made an effort to make people feel included and heard like if someone's post wasn't getting a lot of comments they'd go out of their way to comment on it and include others so that person felt like part of the community.
So I don't know what your interests are but I'm pretty sure at this point there's a group for basically everything. In the right group you may find more sense of community and less of a barrier to posting and sharing because of good admins and just the common interest you have by being in that group.
I don't know what it is exactly, but the Facebook stream fills me with an anxious loathing -- I even find that shade of blue repulsive.
Interesting, but I am not even looking for a community, I just don't want to put a post out there that will be "unsuccessful". It doesn't bother me if I only get a few likes, it bothers me that all my friends see how my post is "failing". I am not in panic but it puts me off from posting. Am I the only one with those thoughts? Facebook without the like mechanism would cater to me much more.
Whatever posts I make on Facebook are usually things I genuinely want to share, whether it's photos while I'm traveling, or link to an article that I find really meaningful. Some people will see it, they might even like it but not press Like, I don't really care. It's something that I wanted to share and I know it reached someone, and that's all I wanted to do. It could be an article that explains really well what Net Neutrality means and why people should care, or it could be an amazing waterfall in Iceland.
Incidentally, I subscribe to certain subreddits about hobby topics (like Dragon Ball Z), and whenever I make posts on them, I (irrationally) care more about how many upvotes (or worse, downvotes) my posts get than I care about my posts' "success" on Facebook. So maybe I do know what you mean, but I see Facebook differently (and more personally and less social-media-y) than everyone else does.
I don't know much about Facebook's feed because I don't use it a ton, but can't you just unfollow the people who post this stuff? I'd imagine after doing this just a handful of times, your feed would become a lot better tuned to the kind of stuff you actually want to see.
The ~once a month I do end up scrolling through my Facebook feed, I find a pretty healthy amount of interesting things from those friends of mine that are interesting. The majority of these aren't even links, they're actual posts.
Actually I did just a month ago but now my feed is quite empty. It seems the people I am interested in stopped posting or even deleted their accounts. I wonder whether and how FB is working on getting those back.
Shitposting has helped me personally get over that. I share stuff I find interesting and fun. If people like it, wonderful, if they don’t, eh it was a shitpost anyway what do I care.
The reasons I keep doing it are in part the same as everyone, it’s great when a little thing you found cool garners some attention, much dopamine, or brings out some stimulating discussion, much learn. But when it doesn’t do any of those, it still helps me better remember and notice those little moments in life that otherwise pale into the background. A form of intentionalness and inthemomentness or whatever the zen buzzwords are these days, if you will.
Strangely enough, I get more comments and questions IRL than I do likes/comments on Facebook. Seems people love to watch and read, but don’t lik publicly exposing themselves as having done so.
I have a once close friend who moved out to Oregon from the east coast. I talk to him every two years when somebody dies at home. Knowing that his kid won the pinewood derby doesn’t give us anything more in common.
Whatever it is, it’s not a substitute for real two-way interaction. Meaningful relationships don't survive on impersonal status updates broadcast to a general audience.
If it involves communication back and forth (e.g. telling each other what happened at work) that’s something. If it’s scrolling passively through status updates or photos, or posting updates on yourself to nobody in particular, it’s junk food.
All my close friends, I direct message them almost everyday.
I got Facebook in 2006, when it was only college kids (and some high school kids), and my usage throughout college was 99% photo sharing and event planning. 10 years later, my usage of Facebook is......99% photo sharing, event planning, and messaging.
At no point did Facebook launch a feature that pointed a gun at your head and forced you to mindlessly scroll through your feed. Blaming the product/platform for people's unhealthy use of it is like blaming dessert or alcohol for existing: I avoid both of those things a lot more than most people do, but I also wouldn't want a world that completely lacked them.
I can smoke cigarettes responsibly. One every few weeks, which I have researched and believe does not negatively impact my health. In fact, it provides a moment of stress relief that outweighs possible negatives.
How do you feel about cigarette legislation? They've never pointed a gun and forced people to smoke. (Which, by the way, is an awful metric for whether something should be banned. Except for gun pointing.)
> Which, by the way, is an awful metric for whether something should be banned
Dude, seriously, _what are you talking about_? At no point did I mention anything about banning Facebook or anything else. I don't know whose post your comment is supposed to be responding to, but just FYI you clicked "reply" under mine for some reason.
The point I am making is that "Facebook use" and "unhealthy Facebook use" are not the same thing, and the tendency I am criticizing is writing articles about the latter and bait-and-switching them to be about the former. I can use my phone to call a drug dealer, I can use my car to hit a pedestrian, I can use my computer to harass people online: and yet nobody considers those to be indictments of the overall concept of phones, cars, or computers.
--- Leaving aside the fact that your cigarette example doesn't make any sense:
Which cigarette legislation in particular are you thinking of? I'm of the same mind as the rest of society when it comes to kids being protected and having less autonomy in their decision-making, so not being able to advertise cigarettes to kids is obviously good. I'm not opposed to Pigovian taxes to balance externalities, especially when harm scales with amount of use and has significant enough externalities (like second-hand smoke), so the taxes on cigarettes don't bother me either. I think that there's some scope for paternalistic legislation of activities that don't harm others, but I think the bar has to be pretty damn high and pretty damn robust for that.
I think a good metaphor is after you've broken up with someone, it can be healthier not to hold onto to a lot of photos, memorabilia, and so on associated with your ex. It's not that you are throwing your ex away; you're making room for a new person.
I've sometimes observed people are so caught up in the lives of old school friends, old colleagues, family and such that they don't have room for new, local relationships.
I think many people can use Facebook in a healthy way. The same can be said of alcohol, video games, reddit, and Internet news feeds. But, for many others, all of these can become damaging addictions. A lot depends on the individual at hand.
To give just one example - in the past, you might have gotten birthday e-mail from a few people. You would have a sense that these people thought about you enough to pay attention to your birthday and contact you. Likewise, if you cared about someone enough, you could do the same and signal that you thought of them highly as a friend.
But now you have Facebook asking everyone your connected with to leave a birthday message on your birthday. I've seen people who's Facebook accounts seem to clearly be dead, but they keep getting the same dozen birthday greetings each year from the same people who actually don't care enough about the person to notice they're no longer on.
And since the Facebook birthday seems to be the way a lot of people think about their friend's birthdays these days, not participating means that you're going to get much fewer birthday greetings than you would have in the pre-Facebook days.
Again, this is just one example, but I think it does a decent job of illustrating how Facebook has supplanted a lot of more substantive communication and replaced it with copious amounts of junk food communication.
This implies that one replaced the other, or that one can be brought about by eliminating the other.
IMNSHO, this is a form of false nostalgia: I saw how much of my parent's generation lived: for most people, social networks haven't replace real world socializing.
Sure, TV as a time waster also existed. And most people did spend some nights watching it. But it was not all night, every night. At least not for the majority of people.
I'm pretty sure I'm doing more of that with Facebook than I would without it. Hiking trips, cycling trips, spontaneous picnics, parties, trips to a concert - Facebook makes it easier to organise those things, and means you stay in better touch with people with more common interests. Pre-Facebook it was easy to do the common things that a critical mass of people liked, but much harder to do any kind of slightly niche social activity.
The time that I spend on Facebook is time that would have been wasted otherwise (mainly on my commute). It's not taking away from quality time.
Do the math. 17 hours per day with the TV not turned on. And even the hours it was on doesn't mean the whole family was watching. Let also consider how many people watched the news every night, and stayed up for Carson. And an hour of TV after school was probably the norm. Soap operas also were popular in the 80s. Tack on an hour of MTV somewhere in the day, and that just about accounts for the average even before we consider how we spent our evenings.
There was plenty of time for all kinds of things.
Then you only got 16h left...minus 7h of watching TV leaves 9h...most people work 8h and in 1985 had a 40m or so commute to work...if you are still counting: we just hit about 0!
Sorry...that’s how statistics work. That not to discount cute edge cases of families playing cards with their neighbors and having ice cream...it’s just not the reality for the majority of the population :(
I dunno, maybe pick up the phone and have an actual conversation?
> My parents, like most baby boomers I suspect, weren’t going out in the evenings to see friends in person.
What the... what is this? It's like some bizarre propaganda written by Zuck himself.
> That’s what Facebook is replacing, and it’s a huge improvement.
Yeah, better to observe your friends from a distance like some kind of science project instead of having genuine interactions with them. Great improvement.
Your TV comment reminds me that one of the biggest shows was "Cheers" where you kinda get to feel like your hanging out with people your age.
I think this is just biased on beeing used to the 'Facebook way' outside of this bubble your arguments just sound strange. (like why would I care what they cook or how their children look right now?)
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Interacted with remote friends via the telephone
People in your situation before phones probably:
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Interacted with remote friends via the mail/telegram
3) Didn't have that many remote friends due living in an era that provided less opportunities for long-distance travel
People in your situation before telegrams/mail:
1) Socialised with local friends
2) Didn't usually have any remote friends due living in an era that provided less opportunities for long-distance travel and/or communications
I think if you will do some reading you'll discover that life proceeded quite handily prior to the availability of long distance communications and/or travel to the general populace.
Is it really tho? I'm not even conservative, I just think that there's certainly something to be said about a social life focused on the kids and home life, instead of replacing that with hollow attention seeking on Facebook.
What it's being replaced with? People who post pictures of their children, which to many is often the whole extent of the interaction with their kids; Just another prop to collect likes on FB.
I admit that's just my anecdotal personal experience from a really bad case, I still think it's a very relevant angle to this as many people do use Facebook as a form of escapism from reality.
This probably couldn't have happened without Facebook proper (now my parents are on WhatsApp), but I think mobile chat groups are a much better form-factor for the type of communication you want.
That's what fentanyl and oxys are replacing, and it's a huge improvement.
The frame of reference of TV might not be the right one. I think the counterfactual scenario is a better comparison point. We should consider what the internet and social media COULD have been had it not been monopolized by a handful of closed, ad-tech motivated platforms.
The internet before Facebook was still a social place that fostered connections between people. I made friends all over the world through UseNet, IRC, PHPBB forums, personal blogs like Xanga or MySpace, and other such platforms. But those weren't conducive to collecting data or serving advertising, so we they fell behind on investment, development, and market penetration.
Even Facebook didn't used to focus on a feed on informations shoved in your face, that was the ad platform they built on top of it. It used to be a collection of personal profile pages, essentially a mini-bio to look people up on. They had associated forum groups you could make/sign up for to socialize with individual groups of people. They've since turned those from conversational groups into "pages" that you subscribe to, better to have content pushed at you but less good at fostering conversation among people.
There are still good group-chatting platforms for actual friends to talk to each other. I keep in touch with my family around the world through WhatsApp (since colonized by Facebook natch). I maintain friendships with people from my MMO days through GroupMe. And I hear the kids today are all about Discord. These all facilitate more human-to-human interactions than platforms like Facebook or Instagram do, IMO.
Discussion forums maintain a persistent sense of identity for the participants so you interact foremost with a person and secondarily with whatever they happen to be saying at a given time on a given topic. Stuff like Facebook privileges content first, so the focus is on the message itself and secondarily on the person making it (good for marketing, bad for socializing).
Even discussion forums like HN or Reddit focus on content over identity. The old PHP forums had avatars and garish signatures and a whole bunch of other visual cues to give each speaker a distinct identity. Everything anyone said is strongly associated with an individual so you build up reputation and identity over time, which is essential for developing a form of community. Platforms like this make one person's comments indistinguishable from any other, so it becomes really hard to develop human connections with anyone.
You don't even need avatars and visual cues. IRC didn't have those, but what it did have was a requirement that someone had to BE IN THE ROOM to see what you're saying. So it's a vibe that's more like a conversation in a pub. You actually have to be aware of who is around and listening when you talk rather than screaming into a whirlwind of activity and seeing who replies. It's cozier. You're aware that you're talking specifically to a group of people that is around, which causes you to put yourself in their shoes when you talk rather than being all solipsistic.
And all of that is before we even get into the gross KPI-derived metrics (likes, shares, ratios, etc.) for evaluating our contributions that Facebook-style social media does which is a whole separate and disgusting thing.
<naravara has left the room>
What did people in my situation do before Facebook? My parents, like most baby boomers I suspect, weren’t going out in the evenings to see friends in person. They’d sit down in front of the TV after work. Their social lives were narrow, focused heavily on home life and the kids. That’s what Facebook is replacing, and it’s a huge improvement.