Somewhat related -- and boy I never thought I'd say this! -- some stuff started changing in my life for the better recently and I decided to get back on Facebook and get involved again (I hadn't deleted my account or anything, I just hadn't posted or interacted in a very long time). I joined a bunch of groups that interested me and more importantly for me, I started making an effort to like and comment on posts of extended family that I rarely get to see in real life.

It's been REALLY positive. Just last night, we had a huge family thread going sharing our family pasta sauce recipes. It.... made me really happy! Now at the somewhat-annual extended family get-together, we'll have something in common to talk about.

I know it's definitely not a substitute for face-to-face interaction, but in letting go of my prejudices just a little, I've found a nice bit of additional joy in my life and hopefully made other people smile at the same time.

I feel like your description of Facebook is what all the employees who worked on it circa 2004 were envisioning it would become. It seemed so groundbreaking yet so serene. A brand new way to do the same things.

I wish we could have all the good without the bad, but I suppose that's what makes this field so insanely hard.

It's just like most things in life: It's good if you consume the right amount.

The platform has also changed. Now it is ad-infested and algorithmically crushed in the pursuit of profit to something which actually discourages these interactions.

Ie, if the algorithms fail to make you over-use it

...and ignore the externalities...

I think the exact same thing too. I know I'm in a relative minority in being able to keep my Facebook privacy settings in check, for example. It's a really tough problem.

It's easy to have the good without the bad by unfollowing people and pages that post bad content.

Woah, that is a pretty compelling story to me. Makes me think about Facebooking a little.

One hint I can give you is that joining groups seemed to be the thing that really turned my news feed into something else. I've joined groups related to game programming, music production, Arduino and a bunch of others related to local music gigs (plus some support groups that I feel I can contribute to) and now there's actually a lot of interesting (and pleasantly technical) stuff in my feed. The other effect this had is that the ads I see are a lot better as well.

On a related note : That’s also how I use Twitter - carefully curated. I’m more of an occasional user, a lurker more than a tweeter. And the resulting recommendations, ads, and tweets are relevant and useful to me in the topics I like. It’s not perfect but it makes general discovery - breadth and depth - meaningful to me, whenever I go thru my feed.

If you mostly consume twitter I recommend trying tweet deck (which might be owned by twitter now?).

Its UI makes far more sense for consumption IMO.

What do you follow on Twitter? I’d like to use it more

I concur. I would also like to suggest voluntary service. Every time I've participated in a service project, I've come away with reduced anxiety and an increased appreciation for the people around me. I discovered what I should be focusing on.

One place to find service opportunities is https://www.justserve.org/ . There's an app too. It's worth a look.

This is exactly how I feel, which is also why it is so difficult for me: I'm in a long distance relationship because of work.

Same here. We met and dated for a year, it was lovely. Then I took a job 1 hour away, 50% higher pay and a promotion, but the relationship does suffer a bit from that 1 hour drive.

But then isn't it reverse time anxiety? You become scared of not being able to spend more time with them.

Yeah, but it's deleterious to my societal productivity. Like I'm happier spending my time with my friends. But I have less of that burning desire to build. I think I might actually be content to live just happily on the beach with the wealth I have now, so long as everyone I love is nearby and we frequently meet.

But obviously I don't want to be content with that.

In the short term you’ll move less bricks for sure.

But in the long term, I wonder if you as a group will be able to discover movable bricks that you wouldn’t have seen or cared about on your own.

And maybe those bricks are both more valuable to move and more likely to successfully get to their destination, because you’re doing so as a group not as an individual.

Not sure.

It's not obvious to me why you wouldn't be content with that.

Living on the beach with the people you love sounds pretty fantastic to me.

What's the end goal? Amass more wealth? Build a legacy?

Overcoming the desire to build a legacy is something I struggle with

> What's the end goal? Amass more wealth? Build a legacy?

Grass is always greener...

The world will be fine if you don't build

Well what do you want, to be happy or to be productive?

Happy people don't make great art.

I used to believe that. These days, I'm certainly happier making art than whatever it was people wanted to pay me to do on a computer.

Why can't happy people make great art? Do we also think that sober people can't write great novels, or people who survive past age 27 can't make great music? I can think of countless counterexamples to all of these. Just because there were miserable great artists in the past doesn't necessarily mean you have to be miserable to be a great artist.

> Happy people don't make great art.

This is kinda just a myth as far as I can tell. There is a often romanticized relationship between art and suffering, because sure, some art is created as a way to relieve suffering. But it's by no means mandatory, and at one point I've even been in the spot (like many many others) of being afraid to get help for mental health issues because of what it might do to the work I was creating. This is how the myth does harm. The longer people "trade" health for art, the more they put themselves at risk in service of this misguided idea. It's no exaggeration to say that people have died as a result of believing that treating their depression would diminish their art. A person in that situation has to win every day of their lives, while depression only has to win once.

But they're happy.

I experience the opposite. Meeting social needs is a motivating factor. If I'm lonely I'm less productive at my leisure.