Does everyone have to be social via social networks nowadays in order to be considered “social”?
Can’t we just be social, you know, face to face? And then just leave online media to news/facts?
It’s so weird to me that in order to be considered “social” it’s not enough to just be social in person.
Have we really come to that?
I think about this a lot. My hypothesis is that social status is increasingly, and will be increasingly, dictated by your "follower" count. How many eyeballs you can attract. Even worse, in my opinion, it will be the primary driver of people's perceptions of you. Basically how good are you at getting attention?
It seems a bit ridiculous to say, but I observe the "high status" or high follower count people networking more and more exclusively with each other. On the other side I see traditionally "high status" people developing their online persona - whether its a youtube channel, twitter account, substack, podcast, etc.
We are in the middle of a societal restructuring (that much is obvious) in a way that the internet is now injecting itself right into the middle of social hierarchy and relationships.
Can’t we just be social, you know, face to face? And then just leave online media to news/facts?
Of course you can. You just can't claim to have "a good social media experience" if that's what you're doing (as rg111 did). If you're removing all the social parts from social media then you're not have a "social media experience" at all. You're doing something else. That might be good, and you might enjoy it and find it useful, but it's not sociable if all you're doing is consuming filtered content about a topic you're interested in.
Rejecting the social aspects of social media is, by definition, antisocial. That doesn't reflect on how sociable you are in other contexts though.
You don't have to be social online, but getting angry at people for socializing on a social network is definitely anti-social.
People have spoken over the phone and have had pen pals for a very long time, so "we have come to that" a long time ago.
If uncle Joe keeps talking about conspiracy theories in family gatherings, I'll keep away as much as possible.
I hang withy friends on Discord. we talk daily and game together.
I never implied that being social over social media is wrong.
The GP, however, was implying that by not engaging in social media (or, using your examples, phone or pen pal) is antisocial, which I argue is wrong.
If engaging in social media is the only way to be social — or, to put it another way, if by not using social media socially you’re considered anti-social — then Facebook et al. have won.
Disagree. The commenter above may as well lead a healthy social lifestyle AFK. It's just that he/she does not want to be bombarded superficial stuff. There is already too much information presented to us on social media, one can not humanly consume them all, so might as well focus on content that is actually useful in bettering oneself.
I have the best SO, caring friends (< 5), better than average relationship with parents with no social rivalry.
I just don't buy into the popular culture- soulless movies like Avengers, sports, celebs, TikTok awfullery, virtue signalling, covert racism, keyboard activism, and so on.
I am content with the social media that I use.
I happen to be a good organizer. I organize religious ceremonies despite being irreligious, I organize other socio-cultural activities and actively take part in them.
As I have grown old, I have learned that it is in my best interest to not show my full self by default- I had gotten judged for not conforming to shallow social norms, being an atheist, etc.
And while on social media, I get to be close to my true self.
For people who don't conform with social norms, either for individual traits or other reasons, social media is simply hellish in nature.
One of the most important "soft skills" I've learned as developer over the past 25 years is that ignoring people because they're interested in things I'm not interested in makes managing a team incredibly hard. You need to be able to listen even when people are talking about "boring" or irrelevant stuff, because sometimes there's something very relevant buried in there. People aren't one-dimensional and they won't always talk about things you want to hear, so if you reject them on that basis you'll miss the good stuff too. Plus, I've found a lot of the time the rest turns out to be quite interesting too if you take the time to listen.