> Social media is basically internet era alcohol.

I've always used sugar and high fructose corn syrup as my analogy.

In the early days of the internet we didn't have what we now call social media, but we had things like blogs and message boards that allowed for some connection with other people. Those things had some of the elements that make modern social media toxic, but they were mixed in with other good things and we consumed them much slower.

Over the past few decades, we've slowly refined social media to what it is today. In an attempt to retain customers we've boiled it down to its most addictive and unhealthy parts and pushed customers to consume more of that quicker than ever before.

The analogy I think of is the introduction of sugar to Inuit culture. Before the Europeans brought it, the Inuit apparently had no need to be concerned about dental hygiene and controlling intake of certain foods. For decades, there was the stereotype of Eskimos with most of their teeth rotted out. I don't know how many generations it took for Inuit culture to adapt.

Spot on. Humans are driven to optimize innovation to an incredible degree… for better or for worse.

The distillation of social media is still ongoing. It won’t be long before TikTok looks as quaint as MySpace does today.

> Social media is basically internet era alcohol

God I wish, I’d probably use it more if it had any similar benefits as alcohol.

I think the analogy flows through the idea that, like drinking in bars, posting on (some kinds of) social media can be used to make friends and/or deepen existing relationships; and that people often excuse a pattern of abuse of {alcohol, social media} as actually having this goal.

Something this analogy through-line makes me notice, is that we have clear cultural images of what a healthy use of alcohol looks like — going out for cocktails with friends; having wine with dinner; etc; vs. what alcohol abuse looks like — day-drinking, drinking alone, drinking until you pass out, etc. But we don't (yet) have similar cultural images for what healthy vs. unhealthy/abusive social-media participation looks like.

I appreciate this as one of the most insightful comments that I've read in a long time.

I think it’s closer to smoking. All the cool kids do it, minimal buzz/reward, takes lots of time/money, totally addictive.

I’m 40 so I grew up with the “cool kids” narrative. But the only time I ever experienced it was when my brother pressured me once. I started smoking because I was bored out of my mind one day and the opportunity was available. Smokers were never the “cool kids” in my experience, at least not any more than football players or drama club.

Everything else you say is spot on, although the “reward” is a very nuanced minimal for me… it’s something I can go do privately by myself for a few minutes without needing to explain that. It’s probably the biggest conscious tie I still have to the habit.

The rewards of smoking were social but not in making you cool. It was that smoking made it easy to find somebody to chat with and start contact. Smokers met outside, borrowed each other fire or gave cigarettes and became acquitances and friends. It was quick and easy.

Not smokers took longer to get to know each other and it was harder. But it was nit about cool factor all that much.

Well, HN is also social media. I find at least some benefit in it, learning about new technologies.

You're getting downvoted, but this raises a good point; how does HN avoid becoming a toxic cesspool?

It shares many attributes/features with other social media. Does it just come down to excellent moderation on the part of u/dang? Is it the lack of instant reply notifications? Is it that thread depth is capped? Only allowing downvotes for power users? Some combination of all those?

I believe so, it's hard to have flamewars as well since most users are limited from responding too fast. All of the above are good ways to increase the quality of discourse here.

In a way, based on the alcohol analogy, HN is kind of like an evening beer with friends at a biergarten, you drink socially, not too much to even get very inebriated, and if you try to, mechanisms exist to stop you, such as the biergarten owners kicking you out. You're not getting (or are supposed to get) drunk at a biergarten, generally speaking.

On the other hand, many other social media are more like clubs. Sure, you can drink less, but the entire environment is designed to get you to drink more. This is analogous to places like Twitter or Instagram which are specifically designed for you to use them as much as possible, like through only allowing short replies (thus stripping nuance and incentivizing short angry replies) or gamifying like counters and incentivizing heavily cherry picked and edited photos.

I've found a clear split between sites which are topic-focused and sites which are person-focused. Also smaller communities tend to be better. That said, Hacker News is unusually good even for a topic-focused site.

I think HN does become a cesspool for some specific subject matters that are controversial or anti-vc. Other than those subjects high moderation tools and extensive limiting of identified toxic contributors helps imo.

> It shares many attributes/features with other social media.

It doesn’t have any concept (much less a public one) of “following”, it doesn’t have public likes, it doesn’t have a DM facility, it doesn’t have a personalized algorithm, it isn’t ad supported (and thus isn’t incentivized to tweal its algorithms for maximizing engagement and ad delivery), it has negative (but equally not-public) voting and signals (flagging) that don’t require filling out a form and human review, and it has dang.

Aside: Has anyone analyzed social media in terms of it's inputs and outputs and distinguished what factors are most critical/useful to achieve a particular goal? That is, an analysis/compendium of social media sites from NNTP to Parler and the pros/cons of various methods? A book? A report?

From small scale (e.g., "How to create a social media site", etc.) to "How to best use Facebook to sell XXX, to influence political campaigns, to overthrow governments, to confuse your competition, etc.".

A good bibliography?

> “When we do things that are addictive like use cocaine or use smartphones, our brains release a lot of dopamine at once. It tells our brains to keep using that,” she said. “For teenagers in particular, this part of their brain is actually hyperactive compared to adults. They can’t get motivated to do anything else.”

/me checks how much time I spent on hn this week-end and decides it's maaaybe time to "log out"

Turn on noprocrast in your user settings.

HN is an online forum and online forums pre-date the widespread usage of 'social media'

Online fora are social media too, doesn't matter when they originated.

IMO forums don’t use any kind of upvote/downvote system for comments or content, so HN is not a forum.

What are the benefits of alcohol?

Social lubricant. People are often more at-ease when slightly tipsy.

It's not as if people who don't drink are socially inept or anything. My guess is that we get used to alcohol and just rely on it. Like sleep pills.

And bikes can still be pedalled without oil, lubricants just makes things a bit easier.

Too much and you become anti-social, but that's a separate problem.

Doesn't social media have the same benefit when used in moderation? It makes it easier to get in touch with friends and make new ones based on shared interests.

At its best, sure.

I think the analogy is we're still in the equivalent of the early days of the Temperance movement for social media, where it's somewhat dysfunctional (like not drinking alcohol in the early 19th century US) to not have at least some account somewhere.

We may well be speed-running this. I won't be surprised by an attempt to ban "hard liquor" like FB and Twitter, nor if they decide to ban everything including "beer" places like here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_movement

The anonymity of the internet removes inhibitions much more than alcohol!

But more insidious

I'd say the fact that the internet is clearly useful in certain ways is a thing that allows some of the downsides to travel along.

With something like recreational drugs, the upsides are just pure hedonism, you do them because they make you feel a certain way and the downsides aren't inextricably connected. Plus the downsides are pretty awful, whereas with internet stuff it's awful but in a way that doesn't require an ambulance. Basically social media addiction is a flu that millions of people catch and mostly live with, whereas drug addiction is a thing fewer people catch but some of them die from it, like Ebola.