6 ms·

I quit Facebook last year because it started ruining my family relationships. I started seeing the side of people that I never saw before and I didn't like it.

by Jerry2 11y ago

I quit Facebook last year because it started ruining my family relationships. I started seeing the side of people that I never saw before and I didn't like it. I saw family & friends say and do things that were done to grab other people's attention. I also saw people, that I knew very well, pretend to be something they were not. I saw friends become enemies over pointless arguments. In short, people I was interacting with on Facebook were, most of the time, not the people I knew in real life. After I quit Facebook for 6 months, I attended family reunions and everything was back to the way it was. I stopped looking at them through the lens that Facebook presented them as and I felt no animosity or disdain towards them. Maybe this is just my experience.

threatofrain 11y ago
But in your description, Facebook is simply the mediating variable, not the cause -- the cause is the unpleasantness generated by your family.
- mentat 11y ago
  Human relationships have always been about selective ignorance.
  - dhj 11y ago
    Do not reveal our surveillance, Gorlock!
  - mtviewdave 11y ago
    Mark Zuckerberg believes that presenting differing personas to different audiences displays "a lack of integrity"[1] and thus Facebook is deliberately engineered to encourage an individual to present their "true" self to all "friends" equally. [1]http://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-having-two-identities-for-yourself-is-an-example-of-a-lack-of-integrity/ http://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg...
    - walterbell 11y ago
      The act of observation changes the observed. There are many ways to observe. In whose interest does Facebook observe?
    - soperj 11y ago
      Mark also has problems functioning in the real world.
    - bottled_poe 11y ago
      > Mark Zuckerberg believes that... Any self-respecting person should not care what comes next.
      - ssalazar 11y ago
        I guess it's edgy to dismiss celebrity outright, but Mark Zuckerberg is the steward of one of the largest social phenomena of our time, so I should think it matters a great deal what he believes--not necessarily because we should agree, but because of the potentially significant effects of those beliefs.
        camillomiller 11y ago
        I agree. It's important to criticize him. Harshly. He's the harbinger of a change whose proportions are yet to be fully understand, but it's like we're all living guinea pigs of his experiment and happy to be that. I don't see how we can be fine with putting a self-declared mildly autistic little genius in charge of defining the nature of social interactions in the new millennium. "here's what I think relationships should be like", says such child playing with his own huge money-churning game.
    - liuhenry 11y ago
      In contrast, WeChat (which is the closest equivalent to Facebook in China) has a number of features that are specifically tailored to allow for these different social contexts. For example, comments on a post are only visible to you if you're friends with the commenter, not just the OP. [1] [1] https://medium.com/chrysaora-weekly/three-moments-with-wechat-7deb56f11e0a https://medium.com/chrysaora-weekly/three-moments-with-wecha...
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  That doesn't change the fact that no one wants to see their loved ones behaving in undesirable ways. If you abandoned anyone who behaves poorly when enabled by Facebook/alcohol/$VICE, rather than helping them, then you wouldn't be left with many friends or family.
- wisty 11y ago
  It's not unusual to have plenty of friends and relatives who are great in small doses, but not so great if you're hearing from them every day.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Does it matter? Facebook is the factor you can change.
- RogtamBar 11y ago
  I believe the format itself, that is, text, not voice nor face to face contact makes conflict more likely.
guessbest 11y ago
Facebook is strange. People on that site don't understand satire.
- dcposch 11y ago
  > People on that site don't understand satire. i dont think you can generalize like that about an app that has more than a billion users
  - clwk 11y ago
    Why not? It's like saying, "People on merry-go-rounds have a hard time balancing."
    - walterbell 11y ago
      Or "HN has better-than-average comments". They are consequences of design and policy.
      - harry8 11y ago
        teehee
- bostik 11y ago
  In that case one could say that FB offers a good cross-cut of [Western] human population. Satire is hard. It's hard to do right, and ironically, the better it's done, the harder it is to spot. For a long time IMDB did not have a proper satire category. Obvious satirical pieces got lumped together with "dark comedy" and "parody". These days we are blessed with sub-categories, but originally, and certainly up until mid-noughties the concept was unknown. So either IMDB didn't see a user-driven need to include the category, or they didn't trust their userbase to be able to understand the difference. Perhaps the biggest "problem" with satire is that it's an intellectually demanding form of expression, both for the creator and her audience. In a world where eliminating your target audience's need to think is considered a virtue, all less-than-bloody-obvious communication efforts will fall victim to Wiio's Laws.[0] The most basic form of the laws can be distilled to: "all communication fails, except by accident". When the stated form of communication relies on subtlety and audience interpretation, it is guaranteed that a sizable segment will misunderstand both the message, and the point. Makes one want crawl to a warm corner, curl up in a ball and cry. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio's_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio's_laws
rokhayakebe 11y ago
I, in 2010.
skyhatch1 11y ago
Cannot say that I've seen family act in ways I didn't expect on Facebook, but certainly have seen it with looser social relationships. I've unfollowed a lot of people because they shared their very strong, retrogressive views on everything from homosexual rights to certain religions. When you see these same people in real life, none of that really reflects in the conversations you have with them. As the other guys said, it's often best to be selectively ignorant.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
77pt77 11y ago
> After I quit Facebook for 6 months, I attended family reunions and everything was back to the way it was. I stopped looking at them through the lens that Facebook presented them as and I felt no animosity or disdain towards them. Is it fair to say you chose to live in partial ignorance because it's less painful?
- pinkunicorn 11y ago
  In my case, yes absolutely you can say that. I don't use Facebook so that I can remain ignorant to a different personality that my friends and family have over there. To give an example, one of my friends makes posts like a politician and thinks his views are always right - sometimes they are sometimes they aren't. But he is a friend with whom I don't want to have political discussions. I don't want to be the one criticizing him on his political views, but if I'm on Facebook that information is going to flow through me - I can't ignore it. So I choose to remain ignorant by quitting Facebook altogether.
  - auxbuss 11y ago
    This is where, I believe, today's social media get things very wrong in a social context (although I understand that it works for them for selling ads). In real life -- Is IRL coming back? -- we have many social circles and behave differently in them. Some folk invoke entirely new persona, but most of us have just the one. Nevertheless, people in those different groups will regard us differently. For example, when you think of bringing two separate groups of friends or social groups together, it's often easy to establish why it wouldn't work. Often when you do bring them together, they split into the original groups, regardless. (Not always, I know; sometimes it works.) IRL, you can "be yourself" and move between groups without creating a new persona. That's just normal life as it has been forever. Online, however, the only mechanism to move freely between different groups is to create a separate account and, perhaps, a separate persona. However, the ad-sellers want to know all about the one person, so they discourage this behaviour. e.g. Forcing the use of real names and performing formal validation of id. It's interesting to me that this was never an issue (at least for me) back in the days of Usenet (and to some extent IRC, still). (Aside: It's in this area that I believe that Twitter missed its chance. It could have owned this space. Sadly, it chose to sell ads.)
ageek123 11y ago
It's interesting when we discover that the way people act "in real life" isn't their true selves. The online world is fascinating because people drop the guards and restraints and you can see the real them. I actually prefer this to the phoniness that people put on for in-person interactions. But it is jarring, just as it would be jarring if in real life you could read people's minds and know what they are thinking but not saying.
- archagon 11y ago
  I'd argue there is no "true self" at all — just different views into your personality. Facebook, perhaps, is not a healthy such view.
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    If all the world's a stage then we are only ever acting, never being.
    - tremon 11y ago
      Ooh, I like that. I'm going to adopt it, but I'll use "then we're only actors, not beings". Feels stronger that way.
      - SixSigma 11y ago
        :) go for it, I like that too.
  - throwawayaway 11y ago
    I have a hard time distinguishing someone's behaviour from their innate personality. Perhaps forgiveness is the key.
  - Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
    Timely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z0XS-QLDWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z0XS-QLDWM
_pmf_ 11y ago
> In short, people I was interacting with on Facebook were, most of the time, not the people I knew in real life. What's really concerning is that one cannot be sure which is the true persona.
Shorel 11y ago
That argument is not too different to the old arguments to ban alcohol. I'm not advocating either way, just noting that one of the reason people drink is because it will lose inhibitions they usually have.

by Jerry2 11y ago

threatofrain 11y ago

But in your description, Facebook is simply the mediating variable, not the cause -- the cause is the unpleasantness generated by your family.

mentat 11y ago
Human relationships have always been about selective ignorance.
- dhj 11y ago
  Do not reveal our surveillance, Gorlock!
- mtviewdave 11y ago
  Mark Zuckerberg believes that presenting differing personas to different audiences displays "a lack of integrity"[1] and thus Facebook is deliberately engineered to encourage an individual to present their "true" self to all "friends" equally. [1]http://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-having-two-identities-for-yourself-is-an-example-of-a-lack-of-integrity/ http://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg...
  - walterbell 11y ago
    The act of observation changes the observed. There are many ways to observe. In whose interest does Facebook observe?
  - soperj 11y ago
    Mark also has problems functioning in the real world.
  - bottled_poe 11y ago
    > Mark Zuckerberg believes that... Any self-respecting person should not care what comes next.
    - ssalazar 11y ago
      I guess it's edgy to dismiss celebrity outright, but Mark Zuckerberg is the steward of one of the largest social phenomena of our time, so I should think it matters a great deal what he believes--not necessarily because we should agree, but because of the potentially significant effects of those beliefs.
      - camillomiller 11y ago
        I agree. It's important to criticize him. Harshly. He's the harbinger of a change whose proportions are yet to be fully understand, but it's like we're all living guinea pigs of his experiment and happy to be that. I don't see how we can be fine with putting a self-declared mildly autistic little genius in charge of defining the nature of social interactions in the new millennium. "here's what I think relationships should be like", says such child playing with his own huge money-churning game.
  - liuhenry 11y ago
    In contrast, WeChat (which is the closest equivalent to Facebook in China) has a number of features that are specifically tailored to allow for these different social contexts. For example, comments on a post are only visible to you if you're friends with the commenter, not just the OP. [1] [1] https://medium.com/chrysaora-weekly/three-moments-with-wechat-7deb56f11e0a https://medium.com/chrysaora-weekly/three-moments-with-wecha...
w1ntermute 11y ago
That doesn't change the fact that no one wants to see their loved ones behaving in undesirable ways. If you abandoned anyone who behaves poorly when enabled by Facebook/alcohol/$VICE, rather than helping them, then you wouldn't be left with many friends or family.
wisty 11y ago
It's not unusual to have plenty of friends and relatives who are great in small doses, but not so great if you're hearing from them every day.
mikeash 11y ago
Does it matter? Facebook is the factor you can change.
RogtamBar 11y ago
I believe the format itself, that is, text, not voice nor face to face contact makes conflict more likely.

guessbest 11y ago

Facebook is strange. People on that site don't understand satire.

dcposch 11y ago
> People on that site don't understand satire. i dont think you can generalize like that about an app that has more than a billion users
- clwk 11y ago
  Why not? It's like saying, "People on merry-go-rounds have a hard time balancing."
  - walterbell 11y ago
    Or "HN has better-than-average comments". They are consequences of design and policy.
    - harry8 11y ago
      teehee
bostik 11y ago
In that case one could say that FB offers a good cross-cut of [Western] human population. Satire is hard. It's hard to do right, and ironically, the better it's done, the harder it is to spot. For a long time IMDB did not have a proper satire category. Obvious satirical pieces got lumped together with "dark comedy" and "parody". These days we are blessed with sub-categories, but originally, and certainly up until mid-noughties the concept was unknown. So either IMDB didn't see a user-driven need to include the category, or they didn't trust their userbase to be able to understand the difference. Perhaps the biggest "problem" with satire is that it's an intellectually demanding form of expression, both for the creator and her audience. In a world where eliminating your target audience's need to think is considered a virtue, all less-than-bloody-obvious communication efforts will fall victim to Wiio's Laws.[0] The most basic form of the laws can be distilled to: "all communication fails, except by accident". When the stated form of communication relies on subtlety and audience interpretation, it is guaranteed that a sizable segment will misunderstand both the message, and the point. Makes one want crawl to a warm corner, curl up in a ball and cry. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio's_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio's_laws

rokhayakebe 11y ago

I, in 2010.

skyhatch1 11y ago

Cannot say that I've seen family act in ways I didn't expect on Facebook, but certainly have seen it with looser social relationships. I've unfollowed a lot of people because they shared their very strong, retrogressive views on everything from homosexual rights to certain religions. When you see these same people in real life, none of that really reflects in the conversations you have with them. As the other guys said, it's often best to be selectively ignorant.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

77pt77 11y ago

> After I quit Facebook for 6 months, I attended family reunions and everything was back to the way it was. I stopped looking at them through the lens that Facebook presented them as and I felt no animosity or disdain towards them. Is it fair to say you chose to live in partial ignorance because it's less painful?

pinkunicorn 11y ago
In my case, yes absolutely you can say that. I don't use Facebook so that I can remain ignorant to a different personality that my friends and family have over there. To give an example, one of my friends makes posts like a politician and thinks his views are always right - sometimes they are sometimes they aren't. But he is a friend with whom I don't want to have political discussions. I don't want to be the one criticizing him on his political views, but if I'm on Facebook that information is going to flow through me - I can't ignore it. So I choose to remain ignorant by quitting Facebook altogether.
- auxbuss 11y ago
  This is where, I believe, today's social media get things very wrong in a social context (although I understand that it works for them for selling ads). In real life -- Is IRL coming back? -- we have many social circles and behave differently in them. Some folk invoke entirely new persona, but most of us have just the one. Nevertheless, people in those different groups will regard us differently. For example, when you think of bringing two separate groups of friends or social groups together, it's often easy to establish why it wouldn't work. Often when you do bring them together, they split into the original groups, regardless. (Not always, I know; sometimes it works.) IRL, you can "be yourself" and move between groups without creating a new persona. That's just normal life as it has been forever. Online, however, the only mechanism to move freely between different groups is to create a separate account and, perhaps, a separate persona. However, the ad-sellers want to know all about the one person, so they discourage this behaviour. e.g. Forcing the use of real names and performing formal validation of id. It's interesting to me that this was never an issue (at least for me) back in the days of Usenet (and to some extent IRC, still). (Aside: It's in this area that I believe that Twitter missed its chance. It could have owned this space. Sadly, it chose to sell ads.)

ageek123 11y ago

It's interesting when we discover that the way people act "in real life" isn't their true selves. The online world is fascinating because people drop the guards and restraints and you can see the real them. I actually prefer this to the phoniness that people put on for in-person interactions. But it is jarring, just as it would be jarring if in real life you could read people's minds and know what they are thinking but not saying.

archagon 11y ago
I'd argue there is no "true self" at all — just different views into your personality. Facebook, perhaps, is not a healthy such view.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  If all the world's a stage then we are only ever acting, never being.
  - tremon 11y ago
    Ooh, I like that. I'm going to adopt it, but I'll use "then we're only actors, not beings". Feels stronger that way.
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      :) go for it, I like that too.
- throwawayaway 11y ago
  I have a hard time distinguishing someone's behaviour from their innate personality. Perhaps forgiveness is the key.
- Disruptive_Dave 11y ago
  Timely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z0XS-QLDWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z0XS-QLDWM

_pmf_ 11y ago

> In short, people I was interacting with on Facebook were, most of the time, not the people I knew in real life. What's really concerning is that one cannot be sure which is the true persona.

Shorel 11y ago

That argument is not too different to the old arguments to ban alcohol. I'm not advocating either way, just noting that one of the reason people drink is because it will lose inhibitions they usually have.