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Well... As someone who has moved to various countries and across continents a few times over the last three decades, I can hardly find another medium that allow
by yawz 9y ago
Well... As someone who has moved to various countries and across continents a few times over the last three decades, I can hardly find another medium that allows me to keep up with friends and family across many countries and time zones easily.
Before Facebook I created and/or used e-mail aliases, e-mail groups, forums, file hosting services, etc. to share our story with friends and family. Facebook makes it much simpler.
I don't use it extensively. I don't play games on it. I don't even connect to it every day. And I would stop using it if I had a good alternative.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoHow about letters via snail mail? It's a lot more personal, since you have to set aside some time to sit down and read/write the letters without the all of the distractions Facebook presents to you, and you're able to filter it to the subjects that are important to you rather than a constant stream of thought from everyone you know.
- yawz 9y agoThis is hardly practical :), let alone slow and expensive with all the pictures printed etc.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoOf course it's practical! How do you think people kept in touch before the internet? How difficult is it to write up a letter, put it in an envelope with a stamp (which you can pick up at the gas station, grocery store, etc) and drop it in your mailbox? Printing pictures is only a few bucks, and as a side effect the recipient can easily frame it and put it on their hearth!
- yawz 9y agoSeriously?!? Would you write that letter to dozens of people in 3 different languages? Or should I pick "only one" of my aunts and uncles to share my son's first school day pictures? Or maybe we can create a human chain where one sends the letter and pictures that he/she receives to the next one in line. (hmm... maybe there's a business idea there...)
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoYou're used to pushing information to them with a firehose. Use a bucket instead. Send letters out infrequently, one per household.
- enjdbsgaga 9y agoThis assumes the recipients have consistent addresses, and requires significant additional time and labour. Why would he drop Facebook in favour of snail mail, when e-mails (a more convenient version of the same thing) provided an inadequate solution for him in the past? You can put just as much time and thought into an email as you can a letter. Technology is not the issue here, merely etiquette.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoI wrote about the difference between snail mail and letters here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031357
- paulcole 9y agoHow many handwritten letters do you send?
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoI never said handwritten. I send printed letters every month or two.
- yawz 9y agoWhy would you print a typed letter and send it by mail instead of e-mailing? Waste of resources, if you ask me, and pretty expensive depending on the country you're sending it to. Good for USPS, though. A typed letter is not more personal than e-mail, I'm afraid.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago>Why would you print a typed letter and send it by mail instead of e-mailing? Waste of resources, if you ask me, and pretty expensive depending on the country you're sending it to. Good for USPS, though. I just checked with USPS. It costs _a dollar_ to mail a letter from Philly to Madagascar. >A typed letter is not more personal than e-mail, I'm afraid. Comparing it to an email is clever, because it helps your point seem more valid. But this is about Facebook, so I'm going to compare it to that - though many of these points are valid when comparing against email as well. Facebook is a constant barrage of snippets from constant mini mind dumps of everything each person is thinking, mixed with ads and distracting videos all carefully served by an algorithm that uses machine learning to steal your attention for as long as possible and addict you to the service. A letter, typed or not, is going to be read in the real world, probably sitting down somewhere comfortable without any ads or distractions. It will be written more thoughtfully because it is an infrequent occurance. It may have been mailed with photos or a small trinket that made you think of them. How would you react if you received a thoughtful letter from your sister instead of of a hundred thoughtless shouts into the void? I certainly hope you would be touched, and I feel bad for your sister if you wouldn't. All you're doing in this thread is deflect, deflect, deflect. I have no idea what you're trying to accomplish. I am fully convinced that you are a Facebook addict in denial.
- yawz 9y agoInstead of writing letters, I guess I prefer to have hobbies.
- bluGill 9y agoThat would work for my parents. It means my second cousin and I exchange "Christmas cards" and no more which leaves a lot out.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoYou have almost 9,000 hours in a year. Surely you can find time in them to write to your second cousin.
- yawz 9y agoI prefer not to repeat myself and spend that time for more happy memories ;).
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoHow many hours per week do you spend on Facebook instead of making "happy memories"?
- Symbiote 9y ago(I downvoted you for excessive repetition. You have posted 17 times in this thread, mostly antagonistically, without saying much new. That's even less useful than the time I spent on Facebook this evening :-)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yawz 9y ago(replying at this level, because HN seems to have a depth limit for nested messages) Drew, I think I understand where you're coming from. But as stated earlier on, I don't even connect to Facebook daily, let alone spending hours on it.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
- bduerst 9y agoThis is what I don't get about the dichotomy of either quitting facebook or letting it run your life. Can't people just use fb minimally without it absorbing everything they do? I login probably once a week at most, and only check messenger if someone pings me on it. It's not difficult, so why are so many people advocating deleting accounts to improve their lives?
- yawz 9y agoTotally! That's close to how I'm using Facebook normally. I don't even have Messenger on my mobile devices.
- jsemrau 9y agoWell, I moved over the last years across several time-zones and continents. There are people that I knew back then and lost contact now. Do I care if they got babies, found a new job, like/dislike Trump, or are doing Toga on the beach ? No, I don't. I moved away. Having that knowledge does not make my life better or worse in any way. I can get the illusion that we are still in contact, but in reality I will never move back to these places. So why should I care?
- yawz 9y agoSounds like you didn't care about them in the first place. I'd like to think that friendships and love (not necessarily romantic love) survives the distance. Having said that, I totally get that one may not necessarily want to know what a friend had for lunch, for example :).
- Torwald 9y agoYou can use a blog.