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Having quit Facebook some 4+ years ago, I think about these things too and have come to the conclusion that: a) I don't need to know about the project my dista

Having quit Facebook some 4+ years ago, I think about these things too and have come to the conclusion that: a) I don't need to know about the project my distant friend is working on, or the food anyone is making or eating* . b) A solution that existed before Facebook were X-Mas cards. So, I think that's what I'll be doing when I no longer see my parents and close friends daily. * On a side note, my mom calls my grandma for an hour or so weekly and they frequently talk about what they cooked and exchange recipes, but that's more personal than a Facebook/Instagram post.

rtpg 9y ago
I've been trying to cut back on FB recently (and HN, though with a bit less success...), and I've found that just filtering out high-volume posters helps a lot. If most of your friends only post once a week or so you might just see 5 or 10 posts in a day. And usually it's somewhat interesting. Not having the app and staying logged out by default also helps. I'll just scroll through facebook once every couple of days now, instead of the old "10 times a day". And I don't feel like I'm missing much except for being a bit late to reply to event invites.
anigbrowl 9y ago
This isn't helpful. Fine, you don't care about your distant friends/relatives daily activities, but that's no help to those of us who do. I live in California and some people who are personally important to me live in florida. I talk to them at least once a day but on an ad-hoc basis, so email isn't that suitable. Edit: corrected geographic confusion Really, what is the point of a post like yours other than to negate the post that came before it by articulating why you don't care about the issue raised?
- sonnyz 9y ago
  I think the point of his/her post is to show that from his/her perspective, the "connection" you get to friends and family via facebook isn't valuable. Although it may be to some, it isn't to everyone. I have to agree, as someone that quit many years ago and hasn't looked back since. I still communicate with my long distance relatives, just not publicly. I use a combination of Google Hangouts, email, and just plain old phone calls to keep up to date with their lives. I share photos daily, via google photos, directly to those that I want to see them. And my family, who happen to use Facebook, know to send me photos using other methods. This way, I only get information/photos that is meant for me to see. Not just every day stuff that's going on in everyone's life. To me, that's not important to my relationships, and is really a waste of my time that I can be using with my family in my house. The interactions I do share, though, is extremely important to me.
  - rayiner 9y ago
    > I use a combination of Google Hangouts, email, and just plain old phone calls to keep up to date with their lives. I share photos daily, via google photos, directly to those that I want to see them. And my family, who happen to use Facebook, know to send me photos using other methods. This seems like an inconvenience you impose on everyone else to do things Facebook handles natively.
    - 2-4-Flinching 9y ago
      > This seems like an inconvenience you impose on everyone else to do things Facebook handles natively. If you're important to them, then people will do whatever they need to keep in touch with you. Inconvenience is when they don't care enough to keep in contact with you. While in a perfect world everyone would accept your impose line of communication, in your case Facebook, everyones preference is different.
      - sp527 9y ago
        I’d add that the relationships where you’re willing to go the extra distance are the only ones that matter. Quality not quantity.
        kiriakasis 9y ago
        so... you could also be the one to go the extra mile and use facebook... don't misunderstand i log in about once a month but because i have other platform (and because i'm terrible at keeping in touch), but other than political or idelogical reasons why not use it for your family convenience?
        mdorazio 9y ago
        I think you've kind of missed the point the posters above are making. Facebook is impersonal. That's why it's convenient - it takes no effort whatsoever to share everything with everyone. As a result, the value of shared information to people who care about quality relationships is much lower than if two people deliberately communicate with only each other about something. Put another way, if your family/friends can't be bothered to actually communicate with you one-on-one about things in their lives because it's less convenient than posting to everyone, then those relationships must not be very valuable. To those of us who care about maintaining quality relationships, convenience is a non-factor. I would much rather have lunch with a friend a few times a year than read their stream-of-life facebook posts on any kind of regular basis, even though the former is several orders of magnitude less convenient.
- nurettin 9y ago
  It seems the karma thing on HN works like this.
jamesrcole 9y ago
> I don't need to know about ... Surely the question is not about what you absolutely need or not. You could strip you life back to only necessities. Some people might find that fulfilling, but I suspect many wouldn't. I think the question is more of cost/benefit. Do the benefits of something sufficiently outweigh their costs.
- Halladie7 9y ago
  As long as you're willing to accept the burdens of using FB as a panopticon. You get the blatant ads, the furtive ads, the manipulative filtering, the spam, the agit-prop. Ma Bell never barged in with a jingle when I used to call my grandmother. There is no cost/benefit analysis here. You can't cast this in a positive light relative to any previous means of social connection. It's absolute shit. I've come to the conclusion that this round of social media is possibly the worst incarnation of technology in the past 30 years. Hopefully the next version is less shitty.
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    > There is no cost/benefit analysis here. You're literally doing a cost/benefit analysis. You seem to be assuming that such an analysis implies there there has to be substantial benefits, or something like that. (I'm not commenting here on whether they do or don't exist in the case of Facebook)
    - Retra 9y ago
      Let's write down the recipe for an modern social media comment: 1. Take person literally to a fault in order to create a counterpoint. 2. Say obviously true, yet embarrassingly vague things to defend that counterpoint. 3. Respond "I'm not talking about that" when any possibility of nuance would enter the discussion.
bazoiks 9y ago
> a) I don't need to know about the project my distant friend is working on, or the food anyone is making or eating* . It's worse than that though - the evidence is that seeing things like that will actually make you depressed. People only post the good stuff on facebook, so it makes everyones life look better than yours is. It's very clear that social media makes people depressed.
OOPMan 9y ago
Yeah, going to have to agree here. Facebook is just a never-ending stream of shit I don't really care about or need to hear about. The time I don't spend on Facebook is vastly better spent than the time I spend on Facebook, even when that time is just watching whatever dumb TV show that helps me unwind (as opposed to reading nonsensical commentary from random people I don't know uttering all the manner of stupidity) I haven't quit it per se, but I the only thing I really use it for anymore is organising my monthly board-game night with friends. As such I find the things Facebook does to try and pull you in to be extremely annoying. Pushing a notification at me claiming I have all kinds of "new" shit I need to look at when in reality it's just a recycling of shit I ignored months ago is, frankly, pretty hideous. You know what, posting this has actually inspired me to go in and do a nice big ol purge...
NOSHSHNACKERS 9y ago
my wife and I both quit.. I have a livly but not to often group text with most of my family - I drop a picture there. There is no real need for fb

rtpg 9y ago

I've been trying to cut back on FB recently (and HN, though with a bit less success...), and I've found that just filtering out high-volume posters helps a lot. If most of your friends only post once a week or so you might just see 5 or 10 posts in a day. And usually it's somewhat interesting. Not having the app and staying logged out by default also helps. I'll just scroll through facebook once every couple of days now, instead of the old "10 times a day". And I don't feel like I'm missing much except for being a bit late to reply to event invites.

anigbrowl 9y ago

This isn't helpful. Fine, you don't care about your distant friends/relatives daily activities, but that's no help to those of us who do. I live in California and some people who are personally important to me live in florida. I talk to them at least once a day but on an ad-hoc basis, so email isn't that suitable. Edit: corrected geographic confusion Really, what is the point of a post like yours other than to negate the post that came before it by articulating why you don't care about the issue raised?

sonnyz 9y ago
I think the point of his/her post is to show that from his/her perspective, the "connection" you get to friends and family via facebook isn't valuable. Although it may be to some, it isn't to everyone. I have to agree, as someone that quit many years ago and hasn't looked back since. I still communicate with my long distance relatives, just not publicly. I use a combination of Google Hangouts, email, and just plain old phone calls to keep up to date with their lives. I share photos daily, via google photos, directly to those that I want to see them. And my family, who happen to use Facebook, know to send me photos using other methods. This way, I only get information/photos that is meant for me to see. Not just every day stuff that's going on in everyone's life. To me, that's not important to my relationships, and is really a waste of my time that I can be using with my family in my house. The interactions I do share, though, is extremely important to me.
- rayiner 9y ago
  > I use a combination of Google Hangouts, email, and just plain old phone calls to keep up to date with their lives. I share photos daily, via google photos, directly to those that I want to see them. And my family, who happen to use Facebook, know to send me photos using other methods. This seems like an inconvenience you impose on everyone else to do things Facebook handles natively.
  - 2-4-Flinching 9y ago
    > This seems like an inconvenience you impose on everyone else to do things Facebook handles natively. If you're important to them, then people will do whatever they need to keep in touch with you. Inconvenience is when they don't care enough to keep in contact with you. While in a perfect world everyone would accept your impose line of communication, in your case Facebook, everyones preference is different.
    - sp527 9y ago
      I’d add that the relationships where you’re willing to go the extra distance are the only ones that matter. Quality not quantity.
      - kiriakasis 9y ago
        so... you could also be the one to go the extra mile and use facebook... don't misunderstand i log in about once a month but because i have other platform (and because i'm terrible at keeping in touch), but other than political or idelogical reasons why not use it for your family convenience?
        mdorazio 9y ago
        I think you've kind of missed the point the posters above are making. Facebook is impersonal. That's why it's convenient - it takes no effort whatsoever to share everything with everyone. As a result, the value of shared information to people who care about quality relationships is much lower than if two people deliberately communicate with only each other about something. Put another way, if your family/friends can't be bothered to actually communicate with you one-on-one about things in their lives because it's less convenient than posting to everyone, then those relationships must not be very valuable. To those of us who care about maintaining quality relationships, convenience is a non-factor. I would much rather have lunch with a friend a few times a year than read their stream-of-life facebook posts on any kind of regular basis, even though the former is several orders of magnitude less convenient.
nurettin 9y ago
It seems the karma thing on HN works like this.

jamesrcole 9y ago

> I don't need to know about ... Surely the question is not about what you absolutely need or not. You could strip you life back to only necessities. Some people might find that fulfilling, but I suspect many wouldn't. I think the question is more of cost/benefit. Do the benefits of something sufficiently outweigh their costs.

Halladie7 9y ago
As long as you're willing to accept the burdens of using FB as a panopticon. You get the blatant ads, the furtive ads, the manipulative filtering, the spam, the agit-prop. Ma Bell never barged in with a jingle when I used to call my grandmother. There is no cost/benefit analysis here. You can't cast this in a positive light relative to any previous means of social connection. It's absolute shit. I've come to the conclusion that this round of social media is possibly the worst incarnation of technology in the past 30 years. Hopefully the next version is less shitty.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > There is no cost/benefit analysis here. You're literally doing a cost/benefit analysis. You seem to be assuming that such an analysis implies there there has to be substantial benefits, or something like that. (I'm not commenting here on whether they do or don't exist in the case of Facebook)
  - Retra 9y ago
    Let's write down the recipe for an modern social media comment: 1. Take person literally to a fault in order to create a counterpoint. 2. Say obviously true, yet embarrassingly vague things to defend that counterpoint. 3. Respond "I'm not talking about that" when any possibility of nuance would enter the discussion.

bazoiks 9y ago

> a) I don't need to know about the project my distant friend is working on, or the food anyone is making or eating* . It's worse than that though - the evidence is that seeing things like that will actually make you depressed. People only post the good stuff on facebook, so it makes everyones life look better than yours is. It's very clear that social media makes people depressed.

OOPMan 9y ago

Yeah, going to have to agree here. Facebook is just a never-ending stream of shit I don't really care about or need to hear about. The time I don't spend on Facebook is vastly better spent than the time I spend on Facebook, even when that time is just watching whatever dumb TV show that helps me unwind (as opposed to reading nonsensical commentary from random people I don't know uttering all the manner of stupidity) I haven't quit it per se, but I the only thing I really use it for anymore is organising my monthly board-game night with friends. As such I find the things Facebook does to try and pull you in to be extremely annoying. Pushing a notification at me claiming I have all kinds of "new" shit I need to look at when in reality it's just a recycling of shit I ignored months ago is, frankly, pretty hideous. You know what, posting this has actually inspired me to go in and do a nice big ol purge...

NOSHSHNACKERS 9y ago

my wife and I both quit.. I have a livly but not to often group text with most of my family - I drop a picture there. There is no real need for fb