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"Antisocial media" would a truthful title. I don't even like texting. Email is a letter replacement. Call me and pickup when I call, or GTFO. Faceblock, Twatt

"Antisocial media" would a truthful title. I don't even like texting. Email is a letter replacement. Call me and pickup when I call, or GTFO. Faceblock, Twatter, Instaglam, Discard, Snapper, TikTak, LinkedOut can all listen to the flushing sound of me deleting their advertising monetization. "Buh buh all of your Ivy and Pac12 associations that made you look important on a résumé." Too bad, I haven't talked to most of those people in years anyhow.

wussboy 6y ago
I hadn't heard "antisocial media" before but I love it
- airhead969 6y ago
  The antisocial social club most def raises the Jolly Roger flag against "social" media. ;-] At some point, I just want a private platform that is paid for using microcredits, no ads/data harvesting, requires verified named people with faces (improved communication quality), connections only stay alive if you actually interact with them IRL, doesn't automatically share everything with everyone in a single context, and doesn't promote dangerous behaviors for likes/shares. The only purpose of hidden rating tags (in lieu of likes and shares) should be that a viewer's own incoming content gets slightly prioritized. Oh and no instant notifications, no news link sharing/"retweeting", no messaging or chat (there's email), and a user only gets to look at it twice a day. Basically, solve many of the societal and social problems FB exploits and creates.
  - icedchai 6y ago
    You just need to go back to the 1990's, when Usenet and BBSes were still active.
    - airhead969 6y ago
      BTDTBTTS. IDSPISPOPD. BBSes: Those tables of phone lines, usernames, and passwords. Usenet: human conversations maybe decreasing, while data volume keeps increasing: porn, warez, and media IIRC. IRC: important things still happen. Just need a DMC-12 and a flux capacitor.
      - icedchai 6y ago
        yep.. I miss those days. Things were less monetized, the "online" population was smaller and more focused.
  - throwaway346434 6y ago
    Your problem is one of overfiltering though. How many times have you googled an obscure error, to find no answers? And then after some time... you solve it, and want to add a comment or make it easier for the next lost soul...and its non trivial. I would argue for a large amount of problems that are interesting to people doing practical things, you want to allow drop ins to your community. How you keep the riff raff out is then unsolvable.
  - RHSman2 6y ago
    I have this idea I’m rolling around and to make it non-capitalist it does need to be funded in some way. Assuming this product fulfilled a human need what is the financial paradigm shift (I mean, who pays for anything these days?)?
cbozeman 6y ago
> LinkedOut That's the one that made me laugh out loud.
- airhead969 6y ago
  It keeps the spacetime continuum together with personal branding, consultant think-pieces and virtual cocktail hour networking while scanning the universe for a more important person to elevator.
grillvogel 6y ago
rms is that you?
- airhead969 6y ago
  Nawh, I always get permission before playing on grassy turf and never speculate if an incomplete course would still be playable. Next, I'd never win a beard-growing challenge. Finally, he has way, way more cash in his wallet; so if you ever need to break a 20.
machinelabo 6y ago
I feel liberated after reading your comment.
krick 6y ago
That's weird. I mean, you do you, but if this is a popular opinion, I had no idea. On the contrary, I'm mildly annoyed when someone calls me to say something that could've said over the text. And I don't think of it as a personal preference: async information exchange is objectively less intrusive, which is why it should be preferred when possible (which isn't always the case, because it's also objectively less fluent). Unless you are some girl I'm mindlessly infatuated with, I'm probably not waiting for you call all day long, so when you are forcing me to interrupt whatever I was doing, because you are calling to say something as simple as "so, you asked me about X the other day, the answer is yes" or to ask a simple question without any follow up (or, my favourite: a courtesy call with no actual information exchange): I'll be polite, of course, but I'll hate you. If you want to ask or tell me something short: send me a text, I'll read and respond in 5 minutes, so that I don't have to interrupt what I'm doing right now. If it isn't short and you are too lazy to type: no problem, send me a voice-message. If you just want some chit-chat: ask me to go grab a beer (via text). If it's complicated and we'll need some back-and-forth, we should call each other, but I'll appreciate if you'll send a text/voice first, asking me to talk over the phone about X. And only if it's URGENT you call me right away. And because it's just sensible thing to do, when you are suddenly calling me, I'm already assuming it's URGENT: in fact, that's the only reason to answer you when you are calling, and not to call back when I'm in the mood. So when it turns out that it really wasn't, you are already an asshole, even if I don't show it.
- airhead969 6y ago
  Would you be content with chatbots, a sex doll, and living in an undersea bubble? If so (I doubt it), great, go for it. If not: don't answer, silent mode, or power off, or appreciate human contact when you do. If people are "calling too much," it's because you failed to train them how to interact with you. And, now you're resenting their assuming it was okay because you were too "nice" to be honest. Instead of mind-reading, communicate (edit: communicate your preferences of communication) perhaps. It's probably you, not them. Sorry, bud. Edit: Let's inquire curiously rather than name-call or get snarky, because that degrades the site and discourages understanding.
  - 6y ago
unethical_ban 6y ago
I'm along this spectrum, but not nearly so far away. I like chat programs used as email - that is, non-real-time. I have lowered my anxiety a lot by realizing that texts are not realtime in my life 98% of the time, and to treat them accordingly: Checked on upon occasion. Don't stress about whether the person on the other end will be upset if you don't get back right away. Planning something? Need someone right away? Set the expectation of response beforehand or just call them.
- airhead969 6y ago
  That seems like a good, common-sense strategy. Textual for details, and not for human clarification. It's often a terrible idea to wrestle in emotional or clarification contexts without hearing or seeing someone else in realtime. Attention is a finite resource that ought to vary with actual urgency; hopefully, with fewest emergencies.
msla 6y ago
> Call me and pickup when I call, or GTFO. I don't exist at your beck and call. Text me and respect that I have a life beyond hanging on the telephone, or I don't care to distinguish you from the billions of autodialers who are the only ones still rude enough to make such demands on my time. BTW, cute misspellings. Little jugs got big ears, I suppose.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  https://www.dictionary.com/browse/little-pitchers-have-big-ears https://www.dictionary.com/browse/little-pitchers-have-big-e...
- mrweasel 6y ago
  > I don't exist at your beck and call Well, no... but depending on context you might have to deal with it. Privately people can do whatever they want, in business, the customer gets to decide. I work as a consultant, if a customer prefer a phone call, then I pick up the phone. If I'm busy a co-worker answers. In a previous job I was the customer, and I refused to do Skype meeting, because I didn't want to spend 10 minutes figuring out why audio wasn't working. If you didn't want to call me, then I just took my business else where.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    It depends how much the business needs or wants the customer. It’s the same as non business interactions.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    in business, the customer gets to decide I found most of my business communications naturally moved to email. The few hangouts seem to mostly be time wasters, people that reach for the phone before they start thinking.
rcurry 6y ago
Good for you. I grew up in the eighties, and if I couldn’t remember your phone number you probably weren’t my friend. I’m okay with the same rules now. Twitter and Facebook are the Internet equivalent of Skid Row - a bunch of hobos fighting over a bottle of thunderbird. The only winning solution is not to play.
- airhead969 6y ago
  About 20 years ago, I used to say: "People are like dung beetles... fighting over balls of shit." Might've been live, pirated HBO George Carlin-inspired. How about a nice game of chess? I wouldn't demonize the very poor as addicts; drunks, sure. A dry hobo is likely to whip your ass and mine at chess. There are a good fraction of sane, teetotaling, drug-free hobos who are merely poor and itinerant without magical bootstraps.
  - rcurry 6y ago
    Agreed - in fact the term hobo just meant a traveling worker back in the Great Depression and most hobos would take offense at being characterized as deadbeats - they were in fact out to make an honest living for themselves in the face of considerable economic hardships at the time. I was just being whimsical as to the mental picture I get whenever I think of all the craziness on social media.
irrational 6y ago
I definitely don’t agree with the picking up the phone comment. 99/100 calls I receive are spam. I’ll only answer if you are in my contacts.
- citizenkeen 6y ago
  I think that's what they're saying.
swayvil 6y ago
I find talking on the phone to be excruciating. I'm fine in person but there's just something about the phone. It's like jerking off a quarter-inch dowel-rod with a pair of salad tongs. Cosmically awkward. I love texting. And email is basically texting. I'm thinking of getting one of those wrist phones so I can voice-text everything.
throwawaygal7 6y ago
Love the line about calling. People in this thread dont get it - if you're going to triage me against your other priorities, and if you dont care enough about our friendship to try to pickup when I call - you're not really a friend. We can still be friendly, but you're too self obsessed and 'busy' (in the inorganic, modern sense) to really be a friend
- eplanit 6y ago
  When I'm very busy or focused, and then a friend calls, I don't want to sound short and perturbed, and I don't want to answer just to plead "I'm too busy right now". This is what voicemail is for, and so long as the call is responded to in relatively short time then no foul has occurred. I'd be leery of "friends" who want attention and interaction on demand. Only my wife has that right.
  - throwawaygal7 6y ago
    'try to pickup' - totally hear you on the voicemail thing. If you're consistently too busy to take any calls from any social contacts, you're too busy to have a deep friendship anyway. We can still be friends, but never having real substantial conversations is going to he a limiting factor on how deep that goes. If you're married, of course you should prioritize your immediate family - a lot of people get more distance on existing social relationships or lose track of friends at that stage of life for that reason. It's not really a bad thing, it is what it is - the loss of an active friendship.
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
Telemarketers have really ruined phone calls. No one under 40 is using them anymore unless they're expecting a call from a potential employer--the only reason in the past decade I've ever "waited" for a phone call--and I'm noticing more and more job postings will reach out to you via text or email first.
- abhinav22 6y ago
  I hate how they now automated it so they transfer you from a robot to a human when you pick up...
34679 6y ago
Massively Manipulated, Monitored, and Moderated Media MMMMM
goatinaboat 6y ago
Faceblock, Twatter, Instaglam, Discard, Snapper, TikTak, LinkedOut I really hoped that Clubhouse would corral all the hardcore narcissists away from all other social media, but it's made them worse, they spend all their time on Twitter bragging about how they're on Clubhouse now. Pathetic.
- core-questions 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I remember people posting on Livejournal and various forums about how cool they were to have a Facebook account....
- PhillyG 6y ago
  So far I only ever hear about clubhouse on hn. Though I'm not really on social media much. I just checked the about page and it actually sounds like a neat idea - voice based chat forums, where new people have to listen for a bit and be given permission to talk from those already talking. Doesn't sound like it's about gaining likes or showing off or inanely talking about yourself. I don't know if it's any good or if the world needs yet another social media platform but it sounds more suited to genuine conversation than quite a few of the current big social media services.
  - skinnymuch 6y ago
    The problem is there’s no search or Filtering. You mostly just see the big rooms. Which means you’re never going to talk when there’s 1000 people in the room and Bill Gates is talking. Clubhouse unfortunately isn’t what you described thinking. It could be! But isn’t. Also the initial roll out allowed certain people to become pseudo super users who are leaders of many clubs. Also, the follower count is still a huge metric. Even more of one because there is no like.

wussboy 6y ago

I hadn't heard "antisocial media" before but I love it

airhead969 6y ago
The antisocial social club most def raises the Jolly Roger flag against "social" media. ;-] At some point, I just want a private platform that is paid for using microcredits, no ads/data harvesting, requires verified named people with faces (improved communication quality), connections only stay alive if you actually interact with them IRL, doesn't automatically share everything with everyone in a single context, and doesn't promote dangerous behaviors for likes/shares. The only purpose of hidden rating tags (in lieu of likes and shares) should be that a viewer's own incoming content gets slightly prioritized. Oh and no instant notifications, no news link sharing/"retweeting", no messaging or chat (there's email), and a user only gets to look at it twice a day. Basically, solve many of the societal and social problems FB exploits and creates.
- icedchai 6y ago
  You just need to go back to the 1990's, when Usenet and BBSes were still active.
  - airhead969 6y ago
    BTDTBTTS. IDSPISPOPD. BBSes: Those tables of phone lines, usernames, and passwords. Usenet: human conversations maybe decreasing, while data volume keeps increasing: porn, warez, and media IIRC. IRC: important things still happen. Just need a DMC-12 and a flux capacitor.
    - icedchai 6y ago
      yep.. I miss those days. Things were less monetized, the "online" population was smaller and more focused.
- throwaway346434 6y ago
  Your problem is one of overfiltering though. How many times have you googled an obscure error, to find no answers? And then after some time... you solve it, and want to add a comment or make it easier for the next lost soul...and its non trivial. I would argue for a large amount of problems that are interesting to people doing practical things, you want to allow drop ins to your community. How you keep the riff raff out is then unsolvable.
- RHSman2 6y ago
  I have this idea I’m rolling around and to make it non-capitalist it does need to be funded in some way. Assuming this product fulfilled a human need what is the financial paradigm shift (I mean, who pays for anything these days?)?

cbozeman 6y ago

> LinkedOut That's the one that made me laugh out loud.

airhead969 6y ago
It keeps the spacetime continuum together with personal branding, consultant think-pieces and virtual cocktail hour networking while scanning the universe for a more important person to elevator.

grillvogel 6y ago

rms is that you?

airhead969 6y ago
Nawh, I always get permission before playing on grassy turf and never speculate if an incomplete course would still be playable. Next, I'd never win a beard-growing challenge. Finally, he has way, way more cash in his wallet; so if you ever need to break a 20.

machinelabo 6y ago

I feel liberated after reading your comment.

krick 6y ago

That's weird. I mean, you do you, but if this is a popular opinion, I had no idea. On the contrary, I'm mildly annoyed when someone calls me to say something that could've said over the text. And I don't think of it as a personal preference: async information exchange is objectively less intrusive, which is why it should be preferred when possible (which isn't always the case, because it's also objectively less fluent). Unless you are some girl I'm mindlessly infatuated with, I'm probably not waiting for you call all day long, so when you are forcing me to interrupt whatever I was doing, because you are calling to say something as simple as "so, you asked me about X the other day, the answer is yes" or to ask a simple question without any follow up (or, my favourite: a courtesy call with no actual information exchange): I'll be polite, of course, but I'll hate you. If you want to ask or tell me something short: send me a text, I'll read and respond in 5 minutes, so that I don't have to interrupt what I'm doing right now. If it isn't short and you are too lazy to type: no problem, send me a voice-message. If you just want some chit-chat: ask me to go grab a beer (via text). If it's complicated and we'll need some back-and-forth, we should call each other, but I'll appreciate if you'll send a text/voice first, asking me to talk over the phone about X. And only if it's URGENT you call me right away. And because it's just sensible thing to do, when you are suddenly calling me, I'm already assuming it's URGENT: in fact, that's the only reason to answer you when you are calling, and not to call back when I'm in the mood. So when it turns out that it really wasn't, you are already an asshole, even if I don't show it.

airhead969 6y ago
Would you be content with chatbots, a sex doll, and living in an undersea bubble? If so (I doubt it), great, go for it. If not: don't answer, silent mode, or power off, or appreciate human contact when you do. If people are "calling too much," it's because you failed to train them how to interact with you. And, now you're resenting their assuming it was okay because you were too "nice" to be honest. Instead of mind-reading, communicate (edit: communicate your preferences of communication) perhaps. It's probably you, not them. Sorry, bud. Edit: Let's inquire curiously rather than name-call or get snarky, because that degrades the site and discourages understanding.
- 6y ago

unethical_ban 6y ago

I'm along this spectrum, but not nearly so far away. I like chat programs used as email - that is, non-real-time. I have lowered my anxiety a lot by realizing that texts are not realtime in my life 98% of the time, and to treat them accordingly: Checked on upon occasion. Don't stress about whether the person on the other end will be upset if you don't get back right away. Planning something? Need someone right away? Set the expectation of response beforehand or just call them.

airhead969 6y ago
That seems like a good, common-sense strategy. Textual for details, and not for human clarification. It's often a terrible idea to wrestle in emotional or clarification contexts without hearing or seeing someone else in realtime. Attention is a finite resource that ought to vary with actual urgency; hopefully, with fewest emergencies.

msla 6y ago

> Call me and pickup when I call, or GTFO. I don't exist at your beck and call. Text me and respect that I have a life beyond hanging on the telephone, or I don't care to distinguish you from the billions of autodialers who are the only ones still rude enough to make such demands on my time. BTW, cute misspellings. Little jugs got big ears, I suppose.

redis_mlc 6y ago
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/little-pitchers-have-big-ears https://www.dictionary.com/browse/little-pitchers-have-big-e...
mrweasel 6y ago
> I don't exist at your beck and call Well, no... but depending on context you might have to deal with it. Privately people can do whatever they want, in business, the customer gets to decide. I work as a consultant, if a customer prefer a phone call, then I pick up the phone. If I'm busy a co-worker answers. In a previous job I was the customer, and I refused to do Skype meeting, because I didn't want to spend 10 minutes figuring out why audio wasn't working. If you didn't want to call me, then I just took my business else where.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  It depends how much the business needs or wants the customer. It’s the same as non business interactions.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  in business, the customer gets to decide I found most of my business communications naturally moved to email. The few hangouts seem to mostly be time wasters, people that reach for the phone before they start thinking.

rcurry 6y ago

Good for you. I grew up in the eighties, and if I couldn’t remember your phone number you probably weren’t my friend. I’m okay with the same rules now. Twitter and Facebook are the Internet equivalent of Skid Row - a bunch of hobos fighting over a bottle of thunderbird. The only winning solution is not to play.

airhead969 6y ago
About 20 years ago, I used to say: "People are like dung beetles... fighting over balls of shit." Might've been live, pirated HBO George Carlin-inspired. How about a nice game of chess? I wouldn't demonize the very poor as addicts; drunks, sure. A dry hobo is likely to whip your ass and mine at chess. There are a good fraction of sane, teetotaling, drug-free hobos who are merely poor and itinerant without magical bootstraps.
- rcurry 6y ago
  Agreed - in fact the term hobo just meant a traveling worker back in the Great Depression and most hobos would take offense at being characterized as deadbeats - they were in fact out to make an honest living for themselves in the face of considerable economic hardships at the time. I was just being whimsical as to the mental picture I get whenever I think of all the craziness on social media.

irrational 6y ago

I definitely don’t agree with the picking up the phone comment. 99/100 calls I receive are spam. I’ll only answer if you are in my contacts.

citizenkeen 6y ago
I think that's what they're saying.

swayvil 6y ago

I find talking on the phone to be excruciating. I'm fine in person but there's just something about the phone. It's like jerking off a quarter-inch dowel-rod with a pair of salad tongs. Cosmically awkward. I love texting. And email is basically texting. I'm thinking of getting one of those wrist phones so I can voice-text everything.

throwawaygal7 6y ago

Love the line about calling. People in this thread dont get it - if you're going to triage me against your other priorities, and if you dont care enough about our friendship to try to pickup when I call - you're not really a friend. We can still be friendly, but you're too self obsessed and 'busy' (in the inorganic, modern sense) to really be a friend

eplanit 6y ago
When I'm very busy or focused, and then a friend calls, I don't want to sound short and perturbed, and I don't want to answer just to plead "I'm too busy right now". This is what voicemail is for, and so long as the call is responded to in relatively short time then no foul has occurred. I'd be leery of "friends" who want attention and interaction on demand. Only my wife has that right.
- throwawaygal7 6y ago
  'try to pickup' - totally hear you on the voicemail thing. If you're consistently too busy to take any calls from any social contacts, you're too busy to have a deep friendship anyway. We can still be friends, but never having real substantial conversations is going to he a limiting factor on how deep that goes. If you're married, of course you should prioritize your immediate family - a lot of people get more distance on existing social relationships or lose track of friends at that stage of life for that reason. It's not really a bad thing, it is what it is - the loss of an active friendship.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

Telemarketers have really ruined phone calls. No one under 40 is using them anymore unless they're expecting a call from a potential employer--the only reason in the past decade I've ever "waited" for a phone call--and I'm noticing more and more job postings will reach out to you via text or email first.

abhinav22 6y ago
I hate how they now automated it so they transfer you from a robot to a human when you pick up...

34679 6y ago

Massively Manipulated, Monitored, and Moderated Media MMMMM

goatinaboat 6y ago

Faceblock, Twatter, Instaglam, Discard, Snapper, TikTak, LinkedOut I really hoped that Clubhouse would corral all the hardcore narcissists away from all other social media, but it's made them worse, they spend all their time on Twitter bragging about how they're on Clubhouse now. Pathetic.

core-questions 6y ago
For what it's worth, I remember people posting on Livejournal and various forums about how cool they were to have a Facebook account....
PhillyG 6y ago
So far I only ever hear about clubhouse on hn. Though I'm not really on social media much. I just checked the about page and it actually sounds like a neat idea - voice based chat forums, where new people have to listen for a bit and be given permission to talk from those already talking. Doesn't sound like it's about gaining likes or showing off or inanely talking about yourself. I don't know if it's any good or if the world needs yet another social media platform but it sounds more suited to genuine conversation than quite a few of the current big social media services.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  The problem is there’s no search or Filtering. You mostly just see the big rooms. Which means you’re never going to talk when there’s 1000 people in the room and Bill Gates is talking. Clubhouse unfortunately isn’t what you described thinking. It could be! But isn’t. Also the initial roll out allowed certain people to become pseudo super users who are leaders of many clubs. Also, the follower count is still a huge metric. Even more of one because there is no like.