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Consider the following scenario: You're pleased and content one minute, thinking your life is going fine the next. You have a few minutes to kill, so you log on

Consider the following scenario: You're pleased and content one minute, thinking your life is going fine the next. You have a few minutes to kill, so you log onto Facebook and begin scrolling... First, you notice a friend's post stating that she has accepted her ideal job. Then you read a coworker's too political rant. You continue browsing and see a video of your neighbour enjoying a fantastic tropical vacation. And now your cousin has uploaded a before and after photo that makes you want to hide your thighs for the rest of your life. The next thing you know, you're second-guessing your profession, irritated by politics, wondering why you can't afford a trip, and researching your next diet. Social media is nothing but roller coaster,

AlwaysRock 4y ago
Removing social media from my phone and replacing it with the Kindle app has quite literary changed my life.
yawboakye 4y ago
this isn't a problem of social media but rather a problem of following current affairs. the cost of publishing has become so low that even news media dedicate whole articles to single tweets (and other social media posts by famous people). devout followers of social media (and perhaps news media, both television and internet) have become addicted to knowing/following the current thing. one can visit/use twitter, facebook, &c everyday without keeping in sync with the current things and/or allowing themselves to be tossed about like a boat in a tempest. curate deliberately. follow few things and people.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > follow few things and people. Everyone follows few things and people. You don't even know the names of all the pop stars to follow let alone their drama... or the news in every language you don't speak...
id 4y ago
If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? Those are good things in general, although the tropical vacation might make me also feel concerned about the climate. The problems I have with social media are that - it steals a lot of time - a lot of content gets me by evoking negative emotion - it's taxing to get exposed to so many different ideas, clips, heated discussions, etc. Makes we wanna throw away my phone and live in the woods
- coldtea 4y ago
  >If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? As if regular people don't compare themselves with others and just enjoy the success of everybody, without considering if they are falling behind or not?
  - id 4y ago
    You can compare yourself and enjoy the success of someone else.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      In limited capacity, in regular life, yes. In social media, the constant highlights of the successes of other people makes you miserable for yourself, whether you feel happy for others too or not. Besides an experience many can verify, it's also quite well studied, including in the linked article.
      - cortesoft 4y ago
        > In social media, the constant highlights of the successes of other people makes you miserable for yourself That might be how it makes you (and others) feel, but that doesn't mean everyone feels that way. There are people on this thread trying to say that it doesn't make them feel that way, but they keep being dismissed. The studies don't say EVERYONE feels that way, so to act like they are WRONG about how they feel is overly dismissive.
scotty79 4y ago
I'm a bit immune to a lot of this because I don't like travel, jobs of any kind, having family, excessive fitness (the one you need to excercise to get) and facebook does fairly good job of exposing me only to rants that confirm my biases. But this also makes Facebook way less engaging for me because it does invoke barely any feelings in me.
- sleepdreamy 4y ago
  You don't like jobs of any kind? Hopefully you have an inheritance because when your parents die you're in for a rude awakening.
scotty79 4y ago
I think a lot of people realize that facebook makes them feel bad but they prefer to feel bad rather than not feel anything at all. They unknowingly pursue easily available emotion (even negative) to avoid emotional boredom. It's a bit like watching scary or sad movies.
- alephnan 4y ago
  > they prefer to feel bad Kinda the premise of The Matrix
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    or a lot of films...
- mcphage 4y ago
  > It's a bit like watching scary or sad movies. People like sad and scary movies because they can experience powerful emotions in a safe environment. Scary minus being in danger is exciting. It’s not to avoid emotional boredom.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > bad but they prefer to feel bad rather than not feel anything at all this is possible. But also FOMO makes them feel worse than feeling bad about what they read online. For many people social networks are a conversation topics, for some it's the only thing they talk about, if they know nothing about what's happening, they're out of the social game, even IRL.
mrtksn 4y ago
I think the roller coaster is not as much as an issue as the fast context switching and the hard labour you need to do to make sense of the things you see. You can't have prolonged and deeper thoughts about anything because you are bombarded with refined extreme opinions and events. Just yesterday, I was getting ready to do some work I noticed a tweet from an antivaxxer retweeted by a cryptobro saying "they cannot hide it forever, data leaks" and it was about insurance companies claims. The data was legit, indeed there was a huge rise in young people claims for dying off from non-covid condition. Wow, are the antivaxxers right, is the vaccine causing young people to die off from heart attacks? Now I have to dig the data and as it turns the rise in deaths started way before the vaccine roll out, about the beginning of the pandemic and it looks like it is related to drugs. Because I followed some cryptobro to keep the pulse of the cryptobroverse, I had to endure doubt about what I knew was true, I had to fear for my life and for the loved ones and I had to spend precious time and mental energy because someone used misrepresentation of statistics to push an agenda. I was too exhausted to do any work. I don't see how this could healthy. I don't see how I simply assume that it was false and ignore it because it will end up me missing out on everything outside of my bubble. I don't see how I can spend that much energy to fight off every single bullshit that is cheap to produce and expensive to clean up. I don't see how this is sustainable. In real life, bullshitters are ousted by the communities but in this artificial communities we don't have the tools fight back.
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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lordnacho 4y ago
Needs more explanation though. You meet your friend, he tells you about his new job, you congratulate him. You meet your coworker and chat to him about politics, and it's kinda interesting. You meet your neighbor after their trip and they show you the photos and you're fascinated. You meet your cousin in real life, you see he looks better, you compliment him. You don't feel like you need to do something yourself. What is it about doing it online that hurts?
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  IMO It's all about your mindset. You can look at a travel photo that your friend took and depending on your mindset, you're either going to feel jealous and wishing you could do the same or feel happy for that person.
- slingnow 4y ago
  The in person conversations are much less likely to be embellished and polished to look like more than they are. The in person conversations are also a form of two-way communication, rather than something more like a person standing on the street corner shouting into a megaphone to catch the attention of anyone nearby. The human interaction makes a world of difference.
  - Ozzie_osman 4y ago
    Also the in person conversations are probably spread out. They'd typically not all happen within the span of a couple of minutes, not giving you time to process and work through each emotion. Unless you're at a party or something, and a lot of people do find parties overwhelming.
- mwigdahl 4y ago
  After reading The Last Psychiatrist's _Sadly, Porn_ I'd say that it's the performative nature of social media. In the social media environment you're reading projected images -- performances designed to appeal to the infinite audience of the platform. When you interact with someone in real life, there's an authentic communication between two people. You at least have the chance to really connect, ask questions, and have a real human conversation.
Agamus 4y ago
Antisocial media makes people antisocial - news at 11!
spansoa 4y ago
Not if you train your feeds to be high signal. Facebook has an 'unfollow' feature which enables you to mute people you don't like, but still have them as a friend (for whatever reason, went to school together once, or they're a colleague etc). As for Twitter, I just curate a bunch of Lists and avoid their algorithmic timeline and 'suggested' content.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
Morbid curiosity sometimes makes me seek out death and decay on the internet. Could this be the secret to my happiness? But seriously, you can self-reflect about you constantly comparing yourself to to others and and some point you really should ask yourself what you want yourself. Even if you assume that the self-presentation of people on the net is honest, winning the social media competition is an illusion.
cteiosanu 4y ago
Shouldn't we work as a society towards a type of education that promotes self confidence (more than self esteem) and makes an effort to reduce bragging ?
sharadov 4y ago
No, it does not bother me. I am one of those people who feels happy when something good is happening in other people's lives. That other person who got that job put time into it and achieved it. Good for them. Someone lost a shit ton of weight and looks ripped. That's motivation for me to lift too and eat better. It comes down to you, are you using that as fuel to motivate you or are you seething inside and burning with envy? I honestly believe that envy is the thief of joy and if you allow it to consume you it will destroy you. The only people that turn me off are those folks who make political shit posts, but I don't follow them.
- ayaen 4y ago
  I too feel happy when something good happens in someone's life. I am sure a lot of people do. That is not by itself the origin of envy. So where do I look next? Once the spectacle is over - at myself of course! I see my shortcomings and from there begin the possibility for all kinds of problems and at the same time improvements in my life. What course does my mind take though? I can certainly hear the voice of resentment in my head when I see something I think is "good for them!" But I must quieten that voice and turn to what is the better approach - to improve myself. This takes effort. So no it is not as simple as you put it here. I am sure you are aware of this struggle. This is not something new. What is new is the frequency with which one is presented with things that reproach ones sense of well-being. Are they eating better food? Living better, happier lives? Having more beautiful babies? And why? So it is only probable that one will slip into a stupor- with so many shortcomings and so many people out there. Hope that made sense.
- colpabar 4y ago
  > It comes down to you, are you using that as fuel to motivate you or are you seething inside and burning with envy? > I honestly believe that envy is the thief of joy and if you allow it to consume you it will destroy you. It's nice that you are able to do this, but most don't use social media this way. They see successful, beautiful people doing interesting things and they feel sad that they can't do the same. Can't you empathize?
  - deleted 4y ago
megaman821 4y ago
This comment and the replies to it make me think there is a lot of undiagnosed depression. I would feel happy for the good fortune of my friends and family and mute the politics off my timeline. If my friends or family did something that I wanted for myself, I would feel inspiration, not envy.
ivanhoe 4y ago
It affects you a lot less once you realize that nothing of that pictures a real, complete story of those peoples' lives, but just a cherry picked show-off moments and emotional venting...
akira2501 4y ago
Your describing social media as something that happens _to_ you. You should probably make it something you _choose_ to use. Too political rant? Skip it. Video of nothing relevant? Skip it. Your cousins photos? If you know they're not for you, why are you consuming them every time they drop? You choose to take your hands of the wheel, of course your going to be taken for a ride.
- 0xEFF 4y ago
  Driving in heavy traffic is exhausting. Going for a walk is refreshing.
krnlpnc 4y ago
> First, you notice a friend's post stating that she has accepted her ideal job. > You continue browsing and see a video of your neighbour enjoying a fantastic tropical vacation. > And now your cousin has uploaded a before and after photo that makes you want to hide your thighs for the rest of your life. Sorry to say, but if a person shares a positive thing that's happened to them, and their "friend" makes that about themself in a negative way, the problem isn't really the delivery mechanism (social media)
phat_gopher 4y ago
I feel the same when I see someone making 6x my salary on hacker news and complaining

AlwaysRock 4y ago

Removing social media from my phone and replacing it with the Kindle app has quite literary changed my life.

yawboakye 4y ago

this isn't a problem of social media but rather a problem of following current affairs. the cost of publishing has become so low that even news media dedicate whole articles to single tweets (and other social media posts by famous people). devout followers of social media (and perhaps news media, both television and internet) have become addicted to knowing/following the current thing. one can visit/use twitter, facebook, &c everyday without keeping in sync with the current things and/or allowing themselves to be tossed about like a boat in a tempest. curate deliberately. follow few things and people.

guerrilla 4y ago
> follow few things and people. Everyone follows few things and people. You don't even know the names of all the pop stars to follow let alone their drama... or the news in every language you don't speak...

id 4y ago

If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? Those are good things in general, although the tropical vacation might make me also feel concerned about the climate. The problems I have with social media are that - it steals a lot of time - a lot of content gets me by evoking negative emotion - it's taxing to get exposed to so many different ideas, clips, heated discussions, etc. Makes we wanna throw away my phone and live in the woods

coldtea 4y ago
>If other people find their ideal job, have a tropical vacation, etc. it makes me feel... good? As if regular people don't compare themselves with others and just enjoy the success of everybody, without considering if they are falling behind or not?
- id 4y ago
  You can compare yourself and enjoy the success of someone else.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    In limited capacity, in regular life, yes. In social media, the constant highlights of the successes of other people makes you miserable for yourself, whether you feel happy for others too or not. Besides an experience many can verify, it's also quite well studied, including in the linked article.
    - cortesoft 4y ago
      > In social media, the constant highlights of the successes of other people makes you miserable for yourself That might be how it makes you (and others) feel, but that doesn't mean everyone feels that way. There are people on this thread trying to say that it doesn't make them feel that way, but they keep being dismissed. The studies don't say EVERYONE feels that way, so to act like they are WRONG about how they feel is overly dismissive.

scotty79 4y ago

I'm a bit immune to a lot of this because I don't like travel, jobs of any kind, having family, excessive fitness (the one you need to excercise to get) and facebook does fairly good job of exposing me only to rants that confirm my biases. But this also makes Facebook way less engaging for me because it does invoke barely any feelings in me.

sleepdreamy 4y ago
You don't like jobs of any kind? Hopefully you have an inheritance because when your parents die you're in for a rude awakening.

scotty79 4y ago

I think a lot of people realize that facebook makes them feel bad but they prefer to feel bad rather than not feel anything at all. They unknowingly pursue easily available emotion (even negative) to avoid emotional boredom. It's a bit like watching scary or sad movies.

alephnan 4y ago
> they prefer to feel bad Kinda the premise of The Matrix
- londons_explore 4y ago
  or a lot of films...
mcphage 4y ago
> It's a bit like watching scary or sad movies. People like sad and scary movies because they can experience powerful emotions in a safe environment. Scary minus being in danger is exciting. It’s not to avoid emotional boredom.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> bad but they prefer to feel bad rather than not feel anything at all this is possible. But also FOMO makes them feel worse than feeling bad about what they read online. For many people social networks are a conversation topics, for some it's the only thing they talk about, if they know nothing about what's happening, they're out of the social game, even IRL.

mrtksn 4y ago

I think the roller coaster is not as much as an issue as the fast context switching and the hard labour you need to do to make sense of the things you see. You can't have prolonged and deeper thoughts about anything because you are bombarded with refined extreme opinions and events. Just yesterday, I was getting ready to do some work I noticed a tweet from an antivaxxer retweeted by a cryptobro saying "they cannot hide it forever, data leaks" and it was about insurance companies claims. The data was legit, indeed there was a huge rise in young people claims for dying off from non-covid condition. Wow, are the antivaxxers right, is the vaccine causing young people to die off from heart attacks? Now I have to dig the data and as it turns the rise in deaths started way before the vaccine roll out, about the beginning of the pandemic and it looks like it is related to drugs. Because I followed some cryptobro to keep the pulse of the cryptobroverse, I had to endure doubt about what I knew was true, I had to fear for my life and for the loved ones and I had to spend precious time and mental energy because someone used misrepresentation of statistics to push an agenda. I was too exhausted to do any work. I don't see how this could healthy. I don't see how I simply assume that it was false and ignore it because it will end up me missing out on everything outside of my bubble. I don't see how I can spend that much energy to fight off every single bullshit that is cheap to produce and expensive to clean up. I don't see how this is sustainable. In real life, bullshitters are ousted by the communities but in this artificial communities we don't have the tools fight back.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lordnacho 4y ago

Needs more explanation though. You meet your friend, he tells you about his new job, you congratulate him. You meet your coworker and chat to him about politics, and it's kinda interesting. You meet your neighbor after their trip and they show you the photos and you're fascinated. You meet your cousin in real life, you see he looks better, you compliment him. You don't feel like you need to do something yourself. What is it about doing it online that hurts?

_fat_santa 4y ago
IMO It's all about your mindset. You can look at a travel photo that your friend took and depending on your mindset, you're either going to feel jealous and wishing you could do the same or feel happy for that person.
slingnow 4y ago
The in person conversations are much less likely to be embellished and polished to look like more than they are. The in person conversations are also a form of two-way communication, rather than something more like a person standing on the street corner shouting into a megaphone to catch the attention of anyone nearby. The human interaction makes a world of difference.
- Ozzie_osman 4y ago
  Also the in person conversations are probably spread out. They'd typically not all happen within the span of a couple of minutes, not giving you time to process and work through each emotion. Unless you're at a party or something, and a lot of people do find parties overwhelming.
mwigdahl 4y ago
After reading The Last Psychiatrist's _Sadly, Porn_ I'd say that it's the performative nature of social media. In the social media environment you're reading projected images -- performances designed to appeal to the infinite audience of the platform. When you interact with someone in real life, there's an authentic communication between two people. You at least have the chance to really connect, ask questions, and have a real human conversation.

Agamus 4y ago

Antisocial media makes people antisocial - news at 11!

spansoa 4y ago

Not if you train your feeds to be high signal. Facebook has an 'unfollow' feature which enables you to mute people you don't like, but still have them as a friend (for whatever reason, went to school together once, or they're a colleague etc). As for Twitter, I just curate a bunch of Lists and avoid their algorithmic timeline and 'suggested' content.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

Morbid curiosity sometimes makes me seek out death and decay on the internet. Could this be the secret to my happiness? But seriously, you can self-reflect about you constantly comparing yourself to to others and and some point you really should ask yourself what you want yourself. Even if you assume that the self-presentation of people on the net is honest, winning the social media competition is an illusion.

cteiosanu 4y ago

Shouldn't we work as a society towards a type of education that promotes self confidence (more than self esteem) and makes an effort to reduce bragging ?

sharadov 4y ago

No, it does not bother me. I am one of those people who feels happy when something good is happening in other people's lives. That other person who got that job put time into it and achieved it. Good for them. Someone lost a shit ton of weight and looks ripped. That's motivation for me to lift too and eat better. It comes down to you, are you using that as fuel to motivate you or are you seething inside and burning with envy? I honestly believe that envy is the thief of joy and if you allow it to consume you it will destroy you. The only people that turn me off are those folks who make political shit posts, but I don't follow them.

ayaen 4y ago
I too feel happy when something good happens in someone's life. I am sure a lot of people do. That is not by itself the origin of envy. So where do I look next? Once the spectacle is over - at myself of course! I see my shortcomings and from there begin the possibility for all kinds of problems and at the same time improvements in my life. What course does my mind take though? I can certainly hear the voice of resentment in my head when I see something I think is "good for them!" But I must quieten that voice and turn to what is the better approach - to improve myself. This takes effort. So no it is not as simple as you put it here. I am sure you are aware of this struggle. This is not something new. What is new is the frequency with which one is presented with things that reproach ones sense of well-being. Are they eating better food? Living better, happier lives? Having more beautiful babies? And why? So it is only probable that one will slip into a stupor- with so many shortcomings and so many people out there. Hope that made sense.
colpabar 4y ago
> It comes down to you, are you using that as fuel to motivate you or are you seething inside and burning with envy? > I honestly believe that envy is the thief of joy and if you allow it to consume you it will destroy you. It's nice that you are able to do this, but most don't use social media this way. They see successful, beautiful people doing interesting things and they feel sad that they can't do the same. Can't you empathize?
- deleted 4y ago

megaman821 4y ago

This comment and the replies to it make me think there is a lot of undiagnosed depression. I would feel happy for the good fortune of my friends and family and mute the politics off my timeline. If my friends or family did something that I wanted for myself, I would feel inspiration, not envy.

ivanhoe 4y ago

It affects you a lot less once you realize that nothing of that pictures a real, complete story of those peoples' lives, but just a cherry picked show-off moments and emotional venting...

akira2501 4y ago

Your describing social media as something that happens _to_ you. You should probably make it something you _choose_ to use. Too political rant? Skip it. Video of nothing relevant? Skip it. Your cousins photos? If you know they're not for you, why are you consuming them every time they drop? You choose to take your hands of the wheel, of course your going to be taken for a ride.

0xEFF 4y ago
Driving in heavy traffic is exhausting. Going for a walk is refreshing.

krnlpnc 4y ago

> First, you notice a friend's post stating that she has accepted her ideal job. > You continue browsing and see a video of your neighbour enjoying a fantastic tropical vacation. > And now your cousin has uploaded a before and after photo that makes you want to hide your thighs for the rest of your life. Sorry to say, but if a person shares a positive thing that's happened to them, and their "friend" makes that about themself in a negative way, the problem isn't really the delivery mechanism (social media)

phat_gopher 4y ago

I feel the same when I see someone making 6x my salary on hacker news and complaining