7 ms·

What gives me hope is if you ever take a break from social media you realize how worthless it all is. It really doesn’t hurt to disengage. For similar reasons

by harryf 3y ago

What gives me hope is if you ever take a break from social media you realize how worthless it all is. It really doesn’t hurt to disengage. For similar reasons it’s possible for new networks to show up which disrupt the old, such as TikTok. The point is as individuals we are way less dependent on social media than we imagine.

moskie 3y ago
I think this is a fine perspective for inconsequential (-ish) social interactions, but then I start to think about the political organizing that these sites have also facilitated. "The revolution will not be televised" and all that, but... man. I was all over twitter getting real-time information as I participated in Occupy and BLM marches. But, now Elon has it.....
- kodah 3y ago
  Political organization on the internet definitely has its downsides too. In fact, as the activity has proliferated it's consumed the internet at times and that's been disappointing, to the extent that astroturfing occurs. On top of that it seems that politics has gotten more homogenous in viewpoints since it proliferated; people are now repeating talking points more than nuanced ideas. There's also a lot of harassment and bullying that occurs due to politics prevalence on the internet. When you go into real life the experience is generally very different and opt out by default.
  - moskie 3y ago
    I definitely agree, but I would also suggest that the need for social media companies to monetize on engagement incentivises them to exacerbate the issues you mention. Removing those incentives might improve political discussion.
aliasxneo 3y ago
I loaded Facebook for the first time in five years yesterday because there was a fire nearby that I was trying to track. That's about the only value it's provided to me in that time. So, not totally useless, but I certainly have no regrets being social-media free.
rtpg 3y ago
I mean I get that for absent-minded browsing but even just...having a hobby and talking about it with people feels pretty much like Normal Person Behavior(TM) and Reddit's subreddits worked well for that in the same way that forums in the past did. Not the end of the world but as a kid who only could find other people to talk about certain hobbies with online up until college sounds like a lot of pepole will be more bored.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  Or maybe they’ll spend more time doing their hobbies than typing about them.
  - starttoaster 3y ago
    The caveat to that is that the more time I spent typing about my hobbies, the more I collaborated with differing ideas within my discipline, and the more I ultimately learned about the hobby. Doing the hobby is one thing, but the social aspect is certainly more valuable than you seem to be giving it credit.
  - rtpg 3y ago
    Definitely a thing, yes
- gretch 3y ago
  We’ve only had this communication capability for the last .01% of human existence. Even 150 years ago, if you wanted to communicate with anyone outside your town, you had to pay a horse based courier what was most likely a very expensive fee. Not to mention the millions of years before that. Did all these previous generations find less satisfaction in life? Well who knows but I argue not. We don’t have to structure our lives so that we are dependent on the internet for entertainment. But also, if you have to pay a small $ fee, okay that seems like a good trade too, if the value is what you are ascribing to it.
  - dTal 3y ago
    >Even 150 years ago, if you wanted to communicate with anyone outside your town, you had to pay a horse based courier what was most likely a very expensive fee. Last month was the 150th anniversary of the introduction of the first government "postal card", in New York City. They cost a penny each and sold 200,000 in two and a half hours. https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/america%E2%80%99s-mailing-industry-the-united-states-postal-service/the-growth-of-the-mail https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/america%E2%80%99s-mai...
RheingoldRiver 3y ago
I disagree. If you find the right communities, you really make close friendships with people - even if you don't know their real names, how old they are, where they work, or where they live. None of that matters, because you share and connect over a common interest. And you could never find so many people IRL with similar interests as you. If this isn't how you're using reddit, discord, etc, and it's easy to disconnect from them, then yeah just leave them. But they foster meaningful interactions too.
- haswell 3y ago
  I don’t think the argument is that one can’t find connection on Reddit. But I think the recent happenings are a good reason to ask how good it is to invest so much in communities that can disappear overnight. I’ve enjoyed my time on Reddit over the (many) years and I’ve made real friends who I now know in real life. But many of the communities I once valued have crumbled or no longer provide the same positive experience. What remains are those real friendships. Social media in general is a gigantic experiment and we’re still just beginning to learn about the psychological and sociological impacts. Shifting focus to local in-person interactions and creating solid and sustainable relationships that don’t depend on the whims of the latest social media platform seems increasingly important. And I still think there can be value found there, but not as a primary form of social connection.
  - adriand 3y ago
    > Shifting focus to local in-person interactions and creating solid and sustainable relationships that don’t depend on the whims of the latest social media platform seems increasingly important. I agree with this completely. I have formed many online relationships particularly in the music community starting during the COVID lockdowns and it has really struck me how ephemeral they are compared to IRL friendships. It’s so much harder to connect in a deep way. It’s also so much easier to walk away. You can just kind of slow down your online engagement and the relationship dries up. I’ve also noticed how I tend to develop a certain impression of someone just based on their online artifacts (avatar, style of writing, emoji, etc) that often turns out to be gravely inaccurate when I finally encounter them in a “realer” format such as a video call. Sometimes I end up realizing that I’d likely not hang out with that person IRL. It’s disconcerting. Lastly, I find I often feel uncertain about the connection I have in ways that I never feel with people IRL. For instance, wondering if my tone is off, wondering if the person isn’t perhaps as interested in whatever endeavour we are working on anymore, etc. I am fortunate in that I have not been much of a feed-based social media user for many years, but my belief that community-based social media (eg Discord) might be better has been tested by these observations. As per your comment, I think RL is where it’s at.
paulcole 3y ago
I’m assuming you’ve talked yourself into believing HN isn’t social media?
- moskie 3y ago
  hm? Of course it is?
itake 3y ago
I've been on the struggle bus quitting reddit for 5+ years. Even with this new level of energy to quit, I'm still on it for ~20 min per day.
- gretch 3y ago
  Have you tried replacing it with something else? I dramatically reduced my social media time a couple years ago by getting some casual games on my phone. Current favorites are NYT crosswords and solitaire. Some innocuous mental stimulation to pass time that doesn’t come with the toxicity that social media can.
  - itake 3y ago
    Unfortunately now I spend a lot of time on Fb and fb reels. I catch myself thinking wayyy to much about whatever news article Fb shows me. I also listen to fiction audiobooks, but none of the healthy things are also low brain energy like Reddit is.
kccqzy 3y ago
I don't consider Reddit in the same league as other social media sites. I consider it a centralized collection of forums. I hardly use my Reddit account, but I have obtained tremendous amount of useful information by searching for a topic and landing on a useful Reddit post or comment.
- SanjayMehta 3y ago
  This was the only use I had for reddit - usually some hardware specific issue. Now I find reddit rarely shows up in DDG results. Searching directly on reddit is futile. Posting queries is also futile as many mods have implemented features to limit infrequent posters. It's been an old boys' club since EKP left.
  - kccqzy 3y ago
    Try Googling; Reddit ranks surprisingly high on Google searches. Better yet use something more specialized such as https://redditsearch.io/ https://redditsearch.io/
    - rerdavies 3y ago
      Or type "reddit xyz" in the google search box -- a trick that I learned only recently. Completely eliminated my dependence on StackExchange, which has evolved into a rotting cesspit of obsolete information.
jhanschoo 3y ago
For reddit specifically, I have to disagree. It's a sad state the Internet has become, where you used to get coherent results from decentralized blogs when you google a sufficiently niche hobbyist topic. These days you just get content marketing spam. Append reddit to your search and you get subject-matter experts. The valuable conversation and folk knowledge is all siloed on social media.
- joshvm 3y ago
  Reddit successfully centralised forums and made it convenient because you didn't need 20+ logins. The other half is link sharing/doom scrolling (the addictive stuff), which replaced Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. In the not-so-distant past if you wanted expert help and non-astroturfed suggestions (or even just memes), that's where you went. Those places still exist for a lot of fields and the experts still hang out (and often are better than Reddit), but you still have the problem of finding them and managing identities across boards. In many cases the moderation is superior. Reddit now suffers from the problem where it's so big that people can run very subtle advertising campaigns to push products. It's still much better than blogspam, but you can still only really trust the negative/critical reviews.
  - germinalphrase 3y ago
    I do frequent a handful of forums, and it appears many of them are powered by Xenforo. Maybe we need to hard sell Xenforo on a shared login model…
    - joshvm 3y ago
      There are some platforms like Discourse which allow you to use OAuth. That's a reasonable setup I think, if you don't care about linking your real identity (or you just make a dummy account).
    - tmcdos 3y ago
      In my personal opinion, Xenforo has a much worse UI than the old phpBB, SMF and similar kind of forum software.
qaisjp 3y ago
The only reason I maintain an Instagram is to have images to show on dating apps, and the only reason I use Twitter is to stay up to date with the tech community (and scream into the void).
allthecybers 3y ago
> What gives me hope is if you ever take a break from social media you realize how worthless it all is. I agree with this sentiment. I left Facebook and don't miss it in the slightest. Left Twitter long before it was fashionable and don't miss it. It's just a bummer that Reddit is going that direction as well. I've tried to leave Reddit a number of times and then remember it's the only place to get direct, responsive support from my ISP and most of my Google searches include Reddit to see what other people think about a product, service or idea. But would I miss Reddit a year from now? Nope, probably not. We could do away with all the surveillance capitalism using us as a product and life would probably be fine.
outcoldman 3y ago
My google search is - "search something" site:reddit.com Otherwise is just a lot of AI generated results with close to 0 information. So I disagree.
rg111 3y ago
I quit that kind of internet years ago. I was on Reddit to talk about Math, programming, books, etc. There are several subreddits from which I was helped. And I helped a lot of other people, too. Quora had a refined userbase. I liked it there. Got ~30mn views on my answers. In these places, I didn't have to dumb myself down and could be myself. There are properly moderated FB groups in which I have made connections, and have a community. On Discord, I am in so many valuable communities- where I can discuss things I like- be a part of something. And I depend on YouTube for learning things about programming, deep learning, etc. So, internet is worthless if you watch cat memes. But for me and millions others, it is a lifeline. And it saddens me very much to see how deeply I depend on these.
npteljes 3y ago
As a social network, it might be worthless, but it's very useful for me as a searchable information trove. During the blackout I have been bitten by this many times, just searching for something and then getting a private reddit page. I think reddit's system works much better than the god-awful traditional forums, where the informational comments and the one-off replies have the same weight.

by harryf 3y ago

moskie 3y ago

I think this is a fine perspective for inconsequential (-ish) social interactions, but then I start to think about the political organizing that these sites have also facilitated. "The revolution will not be televised" and all that, but... man. I was all over twitter getting real-time information as I participated in Occupy and BLM marches. But, now Elon has it.....

kodah 3y ago
Political organization on the internet definitely has its downsides too. In fact, as the activity has proliferated it's consumed the internet at times and that's been disappointing, to the extent that astroturfing occurs. On top of that it seems that politics has gotten more homogenous in viewpoints since it proliferated; people are now repeating talking points more than nuanced ideas. There's also a lot of harassment and bullying that occurs due to politics prevalence on the internet. When you go into real life the experience is generally very different and opt out by default.
- moskie 3y ago
  I definitely agree, but I would also suggest that the need for social media companies to monetize on engagement incentivises them to exacerbate the issues you mention. Removing those incentives might improve political discussion.

aliasxneo 3y ago

I loaded Facebook for the first time in five years yesterday because there was a fire nearby that I was trying to track. That's about the only value it's provided to me in that time. So, not totally useless, but I certainly have no regrets being social-media free.

rtpg 3y ago

I mean I get that for absent-minded browsing but even just...having a hobby and talking about it with people feels pretty much like Normal Person Behavior(TM) and Reddit's subreddits worked well for that in the same way that forums in the past did. Not the end of the world but as a kid who only could find other people to talk about certain hobbies with online up until college sounds like a lot of pepole will be more bored.

jimbokun 3y ago
Or maybe they’ll spend more time doing their hobbies than typing about them.
- starttoaster 3y ago
  The caveat to that is that the more time I spent typing about my hobbies, the more I collaborated with differing ideas within my discipline, and the more I ultimately learned about the hobby. Doing the hobby is one thing, but the social aspect is certainly more valuable than you seem to be giving it credit.
- rtpg 3y ago
  Definitely a thing, yes
gretch 3y ago
We’ve only had this communication capability for the last .01% of human existence. Even 150 years ago, if you wanted to communicate with anyone outside your town, you had to pay a horse based courier what was most likely a very expensive fee. Not to mention the millions of years before that. Did all these previous generations find less satisfaction in life? Well who knows but I argue not. We don’t have to structure our lives so that we are dependent on the internet for entertainment. But also, if you have to pay a small $ fee, okay that seems like a good trade too, if the value is what you are ascribing to it.
- dTal 3y ago
  >Even 150 years ago, if you wanted to communicate with anyone outside your town, you had to pay a horse based courier what was most likely a very expensive fee. Last month was the 150th anniversary of the introduction of the first government "postal card", in New York City. They cost a penny each and sold 200,000 in two and a half hours. https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/america%E2%80%99s-mailing-industry-the-united-states-postal-service/the-growth-of-the-mail https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/america%E2%80%99s-mai...

RheingoldRiver 3y ago

I disagree. If you find the right communities, you really make close friendships with people - even if you don't know their real names, how old they are, where they work, or where they live. None of that matters, because you share and connect over a common interest. And you could never find so many people IRL with similar interests as you. If this isn't how you're using reddit, discord, etc, and it's easy to disconnect from them, then yeah just leave them. But they foster meaningful interactions too.

haswell 3y ago
I don’t think the argument is that one can’t find connection on Reddit. But I think the recent happenings are a good reason to ask how good it is to invest so much in communities that can disappear overnight. I’ve enjoyed my time on Reddit over the (many) years and I’ve made real friends who I now know in real life. But many of the communities I once valued have crumbled or no longer provide the same positive experience. What remains are those real friendships. Social media in general is a gigantic experiment and we’re still just beginning to learn about the psychological and sociological impacts. Shifting focus to local in-person interactions and creating solid and sustainable relationships that don’t depend on the whims of the latest social media platform seems increasingly important. And I still think there can be value found there, but not as a primary form of social connection.
- adriand 3y ago
  > Shifting focus to local in-person interactions and creating solid and sustainable relationships that don’t depend on the whims of the latest social media platform seems increasingly important. I agree with this completely. I have formed many online relationships particularly in the music community starting during the COVID lockdowns and it has really struck me how ephemeral they are compared to IRL friendships. It’s so much harder to connect in a deep way. It’s also so much easier to walk away. You can just kind of slow down your online engagement and the relationship dries up. I’ve also noticed how I tend to develop a certain impression of someone just based on their online artifacts (avatar, style of writing, emoji, etc) that often turns out to be gravely inaccurate when I finally encounter them in a “realer” format such as a video call. Sometimes I end up realizing that I’d likely not hang out with that person IRL. It’s disconcerting. Lastly, I find I often feel uncertain about the connection I have in ways that I never feel with people IRL. For instance, wondering if my tone is off, wondering if the person isn’t perhaps as interested in whatever endeavour we are working on anymore, etc. I am fortunate in that I have not been much of a feed-based social media user for many years, but my belief that community-based social media (eg Discord) might be better has been tested by these observations. As per your comment, I think RL is where it’s at.

paulcole 3y ago

I’m assuming you’ve talked yourself into believing HN isn’t social media?

moskie 3y ago
hm? Of course it is?

itake 3y ago

I've been on the struggle bus quitting reddit for 5+ years. Even with this new level of energy to quit, I'm still on it for ~20 min per day.

gretch 3y ago
Have you tried replacing it with something else? I dramatically reduced my social media time a couple years ago by getting some casual games on my phone. Current favorites are NYT crosswords and solitaire. Some innocuous mental stimulation to pass time that doesn’t come with the toxicity that social media can.
- itake 3y ago
  Unfortunately now I spend a lot of time on Fb and fb reels. I catch myself thinking wayyy to much about whatever news article Fb shows me. I also listen to fiction audiobooks, but none of the healthy things are also low brain energy like Reddit is.

kccqzy 3y ago

I don't consider Reddit in the same league as other social media sites. I consider it a centralized collection of forums. I hardly use my Reddit account, but I have obtained tremendous amount of useful information by searching for a topic and landing on a useful Reddit post or comment.

SanjayMehta 3y ago
This was the only use I had for reddit - usually some hardware specific issue. Now I find reddit rarely shows up in DDG results. Searching directly on reddit is futile. Posting queries is also futile as many mods have implemented features to limit infrequent posters. It's been an old boys' club since EKP left.
- kccqzy 3y ago
  Try Googling; Reddit ranks surprisingly high on Google searches. Better yet use something more specialized such as https://redditsearch.io/ https://redditsearch.io/
  - rerdavies 3y ago
    Or type "reddit xyz" in the google search box -- a trick that I learned only recently. Completely eliminated my dependence on StackExchange, which has evolved into a rotting cesspit of obsolete information.

jhanschoo 3y ago

For reddit specifically, I have to disagree. It's a sad state the Internet has become, where you used to get coherent results from decentralized blogs when you google a sufficiently niche hobbyist topic. These days you just get content marketing spam. Append reddit to your search and you get subject-matter experts. The valuable conversation and folk knowledge is all siloed on social media.

joshvm 3y ago
Reddit successfully centralised forums and made it convenient because you didn't need 20+ logins. The other half is link sharing/doom scrolling (the addictive stuff), which replaced Digg, Stumbleupon, etc. In the not-so-distant past if you wanted expert help and non-astroturfed suggestions (or even just memes), that's where you went. Those places still exist for a lot of fields and the experts still hang out (and often are better than Reddit), but you still have the problem of finding them and managing identities across boards. In many cases the moderation is superior. Reddit now suffers from the problem where it's so big that people can run very subtle advertising campaigns to push products. It's still much better than blogspam, but you can still only really trust the negative/critical reviews.
- germinalphrase 3y ago
  I do frequent a handful of forums, and it appears many of them are powered by Xenforo. Maybe we need to hard sell Xenforo on a shared login model…
  - joshvm 3y ago
    There are some platforms like Discourse which allow you to use OAuth. That's a reasonable setup I think, if you don't care about linking your real identity (or you just make a dummy account).
  - tmcdos 3y ago
    In my personal opinion, Xenforo has a much worse UI than the old phpBB, SMF and similar kind of forum software.

qaisjp 3y ago

The only reason I maintain an Instagram is to have images to show on dating apps, and the only reason I use Twitter is to stay up to date with the tech community (and scream into the void).

allthecybers 3y ago

> What gives me hope is if you ever take a break from social media you realize how worthless it all is. I agree with this sentiment. I left Facebook and don't miss it in the slightest. Left Twitter long before it was fashionable and don't miss it. It's just a bummer that Reddit is going that direction as well. I've tried to leave Reddit a number of times and then remember it's the only place to get direct, responsive support from my ISP and most of my Google searches include Reddit to see what other people think about a product, service or idea. But would I miss Reddit a year from now? Nope, probably not. We could do away with all the surveillance capitalism using us as a product and life would probably be fine.

outcoldman 3y ago

My google search is - "search something" site:reddit.com Otherwise is just a lot of AI generated results with close to 0 information. So I disagree.

rg111 3y ago

I quit that kind of internet years ago. I was on Reddit to talk about Math, programming, books, etc. There are several subreddits from which I was helped. And I helped a lot of other people, too. Quora had a refined userbase. I liked it there. Got ~30mn views on my answers. In these places, I didn't have to dumb myself down and could be myself. There are properly moderated FB groups in which I have made connections, and have a community. On Discord, I am in so many valuable communities- where I can discuss things I like- be a part of something. And I depend on YouTube for learning things about programming, deep learning, etc. So, internet is worthless if you watch cat memes. But for me and millions others, it is a lifeline. And it saddens me very much to see how deeply I depend on these.

npteljes 3y ago

As a social network, it might be worthless, but it's very useful for me as a searchable information trove. During the blackout I have been bitten by this many times, just searching for something and then getting a private reddit page. I think reddit's system works much better than the god-awful traditional forums, where the informational comments and the one-off replies have the same weight.