6 ms·

Being always online wasn’t quite so shitty til the last 10-15 years. Many people did it and were just fine for a long time. To me this feels like blaming food p

Being always online wasn’t quite so shitty til the last 10-15 years. Many people did it and were just fine for a long time. To me this feels like blaming food poisoning on the fact you have to eat food. Maybe the food is just bad. the current state of online is the food. it just really sucks.

croutonwagon 3y ago
I feel like the inflection point was about here: https://imgur.com/ALMObBv https://imgur.com/ALMObBv Not that I am blaming porn. I am not. But once the screens and bandwidth became large enough, UI's easy enough to navigate etc AND the devices themselves became quite commonplace, the always online mentality became one used much less for essential communication and business and transitioned more to a cultural way of life (porn is just an easy and funny way to drive that point home). Doom scrolling wasnt really as much of a thing until Android and iOS matured enough and gained enough acceptance that it was no longer a status symbol. Heck i cant even tell you most of the social media apps these days, much less dating, but having some conversations with my younger cousins over break, there really arent many ways to meet folks outside of some of these apps (at least to them), which is sad. Apparently something as simple as "why not just join some type of IRL hobby and meet people that way" was scoffed at.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  Doom scrolling is an intentional social media "feature". Before infinite scrolling, algorithmic feeds doom scrolling required some effort on the users part. Now you can just keep flicking your thumb up and keep getting more shit.
- rescbr 3y ago
  Infinite scrolling was also present in desktop. I blame the pivot from the chronological feeds to algorithmically generated feeds based on engagement (or whatever other metric).
  - rchaud 3y ago
    agreed, chronological feeds have a visible signal to users telling them how far they've scrolled. If you're seeing posts from Feb of the past year, you've been scrolling too long. Ad-based social apps (all of them) replaced that with algorithmic, so you have no real signifier of how long you've spent scrolling. Tiktok takes this one step further by stripping the date from the videos.
  - croutonwagon 3y ago
    It was. And I agree that plays a part. But Desktops are, by nature, much less accessible. Even a laptop is. You didnt have people nearly as commonly doomscrolling on the subway on the way to work, or in the car, or in the living room around family, when the computer was restricted to a specific space/time etc.
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    > algorithmically generated feeds based on engagement This is one thing that really gets me. Your feed is based on engagement. It doesn't have to be GOOD engagement, just engagement. So when you angrily reply to a tweet you hate, that's engagement. You will be shown more content that makes you angry. Most of the things people complain about in terms of what Twitter shows them, I don't experience. I don't follow people I hate, and if someone quote-tweets, I avoid replying. Definitely don't click the original tweet to see what other people have said.
lupusreal 3y ago
10-15 years ago roughly aligns with the popularization of smartphones. Before that, almost nobody was going around all day with the internet in their pocket so the experience of "always" online was very different.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
If you look at the people who did it early, they're very different in personality than the people who are now doing it. I was the kid who would have preferred to sit in the library all day reading. Not that they let me. For me, I've been plugged into the absolutely largest library mankind has ever been built, since 1994 or so... and I still find myself amazed at what can be found online even now. Some of it are recently digitized works that because they were obscure, I could never have known they existed. Other things are discoveries (even amateur ones) that people post online today that would have been forgotten or unknown in the 1980s (unlikely for the people to have even put it in one of those crappy xeroxed newsletters). I check out Facebook once or twice a month because my wife tells me to like something on it. I didn't even create the account, she did it for me years ago. Even now, I read. And read. And read. Everything from rigorous scientific studies on down to the weirdest shitposting. From great works of literature down to fringe science theories. But all I see other people doing, if I notice at all, is watching Tiktok videos. Are any of the rest of you out there reluctant to bother with consuming video/audio content, even if a search seems to indicate that it might be the only place the information you seek might be found? Well, then you might be one of those personalities for which being online wasn't/isn't so shitty.
drukenemo 3y ago
In the past we could stay online for long hours doing some few activities (chatting, playing games, browsing few sites). These days we can barely survive without a mobile phone always on, permeating every little interaction we have with the world. It’s quite a difference.
- kredd 3y ago
  15 years ago, we would somewhat choose whom to be “always online with”. It was more of a selected in-group of people, having similar interests and ideas. Right now, it just feels like “everyone screaming into the void” as “every app is for everyone”. It feels much different for some reason. Or maybe I’m just getting older and not a teen anymore.
  - KittenInABox 3y ago
    I agree this might be the distinction. Communities are too permeable. The constant conflict we're seeing now reminds me a lot of e.g. harry potter fandom ship raids, except at a broad scale and for everything. We're not hissing about how people who want Harry and Hermione to fuck are dirty traitors to Ron and Hermione, we're trying to get someone's source of healthcare (employment) to kick them off for whatever they said about Ukraine/Russia.
- serf 3y ago
  >These days we can barely survive without a mobile phone always on, permeating every little interaction we have with the world. It’s quite a difference. reading all of these 'royal we' anecdotes makes me feel grateful that I can survive without a mobile quite fine. HN is as close to social media as I get -- so I guess i'm stuck wondering : are all these 'conditions' of the modern world inexorably linked and self-perpetuating? Like, if I wanted to develop a mobile-phone habit would it be best for me to get interested in social media, and vice versa? Maybe my ducking of these trends just stems from my aversion to social media all together, and that saved me from mobile-phone overuse? I don't know. But it is interesting, and wildly segmenting, that everyone around me refers to these problems that 'we' have -- but I don't. I can't be alone in this feeling. p.s. to be clear, i'm not gloating -- if anything it's kind of loneliness inducing that I can't relate to the struggle.. but it's kind of a bittersweet feeling like being one of the few who doesn't catch a plague and has to watch others suffer.
brazzy 3y ago
Nobody except a very small minority of techno-nerds (and most of those not teenagers) was alawys online until about 15 years ago, the advent of the smartphone. It took easily another 5 years before a significant amount of teenagers had them, especially outside the richest countries. But of course it's not the technical capability that's the problem, it's the always-online culture, the network effects, the constant doomscrolling through algorithm-optimized feeds, the instant notification when someone replies to your kneejerk vitrolic comment with even more vitrol. And then again, that culture was not possible without the technical capabilities and widespread adoption of them. Nobody was motivated to build a site or app optimized for doomscrolling until there were enough eyeballs and advertising dollars to capture.
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  Then why does this trend disproportionately affect girls? There is nothing particular special about “onlineness” that should affect them particularly worse than boys, but plenty of very real evidence that shows social media sites like IG are very harmful to girls (and meta knows it). There are plenty of millennials that have been terminally online since at least their early teens and weren’t showing this same trend. I’m saying there’s nothing inherent about “online-ness” that should warrant mass levels of depression like this.
  - naasking 3y ago
    > There is nothing particular special about “onlineness” that should affect them particularly worse than boys Females are on average far more social than males. If there's a dose-response effect social media time and mental health, then we should plausibly expect girls to be affected more.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    I don't know about other social media, but IG combines a culture of posting visual content with heavy use of face/body filters. If you're already feeling self-conscious about your body, this is a recipe for body image issues and self-hate. Girls were facing the same issue from advertising and the fashion industry in the pre-internet era, but now it's beamed directly to everyone's phone.

croutonwagon 3y ago

I feel like the inflection point was about here: https://imgur.com/ALMObBv https://imgur.com/ALMObBv Not that I am blaming porn. I am not. But once the screens and bandwidth became large enough, UI's easy enough to navigate etc AND the devices themselves became quite commonplace, the always online mentality became one used much less for essential communication and business and transitioned more to a cultural way of life (porn is just an easy and funny way to drive that point home). Doom scrolling wasnt really as much of a thing until Android and iOS matured enough and gained enough acceptance that it was no longer a status symbol. Heck i cant even tell you most of the social media apps these days, much less dating, but having some conversations with my younger cousins over break, there really arent many ways to meet folks outside of some of these apps (at least to them), which is sad. Apparently something as simple as "why not just join some type of IRL hobby and meet people that way" was scoffed at.

AlexandrB 3y ago
Doom scrolling is an intentional social media "feature". Before infinite scrolling, algorithmic feeds doom scrolling required some effort on the users part. Now you can just keep flicking your thumb up and keep getting more shit.
rescbr 3y ago
Infinite scrolling was also present in desktop. I blame the pivot from the chronological feeds to algorithmically generated feeds based on engagement (or whatever other metric).
- rchaud 3y ago
  agreed, chronological feeds have a visible signal to users telling them how far they've scrolled. If you're seeing posts from Feb of the past year, you've been scrolling too long. Ad-based social apps (all of them) replaced that with algorithmic, so you have no real signifier of how long you've spent scrolling. Tiktok takes this one step further by stripping the date from the videos.
- croutonwagon 3y ago
  It was. And I agree that plays a part. But Desktops are, by nature, much less accessible. Even a laptop is. You didnt have people nearly as commonly doomscrolling on the subway on the way to work, or in the car, or in the living room around family, when the computer was restricted to a specific space/time etc.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > algorithmically generated feeds based on engagement This is one thing that really gets me. Your feed is based on engagement. It doesn't have to be GOOD engagement, just engagement. So when you angrily reply to a tweet you hate, that's engagement. You will be shown more content that makes you angry. Most of the things people complain about in terms of what Twitter shows them, I don't experience. I don't follow people I hate, and if someone quote-tweets, I avoid replying. Definitely don't click the original tweet to see what other people have said.

lupusreal 3y ago

10-15 years ago roughly aligns with the popularization of smartphones. Before that, almost nobody was going around all day with the internet in their pocket so the experience of "always" online was very different.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

If you look at the people who did it early, they're very different in personality than the people who are now doing it. I was the kid who would have preferred to sit in the library all day reading. Not that they let me. For me, I've been plugged into the absolutely largest library mankind has ever been built, since 1994 or so... and I still find myself amazed at what can be found online even now. Some of it are recently digitized works that because they were obscure, I could never have known they existed. Other things are discoveries (even amateur ones) that people post online today that would have been forgotten or unknown in the 1980s (unlikely for the people to have even put it in one of those crappy xeroxed newsletters). I check out Facebook once or twice a month because my wife tells me to like something on it. I didn't even create the account, she did it for me years ago. Even now, I read. And read. And read. Everything from rigorous scientific studies on down to the weirdest shitposting. From great works of literature down to fringe science theories. But all I see other people doing, if I notice at all, is watching Tiktok videos. Are any of the rest of you out there reluctant to bother with consuming video/audio content, even if a search seems to indicate that it might be the only place the information you seek might be found? Well, then you might be one of those personalities for which being online wasn't/isn't so shitty.

drukenemo 3y ago

In the past we could stay online for long hours doing some few activities (chatting, playing games, browsing few sites). These days we can barely survive without a mobile phone always on, permeating every little interaction we have with the world. It’s quite a difference.

kredd 3y ago
15 years ago, we would somewhat choose whom to be “always online with”. It was more of a selected in-group of people, having similar interests and ideas. Right now, it just feels like “everyone screaming into the void” as “every app is for everyone”. It feels much different for some reason. Or maybe I’m just getting older and not a teen anymore.
- KittenInABox 3y ago
  I agree this might be the distinction. Communities are too permeable. The constant conflict we're seeing now reminds me a lot of e.g. harry potter fandom ship raids, except at a broad scale and for everything. We're not hissing about how people who want Harry and Hermione to fuck are dirty traitors to Ron and Hermione, we're trying to get someone's source of healthcare (employment) to kick them off for whatever they said about Ukraine/Russia.
serf 3y ago
>These days we can barely survive without a mobile phone always on, permeating every little interaction we have with the world. It’s quite a difference. reading all of these 'royal we' anecdotes makes me feel grateful that I can survive without a mobile quite fine. HN is as close to social media as I get -- so I guess i'm stuck wondering : are all these 'conditions' of the modern world inexorably linked and self-perpetuating? Like, if I wanted to develop a mobile-phone habit would it be best for me to get interested in social media, and vice versa? Maybe my ducking of these trends just stems from my aversion to social media all together, and that saved me from mobile-phone overuse? I don't know. But it is interesting, and wildly segmenting, that everyone around me refers to these problems that 'we' have -- but I don't. I can't be alone in this feeling. p.s. to be clear, i'm not gloating -- if anything it's kind of loneliness inducing that I can't relate to the struggle.. but it's kind of a bittersweet feeling like being one of the few who doesn't catch a plague and has to watch others suffer.

brazzy 3y ago

Nobody except a very small minority of techno-nerds (and most of those not teenagers) was alawys online until about 15 years ago, the advent of the smartphone. It took easily another 5 years before a significant amount of teenagers had them, especially outside the richest countries. But of course it's not the technical capability that's the problem, it's the always-online culture, the network effects, the constant doomscrolling through algorithm-optimized feeds, the instant notification when someone replies to your kneejerk vitrolic comment with even more vitrol. And then again, that culture was not possible without the technical capabilities and widespread adoption of them. Nobody was motivated to build a site or app optimized for doomscrolling until there were enough eyeballs and advertising dollars to capture.

JohnMakin 3y ago
Then why does this trend disproportionately affect girls? There is nothing particular special about “onlineness” that should affect them particularly worse than boys, but plenty of very real evidence that shows social media sites like IG are very harmful to girls (and meta knows it). There are plenty of millennials that have been terminally online since at least their early teens and weren’t showing this same trend. I’m saying there’s nothing inherent about “online-ness” that should warrant mass levels of depression like this.
- naasking 3y ago
  > There is nothing particular special about “onlineness” that should affect them particularly worse than boys Females are on average far more social than males. If there's a dose-response effect social media time and mental health, then we should plausibly expect girls to be affected more.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  I don't know about other social media, but IG combines a culture of posting visual content with heavy use of face/body filters. If you're already feeling self-conscious about your body, this is a recipe for body image issues and self-hate. Girls were facing the same issue from advertising and the fashion industry in the pre-internet era, but now it's beamed directly to everyone's phone.