8 ms·

I've never used social media or had a "problem" with my phone. So I used to read articles like this a little smugly, but I'm growing increasingly discomfited by

I've never used social media or had a "problem" with my phone. So I used to read articles like this a little smugly, but I'm growing increasingly discomfited by the notion that I'm...out of touch..? Yeah, it's probably overall a positive thing that I've never been hooked on instagram, but it's also a language/shared experience with which I have no point of contact. I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird. And it's great to be weird! I just hope that it doesn't impact potential connections in the future.

thfuran 3y ago
>I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird. Well, I have some good news: here you are, on social media, having a presence. Admittedly, it's a bit more niche than Instagram.
- captainclam 3y ago
  Haha, good point. I'm not a hopeless case after all.
- browningstreet 3y ago
  National borders and most romantic dates won’t ask for your HN profile but they will ask for all the other major social networks. Not everything with an account and a comment system is a Social Network to lay-people and first encounter authorities.
- dgfitz 3y ago
  Before the abused and tired notion of "social media" was coined, this was called... a forum. Nothing "media" about it.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    I think it still is. A discussion forum like this lacks a number of features we'd commonly associate with social media.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - vundercind 3y ago
      No personalized feed or “watch next”? Not “social media”.
      - dimask 3y ago
        These are not necessary for social media, you can be in social media without these (it sometimes requires browser extensions but not necessarily).
        vundercind 3y ago
        The term doesn’t have to mean what the literal words on their own do, or apply to everything that the individual words might, taken in their own. [edit] and in this case the term is far more useful if it is not as expansive as you suggest. We’d just need another term, then, to describe the kind of thing people usually mean by “social media”.
      - diego_sandoval 3y ago
        I think the disctintion should be: Is the person (their face, their personality) more important, or the content of what they say is more important? HN falls much closer to the "content" end of the spectrum.
        vundercind 3y ago
        Yeah, there are lots of other little aspects that push something closer to or farther from being the kind of thing we usual mean by “social media” (“so it’s a fuzzy category?” yes, like approximately all other categories and labels). Downplaying personal or account identity (which HN does to a more extreme degree than even most forums et c) definitely counts as moving something toward the “not social media” side.
  - krrrh 3y ago
    Link aggregators was what site like this, digg, and reddit were called when they started. They introduced a social aspect for upvoting content into a dynamic feed. It’s something more than a forum, and something less than what later became social media.
    - Vrondi 3y ago
      But before that, forums existed that let you subscribe to threads in your forum account. It's just that the mundane masses used them a little less than the geeky folk. All Reddit added was stealing the upvote/downvote thing from Slashdot and Digg.
      - tempestn 3y ago
        And combining all topics under a single umbrella, so you interact with them all as the same persona.
  - jacamera 3y ago
    Hypermedia?
  - zogrodea 3y ago
    I don't agree. I made friends and noticed other cliques of friends on forums like GBATemp over a decade ago. Regular visitors knew each other after seeing the other users' posts, there are in-jokes, and it's not so different. I would say HN is less self-centered (we don't have unique avatars or signatures) than many old-school forums were. Friendships are less likely to be formed here.
    - dgfitz 3y ago
      > I don't agree. I made friends and noticed other cliques of friends on forums like GBATemp over a decade ago. And I ran a forum, over a decade ago, in which people from all locations/walks of life participated, and I met more than a handful of them in real life. I don't understand what point you're trying to make.
      - zogrodea 3y ago
        I should have specified that, to me personally (but apparently not for you), those old forums were very much like social media. I don’t see a categorical difference between them because the same behaviour is displayed on both of them.
        dgfitz 3y ago
        I’ve been to both a bar and a church with the same people. They act the same both in a bar and in church. Are bars and churches equivalent?
        zogrodea 3y ago
        Bars and churches have different purposes and people's behaviour in each of them should change because of that. The person acting the same and doing the same things in both would be considered to be behaving very strangely otherwise. I don't know of any ills with social media that weren't present on forums for me. The difference seems to be one of scale. I know my intention for joining both was the same (human connection over common interests).
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  While both have been coined "social media", I think there's a huge difference between content aggregation/discussion sites, and content creation sites. I think, deep down, everyone knows HN and its ilk are not "social media". It's a merely discussion forum at most.
  - iwontberude 3y ago
    This is media (web) that we are social on (discussion). It’s these folks own definition of social media that needs fixing so they don’t feel isolated. I don’t use instagram not bc I’m weird but because it’s a shit experience.
    - seoulmetro 3y ago
      The social in "social media" doesn't mean discussion. It means sharing personal media and creating bonds with people. i.e. socialising. Hacker news has no means to do so.
      - iwontberude 3y ago
        We have pseudo anonymity which allows for reputation. I am not sure how much more of a bond you are looking for, but conversation and rapport is about all you need for socializing — both are here.
  - nxkeksbfbe 3y ago
    this is just a cope. sites like this are still social and still addictive, if you don’t believe me then try to stop coming here for a while. in fact try to stop going to all “slot machine” sites where you can constantly refresh and get new interesting things
    - BriggyDwiggs42 3y ago
      It’s really not the same by matter of extremity. Hacker news has maybe a small fraction of the addictive mechanics at play in instagram or twitter. Personally, I only come back to this site because I don’t have other, far more addictive social media to scroll when bored.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  HN isn't technically social media, but it's close. The little vote buttons, the karma, the constant feed of "hot" articles, are designed to fuel the dopamine push that creates addictive engagement. What it lacks to be true "social media" is engagement around a social network. There are certainly "social networks" at work on HN, but most of the users don't know each other and aren't focused on each other's statuses, pictures, videos, relationship statuses. Instead they're mostly focused on intellectual competition via comments. (when you're not allowed to compete for jokes, like folks do on Reddit, you compete for whatever else defines your identity, which on HN is intelligence). Ironically, HN's always wanted to be a social network, in that they want to build "a community of users" where the users all recognize each other (they claim that's necessary in order to build a community). Once HN introduces personal blogs or tweet-like status updates, it will 100% be a social network, with all the same health concerns.
  - exitb 3y ago
    Note that there’s an anti-social element right in the algorithm. Stories that have more comments than upvotes are actively pushed off the front page.
    - tayo42 3y ago
      Probably has the unintended side effect of always keeping new stuff on the front page like other social media does.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Forum participation is a bit different than social media in that it is first and foremost about the discussion and not so much about 'you' which seems to be the main focus for social media, furthermore you can't follow people and there are no push notifications so it is impossible to create 'an audience' other than whoever is there. Those are distinguishing factors that are strong enough to differentiate otherwise the BBS I used to hang out on would have been social media and IRC would be as well. I don't buy that broad categorization. Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter -> social media. Reddit not and HN definitely not. Though the quantity of 'meme' content may have to factor in there somewhere and then we have a continuum of online participation with on one end personal messaging and on the extreme other IG, TT, FB etc.
- seoulmetro 3y ago
  Hacker News isn't social media. No matter how much you want to claim it is.
- camgunz 3y ago
  I think there are important differences between news forums like this one and social media: - HN doesn't have notifications - HN doesn't provide affordances for virality: you can't "retweet"/"subtweet"; you can't start trends like #ProtectTaylorSwift; you can't brigade people; etc - HN doesn't have a personal algorithmic feed - HN doesn't have DMs - HN links elsewhere (mostly) for the main content - HN's moderators are available directly, and they also participate in discussions - You can't be an influencer on HN: you might be a patio11 or something, you might even get jobs from your HN karma or posts, but hawking products based on your clout for a kickback is astroturfing/shilling and the community is pretty good at snuffing it out --- I guess overall my argument is that if forums--even forums like Reddit or random vbulletin forums--are social media then the term kind of loses meaning. It opens the door to questions like "are blogs social media, after all there are accounts and comments sections". I know people highroad social media and its users a lot (I'm guilty of this haha; finally my misanthropy is good for something!), so there's something attractive about an argument that cuts holier-than-thou HNers back down to size (trying to be generous and lighthearted here, again I'm a member of this crew). I just think the shoe doesn't fit in this case. There are good things about social media! Black Twitter! Queer/Geek Mastodon! But I really feel like those services are meaningfully different than forums--especially this one.
sonicanatidae 3y ago
Personally, I don't use tech to interact with people. I use it to interact with information, data, etc. I can live without it, but prefer having it because there is always something I want to know more about. When I was a kid, the source was an over-priced encyclopedia. Now, it's a search and to me, that's the magic. Also, you can't Ctrl-F search paper, and that's a huge downside, imo. YMMV.
- kaashif 3y ago
  > Personally, I don't use tech to interact with people. I am a person. You have interacted with me using tech. How are you defining "tech" exactly? I use messaging apps all the time to organise things with friends or talk to distant family members. There's no better way to do it, I can't meet everyone in person and if plans change, it's better to know sooner.
  - reidjs 3y ago
    Maybe they meant to interact with people they know*
    - sonicanatidae 3y ago
      Not quite. I have 2 accounts that anyone could argue are social media and this is one of them. The other is so specialized that I'm fairly sure no one here uses it and I mainly use it for reference. An account was needed to search. Since I have an account, I will occasionally provide an answer to someone that has a question that I've had in the past, but even that's rare. Otherwise, I use Teams at work, but that's not social media.
  - codingdave 3y ago
    > How are you defining "tech" exactly? The better question may be: How are you defining an interaction? This may be a hot take, but I don't consider HN to be personal interaction. We post content individually. We read it individually. Replies are about the content, not about the person. I am replying to something you wrote, but know nothing about you as a person, so it is hard to claim we have a personal interaction together just because of this comment.
sircastor 3y ago
I think you're the 21st century equivalent of the people who "don't own a television." It depends on what your social circles are like. Given that you're not attached to social networks, it seems likely your associates aren't super connected either. So you might miss out on a few inside jokes, but those are fleeting in the moment anyway. Probably nothing truly long lasting. Because of the broadness of the social network experience, it's not the same as missing Dallas or Game of Thrones in prior decades. And you might not have a water-cooler to talk at anyway...
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > it's not the same as missing Dallas tell me how old you are without telling me how old you are :)
TehShrike 3y ago
I installed TikTok for a couple weeks to try it out. It wasn't as interesting as people acted like. I don't think you're missing much.
- petsfed 3y ago
  My experience with Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts and Facebook stories (and all the other things that compete with TikTok) is that it can still get its hooks in, but you have to invite it in. That is, if it doesn't immediately grab you, its not enough to open TikTok and idly doom scroll for 2 minutes. You have to consciously watch for 15 minutes before it starts to alter your brain chemistry.
  - TehShrike 3y ago
    I did that (scrolled for 15+ minutes) around a dozen times. I kept waiting for the algorithm to serve me that really great addictive content, but I only found a couple actually good creators. Most of the best videos I saw were Vine compilations
bitfilped 3y ago
No worries, the line near the top of the article about needing a phone in the search of a partner is so absolutely foreign to me I had to stop and reread the sentence to be sure I was comprehending correctly. And I'm more than a decade younger than the author!
- rblatz 3y ago
  I’m in my 40s, how would you expect to court a partner without a phone? There is already plenty accounts out there that even the relatively small barrier of iMessage -> SMS is a large enough of an inconvenience to stop a lot of casual relationships from moving to the next level or even continuing. Having no phone means you are basically unreachable for most of the day. A much more significant hurdle to get over. It’s possible to find another like minded person but that is a very tiny minority of people looking for a partner. It’s not the 90s anymore and people are accustomed to living in this constantly connected world. Look at most sitcoms from the 90s so many of the situations they find themselves in just aren’t relatable because of the easy communication we have with everyone at all times.
  - lapetitejort 3y ago
    Random interactions at a third place can happen without a phone, but eventually you'll want to meet somewhere else, and unless you're comfortable with the old school "meet me at the clock" style meetup and all the failure modes that could occur, you're going to need a way to communicate
  - bitfilped 3y ago
    I guess we need to agree exactly what "not using a phone" means. I send >85+% of my sms or sms-like messages from a laptop/desktop. So no, I don't see a phone as an important part of my communication besides the fact it gives me a number serving as an ID that could just as easily be provided many other ways. I primarily took this line to mean dating apps, facetime, and other social media like functions; which I would argue are mostly worthless for developing and maintaining friendships or partnerships. If we're taking it to the extreme and saying that not having a phone somehow disallows you any digital communications; then yes it will be significantly more difficult without a phone, perhaps to the point that some would feel it's a necessary device.
insane_dreamer 3y ago
you're really not missing out; social media has its benefits but I'm not sure they outweigh its detriments I deleted my FB account ~8 years ago and twitter ~1 year ago and have not regretted it one bit. IG is the only one I have left and use that to share/keep up with family/friends' photos.
arsome 3y ago
As long as you don't overspend on weird. Being weird is great until it isn't.
araes 3y ago
Having gone the other way, can comment slightly. Tried FB, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Vimeo, Imgur, LinkedIn, and Slideshare. (Plus several forums/newsforums like Reddit, Slashdot) Mostly found out I was not humanity's demographic. I don't really like posting exercise photos. I don't really want to take pictures of my pets. I don't watch sports all that much. I don't follow celebrities much. There go most of the 10k+ categories. (re: Instagram's unlinkable explore page https://www.instagram.com/explore/ https://www.instagram.com/explore/ ) From my own experience, you don't actually feel very "in touch" unless you're successful. Instead, you end up making a lot of posts into the void that maybe get 10-20 views? 100 on a ++ post. Spend a month on a demo and get 1 comment. Watch nobody ever read what you wrote, while others post "does sugar go in spaghetti?" and get 60 million views and 4 million comments. [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58270497 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58270497
- fragmede 3y ago
  what's your demo?
  - araes 3y ago
    Here's a couple recent ones: Game I made for the Library of Congress' Game Challenge this year. Combination of a match-3 game, and a society simulation, such as the Civilization series. Part I thought was neat was Tetris style swap powers you earn with trominos and tetraminos, as well as pentaminos for structure criteria. Note: LoC wanted "simple, easy to start" http://www.forsako.rf.gd/AmericanCities/LibOfCongressGame.html?i=1 http://www.forsako.rf.gd/AmericanCities/LibOfCongressGame.ht... Spherical planetary erosion (quick gif, video's on Twitter, I just left after the strobing X on the roof episode.) https://i.imgur.com/ry7s6JY.gif https://i.imgur.com/ry7s6JY.gif Least squares curve fitting with semi-arbitrary equation matching and visual points you can move. http://forsako.rf.gd/JAMA4JS/JAMA_Test_Visual.html http://forsako.rf.gd/JAMA4JS/JAMA_Test_Visual.html
andoando 3y ago
I dunno if it’s that weird. It can help if you want to be more social of course.

thfuran 3y ago

>I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird. Well, I have some good news: here you are, on social media, having a presence. Admittedly, it's a bit more niche than Instagram.

captainclam 3y ago
Haha, good point. I'm not a hopeless case after all.
browningstreet 3y ago
National borders and most romantic dates won’t ask for your HN profile but they will ask for all the other major social networks. Not everything with an account and a comment system is a Social Network to lay-people and first encounter authorities.
dgfitz 3y ago
Before the abused and tired notion of "social media" was coined, this was called... a forum. Nothing "media" about it.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I think it still is. A discussion forum like this lacks a number of features we'd commonly associate with social media.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vundercind 3y ago
    No personalized feed or “watch next”? Not “social media”.
    - dimask 3y ago
      These are not necessary for social media, you can be in social media without these (it sometimes requires browser extensions but not necessarily).
      - vundercind 3y ago
        The term doesn’t have to mean what the literal words on their own do, or apply to everything that the individual words might, taken in their own. [edit] and in this case the term is far more useful if it is not as expansive as you suggest. We’d just need another term, then, to describe the kind of thing people usually mean by “social media”.
    - diego_sandoval 3y ago
      I think the disctintion should be: Is the person (their face, their personality) more important, or the content of what they say is more important? HN falls much closer to the "content" end of the spectrum.
      - vundercind 3y ago
        Yeah, there are lots of other little aspects that push something closer to or farther from being the kind of thing we usual mean by “social media” (“so it’s a fuzzy category?” yes, like approximately all other categories and labels). Downplaying personal or account identity (which HN does to a more extreme degree than even most forums et c) definitely counts as moving something toward the “not social media” side.
- krrrh 3y ago
  Link aggregators was what site like this, digg, and reddit were called when they started. They introduced a social aspect for upvoting content into a dynamic feed. It’s something more than a forum, and something less than what later became social media.
  - Vrondi 3y ago
    But before that, forums existed that let you subscribe to threads in your forum account. It's just that the mundane masses used them a little less than the geeky folk. All Reddit added was stealing the upvote/downvote thing from Slashdot and Digg.
    - tempestn 3y ago
      And combining all topics under a single umbrella, so you interact with them all as the same persona.
- jacamera 3y ago
  Hypermedia?
- zogrodea 3y ago
  I don't agree. I made friends and noticed other cliques of friends on forums like GBATemp over a decade ago. Regular visitors knew each other after seeing the other users' posts, there are in-jokes, and it's not so different. I would say HN is less self-centered (we don't have unique avatars or signatures) than many old-school forums were. Friendships are less likely to be formed here.
  - dgfitz 3y ago
    > I don't agree. I made friends and noticed other cliques of friends on forums like GBATemp over a decade ago. And I ran a forum, over a decade ago, in which people from all locations/walks of life participated, and I met more than a handful of them in real life. I don't understand what point you're trying to make.
    - zogrodea 3y ago
      I should have specified that, to me personally (but apparently not for you), those old forums were very much like social media. I don’t see a categorical difference between them because the same behaviour is displayed on both of them.
      - dgfitz 3y ago
        I’ve been to both a bar and a church with the same people. They act the same both in a bar and in church. Are bars and churches equivalent?
        zogrodea 3y ago
        Bars and churches have different purposes and people's behaviour in each of them should change because of that. The person acting the same and doing the same things in both would be considered to be behaving very strangely otherwise. I don't know of any ills with social media that weren't present on forums for me. The difference seems to be one of scale. I know my intention for joining both was the same (human connection over common interests).
stronglikedan 3y ago
While both have been coined "social media", I think there's a huge difference between content aggregation/discussion sites, and content creation sites. I think, deep down, everyone knows HN and its ilk are not "social media". It's a merely discussion forum at most.
- iwontberude 3y ago
  This is media (web) that we are social on (discussion). It’s these folks own definition of social media that needs fixing so they don’t feel isolated. I don’t use instagram not bc I’m weird but because it’s a shit experience.
  - seoulmetro 3y ago
    The social in "social media" doesn't mean discussion. It means sharing personal media and creating bonds with people. i.e. socialising. Hacker news has no means to do so.
    - iwontberude 3y ago
      We have pseudo anonymity which allows for reputation. I am not sure how much more of a bond you are looking for, but conversation and rapport is about all you need for socializing — both are here.
- nxkeksbfbe 3y ago
  this is just a cope. sites like this are still social and still addictive, if you don’t believe me then try to stop coming here for a while. in fact try to stop going to all “slot machine” sites where you can constantly refresh and get new interesting things
  - BriggyDwiggs42 3y ago
    It’s really not the same by matter of extremity. Hacker news has maybe a small fraction of the addictive mechanics at play in instagram or twitter. Personally, I only come back to this site because I don’t have other, far more addictive social media to scroll when bored.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
HN isn't technically social media, but it's close. The little vote buttons, the karma, the constant feed of "hot" articles, are designed to fuel the dopamine push that creates addictive engagement. What it lacks to be true "social media" is engagement around a social network. There are certainly "social networks" at work on HN, but most of the users don't know each other and aren't focused on each other's statuses, pictures, videos, relationship statuses. Instead they're mostly focused on intellectual competition via comments. (when you're not allowed to compete for jokes, like folks do on Reddit, you compete for whatever else defines your identity, which on HN is intelligence). Ironically, HN's always wanted to be a social network, in that they want to build "a community of users" where the users all recognize each other (they claim that's necessary in order to build a community). Once HN introduces personal blogs or tweet-like status updates, it will 100% be a social network, with all the same health concerns.
- exitb 3y ago
  Note that there’s an anti-social element right in the algorithm. Stories that have more comments than upvotes are actively pushed off the front page.
  - tayo42 3y ago
    Probably has the unintended side effect of always keeping new stuff on the front page like other social media does.
jacquesm 3y ago
Forum participation is a bit different than social media in that it is first and foremost about the discussion and not so much about 'you' which seems to be the main focus for social media, furthermore you can't follow people and there are no push notifications so it is impossible to create 'an audience' other than whoever is there. Those are distinguishing factors that are strong enough to differentiate otherwise the BBS I used to hang out on would have been social media and IRC would be as well. I don't buy that broad categorization. Facebook, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter -> social media. Reddit not and HN definitely not. Though the quantity of 'meme' content may have to factor in there somewhere and then we have a continuum of online participation with on one end personal messaging and on the extreme other IG, TT, FB etc.
seoulmetro 3y ago
Hacker News isn't social media. No matter how much you want to claim it is.
camgunz 3y ago
I think there are important differences between news forums like this one and social media: - HN doesn't have notifications - HN doesn't provide affordances for virality: you can't "retweet"/"subtweet"; you can't start trends like #ProtectTaylorSwift; you can't brigade people; etc - HN doesn't have a personal algorithmic feed - HN doesn't have DMs - HN links elsewhere (mostly) for the main content - HN's moderators are available directly, and they also participate in discussions - You can't be an influencer on HN: you might be a patio11 or something, you might even get jobs from your HN karma or posts, but hawking products based on your clout for a kickback is astroturfing/shilling and the community is pretty good at snuffing it out --- I guess overall my argument is that if forums--even forums like Reddit or random vbulletin forums--are social media then the term kind of loses meaning. It opens the door to questions like "are blogs social media, after all there are accounts and comments sections". I know people highroad social media and its users a lot (I'm guilty of this haha; finally my misanthropy is good for something!), so there's something attractive about an argument that cuts holier-than-thou HNers back down to size (trying to be generous and lighthearted here, again I'm a member of this crew). I just think the shoe doesn't fit in this case. There are good things about social media! Black Twitter! Queer/Geek Mastodon! But I really feel like those services are meaningfully different than forums--especially this one.

sonicanatidae 3y ago

Personally, I don't use tech to interact with people. I use it to interact with information, data, etc. I can live without it, but prefer having it because there is always something I want to know more about. When I was a kid, the source was an over-priced encyclopedia. Now, it's a search and to me, that's the magic. Also, you can't Ctrl-F search paper, and that's a huge downside, imo. YMMV.

kaashif 3y ago
> Personally, I don't use tech to interact with people. I am a person. You have interacted with me using tech. How are you defining "tech" exactly? I use messaging apps all the time to organise things with friends or talk to distant family members. There's no better way to do it, I can't meet everyone in person and if plans change, it's better to know sooner.
- reidjs 3y ago
  Maybe they meant to interact with people they know*
  - sonicanatidae 3y ago
    Not quite. I have 2 accounts that anyone could argue are social media and this is one of them. The other is so specialized that I'm fairly sure no one here uses it and I mainly use it for reference. An account was needed to search. Since I have an account, I will occasionally provide an answer to someone that has a question that I've had in the past, but even that's rare. Otherwise, I use Teams at work, but that's not social media.
- codingdave 3y ago
  > How are you defining "tech" exactly? The better question may be: How are you defining an interaction? This may be a hot take, but I don't consider HN to be personal interaction. We post content individually. We read it individually. Replies are about the content, not about the person. I am replying to something you wrote, but know nothing about you as a person, so it is hard to claim we have a personal interaction together just because of this comment.

sircastor 3y ago

I think you're the 21st century equivalent of the people who "don't own a television." It depends on what your social circles are like. Given that you're not attached to social networks, it seems likely your associates aren't super connected either. So you might miss out on a few inside jokes, but those are fleeting in the moment anyway. Probably nothing truly long lasting. Because of the broadness of the social network experience, it's not the same as missing Dallas or Game of Thrones in prior decades. And you might not have a water-cooler to talk at anyway...

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> it's not the same as missing Dallas tell me how old you are without telling me how old you are :)

TehShrike 3y ago

I installed TikTok for a couple weeks to try it out. It wasn't as interesting as people acted like. I don't think you're missing much.

petsfed 3y ago
My experience with Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts and Facebook stories (and all the other things that compete with TikTok) is that it can still get its hooks in, but you have to invite it in. That is, if it doesn't immediately grab you, its not enough to open TikTok and idly doom scroll for 2 minutes. You have to consciously watch for 15 minutes before it starts to alter your brain chemistry.
- TehShrike 3y ago
  I did that (scrolled for 15+ minutes) around a dozen times. I kept waiting for the algorithm to serve me that really great addictive content, but I only found a couple actually good creators. Most of the best videos I saw were Vine compilations

bitfilped 3y ago

No worries, the line near the top of the article about needing a phone in the search of a partner is so absolutely foreign to me I had to stop and reread the sentence to be sure I was comprehending correctly. And I'm more than a decade younger than the author!

rblatz 3y ago
I’m in my 40s, how would you expect to court a partner without a phone? There is already plenty accounts out there that even the relatively small barrier of iMessage -> SMS is a large enough of an inconvenience to stop a lot of casual relationships from moving to the next level or even continuing. Having no phone means you are basically unreachable for most of the day. A much more significant hurdle to get over. It’s possible to find another like minded person but that is a very tiny minority of people looking for a partner. It’s not the 90s anymore and people are accustomed to living in this constantly connected world. Look at most sitcoms from the 90s so many of the situations they find themselves in just aren’t relatable because of the easy communication we have with everyone at all times.
- lapetitejort 3y ago
  Random interactions at a third place can happen without a phone, but eventually you'll want to meet somewhere else, and unless you're comfortable with the old school "meet me at the clock" style meetup and all the failure modes that could occur, you're going to need a way to communicate
- bitfilped 3y ago
  I guess we need to agree exactly what "not using a phone" means. I send >85+% of my sms or sms-like messages from a laptop/desktop. So no, I don't see a phone as an important part of my communication besides the fact it gives me a number serving as an ID that could just as easily be provided many other ways. I primarily took this line to mean dating apps, facetime, and other social media like functions; which I would argue are mostly worthless for developing and maintaining friendships or partnerships. If we're taking it to the extreme and saying that not having a phone somehow disallows you any digital communications; then yes it will be significantly more difficult without a phone, perhaps to the point that some would feel it's a necessary device.

insane_dreamer 3y ago

you're really not missing out; social media has its benefits but I'm not sure they outweigh its detriments I deleted my FB account ~8 years ago and twitter ~1 year ago and have not regretted it one bit. IG is the only one I have left and use that to share/keep up with family/friends' photos.

arsome 3y ago

As long as you don't overspend on weird. Being weird is great until it isn't.

araes 3y ago

Having gone the other way, can comment slightly. Tried FB, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Vimeo, Imgur, LinkedIn, and Slideshare. (Plus several forums/newsforums like Reddit, Slashdot) Mostly found out I was not humanity's demographic. I don't really like posting exercise photos. I don't really want to take pictures of my pets. I don't watch sports all that much. I don't follow celebrities much. There go most of the 10k+ categories. (re: Instagram's unlinkable explore page https://www.instagram.com/explore/ https://www.instagram.com/explore/ ) From my own experience, you don't actually feel very "in touch" unless you're successful. Instead, you end up making a lot of posts into the void that maybe get 10-20 views? 100 on a ++ post. Spend a month on a demo and get 1 comment. Watch nobody ever read what you wrote, while others post "does sugar go in spaghetti?" and get 60 million views and 4 million comments. [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58270497 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58270497

fragmede 3y ago
what's your demo?
- araes 3y ago
  Here's a couple recent ones: Game I made for the Library of Congress' Game Challenge this year. Combination of a match-3 game, and a society simulation, such as the Civilization series. Part I thought was neat was Tetris style swap powers you earn with trominos and tetraminos, as well as pentaminos for structure criteria. Note: LoC wanted "simple, easy to start" http://www.forsako.rf.gd/AmericanCities/LibOfCongressGame.html?i=1 http://www.forsako.rf.gd/AmericanCities/LibOfCongressGame.ht... Spherical planetary erosion (quick gif, video's on Twitter, I just left after the strobing X on the roof episode.) https://i.imgur.com/ry7s6JY.gif https://i.imgur.com/ry7s6JY.gif Least squares curve fitting with semi-arbitrary equation matching and visual points you can move. http://forsako.rf.gd/JAMA4JS/JAMA_Test_Visual.html http://forsako.rf.gd/JAMA4JS/JAMA_Test_Visual.html

andoando 3y ago

I dunno if it’s that weird. It can help if you want to be more social of course.