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I recently had the opposite revelation: Most social sites are too much of a distraction, feeding us with pointless weakly-written opinions and things that have

I recently had the opposite revelation: Most social sites are too much of a distraction, feeding us with pointless weakly-written opinions and things that have zero effect in my life. Their signal to noise ratio is definitely lower, and is not compensated by the higher amount of info they pile up. Humans are by nature curious about what's happening, and no matter how much one bulks up at the local gym, they are probably not quenching their thirst in that way.

diego 14y ago
And you're posting this to a social site :)
- zerostar07 14y ago
  Don't get me wrong, HN is my go-to source for interesting stuff to read. But it turns out the best ones link to "mainstream news sites".
w1ntermute 14y ago
> I recently had the opposite revelation: Most social sites are too much of a distraction, feeding us with pointless weakly-written opinions and things that have zero effect in my life. I don't think TFA is suggesting that you replace mainstream news with social news - just that you should cut mainstream news out of your information diet. > Humans are by nature curious about what's happening, and no matter how much one bulks up at the local gym, they are probably not quenching their thirst in that way. Humans are "by nature" a lot of things, many of which we've come to fight quite successfully. There's no reason why this would be any different.
huggah 14y ago
You're presenting a false dichotomy: Joel never said "switch to social sites"; in fact, he suggested we all go out and do things. If you feel like you need to "quench your thirst" for current news, maybe traditional outlets work better for you than social media. Personally, I agree with Joel; most of us in the modern world are gluttons for information, and consume more than we even want, let alone what we need. Yes, I realize the irony of posting this to a social news site.

diego 14y ago

And you're posting this to a social site :)

zerostar07 14y ago
Don't get me wrong, HN is my go-to source for interesting stuff to read. But it turns out the best ones link to "mainstream news sites".

w1ntermute 14y ago

> I recently had the opposite revelation: Most social sites are too much of a distraction, feeding us with pointless weakly-written opinions and things that have zero effect in my life. I don't think TFA is suggesting that you replace mainstream news with social news - just that you should cut mainstream news out of your information diet. > Humans are by nature curious about what's happening, and no matter how much one bulks up at the local gym, they are probably not quenching their thirst in that way. Humans are "by nature" a lot of things, many of which we've come to fight quite successfully. There's no reason why this would be any different.

huggah 14y ago

You're presenting a false dichotomy: Joel never said "switch to social sites"; in fact, he suggested we all go out and do things. If you feel like you need to "quench your thirst" for current news, maybe traditional outlets work better for you than social media. Personally, I agree with Joel; most of us in the modern world are gluttons for information, and consume more than we even want, let alone what we need. Yes, I realize the irony of posting this to a social news site.