5 ms·

To me, yes. Well, I've never been on "social media", but e.g. at night before bed some times I scroll on HN for a long time before falling asleep (30min-1hr).

To me, yes. Well, I've never been on "social media", but e.g. at night before bed some times I scroll on HN for a long time before falling asleep (30min-1hr). If I commit myself not to, I read instead. The thing we should be talking about is forms of entertainment, and social media is just one type of entertainment. We should be discussing pros and cons of different forms of entertainment. Instead the discussion is "social media bad", which is a great starting point, but has the problem that allows us to avoid having to talk about the underlying mechanisms. For example, one of the people responding here says "if I don't go on social media I go on youtube instead." If you try and think past "social media bad", what is actually going on?

phantasmish 11mo ago
At one job where I was under-worked but had my back to a major walkway and to my manager’s glass-walled office I put Project Gutenberg txt files in a terminal and any time I might have looked at HN, I did that instead. Three novels in three months.
- apprentice7 11mo ago
  That's genius ?? Gonna try this starting right now as I'm at work scrolling through HN, lmao
  - phantasmish 11mo ago
    I just used “less” to read them, if I were to do it again I’d find something that at least kept my place on program close. I think I only accidentally closed it like once in that three months, but over time it would have been a problem worth solving.
    - ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
      Personally I would've opted by opening on vim inside tmux. But then again, I never liked "less".
- ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
  I've tried "reading at work" and failed. I was trying to read scientific papers that are only tangentially related to work, and couldn't manage to do it. I attribute that to the fact that scientific papers, like coding, requires a lot of time of "building your mental environtment" so you can't be switching all the time.
esperent 11mo ago
I believe that reddit and HN are social media. They're a different form than Facebook or TikTok, but we come here to be social just the same. If someone used HN to find interesting articles, then spends 90% of their time reading the articles and only comes to the comments briefly to see that other people think, then it would be fair to call HN a news aggregator site for that person. But realistically, for most people, it's the opposite - 90% of time chatting with people in the comments, with the actual articles (or even just their titles) mostly just used as conversation starters, with the conversation often veering into wildly different threads that barely relate to the original topic. That's social media.
- ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
  Regardless of whether I consider HN social media or not, the point of my response is exactly the same. But if you want to have the (less interesting) conversation about definition, I don't call HN social media, because there's no media. It's just talking to other people. You say > or most people, it's the opposite - 90% of time chatting with people in the comments Exactly! I didn't even read the article. I'm just here talking to people. So I don't call it social media for the same reason that I don't call whatsapp social media. It's just social.
  - esperent 11mo ago
    Media is shared information, including text. Traditional media is created by institutions like newspapers and mass broadcast. Social media changed that so that anyone can create the information. When we write comments here, we are creating short pieces of media and sending them out to be read. I find this conversation, about what social media is, and whether some kinds of social media can be healthy, highly interesting, important even. I also think it's important that we on HN are aware that we're engaging in social media because any time this conversation comes up, there's lots of people saying that they don't use social media, they only use HN, which leads to feeling superior to people on other forms of social media. I don't think that's valid or healthy. If you or I use HN for 30-60 minutes everyday and we find utility in that, there's no difference to a teenager using TikTok for the same time, we don't get to feel superior or talk about social media addiction without being aware that includes us. Tiktok has a bad rep but it has some pretty great content too, informative, well produced. Same with YouTube.
jhrmnn 11mo ago
Same here. And while I may be on HN for a long time, I would fall asleep within minutes of a (good) book. Which tells me something about these two modes of entertainment
- ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
  It tells me that a phone is, for reason I only partially understand, more stimulating in some dimension, than a book.
oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
I find it strange that people don't consider HN as social media. I guess the distinction is that you don't usually directly interact with other users, but it has user-generated content, link uploading, very frequent updates, and voting — it ticks many of the same boxes, imo.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- jhrmnn 11mo ago
  It certainly engages the brain in a similar way. I agree that the forums of old were proto-social media.
- analog31 11mo ago
  The voting is the closest thing it has to algorithmic content selection, it's not tailored to each user, there's no advertising, and rage-bate headings are discouraged if not forbidden. By today's standards, it's quaint.
  - oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
    Oh, it's very good social media, don't get me wrong. I think that's why people avoid the term: social media has pretty negative connotations, so people don't want to use it for things they like.
- ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
  Responded to your sibling https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230711
Aromasin 11mo ago
My progression was something like: Video Games > Social Media > YouTube > TV > Reading I had to cut quite a few things out of my life before I defaulted to books, because all of the prior activities tapped into my brains inherent desire for stimulating, low effort consumption. Reading is quite often hard, boring, or difficult, but generally more rewarding in the end. I retain more useful information, explicitly because it is more difficult and my brain denotes it a higher reward value.
- theshrike79 11mo ago
  What you read is also a big thing. There's no need to read that new pseudointellectual tome everyone is talking that could've been a blog post. It's a boring slog to read anyway. You can just grab a book where a space-wizard stops an orbital bombardment with his willpower[0]. Or one that's Top Gun but Grimdark WH40k[1]. Whatever is fun for you specifically. Books can be fun, they don't need to have any "value" past entertainment. And get an ebook reader. An actual one with an e-ink screen. It moves the barrier from going "I'm bored" to "I'm reading" to near zero. Just open the smart cover and the book is exactly where you left it. And if the book is 15 or 1500 pages, it weighs the same. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/series/124536-starship-s-mage https://www.goodreads.com/series/124536-starship-s-mage [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58912.Double_Eagle https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58912.Double_Eagle
  - ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
    > Whatever is fun for you specifically. Books can be fun, they don't need to have any "value" past entertainment. That's a choice. I avoid books which are exclusively about entertainment. I always aim for value + entertainment. Absolutely yes on the ebook reader. Also, get one that you can use without internet so they're not spying on your and deleting your books. I got a pocketbook. Small, cheap, doesn't need internet. And yes, _actual_ e-ink, otherwise you're just playing on an ipad. But one thing I love about my pocketbook is that it has a backlight which you can set it to very low, plus enable dark mode, and I can read it in complete darkness which with a physical book you can't.
  - seec 11mo ago
theshrike79 11mo ago
I think the issue with "social media" is that it doesn't end. If your entertainment is a movie or a book, there's definite progress to it. You can finish a movie in one or two sitting, the book has a beginning and an end (unless it's by GRRM or Rothfuss...) Even TV shows end, no matter what kind of reality dreck they are, giving you a natural point for slapping your knees, getting up and saying "yep, that's it" and moving on to something else. Social media algorithm feeds just give you infinite amounts of content with no beginning, middle or end.
- ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
  Phew. It's not every day that I see a genuinely new point. I hadn't considered that, thank you. Other things that don't end: some computer games (but some computer games do), tinkering with computers (but some thing you do with computers do have a definite end), tinkering with the physical world.
  - theshrike79 11mo ago
    Re: Games I literally can't play stuff like Civilization and the like. There's no natural point to stop, so I just keep playing until the sun comes up. "One more turn" Young me was this close to getting fired due to Civ3 being released, I started dozing off at work and playing all evening and night :D In other games there's usually a save point, you hit a difficult boss, or the round ends in multiplayer games - those give a natural point to stop playing.
    - DamnInteresting 11mo ago
      I remember buying The Sims when it came out originally. I started a gaming session that evening, and after a little while I noticed the sun coming in the window. I'd played all night without noticing. Since then, I've given that kind of open-ended game a wide berth. It's a bit disconcerting for a gaming session to achieve flow state.
      - theshrike79 11mo ago
soupfordummies 11mo ago
same and my attention span is exercised a lot more while reading a static book vs skimming and clicking through different articles/comments.

phantasmish 11mo ago

At one job where I was under-worked but had my back to a major walkway and to my manager’s glass-walled office I put Project Gutenberg txt files in a terminal and any time I might have looked at HN, I did that instead. Three novels in three months.

apprentice7 11mo ago
That's genius ?? Gonna try this starting right now as I'm at work scrolling through HN, lmao
- phantasmish 11mo ago
  I just used “less” to read them, if I were to do it again I’d find something that at least kept my place on program close. I think I only accidentally closed it like once in that three months, but over time it would have been a problem worth solving.
  - ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
    Personally I would've opted by opening on vim inside tmux. But then again, I never liked "less".
ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
I've tried "reading at work" and failed. I was trying to read scientific papers that are only tangentially related to work, and couldn't manage to do it. I attribute that to the fact that scientific papers, like coding, requires a lot of time of "building your mental environtment" so you can't be switching all the time.

esperent 11mo ago

I believe that reddit and HN are social media. They're a different form than Facebook or TikTok, but we come here to be social just the same. If someone used HN to find interesting articles, then spends 90% of their time reading the articles and only comes to the comments briefly to see that other people think, then it would be fair to call HN a news aggregator site for that person. But realistically, for most people, it's the opposite - 90% of time chatting with people in the comments, with the actual articles (or even just their titles) mostly just used as conversation starters, with the conversation often veering into wildly different threads that barely relate to the original topic. That's social media.

ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
Regardless of whether I consider HN social media or not, the point of my response is exactly the same. But if you want to have the (less interesting) conversation about definition, I don't call HN social media, because there's no media. It's just talking to other people. You say > or most people, it's the opposite - 90% of time chatting with people in the comments Exactly! I didn't even read the article. I'm just here talking to people. So I don't call it social media for the same reason that I don't call whatsapp social media. It's just social.
- esperent 11mo ago
  Media is shared information, including text. Traditional media is created by institutions like newspapers and mass broadcast. Social media changed that so that anyone can create the information. When we write comments here, we are creating short pieces of media and sending them out to be read. I find this conversation, about what social media is, and whether some kinds of social media can be healthy, highly interesting, important even. I also think it's important that we on HN are aware that we're engaging in social media because any time this conversation comes up, there's lots of people saying that they don't use social media, they only use HN, which leads to feeling superior to people on other forms of social media. I don't think that's valid or healthy. If you or I use HN for 30-60 minutes everyday and we find utility in that, there's no difference to a teenager using TikTok for the same time, we don't get to feel superior or talk about social media addiction without being aware that includes us. Tiktok has a bad rep but it has some pretty great content too, informative, well produced. Same with YouTube.

jhrmnn 11mo ago

Same here. And while I may be on HN for a long time, I would fall asleep within minutes of a (good) book. Which tells me something about these two modes of entertainment

ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
It tells me that a phone is, for reason I only partially understand, more stimulating in some dimension, than a book.

oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago

I find it strange that people don't consider HN as social media. I guess the distinction is that you don't usually directly interact with other users, but it has user-generated content, link uploading, very frequent updates, and voting — it ticks many of the same boxes, imo.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
jhrmnn 11mo ago
It certainly engages the brain in a similar way. I agree that the forums of old were proto-social media.
analog31 11mo ago
The voting is the closest thing it has to algorithmic content selection, it's not tailored to each user, there's no advertising, and rage-bate headings are discouraged if not forbidden. By today's standards, it's quaint.
- oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
  Oh, it's very good social media, don't get me wrong. I think that's why people avoid the term: social media has pretty negative connotations, so people don't want to use it for things they like.
ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
Responded to your sibling https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230711

Aromasin 11mo ago

My progression was something like: Video Games > Social Media > YouTube > TV > Reading I had to cut quite a few things out of my life before I defaulted to books, because all of the prior activities tapped into my brains inherent desire for stimulating, low effort consumption. Reading is quite often hard, boring, or difficult, but generally more rewarding in the end. I retain more useful information, explicitly because it is more difficult and my brain denotes it a higher reward value.

theshrike79 11mo ago
What you read is also a big thing. There's no need to read that new pseudointellectual tome everyone is talking that could've been a blog post. It's a boring slog to read anyway. You can just grab a book where a space-wizard stops an orbital bombardment with his willpower[0]. Or one that's Top Gun but Grimdark WH40k[1]. Whatever is fun for you specifically. Books can be fun, they don't need to have any "value" past entertainment. And get an ebook reader. An actual one with an e-ink screen. It moves the barrier from going "I'm bored" to "I'm reading" to near zero. Just open the smart cover and the book is exactly where you left it. And if the book is 15 or 1500 pages, it weighs the same. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/series/124536-starship-s-mage https://www.goodreads.com/series/124536-starship-s-mage [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58912.Double_Eagle https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58912.Double_Eagle
- ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
  > Whatever is fun for you specifically. Books can be fun, they don't need to have any "value" past entertainment. That's a choice. I avoid books which are exclusively about entertainment. I always aim for value + entertainment. Absolutely yes on the ebook reader. Also, get one that you can use without internet so they're not spying on your and deleting your books. I got a pocketbook. Small, cheap, doesn't need internet. And yes, _actual_ e-ink, otherwise you're just playing on an ipad. But one thing I love about my pocketbook is that it has a backlight which you can set it to very low, plus enable dark mode, and I can read it in complete darkness which with a physical book you can't.
- seec 11mo ago

theshrike79 11mo ago

I think the issue with "social media" is that it doesn't end. If your entertainment is a movie or a book, there's definite progress to it. You can finish a movie in one or two sitting, the book has a beginning and an end (unless it's by GRRM or Rothfuss...) Even TV shows end, no matter what kind of reality dreck they are, giving you a natural point for slapping your knees, getting up and saying "yep, that's it" and moving on to something else. Social media algorithm feeds just give you infinite amounts of content with no beginning, middle or end.

ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
Phew. It's not every day that I see a genuinely new point. I hadn't considered that, thank you. Other things that don't end: some computer games (but some computer games do), tinkering with computers (but some thing you do with computers do have a definite end), tinkering with the physical world.
- theshrike79 11mo ago
  Re: Games I literally can't play stuff like Civilization and the like. There's no natural point to stop, so I just keep playing until the sun comes up. "One more turn" Young me was this close to getting fired due to Civ3 being released, I started dozing off at work and playing all evening and night :D In other games there's usually a save point, you hit a difficult boss, or the round ends in multiplayer games - those give a natural point to stop playing.
  - DamnInteresting 11mo ago
    I remember buying The Sims when it came out originally. I started a gaming session that evening, and after a little while I noticed the sun coming in the window. I'd played all night without noticing. Since then, I've given that kind of open-ended game a wide berth. It's a bit disconcerting for a gaming session to achieve flow state.
    - theshrike79 11mo ago

soupfordummies 11mo ago

same and my attention span is exercised a lot more while reading a static book vs skimming and clicking through different articles/comments.