Social Media's Effects On Our Minds & Lives

I closed all my social accounts except Twitter (more for global pop-news) and started a blog to write about me instead. No likes, no opinions, no "friends", just me and what I want to share.

i quit FB at the start of the pandemic. so glad to finally quit. didn't have to manage the work page anymore. 

i had my personal page whittled down to the handful of people i wanted to interact with. but had every other thing blocked or hidden. some of the groups were useful and it was good for finding out about events and shows.. but otherwise it was a trash bin. 

i could see it turning into a groups and events type thing and then for keeping in touch with family. etc.  would be nice if it would experience a sort oof crash in user base. but there's billions of people on it so would take a lot to get to doodoo itself. 

I never joined any social media sites, and never will. People habitually dismiss this as a by-product of my age, but the real reason is that I've been programming web backend software for all my adult life (I've been doing it way before the first dotcom bubble burst), and I'm extremely privacy and security conscious, so I know exactly how (and why-how) the sites work - both technically and psychologically - and how they've been specifically engineered to prey on users, the true product sold by the companies running the sites. The sociological, sociopsychological, and societal damage they've caused is incalculable and irreversible. I would have a metric crapton more to say about them, but I would just bore everyone, so I'll refrain.

move fast and break things

  On 8/8/2021 at 10:19 PM, very honest said:

move fast and break things

That's in the same category as meritocracy. See also What Tech Calls Thinking, and of course Extraction/Surveillance Capitalism.

I only use Facebook for looking at the group for the estate where I live, for juicy neighborhood goss. Probably check a couple times a week. I'm also in the watmm Facebook group but it's shit?!

anybody on mastodon/fediverse? we have a test server running here..i like the concept of micro-socials.

  On 8/8/2021 at 9:50 PM, ignatius said:

i could see it [Facebook] turning into a groups and events type thing and then for keeping in touch with family.

This is essentially what I use it for. I've never used it for a news (like current events sort of news) source, but there are a couple of academic groups that are well moderated (although they let remain as a member...) that keep me up to speed on a couple of areas of interest, as well as keeping in touch with friends that are not local to my area.

As well, for some reason, FB marketplace is way more popular than craigslist and kijiji in this locale, so it's somewhat useful in that regard.

social media’s effect on our lives is that there are too many watmm threads about social media

I'm back on tinder again and it feels weird to treat potential relationships the way I treat job applications.  I matched with like ten different people and now I'm too overwhelmed to hold a conversation with any of them.  I just wanted something casual and low pressure but instead I'm trying to make short tailored responses just to buy time.  What a mess.

Was sad when Instagram came back online after such a short outage. Was hoping for a week at least.

Started a blog today and intend to rage quit insta soon! 

Question about people's experiences with facebook vs mine. I am on facebook but rarely go down a rabbit hole of looking people up. Only when I haven't seen them in a long time and am thinking about contacting them to hang out. Besides that IDGAF about some random person from my High School whos friend request I accepted years ago (when I shouldn't really). Tho I did go thru and unfriend a lot of the people I barely knew at one point of another.

When I am reading other people's posts it's always in my mind that they are only showing their best moments and are playing the positive moments up because that is what facebook is. So when I see someone with a 'great life' on facebook then hear about all the problems they are having outside of that, it doesn't surprise me at all. I just assume everyone is like that to one extent or another.

Because of that I have never really had an urge to get rid of facebook beyond the fact that companies have my data and I am in some algorhithm somewhere feeding me the right posts at the right time. That is the only reason I can think of to quit. Is that most people's reasons or does the 'fakery' on facebook make browsing it unpleasant?

the main reason to quit is not to enable Facebook in what it's doing to people and society globally, which at this point is well-documented. it's a weapon. it has little to do with a person's individual experience on the platform which can vary, it's more about what the platform does as a whole and how it's enabled in that by our engagement.

  On 10/7/2021 at 2:13 AM, usagi said:

the main reason to quit is not to enable Facebook in what it's doing to people and society globally, which at this point is well-documented. it's a weapon. it has little to do with a person's individual experience on the platform which can vary, it's more about what the platform does as a whole and how it's enabled in that by our engagement.

How often do people come together for something that has little to do with them on an individual level?

are you asking why we live in a society?

facebook make the mind go poopoo.

I need more dopamine, someone react to this

  On 10/9/2021 at 2:30 AM, drillkicker said:

I need more dopamine, someone react to this

  On 8/8/2021 at 10:04 PM, dcom said:

I never joined any social media sites, and never will. People habitually dismiss this as a by-product of my age, but the real reason is that I've been programming web backend software for all my adult life (I've been doing it way before the first dotcom bubble burst), and I'm extremely privacy and security conscious, so I know exactly how (and why-how) the sites work - both technically and psychologically - and how they've been specifically engineered to prey on users, the true product sold by the companies running the sites. The sociological, sociopsychological, and societal damage they've caused is incalculable and irreversible. I would have a metric crapton more to say about them, but I would just bore everyone, so I'll refrain.

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Well go on, I'm interested enough in your perspective.

Also I'm wondering if there's a way to measure it's affect on peoples attention spans, mine feels incredible short and I feel sad about it but I don't know what "normal" is. The other thing is it is seemingly causing people to be always needing to multi task which i have seen a lot of; need to constantly be messaging / scrolling, etc while working / studying (maybe that's just addiction?). Having periods of time where you only focus on one thing without breaking the time up constantly by looking at your phone seems to be becoming more and more rare.

  On 8/8/2021 at 10:04 PM, dcom said:

I never joined any social media sites, and never will. People habitually dismiss this as a by-product of my age, but the real reason is that I've been programming web backend software for all my adult life (I've been doing it way before the first dotcom bubble burst), and I'm extremely privacy and security conscious, so I know exactly how (and why-how) the sites work - both technically and psychologically - and how they've been specifically engineered to prey on users, the true product sold by the companies running the sites. The sociological, sociopsychological, and societal damage they've caused is incalculable and irreversible. I would have a metric crapton more to say about them, but I would just bore everyone, so I'll refrain.

Expand  

this is a social media site and it's designed you trap you in with flashy red icons and notifications of who replies to you or likes one of your posts just like facebook.  ive asked for the ability to turn this off but it's not there yet.

edit: oh its there now, account settings > other settings (right hand side) > notifications

  On 8/8/2021 at 9:50 PM, ignatius said:

i quit FB at the start of the pandemic. so glad to finally quit. didn't have to manage the work page anymore. 

i had my personal page whittled down to the handful of people i wanted to interact with. but had every other thing blocked or hidden. some of the groups were useful and it was good for finding out about events and shows.. but otherwise it was a trash bin. 

i could see it turning into a groups and events type thing and then for keeping in touch with family. etc.  would be nice if it would experience a sort oof crash in user base. but there's billions of people on it so would take a lot to get to doodoo itself. 

Expand  

Same, I would close my FB account, except for a family reunion group, that I have no other contact info for.

never ever joined any "out-in-the-open" social media like fb, insta and the like simpy because it seemed to mainly attract extrovert, narcissistic wankers. "social" network my ass.

finally caved-in to whatsapp tho so my granny can stalk me 24/7.