[HN Gopher] Quitting Twitter? What People Say About Life After S... ___________________________________________________________________ Quitting Twitter? What People Say About Life After Social Media Author : prostoalex Score : 27 points Date : 2022-06-02 22:20 UTC (39 minutes ago) (HTM) web link (www.wsj.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com) | spicybright wrote: | Seeing people frame not using a website as something massively | life altering change says a lot about social media in general. | | But I'm definitely going to bite my tongue calling these articles | silly as long as it has a chance of "unplugging" people from the | toxicity. | WilTimSon wrote: | Considering just how important social media has been in the | last few years, I don't see how suggesting people should quit | social media is silly. The US has had a president who largely | communicated with his constituents through Twitter (one-way as | that communication may have been), celebrities get their | careers re-ignited because Twitter rallies behind them, | influences are... a thing?, social media management is a full- | on career for people! | | At this stage, the world is actually quite stuck with social | media and, honestly, I can really believe that something as | seemingly minor as quitting Twitter can change someone's | demeanor, quality of life and so on. Social media is a bloody | juggernaut, sometimes it's best to move out of the way. | bsnal wrote: | > Seeing people frame not using a website as something | massively life altering change says a lot about social media in | general. | | No, it says a lot about those people. | sexy_panda wrote: | I did and my mental health thanked me for it. I feel less anxious | and stressed. | | Nothing happening there is important in any way. Who cares if | Musk buys Twitter. | [deleted] | HideousKojima wrote: | I deleted Facebook the day of the Snowden leaks and haven't | looked back. LinkedIn is the only social media network I still | have an account on, and I only use it when I'm on the job market. | | It's been fantastic to not have to worry about all the drama for | a decade now. | bee_rider wrote: | I can definitely think of at least one other social media site | you have an account on! | drunkpotato wrote: | Hah! You beat me to it! I do agree with the overall sentiment | however. I think it's important to see whether your | relationship to a given social media is healthy or not. For | me, my relationship to reddit, facebook, and twitter were | unhealthy, so I deleted them. That's not going to be true for | everyone; I definitely know people who use them in a | positive, life-improving way, that's just not what was | happening to me. | fdgsdfogijq wrote: | Sometimes I feel like as a hard core engineering type, social | media doesnt appeal to my brain. Same with TV shows on netflix, | movies, gossip, hollywood, fashion, common trends. None of them | "stick". Coding alone in the dark does, and sometimes I recognize | I need to step away and talk to people. But I keep getting drawn | in to the next abstraction. Must be how it feels to use social | media | notjustanymike wrote: | On Instagram, someone else is always having a better day than | you. | mdanger007 wrote: | I talked some s. to a guy blaming the teachers for a school | massacre and twitter suspended me. told them to where to shove | their little bird. it's been a good week post-twitter. | shrimpx wrote: | As far as I'm concerned, you used Twitter correctly. From what | I can tell by browsing, enabling people to tell other people | where to shove it is the platform's raison d'etre. | madrox wrote: | I've worked in social for over a decade and even attempted a | startup in the space. If we're taking the dopamine hit mention in | this article seriously, then the western world has completely | fried its dopamine receptors. I've observed people are craving | serotonin as a result. You get that through actual community and | connection. You can't get that on massive networks. You get that | on small ones, but finding small ones can be hard. | | If social media is a walled garden, then I believe the next wave | of social media will be "social fences." Ways of creating silos | within a platform so that you only interact with specific | communities, much like how subreddits, discord servers, or twitch | channels operate. | | Even if I'm wrong about where it's going, I think everyone feels | that the wave of the last decade is cresting. Catching it will be | tricky, but if you manage it then you'll ride it far. | sk8terboi wrote: | I'm thinking of quitting HN, what have they done lately? | VWWHFSfQ wrote: | What do you mean "what have they done lately?" I guess you | could go over to lobsters if you're looking for a more heavily | moderated/focused tech disussion website. But eventually | they'll reach eternal september too. | greyface- wrote: | https://archive.ph/9y0hq | version_five wrote: | There is some irony that posting the kind of feigned outrage and | clever swipes that are being directed at Musk are exactly the | kind of things that Twitter is for. No doubt people want to quit, | but then where would they tell people about how they quit and how | mad they are? | Retric wrote: | Here for one thing. I have seen a lot of posts about quitting | Twitter, Facebook etc. | 0des wrote: | On outrage: I'd be worried about where that aggression would be | directed without twitter as the whipping boy. It seems as if | those that are most persistently caustic derive from twitter a | sense of regaining control, and a fleeting ability to | internally re-balance their lack of power they experience IRL | hprotagonist wrote: | alternative: it just goes away. | | for a long time the thought was that most suicides would find | a way, so specific countermeasures weren't useful; turns out, | it's not true. | version_five wrote: | To some extent that may be true, but I think there is some | truth to the whole algorithmic promotion thing that makes | sure Twitter keeps your attention by riling you up. | | So say I'm mad about something Elon Musk did, and I go to | Twitter to post about it, I'll get fed a bunch more tweets | reinforcing how bad the thing was and get even more outraged, | and keep scrolling. Even without a Twitter account, I find | clicking on seemingly benign Twitter links on HN quickly gets | me into threads of political discussion that rile me up. | | Contrast that with going to e.g. HN and sharing a story or | commenting on a post about something I don't like. It's | definitely still possible to get into an argument that pisses | you off, but at least its actual people provoking you, in a | community that has a pretty low tolerance for that, so it's | not going to go to far. | | If you're pissed off enough, you'll find another outlet, | though I think twitter is less an outlet than a place to make | you even madder ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-02 23:00 UTC)