HN Gopher Feed (2017-11-26) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing (2015)
134 points by dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/why-facebook-is-the-junk-food-of-socializingocializing___________________________________________________________________
agumonkey - 32 minutes ago
> But it?s the visual equivalent of empty calories?delicious but
not nutritious.modern life #someta
splittingTimes - 30 minutes ago
I also dont get all that hate either. Just use it as a tool for
what its good for. For me that is mainly to stay in the know about
(1) events hosted by friends, (2) activities in common interest
groups, (3) the life of friends and family overseas.- Dont use your
real name, gender, nationality, etc. Just create a random
identity.- Dont post pictures, ask friends to not post pics of you.
Remove all tags. NEVER EVER POST PICS OF YOUR KIDS.- tailor your
news feed: Aggressivly remove/unfollow people/groups that add only
trivial noise and no interesting content. In doing so, I actually
started to enjoy my thinned out feed.- comb through your friend
list once a year (I always do after New Years) and clean house.
Some people collect friends like trophys and are proud of their
1254 contacts. Instead, do the opposite: Try to keep it as small as
possible. Ask yourself, do I really need and care for this contact?
Remove people that do not add value to your life.- Dont use the
messanger app. Turn off all notifications.
vog - 23 minutes ago
With all those caveats to keep in mind, and more caveats to come
in the future as Facebook "evolves" ... isn't it much simpler not
to subscribe to Facebook in the first place?
splittingTimes - 2 minutes ago
Not for me. If you use it right you can get a lot of value out
of it. The trick is to fold all the virtual social network back
into real life. Most of my social activities are organized
through FB:- arrange the next casual soccer kick- see when is
the next social dance and who is going- friend organizes a
christmas dinner party- other friend goes to a science slam, I
might join- who wants to go bouldering this weekend?- see this
neat trick in the "Upcycling" group how to reuse an old ...-
oh, this old cafe in my borough is getting kicked out. Friends
are organizing a solidarity march.Organize/Getting this info
would be so much harder without FB.I also like to keep people
in my feed that have a contrairian view point to mine. Keeps
you sharp and sometimes you learn that your viewpoint might not
have the best argument...
losteric - 1 minutes ago
> I also dont get all that hate either.Well, start with reading
your list. That's a nice list of reasons to hate Facebook. People
shouldn't have to tip toe around abusive data harvesting and dark
patterns... Your list sounds like a symptom, not a solution.
git-pull - 1 minutes ago
> Ask yourself, do I really need and care for this contact?
Remove people that do not add value to your life.I do a different
test. It's called "Do you care about me?"If I got in a car crash
over the weekend, would you even know? If you found out, would
you visit me?If the answer is yes: but they're family, I already
have their contact info. For non-family, that group fluctuates,
and more often than not, it's zero. I'm fine with the number
staying there. Benefits include: Less drama, breakups, regrets,
and more time to get work done.If the answer is no, which it
mostly is: I feel I save time and am more self-honest not
connecting with them.But as I get closer to 30 I feel less
interest in connecting with others. The only exception is when I
travel and the surroundings are more intriguing.On the other
hand: Social media is a great marketing tool. I'm fine if people
use Facebook however they choose. And I also agree with pruning
boring content in favor of subscribing / liking manually.
matthewwiese - 2 hours ago
Interesting article, and I'm usually a fan of Nautilus pieces, but
isn't this a bit obvious? Almost like 2017 is getting to be the
year it's fashionable to poo poo social media (and Facebook in
particular). Haven't used the site since about 2010 'cause the rank
smell of the Skinner box made my nose curl from afar.I'm baffled
that psych studies have to be referenced for people to see the
obvious; and I'm certainly not on a higher plane of self-aware
existence, either.
dawhizkid - 1 hours ago
It's not obvious.The fact that sugar and refined carbs
(pasta/rice/bread) is bad for you is not even obvious to most
people.
Radim - 33 minutes ago
Life is bad for you.Did you know oxygen was once a terrible,
toxic substance that was "bad for you"? [0]It still is, to some
degree. But cheap sources of energy always win in the end.My
point is that we (as humans) suck at processing some things and
appreciating the true timescale of optimization. Our bodies
fight old cargo cult wars, an exercise in wanton complexity.
Hardly an argument against change.I suspect the same applies to
the "badness" of junk food and social media, except it has
accumulated less baggage and hence can steer faster.[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event
hw - 1 hours ago
Isn't it obvious, that some people might not see the obvious,
like the fact that social media is bad for your health?
DeusExMachina - 1 hours ago
What makes you think that this is obvious?People come to
different conclusions even when presented the same facts. In a
case like this, they don't even have the same fact, nor the same
background or even the same age (to a teenager Facebook is a
completely different place than for an adult).
jsemrau - 42 minutes ago
I believe people finally got the point that all their "social
engagement" is pretty useless.
surrey-fringe - 25 minutes ago
Ever since deleting facebook I've felt so much ___. It's only once
I quit the site I was able to take a long hard look at my
perception of ____ and realized that everyone else does ____ while
I should do _____. I realized that I'm actually ____, not ____. I
started handling my _____ relationships in a healthier, more ____
manner.
rxhernandez - 18 minutes ago
I deleted my Facebook in 2010 and it stayed deleted until the end
of 2016. Now I get invited to more events, my friends no longer
feel like distant strangers when I see them for the first time in
months and I know how all my family is doing. It really sucks
seeing how much more of a life some people have through facebook
but research is a lifestyle and I knew what I signed up for. Your
miles may vary though as I have the discipline to not look at it
every hour(not because I'm intrinsically any better than you but
because I got used to running mental marathons for 6 years).
egfx - 1 hours ago
Hmm, half of the links on nautil.us are currently broken.
gramakri - 1 hours ago
Think the site is down
[deleted]
jackvalentine - 1 hours ago
Google Cache:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nautil....
watwut - 57 minutes ago
These anti Facebook and anti social media articles are so
ubiquitous on hn now, that is starting to feel like a campaign. All
too sudden, there is too many of them.
cowpig - 46 minutes ago
Anti-facebook articles have been common on HN for years, and it's
particularly ubiquitous right now because of all the powerful
negative influence it's having in politics.
jsemrau - 40 minutes ago
When the world is screaming at you "You have been played" is
quite a powerful statement.
eksemplar - 57 minutes ago
Fast food serves a lot of purposes though. It's not healthy, but it
feeds people, it's cheap and it lets you spend your time on
something else.Facebook really has few reasons to be around anymore
outside the fact that it has a lot of users.
Karrot_Kream - 11 minutes ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
hbarka - 50 minutes ago
And think of the healthcare consequences too
chrisseaton - 50 minutes ago
I'm not sure I'd agree that fast food is the same thing as junk
food. There's nothing inherently unhealthy about food that has
just been prepared quickly. Junk food doesn't feed you correctly,
that's the point.
mtgx - 47 minutes ago
> It's not healthy, but it feeds people, it's cheap and it lets
you spend your time on something else.Yes, Facebook is the "bread
and circus" of the modern world. Plus, it's a dream come true for
intelligence agencies, as people build their own dossiers and
then make them public (or keep them within Facebook, which is
pretty much the same to the intelligence agencies).
chiefalchemist - 2 minutes ago
I confess, most of what I consume via the internet is of little use
to me. Sure, some of it might be interesting; some of it my present
itself as relevant; but most of it (the truth is) life would go on
without it.Don't take this the wrong way, but push come to shove,
HN falls into this low truly impactful life nutrition as well. This
is not a critique. It's just that despite my semi-best attempts the
signal to noice ratio remains suboptimal.
merraksh - 34 minutes ago
Note that the only explicit mention of Facebook is in the title.