Social Media's Effects On Our Minds & Lives

[Brisbot]

I don't know why you should expect social media to be some grand human achievement and generally character-building activity. Nothing wrong with social media in the right doses, it's useful for some stuff, maybe a waste of time mostly, but so are most activities in our free civilization. I tend to filter out a lot of useless fodder though and waste no energy on the drama. Strangely enough I don't feel the need to remove all my accounts in order to preserve my sanity - it's great to keep in touch with long-time friends who live faraway, as well as nurture new contacts.

 

I don't look at social media as some devious brainwashing concoction, people willingly get themselves sucked into the bread and circus bullshit just like they've always been - we are governed by stronger internal forces than outer ones, and particularly much stronger than some wishful kumbaya anarchoprimitivist pipe-dream.

 

However, at the risk of coming across as really hypocritical, I waited a long time before I relented and got myself a smartphone - always hated the way it sucks people out even in one-to-one conversation, even though it might be unreasonable to expect someone's full attention in this day and age. Now I find myself falling into the same trap, naturally, and have to struggle to avoid it... before I'll become everything I ever hated. Like some others have said, it's tremendously important to unplug routinely. I don't think there is a bigger factor for well-being today that goes so overlooked.

 

Tell you what, next time I hang out with the mates I'll dare them to leave their phones all on a table or something :)

Hey Chim, welcome back to the social media website that is WATMM :)

 

You're right, that social media is not intrinsically something that can you can get sucked into. But, as facebook for example, it's become just that. My dad uses FB to keep up with old friends. He does that, but all you have to do is look at his old friends. They friended him sure, but their boring is showing in their own status updates. Like Boring minutia on their kids.

 

"My son's first poop 5/30/2015", for example. 20-80 likes for some reason, depending if they've friended 150 or 800 people. They update their status once a day with something that should only be interesting to them.

 

"I'm going to work!" I see that one a LOT on my FB. REALLY?! KEWLZIES! THX 4 SHARING :)

 

I also feel like a pre-judgement of a person on social media isn't far off if they have tons of 'friends' I mean, when you see someone with 2.5k friends.... you know there's a problem. If they're not friending fans or something, like Mr. Grant of Rephlex does, then something else is going on. EVERY person with 1k+ friends I know has acceptance issues. They're the type that could never be alone longer than 5 minutes. They could never work on music, for example. Too alone.

 

 

Edited May 31, 2015 by Brisbot

[delet...]

Speaking of social media, i just blocked the only person that was regularly updating their g+ account, because he kept liking nyt, guardian articles and obama bullshit. So that wasteland has just gotten even more wasteland'ee. Also i had written a mindfuck post in response to one of those stupid probama discussions that he'd liked and a couple of people from that thread must have added me to their circles which somehow then put their posts on my feed *without my permission* and they'd have to be bots because they updated several times an hours with liberal cause bollocks likes. And then to remove them using android on my phone i found two official locations, one from g+ at google and the other from the g+ help centre itself, and both had different advice both of which was incorrect on how to block people, probably because they were based on earlier iterations of that software. heh, and then when i finally found the correct method it was so convoluted it was ridiculous in the extreme. You don't just click on someone's name and a drop down menu comes up or it at least takes you to their page so that you can block them there. You have to press people, then it takes you to a page suggesting people it thinks that you might want to add (including these two new interlopers), but you don't click on them yet, you then have to search their username and it will finally take you to their page whereupon you may finally have a drop down menu from which you can block their sorry arses.

 

I mean G+ come on. And really 'blocking them' seems like they are an inevitable thing that you have to construct a wall to shelter from, whereas if it was just like unfriending someone (and you'd have to have mutually decided to be their friend in the first place) seems more final, they've dropped into the bottomless social media aether. I think g+ is so desperate to 'create connections' amongst it's userbase that it's shooting it's functionality in the foot. I remember them doing similar things from day one which they subsequently nixxed. But obviously bad ideas by useless managers of dev teams are cyclical. The new manager comes in who doesn't know the product very well, "anybody got any suggestions" staff bring up something similar to what they were doing five years ago which they got rid of eventually but that was three managers ago. heh. Stuff appears to get done but in the macro it's really just cycling through the stations on that same great wheel of godo.

 

As to facefart, i was annoyed with it like the OP and many on here many a years ago, but i also never had any sort of compulsion to use it with any frequency (unlike this damnable timewastey place (hence my disparaging the contradiction of posting here to complain about social media)) and don't have many, haven't allowed many, friends on it. So even if i were to care about it, it wouldn't take long to manage. I guess everyone else is talking about the place from a place of addiction, in which case vent away, divorce yourself from it, whatever.

[Brisbot]

I remember a few years ago a couple of my friends straight up quit FB when google+ was released because they thought it was going to be the next big thing.

[delet...]

the circles idea is great, but i think that people are too lazy to deal with options, which is a damn shame.

[autopilot]

I can understand why some people use Facebook to "keep up with old friends that I don't see anymore" and totally get it. Personally, I found that the interactions I had on there weren't what I considered meaningful relationship maintenance, and being perfectly okay with (the universal truths of?) transience and impermanence, I am content to let people go from my lives who I don't interact with regularly anymore. Perhaps that's an obsolete mindset I'm carrying over from a time before Facebook, and I'm actually being a callous dickhead by not keeping up with someone I shared crayons with in elementary school.

 

@delete, looking back I can see how your subtle irony totally went over my head. I completely recognize that messageboards are basically a prior incarnation of what would later become Twitter & Facebook (hence my mentioning it as the last line in my original post), but there's definitely something very different about an IDM messageboard filled with music nerds & art heads, in that I feel quite confident that what I post here will not be read by my grandma.

[Brisbot]

 

 

the circles idea is great, but i think that people are too lazy to deal with options, which is a damn shame.

I honestly don't remember what google+ is like. I remember thinking "FUCK I already have a Facebook, everyone's already here! I already waste enough time making needlessly long posts on forums, so fuk it." I do remember thinking that circles thing was cool. That's the only thing I remember.

 

 

 

 

Personally, I found that the interactions I had on there weren't what I considered meaningful relationship maintenance, and being perfectly okay with (the universal truths of?) transience and impermanence, I am content to let people go from my lives who I don't interact with regularly anymore.

What REALLY got me is how other people were okay with this, and people were content with the interactions on FB taking the place of real interaction. I think that's the main reason. When I tell my friends this, who I love dearly, they just kinda shrug.

 

I am not that content on letting people go from the recent past. I'm always sad to see relationships end. It's always natural though. The crayons thing is a bit of an extreme example though. Heh.

Edited May 31, 2015 by Brisbot

[chim]

They friended him sure, but their boring is showing in their own status updates. Like Boring minutia on their kids.

 

"My son's first poop 5/30/2015", for example. 20-80 likes for some reason, depending if they've friended 150 or 800 people. They update their status once a day with something that should only be interesting to them.

 

"I'm going to work!" I see that one a LOT on my FB. REALLY?! KEWLZIES! THX 4 SHARING :)

 

Guess what, a lot of people lead boring uninteresting lives, maybe to you but not to them. At least it's better than people constantly embellishing themselves with facades of having perfect zany lives. It's not really rocket science... Today it's an achievement to hit the gym without posting a status update!

 

I also feel like a pre-judgement of a person on social media isn't far off if they have tons of 'friends' I mean, when you see someone with 2.5k friends.... you know there's a problem. If they're not friending fans or something, like Mr. Grant of Rephlex does, then something else is going on. EVERY person with 1k+ friends I know has acceptance issues. They're the type that could never be alone longer than 5 minutes. They could never work on music, for example. Too alone.

 

I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record with my boring "voice of reason" shtick here, but just because it's really easy to jump to that kinda conclusion about people with many friends doesn't make it true. It doesn't really have to do with how many friends they've got. There are a lot of insecure "scene queens" or sociopaths-in-training but most of those people I know just happen to have really magnetic personalities or engage a lot of people in their lifestyle/work. It doesn't automatically make them interesting but I don't think it's a sign of weakness to be extrovert, everybody knows you don't have much more than a handful of people you can really count on anyway and 90% of those people will never really contact you other than to wish you a happy birthday or whatever. The sociopath thing depends on other factors. One of my oldest friends has thousands of friends just from being easy going, good looking and traveling a lot, always been a cool dude and never had acceptance issues (In fact, he helped me with my own at a younger stage of our lives). He called me one morning saying he'd been up all night reading every single page of Ullillillia's website trying to figure this guy out, and that I just had to check it out - not really a socialite in the classic sense!

 

Thanks for the warm welcome by the way :)

 

I am not that content on letting people go from the recent past. I'm always sad to see relationships end. It's always natural though. The crayons thing is a bit of an extreme example though. Heh.

Man I'll be the first to propagate impermanence and the importance of reflecting on it, I'm sure you can find posts of myself doing just that, but I'm just the same as you. It really hurts to drift apart from some people, inevitable as it might be, and it makes it all the more meaningful with the ones you don't seem to do that with, no matter how far away, no matter how long it passes between interactions. That stuff makes all the other meaningless bullshit totally worth it.

Edited May 31, 2015 by chim

[Brisbot]

I may be biased, but every sociopath I know on FB is an attention magnet (not every sociopath cares for attention, but the ones on FB are obvious if I know about them well enough). I judge them to be sociopaths for their past actions on other people. Not really me, I avoid those types of people as their reputation precedes them. If I look up a person who I thought had a few screws loose in a sociopathic sense, they across the board have tons of friends. Though they might just be selfish and narcissistic.

I should also mention I only know a handful of people with over 1k friends. They're all "off". Their facebook posts are often about how someone else did something wrong, or are obvious attention grabbers. Most of them friended me at one point and I barely know any of them. So I don't see the reason why they friended me. Ech. To them I am only plus one to their friend count, which is the main reason I'm against accepting the friend request.

I know potentially 1 genuine person with about 4000 friends (not Grant), who's genuine personality is the magnet as you say, and who doesn't get her kicks out of what other people's issues are, or use them. ONE PERSON :\. I will say that my sample size is small, so maybe I am an exception and you are right.

The language I'm using to describe these things is a bit colorful I think, but I don't have any way else to describe what I'm seeing.

There's usually a reason someone wants so many friends, maybe they're big at work as you said. But really how many people are going to know thousands of people from work? I think it would be obvious from their job description. Grant knows 'thousands' of people through work for instance. That is very much an exception.

 

 

Guess what, a lot of people lead boring uninteresting lives, maybe to you but not to them. At least it's better than people constantly embellishing themselves with facades of having perfect zany lives. It's not really rocket science... Today it's an achievement to hit the gym without posting a status update!

I actually meant that people who were interesting IRL suddenly became boring on FB, hence the "FB brings out the boring in people" ! I'm trying to say that I'm no exception to this! I did that myself for a while. When I first got a FB like in 2009 or 2010, I liked posting what I at the time thought was insightful stuff or an observation I had. Got like 0-3 likes. The most likes I ever got for anything was the stupid one liner. That crap can generate dozens of likes! I started ONLY posting the kinda stupid easy thoughts I had, then after a while that became boring and I stopped posting all together.

btw, neither pretending to have a perfect life or posting about going to the gym for the 80th time is really acceptable. It's alright if you're talking about starting to go to the gym, or your 1 year gym anniversary, or something. I tend to think that almost everyone lives boring lives, including me! But then they always think they need to post every day or 2 about them when nothing particularly interesting happened. Maybe something abnormal or interesting enough to post about happens every few weeks at most. If we only got those updates, then FB would be a pretty cool place. But it's not. Everyone goes to work everyday because that's how life is.

man, my posts don't look nearly as long when I'm writing them, then post and it's like: 'my life is boring'.

Edited May 31, 2015 by Brisbot

[Danny O Flannagin]

As much as I hate Facebook, i can't see myself deleting it because I'm tethered to my friends who are on it. It's pretty great for hearing about local events and using it as a social email to link something or to contact someone who doesn't have your number. Honestly just wish i could disable the news feed and i'd be happy. Tried to get into a habit of just clicking on messages but the news feed would suck me in with all its inane bullshit

[delet...]

I can understand why some people use Facebook to "keep up with old friends that I don't see anymore" and totally get it.

 

Why add these people in the first place. Apart from immediate family i only have close friends from real, and like minded twatsicles from places like watmm on my fb and i don't use my real name or have bothered to fill out details like school went to and whatever, so i am never likely to get anyone searching me that thought that i owed them a crayon. This is probably why i have a completely different outlook on faceblart i guess. I just see it as another contact point, not a be all and end all end in and of itself. Also, i hardly ever post on there, so am not looking for likes or interaction there either really. I just want to know when my sister has a new bbQ or something.

 

nwae, delete your account, and so should everyone else that wants to do it, i'm sure it's for the best if it's making you unhappy. Maybe reboot under another name one day, hopefully by then there'll be an hybrid of facefoot and g-pruss that's open source.

[Brisbot]

 

 

As much as I hate Facebook, i can't see myself deleting it because I'm tethered to my friends who are on it. It's pretty great for hearing about local events and using it as a social email to link something or to contact someone who doesn't have your number. Honestly just wish i could disable the news feed and i'd be happy. Tried to get into a habit of just clicking on messages but the news feed would suck me in with all its inane bullshit

Hey Danny, I definitely get what you mean. I even tried to just use it as a messenger. I felt like that too for like two years, but as time went on the time wasted became more important to me than the simplized relationships I was getting from FB. Trust me, it's less of a deal than it seems. Your personal life will only get better and your free time freer once THE FACEBOOK IS DESTROYED.

 

Another thing I noticed about FB, was that when you met these people in real life that you've previously talked through on FB, especially through status updates, what happened on Facebook was as if it never happened. It's kind of like Facebook doesn't actually exist. It's kinda weird. Nothing that happens there is of any substance. It's hard to expand friendships or even maintain them there. Which leads me to believe it's just a waste of time.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 31, 2015 by Brisbot

[logakght]

It sucks.

[Haste]

Now I feel bad for having re-joined recently. Serves me right.

[ambermonk]

I feel quite confident that what I post here will not be read by my grandma.

Same. Mine's got me on FB, which is fine I guess. But if she finds me on WATMM, god help me.

 

[Guest kymppinetti]

I've been there and not been, and I have to say that I prefer without it much better. FB have it's uses, I wouldn't guestion that. For example, one of my friends uses it for communication with other students on school: discussing projects, who do that part etc. Everybody has it, and it is so easy to just make a group chat there and talk. Well... I don't have facebook at the moment. And I just made an entrance exam to the same school as him. So I wonder will the group pressure win me over. Will I again enable my account. We'll see.

[d-a-m-o]

Facebook is useful for communication but all the bullshit in the newsfeed are boring and depressing (pictures of other people's kids are annoying as fuck, who cares about that seriously ?)

 

and now everyone has an account ( and if you don't people think you're strange, asocial or whatever)

[pcock]

 

I don't know why you should expect social media to be some grand human achievement and generally character-building activity. Nothing wrong with social media in the right doses, it's useful for some stuff, maybe a waste of time mostly, but so are most activities in our free civilization. I tend to filter out a lot of useless fodder though and waste no energy on the drama. Strangely enough I don't feel the need to remove all my accounts in order to preserve my sanity - it's great to keep in touch with long-time friends who live faraway, as well as nurture new contacts.

 

I don't look at social media as some devious brainwashing concoction, people willingly get themselves sucked into the bread and circus bullshit just like they've always been - we are governed by stronger internal forces than outer ones, and particularly much stronger than some wishful kumbaya anarchoprimitivist pipe-dream.

 

However, at the risk of coming across as really hypocritical, I waited a long time before I relented and got myself a smartphone - always hated the way it sucks people out even in one-to-one conversation, even though it might be unreasonable to expect someone's full attention in this day and age. Now I find myself falling into the same trap, naturally, and have to struggle to avoid it... before I'll become everything I ever hated. Like some others have said, it's tremendously important to unplug routinely. I don't think there is a bigger factor for well-being today that goes so overlooked.

 

Tell you what, next time I hang out with the mates I'll dare them to leave their phones all on a table or something :)

Hey Chim, welcome back to the social media website that is WATMM :)

 

You're right, that social media is not intrinsically something that can you can get sucked into. But, as facebook for example, it's become just that. My dad uses FB to keep up with old friends. He does that, but all you have to do is look at his old friends. They friended him sure, but their boring is showing in their own status updates. Like Boring minutia on their kids.

 

"My son's first poop 5/30/2015", for example. 20-80 likes for some reason, depending if they've friended 150 or 800 people. They update their status once a day with something that should only be interesting to them.

 

"I'm going to work!" I see that one a LOT on my FB. REALLY?! KEWLZIES! THX 4 SHARING :)

 

I also feel like a pre-judgement of a person on social media isn't far off if they have tons of 'friends' I mean, when you see someone with 2.5k friends.... you know there's a problem. If they're not friending fans or something, like Mr. Grant of Rephlex does, then something else is going on. EVERY person with 1k+ friends I know has acceptance issues. They're the type that could never be alone longer than 5 minutes. They could never work on music, for example. Too alone.

 

 

 

I have 1500 friends on facebook cos i meet alot of people out clubbing/at parties and its useful for promoting a night.

[ambermonk]

I still remember several months ago when I scanned some photos from when I was in NYC in 2003 which I took with one of those disposable Kodak cameras (which probably don't exist anymore). I uploaded those photos to FB after I'd scanned them and FB actually recognized the people in the photos and asked me to tag them, matching them with my friends, even tho those photos were taken before FB even existed.

Anyone else have a similar experience scanning and uploading old photos?

[granty]

Facebook is useful for communication but all the bullshit in the newsfeed are boring and depressing (pictures of other people's kids are annoying as fuck, who cares about that seriously ?)

Out of curiosity, why do pics of other peoples kids annoy you so much? Only asking cos I post pics of my daughter now and then, mainly for the benefit of relatives who don't see her that much. I know it annoys people though, especially my wife's middle aged spinster mates who still behave like they're 18 years old. Probably makes them feel their biological clock is about to run out or something. I've seen a few passive aggressive comments from them 'apologising' for not posting photos of kids, then posting pics of themselves making drunken twats of themselves on a nightly basis. I unfollowed them, bloody harridans.

 

Anyway, after reviewing my post above I realise I am a boring bastard busybody and seriously need to quit Facebook now.

[autopilot]

Pictures of your kid should not be publicly displayed on the internet until they're 30 and have accomplished something worthy of widespread attention, until then you're just showing off your ability to come in a vagina and not have a retard pop out, which doesn't impress anybody but your parents.

 

Do you ever think about how your kids are unable to give informed consent about this public photo documentation of their lives and, upon turning 18, may seriously resent you for it? I know that if my parents posted "just had his first poo!" with a picture of 4-year-old me standing next to an excrement-filled toilet, and it was out in the digital ether linked to my legal name forever, I'd probably be furious. Not saying you'd do something that crude, but you ARE putting them into a giant facial recognition database that might land them jail time when they get into graffiti at age 19 and are picked up by speed cameras linked to a global law enforcement AI.

[granty]

I think it's considered the modern day equivalent of getting them printed and then getting the family album out and showing it to people. I aware of the consent issue, but that sort of goes out the window when they've done something funny. I don't think she'll resent me for it when she's older. I wouldn't be surprised anyway if there are controls for this generations kids in 15 years time - where they can manage privacy setting for photos of themselves. Either way, if you can't bear to see my daughter on a swing, smiling, then just fuck off and unfriend basically. Good riddance.

[Polytrix]

Holy fuck.

[Polytrix]

I think it's like what you said though, if you have people on Facebook who genuinely are your friends and care for you and your family, then they probably enjoy seeing the photos. Passive aggressive behaviour from a 'friend' isn't an amicable quality. This is why I find all this so fucked up, it totally degrades friendship and the important qualities that you should possess to fulfil that role for someone. It's so divisive and I found that I was behaving that way too, I'll friend this girl in the hope that one day I can date her rather than actually fostering a friendship which doesn't really exist.

[granty]

I've found most posts, including my own, are of the 'look at me aren't I funny/clever/thoughtful' variety. It's like we've become a nation of egotistical PR agents four our selves. Now and then you do make some more meaningful connections, I think, but they're few and far between.

[granty]

Also, if you get angry when people post pics of themselves being generally happy, then maybe the problem isn't them, it's you. Again, I'm guilty of that.