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Comment by kowdermeister | Hacker News Reader

I've read the whole article, but this is where I should have stopped.

> I’ve never had a social media account.

He basically summarized that procrastination is harmful and social media is to blame. He doesn't really share anything I haven't known as a social media addict. Kinda like saying to a smoker that smoking tobacco causes cancer. I know that, what now? I tried shutting down social media sites with plugins, blocking sites in the hostfile and other slow to circumvent things. They kinda worked, sometimes never. I also noticed that if a site gets shut down, something new emerges that replace it.

This is something you have to deal with, regulate it. If you find yourself constantly opening FB, Twitter or whatever your addiction is, then it signals that something you are having problems with something you should be really doing.

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I actually think that quote is interesting for a different reason. First he says:

> I’ve never had a social media account.

Then:

>I think many more people should follow my lead and quit these services

You can't quit something if you never started using it.

I think what he meant was, be like me, and to do that, quit those services.

My take is that this article is also really poorly written. The overly formal tone and extended sentence structure makes it seem like the author is trying too hard to sound smart. He's doing this especially annoying type of bad writing where he thinks the tone he would use for an academic research paper read by one professor is a good fit for an opinion piece that will be seen by thousands.

> There are many issues with social media, from its corrosion of civic life to its cultural shallowness, but the argument I want to make here is more pragmatic: You should quit social media because it can hurt your career."

> Perhaps more important, however, than my specific objections to the idea that social media is a harmless lift to your career, is my general unease with the mind-set this belief fosters.

Just talk to me like a person! Unless you're Slavoj Žižek you should probably go for something more accessible and conversational.

You think that sounds like a research paper? What field are you reading research papers in?!

For what it's worth, the author of the article has written multiple best-selling books for popular audiences.

Exactly. Whenever I increase my consumption of social media, it's because I'm doing something I'd rather not be doing at work. Even these little 5-10sec wait times make me open a new tab and check HN.

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