Comment by iamben | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamben | Hacker News Reader

Another purely anecdotal comment, but I came off (as in just stopped opening) Facebook about 4 years ago. I missed it for about 2 weeks; it was very habitual to just open Facebook when you think you need something to do. But honestly, it was such a great decision. I found it so hard not to get sucked in to stupid arguments and comments ("hey look! here's actual evidence that disproves this" - followed by a 15 comment argument...) which I then kept coming back to and ended up really draining. I can't imagine how horrendous it's been over the last few years (politics, pandemic, etc).

I mostly dialled out of Twitter as well - I'll still check some accounts occasionally, but I gave up on the timeline. I'd be excited to try a Twitter without bot amplification and (perhaps?!) some poster accountability.

I still enjoy Instagram. It's easy to tailor that to things I want to see - cats, watches, denim - and I can avoid the comments. I'd hate to been a teen with instagram though. I can imagine you could end up feeling very inadequate pretty quickly.

Man, the Internet is a funny thing. On one hand it's so great. On the other- what a disaster. I guess it's like everything, you gotta find the balance that works for you and just keep an eye that it stays balanced.

Honestly, I can same the same thing for Hacker News, or whatever website you find yourself habitually visiting. If you are sitting at a computer or phone with nothing in particular to do, do you immediately start to go to certain sites? It's worth taking a week or two off from those sites (or relegating them to one day a week) and seeing what changes. Sometimes it's like a mental fog lifting. When you don't have something you're reflexively doing, you start to think about what you actually want to be doing.

To take this further, it is worth taking time off from habitual actions in general. In my case: taking time off of alcohol lead to now only having a drink a few times a year; even taking a day off from a videogame helps break the dopamine cycle and I am then more-free to make decisions about my time; and going longer without food helps me eat healthier, feel better (reducing inflammation and acid reflux, notably), and not waste food.

> I still enjoy Instagram. It's easy to tailor that to things I want to see

I was 100% with you on this up until a few months ago. When they made their big push for Reels, everything went to shit. Now my feed is full of barely dressed women dancing despite me following no accounts of that nature; I guess for not much reason other than being an 18-34 yo male? I’m not morally opposed by any stretch, but it does make me sort of scared to open the app on the train.

I’ve tried following a few hashtags for stuff I’m interesting in (pixel/other digital art, architecture, fancy food), and while some good stuff is surfaced there’s so much hashtag stuffing going on that many of the posts are just unrelated self-promotion.

Like Twitter, every few posts there’s an algorithmically suggested post from someone I don’t follow. There’s seemingly no option to turn this off; only opt out for 30 days.

In the space of this year Instagram has gone from being the only social network I felt I had a reasonable amount of control over to the one I like using second least (least of course being Facebook itself).

People who get into arguments on Facebook seem to have lower EQ. They feel impossibly itchy, and they have to scratch that itch. They cannot hold back emotionally. They have to do something.

These people are at the disadvantage in the modern world and need EQ training asap.

Well replying to this comment put me in a real Catch-22 like situation, doesn't it?!

No it doesn’t!!!11!

Hey, buddy, my equalizer is a-ok

I have a friend who quit facebook, so our mutual friends start writing me on facebook instead to "tell him this and that" and now I'm his secretary that has to relay all information back and forth.

If it's not a group conversation, they need to discover that magic new feature phones have called SMS

Using whatsapp, telegram or any other messaging app is also an option

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