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Comment by beauHD | Hacker News Reader

> After a time, habitual or frequent users become desensitized to positive feedback, such as likes and comments, from other users.

I've noticed this personally. In my early social media days circa 2012, going viral with a post of mine evoked genuine gratefulness for the post and appreciation for how much reach it got. Now, going viral is just a habit. 10,000 likes, 1000 shares on Facebook is my new normal. It's not 'special' like it used to be. I still appreciate my viral posts, just not to the extent of my early social media days (this is probably because fewer people were on it in 2012).

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I feel like bots (or human analogues thereof) have "devalued" these numbers a lot. Loads of people will just like or share things on autopilot, on any social network, and then you get bots adding up the rest - since I'm sure interactions like liking and sharing increase their trust rating, and thus their value, without that kind of activity being easy to detect as being from a bot since it's just a click on a button.

We've got a youth that wants to do youtube, he gets really excited when he gets a subscriber or a share or something. But I'm like... it doesn't count until it's in the thousands or tens of thousands. That's me gatekeeping though, I'm probably being a dick about it.

> It's not 'special' like it used to be.

Isn't this true for nearly everything in life?

E.g. when I won my first marathon, I was ecstatic. Now after winning 20 of them, my happiness is much more muted.

You can even say it about the first time you ate ice cream.

I don't think this is a reason to be worried about social media or make special rules about it.

But isn't there more value in a reward leading you to run marathons than a reward leading you to waste your time (literally a net negative mental health wise) scrolling on a social site?

I genuinely believe that setting goals for yourself and achieving them is intrinsically more valuable than... not doing that, i.e. scrolling.

I think people want different things in life and I don’t think different leisure pastimes are inherently better.

Like in the previous example, I don’t see how a marathon isn’t also a colossal waste of time. You spend half a day running the and nothing has changed other than you feel good. Fair enough, but same thing with video games or music or social media.

Perhaps a useful hobby could be carpentry or something, but that’s a slim percentage of all hobbies, and even then, there’s probably a machine or a guy who can do it better than you and you can simply pay them.

My point was based around the idea that setting goals for yourself and pursuing them is better for you than not doing that. Disagreement on the point would surprise me. I’m not saying we all have to run marathons or hike the AT, but, really, well anything you can set your mind to is good. It could be being a great father or husband, or carpentry, or marathons. Anything is better than doing nothing and scrolling.

I don’t see scrolling as a “leisure pastime”, maybe that’s the crux of our disagreement. But if all of one’s leisure time is spent scrolling I cannot see how that is good for the individual compared to just about anything else.

I think social media really peaked around that time.

Social media was on the computer. You would interact with it every now and then, then leave. It was useful for making or keeping in touch with friends. You had the good parts without too much of the bad parts.

But once smartphones took over, you were plugged in 24/7. It brings it out at its worst.

The dopamine hit from the like/share notification no longer hits like it did in 2012.

Reminds me of drug addicts building tolerance and upping usage to get same “high”.

Probably get the same feeling again if you hit 100K or 1M interactions

Personally, haven’t cared since 2015. FB — stopped using for socials but use its marketplace for selling/buying. IG - keep an account but otherwise have stopped using it.

Still use anonymous social media like HN or reddit. Although lately stick to the fediverse — mastodon, lemmy, and matrix.

tbh I think admitting in public that you use mastodon or lemmy outs you as a fringe nut, just like using 4chan /pol/ does

Is that a problem though? You'll filter the people you want to interact with, effectively. I'd personally probably talk more to someone who goes to /pol/ than someone who goes on IG and TikTok. If you say "I use mastodon" that also creates an in-group effect, anyone else who does the same or similar are more likely to hit you up with a conversation due to that fact :)

What makes you say that?

Most of my friend groups are migrating towards mastodon. I haven't noticed any political connotations.

Isn't this natural? If you are not sharing 'viral' stuff to conform with expectations to be hip and desire huge audience without providing value, then it is good.

Healthy reaction to this small fandom is to take it as an indicator you are doing something good and should not focus on reception, but on the product.

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