Social Media: the devil?

I wanted to ask Mr @RonGilbert, how is quitting Twitter going? Do you notice it improved your life after you quit? I’m finding similar troubles with Facebook, and getting negatively triggered.

Do you ever miss connecting with those Twitter people? Has quitting created a void in your social life? I’m seriously thinking about quitting.

I would like to start an experiment:
. Take 20 teens
. 10 can have their smartphone for 2 weeks
. 10 can’t

I’d like to see how nowadays teens without their smartphones can spend their time.

@milanfahrnholz I vaguely remember a Simpson episode with such a thing: it was the TV in place of the smartphones.
Edit: found it: itchy and scratchy was modified into a lovely cartoon:

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That was such a nice montage scene, using Beethoven´s 6th as backround music. :slight_smile:

I’m obviously not Ron (or am I? :wink: ), but I can say, that I don’t regret that I’ve left Facebook. I don’t like all these kinds of social networks and I would shut them all down if I could - including Whatsapp. They “suck” the time out of their users and make them feel bad.

They can’t. Most of them are addicted to the smartphones and the social networks. These services are explicit constructed in a way that you can’t stop using them. If you take the smartphone from a teen it will show symptoms like an addict.

btw: You can try it yourself: Can you live and do your work without a smartphone?

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I doubt that he has missed anything from Twitter yet.
Personally, I left fb about 2 years ago and I never regretted it. If I want to communicate, I simply use other ways for this. Now I have a bit more spare time and a clearer mind.

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I´m not on facebook. But I have gotten to like twitter because it is not really intrusive and leaves you alone most of the time. It all depends who you follow and who follows you, I guess.

I think I annoy others with what I write and retweet on there more than it annoys me tbh. :laughing:

I also wouldn´t want to be without @41strange and @sweartrek anymore.

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can you even established a ‘connection’ with people using twitter? :slight_smile:

I lived 2 weeks without checking this forum, and felt good. :blush:
When I returned to work, I’ve read 200+ backward messages.

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:open_mouth:

I know I have, actually.

Except when it tells you you have a notification every day, only for you to find that it’s telling you about some tweet that somebody else made that some of your followers liked. :upside_down_face:

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Yeah, you know. I try not to reply to famous people because of that. But somehow I reply to everything I want to reply to no matter who wrote it. :smile:

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How time consuming is that (per day)?

Seconds, literally seconds.

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Again, not Ron, but this made me reflect on my own social media experience.

I got fed up with Facebook and stopped using it about three years ago. Most people on my timeline seemed to use it to brag or draw attention to themselves. It breeds narcissism and I got fed up with that. I also think it’s a bit weird using it to ‘keep in touch’ with family and friends. I can, and should, do that in real life. Too many people still say to me, ‘Oh didn’t you know [important life event]? I put it on Facebook.’

Having discovered Twitter around the same time, I get on much better with that. As most people I follow aren’t my family/real life friends, and most of my connections are as a result of similar interests, it’s much more rewarding and much less self-obsessive. I feel like people actually have interesting things to say, and I’ve been introduced to lots of new things I might not have discovered otherwise. The exchanges are so short that I rarely get embroiled in an argument - only the odd one where a troll has sucked me in.

And Twitter is the only place I’ve been able to have actual exchanges with people/celebs who have inspired me, which is amazing :slightly_smiling_face:

I can see how Twitter can become painful for people in the public eye, and perhaps that’s why a lot of those people quit. It must be irritating having to justify and explain things to arrogant people who think they know everything about how developers, inventors, producers, writers, etc work and why they make certain decisions.

I agree with Milan that it leaves you alone a lot more than other platforms (with a little tweaking of the settings).

I guess this forum counts as social media, too. I like the ongoing conversations on here, and it suits me that I can dip in and out of small, light topics and also get well into bigger, in-depth ones. And the community is way more mature than anything I’ve found on Facebook. That’s not to say there haven’t been a few times I thought about leaving, but in the end the things that brought me here in the first place, and the people that have become important to me, prevailed.

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I’m on facebook a lot, but I never really got into twitter…

On facebook I’ve got a really nice feed - I curated it so I only follow 20 or so of my funniest friends instead of the whole lot (also conversely there are some people my posts don’t show to, in case they spoil the conversation).

There are some really great groups on there (some are closed, so you have to ask for an invite), like “The Classic Gamers Guild” and “LucasArts Adventure Games”… I don’t really have time to interact that much on them, but they’re really cool communities and there is a lot of nice convo.

I also follow some meme pages which I swap every so often, some real funny stuff out there, Florkofcows, etc.

My main problem with twitter is that you can’t write much in a post and I like to write a paragraph or so. Also I find it harder to curate twitter as it’s so open that it’s like everyone can jump into the conversation.

It was an interview with this guy that made me want to quit Facebook. It’s hard because I like the Matketplace feature and learning about events near me.

Agree with exactly everyhing!

I forgot to mention that actually. What Katie mentioned is something that can easily be switched off. So it is no problem, really.

You mentioned that a couple of times and I hope it wasn´t always because of me. :neutral_face:

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I don’t think it’s ever been because of you :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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So, what now I´m not even important enough to ragequit the forum over, or what? :angry: