
Stop externalising your life - daGrevis
http://jshakespeare.com/stop-externalising-your-life/
======
calinet6
The funny thing is, most people I know completely agree with this viewpoint.

"Yep, it's tearing the fabric of society apart alright. It's creating a
generation of self-interested media whores."

But wait, aren't you one of them? Didn't you _just_ post a picture of those
tacos you made last night?

"Yeah man, they were _freaking awesome tacos._ "

Yes, it's a little narcissistic. Yeah, it's disruptive to your actual in-the-
moment experiences. You can go overboard. You can also strike a balance, and
it just becomes a thing you do sometimes, it's not going to kill you, it's not
going to actually change the fabric of society. It's going to make some people
annoying. Sort of like punk rock or emo or neon colors or television.
Whatever. We'll adapt.

And it might have positive effects too. I made those tacos last night (heh,
yeah, it was me, and I totally posted them to Facebook) because I saw my
friend cook some mexican last week (posted to facebook) and it looked good.
That friend of mine posts pictures of food she makes all the time, and it
inspires me to cook more. We discuss the food, I ask for recipes. This isn't
just narcissism—it's interaction. To ignore that positive effect just because
you notice a subtle and possibly true behavioral shift is short-sighted.

My humble opinion is that most people are self-aware enough to know the
externalization of their lives is detrimental on the large scale. They know
enough to put down their phones or iPads for the important moments, or even
the routine ones. We're all collectively learning how to make our lives work
with this level of interconnected communication—it's a new thing.

I completely agree with the sentiment of this article, but I think most people
do. I think people are constantly going to be looking for better solutions to
this problem. I don't know if Facebook will find that solution, but I've said
it before and I'll say it again: the social network that integrates with life
and human behavior the best will be the one that overtakes Facebook (if you're
going to try, please bring on a social psychologist in your first 10
employees).

The internet will not always be like this. It's immature, it doesn't fit quite
right yet. But it will get better. And if it doesn't, it'll just continue to
be slightly annoying. Not the end of the world.

~~~
bollockitis
That's an excellent point, and very eloquently written. The article does
mention one other phenomenon though, and it's the selective nature of what we
share. It has been discussed in the media that Facebook can make some people
angry, envious, and depressed (<http://ti.me/V9kKkd>). By selectively
broadcasting our successes to the world, whether it's a promotion at work or
awesome tacos, we contribute to a tapestry of a superficial, though entirely
false, view of the world. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to broadcast
my failures any more than you do. It's natural to want to share only the good
things.

I'll use myself for example. I'm not particularly prone to sharing or to envy
(at least, that's what I thought). I rarely posted anything to Facebook, and
when I did, it was science or news related. I even felt violated when others
posted pictures of me. However, after about two years worth of Facebook use,
mostly lurking, I was surprised to find that I was angry with just about all
of my "friends." It seemed they were so much happier than me, wittier, more
liked, more photogenic. Their families seemed so perfect, while mine was in
smoldering ruins due to tragedy, divorce, and bitter grudges. Their posts got
loads of likes and comments, while mine received few or none. They also
seemed, well, so dumb: they wrote "are" for "our" and mixed up "they're,"
"their," "and "there." And they broadcast inane political rants, which, turns
out, is a great way to ensure that I'll never want to hang out with them
again.

So, in turn, for me at least, I found it had affected me negatively, so I quit
using Facebook, and I think it made me much happier and a better friend. I
stopped placing expectations upon my life by what I had seen on Facebook. And,
most of all, I was shocked to discover how judgmental I had been toward these
people. I'm the guy who is often jokingly referred to as the family shrink.
Everyone comes to me with problems because I'm patient, I listen, and I don't
judge. Well, on Facebook, I was a different person. I was brutal. And that
attitude alienated me because I found that I couldn't like people in real life
whom I couldn't respect in digital life, whether it be due to my own
selfishness or their poor grammar. Perhaps that's why I rarely posted—I felt
that I would be judged just as I had judged them, and I feared rejection.

Now when I talk to my friends, they seemed shocked that they have to fill me
in on things that have been thoroughly covered on Facebook. But when we do
talk, it isn't infused with the expectation to please. I can be honest, and so
can they, and there's no need to feel like we're having a loud conversation
while sitting at the center table in a crowded restaurant.

I don't think this applies to everyone. I have a friend who doesn't seem the
least bit bothered by this. Maybe I'm emotionally weak, or overly sensitive,
or more prone to envy than I would like to think. And I don't condemn Facebook
entirely. Like you said, I think we're still working this whole thing out, and
we have yet to figure out how to positively integrate it into our lives. Even
so, I think for some people, no amount of sharing is good, not if we're only
sharing the good bits.

~~~
contingencies
I also stopped, about 6 months ago. Since then I have begun writing poetry
again, been photographing a lot, sold my first photographs (a few, to
different buyers, after many years of photography), travelled, and generally
had a good time.

Sure, I miss finding out about some weird events, but generally speaking it
means I communicate directly with a subset of friends I care about rather than
all-and-sundry.

I was going to write "...and it makes life more meaningful", but that's false.
Actually I sometimes scratch my head in wonder .. what are all these people
doing?

Yet that feeling has existed since childhood and I have come to recognize it
as a part of me, part of what makes me different and strong.

Never give up on your own perspective. Be honest to yourself.

Let the sheep graze and fear not, for others also tread their own path.

~~~
jff
Yep, you're a very special snowflake, you've always known you were different,
and those sheep are just _so ignorant_.

If they find value in telling each other about their life experiences but you
don't, that's fine. Maybe they enjoy seeing the cool things their friends do,
maybe those posts give them great ideas for vacations or what to make for
dinner or what kind of dog they want to get.

You can leave the "yeah, what sheep" bullshit for a t-shirt at Hot Topic,
where it belongs.

~~~
PavlovsCat
On the other hand, if they find value in telling each other _superficial
stories about_ their life experiences, on a purely private platform to boot
that spies on their every move, that's kinda fucked up.

------
ohwp
Waiting for the pope: <http://i.imgur.com/sNTmp4s.jpg>

In my opinion you miss a lot around you when you are constantly staring at the
screen of your device.

Two days ago I was sitting at a birthday party. The guy next to me constantly
took pictures sending them with Watsapp. I never spoke a word to him because
he was busy with his phone all the time.

I'm still not sure what to think about that but I don't think I like the
change.

~~~
dsirijus
Not be demeaning, but there is an alternative way out of that - become a power
user.

I frequently continue programming/typing, slip in an audio note to self or
search the web via Google Now, while holding a normal conversation. And people
with whom I interact got used to this to the level of requiring me to have the
data from Wikipedia ready for the continuation of the discourse. :)

This is not a comment on the externalisation, but on how gadgetry, used
properly, can add to experience.

~~~
skrebbel
> _I frequently continue programming/typing, slip in an audio note to self or
> search the web via Google Now, while holding a normal conversation. And
> people with whom I interact got used to this to the level of requiring me to
> have the data from Wikipedia ready for the continuation of the discourse.
> :)_

If you ever do that while talking to me, I'm off. If you don't want to talk,
don't, but if I'm genuinely less interesting than Google Now (of all things!)
then why don't you just walk away?

~~~
tedks
I can think of several reasons:

1\. It would be insulting to do that.

2\. Most people understand that as long as the flow of conversation is
maintained, it doesn't really matter what else you're doing. People have
conversations while doing other things all the time.

3\. Doing something else while conversing with someone doesn't actually mean
you're less interesting than that something else. It means that temporarily,
there exists reason to do that thing.

4\. You have a real relationship with the person with whom you are conversing
and both of you understand that taking 10 seconds to look something up on
wikipedia will not damage that relationship.

Could you really think of none of those things? If not, why not just signal
your luddism directly by saying "If you use google now in my presence, I will
hellban you from my life?"

~~~
archon
> 1\. It would be insulting to do that.

It's also insulting to not give a conversation your full attention, for some
of us. If I'm trying to talk with you about something (as opposed to talking
_to_ you), I'm going to be insulted if you're checking your phone and
otherwise broadcasting through body language and your inattention that "what
you're saying to me right now is unimportant, and I would rather be doing
other things."

Whether you are capable of paying full attention to our conversation while
doing other things is immaterial; it's about perception. If I feel like you're
not interested in the conversation, I'm just going to shut up and move on.

~~~
lotharbot
>> _"It's also insulting to not give a conversation your full attention, for
some of us."_

There are certain mental conditions (including variants of ADHD) wherein it's
actually _easier_ for someone to focus if they're doing two things than if
they're doing one thing.

It's insulting to those of us with those conditions to be told to stop because
you misunderstand us.

~~~
kaens
It's fine if people are insulted by that behavior. It's fine if people are
insulted by people being insulted by that behavior.

There are enough people with varying behavioral preferences or needs that
people insulted by that behavior to a significant degree should simply not
associate with those people. Opportunity lost? Maybe. Maybe not. They probably
aren't going to be the best fit together for whatever they're doing if they
clash with that type of amplitude though.

That said, there's a point here that I don't think is made quite often enough,
or not explicitly enough:

People do not have the right to not be insulted. If you're insulted by
something some people do, I'd guess your course of actions should be:

\+ ask them about why they do it

\+ express that you find it insulting and why

and then if the context of their actions doesn't remove the insult to you,
stop associating with them.

People are sometimes purposefully insulting -- those people are dicks, and
you'll accomplish nothing by engaging them.

Some people are accidentally insulting and will gladly try to be aware of your
sensibilities while you're around. Some people will have behavior that is part
of their identity that is insulting to you for reasons that are pretty alien
to them.

Particularly in that last case, people on all sides need to grow the fuck up
and realize that being insulted and/or being interpreted as insulting is not
nearly as big of a deal as some people make it out to be. Be insulted, be
offended, it's fine.

Stop being indignant about it.

Speaking for myself, I can't imagine being insulted by something that when
clarified did not have insult as its intent without having some sort of skewed
notion of my value as a living thing in relation to other living things.

------
JDGM
My parents' generation would share holiday snaps or even host slide show
evenings for neighbours after traveling somewhere. I think that photo sharing
on Facebook etc. is just the modern version of that and as back then, we have
people who find this obnoxious, interpreting it as a form of bragging.

I believe it may be a little bit bragging, but is mostly validation-seeking.
Many people just seem to be wired in a way that craves a social response to
their behaviour. Call it neediness, insecurity, whatever...I think the kindest
thing is to simply identify it as a personality trait.

Back in the slide show days I remember being impressed by the stance my
parents took which was to sit back and enjoy the holiday snaps as much as they
could, because the person showing them was getting something out of that.

Today, I will act interested in a dream a co-worker wants to tell me, not
because I am particularly gripped by how they "were flying, but also not, and
everyone's face was Graham from accounts", but because it seems to make them
happy to have someone listen. If simply clicking a "like" button or posting a
thoughtful comment can give someone warm fuzzies (and we know it does) then
I'll do it.

~~~
nodata
Are you sure these slide evenings were as entertaining and impressive as your
remember?

I've never heard anything positive about them until your comment, up until now
they've always been the subject of boredom jokes.

~~~
JDGM
Spot on. I may have expressed myself unclearly - I am indeed referencing that
trope of boring slide evenings, and likening them to the photos which flood
our social newsfeeds, showing e.g. Asian Fusion cuisine, rock climbing, and
pouting in nightclubs.

The point I'm making is that the boredom joke about the slide evenings was
social etiquette and care for other people's feelings preventing intelligent,
well-mannered people from being anything but polite. The joke was indeed
always on the slide-shower, and it was a bitter-sweet empathic one. I see a
modern parallel.

~~~
microtherion
The big advantage of Facebook or Twitter over slide evenings is that it’s much
easier to skip a FB update you don’t care about (or even skip all updates from
someone) than it was to duck out of a slide evening.

Even better, you may have friends who are not overly selective about what they
share, but still share something worthwhile every now and then. With social
media, it’s fairly painless to pick our the worthwhile pieces. In a slide
evening, I’d have been bored to death.

~~~
JDGM
I can't really refute any of that, it's a good takedown of the analogy. I'm
trying to draw parallels which help me understand what's happening and behave
appropriately but yes, there are very relevant differences.

I suppose I would say two things, one serious and one silly:

The serious is that I actually do find it harder and harder "to pick out the
worthwhile pieces" in social media. I'm adding more people, they're all
posting more, and the feeds are getting messier and messier. I don't think
slide evenings _started_ as snoreathons, and there must have been a novelty
period before it all got tedious. If there was a turning point then I feel
we're not far from the equivalent one with our social media photo-flooding.

The silly is that at the slide evening I would be plied with wine and...well,
in those days I suppose Twiglets? Right this second, I would gladly sit
through an hour or two of Machu Pichu (OK, let's be realistic: Cornwall) in
exchange for a comfortable chair and the quaffing of a few glasses ;)

~~~
microtherion
The problem with the messy feeds is quite real for me too. I find that in
Facebook, things tend to balance out reasonably well: Most friends don’t write
a flood of updates, or particularly long updates, and the feed balancing
algorithm seems to present me with a reasonable mix of updates.

I’m far less active in Twitter, where I seem to easily get overwhelmed by a
flood of small updates, or G+, which seems to attract highly prolific writers.

------
crusso
I started with Usenet and email back in the late 80s. When the Internet boom
hit ten years later and everyone's mom had an email account, I spent years
agonizing over people who were unable to quote a forwarded reply properly or
who couldn't grasp the fact that Bill Gates wasn't going to be paying anyone
for the amount of email sent around.

But you know what? Most of those people have learned a decent bit of
netiquette. They even know the word "netiquette". They got over the newness of
email and the web.

I'm seeing people getting over the extreme narcissism as well. They've tweeted
going to the bathroom enough so where it's no longer a thrill. They've posted
enough pictures of their meals to facebook or wherever.

I think that most of this behavior is just a phase that will pass.

~~~
batgaijin
so the eternal september passes?

------
tedks
"you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re
detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look
attractive to other people."

Humans are social animals. Everything we do is focused on making ourselves
look attractive to other people. People who don't do this are typically not
liked by others. The fact that most people do the behaviors the author
describes and yet are liked by others seems to indicate that they've succeeded
at making themselves look attractive.

Of course, there are plenty of strategies to make yourself look attractive.
Some people might dress in mainstream fashion, hoping to pull it off well
enough that they can distinguish themselves from all the other people doing
it. Others get tattoos and piercings and make themselves unappealing to all
but a niche subgroup, within which they have less competition.

I find it hilariously ironic that the author is engaging in the very same
behavior (right down to posting the hacker news discussion link in the
footer!) as the people they attack. Only humans can do this.

~~~
3minus1
I agree. The author identifies a near universal human behavior and his
reaction is to condemn it as tearing apart human society. I don't think so.
More like it speaks to something deeply ingrained in our nature, something we
evolved because it was beneficial to survival.

~~~
ijk
It's definitely a deep part of the human psyche. Though I can see space for
arguing that social media is too effective.

Our social instincts aren't structured to process detailed updates from
thousands of people, nor to broadcast our personal moments to them. I suspect
that much of the frustration that people feel is by getting hit with hundreds
of updates in the volume that would normally only be shared with very close
friends. It comes off as narcissist, because narcissists are the kind of
people who can't read the social cues to stop sharing that information--but
the social web also lacks the cues that create inhibition.

In fact, because you only get delayed feedback, people lack the social cues
that usually get them to stop. And then when the feedback happens, they get a
socially-reinforcing signal, separated from the original impulse.

------
adam-a
Most "normal" conversations could be cast in this narcissistic light, if you
wanted to. People tell each other about the interesting things that happen to
them, and not about the mundane, sad, or private things. An awful lot of
conversation is about establishing common ground and consists of "Have you
seen that film?" "Yeah, I saw it. I liked it, the actor, he was in another
film, did you see that?". Back and forth exchanges of, fairly dull
information. Of course people get into deeper conversations as they get to
know each other, and these are often sparked off by the dull stuff. This
happens on Facebook too of course, though often it's privately, and so less
visible.

I think the negative reaction from a lot of people is mainly the shock of the
new. Like it or not your children will use online networks and sharing as part
of their normal social landscape. You can either bemoan them all as unnatural
monsters, or realise that these things are inherent to social interaction, and
not a problem caused by techcnology.

------
papa_bear
It's possible you're just thinking too much about it. A lot of people look
back on the things they've shared as a way of maintaining a personal photo
album. My facebook definitely has a more complete photo history than any one
device I own, and it's almost effortless to throw the photos I take up there.

That, and I don't mind seeing the things my friends are doing - it gives me
ideas for things I want to do in the future. I used to disdain the
"humblebrag" nature of sharing random photos, but I've been getting into a
much more "fuck it" attitude recently. It's going okay.

~~~
josscrowcroft
I think that self-inquiry here is the key, finding one's intentions.

I've sometimes found days ruined by the constant need to update everybody on
things – on close examination, I can feel the compulsive need to be bigger and
better, which is just more ego – and when looking back at those photos, I know
I didn't take them as an expression of the moment, I took them as an
ego–enhancer. Which didn't work.

On the other hand, I don't think he's saying "never take photos, never share
things". If you examine your intentions and find you're not simply using
sharing and photos as a bragging method, then power to you.

~~~
JDGM
This, this, a million times this. I recall a professor very fond the phrase
"you may wish to examine your motives".

I have found that fantastic advice and hear it most of the time before I click
"post", "reply", "submit", etc.

Even here, now. I'm about to post this comment. Do I want karma? Do I need an
outlet for the thought? Why am I posting this? Have I achieved everything I
wanted by just writing it and actually could just close the tab without
hitting reply?

It is not a pleasant feeling.

~~~
josscrowcroft
Yeah, it's a path inwards, which is powerful but I suppose you gotta be
careful about – in case "you may wish to examine your motives" is just _more_
ego, mind-games..

~~~
JDGM
Indeed. Any ideas how to solve this one?

The closest I've come is acknowledging there may be a sweet spot somewhere
between introspection, expression, and just following good activity habits
without thinking or talking too hard about them.

My hunch is that when you've got something solidly in place that "works" (well
balanced exercise, diet, career, relationships, family, finances, security,
play, hobbies, routine, sleep, etc.) then excessive self-inquiry and
validation-seeking don't seem so important any more.

------
cpressey
> _It’s not sharing, it’s bragging._

Some would call it "narcissism", which (with an appropriately nuanced meaning)
I think is more accurate than "bragging".

I strongly agree with the article. Sharing your experiences with social
networking isn't necessarily about needing to get validation from others on
your experience in order for the experience to feel complete for you... but
for some people, it is. And I have to wonder, the more prevalent social
networking becomes, are more and more people going to use it as their image-
of-self crutch? And I have to wonder, what does such a society look like after
a few decades? It's a bit like Warhol's "15 minutes of fame", except minutes
are the wrong unit of measure. Everybody's a 15 milligram celebrity...

~~~
JDGM
Regarding what this looks like in a few decades, I talked elsewhere in the
thread about slideshow evenings and it was correctly pointed out these are
exclusively thought of as a joke. I believe that's where we're going: we'll
mock the narcissistic behaviour out of the culture. This is a good start:
<http://youtu.be/Nn-dD-QKYN4>. Of course, a new thing will come along and it
all repeats.

------
jshakes
Apologies for the downtime, here's a cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&safe=...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1600&bih=797&sclient=psy-
ab&q=cache%3Ajshakespeare.com%2Fstop-externalising-your-
life%2F&oq=cache%3Ajshakespeare.com%2Fstop-externalising-your-life)

------
FajitaNachos
I've had a facebook account since 2006. I never post anymore. The only reason
I haven't completely deleted it, is because it's a decent way to stay in touch
with old acquaintances. I don't tweet. I don't check in anywhere. I don't post
to instagram. It's just not an appealing to me. Other than close
friends/family, people don't really care what you are doing.

Facebook and other social outlets are a way for people to humbly or not-so-
humbly brag about what they are doing, and for those people consuming the
content to be envious or critical of it.

I enjoy the fact that I can step away from the computer at any moment and not
feel the urge to repeatedly check Twitter, Facebook etc.. and just enjoy life.
I don't think I'm missing out on anything by not socially sharing my life on
the internet.

------
prawn
Each to their own.

I enjoy seeing what my friends and family are up to, including the minutiae
that might not otherwise come up in conversation. In participating, I also
have an easy history of the things I've done to look back over. My wife loves
TimeHop reminding her, via social updates, what she was doing on the same day
a year ago. "Remember this?" Cue much reminiscing.

Further to that, all social sharing serves as developing a personal brand and
there are social and commercial advantages to that whether all doing it
realise or not.

"Paint a picture of it."

I almost laughed at this bit. Why not allow even more time for contemplative
thought by first creating inks from scratch, using ingredients relevant to the
original experience and naming each combination of colours to evoke just the
right memories?

------
zeteo
Many people have heard the phrase "conspicuous consumption", but it's only
half of Veblen's analysis. It counterpart, "conspicuous leisure", is arguably
at least as important. Typical social proof that you're doing well is not just
buying a BMW, but also showing that you _didn't_ have to work hard for it.
This is communicated most effectively by advertising the time you can afford
to spend on non-economic activities: tourism, cooking, amateur photography
etc. There are, of course, many other good reasons to engage in these
pastimes. But their importance as a means of social display should not be
underestimated.

~~~
cma
Yep: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_leisure>

"such as taking long vacations to exotic places and bringing souvenirs back."

Souvenirs wouldn't be worth nearly as much if you were forced to keep them to
yourself.

------
moron4hire
This is a big part of why I stopped using Twitter. Of course, every tool has
its uses and misuses, and Twitter can be an excellent way of discovering new
content from favorite producers, but using it myself turned into a popularity
contest.

PG writes about popularity contests in Hackers and Painters, and how geeks
prefer doing and learning over winning popularity standing. I didn't read H&P
until after I had quit Twitter (and largely quit Facebook. Facebook is nothing
more now than "email from my mother"). But that resonates well with me. I
found myself tracking trending hash tags and trying to come up with witty,
pithy tweets that I could also hashtag in kind. I had specific strategies that
I would test and track the retweets and replies. It was kind of sick, looking
back at it now.

But looking back at my internet life, it wasn't always like that. If you
consider the BBS and web forum to be proto-social networks, this type of
behavior (in certain communities) was neither broached nor tolerated. A much
greater emphasis on discourse existed. In certain online communities, posting
"+1" or "first" (or its more recent analogs "this" or "feels") was a fast
track to banning. But those networks had something that Facebook and its ilk
lack: administrative moderation, either by a staff of people or by community
members with elevated privileges.

They were also geared towards the long form of prose, rather than the pithy-
saying style. Twitter still has it's 140 character limit; it is considered the
culture of Twitter. Facebook for many people functionally had the same limit
as they interfaced with it through MMS. I don't know if they still do now, but
at one time Facebook had a character limit on status updates and replies; even
if those limits were removed now, the vast majority of Facebook's users are
trained towards them now, and we see a new article every week talking about
Facebook being unable to attract "new, teenage" users. Similarly, Tumblr's
easiest levels of contribution are the reblog and photoshares.

When the discourse is so severely limited, then there can't be a discourse.
People will revert to what is easiest: posting things that are not meant to
engender discourse. People brag, always have, it's natural. But the signal to
noise ratio is much worse now because services like Twitter, Tumblr, and
Facebook make the noise so much easier to create than the signal.

EDIT: sorry, typos, still on my first cup this morning.

------
Karunamon
>But I think our reasons for sharing experiences on social media are more
cynical than that. It’s not sharing, it’s bragging.

No. Stop. You do not speak for every user of social media, or most of them, or
even a significant fraction of them.

>We end up with a diminished perception of reality because we’re more
concerned about choosing a good Instagram filter for our meal than we are
about how it tastes.

Does anyone aside from a minority of people who can be described with various
adjectives, but I'll settle on "attention whore", actually work this way? I
don't. Nobody I know does. Do you?

Balance in all things. This is just another blasted "social media is teh
evulz" post dressed in flowery language.

For what it's worth, this is why I think Glass and its descendants will be the
next big thing. You remove the friction from sharing, you remove 98% of the
author's complaints (and the complaints of those "social media blaarrrgh"
types). When sharing becomes as simple as just looking at something and saying
a magic word, or nodding your head, or touching your temple, you don't have to
throw brain cycles at operating some kind of device, it just happens
naturally.

------
mark_l_watson
I enjoy externalizing :-)

My wife and I travel a lot and I like to write a daily diary that I send to
family (and friends who "opt-in"). I often include a few pictures. There is
often some down time travelling, and journaling experiences makes a long wait
for transportation, etc. enjoyable. I enjoy reading my own travel logs years
later.

I live in the mountains (Sedona in Central Arizona) and when I go on really
long hikes (I am leaving on a 6 hour hike in 45 minutes :-) I always send a
picture to my Dad and some remote friends who occasionally travel to Sedona to
hike with me.

------
basicallydan
Personally, I agree. I know there are differing opinions but I don't care most
of the time what my friends & family are up to in real-time. They'll tell me
when I see them. I like to write about things I have done if I have some
opinion of it, or if I'm proud of an achievement, but that's about it. People
don't necessarily need to know what I'm doing _right now_ if it's nothing
particularly special or new.

Conversely, I don't need to necessarily need to know what they are doing all
the time. But if they feel the need to share, fine. I just hope that if they
read this post, by you, they might critically think about their current
behaviour.

------
pepperp
>What were people actually saying by Tweeting about their visit?

They are telling others about their life experiences. It's called
communication, we do it in real life all the time, why can't we do it online?
If somebody told you what they did on the weekend, do you respond "you are
fulfilling your obligation to have to share"?

~~~
jbelanich
The crux of the argument seems to be the time and place of sharing. Before the
advent of social media, sharing used to happen after the event. Now, it
happens during it. The author doesn't seem like he is against sharing in
general, just the sharing that interferes with the sensory experience of the
event itself.

------
Nursie
Sounds like the author has had some sort of compulsion/addiction to posting
pictures on the internet.

Not everyone does that.

------
eksith
All the more reason to hurry up with those ocular implants! Never miss the
stream while you record it. ;)

But seriously, the genie is out of the bottle. There's no going back to the
pre-sharing days as we've come to notice our memories are fleeting... as are
our lives. In essence we're the culmination of our expriences and these days,
we're (I think) subconsciously leaving evidence of our existence, just in case
everything else of our proof of impact on the world is lost.

I'm not happy that we've completely substituted interraction with persons in
favor of the interface, but I don't think leaving behind the sharing culture
altogether is the solution. We'll (over)share, as long as the technology
exists. I think the only solution is to make it as unobtrusive as possible so
as to not miss input of the real world with our own organic senses.

In a strange way, I can see this as the true appeal of Steve Mann's EyeTap or
Google Glass. Absorb your surroundings with your synapses _and_ NAND. What
your synapses will miss, the NAND will store for decades or more. All the
while augmenting your sensory reach.

------
pkorzeniewski
My thoughts exactly. Let's be honest, most people share stuff on FB/Twitter to
show off, they project an idealised picture of their life - photos from
parties, trips, concerts and so on with one clear message: "Look at my awesome
life!". Who cares? Why is it so important to know everything about everyone,
all the time? Why share every bit of your life with hundreds of people you
barely know?

------
heymishy
I agree with your viewpoint totally - and others may disagree as they have a
vested interest in encouraging consumers to share - but it is an trend that is
becoming increasingly prevalent. I think your main point is that we are
sliding towards the sharing-for-sharing's-sake end of the sharing spectrum
rather quickly and perhaps without realising it, and that its something to be
conscious of.

------
tunesmith
A large part of sharing because people _want_ to live vicariously through
other people. And sharers know this, and so they help out. That is exactly
what it was like for my Europe trip last year - it was a big enough deal to me
personally that I wanted to record it as one of the highlights of my life, and
I had friends and family that I knew were excited about the trip. So I shared
with lots of detail, and they loved it.

I think the sentiment in the article is more one of the side effects when the
system gets out of whack magnitude-wise in one direction or another. Perhaps
you're (not the poster; anyone) sharing habitually with no intent behind it,
or perhaps you're resentful of your friends, or perhaps you haven't challenged
yourself recently to go out and do something new or formative.

But when used to share an actual highlight, with people that care about you
and are apt to be happy about your highlights, it's a transaction that
benefits both sides.

------
frogpelt
The Internet is only 20 years young. In Internet years that is ancient but
technology and the way people use it always goes through progressions.

Early on, the Internet was largely about research and news. Then, people
realized they could shop online: E-Commerce, dotcom bubble. Step 3, everyone
could have their own little domain, Blogs and personal websites. Then, the
Internet became the place to be entertained, video, music, games. Now, we can
be social and share everything with our network of "friends".

Obviously this is just one guy's synopsis and it's probably out of order in
some ways. There has also been lots of overlap during the progression.

It's not that strange that we are where we are. When I was a bit younger many
people I knew had personal websites. Then they migrated to blogs. Now they're
on facebook and twitter. They'll move on to something else.

The social aspects of the Internet will morph into something else. The
fundamentals will stay but the methods and purposes will change.

~~~
rasur
> The Internet is only 20 years young

Are you confusing "the web" with The Internet?

~~~
frogpelt
I probably am. Thanks for clarifying. I'm sure it tripped up several people.

BTW, were you using either the _Internet_ or the _web_ before the early 90's?
When have you used the _Internet_ without using the _web_? Are you this hard
to communicate with in real life?

~~~
rasur
> BTW, were you using either the Internet or the web before the early 90's?

You mean "the 80's" then. No I was working on mainframes. Much more fun.

> When have you used the Internet without using the web?

Many many times. Usenet, FTP, telnet, bulletin boards etc.

> Are you this hard to communicate with in real life?

Given that my day job is being a System Engineer for a search company, one has
to be pedantic to a certain degree - but you appear to be leveling a claim of
my being difficult to communicate with due to a minor error on your part that
was corrected by someone that can differentiate between the two. But to answer
your question: No, I can be far far worse, if necessary :p

------
phryk
Just for the record (pun totally intended): I fucking hate it when at a
party/rave/concert everybody and their damned mother is standing around
recording everything. Especially on the dancefloor. Especially especially if
they then are all like "Dude, could you stop moving around, I'm trying to
record this!1!!".

------
papaver
reminds me of the buddhist quote:

"If while we are washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits
us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as they were a nuisance,
then we are not 'washing the dishes to wash to wash the dishes.' What's more
we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes....If we can't
washes the dishes, chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either."

i remember going to a gdc after party where they had a burlesque show for
entertainment. 75% of the crowd had their phones out recording the event while
watching the dancers through their phones. so sad.

there is little more fulfilling than enjoying the present moment. its fun
looking into the past and sharing but it comes nowhere near living in the now.
weather that is during the act of eating or washing the dishes...

------
jetti
This reminds me of the College Humor parody of "Photograph" by Nickleback
called "Look At This Instagram" (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn-dD-
QKYN4>).

I've seen many comments in this thread from people who believe this is a
passing trend, however, I have a hard time believing that. I think that this
is going to continue because the oversharing and posting everything is a way
for those with low self esteem to make themselves feel better. It's a way for
those who feel like they have no control to have some control over what their
perceived life is like.

------
mattezell
I find myself being as guilty as any on this front - constantly thinking that
my 'friends' (all ~200 or whatever of them in that list) actually care and
need to know that I am eating/drinking/viewing/visiting/riding/doing/etc
whatever it is that I am doing...

While I am ashamed to admit, I can recall more than one such instance where I
am among friends having a drink, and I decide to check in - then I realize
that I have to tag people, then I have to search for location because it
didn't correctly pull up, then I have to re-do it all because I accidentally
backed all of the way out of the initial post... Then I have to do it all over
again to G+.. "Oh, what was that, friend? I wasn't listening completely as I
was carrying out the super important ritual of sharing with the world that we
are sharing this tasty beverage in this dark downtown pub instead of paying
attention to our ongoing conversation about the next great thing in social
media and connectivity..."

Is it the end of the world? No. Is it hurting my relationships - so far, I see
no indication of that... Is it perhaps a bit annoying to have to repeat
yourself a couple of times because you couldn't be heard over the glow of
cellphone screens as they were being used to check in on FB? Yeah, just a
little bit - but we'll live...

But really... Don't worry... Glass is here, kicking our assimilation into the
next higher plane of online existence.. With some future revision, we will be
controlling it all via eye movement and facial gesture - and so you will then
be relieved, instead of annoyed, to learn that your friend wasn't having a
seizure or a severe facial spasm, but instead were just tagging you in a post
on Facebook and G+ simultaneously...

The reality is - we wouldn't do it if it weren't fun or providing us something
that we (the majority of the collective) were looking for... It scratches an
itch - albeit a narcissistic one at times... While I agree with points here
and found the post to be an entertaining read, it's not (yet - or likely ever)
that big of a deal... It now seems pretty apparent, with the success of
MySpace, Facebook, G+ and other such social sites, that we all like it - the
person posting about their drink at the pub and the person liking the check-in
from their couch... That's the beauty, I guess - it's pretty much an opt-in
activity - you either have an account and participate or you don't...

------
bobwaycott
Externalizing isn't just pictures. It's words, as well. They are often more
powerful than pictures, when in the right hands. I find it a bit amusing that
the OP externalized his trip in an article about how people shouldn't
externalize--describing not just where he was ( _Singapore!_ ), but how long
he was there ( _a whole month!_ ), the food ( _exotic!_ ), sights ( _there
were so many!_ ), and his reasoning, as well ( _to impress!_ ).

While I agree with some of the intent and observations he made, it carries a
strong tone of _I just realized I was doing this thing, don't really like the
reasons I think I had for doing it, and am going to make excessively broad
generalizations about everyone else who does what I perceive to be similar_.

The article would have been better to leave out that last bit. You see, there
are potentially as many reasons for people [over]sharing as there are people
sharing. Since when does taking a picture of/with/in a piece of art require
'bringing a unique interpretation of the artwork to the table'? Who is the
author to determine if the pic-taker is sharing a 'hidden gem with their
followers'? If I'd visited the Barbican and snapped a pic of the Rain Room to
share, it'd be because I thought it was an awesome experience that, while
perhaps not hidden to locals, would most certainly be unknown amongst the
people I'd share the photos or video with. I enjoy experiencing art, as do
many of the people I know. They'd enjoy experiencing the art through a
photograph or video.

I have very fond memories of watching hours of videos whenever my grandparents
returned from a trip somewhere in the world. I specifically recall being
amazed by VHS footage of the pyramids when they returned from Egypt. I was
about 10 years old. Those grainy videos changed my life. My way of thinking
was forever altered. The world was no longer what I saw around me in the city
and desert surrounding Los Angeles. It was huge, incredible, majestic, awe-
inspiring--and, more importantly, it was there for ME to experience,
investigate, enjoy, and re-share it with others. I began diving into studying
the histories, cultures, and languages of parts of the world that captured my
interest. I rejected the idea that was so prevalent in my family that America
was this awesome Promised Land, better than everyone else in the world,
because the US didn't have the incredible things I saw in those home videos
and my weekly trips to the library on Saturdays--the Pyramids, Great Wall of
China, Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Taj Mahal, castles, 600-old libraries, multi-
thousand-year-old cities ... you get the picture.

I'm so glad my grandparents externalized parts of their life. I'm also really
happy when friends do it, because it reminds me of just how much is still out
there to experience.

Do I care about last night's tacos? Nah. But I can digest those on the way to
seeing the pictures of your trip to Budapest.

~~~
unethical_ban
Well, the author was making a point about the way people interact with their
omnipresent tweetdeck/camera device.

He was painting a picture for the sake of making a point, not for the sake of
"hey, I'm in Singapore".

~~~
bobwaycott
> _He was painting a picture ..._

Exactly. Stop there. The irony is that he did _exactly what he was complaining
about_ , but in words, not pictures. He apparently missed the part where that
is externalizing his life. I'm more careful than you to eschew attributing
intentionality, but the effect is the same--he externalized his life via a
blog post that decried externalizing one's life.

It's all about words. If he'd been more mindful, he could have written
everything in that paragraph with _less-externalizing_ language--no mention of
where he was, what he did, how long he was there, etc. But it's much more
difficult to hit the point of _non-externalizing_ language.

We're always externalizing our lives, irregardless of medium.

More importantly, though, the OP's point is just _weak_. He commits
fundamental attribution errors and compounds it with fallacious mind
projections. He sees errant personality traits in [over]sharers where context
and circumstance might hold greater explanatory power. He assesses his own
behavior and intentions, then projects that onto the Reality of Others, as if
he's grasped the fundamental psychological happenings of all the millions of
people who [over]share. It's useless nonsense. He ignores the complexities
inherent to human terminal and instrumental values, as if he possesses the
acumen to tease them out in a few hundred words. Values are complex, nuanced
objects. He sweeps everything about sharing one's experiences into a
simplistic and negative _You're externalizing your life. Stop it!_

Externalizing one's life is not an intrinsic negative. Sure, there's a lot of
stuff people share that I might find useless. But that's a measure of _my_
value judgments, not theirs.

~~~
jbelanich
Ironically, "painting a picture" is exactly what the author said you _should_
do:

"Write about it in more than 140 characters; on paper even. Paint a picture of
it. Talk about it face to face with your friends. Talk about how it made you
feel"

It doesn't seem the author is complaining about all externalization, just the
externalization that takes place during experiences, like posting pictures of
yourself eating a meal while eating said meal. I just don't see the irony you
mention, as he is doing exactly what he said people should be doing.

As for the rest of your comment...I'm inclined to agree that the author's post
is an overgeneralized complaint, perhaps even with fundamental logical flaws.
However, hidden in the haphazard argument there seems to be a tinge of truth
regarding over-sharers.

~~~
bobwaycott
> _It doesn't seem the author is complaining about all externalization, just
> the externalization..._

... he personally does not like.

That's where the irony lies. He is saying "don't externalize in this
[personally valued as annoying] way; do it like this [personally valued as
less annoying] way."

He's suggesting people stop externalizing by way of another mode of
externalizing. It's _still_ externalizing. The implied meaning of his article
is not congruent with the literal meaning of his suggestion for improvement.

[edit: clarity]

------
bjhoops1
Great post. Reminds me of Neil Postman's Technopoly - written just before the
advent of the internet. The main premise there was that we live in an age of
unprecedented amounts of information, yet our ability to parse that
information and filter out the unimportant is diminishing, if anything.

Much as I love the man, I'm glad for Mr. Postman's sake that he has passed
away and been spared seeing his most dismal prognostications realized in all
their mindless glory.

------
lmm
>The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by
sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are
focussed on making them look attractive to other people. Your experience of
something, even if similar to the experience of many others, is unique and
cannot be reproduced within the constraints of social media. So internalise
that experience instead. Think about it. Go home and think about it some more.
Write about it in more than 140 characters; on paper even. Paint a picture of
it. Talk about it face to face with your friends. Talk about how it made you
feel.

I think this is precisely backwards. Social media sharing enhances my
experience rather than detracting from it, precisely because it is so artless:
I'm not thinking about how to describe where I am or what it looks like, I
just check in or send a photo. If I were to follow the advice in the second
part of this paragraph, I'd be doing exactly what the first half warns me
against: focussing my efforts on how things look to other people.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "Social media sharing enhances my experience rather than detracting from
it, precisely because it is so artless: I'm not thinking about how to describe
where I am or what it looks like, I just check in or send a photo."

How does checking in somewhere or posting a photo of something to your
followers enhance your experience of something?

~~~
lmm
Because I enjoy doing it.

~~~
mfringel
You've explained why you like posting/updating/etc., but you haven't explained
how it enhances your experience of whatever you're doing at that moment (i.e.
the subject of the posts/updates).

By way of example, how does taking a picture of your meal and sending it out
on social media enhance the meal for you?

------
melistress
"It’s not real life, of course, because people overwhelmingly post about the
good things whereas all the crappy, dull or deep stuff doesn’t get mentioned."

I think social media is what you make of it and who you stack your social
media accounts with. If you stack them with people who only post how awesome
they are, this is what you will get out of it.

My Twitter feed is a rollercoaster. I have people who share their awesome
moments and their horrible moments and their thoughts and hopes and dreams and
their humour. If you "follow" just anyone just because you want to be popular
and have a lot of followers, you ARE going to get a lot of junk and no real
content. Rather than "stopping our externalizing" I think that we, as the
viewers of our social media feeds, need to take responsibility for the kind of
people we choose to have in our feed.

Honestly, trying to tell people what to or not to post is like censorship.
Stop burning the books and instead make a choice not to read them. Fill your
life with content that makes you happy.

------
ardit33
Sharing is caring (to a certain degree), if your sharing is not just pure
bragging, the I can see only positives on it. E.g. somebody sharing on how
good the food is in a new restaurant is genuinely happy about the experience
and wants his friends to check out this restaurant too, as they might like it
as well. This is good motivation and basic human nature . Vs somebody that
goes in a very expensive restaurant (that everybody knows about) and shares
just to brag about it/ show their social status (this might just elicit envy
from their friends, another basic human emotion). Delivery style and context
are very important in this case.

On the other hand I have friends/ acquaintences that don't share at all and
just keep it to themselves. To me this is selfish and just as bad as over
sharing. A good friend will share both good and bad news. People that share
over selectively, or dont share at all are on the selfish side.

------
wallflower
My social commentary - there is immense _peer pressure_ to do this -
especially in the younger communities. A long time ago - we got the 'Jones
family update' holiday letter once a year - a push update - now we can get
fragments of it in real time...

“You could have this really amazing night, but if you didn’t get a picture,
it’s like it didn’t happen,” said Ms. Parr, 22, a senior at Gettysburg, whose
friends often order designer outfits from the Rent the Runway Web site because
incessant documenting makes wearing anything more than twice taboo. “It’s
crazy how much pictures consume our lives. Everyone knows how to pose and how
to hold your arm and which way is most flattering, and everyone wants the
picture taken with their phone.”

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/fashion/for-college-
studen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/fashion/for-college-students-
social-media-tops-the-bar-scene.html)

------
JohnLBevan
I like the effect this has on me. I look at Facebook at the weekend and see
some friends were up hours before me to run up a mountain, others have gone
into London for the day to see an exhibition then head to a restaurant. I
stayed up late the night before watching (and of course, sharing) YouTube
videos so missed the best part of the day, but now I see that I'm failing to
live life. As a result I up my game and rather than have breakfast and lounge
about I head out looking for interesting things to do to justify myself. . .
then on Monday when I get a coffee and someone asks "What did you do this
weekend" I'm saved of the infamous answer "Just chilled really", which is post
Facebook world speak for "Nothing". Now to wait for the up votes and ensuing
rush of self-esteem. . . Anyone? ;)

TL;DR Subconsciously believing everyone's better than you forces you to up
your game and thus get more out of life.

------
hoytie
I find that for a lot of people documentation has replaced experience. I
watched a performance a week or two ago, and a guy in front of me took photos
and videos for 20 minutes straight then abruptly got distracted and walked
away. It struck me as precisely the symptom of working to externalize your
life so much that you forget to actually experience it.

Thinking in terms of narcissism, distraction, oversharing, externalization,
etc, I've realized how scary and absurd the Google Glass marketing is. It's
been marketed as something that will let us come back to reality and genuine
interpersonal relationships, when it's only going to indulge our tendency
towards sharing and distraction even more. I think that in order to market
Google Glass effectively they had to make the absurd claim that even easier
access to the internet will cure our anxious attachment to it.

------
meerita
I prefer my life now than it was before when internet wearing diapers. Before,
I had to eat all the drama from everyone I had to meet in any circunstancie,
many times, I had to be a listener to really idiots dilemmas or silly issues i
really didn't give a shit just because often you can not choose when and whom
to talk, well, actually, yes, but that also carries a price: be repudiated
because you had decided not to tolerate such interactions.

The offline world can give many joys but also do not forget that it can bring
many dilemmas too. And in my experience has shown me that dilemmas abound more
rather than the joys.

I interact with people more now than before and this does not keep me from
choosing what conversations I get into the offline world. But I preffer this
much because people is on their stuff and not bothering each other without
reasons.

------
sheri
I also feel its the modern day version of 'keeping up with the jones's'. I
have my startup, which I've been working on for the past few years. After
being inundated with images of new babies, houses, cars etc, its hard to
resist trying to show my life in a better light.

------
polskibus
Yeah, kill the growth model for most "social" companies. The amount of noise
is really counter-productive. I know one can just turn it off, but I don't
want to live in society where most don't turn it off and focus on presenting
life to others instead on life itself.

~~~
icebraining
Have we ever lived in any other society? As far as I'm concerned, we just have
better presentation tools.

------
DanielBMarkham
"It’s not sharing, it’s bragging..."

Turns out social media is freaking way tricky. If you share bad things, well,
people don't want to hear it. If you share happy news, well, people think your
life is perfect. So its damned if you do, damned if you don't.

My concern is that instead of young adults being the imperfect people that
they are -- forming cliques, being sexist or ageist, and so on -- we're
teaching kids how to "fake" having the right attitudes. So yeah, you can be as
misogynistic as you want, just don't let it show up on social media.

So the real harm social media does is to ourselves: it teaches us fake
friendships,fake conversations, and fake storytelling. This will have lifelong
negative consequences for many.

------
slant
When I attempt to curate the capturing of an experience, it is normally for
myself later in life to be able to look back on the event. I may share my
experiences on occasion, but my efforts in capturing these things are rarely
for the sake of others.

------
kislayverma
>>> The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences
by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts
are focussed on making them look attractive to other people. >>> I wouldn't
agree with that fully, because I (and I assume many others) often share stuff
because I think it's cool and others might like to check it out. Think of the
number of time you have discovered neat stuff because someone shared it.

So if you are sharing compulsively and simply in order to make yourself seem
awesome, that's messed up - but it is also the cost of content discovery on an
ever expanding internet.

------
snowwrestler
Look at it from the other perspective: I really like to check Facebook or
Twitter and see what my friends and family are doing, what they're enjoying,
what they are thinking. By sharing these things, they are also making me
happier.

------
acjohnson55
I like Facebook. Not the company, but the service they created. I get to be
myself with my friends, but just remotely. I can name about 20 people who were
just acquaintances in "real life" but became good buddies via Facebook. A lot
of them are people with whom I have heated online arguments over politics,
religion, and economics. But we respect each other for it.

There are definitely people who don't fit into my Facebook paradigm. Those
people have their posts demoted. After a small amount of effort configuring my
feed, I now get content I mostly actually enjoy from people I mostly actually
want to hear from. It's quite nice!

------
alexanderclose
Ricky Van Veen (College Humor, Vimeo) has an interesting talk about this whole
online sharing thing.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-xU92gDntQo)

I tend to agree with him, that we share and document the parts of our lives
that matter to us, to help create our identity. It's the same way people drive
a car that fits or fill their closets with their style of clothing. It's an
outward expression of who we believe we are, and how we view the world.

Look at how teenagers use tumblr. They curate content to exactly match
themselves.

------
joyeuse6701
I think the point the author makes goes beyond the shallowness of 'he's
posting on social media, what hypocrisy, look at his externalization!' I think
the take away is that by our society's knee jerk reaction to share a picture
or write a short micro-blerb describing an event as it happens, that we
actually degrade the moment for ourselves. We cease to be immersed in our own
world completely but end up stepping in halfway into the virtual as we prep
that filter, or select careful word choice and tag very particular people to
reap the benefits of our narcissism.

I think it is important to make the distinction that the act of
externalization or sharing of an experience as some have mentioned should not
be completely written off. There is a positive way to externalize our
experiences, and it requires more effort and thought. As a general rule of
thumb I would argue that experiencing something, reflecting on the experience
afterword, and presenting it in a meaningful way meant for longevity is the
method most preferred. Sometimes we can't wait until after the moment.
Sometimes we need to take a picture now, but the filter and the posting can
happen later. The insta-thought that you had that you'll forget may need to be
jotted down, on the phone, or in a notepad, but it should not require a
complete entrance into social media and draw you away from the moment like it
currently does.

The best experiences I had in Facebook was not waiting for every single
picture to come out and following someone's life as it happened, it was
waiting for when that big album from someone's trip was finally uploaded.
There, in one stint you could immerse yourself vicariously in the experience
that someone had. When a breakup would happen, instead of reading the
vacillating short thoughts and daily experiences of someone going from gleeful
to miserable, it was always better IMO to read a reflection that someone had
after several months of thought and introspection.

There is a proper way to use social media and share, and as we are, aren't
using it to it's full potential. Remember when your papers in school had a
minimum word limit? The point was that you had to put in effort when you wrote
something. Instead, we get a max of 140 characters and the incentive to share
NOW without any real foresight into what we post. That should change, I hope
it changes.

------
lorddamien
I always have this conversation with my girlfriend: \- My point, being her
experiencing everything through a small lcd screen, no matter how much pixels
or which fancy word like retina is using. \- Her point, she will be able to
keep memories as you can forget something, but the picture would be still.

On one side, I do agree I would like to have pictures and videos from my
childhood and my experiences as a teenager. Going further, I would really
enjoy to have them from my grandparents. On the other side, we have 2Teras
worth of disorganized pictures.

------
avenger123
I appreciate where the author is coming from but is this really an issue? I
mean, how big a problem is this really?

I would imagine most of us have more important things to do than spend our
minutes uploading pictures to social media sites. I guess if you are the
attention grabbing kind, it works but within my sphere of colleagues and
friends I just don't know anyone that does this. And, yes, I am talking about
technical people that understand what Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are.

Maybe I'm a minority but I suspect that probably not.

------
JulianMorrison
Like it was so much different when you were staring at the holiday you weren't
actually experiencing through the viewfinder of a polaroid camera, back in the
day.

Don't blame twitter for this.

~~~
ctdonath
At least the Polaroid had the self-limiting factor of physical media & manual
processing for each photo taken.

------
scott9s
I totally agree with the premise, but (there's always a but) attitude and
happiness can be manufactured artificially. So, if sharing on twitter/facebook
help me to see where ever I am in the here and now in a more positive light.
then the fact that I'm sharing is forcing me to look at it positively which
then is in turn making the experience more happy and memorable. Hypothetically
speaking. There's some assumptions there.

------
madrox
I still remember how social media revolutionized the tech scene in San Diego,
where everyone is spread out and can't mingle that often. Instead of monthly
meetups where people kept asking "what have you been doing in the last 4
weeks?" it was "tell more about X you were saying on Twitter." Dialogue became
more deep and dynamic.

We can't close Pandora's box. Might as well figure out how to make it work for
you.

------
mathnetic
The author makes a leap here:

>We end up with a diminished perception of reality because we’re more
concerned about choosing a good Instagram filter for our meal than we are
about how it tastes.

I'd like to see some data on the effects of documentation on an experience.
You could track things like perceived immersion in and overall rating of an
experience with and without an effort to document it.

------
Tsagadai
_The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by
sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are
focussed on making them look attractive to other people._

But that is the point for many people. Most people aren't doing things to
personally enrich themselves, they are doing it for others.

------
rocky1138
My first thought when reading this is 'hyperbole', as in the writer is giving
this subject much more weight than it deserves.

My second thought is to recommend unplugging from the most prolific of
tweeters, writers, and facebookers. This way you're not hit with the firehose
and anything worthwhile will be distilled up to you by someone who is.

~~~
hejsna
Good advice! I tend to unfollow people who tweet publicly more than ten times
a day - they're hogging my mental bandwidth. Good thing about today's social
networks is you can set your filters accordingly. Excessive bragging will get
you hidden in my facebook feed, too.

------
andrewfelix
This really spoke to me. Perfectly articulated why I am not on Facebook.

 _"This is the curse of our age. We walk around with the tools to capture
extensive data about our surroundings"_

Less and less people are actually enjoying and engaging good moments in life
and instead trying to construct a frame around said moment that will look good
on FB/Twitter.

------
aiftw
It's narcissistic to imagine that you matter at all. This "age of the
internet" is about bootstrapping the entity that is larger than ourselves. It
needs enormous amounts of data to even have a chance at understanding the
world. Please keep blogging about what you just ate. Take lots of pictures.
Log everything.

------
presspot
Interestingly, My most responded-to tweet ever was when I had what what was
one of the worst days of my life and I tweeted that sentiment: raw, emotional,
unfiltered.

This to me is instructive. People respond to your vulnerability and humility.
Nobody has an easy life. It's potent to own up to that.

------
lesinski
This is an outrageously superficial analysis of sharing... It's natural to
want to share experiences. This is what we do socially every time someone at
work asks "how are you?" or when a friend comes over for a beer. Calling it
"robotic" is a huge generalization.

------
antisocial
Noble Silence: "Before you speak ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is
it true, does it improve on the silence?"

<http://chandana.blogspot.com/2011/04/noble-silence.html>

s/speak/(share|post|tweet)

------
stefanix
The life stream is really just the small talk of the social network. It's not
particularly interesting but it enables the next step. Communities of practice
and group action do rely on people syncing up their interests first.

------
awjr
We have a rule. No electronic devices at the dinner table. Ever.

If we're out with friends and our kid is 'bored' then we usually let her play
on her tablet. It's the upgrade from crayons and paper when she was young.

------
hcarvalhoalves
We post photos of the places we have been to and comment about things we have
done for the same reason our ancestors painted their life in the cave's walls:

If we don't leave our mark, it's as if we didn't existed.

------
theprodigy
It's called humblebragging. Without the millions of people looking to find
unique experiences to "humble brag" about Facebook would be very boring and
wouldn't be as successful.

------
nekgrim
Mind-reading tweets sender is the future. And mind-reading instagram with
google glasses.

More seriously, balance is everything. Take photos, then put away your
phone/camera, and enjoy the view.

------
jorgeleo
I tried to read the article and I can't, he blames it on the database...

The irony

------
methodin
Could be that everyone just wants to feel special and induce envy in their
peers. The desire to be great drives a lot of human interactions.

------
moultano
When I share what I'm doing, sharing with my friends is secondary to sharing
with myself in the future when I look it up again.

------
cucumberOrGrap
Watch this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwR5l8wfXlU>

------
swalberg
Reminds me of <http://5by5.tv/superhero/8> (audio, 4 minutes)

------
thewarrior
I cant reach it . Does anyone have a mirror link ?

~~~
pilgrim689
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&safe=...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1600&bih=797&sclient=psy-
ab&q=cache%3Ajshakespeare.com%2Fstop-externalising-your-
life%2F&oq=cache%3Ajshakespeare.com%2Fstop-externalising-your-life)

------
ankitaggarwal
Just wait, Google Glass is coming soon :)

------
3dptz
Stop complaining about opt-in social media.

~~~
melistress
Hear Hear!

------
jgeerts
This post is just plain beautiful.

------
not_cool
wow, cool blog. Let me share with some friends.

------
shadowrunner
My point requires a back story, but I think its worth it:

A few years ago several teenagers loitered everyday outside my apartment
window. Sometimes they skateboarded, other times jumped off a wooden ramp with
their bikes, but always did they curse and swear.

Especially one kid, who was the ringleader. Every second word was the f-shot.
An angry kid.

So one summer evening, as I was trying to get work done but hearing this
caustic stream of vulgarity outside my window, I decided to straighten these
punks out. I went on my balcony and yelled at them to chill it with the bad
language.

They looked at me as if I was an alien, then continued swearing as soon as I
left. Louder this time. They swore even more from then on, especially the
ringleader kid. He was angry for a kid.

I was getting angry too. Even with my windows closed I could hear the cursing.
I was tempted to threaten them, to really let them "have it", but in a rare
moment of sanity realized that _I can't force them to do anything. I can only
change myself and how I respond to them._

So I changed myself, and instead of getting angry, I decided to help them. I
started a dog walking business and hired the ringleader to walk the dogs. That
way he'd be busy and earn some spending money.

I gave him business cards with his name on it and bus tickets whenever he
needed to get somewhere.

Turns out it was his first job ever. I later found out he had behavior
problems and had been expelled from High School.

I befriended him and showed him how to go door-to-door to get clients. He
didn't have a dad around so I was probably the closest thing to it.

He stopped swearing after that, and so did his friends. I didn't even ask them
to.

Unfortunately his unemployed mother was evicted about a year later, and he
with her. I haven't seen or heard from him since.

 _Be the change you want to see in the world._ -Gandhi

~~~
reledi
Amazing and inspiring story, thanks for sharing.

------
kahawe
This has for a long time been my only explanation for twitter. All the hash-
tag and "centralized communication is awesome" came later. Twitter started out
when blogs were popular and people were doing this "externalizing" on their
freshly-setup blogs regardless of how little they had to say. The problem was
you still needed a computer to access your blogger-or-whatever account since
there were hardly any smartphones and even worse, you actually needed to write
a little bit even when you just wanted to show off because most successful
blogs back then were not one-liners with a pretty picture because all the
"cool" kids were writing long entries so you had to too.

Enter twitter. They were the first ones to offer text-message (SMS) to website
publishing for free and internationally. This was huge, even for me who
giggles at "web 2.0" to this day. This is why it's 140 chars only and this was
the main reason it ever got people's attention in the first place, now
"everyone" could easily publish all that vital information about their pet's
last bowl movement at any given time of the day from everywhere. And even more
importantly, they could do all that showing-off in a much more efficient and
easy way since it was only 140 characters so they did not have to bother with
coming up with some "lorem ipsum" like entry to accompany their showing off.
It was being able to show-off without feeling guilty about not writing a long
blog entry. Reaping all that sweet peer-approval with hardly any of the work
you needed before. twitter quite literally enabled this conspicuous showing-
off and made it en vogue. Since all the "cool" kids were showing how great
their lives are, so you had to too, right?

And now for something completely (or slightly) different. One of my real-life
friends does that showing-off on fb in an even cheaper way that I haven't seen
anyone else doing so far and I just find it even more ridiculous and it has
become a pet peeve of mine. Without failure the last 30 to 50 posts he made
were pictures of some sort of object of more or less conspicuous consumption
and as text he would just write the one or two words describing what is on the
picture - and then, to somehow add depth and give it more "meaning" without
anything actually being there except showing off and to make it look
"smarter", he would add a smiley. That's it. So imagine posts like:

"whiskey :-)"

"enchiladas :-)"

"sunset :-)"

"<insert expensive watch> :-)"

"someotherexpensivecrap :-)"

One of these days, the internet curmudgeon in me is going to call him out on
it and properly ridicule him for it!

------
racl101
I think you could summarize the entire story with "Stop trying to capture the
moment in your smartphone, and start LIVING IN the moment."

