
A world that's designed to make you sad and angry - iliekcomputers
https://paramsingh.github.io/2020/sad/
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deadwing0
I deleted my Facebook account years ago. I stayed with Instagram and Twitter,
thinking I could just follow people in tech or other interesting people that
would expose me to interesting news, etc, but I always found myself getting
sucked back in to political news and other negativity. There is so much
negativity on Twitter. It feels like the one-liners cause more contention
because we can just make a quip about the other tribe - take that! - and
receive quick praise from our tribe. I can sincerely say that not visiting
Twitter or Instagram anymore makes me happier. I never gained much of value
from it, at least not anything I can't find elsewhere.

~~~
polishdude20
I never really got into Twitter or Instagram because I felt like they're both
about advertising yourself to the world. Twitter with advertising your ideas
and Instagram with your photos.

As for Facebook, I never deleted it since I use messenger all the time to plan
things with friends and family. But I never visit Facebook the website. I just
don't visit it.

~~~
saghm
You can deactivate your Facebook account and still use Messenger. Of course,
if you're not logging into Facebook itself at all, I guess there's not much
need to.

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yasinaydin
I can easily guess that the author and most of the commenters here are from
USA. The reason is, to my experience, in "governmentally
undeveloped/developing countries"[1] like USA, Russia, Turkey and China, news
mostly consist of bad things. However that's not necessarily true for some
European countries, especially Northern Europe.

I live in Estonia and most of the news here bear positive news, since we have
proper social government and a good social justice here. For an example you
can go to [https://news.err.ee](https://news.err.ee) (English, although less
news) and see for yourself. One other thing that are in these countries is
that the top news are about politics, entertainment and sports and does not
include much culture value.

In a distant past news could be good or bad, but now (in many countries) it
feels like it's usually either bad or distraction.

[1]: I just made that up, sorry.

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lurquer
> I’m gonna stop reading the news, it’s too much stress for me.

While in college, I read the newspaper each and every day, cover to cover...
from 100 years ago. (Microfiche... those were the days.)

Anyway, I found that all the same issues (drugs, abortion, corruption, race
relations, etc) were discussed. With the same arguments on both sides.

It gave me a lot of perspective that my contemporaries didn’t have.

Highly recommend it.

~~~
radihuq
Whoa that's really interesting & something I might try. Where'd you find these
newspapers?

~~~
lurquer
At the library. Microfiche. I'd get a bagel and coffee, walk across courtyard
to the library, and read through that days paper (100 years back.)

Very depressing comparing the news then to now... if there was a bill at
issue, the text of the bill would be included in full. The grammar was
perfect. Few typos. Vocabulary was rich. In short, it was well-written and
edited. There is nothing like it ... anywhere ... any more.

~~~
radihuq
Sorry I assumed Microfiche was some German word for nostalgia or something
similar LOL. I'm not sure how accessible microforms would be to me today but
I'm sure I can find general archives somewhere.

Thanks for sharing!

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jonnypotty
These companies have such breathtaking contempt for human beings. Mind you
that's not that unusual for business.

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olcor
I completely agree with you on almost all points (I don't have a social media
account either for the exact reasons you mentioned; dropped all of them like a
hot potato when I read some of those social media experiment papers) except
for this:

> I’m gonna stop reading the news, it’s too much stress for me.

This I feel is actively dangerous. You _need_ to know what is going on out
there. While I agree that most of the news counts as opinion (and is marked as
such sometimes), you need to develop a skill which parses through the fluff
and take just the facts into account. This might not be easy, but it is worth
it.

~~~
polishdude20
Nah, me reading the news is part of a two way transaction. If I have a "duty"
to be informed by reading the news, the news had a "duty" to be high quality
and not be in the current state it is now. Most of the news anyways is of
things happening on the other side of the world which I can't influence or
change. I think if people focused more on their local issues and tried to fix
their local communities, that would be much more productive.

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AtlasBarfed
IMO the saturation of ads in traditional media / means dwarfs the scale of the
current majors of social media. Not that I wish this to be a minimalization of
their role of despair in modern society.

But the current standards of beauty, happiness, and success are a product of
decades of tailoring by the traditional ad media and the businesses that use
them to sell their kewpie dolls.

Needing things is central to producing consumer demand, and therefore drives
GDP and the economy.

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farhanhubble
I only use Twitter and only follow a handful of researchers, not many of them
are friends or coworkers. I also occasionally mute or unfollow people who
share venomous content, no matter whether it's right, left, or center-leaning.
I also don't consume too much news. Just a quick glance at the headlines and
stay away from comments which are mostly hate-filled and idiotic.

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andi999
Anybody remembers the tv series Columbo? Maybe this explains why he was always
snooping around in beautiful mansions.

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amwolff
I had high hopes for WT Social (Wikimedia's news & social networking website),
but from my experience it doesn't work really well (yet). The concept looked
good, though. They claim to have solved the issues (by design) mentioned in
the article.

~~~
deadwing0
It seems that the WT Social app hasn't been working for almost a year
(according to Google Play Store reviews). I'm curious and will look further on
their website. Thanks for making me aware.

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ShrCul
Very short, but I can appreciate a succinct and no-nonsense blog post.

~~~
iliekcomputers
Thank you!

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saargrin
i frankly cant live without social media, so i just try to balance my feed so
i can see both side's bullshit

