
The End of the Social Era Can’t Come Soon Enough - noncoml
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/the-end-of-the-social-era-twitter-facebook-snapchat
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joe_the_user
The thing about the reviling of social networks is it generally takes this
sort of media as an upsurge that came out of nowhere and could somehow stop in
a fashion that returns things to people making nebulous "face to face"
contacts, in a world that's not changed since the pre-social-network era.
Actually, there was an explosion of isolation before all this[1].

It seems to me that the world has become massively more socially isolated and
social networks are as much a response to this as they are an addictive
phenomena unto themselves - indeed, explosion of opioids, addiction and
suicide has very much also been an effect of this social isolation and is
naturally more destructive.

TL;DR; If one complains about social dysfunction, give us a path to social
_function_ , please.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone)

~~~
Top19
The larger issue that your getting at is the rise of “individualism” over the
last 40 years.

The first time I heard that I remember thinking what a ridiculous concept,
people have always been interested in success and self-improvement in America.

But after hearing nearly every brilliant sociologist and conservative/liberal
political commentator make the same comment, I started to see things
differently. The loss of community in America has been really sad. As jobs
have become harder to get, as social programs from the government have
decreased, as people have turned away from churches, people have either lost
the community embedded in those institutions or the financial guarantees that
allowed them to pursue community without worrying about-side hustles or growth
hacking.

Christopher Lasch’s The Age of Narcissism (1979) or anything recently by
Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Lind, or even Laura Ingraham all point to the same
loss.

A really sad statistic I heard the other day was the experience in suicides of
those 12-14 years old. It’s doubled in the last 5 years among boys and girls.
I would think childhood would be a somewhat happier place but even it is
engulfed by sadness.

EDIT: Just saw you mentioned Bowling Alone so I took that out. Also want to
say community vs individualism is a recurring theme in the history of America,
one tends to dominate for 40-50 years before succumbing to the other.

~~~
ghostcluster
> as social programs from the government have decreased

what programs are you talking about?

~~~
Top19
Probably the best example is the TANF welfare reform passed in 1996.

On the surface it had a very reasonable goal. Require workers on welfare to
seek employment.

However, this, combined with the shipping of jobs to China (stuff that had
been manufactured in the US was instead manufactured there and shipped back),
businesses forcing citizens to compete with immigrants who they knew they
could threaten with deportation, along with outright cuts to welfare, kind of
destroyed the program.

In other words, welfare was cut while jobs were getting scarcer, and then they
turned around and made getting a job a requirement to having / staying on
welfare.

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alexozer
For a while when I was younger I naively thought Facebook would formulate my
timeline in such a way that I could keep up with genuinely interesting and
special things people who enjoy tech like me think and do, and likewise feel
genuinely encouraged to reciprocate _occasionally_.

Why instead does my timeline have to be so precisely boring, mindless,
impersonal, and yet _addictive_? Maybe because 1) incentive to post is largely
motivated by lowest-common-denominator, broadest appeal rather than niche, 2)
posting about specialized interests are therefore unincentivized, and 3) such
posts from friends produces a positive feedback loop in the rest of the group?

Maybe it'd be worse if Facebook actually worked this way because it would be
harder to avoid entirely.

~~~
danso
> _Why instead does my timeline have to be so precisely boring, mindless,
> impersonal, and yet addictive? Maybe because 1) incentive to post is largely
> motivated by lowest-common-denominator, broadest appeal rather than niche,
> 2) posting about specialized interests are therefore unincentivized, and 3)
> such posts from friends produces a positive feedback loop in the rest of the
> group?_

Maybe some of the addictive effects you're feeling are out of habit. When's
the last time you quit Facebook cold turkey, and for how long did you do it? I
found that quitting for a few days -- by doing something as simple as changing
my password to gibberish so that I could not login without going through the
email verification process, thereby preventing me from "reflexively" checking
FB -- could be enough to get me to forget about FB for weeks, even months.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
It might sound silly, foregoing most apps and using private/incognito browsing
on all my devices 100% of the time is a productivity booster for me.

The friction of having to log into every site all the time means I'll only go
if I feel I need to, thereby keeping my device usage "productive".

A huge bonus is not being bombarded with push notifications and a lot less
tracking.

~~~
danso
Not silly at all. I think we as humans vastly underestimate the degree that
we're influenced by small subconscious things, even though there's entire
professional fields and countless dollars devoted to the practice (e.g.
design, copy-writing, ui-ux). It feels better to see things as rational
decisions, sometimes between good versus evil, rather than to admit our
mundane weaknesses.

I do something similar to you, except that I log off at the desktop (except
for HN, sadly). If I want to send out a pointless but time-consuming rant
about something ultimately trivial, I'm going to have to do it on my phone's
touchscreen. And the thought of doing so is often more than enough to kill the
desire so I can just focus on real work and writing.

When I find myself lying in bed longer than I should because I'm touchscreen-
typing these comments/posts, _then_ I go cold turkey on my phone :).

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malvosenior
The latest barrage of anti-SV articles from old media seem very focused on
Trump. Where were these complaints before the election? I remember the press
loving how Obama used social media to his advantage.

All of this reeks of political propaganda.

~~~
Jerry2
Before, MSM was able to tell people what to think and they were the
gatekeepers of "the truth" and were able to set agenda. Now they matter less
and less and people just don't pay much attention to them since there's so
much choice now. And you can actually bypass them and go straight to the
source of news. And that's a problem for them. So they're publishing all these
kinds of anti-SV, anti-social media articles in hope of turning the tide.

~~~
chriswarbo
Whilst there are obvious downsides to having a few powerful organisations
pushing (their version of) "the truth", there are some upsides: those orgs
rely on their reputation, and they're great big targets for lawsuits or even
just competition (if newspaper A is too blatant with their lies/spin,
newspaper B can call them out on it).

The difference with social media is that we still have a few powerful
organisations, but they're no longer the source of content: if/when blatant
lies are spread by Facebook, their reputation isn't at stake because everyone
knows they didn't create those lies. With the amount of data moving through
these systems, it also seems hard to blame them for not catching things
effectively, since that's such a hard problem. Like people asking for YouTube
uploads to be viewed by a human before approval: there's no way to make such a
scheme workable, so we kind of let them off.

Another tricky aspect of social media is the ability to target the audience
quite narrowly. With a newspaper, everyone gets the same content, so the news
being read by the impressionable or vulnerable is the same as the news being
read by the skeptical and the expert. The latter can complain when something
seems off, and that protects the former.

Yet these days we can specifically target conspiracy theories, propaganda,
etc. _only_ to those we think will be vulnerable to it. The well-informed,
skeptical experts won't complain, since they never even know it exists.

~~~
mc32
These days of online "newsmedia/newspapers" are not the same as the old days
of print media. They are after clicks and they tend to write to their core
audiences. This means HuffPo, WaPo and WaEx write to their audience to the
detriment of any semblance of evenness. When it comes to policy they all seem
to have pet audiences whose agenda they push rather than examine the pros and
cons --these days they seem to push agendas blindly or by cherry picking data.

~~~
danso
> These days of online "newsmedia/newspapers" are not the same as the old days
> of print media

How "old" are we talking about? 10, 20 years ago? The newspapers that inspired
the Founding Fathers to give explicit protection to the press? The days of
Joseph Pulitzer? Because despite his namesake award, it sounds like he ran his
newspapers about as upstandingly as the most clickbait service you can think
of today:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Hearst_in_Sa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Hearst_in_San_Francisco.2C_Pulitzer_in_New_York)

~~~
mc32
Even 20 years ago. Newsmedia tried to drive the issues of the greater society
--at times that meant participating in Mockingbird ops, but I think they
honestly did what they thought was for the benefit of the country at large. I
think that fell apart during Clinton's second term where things got really
partisan and we've not recovered from that. We used to cooperate on things
like Gun rights/control, Abortion, Civil Rights, etc. Now there is no overt
commonality. They retreat to their corner and vilify the opposing view.

Nowadays, it's more about driving issues at the edge --things that will get a
rise out of both foe and friend.

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dawhizkid
'user engagement' is an SV-euphemism for addiction

~~~
rwnspace
Appealing to worst instincts (and shaming those who are folly to them) is a
real classic. Shaping products towards maximum capital extraction instead of
holding that secondary to some kind of human-focused philosophy is also called
'efficiency' nowadays.

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Simulacra
I would welcome a decrease in social networks, and hope they're burning out
soon. IMO we've become so desensitized to in-person communication, that it's
lost a lot of its importance. When was the last time someone called you to
find out how you're doing, rather than just liking a facebook post? Perhaps
I'm too old fashioned...

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danschumann
I'm playing a bit coy here, so play along or don't read this:

How is facebook different from the internet as a whole? In a way is it a
mirror of the internet? Everyone has a presence, they surf pages, they make
comments, they have pages, games, etc. In some countries where internet access
is new, they don't even know the difference between facebook and the internet,
because they never use anything else.

In a way, facebook is like the dark web. It's a version of the internet with
different rules. We think the dark web is bad, and now people are starting to
think facebook is bad. If we start to hate facebook, what's separating us from
hating the internet as a whole?

Is it the separation? On the main internet, your real world friends won't know
what you posted. You can let off steam, express your interest in nerdy topics,
etc.

Is it because facebook is like public speaking, but without the emotional
signals that scare you into being on your best behavior, so you're very likely
to say something that could offend the whole room ( and you won't even know
you've offended them! )

Is facebook like a dating site? One where you can play 'under the radar'
because it's not exactly a dating site? You can be yourself without being
yourself.

Facebook is an aggregator. It's like someone took the internet and boiled it
down, reduced it, and increased its strength.

When I used to use the internet, I used to think of what I wanted to look at,
then search specifically for that, or go to a website that has a niche
interest, like nintendopower. Now, I go to a 'generalist' website, like
facebook, and I let it suggest something I'd be interested in seeing. There
was discovery in the old method, but I was still at the wheel. The search had
an aim before, and is now aimless.

Aimlessness, purposeless, nihilism, these are all related. They are all
related to having no responsibilities. On facebook, the question is: are you
responsible? Sort of. Sort of not. Sometimes you should like a post, sometimes
you shouldn't. It's very unclear. It's very discouraging. The "shoulds" are
very poorly defined, because everyone has different rules for what good
manners are.

Winning on facebook is what, more friends? Until you have so many friends that
it dilutes your real friendships into a sea of acquaintances. Or, until you
feel like a slave to faux-fame.

The alternative is: don't use facebook. You ditch everyone who uses it, and
they think you're a snob, or worse, they think you specifically unfriended
them and only them, because they don't know you quit. It's like the whole
world jumped off a bridge. Sure, it's the wrong thing to do, but literally
everyone did it.

A better alternative: a bot that auto responds to things and tells people you
aren't on facebook anymore, and how to reach you. This may be the best way to
quit.

~~~
csense
The best insight in this comment:

"There was discovery in the old method, but I was still at the wheel. The
search had an aim before, and is now aimless."

The real issue here's the increased personalization. Echo chambers, filter
bubbles and alternative facts can thrive when you give each user a different
gatekeeper that attempts to filter to their preferences.

Rather than using your personality to drive a system for locating information,
the system locates information which ends up driving your personality. The
fact that the algorithm's choosing before you begin the search adds a reverse
coupling coefficient, which is too strong.

By attempting to show you only things you want to read, the system
inadvertently creates barriers to communication between people who disagree.

~~~
danschumann
Abide my foolishness a bit more, if you will:

My search used to have a query, now it has a history. No longer do I type a
string, now I'm tracked, monitored, and suggested to. My search query is my
mouse-move, how long I hover, how fast I scroll, what I click on. So, by using
facebook, I'm building a search-profile, whereby I'll get results based on
this data. It's ever-continuing, but never comes to fruition. Facebook is like
typing a novel into google search, and never hitting enter. You continually
refine your search parameters, but you never find what you're really looking
for.

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jswizzy
We are living in Universe 25. The millennial are the beautiful ones for sure.

