I don't know how to say this constructively, but this post reads like it is written with a deep smugness. It feels very "ego-y". It feels like the author has glommed onto a real concept (denying the ego) but instead used it to get out of the competitive marketplace of social media, and instead take it to their blog where the competition is invisible and lesser. It even basically finishes with "tune in later to keep in touch with my journey of mastering what all you plebs struggle with and can't see."
Just how it feels to me, anyway. It's very overwrought.
You're right, there nothing much there but excessive, if muted, self-grandiosement and hypocritical judgement.
Eg, the first sentence:
> As I begin settling into a new flow of my life I find myself finding tremendous sanctuary and peace with myself.
2 * "I", 2 * "myself", 1 * "my life" and a claim that this person has found "tremendous sanctuary and peace".
> I notice this internal tranquility seems to be related to my exodus of social media.
In the second sentence we read that they have peace because of their absence from social media. Great, but then why write a blog post about it all?
It seems like an egoic attempt to try to claim moral high ground to castigate others, while failing to address the crimes others commit in oneself. Do as I say..
The ego has a million-and-one (and, always one more) ways to subtly cling to anyone trying to rid themselves of it.
As far as I can tell, from observations in myself, and of others, the ego is only something you can manage. You can experience moments of freedom (most reliably through psychedelics in my experience) that give you a taste of something beautiful and relieving. But the ego is just sleeping.
The tentacles of the ego are attached to the very nature of your life itself - to very basic metabolic processes. It’ll always be with you - your existence and your ego’s existence are hopelessly intertwined.
I agree. I don't think its possible to kill one's ego. And that one shouldn't want to do that anyway.
I would say, that one can educate the ego so that it is working with you not against you - one can try to align it with one's principles and remove the multiple incompatible desires in oneself. This involves internal reflection, awareness of one's emotions, acknowledgement of one's shadow self, love of honesty, endurance - and hopefully, at the end of the process you have emotions, thought and actions all working in an aligned, non-dissonant way.
It seems to be possible, but it requires extreme commitment. Different sects of Buddhism may show the way, but it is something people commit their life to completely to fully achieve.
Even then, who is to say if the monks starving to death sitting on the floor aren’t smug in their achievement lol.
Still, for those looking to reduce the role of ego in their life, it is a potential path.
Ego reduction is a sufficient and useful goal for many people.
It’s my impression and experience that it’s far more directly built into language than metabolic processes, though certainly I see where you’re coming from.
Shutting up for a long time is a pretty good way to test your comfort level with suppressing an inflated concept/value of self. Extending the shutting up to internal chatter, even more so.
I would argue your comment is cynical as well. HN tries to be a place of discussion which means challenging ideas. Someone having recently passed is sad and tragic and deserves respect, but it doesn’t make their public opinions immune from discussion
What is with the recent (2000+) use of “disgusting” to mean reprehensible?
Disgusting tends to directly describe an individual rather than an act. I think that makes it much less useful in teaching and discourse, since it strongly evokes ad-hominem vibes.
I think we might all be better off to carefully consider the (mis)use of the term when our goal is to educate, enlighten, correct, or lead.
It’s a great term to use when the goal is to shame, diminish, or discredit an individual, but should we be doing that except in cases where a person has revealed themselves to be beyond a desire to improve or any hope of redemption?
> We aren’t using social media to drive action. We are using it to farm a false sense of worth. To cast stones at anyone who foolishly stumbles into the latest virtue-trap.
Yeah, it feels like most of social media is now shit-flinging and calling the "outside group" stupid so one can feel "At least I'm not a stupid horrible person like that idiot!".
I notice on Instagram you can "like" comments but not dislike them, to disagree with someone you have to put in more effort and type a rebuttal. This "oh we prefer positivity" behavior also means reinforcement of ignorant behavior, by the many likes people see that they get for their hateful comments.
Social media simply amplifies what is already common among human beings. One way it seems to do this is by flattening and legitimizing impropriety. Normal societies are "chunky", that is, you have niches and enclaves and varying distance unified in some increasingly "thin" manner. This enables various kinds of relationships to flourish (think of how marriage creates a special space for the couple, and then another space for the family that results from it, then consider the different space that the extended family creates, or coworkers create). But in social media, this structure evaporates. Everyone is shoved into the same space. People you barely know or don't know are on par with your closest family and friends. This is bound to cause aggression and nosiness and impropriety. To put it hyperbolically, it's like having your coworkers in bed with you making lewd comments as you have sex with your spouse. Social media encourages and defaults to this kind of boundary violation so that you are effectively consenting to it by using it because otherwise, it makes little sense to use. So telling someone to mind their own business becomes more difficult _because you're the one who volunteered the information in the first place_, whereas you can still tell an intrusive stranger to piss off with the confidence of moral justification.
>Social media simply amplifies what is already common among human beings
We all have some anger in us too. But we're not all frequently beating up or even killing people in powerful fits of anger. Something that "simply amplifies" pre-existing violent tendencies can have a dramatic detrimental effect on society.
Human beings have many potentialities. Amplifying some of them as opposed to others, is enough to change major parts of our behavior, personality, and even society.
This is very astute. It's as if all social institutions were dissolved, then reconstituted into a single structure that is bad at just about every interaction it destroyed.
I really do miss the days where candor was seen as a sign of respect. Now it's just seen as being contrarian or even insulting. All because you "ruined" their virtue-fueled dopamine drip.
It's not a genuine interaction, at all. It's a town hall full of shit posters, some of which you went to school with or just happen to be related to. There are literal families divided right now because Becky went full "nobody asked, stay off my profile" mode on her Uncle Steve. Which is just nuts.
Really makes me worry about where we'll be in 20-30 years, socially speaking.
> All because you "ruined" their virtue-fueled dopamine drip.
You are ignoring how peoples diet have changed over the decades. Life activities were more directed towards survival, even things like growing vegetables in the back garden or allotment were hobbies to help put the icing on the cake for an otherwise functional world.
Today, with food aplenty and technological gains like mobile phones, the internet, not just social media, is perhaps best seen as a mirror of the human psyche, a mirror of the regional, national and global collective ego's.
This may well be a golden age for the advancement of psychology.
> most of social media is now shit-flinging and calling the "outside group" stupid
I saw myself in both your quote and the one you responded to.
For the past year, I've participated in calling out Unstoppable Domains for their bullying tactics[1], shady behavior[2], &c. I've delighted in catching their employees off-guard in obvious lies. I've made ample use of the #StoppableDomains hashtag to further expose how they're a Web2 company masquerading as Web3. All this for Twitter to indefinitely ban my account for "platform misuse."
Was it worth it? My previous data export was almost a year ago so, unfortunately not. Losing a decade plus of memories hurts but it further illuminates the need to own your content (and that's a rant for another day).
I do think that holding people and corporations accountable is important. At this point though, I don't care to continue putting energy into platforms and not really getting much back from them (if anything).
We literally had exactly this model on all social media platforms for years and while I certainly remember everyone had that uncle who posted everything he saw on Fox News and exchanges that made for awkward Thanksgiving dinners it wasn’t nearly as toxic as it’s gotten now, especially wrt strangers and bots.
This. People keep saying how the Fediverse is awesome and different. But everytime I go to sign up for Mastodon, I'm greeted with culture war rage bait and I decide against joining.
Surely you must willingly follow people who post this kind of content, or inflammatory tags? Because I think it's the only way this content can reach you.
> Surely you must willingly follow people who post this kind of content, or inflammatory tags? Because I think it's the only way this content can reach you.
Really? Right now, if I go to mastodon.social, I'm redirected to https://mastodon.social/explore and 3 out of the first 4 posts are people fulminating about "red states", "anti-racism" and "Twitter" respectively.
Well I have to say I never really visited this instance directly, I just visited the main French one (piaille.fr) initially, and eventually signed up on the SDF instance but I just don't visit the "local posts feed", I only read what I'm following.
As far as I know my experience would be the same with any other instance, nobody has to read random posts by people who just happen to be on the same instance.
Similarly, if you visit certain instances you will be greeted with the polar opposite of that. The inhabitants of some instances are more political than others. If you actually create an account you will be able to pick and choose whose posts you want to see.
The strictly chronological approach seems to work fairly well as long as you only follow a few people but it doesn't scale very well.
> The inhabitants of some instances are more political than others.
The founding generation of Mastodon roughly overlaps with people who believe that everything in life is political. Moreover, that group roughly overlaps with people who believe that attempting to escape strident political rhetoric is itself a political action directed against whatever groups they are passionate about. Founding-generation Mastodon users have expressed concern about the Mastodon ecosystem eventually evolving out of the kind of concerns and way of writing that they have, to something more representative of the broader public.
> The inhabitants of some instances are more political than others.
Which ones are less political? I went to a supposedly global and tech focused instance only to find US political slogans in the "About" page itself.
> If you actually create an account you will be able to pick and choose whose posts you want to see.
That didn't work on Twitter and I doubt it'll work on Mastodon. Neither of them have a way of categorising posts into topics. There's no way to follow someone to get updates about their work without being subjected to whatever political digressions they chose to share.
> There's no way to follow someone to get updates about their work without being subjected to whatever political digressions they chose to share.
Well that's a weakness inherent to microblogging, some people like it evidently (as seen by the success of Twitter). I don't and only got a Mastodon account because I need it to follow some work I'm interested in, and indeed I need to ignore posts I don't care about.
Following and ignoring tags helps, but it's not perfect. But it works better than on Twitter.
Well I certainly don’t have empirical data or anything other than my own experience of close to 20 years interacting with people online prior, the biggest thing that has changed as far as I can tell is the drive to engagement and introduction of algorithms to further that goal.
Of course there’s always has been and always will be toxic content but to me it feels like society is breaking down in a way that is unlike what was happening before and it seems largely driven by social media interactions.
That will only incentivize posting low quality worthless things in order to improve position and reach in comments. Might as well just charge them $8/mo for the privilege of making other people see their comments.
Edit: I think I misunderstood what you were suggesting (just a chronological timeline?).
> Yeah, it feels like most of social media is now shit-flinging and calling the "outside group" stupid so one can feel "At least I'm not a stupid horrible person like that idiot!".
Like the folks here on HN in this very thread flinging shit and calling those horrible social media users idiots, you mean? The irony in your comment is just too much. Yikes.
Just stop. People are people. In-group/out-group abuse and hate has been a fact of life for as long as we've been a species. You treat that, as Nova did, with understanding and empathy, not with more hate.
As long as you (and you're hardly alone in this topic!) walk around with that chip on your shoulder you are guaranteeing never to escape your personal in-group prison, nor to ever make peace with the out-groups you're yelling about.
Are you sure that the disagree button is because they prefer positivity? I am not a social media user, I have none of them, but I've always read that social media eat their lunches thanks to flame wars, would it be possible that the non-existent disagree button is because a disagree button would be a passive way to show disagreement, while a message is more likely to generate engagement?
I support the post author's position completely. It's incredibly clear to me now after using social media for about a decade that it's not something healthy to participate in, and I shouldn't use it beyond a few really specific scenarios, like communicating with a business.
I've watched it destroy relationships, including some of mine, and turn people into psychopaths. When I meet someone new I can observe a pretty consistent correlation between how heavily they use the major social media platforms and how awful of a human being they are.
It is not a thing you want in your life, full stop.
Not everyone's social media experience is the same.
The author was participating in the noise, stuck in the culture of substance abuse.
Their experience is that this is the only experience.
To the most casual observer this is clearly untrue.
----
Anyone paying attention to the science on social media is aware there are people stuck in this cycle.
It's cool that this person woke to it but there is nothing larger here and there is no indication their habits are going to change longer term. They are determined to continue to participate in something they admit harms them.
Yeah I’m pretty tired of people who have a problem with social media assuming that that means everyone has a problem with social media - or that social media itself is a problem. If it doesn’t work for you, then don’t do it. Stop projecting and start taking responsibility for yourself.
Self worth comes from yourself. If you’re getting your worth from an outside source, that’s external validation, which is a wholly unsatisfying strategy. You’re always going to be chasing it. Not everybody has that problem.
While taking responsibility for yourself is important, I think there still needs to be a discussion in society about addicting habits. There is a reason why many substances are forbidden, why alcohol and tobacco are not sold to kids, and why gambling is regulated.
Sure, regulations change (like the push for legalizing marijuana), but I doubt anyone is seriously advocating to make everything addictive completely freely available.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, or the author for that matter, but I can't quite entirely tease apart why one would apply to the one and not the other.
I noticed the train wreck phenomenon she described around 2009 on facebook and immediately quit knowing that I lacked the self control to look away. I post from multiple anonymous hn accounts to test ideas and make a point of not acquiring a particularly high karma before switching to a new account to ensure that I don't get attached to a particular persona that might become correlated with the handle.
2009 was when FB introduced the 'like' button, which I think burdens the majority of the responsibility for the decline of the quality of interactions on Facebook.
Gathering 'likes' was addictive, and because of the low effort required to 'like' things, it created the false impression of being connected to people. Suddenly, reacting to EVERYTHING became an expectation. Of course, this is what Facebook wanted, but it is overwhelming to react meaningfully to everything every one of the 338 friends an average Facebook user has.
There's also the receiving side of likes - the Variable Ratio Schedule which means the more you post, the more likely you are to receive a 'like' - but there's not a direct correlation. Skinner (the father of operant conditioning) identified this as the most effective reward mechanism to condition behaviour.
I believe (quite strongly) that the 'like' button is directly or indirectly responsible for most of the mental health damage being done by Facebook and Instagram.
Why would there be correlation? Do you mean in your own mind, or decided by others?
> test ideas
I don't understand. You post things you don't necessarily believe, to see how people react? This is not a healthy approach for you or the platform. You could instead use one account and simply say you're not sure about this or that idea, or on the fence about particular issues.
I only post things I believe to be true but I am not always successful at communicating my thoughts and feelings. The response lets me know if I was effective or not. I also have blindspots and recognize that I may not be seeing the whole picture at any given moment. Sure, I could hedge every statement with every possible doubt but then it becomes impossible to actually say anything.
If I had a reputation then people would consciously or not evaluate the truth of my statements at least in part based on my reputation. I often fail, but I try to write the truth as I see it and let it stand without being tied up in my identity.
But right now I have zero knowledge of your reputation. I have zero interest in finding out the reputation of "user norir"... I am evaluating your statements one at a time, without interest in your historical activity.
I would expect the same of readers of my posts... I highly doubt anyone is digging through my old posts. Who has the time? For what purpose?
The exception is maybe a big claim you make. Perhaps a controversial claim which is hard to verify, and people may then look at your past comments. But if you're not making any big bold claims, or leaking juicy gossip, or dropping any unbelievable truth bombs....
I think your account churn is motivated by something else. It's your business, it's all good, but your HN account reputation wouldn't be used against you. Every day is a new day, and people gravitate towards good faith discussion, don't they? Your spicy post from the other day is forgiven! (to be clear, I am not aware of any spicy posts you wrote). Good luck.
The way you wrote this resonates with me. I've noticed the "pressure," internally sourced or not, that comes with building a persona in a community of peers you (for the most part) respect.
It's good in some ways because it drives behavior I would consider healthy in a community--thoughtfully reviewing a post before hitting 'reply,' respectful discourse, and thorough fact-checking.
But I also find that same pressure convincing me not to post, especially if I'm a novice in an area or need help. I understand this is egotistical in many ways, and managing it by "staying anonymous via a new stage name" is a really interesting idea.
A little of both. I do sometimes feel like "this is a post for xxxx" vs. this is a post for norir. I'm not comparing myself to him, but kierkegaard used pseudonyms to write most of his works in personas that he considered distinctive and separate from himself although surely they reflected aspects of himself.
Humans need to have a persistent world view. Without persistent world view I could not even use a spoon -- I would be constantly surprised by what is this thing in my hand, and what I am supposed to do with it.
My current understanding is that purpose of the ego is to maintain the world view. In other words, it provides resistane to change to the current world view.
It is supposed to work like soil works for seed -- provides some initial resistance to facilitate growth and make it possible for the plant to survie after it breaks through the surface.
Therefore, ego is absolutely necessary part of humans. Killing it is not possible and even trying to kill it is not a useful aim. (I know, I have tried.)
That said, there may be many problems related to oversized egos and learning to work with your ego is worthwhile.
Reading this helped me realize some feelings I've been having recently after not being on Instagram for a few years and then going back to it recently. The content has shifted from a feed of my friends' lives to a feed of copy-paste memes, headlines with weird music playing, tiktok screen-caps, and a ton of advertisement as media content. It's unfortunate that the reigns of almost all kinds of social media are now in control of Meta, soon when X/Twitter disappears and Threads becomes the leading thoughts and news platform, it will feel like we might be missing big chunks of real news and life because that stuff doesn't sell ads.
Just picked up Neal Stephenson's Fall, or Dodge in Hell today and am 1/4 way through. There's so much animosity & energy against social media that rings parallel here.
> Over the past months I have began mountain climbing again, and in many cases I have rediscovered a sense of self-respect for my ability to accomplish my goals when nobody is watching.
Ouch... I hope it wasn't a seeking of this feeling that lead to her fatal accident.
That's a shitty thing to assume. For all you know they treated their website like a diary and just write for the sake of expressing themselves. It's not like the author posted it here seeing as they are dead.
Perhaps its purpose is simply to notify any followers why things might get quieter.
Though, of course, she probably should’ve taken account of your… feelings about potentially being exposed to her blog someday. The utter nerve, apparently. After all, you’re the main character, and people must only have motivations insofar as they apply to you, right?
It is at least a beginning. When someone is learning something new, they will naturally take some time to be good at it. They are merely expressing their awareness that the ego is something that is the root of their suffering. For now, they are comfortable expressing it from the ego’s point of view… because it’s familiar! We’ve all been there at some point, and most of us don’t even move on from it.
It seems to me that those criticising the OP for using too many “I”s are behaving like crabs in a bucket. Let us look beyond mere words and into what OP is actually trying to communicate.
> How can anyone farming a void on emptiness internally enact change?
> I see millions of empty users crying out for more validation
The author is web buddha and just achieved nirvana, others are just validation-seeking, void-farmer, self-disrespectful egotistical losers (I'm exaggerating, of course, but that's the gist of it).
I mean, I get it. First step to solve a problem is to recognize you have a problem. But does the text really does this, or just shifts it to a more generic, "it's everyone and not just me" problem?
I read it from an egoist perspective and I think it actually makes sense. Not sure in which way you are using the word irony, but if by the technical literary definition, yes I agree. Ironic.
I agree. To quit social media for selfish reasons is really not killing your ego; it's nourish it. Social Media should benefit all and it always comes at somebody's expense.
Not sure what you mean here. There is no obligation to use social media. Quitting it is a healthy move. It seems like you think acting for your own good is the same as selfishness, which would be ridiculous. You have a moral obligation to act for your own good. It's just that people often have stupid ideas about what it _objectively_ means to do that. True selfishness is not good for the selfish person.
I find it so irritating and difficult to read when authors needlessly make most of their paragraphs a single sentence. Or use lots of tiny sentences that read like fragments. I guess it's to add effect? Except it doesn't read like it's profound, it's just annoying.
Please stop doing this and just write like you talk. Unless that's also how you talk, in which case please just don't do that.
Given that the author died last Wednesday—this being her last post is likely why it’s front page of HN—I suspect your writing advice might go ignored in this case.
It’s a device used for conveying dramatic feelings in storytelling. You’d never use it in formal communication or technical documents, but there’s no reason to get worked up about it either.
There is a reason - it's tiresome. It reeks to me (personally) of someone who is really really high on their own supply, and if they were speaking it aloud they'd be using a condescending newsreader voice.
It definitely doesn't add clarity for me. Paragraphs group sentences about an idea. Breaking sentences into paragraphs implies that you're starting a new thought. If you're not, it just makes the writing choppy, and it reads with extra pauses in my inner monologue that I think most people wouldn't have if they were speaking rather than writing.
Don't shoot the messenger... There is not much difference between generic social media critique, AI angst and, gnerally, making tools responsible for the actions of their owners. If you cant stand what social media does to you, stop. But please, stop projecting your own inabilities on others. Just because a certain type of person feels unhealthy using a particular tool doesnt say how it is going to influence others... If for one met my gf on FB, and I am still grateful for the service at the time. Does that mean I unconditionally like FB, no. One thing I've learnt though is that whenever someone tries to educate me about the "truth", I know they are likely full of shit.
Ego death with a side of "stay tuned for more blog posts and Twitch streams".
> doom and horror
I don't think lumping everyone into this bleak conclusion is fair or accurate. Perhaps it's a method to excuse yourself from your own use of social media: the "system" is to blame, and everyone else is just as bad?
> "Everyone wants to slow to gawk at the carnage – nobody wants to stop and lend a hand."
Not true. Some would lend a hand if they thought they wouldn't get in the way. Some slow down to assess the situation to determine whether they could help. Not everyone is an unhelpful gawker.
I recommend listening to krishnamurti's talks. specially those from saanen in the 70's, those with dr david bohm and those with alan naude.
The intellect can not resolve it self one has to practise
The observer is the observed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS9r2_fUtWM
Not sure who this is, but it reads to me like they are about to commit suicide.
>I want to kill my ego, or at least substantially break it.
So not that they have had an ego death, but rather had a goal of it.
This is very much akin to Echart Tolle in his ego death. He was literally suicidal and then realized his ego is his problem. Thus avoiding an actual suicide.
>I deeply believe everyone is virtuous, as they personally define it. For the most part, I believe the world’s virtues are common. We all want peace, joy, safety, and comfort. We all want to smile.
Well I don't. And this belief isn't any more valid or invalid than mine, or anyone else's. Regardless of the flimsy definition of virtuousness, there are people out there who are hellbent on causing harm, and some are petty killers who are caught easily for tormenting and murdering their own little children, while others are in positions of serious power and leverage over nations who start wars and worse. Are there good people? Yes. Is everyone after peace, joy, safety and comfort? No Master Wayne, some people just want to watch the world burn.
The people in charge of Social Media aren't good people.
It’s almost a weakly stated version of the ancient philosophical discussion about desiring the good (where good is basically “that which is desired” and evil “that which is not desired”) - it needs much more development to become a useful discussion.
And it becomes even more vague on a societal size - if I had a button that when pressed would take one dollar from everyone in the USA and give it to me, would I press the button? $350 million versus large amounts of people only out a dollar …
What makes you think "the people in charge of social media"* aren't good people?
(* Is this just at the CEO level, so a handful of people? Or like, their immediate underlings, so a few dozens of people? Or middle management, so hundreds? Are they all not good people?)
Just how it feels to me, anyway. It's very overwrought.