[propman]

I deleted Instagram a few months ago and I’ve not missed it once. The people who post more take up most of my bandwidth and those people I sincerely do not care about but due to social etiquitte have to follow. As I grow older I find that I really don’t care about maintaining superficial relationships with acquaintances, many of whom I might not see ever.

Other negatives- I click on one picture of a scantily clad woman and my entire search feed turns into softcore porn for a month.

Culture is too vain. Selfies, blatantly showing off, spending hours on touch up apps were looked down upon in the entire history of the internet until that Ellen selfie photo that got huge. Apple, Facebook, Google, the media all advertised and made it socially accepted that the vanity is good. That had it’s pros and cons but I feel like we are crossed over on the cons side too much.

The culture is too global. Everyone’s opinions/posts/comments all converge to the same dumbed down pop culture accepted norms/memes. Everyone tries to be funny in the exact same socially accepted way and there is no originality.

[vlunkr]

I’m also tired of the “global” culture. Reddit is a terrible offender of this. The same opinions always prevail, and dissenting ideas are pushed out of sight. This applies to politics, religion, humor, pop culture, everything. It rewards conformity and it’s so boring. Smaller subs are usually lots better, simply because there are fewer people there to perform their predicatable voting.

[dougmwne]

I have an odd image that I think provides a good mental model of this. Bear with me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWR0AS2rW48

These metronomes start out tick-tocking in their own time, but each affects the other until they are all locked in perfect sync.

This is what global digital media culture is doing to us, subtle nudges to conform to a single global monoculture, so gradual that it's hard to see it happening until it's happened.

[bicubic]

For the most part, social media doesn't change people's opinions or beliefs. The beat of individual metronomes is not changed, instead social media acts as a filter that only lets through the loudest views, where loudness is a function of how many people hold a given view, and how strongly they feel about it.

The people that don't share those views? They continue not sharing them and get increasingly frustrated by social media platforms drowning them out.

This is a key aspect of the widening political left/right divide. Every meaningful topic is divided into two opposing categories, and then the people who hold the less loud view are drowned out. Voat.co was created when moderate/right leaning abandoned reddit. Now it's a bastion of the alt-right.

[mercer]

I wish I shared your optimism about the 'fence-sitters'. Unfortunately I've seen first hand how people in my surroundings ended up essentially parroting those 'loud' views and radicalizing before my eyes (in various ways).

It's true that this isn't the case for everyone, but unfortunately the loud voices often have a disproportionate effect on reality.

[cirgue]

> For the most part, social media doesn't change people's opinions or beliefs.

Maybe not, but it certainly does influence which beliefs people choose to talk about. It also influences the range of beliefs people think it is possible to hold, which I think does influence people's beliefs and opinions over the long term.

[antidesitter]

Very cool demonstration!

You might be interested in this interactive demo of social networks: https://ncase.me/crowds/. It explores how the connectivity structure of social networks impacts the spread of ideas.

[spin]

Thank you for sharing this demo (and to the GP for the video with the metronomes). Very interesting; very cool.

[jhwhite]

What field of study is this?

[esfandia]

Social Network Analysis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis

[stardek]

I expect it's covered in several areas but the field of opinion dynamics often investigates these sorts of situations.

[prince005]

This was such a good demo!

[chestervonwinch]

That demo is just so neat!

[brokenmachine]

That was an awesome demo.

[PavlovsCat]

I think that's the perfect image actually, and it also can explain how all sorts of groups can "conspire" without ever having to formulate or agree to it. And I mean that very broadly, from super evil to very benign or even awesome.

One obvious negative example I think is mobbing. In most cases, it's not preceded by a bunch of people all agreeing "let's be mean to this person". Things like timing, tone of voice, choice of words, and body language can be more than enough. Maybe the people who engage in mobbing have a similar history, but never talked about it, they "just like X", and "just can't stand Y".

The rationalizations come after the decision, and that's much more potent when the involved people cannot admit their subsurface reasons to themselves. Because then projection usually enters into it, and any resistance against that projection (like showing the absence of a quality they projected) makes people feel threatened even more by what they sought to get rid of by projection. I think projection is both an overused word (by me), and an underrated concept (including by me). It drives the hatred of the vulnerable and poor, it drives so much.

And if one is so scared of something, even when it's at rest, that they "have to" throw at it at someone else, who then throws it back with velocity (i.e. now it's no longer at rest), that can escalate quickly and extremely just between two invested people, even more so between invested groups.

A global monoculture, or many distinct monocultures, are both bad for the same reasons IMO. And even groups that ultimately are very similar can end up as sworn enemies depending on how things develop. Be it because they already carved up territory and want to control a medium pie rather than be part of a larger pie, or because they're just so invested in the projection of their own ills on the enemy group (which likely does the same to them).

> [Hitler] can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.

-- George Orwell

And while I posted this quote too often, it's too relevant to the subject of cultural monoculture to not repeat it here... I actually wish I hadn't posted it before, now that I saw your comment!

> From a philosophical viewpoint, the danger inherent in the new reality of mankind seems to be that this unity, based on the technical means of communication and violence, destroys all national traditions and buries the authentic origins of all human existence. This destructive process can even be considered a necessary prerequisite for ultimate understanding between men of all cultures, civilizations, races, and nations. Its result would be a shallowness that would transform man, as we have known him in five thousand years of recorded history, beyond recognition. It would be more than mere superficiality; it would be as though the whole dimension of depth, without which human thought, even on the mere level of technical invention, could not exist, would simply disappear. This leveling down would be much more radical than the leveling to the lowest common denominator; it would ultimately arrive at a denominator of which we have hardly any notion today.

> As long as one conceives of truth as separate and distinct from its expression, as something which by itself is uncommunicative and neither communicates itself to reason nor appeals to "existential" experience, it is almost impossible not to believe that this destructive process will inevitably be triggered off by the sheer automatism of technology which made the world one and, in a sense, united mankind. It looks as though the historical pasts of the-nations, in their utter diversity and disparity, in their confusing variety and bewildering strangeness for each other, are nothing but obstacles on the road to a horridly shallow unity. This, of course, is a delusion; if the dimension of depth out of which modern science and technology have developed ever were destroyed, the probability is that the new unity of mankind could not even technically survive. Everything then seems to depend upon the possibility of bringing the national pasts, in their original disparateness, into communication with each other as the only way to catch up with the global system of communication which covers the surface of the earth.

-- Hannah Arendt, "Men in Dark Times" (1968), in the essay about Karl Jaspers

And not just the national pasts I'd say, also the past and present of individuals. The people and nations as they actually are, with the messy details... not the memes they repeat or the things they "support". I think the danger is that when people are not standing for themselves, but referring to something they consider unassailable, or an abstraction they cannot even explain, just use, while being convinced that's better than standing for oneself (than "merely having an opinion")... then they quickly unlearn standing for themselves, and unlearning thinking follows from that.

To "conceive of truth as separate and distinct from its expression" is something many seem to consider desirable and noble, as best practice and highly scientific. And of course we all depend on trust and expert knowledge; but there's a difference between knowing that, and outsourcing oneself completely and for good. We learn a lot of things based on more or less blind trust as children, but then it's still good to doublecheck those things as adult.

The opposite of that would be boiling down everything into stuff that can be counted, memes that replace thought, etc. Voting instead of arguing is one example, judging things purely on financial gain or how many people agree is another. It sometimes makes sense, it can be very practical, but if it reaches the point where, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind.", if the tools use us rather than the other way around, then that's too much. The extinction Arendt warned of might very well come about, but "just" as the extinction of human individuality and thought.

> It can be hidden only in complete silence and perfect passivity, but its disclosure can almost never be achieved as a willful purpose, as though one possessed and could dispose of this "who" in the same manner he has and can dispose of his qualities. On the contrary, it is more than likely that the "who," which appears so clearly and unmistakably to others, remains hidden from the person himself, like the daimon in Greek religion which accompanies each man throughout his life, always looking over his shoulder from behind and thus visible only to those he encounters. This revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others and neither for (the doer of good works) nor against them (the criminal) that is, in sheer human togetherness. Although nobody knows whom he reveals when he discloses himself in deed or word, he must be willing to risk the disclosure.

-- Hannah Arendt, "The Human Condition"

We're now kinda saying no, we don't actually have to "risk the disclosure", and nobody can expect from us to disclose ourselves, nor to face others as the actual people they disclose themselves as. Adopting what the group thinks or what we consider "objectively true", labeling statements to deal with the label and not the statement, labeling persons to deal with the label and not the person, those might all be symptoms of the same inability to stand for oneself, which comes packaged with the inability to let others stand for themselves. The lights are on everywhere, but many houses are empty.

"of course, the process is reversible" :)

[I proofread and shortened this a bunch of times, sorry for it being still long and probably still containing many errors.]

[selestify]

I really enjoyed reading that, even if I don't think I fully understand yet.

What exactly is the problem with a monoculture? Loss of individuality? And since you say the process is reversible, how do you think we could reverse it?

[PavlovsCat]

> What exactly is the problem with a monoculture? Loss of individuality?

Yeah, though I can't say for sure if loss of individuality causes monoculture, or the other way around, or both. In the extreme extrapolation I would we wouldn't even be all the same humans, but simply not humans anymore. More like conduits, marionettes of each other.

As for reversing it, I think that begins with the individual, with reclaiming oneself if you will. And that in turn starts with granting oneself the right to do that, wherever one feels comfortable and good about it. By that I mean, just because we're all so deep into something that might have been going on for generations, and can't just instantly "fix" everything, doesn't mean we can't take small steps and consider those meaningful.

It's a bit like someone might refrain from using product X for ethical reasons, even though they use a lot of other products with bad ethical implications. So, IMO it starts by rejecting the pervasive idea that little decisions matter. At the least, they always matter for the person making them. We don't have to be "proud" of such decisions, but we should not belittle them either, and should not mind when people belittle them.

> Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.

-- Henry George

> Think deeply about things. Don’t just go along because that’s the way things are or that’s what your friends say. Consider the effects, consider the alternatives, but most importantly, just think.

-- Aaron Swartz

And you know, I don't even think "just think" is a simplicistic answer, it may be the best. Because what that means in practice is different for each person, and that's kinda the point.

Yes, what you do may not right away stop others from going crazy on social media, but you never know from what little thing good changes may come. Just like nobody would have thought a little website to rate the hotness of students would turn into what Facebook is now ^^

> You have to remember that in democratic societies citizens talking with each other is very important. We've lost a lot of that with the mass media. Now we have an opportunity for citizens to create their own communications with each other. So when these big deals with the big companies and the big governments carve up this new territory, I feel it's very important that we keep a kind of "social green belt", that we keep the ability for citizens to talk amongst each other.

-- Howard Rheingold, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_o8gerare0&t=22m14s

When I came across that, it made me sad because of how it all developed from such optimistic beginnings, but I'll never say "that ship has sailed". If it has, make another one. We can still do that, we still deserve it.

But it requires confidence. To stand in for yourself, even against "group think" which can be very motivated, you have to be a good, honest friend to yourself, and maybe to people you don't want to become prey of the group. That's easy to say, being one's own friend (without that meaning delusion) can be very hard, just like "have confidence in yourself" is easy to say, and very frustrating for someone who doesn't know how. Just draw the rest of the owl! But, have confidence in yourself :)

[Mediterraneo10]

Even Reddit subs for niche interests can suck now, precisely because of Instagram culture. I follow some subs for certain outdoor hobbies, and while in the past we would discuss gear or the specifics of various routes, now all most people want to do is post selfies in impressive locations. Reddit has killed off many of the old forum websites, so it is not as if one can just go back to those to get substantive conversation. Indeed, substantive conversation seems to be dying out overall, because just posting selfies gets one more social appreciation.

[txcwpalpha]

While it's not really a "niche" interest, the travel subreddit is a particularly prime example of this. ~6-7 years ago, I remember that subreddit had a substantive amount of text posts that were mostly about suggesting trip itineraries, destinations, travel tips, travel stories, etc. Now, I just opened it up and every single one of the top 20 posts is an Instagram-style photo post.

The comments aren't any better. In the past, I remember that even on photo posts, there would be substantive comments discussing the destination pictured in the photo. Now it seems its mostly unsubstantive "oh wow so beautiful", "what a wonderland", "wish I could go there", etc. There are some exceptions, but they're rarer.

I really wish there was a good solution to this, or at least a place to go to avoid the "instagram culture". Unfortunately, as you mentioned, all of the non-"instagram culture" sites have been mostly pushed out by monoliths like reddit. And as for solving it, it seems that most of society is still not convinced that "instagram culture" is a bad thing that needs to be solved in the first place.

edit: I just opened up the "top posts of all time" page on that subreddit, and of the 600 posts I scrolled through, 599 were photo posts that were submitted within the past year (there are probably even more, but I just stopped scrolling at 600). The lone non-photo post was asking for help finding a missing person. Every other previous text post (even the megathreads giving advice for popular destinations, which used to be a huge part of r/travel) have been drowned out by the "Instagram culture" posts.

[zone411]

Check out my company's travel forum for text content http://www.city-data.com/forum/ but if I'm to be honest, the most travel content is on TripAdvisor forums. Reddit doesn't compare here, it's basically random, not curated, Instagram travel photos.

[jpatokal]

FWIW, the /r/travel rules explicitly ban "clickbait, spam, memes, ads, brochures, surveys, vlogs, blogs or other self-promotion". So I can't post a link to my travel blog, even if it happens to have in-depth content that I think others would find interesting, but I can post visually arresting photos.

[txcwpalpha]

Those rules don't ban text posts, which is what I was talking about. Having meaningful discussions about travel without promoting a travel blog or ogling over a photoshopped picture from a designated "instagram photo spot" is possible, and used to be commonplace on r/travel, but just isn't anymore.

[ragazzina]

>I really wish there was a good solution to this, or at least a place to go to avoid the "instagram culture".

4chan travel board /trv/ has very little instagram-like content - it has other issues though.

[CamelCaseName]

Please let me know if you have any ideas for reversing this.

I help moderate a mid-size subreddit (100,000-500,000 subscribers) and we're completely overrun by low quality content.

We tried adding new rules, silently removing/banning offending users, and making repeat announcements, but it seems like it's too little too late. A rehashed joke post can easily receive 100+ points in an hour while a good post may receive, at most, 20 points in the same time.

[tokyodude]

This is just an idea but ...

Don't make voting visible and don't show people their points. You still need voting so popular topics bubble to the top. You still maybe need user points so users who post bad content get bad scores? (maybe you don't need this).

What you don't need is for any of it to be visible. User's seeing their points go up is a gamification technique that pushes their (and my) button. "Oh! I just got 150pts!" feels so good so I'm compelled to try to get more points.

I notice my point total here on HN. Every time I see it go up I'm conscious of a little pleasure bump I get "oh, some people agreed with me or thought my post was useful!". I've thought about writing a browser extension to hide it from myself. Mostly the only thing I want to know is if I got replies.

[narrator]

The problem with reddit is putting together a deep thoughtful piece is worthless because it will be yesterday's news and confined to obscurity in a matter of hours. This didn't happen on forums where the topic got bumped every time there was a reply.

[puranjay]

I miss old school forums. I've been visiting my old haunts and they're all deserted now. Reddit has eaten them all and the internet has become poorer as a result

[wmeredith]

It’s seems like that issue could be solved by tweaking the ranking algorithm to prefer recent comments/activity.

[laurieg]

On another mid size sub we decided to take a hard line: Text posts only, automod flags on image links, banning people who break the rules.

It changed the sub significantly. Some people liked the more serious tone, some people felt like the fun had been sucked out. At the end of the day, you can't please everyone.

[robinoh]

Let's ask Reddit to allow moderators to manually change the algorithm and apply different rules for jokes/ images/ self. i.e. in order to rank, a joke would need 5x as many up votes than an original content/ discussion/ post.

[sincerely]

Making the barrier to post low-quality content slightly higher will always help. For instance banning direct link posts and only allowing self posts.

[jacquesm]

Limit the number of subscribers to 50K or so. Only let new ones in when old ones churn. Remove the ability to post images.

[toasterlovin]

Don't allow photos or video.

[api]

No photos, no video, no memes.

[Implicated]

I've experienced the same things with the same communities. The forums for the outdoor/backpacking community seem to have seen a dramatic slow down in the last few years (I run a used backpacking gear 'for sale' post aggregator and have seen a decline in # of posts over the years - with reddit/subreddits being the only venue that's growing) and the subreddits seem to be 'growing' but their post quality (obviously, this is my opinion and it's not necessarily shared with everyone involved) is suffering greatly.

[toasterlovin]

Yeah, there's a reason HN is text only. The medium dictates the message. If a medium has images, then that medium becomes dominated by images because images are much more captivating that text.

[smileysteve]

I think we're seeing a dramatic slowdown in the people actually participating as well. I'm seeing club participation down for a lot of activities.

[forsakenkraken]

I've noticed this as well. Even activities which are widely popular eg, Football, American Football are apparently struggling. The niche sport that I do isn't doing too badly, but the clubs aren't attracting new members and many of the new participants aren't staying in the sport long term.

[cle]

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. We have under-appreciated the costs of hyper-connectivity.

See for example this paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=832627

By modeling communication in the context of problem solving and running simulations with that model, the authors show that less efficient communication can have better long-term results.

I'm afraid that the speed, ease, and low cost of communication is increasingly encouraging us to look outwards instead of inwards when faced with problems to solve. Which means humanity will tend to quickly converge on the first "solution" instead of spending more time searching the solution space for better solutions. This really bothers me, and I don't know what we can do about it (or if we should do anything about it).

[VRay]

I've also been bothered lately by the tendency for people to look for/latch on to the first easy answer they find online

It's especially bad among coders.. There seems to be a lot of people who got sucked into software work for financial reasons, but never really learned the basics of how to research something and apply their knowledge. Instead of treating software development as a form of engineering, they treat it like a puzzle and kludge their way through with a hodgepodge of copy-pasted snippets they don't ever try to understand.

I'm also not sure what (if anything) to do about the issue, though.. I don't run into those people in the belly of big OS/platform vendors I've worked for, so maybe it's really just a minor annoyance in the grand scheme of things

[agumonkey]

space (not cosmos, just open gaps) is the future then

[anonu]

These social media platforms can't win (not that they should...). Either their AI is so tailored to feeding you exactly what you want to see, giving you a myopic view of the world --- or, you get fed the same memes and articles that everyone sees, leading to "mono-culture" and global conformity. Is there a happy middle ground?

[yakshaving_jgt]

Yes. A non-algorithmic feed.

Twitter was better when it just displayed posts from accounts you follow, in chronological order.

Exactly the same goes for Instagram.

I have since closed my Twitter account. I had it for 10 years, and I had over 5k followers. The algorithm constantly forced SJW lunatics into my feed no matter how aggressively I muted keywords.

I still have my Instagram, but the same problem exists. It’s become super low-quality content, and lots of ads. Instagram was great because the community felt real. Now in my case it’s either soft-porn, or travel-porn. The travel-porn is probably worse. People taking unoriginal photos, with all the same filters, with a completely disingenuous question posed in the caption in an effort to generate comments, and subsequently more network effects by pleasing the Instagram algorithm.

Even the adverts displayed to me are often just people’s personal profiles. Is this the real life? People are paying a platform to promote their selfies? It’s madness.

Instagram will collapse eventually.

[narrator]

One weird problem that's similar to this is that Quora is starting to get a lot of answers from India and Pakistan about relationship questions. So I'm reading these Quora questions and people are talking about their horrible arranged marriages in Pakistan or wherever. Sure, there are people who speak English outside of the U.S, but they don't have to show up in my feed.

[brokenmachine]

I've noticed that as well, not about arranged marriages specifically but a ton of of ultra naive questions about relationships like, "Why do guys change their mind about a girl that they liked?", and "How do I know a girl is right for me?" (sic).

Those were literally the first two from my feed just then.

I used to find Quora interesting but it just has so much of this low-quality spam on it now.

For my feed it's all that or military stuff, which I do find interesting on occasion, so I do see why that's there.

I wonder if it's just our feeds or if the whole of Quora is like that.

[rootkea]

> I used to find Quora interesting but it just has so much of this low-quality spam on it now.

I am an Indian and I concur. I honestly don't remember the last time I visited Quora since then.

[random_kris]

right?!?! I found quora quite interested. But latetly seems like spammers kinda gamed the system. I same same people answering questions. Most of the answers and questions are probably fake / oversexualised. Stopped visting that site

[malloryerik]

When you guys say "global" culture, what do you mean?

[village-idiot]

I think “monoculture” might be a less loaded term for what others are trying to communicate.

[api]

"Borgsongs" is what I've started calling it. I recall the term from STTNG for the omnipresent chatter experienced by members of the Borg collective.

[techopoly]

This is really true -- on Reddit if you post a dissenting opinion, you're usually downvoted.

[spoondan]

It’s funny. I know the front-facing camera followed demand and was at least partially meant for things like FaceTime and taking photos with friends. But it also fed back into and catalyzed the normalization and popularization of selfies and vanity.

Throughout most of my life, we would break out physical photo albums or an occasional VHS to reminisce. They’d be group photos, vacation pictures, captured moments from a birthday or wedding. I can’t imagine how we would react to a friend pulling out a photo album that contained the stuff many popular Instagram accounts post. They would seem psychotically narcissistic.

Yet, we aren’t that far removed in time from selfie sticks being a joke. And it feels like we are an eternity apart in how our attitudes have adjusted.

[rcruzeiro]

I distinctively remember a picture of a Chinese lady using a contraption to use a camera to take pictures of herself in some touristic site. This was captioned "the loneliest tourist in the world". This picture was quite famous a few years ago. Nowadays that kind of contraption is so common place that no one thinks twice upon seeing it.

[atom-morgan]

I totally forgot about this. How quickly norms change.

[crdoconnor]

I remember that too. She was at Angkor Wat.

[fjsolwmv]

This is silly. Before selfies you just had to ask someone else to photograph you, either a friend or a stranger, or carry a tripod, or have n-1 people in the photo. Stealing a camera that someone asked to be photographed with is an old trope of travel literature. Vanity was not invented 10 years ago

[paganel]

> Stealing a camera that someone asked to be photographed with is an old trope of travel literature.

Me and my gf are generally against selfies and as such we distinctly remember the people that we ask for a photo at various tourist destinations (well, most of them, anyway). Yeah, that means that we don't have an endless stream of photos of the two of us taken together but that only means that the ones that we do have are even more special. Plus, like I said, we can reminisce about the actual people that took those photos of us and with whom we interacted (our favorite is a chic French lady in her 50s who offered to take a photos of us while we were on top of the Basilica San Pietro dome in Rome).

[JauntyHatAngle]

It certainly wasn't, but it also was not normalised to the extent it is today.

People laughed at selfies only 5 years ago, thinking it was a bit self-interested, now it's a normal part of the culture.

[jacobolus]

I took a college course about photographic culture in ~2008, wherin we read 150 years of essays complaining about how vain everyone was having their picture taken all the time, how they all took the same uncreative tourist photos, how sitting through people’s slideshows from their trips was a bore, how smiling at cameras is contrived and artificial, how photography wasn’t real art and didn’t require any skill, how the availability of cheap photographs was degrading the concept of a portrait, etc. etc.

This is not even close to a new phenomenon or a new complaint. The main difference is that almost everyone carries a camera all the time now, the marginal cost of taking additional photos is basically 0, and sharing pictures is easier than ever.

[ctdonath]

IIRC, someone built a "camera" that searched for photos that had been taken from that location & direction already, returning the best existing approximation instead of actually taking yet another picture.

[JauntyHatAngle]

I'm not saying its new. I'm saying its more normalised than it was.

Vanity has always existed, and as much as it's a dirty word in many's eyes, it does have a purpose.

However, for whatever reason (there are tons of reasons and probably all of them play a part), it's more normalised and common than it ever has been before, for better or worse.

[thousandautumns]

Your timeline is definitely off. Selfies were absolutely part of the cultural norm 5 years ago. I don't know when they normalized, but it was definitely between 2009 and 2011, as smartphones proliferated to become something most people had.

[JauntyHatAngle]

I suspected it might be, the years are becoming a bit muddled together in my mind when it comes to culture.

I can say with confidence that only rarely were people taking photos of only themselves 15 years ago. Today its a regular occurence.

Whether that is the vanity that has increased, the ability and proliferation of photos that has increased, or just the normalisation of the expression I don't know, because as other have said, vanity has always existed, but certainly selfies themselves are way more regular and a self-interested culture appears more normalised.

Perhaps through all of time people would be stepping on an anonymous soapbox had it existed, but it's only available today?

[ryandrake]

People still laugh at selfies. Narcissism and attention-seeking has never been normal behavior.

[pessimizer]

If somebody had a hundred pictures of themselves before the cellphone camera, you would have thought they were insane - especially if they thought you were interested in looking at them. I'm not sure my parents took more than a few hundred pictures of me the entire time I was growing up.

You've been Overton'd, and you think that something that was sold to you is something that is spontaneous or natural.

[artursapek]

It's because photos cost virtually nothing these days, compared to the film photography of your childhood.

People also have hundreds of photos of lattes, food, cats, their friends, and all kinds of other stuff that makes them happy.

[kochikame]

Taking photos of things you are interested in is, for me, fine. It's easy to take photos and we can all snap those flowers, beers, sights etc. that we like.

Taking photos of yourself, on the other hand, just seems to me to be grossly narcissistic. Like, why have thousands of photos of yourself in your phone? Super weird IMO

[null000]

This assumes the photos of yourself are for you.

Sometimes other people do genuinely want to see you in a photo. I like seeing my friends and family in pictures, and they like seeing me in pictures. You can take it to an extreme, but a lot of the, frankly, bordering on self-righteous conversation around selfies on HN tends to imply, intentionally or no, that any selfies == gross narcissism instead of, you know, a genuine way to connect to people in the present and to connect in with the past once you're a few years out.

[vonseel]

Yeah, nowadays it’s incredibly common to see someone post something with a caption like “My friends are cooler than yours.”. I’m not sure what part of that is funny, friendly, or mildly appropriate for a social website. It is off-putting and makes me dislike the person who says it.

[xapata]

Portraits have always been one of the most common subjects in art. In the Renaissance, many were commissioned by the subject(s). Technology has simply made it easier.

[pessimizer]

Selfies are not art, but self-portraits are also not one of the most common subjects in art. Specializing in self-portraits made you strange and interesting, like a Cindy Sherman, and definitely made you look self-obsessed, which played into the interpretation.

[xapata]

Do you distinguish paying an artist to paint your portrait from a self-portrait? Both are selfies in my mind.

[EForEndeavour]

They're about as different as taking a horse-drawn wagon to the next town over versus riding there yourself on a racing motorbike.

[xapata]

Sure. Either way it's the same motivation. Technology didn't give us the desire to have a picture of ourselves.

[mr_spothawk]

> Selfies are not art ... clearly you've never seen my selfies.

[pm90]

> They’d be group photos, vacation pictures, captured moments from a birthday or wedding. I can’t imagine how we would react to a friend pulling out a photo album that contained the stuff many popular Instagram accounts post. They would seem psychotically narcissistic.

Well, the sad truth is that the world is lot lonelier than it used to be before. As someone who doesn't care much about being social, I personally like the fact that I no longer need to depend on others to take pictures that I find to be interesting.

[selestify]

Why is the world lonelier than before when we have so many more means to connect with one another nowadays?

[ddalex]

Because of the New York effect. The personal information density is so high that we tune it out automatically as not to be overwhelmed. Outside privacy cannot be maintained so we strengthen the inner one, by not paying attention to other humans. Go to New York and you'll bump into people every 5 steps you'll take, but you'll just ignore them and they will ignore you. There will be no meaningful relationship there, others may be furniture, just as well. So we get more lonely as we get more connected.

Personally I think our jungle - evoluted monkey brains are not capable of dealing with so many social connections, as we used to live in smaller groups, of 30 or so. So we just tune out the overwhelming information.

[pm90]

My completely unscientific take is that its an unholy combination of deteriorating worker protections + social media addictions. So even though there are more avenues to connect with each other most people:

* rely on social media to try and satisfy their need for bonding with others * just don't have as much free time as they did before, because they have to work harder/more jobs to stay afloat

[paganel]

> Yet, we aren’t that far removed in time from selfie sticks being a joke.

I totally agree with your post, just wanted to say that it is my feeling that selfie sticks are on a "downward trajectory", so to speak, as I haven't recently seen as many people using them as 3-4 years ago. The same goes for the GoPro-like photos/videos.

[grecy]

I was recently at a place with baby elephants, and it was staggering to watch hordes of young white women turn their backs on the elephants to take selfies.

I've been in Africa so long I have not seen a person do that for well over a year, and it struck me as seriously odd.

[r_c_a_d]

I find it odd too. I was in a crowded art gallery recently and grew increasingly angry at the number of people who were either taking selfies next to the paintings or standing as close as possible to get pictures of the paintings... without actually looking at the paintings directly at all.

The occasional "I was here" picture is fine, but why even go to a gallery to just to prove that you were there? It's way beyond simple vanity.

[paulie_a]

It seems like that type of photo is a requirement on some dating apps.

[village-idiot]

Part of that is volume. The value of a given recording of your life to you drops with the quantity of recordings.

[Rotdhizon]

To your second point, I also experience this. Being completely serious, I use IG to just follow cute animal accounts, mostly birds and pigs. Every now and then some promiscuity gets included in my feed. If I dare click on one of those pictures, my feed changes and starts showing me every other wannabe model or pornstar on the app. I just want to see cute birds, not humans.

[roel_v]

On pinterest, I have something similar, except that I'm mostly following cooking things and some 3d art here and there, and then every few weeks they sneek in some bible verses and anti-abortion propaganda. I'm sure some algo somewhere is binning me with some of those people based on me looking at dumpling recipes, but jeez.

[tanilama]

Oh here comes my YouTube anxiety. They should really have this guilty pleasure button that doesn't count as your historical interests.

[hoorayimhelping]

It's so frustrating, because the only reason I click photos like that is find the menu that lets me click "hide photos like this." Lately, my entire Instagram experience has been look at my feed, see four new photos, look at explore, see mostly soft porn, click hide on few, see that it did nothing, give up, don't look at Instagram again. Facebook has completely ruined Instagram and I've basically written it off at this point.

[hackerbabz]

I like instagram because it doesn't force me to look at the public feed. I only look at posts from people I follow and I only follow people I actually know + a few podcasters I really like.

[technofiend]

Imgur front page policy is no selfies and no NSFW posts, which results in lots of comics, animals and silly gifs. Might have some of what you're looking for?

[giancarlostoro]

Instagram has a feature to mute people so you never see their posts, and it doesn't unfollow them. It's like a soft-block. I do it sometimes for stories and other times for all posts, then if I feel like I should, every few weeks or something I like some of their recent pictures randomly. I mostly just don't bother though.

I too uninstalled Facebook, Instagram is a little less obnoxious so I've left it, though from time to time I uninstall it completely for a while as a break period.

[bagacrap]

It's called muting. It's one of many features that IG has available which I think makes it healthier than other sm platforms (others include: stories vanish, so you don't need to be a perfectionist and you get to see mundane details of other people's lives rather than just marriages, extravagant voyages, etc; "all caught up" interrupts infinite scroll; comment threads are by default mostly hidden, so it takes a lot of work to even see any arguments, etc)

Overall I think ig is quite a bit better for me personally than fb.

[anonymous5133]

Completely agree. Most of the people on my facebook are just old coworkers. None of these people have reached out to me through messenger so I would say facebook is a waste of time.

Worse yet....facebook is a huge distraction and will prevent you from actually reaching your goals.

I've deleted my old facebook but I created a new one. I don't use the news feed anymore and instead visit a select few groups that actually benefit my life but those groups are mainly focused on making side income and the such.

Also worse yet is the amount of data that facebook is pulling in from all over the internet. Facebook has effectively created the largest non-governmental surveillance system on the web. That's a huge threat to your personal privacy. They've gone too far and need to be stopped.

[viburnum]

When I used Instagram the search tab did a really great job of showing me great architectural and historical photos, but if I looked at the page too often, it just turned into hot women and dumb memes. I'm guessing that if it runs out of interesting content it just shows you popular content.

I am happier now without Facebook and Instagram.

[znpy]

> As I grow older I find that I really don’t care about maintaining superficial relationships with acquaintances

This.

[qwerty456127]

> I deleted...

If you delete your account, doesn't it mean somebody else can register an account with the same name to impersonate you?

[mrweasel]

Can't they do that anyway? I mean there's more than one John Smith in the world, there's nothing preventing all of them from having an account. What normally prevents impersonation is people checking if you have the same set of friends.

[Yizahi]

You can't complain to Facebook about impostor account if you aren't registered already. And deleting you profile won't delete you shadow profile that FB collects on everyone, so it is kinda pointless action anyway.

[drharby]

Social etiquette makes you follow people? Ha! Not laughing at you, but the perception of insta etiquette. Its a tool to socialize. People i want to follow, i follow. Noone is entitled to my time, just as i am not entitled to anyone's time

[flycaliguy]

It’s a tool to socialize and socializing is complex.