Ask HN: Does anyone else hate to see social media (Facebook, Whatsapp, etc)?

[jcslzr]

I don't think I am a bad person and I am not unemployed or divorced, although some friends certainly have more money than me, still, I don't see or don't want to understand why this happens to me.

It would seem like I am afraid of interacting with people on social media, but I like to interact with people in real life.

[simplecomplex]

Yes, so you're not the only one. I don't care to see what stupid news articles and memes my friends happen to like every single day while mindlessly browsing their phone in bed, at lunch, at their workdesk, etc.

I have a wife, a family, and friends. I see these people in real life. When I go to my neighborhood cafe, I talk to the locals while drinking coffee, not "working" on my laptop with Facebook/Slack/whatever in the background and headphones in.

I don't talk to Alexa and Siri. I don't subscribe to Netflix, Spotify, or Amazon Prime.

What's really creepy is all the people I come across that find this out tell me "they hate social media but could never do that".

[fabiomaia]

Totally get the social network stuff. But I'm curious how (or if) you consume media like movies and music if you don't use Netflix or Spotify? What did you mean there?

[simplecomplex]

Yeah, I watch movies and listen to music.

I pirate movies (via bittorrent) mainly because it’s easier than maintaining subscriptions with Netflix, HBO, Amazon Video, etc. I’m not against paying for movies, I’m just not interested in walled gardens. If movies were sold like bandcamp sells music, I’d gladly pay. I also hate running into buffering issues, disappearing content, and netflix’s atrocious UI. I just google what I want and download the movie in a few minutes.

I don’t use Spotify because of the same “walled garden” issue. I’ve bought plenty of music through bandcamp, and for free listening I use YouTube and various internet radio stations.