[fhbdukfrh]

Don't conflate the medium with the quality of interaction. Not on FB != hermit, that's just what Facebook wants you to believe. I prefer deep personal relationships with few over hyper connectivity. Others may want a broader, shallower network; neither is wrong just define happiness for yourself.

[berkes]

I gave up facebook in 2014. It was a good decision. Some contacts I've lost. Others I picked up on email.

My sister now posts her baby pics to me via whatsapp (yup: facebook owned) and email. Mom SMSes me when she wants to contact me. Dad emails me from overseas bi-weekly.

Other people, I meet over a beer, or a coffee. And the best of it all? You have actual stuff to talk about. No! I did not know you had a second child already. Wow! Do tell!

[RussianCow]

> And the best of it all? You have actual stuff to talk about. No! I did not know you had a second child already. Wow! Do tell!

I cannot emphasize how positive this is. I deleted my Facebook account about two years ago, and it's amazing how much more intimate my conversations with friends have become for precisely this reason. They now can't assume that I know things that are going on in their lives, which was hard at first (due to social pressure—"What? You haven't heard?") but became a blessing really quickly. I didn't realize how shallow some of my interactions with friends and acquaintances were until I dumped social media. By actually having a deep, face-to-face conversation with someone, you're much less likely to skip over some of the more nuanced bits that you're assumed to already know.

[taude]

My immediate family (brother, some nieces) all share a nice What's App group. Way more rewarding when someone posts something to that than FB feed. Also, have various groups with former co-workers, etc. I've replaced bland, meaningless feeds, with small targeted groups. And it couldn't be more perfect.

[vonseel]

Understood, but you also have to remember you can't control how your friends communicate. I'd be perfectly fine communicating only via iMessage, but most of my friends have social media accounts and when I quit FB/Instagram and stopped liking their posts, I had less presence in their lives. Think about that - social networks are almost like an Internet schoolyard; just upvoting something shows presence and lets everyone else know that you're in the room.

[gfo]

To me, it's opting into different means for keeping in touch and hence, keeping that "presence" in my friends' lives.

I quit Facebook a year ago - I had 800+ friends. I was only "close" (subjectively) with a slim fraction of that. Now, I text, call, send birthday cards, and use other means to communicate with those I truly care about. Not that I don't care about the other, it's more of my way to prioritize the people who I've shared more life experiences with and/or can better relate to.

If I see the others who aren't in that close circle, we have plenty to talk about. If I see my close friends, well, we do as close friends always have done.

No offense, but I would argue the notion of needing "presence" in people's lives contains some inherent narcissism which is also prevalent on social media; and to be fair, the other piece is the need for belonging. True, it was a tough pill to swallow when first disconnecting, but over time this faded and via the other means I suggested, I've found I get that same level of belonging.

[jbverschoor]

It's the equivalent of body-in-seat nonsense.

[greggman2]

I'm not sure that's true. if 3 people like a post I see 3 names. If 15 people like a post I see 3 names so 12 people went unnoticed. Is that presence?

[d3sandoval]

If you really care for each other, they'll find a way. My family has realized that group message are the only way to communicate quickly with one another. I have friends and family with whom I correspond via snail mail. And email bridges the gap between those who prefer digital, but not texting. As others have said, the conversations are more meaningful, even if they are less frequent

[celticmusic]

yeah, I've never understood myspace or FB. I remember when myspace was first blowing up, people were talking about having 100 friends, which always blew me away. I couldn't imagine trying to keep up with that many friends.

I had a brief 1-2 year stint on FB where someone finally convinced me to get on it, and I had 13 friends on there. All of them people I know and hang out with regularly in real life. All I ever did was post funny things I came across, and I eventually got pushed off during the election cycle because I got REALLY sick of seeing all the misinformation about hilary and trump (both sides were doing it).

I just don't understand FB.

[bjornjaja]

At its core Facebook is a great and useful tool, but like everything else that is sold to corporate influence its primary purpose rots away. It _should be_ a way to interact with close friends and family, but it’s become a breeding ground for ads, and ads welcome misinformation—for the right price.

Honestly—there’s no reason a social network can’t be decentralized these days. Give people back their friendship circles and their information.

My understanding of Facebook is that it taps into human necessity for socialization, but it’s only masquerading as such and yields too-many, and over-stimulating relationships based on false pretense.

[BurningFrog]

Yeah, you may have done it wrong :)

To me, FB is a way to keep in touch with non close friends and relatives. I know what my close friends are up to anyway, but without FB I'd have no clue what the "next tier" 50-100 people do.

[jbverschoor]

Really? Anyone actually posts something personal these days? Facebook is not about that anymore. It's about liking posts and ads. So basically twitter / reddit, which makes sense as they copied the twitter timeline

[achenatx]

I dont need facebook for my closest friends as I see them often enough. But there are 200-300 friends and family that I dont see often and it is great to see what is going on in their lives.

I only tend to post once every few weeks, but I enjoy reading about what people I know are doing.

Facebook groups have been a great way for neighborhoods and communities to come together.

[oska]

> Facebook groups have been a great way for neighborhoods and communities to come together.

I would argue that we would have organically developed much better online ways for neighbourhoods and communities to come together, absent the monopolistic Facebook.

[205guy]

I don't understand people who don't understand Facebook :-)

You know what a blog is, what photo-sharing is, and RSS too. You know how people are social, a little bit vain, and like to brag. I'm sure you know about ad-tech, data-mining, EULAs nobody reads and dark patterns. I'm sure you've used email and chat, and you know deep down all email clients suck anyway.

Mix it all together, put it on phones with push notifications, and boom, you have Facebook and control half the Internet.

[type0]

> I don't understand people who don't understand Facebook :-)

People who use Facebook mostly do so because they don't understand how it works, in some cases they do understand but prefer to be ignorant.

[celticmusic]

obviously I understand the business model intellectually, what I don't understand is the draw.

Trying to keep up with 200-300 people sounds fucking exhausting to me, yet this is the reason most people have given in response as to why they use FB.

I just have to question if these people actually do anything in life besides socialize.

[205guy]

How is this not a caricature of HN readership and geeks in general? Some/most people might even tell you that the purpose of life is to socialize--and all the games/power plays around that.

To add more information, FB doesn't actually connect you to 200-2000 people literally. When you think of RSS, you think of seeing every single article that you subscribed to, but FB doesn't do that. It shows you only some of the what others publish, and it uses its dark algorithms to make sure those are the most engaging and addictive stories (reposts of click-bait titles, trending gossip, politically divisive arguments, etc.). And then it pads the feed with ads and more click-bait.

Actually the "genius" of FB is to tap into the social-reward centers of the brain by letting you inflate the number of friends, the number of followers, number of notifications, while still trimming down the firehose of pictures of your second cousin's roommate's tacos. Conversely, it lets you post your food pictures into the void and feel that others care about it, without actually bothering too many people.

To answer your question directly, yes these people spend inordinate amount of time doing this, but I believe they feel it is a good thing, to have a big social circle and feel connected to all those people--without always seeing how they were manipulated into being addicted to something that is not real socialization.

[celticmusic]

I am who I am and I make no apologies for it, stereotypes be damned.

I get more value out of being useful than socializing. That's just the way I'm built.

[coreypreston]

Precisely my thought process when giving up FB. Sure I'll miss the timeliness, but when I hear the great news or even bad news, I can be there with my friends to celebrate or empathize in person. Quality over quantity.

[domador]

How about a bit of both? I definitely value my deep personal relationships, which are few, but log in to Facebook every couple of weeks or so. I also get the occasional invitation through Facebook.

[rtkwe]

It doesn't have to equal hermit-ude but it does require work to avoid it. Social media is great for making low friction contact between people.

[foxhop]

Thanks for this. It helps to hear it.