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by vertr 5614 days ago
There was a twitter meme going around yesterday: "not having facebook is the new not owning a TV."

I think that this phenomenon is mostly a bandwagon of Guru's who want to have something new and 'revolutionary' to present to their followers. Pavlina's always telling people to quit something. First it was regular sleep, then monogamy, etc. While he purports to be anti-consumption, this really just makes us focus on our consumption even more.

A better strategy for a balanced digital life is to pragmatically audit your useage on an ongoing basis.

4 comments

Wow, interesting. I knew about Pavlina only through his writings on polyphasic sleep. His stance on monogamy seems to be really interesting though (and weird for me)[1].

I remember him writing that one reason for quitting polyphasic sleep was that he didn't spend much time in bed with his wife.

It's interesting to note that Facebook seems to me to be a vehicle that can be easily abused to bypass monogamy.

Maybe the pieces fit in the end.

[1] http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2009/01/polyamory/

The other reason, which he probably didn't admit to himself and certainly didn't admit to the world, is that he was probably soul-crushingly tired all the time. See: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm
That is certainly a better strategy, but is it realistic? It seems to me most people do not succeed in doing so and never will. They get addicted easily and forget to pay attention to what they are doing on a meta-level.

  A better strategy for a balanced digital life is to
  pragmatically audit your useage on an ongoing basis.
That sounds interesting. Can you be more specific?
"not having facebook is the new not owning a TV"

Great analogy. Both are a complete waste of time.