[tombert]

Even disregarding privacy concerns (which you shouldn't!), I stopped posting on social media largely because I'm too argumentative of a person for it.

When arguing is limited to people I see in person, it's a somewhat time-boxed and constrained operation. I typically can only argue with one person for N minutes, and eventually both of us get tired of it and we move on with our lives, but there's always someone wrong on the internet, and a lot of those wrong people love to be wrong publicly on social media. I would always end up arguing with a stupid post that a stupid person on Facebook had, and then someone would chime in in support of me or the person I'd argue with. Before I knew it, a not-insignificant percentage of each day was being dedicated to responding to idiocy on social media.

Eventually, it started getting annoying and I deleted my Facebook, and never really looked back. I run a Mastodon instance that I almost never use (but I had to justify the server I bought somehow), I briefly worked at Reddit, and obviously I post a bit on HN which is basically social-media adjacent, but despite all this I never really felt compelled to go back to constantly posting on social media.

I suspect a lot of people have come to similar conclusions. I enjoy talking to my friends, and I do pretty liberally on Signal, but I feel that's sort of in a different category than "social media".

[whstl]

Funny. I was actually able to control myself in Facebook/Twitter (I had veeeery few discussions there, even peaceful ones were rare), but the problem was the increasing amount of arguing I was seeing, especially thanks to the algorithmic timeline.

It was making me feel like shit even when I wasn't participating. Even when I stopped liking stuff it was visible that it was fucking with my mental health. Walking away from reading two people arguing completely drains my energy.

Reddit is not that different. I don't have an account and just go there to get updated on my favourite hobby, but even that will show me a lot of people arguing and things getting heated, and it makes me a bit anxious after reading.

Mastodon is going in the same direction IMO. It is a bit of an echo chamber the people I follow (I don't mind this tbh), but 60% of the things that get going are fucking powderkegs where a single disagreement becomes too heated. I've seen people piling on others because of opinions I agree, and vicariously reading makes me feel like shit.

I'm perfectly fine with conflict and with discussions, but it doesn't really work for me when lots of topics are treated as if it was as high-stakes as we do online.

[javajosh]

>increasing amount of arguing I was seeing* [on twitter]

I recently created a new account, adding only programming and professional connections, and it's actually quite good! If you don't click on any of the "trending" stuff, it functions like a microblog should: it's a way for me to keep up with the projects and OSS personalities I want to, without the fuss.

I did something similar with YouTube: I simply turned off "watch history". The youtube home page is literally empty, because without data the algorithm offers nothing. (In fairness, there's a big contingency message saying in bold letters "Turn watch history back on? Pretty please?") The only time I see content on youtube is because someone I subscribed to posted something. It's glorious. No more doom scrolling because the content is finite once again. I find that the creators I like (and the comments) have enough references to other content that I don't feel cut off. And there's always search. It's just that default empty screen that seems like the magic sauce.

This is my "middle path", and it seems likely that if it catches on they'll do something to disrupt it. In which case I will truly leave. It would be such a waste though, and why we can't have nice things.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Personally, I found switching to liferea (an RSS reader) to track the YT channels I cared about, and generally avoiding using recommendations was a path to satisfaction. I spend very little time scrolling through YT now. Most of the time, it's liferea that tells me a new video is out that I almost certainly want to see. However, the recommendation engine works quite well for me, and so when watching the video I did actually want to see, I will see the right-side suggestions list and every so often, there's something good/valuable there).

[bratwurst3000]

Thank you! I didn’t know that feature of YouTube. I love YouTube and you made it a better place. Because now I block the front page but then I miss the posts of channels I subscribed.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Use an RSS reader (I use liferea) to track the latter. It can be delayed by several hours, but that's the life we want, right?

[whstl]

That new feature of Youtube is indeed fantastic.

[kelnos]

I don't think I'm quite as argumentative as you've described yourself, but I've fallen into some of the same traps in the past.

I stopped using Facebook 5 or so years ago, and almost instantly felt better day-to-day. I hadn't realized how upset Facebook was making me. Sometimes it would just make me sad (as in, "it's so disappointing that people believe garbage like XYZ") and other times actively angry. Sure, I did occasionally change people's minds by arguing with them in Facebook comments, but that was pretty rare; usually people would just dig in and everyone involved in the argument would end up angry and frustrated.

And it wasn't just that: even when I felt no desire to wade into some sort of contentious conversation, just seeing those sorts of arguments stressed me out and made me upset. Even as I started pulling away from participating in discussions and arguments on Facebook, I realized the root of the problem was still there: divisive crap promoted by algorithmic engagement metrics. Even dialing back my participation wasn't really helping.

So I just stopped, and I feel so much better for it. On occasion (maybe once every 4-6 months) I'll sign into my Facebook account for some specific purpose (to find someone's birthday or email address or something like that), and I'll (as detached as possible) scroll down the news feed a bit for a minute or two. It's so liberating: I realize that I actually don't care about 95% of what my friends and acquaintances are posting. For the most part, I learn about my friends' lives by actually interacting with them (either in real life, or 1-on-1 or small-group chats). There are some friends who I have lost touch with, and that does make me a little sad, but the negatives of using Facebook again just aren't worth it for me.

I pretty much limit my arguing with people on the internet to HN, and while I probably do spend more time doing that than is healthy, I think I'm doing a lot better than when I was actively on Facebook.

[tombert]

I agree with pretty much everything you said; I don't argue too much on HN but I do occasionally.

My life improved substantially after I dropped Facebook, but the frustrating part now is that LinkedIn (more or less a necessity to find a job in 2023) has started to attract the same morons posting their conspiracy theories, and now I feel like somewhat of a hostage audience. At that point I'm in this kind of uncomfortable position of "do I let these potentially harmful posts go completely unchecked, or do I risk future employers knowing my political beliefs?"

Mostly I've opted for the former, but as you said, the issue is that I am still exposed to these arguments. The second that I find a job that I am confident I won't be laid off from, I'm never logging into LinkedIn again.

[0x0203]

Why do you feel LinkedIn is a necessity these days? What exactly does it provide that makes getting a job without it so difficult? I'm genuinely curious; I ditched LinkedIn a few years ago as I didn't see it providing any value for anything in my professional life and haven't suffered for it (as far as I know). And I've been involved in the hiring several people; linkedin has never been involved.

[whstl]

For me personally it is incredibly convenient: whenever I want a new job, I can just log into LinkedIn and reply to a few recruiters messages to schedule 5 or 6 interviews for the week.

I really hope I never have to look for a job again without a recruiter helping me through the process.

[tombert]

A few job postings that I've seen actually require me to post a LinkedIn profile to hit the "submit" button. I suppose I could put some placeholder text in there like "N/A", but I feel like that would put me immediately on a waitlist.

[letuv]

It can help to practice compassion for strangers and equanimity.

They might be wrong but they are just acting in the way they believe is best, and even if they have some impact it's ultimately just a tiny effect in a vast universe.

[xboxnolifes]

> ...even if they have some impact it's ultimately just a tiny effect in a vast universe.

This was my view when I was younger. People acting/saying stupid things will just be stupid people and it doesn't really matter.

Then I realized many of these same people were ending up in positions of power...

[tempodox]

There is great wisdom in Mark Twain's advice to never argue with an idiot.

[netsharc]

> Before I knew it, a not-insignificant percentage of each day was being dedicated to responding to idiocy on social media.

I feel like this is an addiction, the high from noticing "Oh my god, you god damn idiot, let me write why you're so stupid, oh I'm so glad I'm not as stupid as this person!". Getting the validation from other people is even more thrilling. I guess it's why social media mobs are so "popular" too, there's even a book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You've_Been_Publicly_Shamed

Or should that be "were popular"? Luckily Twitter is close to death now.

I have a feeling it's related to loneliness epidemic ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=loneliness+epidemic ) and people looking for their connections not through friends ("I need to be vulnerable? no way!") but by anonymous participation in online communication/shit-flinging-fest of every comment section.

Covid was also interesting, you got to walk around in public and think "What a fucking idiot, I'm glad I'm better than that person", and it worked both ways, someone wearing a mask? What a sheep! Someone with no mask? "Must be a stupid Trump voter!". Someone with their nose showing outside their mask? Etc, etc...

[tombert]

I think it might be a combination of a addiction, and a sort of “technological immaturity”, which is why the number of posts on social media would be dropping.

I am 33 years old, born in 1990. My parents were kind of geeks so we got the internet pretty early, around 1992~1993 (give or take a year…it was 30 years ago!), so for pretty much my entire life I have had the internet and have been using it for about as long as a person can have used it. As a result, while cool, I think the internet isn’t as cool to me as it might be to nearly anyone older than me.

Social media came to prominence when I was around 15 (~2005/2006), and it was a novel and unique thing that 15 year old Tom thought was pretty cool, but I wonder if the people born into a world with social media are somewhat immune from the novelty of it.