Related to reducing media exposure and the attendant increase in the sense of wellbeing, this is a lovely article by the Serbian / American poet Charles Simic, about discovering how his dad had attained "Olympian calm":
"Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day.
My own inordinate interest in what the lunatics are up to in every corner of our planet has to do with my childhood. When I was three years old in Belgrade, German bombs started falling on my head. By the time I was seven, I was accustomed to seeing dead people lying in the street, or hung from telephone poles, or thrown into ditches with their throats cut. Like any child growing up in an occupied city during wartime, I didn’t think much about it. I was as serene then as I will ever be, sitting among the ruins smoking my first cigarette, riding on a Russian tank with a friend, or watching our school janitor hang the portraits of Marx, Stalin and Marshal Tito in our classroom after the liberation."
Detachment has its place in mental health but that is more when realizing "this is bullshit and doesn't matter". Like keeping up with the Joneses. If you don't actually enjoy any of that or find it useful just saying "fuck that and fuck you" to the social pressures is being anomalously sane.
To be honest all of the 1950s Zeitgeist reeks of suppressed trauma addressed in an unhealthy way. The whole lawn obsession reached a zenith from homesickness in Europe and POW camps - and that is just one of the milder examples. Kids ended up taking this state as a deeply unhealthy norm.
I totally quit television about a year ago, and it had a very noticeable positive impact on me.
I also mostly quit Facebook with the end of last year. I say mostly, because I still use its event calendar, and occasionally check my stream. But I significantly reduced the amount of comments I leave on that platform.
I feel like, while the criticism of FaceBook, Twitter, Reddit and co is pretty much warranted, we managed to push aside the biggest time sink we already have since the 60s.
TV, and Netflix, for that matter, is wasting our time since many many years.
I stopped watching regular TV around 2005 due to the influx of "reality-tv" and other crappy formats. What I used to watch before was real documentaries on discovery and it's family of channels.
Now I just watch Festival of Science or Royal Institution lectures on YouTube and some anime on wakanim :)
There are also a lot of real in-class lectures filmed on various topic on YouTube that I find very nice.
I don't miss regular TV at all.
I quit facebook around 2012 (deleted and purged the accont by waiting 6 months) and I don't miss that either. I still have contact with the friends that I care about via phone, I just don't look at their fake lives on facebook anymore.
I vaguely think I stopped watching TV, modulo Netflix, around the same time as you. Now when I see it in a trucker's break room or similar, it strikes me as shockingly vacuous, and so filled with commercials.
And now I'm living the irony, driving a truck and hauling all that stuff that the TV is waving in front of us. Just as some of you are living the irony, spending your hard earned educations building the infrastructure that implements the waving.
"Now:" I'm pulling a trailer from Illinois to Ohio, filled with "cereal, dry," from a maker to a big box chain's distribution center. Eat up! Eat!
> I vaguely think I stopped watching TV, modulo Netflix, around the same time as you. Now when I see it in a trucker's break room or similar, it strikes me as shockingly vacuous, and so filled with commercials.
Third'd. I cut the cord years back mostly as a consequence of doing the digital nomad thing. I agree with the shocking vicious part. It reminds me of getting crab cakes on the east coast -- in the 90s it was mostly lumps of tasty crab with a little bread, and now it's mostly bread with a little crumb of crab. TV feels the same -- mostly BS with a few shrinking nuggets of entertainment. No wonder Netflix and other streaming services are going strong.
To digress, I'm curious about your life as a truck driver. What do you do with all the time in the truck? Podcasts? shortwave radio? And what are your thoughts about the industry as a whole?
I was a software dev and SWQA since 1988, with a few years taken off in the middle to deal with some externalities.
I rage-quit my last SWQA job, then discovered that a 60+ year old B player ought not to have done that. And so I drive.
What do I do with all the time in the truck? Drive, watch the road, watch out for you all (you all are cray, and are probably gonna die, I'm just sayin'). Watch my time from various perspectives: time/miles to pickup, time/miles to delivery, time left on my allowed driving time, gallons of diesel remaining, will I make it on time, do I have to warn of late arrival, should I pull off and shut down for wind, rain, snow, ice, fatigue, when will the local troopers open the highway to trucks again, am I speeding or following too close, am I holding people up behind me, are you f'ing tailgating me, are my brakes on fire, what's going on way up there (I can see pretty far with my head ten feet off the ground) ...
I don't care what you're doing in your car, and I virtually never look, except once in awhile I'll look at your head (or search my spider sense) to see if you're paying attention. To the road. Not to your phone.
When I'm not doing that stuff: I don't have a CB radio. Sometimes I don't play any audio and just think, or enjoy the scenery. It's an incredibly beautiful and interesting country. Sometimes I chase NPR across the radio. Wyoming is a pretty good state for NPR, because they have translators all over. Once in awhile I'll drive through a college or tribal radio station that really does just play what they feel like, those are good.
Sometimes Pandora. I've been trying to listen to podcasts, but it's not a great experience. I can't seem to manage podcasts via Pandora or Spotify very well. I don't like pre-downloading, I'd like to just listen via a stream (most recently VLC on Android, bluetooth to my radio, but the casts often just end in the middle (lost cell signal?) and go to the next one).
My thoughts on the industry as a whole are, I can only see a tiny sliver of the industry. There seems to be an infinite number of ways to get stuff from here to there, and all I really know is working as a "solo" (not part of a two person team), "company driver" (not an owner-operator) for one of the large truck companies.
When I started two years ago there was a huge trucker shortage. Now some companies have gone out of business, but "they" say that it'll pick up again soon. I believe large companies are still hiring, because industry turnover is huge. Lots of people decide they don't like it. I like it a lot.
It's a really good job for me, as I'm not very sociable. I'll go months without going home (divorced, one grown son). Most long distance drivers take 3 or 4 days a month in "home time." Some drivers are regional or local and they're naturally home more often and more regularly.
I drive a 2017 Kenworth T-680, 15 liter straight-six Cummins engine, 10 speed Eton automatic. I mostly pull "dry vans," the 53 foot closed rectangular trailers that you mostly see. Sometimes I'll pull a "reefer," refrigerated trailer, basically the same as a dry van but you also have to pay attention to the reefer operation and temperatures (multiple compartments inside the trailer).
I typically have about an hour of time at the end of the day, and an hour in the morning. Sometimes a little more. Rarely a lot more, when the company hasn't found any freight for me to haul. The longest I've spent without freight has been a weekend, and that's rare. I only get paid for miles driven in service of an assigned trip.
During my typical two +/- hours/day I eat, clean, read, communicate with the fam. I've written hundreds of emails home, with pictures, and I'm trying to clean some of those up to get them posted at a location to be named later. In my free time.
* Deleted Reddit. I open the app every once in a while, scan what's popular. But not a lot.
* Pruned twitter. I don't follow anyone on Twitter anymore, save my partner. I deleted all my posts, going back to the beginning. I don't read it anymore, but I've preserved my username.
* Kept Instagram. I like following certain people in places around the world I have a travel connection too. And certain athletes in sports I follow.
And so...
If there's no benefit to posting -- there's very little inclination to consume. No arguing, no triggering, no pavlov-ian itch.
I post to Instagram, I post a little bit here on YC. This leveling keeps the "push for pellet", or "pull down for more content" habits very minimal.
I don't think there's any particular need to cold-turkey quit watching TV, just to be a little strict with yourself about what you watch.
Similarly with Facebook; I use it but I don't follow friends particularly - I follow pages, mainly a useful local neighbourhood page that mainly seems to concentrate on who has lost a cat and who can recomnend a plumbe. Similarly with Reddit, just select a few decent subs that you are interested in.
I look at Fscebook every couple of weeks. Reddit - too frequently.
There is nothing to cold turkey about TV. I got cable to watch the olympics a few years ago and found nothing else worth watching for months. I used to watch various documentaries on the History channel, but now it’s full of ancient aliens crap. I think my demographic left and they just stopped producing content for US.
I feel the same way. Haven't had linear satellite/cable in years. Gave it up in my teens. Since then I've moved over to science videos and the like (NileRed, Nurdrage, RI Lectures) and metalworking/machining. Things you'd never in a million years see on cable TV.
For all its faults - Youtube has a lot of factual content produced by people who want to share their cool hobbies with the world.
The thing I really want to give up next is Twitter. Or at least my 3,000-follower public account. It started out with finding like-minded friends, but quickly turned into a place where I can't even say "I find WD40 often works better than cutting fluid when machining aluminium" without being jumped on.
If you like NileRed I think you'd enjoy "Applied Science" and maybe "Cody's Lab". "Scrap Science" is pretty good, I felt bad for the guy after spending a year failing to make heavy water. I spent a couple years in a chemistry lab and that guy's "bathtub chemist" techniques make me cringe but it all generally works out, well, aside from failing to make heavy water. The "Hydraulic Press Channel" is very tangential but semi-related, and "Practical Engineering" and "Steve Mould" are a little light weight but enjoyable. "The Backyard Scientist" is mostly "things that go boom" along the lines of turn of the century Mythbusters, but is still kinda fun.
By "RI Lectures" do you mean the channel with the actual youtube name of "The Royal Institution"? If so, I think the across the pond competitor is "MIT OpenCourseWare" although I find it far easier to download MIT OCW videos from archive.org than trying to find and stream them and keep track of which I've seen.
I've had the interesting experience of learning Linear Algebra from Strang's textbooks a long time ago, then watching his lectures to refresh my memory. You can do something similar with Automata Theory and Ullman via a MOOC, or at least you could a couple years ago.
You've more or less posted my entire Youtube subscriptions list there!
Applied Science (Ben Krasnow) is one of my favourites. Cody's fantastic too, for the backyard-science angle. I find Hydraulic Press a bit too "let's break stuff and laugh", but it's fun to watch and switch off for a few spare minutes. Same for Backyard Scientist ;)
Post-Apocalyptic Inventor is good for my scrapyard-challenge-but-real fix.
My real hook at the moment is How To Make Everything. He starts with Stone-age technology and shows the progression from there. It's fascinating to see how we got from "there" to "here" with a series of successive discoveries and refinements.
BosnianBill's Locklab, Locknoob and Lockpicking Lawyer are other favourites (but then, I've always found security tech interesting).
I've got an interest in retrocomputing so LGR, Modern Vintage Gamer, Adrian's Digital Basement and CuriousMarc are on there too.
I do mean the Royal Institution's official Youtube channel, yes. I started watching for Andrew Szydlo's chemistry demos and stayed for the other content!
I've heard of MIT OCW (since the original announcement popping up on Slashdot), but never really looked into what was available. Perhaps I should!
I like how "Applied Science" sends down interesting rabbit holes. One minute I'm watching homemade photochromic glass adventures, next I enjoy three hours of enjoyable clicking thru wikipedia and other internet links.
Yes the Hydraulic Press guys have a lot of "boom ha ha" content but they sometimes have more intellectual content such as "We're going to make homemade particle board out of sawdust" and I'm like, no, you're not, I know its way to complicated, but its fun to watch them try and be partially successful.
If you like retrocomputing, then "Moshix" channel will provide a couple hundred hours of mainframe content. The editing is slightly off, moves too slow during non-interactive content such as watching scripts run, and too fast during interactive content while hand editing JCL and typing sysprog tasks in general. Just because you CAN type 100+ wpm doesn't mean its a good idea during a screencast. The content is very compelling, regardless of editing decisions.
Something I don't like about retrocomputing is stuff I started out doing is now considered retro. Or even worse, stuff that was futuristic when I had a couple years in, is also considered retro. I guess getting old beats the alternative.
LOL sorry for the late post, but you got me, I was thinking you meant Cathy Rogers the combined producer actor, but its actually Mr Llewellyn (who is also interesting to watch).
Ms Rogers was very interesting to watch as she is near prototypical "maker culture" in the sense of artist-trying-to-do-STEM (IIRC she's a successful musician) but technically predates popular "maker culture" by about a decade. Sometimes seems old fashioned or retro in 2020, but was extremely futuristic around the turn of the century.
I personally don’t find TV a time waster. If you enjoy it, as I do, then do it, guilt-free.
However if you find yourself addicted ie you want to do other things but you keep getting “sucked in” then by all means stop - it will have a noticeably positive impact.
I wasn't feeling like TV directly prevented me from doing anything else, but it still felt like a big relief when I finally sold my TV.
It didn't feel like it was stealing any of my time, still, my daily activities at home changed to something that feels much more productive and healthy.
I read more, and spend more time with my personal projects.
TV is sneaky, you don't realize how much time of your life it consumes.
Glad the change is working for you. There's definitely such a thing as overdoing TV binges. But all of us need to be cautious about ditching a legitimate entertainment and relaxation medium because it's not "productive", productivity isn't the only goal in life. It's OK to chill out and recharge!
(Not in any way criticising you - just the community here often appears obsessed with maximising personal output and I think jeez just relax sometimes guys!!)
The bigger point is TV is a poor way to ‘chill and recharge’. It zaps your creative process, deadens your judgment, and isolates you from those around.
Reading, conversation with friends/family, poetry, painting, sitting and enjoying a good meal/cigar etc... all have the quality of chill and recharge without the negative effects of TV.
I'll go out on a limb here and defend TV: I think this is a somewhat-outdated view of television.
Modern television isn't just The Big Bang Theory anymore. The line between cinema and television is quickly blurring, with television shows like Chernobyl that are essentially very long films. Even "regular television" can be incredibly enlightening, with shows like Planet Earth exposing us to parts of our own world we might never see otherwise and our imagination might not even do justice!
And much like cinema, sure the experience itself is somewhat isolating in that you're trying to pay attention to it and not converse with those around you. But what's beneficial about some television shows are the emotions they inspire, the conversation they generate after, the fantastical thoughts that come later while you process what you saw.
Sure, garbage exists on television in the same way that pulp fiction (i.e. low-quality literature) never really died out. But I don't think it's fair to dismiss the medium any more than it's fair to dismiss film or literature.
Yeah I don't see it as competing with other "wholesome" activities (cigars?!), just: don't beat yourself up for enjoying a bit of low-effort, passive entertainment!
Personally I find decent TV shows a great way to unwind after a busy day, but of course YMMV.
Maybe I didnt express myself well enough. I didn't raise the issue of spending too much time in front of television to promote 24/7 productivity, not at all. I know quite well how important it is to just chill out and wind down. However, most TV programs that I was watching before I quit it completely felt like they were slowly poisoning me with stupidity.
It is really the lack of quality and frankly, intelligence, that drove me away from classical TV.
Sounds like we are in agreement. And yes there's a world of difference between world-class TV drama and the dross that fills much of the airwaves that frankly perhaps should come with some sort of health warning...
I don’t agree. Watching tv and browsing social media just temporarily heightens the mood, but then tampers of very quickly. That time could be spend doing something useful like following a hobby, because that increases overall happiness.
Arguably, framing someone's life behavior as functions of usefulness is antithetical to the need to engage in recreation. The following of TV is useful if your social sphere is amongst other people who watch TV. It builds a canon in which to socialize, discuss, invite people for watching parties, etc.
(I myself do not watch tv but I also have no desire to presume anything of people who do. I at least personally acutely feel a loss of culture because TV and movie watching is very common in socialization rituals and I am unable to engage in them.)
There are better ways to socialize and watching television should be the last one. Talking with other people about movies and television shows is superficial and won’t help in bonding with them, because your personality lacks depth.
Both function much like a drug: pleasant in small quantities, but easily creating a feedback loop that results in it dominating your behavior. Some people appear to be more susceptible to it than others.
The neural mechanisms have a lot in common. Video games, I would note, also share that mechanism.
Same here! I haven't had a TV in many years and since quitting the news (on every medium) I'm much happier and have much more time and energy to devote to fun and productive things.
Haha granted, I do enjoy Hacker News, because it's just random interesting links, not politics or current events, which is what I'm very deliberately chosing to cut out.
What’s going on in the world is rarely useful to know, unless you’re talking about weather and traffic reports. Keeping up with it every day is just another entertainment hobby, like watching home remodeling shows or whatever. It’s fine, but only marginally useful or improving.
I used to hyperconsume news but concluded that news just isn't really a good way to know what's going on in the world. It's mostly alarmist outrage devoid of any meaning.
Wow, I typically only get that question from people way older then 70 years...
That feels weird, to read this on HN.
No, sorry, I don't need a TV just to get a few news bites daily. There are other ways to stay up to date.
I have my alarm set to a high quality radio station at the time their morning news show starts.
This is a 5 minute news show that condenses the essential things of the day. If I feel like I need to know more about a specific event, I typically browse a news site with my phone while walking to work.
That is enough to be able to follow the typical smalltalk once I hit the workplace.
I used to have my clock radio set to a news station. One morning the first thing I heard was about a massacre in Seattle's International District (their "Chinatown"); thirteen people murdered IIRC.
I ended up finding youtube even more addicting than regular TV or netflix. This shouldn't be surprising, but I had to take steps to mitigate my Youtube intake all the same.
time spent in a way that made you feel good isn't wasted. maybe it had no economic output but that isn't a waste.
But the long term benefit of TV/Video isn't a diet that's good for you. Consider all the things you could do (not "achieve") if you'd use it for reading books, travel, learning a language or art. What this medium robs you of is boredom, which maybe feels great in the short run, but is hugely damaging to your creativity, focus and (probably even) mental health.
When I deleted facebook I noticed a huge improvement, but also I shifted my attention to other things which are equally addictive (HN, and my "personal information pipeline"). So like when I stopped smoking and moved to caffeine and sugar I substituted my FB addiction with other forms of unhealthy consumption. Getting rid of FB is therefore easy but getting rid of the underlying addiction is _really_ hard.
Sitting alone in a room with your thoughts is almost impossible (for most). Try it for a couple of days! Do nothing - not even reading a book you'll feel like you're going insane!
What works though is taking really long walks, or going out to nature for a few weeks (or months) and being on your own. You won't feel bored for long I'll promise! The most awesome memories I personally have are from things that made zero sense (and often in the most terrible circumstances).
> time spent in a way that made you feel good isn't wasted
I am not sure this sentence is universally true. I'd like to remind you about the experiment with mice that got a button to trigger their own happiness center... They end up pressing that button, until they die from lack of food.
IIRC those mice were also locked up in drab cages. And the experiment was redone in a more natural environment (for example other mice to interact with) were they didn't show this behavior.
true. also drugs usually feel great. there seems to be a cost for feeling great, e.g. you can't have feeling great/happy without sometimes feeling down/sad. how would one even understand the concept of happiness or being fulfilled if they have never experienced the other side.
I have never understood why people claim reading is a more worthy use of time than watching tv. Love island probably teaches people more about the human condition than fifty shades does, so pick your poison
Because it's not actually about "optimizing time," it's about a feeling. A lot of people find themselves in a pattern where they binge-watch a show they don't really even like to fill time. Likewise with social media, at some point you're not sure why you're even doing it. Likewise for people who cut back on video games.
It's the behavior, not the medium, that gives this uneasy feeling all of your time is going to a thing that you didn't mean to spend it on.
On the other hand, if you find yourself sucked into a book for a weekend, odds are it's because you can't put it down and will regret nothing. Nobody binge-reads bad books.
most books that have been published in the past 100 years will disappear because they aren't worth the e-/paper they're written on. What makes reading more valuable for your brain is that it requires active engagement. films might be valuable too (I love films such as sci-fi, crime and comedy) - but binging 6 hrs on movies/shows every days is sure not as valuable as reading 6 hrs every day.
It becomes even more damaging when the screen is your only window into the world. e.g. we work in front of a screen all day, then on the way home metro/train or whatever hold a phone to check up on social-media, then after dinner switch on the TV. No wonder so many (young!) people are isolated. (young is especially shocking. I'm old and it's normal for me to be alone. Guess men are terribly at socializing. But seeing so many kids end up lonely and isolated is pretty sad)
> binging 6 hrs on movies/shows every days is sure not as valuable as reading 6 hrs every day.
Citation needed
All reading is not inherently valuable, in the same way all television is not. I don't get any more socialisation from reading a book, and indeed unlike e.g. watching TV with housemates/family it's an entirely isolated non-social activity.
Now, if we're talking solely about _children_ then i will give the act of reading additional value due to reading comprehension being a key skill that they need to improve! But mine isn't getting any better at this point, certainly not by reading the same old trash I always do.
"TV bad, Books good" is just a weird generalisation that sticks in my craw and I've never seen a believable piece of evidence for it
Most of my sons screen time is spent socializing. He rarely watches TV, but he spends a lot of time in multiplayer games where he is simultaneously on discord and building friendships. Yes, he needs face to face socialization too, and he gets plenty of that at school and various other activities, but the point being that screen time can be very passive or it can be active and involve lots of social contact.
When I was younger, I spent quite a lot of "active screen time" with IRC. Back then, it felt like I am connected to other people. In retrospect, it would have been far better for me if I used that time to socialize with real people IRL.
If I could go back in time, I would force myself to go out and meet real people, instead of simulated friendships in a chatroom...
Having also spent lots of time on IRC, most IRC channels are very different from voice chats with a circle of close friends. Even an IRC channel with close friends is very different,because it's a much more async communication with bursts of more live interaction Vs. the continued direct interaction of a voice chat during shared gaming.
Personally what he's doing would be hopelessly exhausting to me - I'm quite introvert and the level of social interaction he's engaging in is way above my tolerance level in terms of intensity.
Oh yeah, I can trust my assesment that real life contacts (lets call it a network) would have been more useful in the long run. I "wasted" about 10 years of my life spending time in front of a computer, as a sort of escape from the fact that I am an outsider by trade. I would have benefited a lot more if I tried to break that habit much much earlier.
For TV, a large number of people are paid enormous amounts of money and put huge efforts into the best result a bland corporate team can produce to increase ad sales by encouraging consumerism. "Love Island" does NOT exist to teach people about the human condition, its only goal is to increase hair spray sales, any other positive effect is simply a happy accident. Even "non profit" TV like PBS mostly exist to entertain the egos and virtue signalling of a small number of major monetary donors.
On the other hand, books are usually written by one person so they have a much stronger and more focused voice, and that strong voice usually has an interesting axe to grind.
Or rephrased, if its not interesting or is overly bland, no one reads the book. Admittedly being the most successful at appealing to the groupthink of a sub-population willing to pay for a book is not a Utopian civilization level result, but it is still better than peddling consumerism, and most authors seem to want to get their story out more than they want wealth. Book authors much like pro athletes are a power law distribution where most starve but a microscopic minority get very famous and very rich, so if money were a primary goal they would have gone into finance or software development instead of writing books.
One exists to addict you into consuming ever more bland megacorporate products, the other exists to sell the best ideas, either inherently best, or at least best at meeting existing groupthink demands.
The voice of the product is like the difference between the billionth corporate marketed mcdonalds burger vs a (celebrity?) chef multi course meal.
An excellent analogy would be watching TV would be like following the Walmart twitter account, whereas reading a book would be like reading Paul Graham's blog posts.
But I agree with your point. You can watch PBS mindlessly. I used to geek out on the obscure, ephemeral nature of all the educational films they used to show. It was a guilty pleasure.
At this point I consider both reading and TV, and especially movies because they don't encourage bingeing, more worthwhile than internet use of any kind - mainly because they require sustained concentration and don't encourage the tab-jumping, notification-checking, infinite-scrolling content addiction that I feel myself falling into when I'm on the internet. There's something to be said for sustained focus on one piece of content, even if that content is Love Island.
If you have no problems with your current levels of creativity, focus, etc. is doing those things ("reading books, travel, learning a language or art") still superior to TV?
I wouldn't say superior. That would be snobby and ignorant, but I think it depends on "does it make you happy"? If you have to stop and think then maybe it doesn't. If not then great! Why change something that fulfills you. Doesn't matter what other say, or does it?
Well, first of all, most TV programs I know are catering to an audience that is clearly not fitting my expectations of quality information or even entertainment. The mother from "requiem for a dream" comes to mind when I think about average TV entertainment.
What adds to that, is that I really can't stand the style of action movies produced since about 2010. They are heavily overloaded and lack a story that is worth following.
Maybe I am getting old, but I constantly feel like being wound up by TV programs these days.
There is a great plugin for browsers called 'news feed eradicator'. It's great because it turns facebook into messenger with notification center when somebody mentions you or there is event coming up.
Just a little note on using Facebook for the calendar. That was also an excuse for me to not deleting Facebook, but I imported the calendar to Google.
It's been a year and I don't miss any of it.
The only reason why I have a Google account is that Google bought YouTube.
Establishing a Google calendar to get rid of Facebook doesn't seem like a win for me...
Besides, how does that work? Much of the Facebook Calendar feature works for me by friends inviting me to events. So in a sense, I will still need to maintain an FB account.
The big corporate channels like "Analog Devices Inc" have too many premade for facebook 90 second snaps, and not enough relax in the living room recliner long format content.
The more niche the content the better the odds of "big corporate" producing quality content. "Analog Devices Inc" is mostly 90 second commercials, but "Arm Mbed" and its office hours series, despite also being "big corporate", has lots of enjoyable long format content, assuming you're into embedded FOSS RTOS for ARM or STM32.
For me the greatest improvement came from stopping using Twitter and Reddit rather than Facebook or Instagram (I quit using all four within the last year, Youtube is the only social media service that I'm still regularly consuming, I'd like to quit that too), of course this is based on my personal situation and the way I personally use all of those media. In my specific case I have the impression that Twitter and Reddit are somehow more addictive and they used to have the largest detrimental impact on my mental health. With Facebook, that impact is moderate and with Instagram I would say almost non existent.
Same here. At least in Facebook you mostly communicate with people you've chosen to accept as friends, and know who they really are.
Reddit and Twitter on the other hand show all the bad sides of anonymity to the fullest. Way too much blind tribalism and conflict seeking, few adults actually capable of real discussion. So it's not only a waste of time, but one that gives you a bad mood as well.
People on Hacker News, by and large, don't seem to grasp the concept of using Twitter for things other than having debates/arguments. The criticisms of it here typically boil down to it not being a good platform for discussion, when in reality, that's just not the point of Twitter!
Most people are using Twitter for the memes, the (often educational) content, the news, and direct messaging. The average person is probably not there to look for people to have a long form discussion with, especially if that person is a stranger who is trying to argue with them.
The echo chamber is real. I went cold turkey on Twitter after using it for 10 years and gaining about 6k followers.
Twitter was the #1 source of left-wing extremist noise in my life. I'm sure there were/are right-wing extremists on that platform too, but one seemed to appear in my algorithmic feed more than the other. Or perhaps it was confirmation bias. Who knows!
Both side's on it. In fact there's no sides. Just that Twitter is competent at removing constructive elements and distilling hatred/rage/anger for profit and it's working against you.
There are few ways to strip out some of their 10-year "improvement" and oh how deserted it looks under there...
Message to the shareholders: "Millions of active users, billions of messages"
The truth: most of those messages are angry and argumentative, and most of those "active users" are just the same people being angry and tribal towards each other.
It makes for good stats, but like all stats, they're just numbers if presented without the context and analysis behind them.
It makes for good stats and it makes revenues. For those angered victims they would express sympathy if that's what you are going to ask for I guess...? My fear is this is going to destroy the society in a decade or two but then not many company survive that long so in financial risktaking standpoint this can't be significant.
I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I'm quite convinced certain subcultures are overrepresented on Twitter, and that while Twitter is open to all, that doesn't mean it's a representative cross-section of the general population.
I think this is true of most social networks, and is more obvious in certain cases, e.g., Tumblr.
Both sides are indeed on Ttwitter but it feels like it has a strong skew to the left. And as Time Pool discussed on Joe Rogan, the platform itself censors right wing opinion far more than left wing opinion.
I never understood the value of Twitter. It looked to me like a few people machine gun blasting personal details to the world. Why anybody would do that or even read it was bizarre to me. I guess some people just crave attention.
I wonder if people will ever quit Facebook.. I mean after all the stuff that's happened and they still haven't.
We had a discussion about this recently in my Spanish class. Someone asked me for my facebook and when I said I closed it long ago they were all like "eeewww privacy freak".
So I explained my reasons, the abuse of personal data, the manipulation of the masses (Cambridge Analytica) and the others immediately sprang to life saying how horrible it all is. And turned out to have good knowledge of the facts. But yeah, it's so easy to stay in touch with friends.. Well yes I know, as an expat it's not easy without it.
Still, their initial "ewww" reaction really surprises me considering their apprehension at Facebook's practices.
Facebook, like many other things in our society, is a Clan-thing. "My clan vs your clan" is a game that humans play very very well.
Their initial reaction is just "oh, you are not one of us". If you talk about the details, they might agree with you, but they still fall for the "not one of my clan"-thing initially.
Same happens with many things.
Linux vs Windows vs Mac OS
Android vs iOS
Left vs Right
Vegetarian vs meat-eater
vaxxination vs anti-vaxx
choose your poison.
HN contains many obvious example of clan behavior. New Urbanism, bicycling, cooking for yourself instead of eating restaurant food every meal, Trump derangement syndrome, Brexit is going to cause the collapse of civilization, all strictly enforced groupthink on HN.
It never fails to amaze me how we (as a group) can have a free and open discussion of microcontroller RTOS options, but god help someone who has the wrong opinion about bicycling the groupthink will incinerate them.
Free to have any opinion here about tech things, but the counter reaction to that is no freedom at all about non-tech related opinions.
It is awful that staying in contact with messages from friends and loved ones forces one to be exposed to Facebook's addictive advertising, propaganda and surveillance machine - especially as Facebook is a monopoly.
Legislation enshrining adversarial interoperability would allow competition to improve user experience.
But now Facebook is a kingmaker akin to the Murdoch press legislators are not incentivised to corral Facebook.
Imagine a message client that interacts with facebookosphere and allows the use of a single detoxified client for messages and feeds from all protocols, services and ospheres.
Facebook is moderately useful for keeping in touch with people you want to hear from and who just won't use email/Mastadon or whatever, and for interest-based groups and events. That is all. And as long as you strictly restrict yourself to using only the website through a browser and eschew their apps and carefully go over the privacy settings and tune them to your needs you should be okay. As for endlessly scrolling the newsfeed all day, well that is not so much Facebook's fault as that people who do that are probably having too much idle time and not knowing how to do some productive or more creative activity. If Facebook did not exist those people would trawl through Twitter or Youtube or something else.
> As for endlessly scrolling the newsfeed all day, well that is not so much Facebook's fault as that people who do that are probably having too much idle time and not knowing how to do some productive or more creative activity. If Facebook did not exist those people would trawl through Twitter or Youtube or something else.
ehh... yes and no.
On the one hand, there is something to the idea that folks should take responsibility for figuring out how to not waste their time like this (if they consider it a problem; if you want to spend all day on goofing around on the internet, have fun I guess). There's some internal motivation required to make that happen that's a skill worth learning.
...but on the other hand, companies spend a ton of money researching how to keep people "engaged." This includes hiring psychologists to help them fine-tune the crap out of their platforms to make them addictive. Given that level of manipulative behavior, I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the users. And yes, without Facebook they might just do the same on Twitter or YouTube, but those platforms are doing the same thing. It doesn't make it ok just because everyone else is doing it.
I just want status updates and photos from my friends. If I could literally mute all shared content (memes, twitter dunk screenshots and "shares") it would be a much nicer platform to use, but from Facebook's perspective this would be awful because I would be on and off the site in a few minutes.
It turns out I really just wanted MySpace with photo albums.
The internally-inconsistent premise FB is based on, keeping in touch with friends, ultimately leaves nothing new and no mystery to talk about.. and no point to ever meet, effectively creating distance from and losing friends. Isn't that an awesome technology?
My attempts to not use Facebook and social media typically ended with substantial social isolation. The range of media I consumed became significantly smaller, because apparently got variety from other peoples suggestions. Maybe these articles are about people who have great IRL communities they fit perfectly in, but some of us are mostly lonely unless we keep at least those weak ties via network.
So ironically, I am not in period of starting to use Facebook again, so that I have more contact with people again.
Why not go do social hobbies? Photography or creative clubs, walking groups, dance classes, book reading clubs, volunteer work. There is lots to choose from.
I have job and kids. And I am already using my allocated "for me" time for sport. It gives some social contact, but not enough. Social hobbies require significant time spent hanging out, but are not child friendly so they are out.
Besides that, walking groups or book reading clubs don't exist here. Photography or creative clubs exist only in form of structured classes, where you pay for two lessons a week. Adults/older people, they mostly come and hurry back home - which is what I would do too I guess anyway. They are not really social places where you come for idle chat and build relationships that survive end of semester.
So it does not even matter that none of these activities appeals to me in any way - I could not belong to creative group, because I completely sux at art and find it frustrating.
That makes sense, tbf you do have a family, for a moment there I thought you were alone, alone.
Another suggestion (last one ;) if you have a family is board games. You have adult / kid games,lots of banter to be had and can be played with other families for a good time.
I highly recommend DND if you can find a group or feel like starting one. Requires no talent and is basically all structured socialization. You can play with your kids if they're old enough and you want to.
Instagram has so many low-quality ads that show up so frequently when scrolling through the feed/stories that it's like they don't even WANT me to get addicted
Personally, giving up facebook saves about 10-15 minutes a day. I feel better, not because my friends' stories were making me feel inadequate, but because it is one less stream of mostly useless information that I need to filter and process. I miss seeing pictures of my friends. I do not miss people regurgitating political memes. I don't think quitting FB dramatically improved my life satisfaction or happiness.
It's interesting that a bunch of economists found no evidence of any economic losses from quitting FB. Nobody reported loss of any economic opportunity, access to purchase something they wanted, or anything like that, due to foregoing use of that platform.
Did the researchers fail to look for those things? Or did they just not come up?
Facebook is a good example of the damage that can be done by the self imposed jail of binary thinking.
The proposed binary thinking option is users will be detrimentally manipulated and exploited as an advertising product where the manipulation is sometimes intense enough to exacerbate mental illnesses, whereas the binary alternative of deleting everything and going Unibomber will result in extreme social and job related ostracism because obviously "he's trying to hide something".
There are analog middle options that are just as valid as the polarizing binary extremes. I have a perfectly good FB account with plenty of connections, but I only log in every couple months. A little awkward when someone wishes me happy birthday and I don't see it until four months later, but whatever. Most of the time stuff that was posted six months ago is irrelevant today, and likewise I feel pretty safe ignoring most of what was posted today. I find that on FB, as with any other online media, that there's at least 10 to 100 times as much lurking as posting, so there's really not that much to read anyway. For example my best old work friend is about as much of a lurker as I am, so there's really nothing to see.
Or to summarize, the negative effects of deleting your account have nothing to do with the result of "stop using facebook", if you simply stop using it and do not delete your account.
I wonder if selecting your population via people who respond to a Facebook ad about studying quitting social media introduces any bias. (I can't see the article so I don't know what their ad actually was) I worry that the correct takeaway is people who are interested in the idea of taking a break from social media probably should. Maybe the study was sufficiently well compensated that people who feel positively about social media still felt participation was worthwhile?
It is amazing to me that yours appears to be the only question that asks this.
But yes, there are problems with this study imo...none of which are really addressed in the paper. Giving someone $100 to quit is kind of an "economist" thing to do but is that really enough of an incentive to do something you wouldn't otherwise do? No.
They do say that their ad didn't mention quitting Facebook. And they did some kind of survey first (which is how they got the $100 figure if I understood that correctly) but it still doesn't look great to me. In particular, they claim that they did an RCT because they randomly assigned the people who clicked on their ad...that isn't random.
I also think compliance is far harder to observe than the author's believe. The subjects deactivate, and if they log back in it reactivates but is that foolproof? Not really. Tbf though, the number of subjects who fail to complete is low given upside of $100...so maybe.
The key parts of the survey really rely on self-reporting (will people have a bias to report improved wellbeing given all the bad publicity about FB? probably).
But yeah, this isn't really an RCT. It would be nice to see one but I think the issue is that most people who use Facebook a lot probably aren't interested in stopping.
I used to use Instagram quite a bit. Got really frustrated with the vapidness and pointlessness of it. When I gave it up, I just felt like this weight had been lifted. No need to look at how cool others’ lives seem to be, just time to live my own and enjoy it for my own sake rather than sharing.
These days I prefer to use social media as a form of dialogue, almost like forums, than anything else. The focus is on ideas and conversation.... which is why I actually really enjoy HN.
Sometimes I feel like I have a "genetic advantage" to not be attracted by social media. I have a Twitter account that I rarely use (mostly for API-access for NLP research), I check into my Facebook account maybe once a month and have never used Instagram. I watch some things on Youtube (usually recorded lectures or tech talks or board game videos) but rarely ever "drift" towards recommended videos and the like.
I used to be on IRC a lot back in the day but quit it completely, I used to frequent specialized forums, especially when I was an online poker player but also have quit those completely.
Don't have a Reddit account and am not really following that. I guess my HN account is the most used social media right now.
I also don't feel the urge to post and share pictures which I notice a lot in my friends. Sometimes it feels like a moment doesn't exist for them unless they can capture it in a picture (whereas for me it actually disturbs the enjoyment of the moment to stop and take a picture).
I instant message but am notorious for "answering late" and keep getting complaints that I don't check everything immediately. I usually put my phone on the charger when I get back to work and only look at it every now and then, sometimes not at all until I go to bed.
Interestingly, I am very interested in how social media works technologically and have also been an early adopter of many technologies. However I feel like I'm fairly "results oriented" when it comes to social media so I expect some sort of benefit from using them vs. the time spent.
I've also noticed that I'd probably test well on my ability to delay gratification and I feel like this might be correlated with social media consumption in some way (maybe there's studies on this?).
Do you find that you tend to get sucked into to ANYTHING in your life? Content, substances, activities? I find that I have a very addictive personality across the board - once something feels good it's very hard to stop even when I consciously want to or it's making me feel bad. This happens to me with social media, TV, alcohol, drugs, and occasionally even reading or a new hobby I'm really into. Rather than the ability to delay gratification, I'd imagine social media consumption is correlated to whatever it is about the brain's dopamine pathways that leads some people to get addicted to things more easily than others.
This is true for most of the finding. But not for politics, in my opinion. I think people are more likely to get polalized in Facebook than in ycombinator. In fact it is known that political campaigns invest heavily in facebook adds. And this is worse than most of the regular media, which although biased, at least provides some sort of fact checking or push back usually.
The way I choose to use FB or Twitter is to check one's profile before the actual meeting happens so I could have some 'common knowledge' with him to talk about. As a researcher and programmer, it's crucial to realize that you couldn't do anything meaningful or fundamental without immersing yourself into thinking and being kinda isolated.
I'm kinda pessimistic about this round of internet bubble as it seems to come out of the exploitation of people's spare time and attention by using superficial content and instant satisfaction. (FB, Netflix, Tik-Tok, etc)
But productivity is indeed boosted. I couldn't imagine WFH being so widespread 20 years ago, but now with a smartphone, you can basically meet, chat, work on documents/ projects, taking lectures from elementary to graduate level. So in the long-term, I'm still optimistic that, maybe after the burst of the current bubble, people will realize how addicted they've been, and how they should adapt to new techs.
I still use Reddit, Youtube and Twitter on a daily basis. I get to choose what to follow, how and for that, it's informative (and a time-passing activity for sure) and useful.
Facebook, on the other hand, is an all or nothing app in my opinion. It's difficult to distinguish between who to friend and who not. Close friends and family members, I keep in touch with through WhatsApp, text and whatnot.
As an entertainment (or informative) platform, Facebook is even worse. Sensationalism and misinformation is rampant, or you're bombarded with ads. And you're not really allowed to interact or disagree without getting into a de-railed discussion.
On top of that, you're comparing your life with those of others (' highlights). It's a useless and depressing timesink (which Instagram is as well for those exact same reasons).
I stopped using Facebook a good few years ago (4+), and to be honest, I know it had a positive impact on me, but at the time I was a very frustrated with almost a feeling of being blocked off from some part of society/friends.
Now I have absolutely no reservations saying : 'No sorry I dont have FB' and it's such a relief.
I do still have other bad habits such as over consumption of youtube/news sites which I'm also working on, but I recommend the leap away from the plague of Faceobok.
When I have kids, I genuinely will be very diligent about deamonizing all social media and education around modest useage.
The social media enviornment has exploded so fast there has never been time to fully realise the impacts or the effects later. But all indications look towards it being incredibly damaging.
> In a randomized experiment, we find that deactivating Facebook for the four weeks before the 2018 US midterm election (i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use. Deactivation reduced post-experiment valuations of Facebook, suggesting that traditional metrics may overstate consumer surplus.
Polarization has been the trend in the western world for the last decade, slowly but surely countries are being divided and polirized more and more. It doesn't paint a good picture of the future for sure, and social media is part of the problem unfortunately.
Personally I consider polarization the ultimate in intellectual laziness as a scapegoat. The problem is that people disagree! Not that they any stances are particularly evil or insane, factionalism, zero sum thinking, nor any actual solution in mind. Asking if they have any ideas for a solution just gets a dirty look as you commit the faux pau of actually attempting to get people to think. Instead it is just one word which tries to sound smart but is utterly vapid repeated as nausuem as the source of modern ills. Polarization!
Never mind that lack of it has historically lead to /way worse/ outcomes. Unity is not a good thing in itself.
I've stopped using it in 2009 because of a fallout with my classmates.
Sometimes I wonder if I missed social occasions because of not using facebook. Generally I realized facebook didn't really allow to "make new friends" because it lacks "discovery" features.
Now there are social networks who are focused on neighborhood and honestly I wish facebook would do something about discovery. I haven't heard from the facebook dating app either.
Facebook, even if it's successful, feels like such a big waste of potential.
I thought I was clever to disable YouTube viewing history, thus replacing all the interesting and addictive videos I normally get lost in with the most inane garbage from the typical "news" vendors, sports highlights, celebrity interviews, Star Wars/capeshit theorycrafting, crap from Business Insider and TED and the like, etc. which I of course planned to never watch...
Now when I want to avoid working I just end up watching stupid clickbait instead of interesting clickbait...
What I found really helpful in reducing Youtube viewing time, is to use a browser-extension that hides recommended video all together. This way, you only watch videos you explicitly searched for.
I did this. The only thing it gave me was social isolation. People look at you funny when you tell them you don't have a facebook account.
If you have a well-developed circle of friends, sure. But this only holds for what, half of Americans? I don't know people well enough that I'd have a functioning social life without Facebook, unfortunately. I think this holds for many other people as well.
In my case I'm spending less time of FB (almost only for work) and more on HN and other sites. Definitely more on WhatsApp groups with people I meet in real life. Basically I'm losing contacts with people living hundreds or thousands of km away that I don't see even any other year. No impact on news, there are plenty of sources outside FB. FB never was my primary source.
I would love to see similar studies done on other social media platforms.
I quit Facebook a couple of years ago and went back to take a look recently. Whole bucket of "nope" right there. I am now concerned about other platforms I find quite sticky though, including Reddit, HN and particularly Twitter.
I made the conscious decision to just make a list of everyone’s birthday I cared about before I deleted FB. I often hear people say, “I wish I could leave Facebook, but how would I know when anyone’s birthday is?” which I don’t see as an insurmountable task.
Since in your case you didn’t save them before deleting it, I wonder if it would be an interesting opportunity to randomly message people you haven’t spoken with in a while, to put some birthdays in the calendar.
I know several people who essentially need to maintain facebook and other social media presence to be employed because they work in social media adjacent fields or journalism, where social networks are nowadays the main source to do basic things like get into contact with sources and so on.
So no many people are actually dragged into these networks rather involuntarily. The same is also true when it comes to people's dating lives if one looks at the behaviour of particularly young people.
Not only that, they put events for our kids activities on facebook.
I have to ask to be emailed about these events and often I get a screenshot of their facebook post!
You should not have to be on a platform to participate and luckily everyone that I explained this problem to understands it and do send me the email with events. But it creates enormous pressure to be on the platform.
> FB is so detrimental to society, people that never use it need to be concerned much like with gambling and alcoholism.
I don't get how Facebook is detrimental to society. Probably I am missing something.
The majority of people do have an option to delete their account or simply not to log in. Apart from Facebook's involvement in scandals like Cambridge Analytica, I don't see what's wrong with the site or company. It's true that it can be used for causing harm, but that's true for almost every other tech out there.
That's the equivalent of the "guns don't kill people. People kill people." argument. It's a sort of "shifting the goalposts" fallacy.
Tools, organization, policies,... are always an expression of a specific or a common intent. How Facebook moderates the platform, makes design choices, how it decides on what to show on your newsfeed,... all of that is intentional.
Facebook isn't a public commons, it's not a space where people freely control the flow of the content they publish or control what they see or when they get to see it. Facebook is designed with the express goal of getting to know as much as possible about its tenants - "insights" in marketing speak - so it can then sell that information.
The problem with Facebook is how 2nd and 3rd order network effects that disrupt the fabric of society, emerge through its sheer scale. What's wrong with the platform is that it is entirely unwilling to acknowledge those effects and happily shift responsibility towards society and individuals.
If people aren't willing to delete their account, then that's because Facebook has captured how people communicate and understands that it plays into basic psychological behaviors such as FOMO, or that nobody likes to be an outsider.
If literally everyone you know goes to the top place in town every thursday and saturday night, if all the gossip happens at that spot, well, it's extremely hard to stay clear of that without feeling left out.
I don't see anything to actually blame them for specifically. Lots of insinutations and FUD but no actual claims of harm or what they should have done instead. You have described shady monetization but not the harm inflicted. If I measure everyone in town's height when they walk by a lamppost and sell it to clothing manufacturers I have gotten money due to them but I haven't stolen anything by any sensible framework.
I mean I consider Facebook a pile of trash but that I recognize that the problem has always been the people who make up society being vapid, foolish, and vain caring more about it. Banning Facebook won't fix those problems - their ancestors have been witchhunting, engaging in stupid "reformations and moral crusades" that only make things worse without any redeeming values and lashing back at inconvenient facts long before Facebook.
Are you implying now that it's impossible to hold politicians accountable because you can't prove any direct harmful causality between their actions and the effects on individual citizens?
No - but Facebook is not politicians nor voters. It should be trivial to prove harm from a politicians policies. There should be direct and clear chains of causation and knowledge applying actual standards.
The reason you can't hold politicians accountable is because their whole aparatus of government is deathlty afraid of setting any precedent which might hold them personally accountable for direct misdeeds.
See the furious rationalizations known as Qualified Immunity and refusal to prosecute literal war criminals. See the furious reaction to whistleblowers above literal traitors who sell secrets to foreign governments. It is abundantly clear that they fear transparency and accountability above all else and replacing the clusterfuck with something not even worse is politically very difficult.
Blaming Facebook for "influence" is questionably third to fourth order as well, especially when far more direct culprits go unpunished without reason. It is classic cycle of abuse displacement of blame from a more responsible to a more accessible and vulnerable target.
Sure grandma may voted for a guy whose campaign platform was literally "Mein Campf" subsisted for the local language and country but maybe the uncomfortable truth is that she was always quietly a genocidal racist who felt that mass murder was preferrable to being on an equal footing to "lessers" but was fine before because they "knew their place". Utterly horrifying but easy to see why most would prefer to blame Facebook over their family members for being responsible for being horrible people.
It reeks of "follow the money" ambulance chasing of suing the laundromat for not having bulletproof windows instead of the gangbangers who hit the victims during a drive by shooting. Only in this case it is "follow the politicial power to try to dragoon it to something they think will be in their favor".
Not the first thing hn has a strong obsession with though. (Google? WeWork?)
I bet many of the people here grind their teeths when they see mark Zuckerberg earning billions doing what they didn't and now can't because of Facebook Monopoly on social media apps. They patched up every way to connect inside their walled garden and grab the existing users.
As a side note, make a Facebook account and never log in beside the first time with zillions of anti tracking plugins. People who will otherwise ask for your Facebook can just search your name (they do this first before asking) and send a friend request, and I doubt anyone would ask why you didn't accept their friend request because
A. You might not like them or so will they think. They will be afraid to open up that they are bothered by you not accepting the friend request. After some time, if you remain friendly irl or on other platform they will think maybe you forgot or something. They will make up a reason for you that satisfies them of the image they have of you for not accepting the friend request.
B. They simply send too many friend request to remember whether someone accepted or not.
HN is a big echo chamber of non-experts thinking that they can do science not related to their 9-5, all in the name of feeling like they waste their lonely lives on a site that's slightly more intelligent than 4chan.
"Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day.
My own inordinate interest in what the lunatics are up to in every corner of our planet has to do with my childhood. When I was three years old in Belgrade, German bombs started falling on my head. By the time I was seven, I was accustomed to seeing dead people lying in the street, or hung from telephone poles, or thrown into ditches with their throats cut. Like any child growing up in an occupied city during wartime, I didn’t think much about it. I was as serene then as I will ever be, sitting among the ruins smoking my first cigarette, riding on a Russian tank with a friend, or watching our school janitor hang the portraits of Marx, Stalin and Marshal Tito in our classroom after the liberation."
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/12/05/goodbye-serenity/