Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Reading a fantastic book called Digital Minimalism on this very subject.

Back when I used social media I noticed I'd be very angry arguing with people I didn't even know. Never meet anyone with a job. Deleted all that crap, moved , and had an amazing partner( she had a JOB) within a month.

Life is right here, if your at a coffee shop and you notice someone reading a book that seems interesting ask about it. Works out much more often than chatting with bots. Even when snapchatting with a "real" person, the "typing" notification felt like a raw anxiety machine. Now I only meet people in real life, text her once if she'd like to get dinner at 8 or so and then move on with my life.

Feels really good to hop off the social media hamsterwheel. Me a few years ago:

Gotta get more followers to get more likes to get more followers to get more likes to get more followers. Then maybe my matches will see how cool and popular I am. It's very much pointless. You'll never be popular enough. Without question I've removed the vast majority of stress from my life by ditching social media. Frankly my life is amazing. But if I'm staring at what other people have all day I'll never recognize it. Everyone will post 'just engaged' photos , no one is posting 'our marriage has been really rough, but I don't want to move back in with my parents'.




HN is social media.


On that note, to today's 10,000: HN has a "noprocrast" feature that can help you break off the habit slowly. I love the defaults (20 minutes every three hours) and it's enforced across devices. Go to your profile to set it up.


> HN is social media.

Strongly disagree.

Social media is where one shares ones social life (it's in the name!). HN, like many other sites dating back to the days of USENET, is a subject discussion forum; in HN case, a technical / IT discussion forum.

Granted, there are sometimes crossovers between the two, but HN certainy isn't one of them.


I still crave (you)s on HN. Even though HN has no notifications or inbox. I still check my threads frequently to see if anyone has replied to me. Maybe you are happy using throw-aways and shouting into the void, but I think that is a minority.


I don't think it would qualify, since there's no connection between users' profiles. You can't set up a "friends" list, or any other kind of group.


I must agree with the parent commenter: HN is social media.

Oh, maybe it's not exactly like facebook or Twitter, but it ticks so many other boxes.

I could list many, and argue about them (arguing: another staple of social media), but the most important to me is that HN is effectively a procrastination tool, and it's associated with that mental "fix" of instant gratification.

It's different from facebook in that HN is more heavily moderated and more focused, but other than that, it triggers the same kind of (bad) habits, at least in my case.


You are free to pick a different definition. "Permits arguing and procrastination" would make it a pretty big category, including all online forum and chat systems back to the Usenet / BBS and maybe CompuServe / Prodigy days (I don't know enough about the last two).


uh yeah, those things are absolutely social media as well


Usenet seemed more social than HN, as I remember it from the 1990s. You'd go back to the same groups, and see the same people posting. On HN, I don't usually see any name I remember.


I regularly see names I remember on HN: tptacek, pron, dragonwriter, lmm, coldtea, etc.

It's not exactly the same as contacts on Facebook, though it's closer to Reddit. Definitely social media.


Regardless of whether it's social media or not, HN is a huge digital waste of time. Try to think of more than 10 posts that really improved your life over the years. Now realize that you probably look at more than 50 HN posts a day. I would spend much less time on HN, but it's an addiction, like most things digital.


My experience has been different. I consider HN to be a kind of 'finger on the pulse' for my profession as a programmer, and in that regard it's fantastic.

Reddit, on the other hand, is a huge time sink (some good, some bad, I read an awful lot of short fiction on Reddit, and I consider that a positive).

I can think of dozens upon dozens of posts that were useful over the years! In a way HN has reduced the amount of networking I have had to do in order to see what people are interested are in, as they are posted here!


I've found a lot of good things on HN. I'd say it's near a net zero as far as time lost vs new things learned goes.


Yeah and I would have deleted it along with my other accounts if it weren't for the "no procrast" feature too.


Someone reading a book at a coffee shop probably doesn't want to be bothered by someone asking about it.


It’s fun watching people raised in a world where all communication happens on a screen dismissing the things people used to do to communicate as impossible.

I do it myself. Even though I spent half my life in a word where the only way to talk to a friend was to pick up a phone and dial their number, today’s Jason recoils violently from the idea of doing something so rude and invasive as that.

So just in case: in a previous world, sitting in a prominent place doing superficial activity such as reading, smoking, or looking at a phone screen was a signal that one was open to casual conversation.


> So just in case: in a previous world, sitting in a prominent place doing superficial activity such as reading, smoking, or looking at a phone screen was a signal that one was open to casual conversation.

That's not universally true. To my understanding, places like Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland), Japan, and Russia have historically had cultures that don't encourage randomly walking up to strangers and striking up a conversation.


They will either not look up, or quickly answer and go back to the book if so. It’s okay if that happens.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: