OT-ish: Thoughts on social media use? Good or bad? And how to control it?
All.
Thought I get some feedback from my trusty MgoMembers regarding social media. Personally, I have a strong dislike for social media. I'm not on Twitter, Insta, Snap, etc. And I closed my Facebook account when I couldn't take it anymore. Posts were either:
1. "I'm doing something cooler than you"
2. Political leaning, including any virtual signaling
3. Pictures of babies/kids
4. Pictures of food
Being off social media I think has been good for me, but now my kids school is almost requiring us to have at least Facebook as most events etc are announce and scheduled that way. How are people dealing with social media in a meaningful way? Is there a way for me to continue to avoid it? Thoughts?
Dont give in. Require the school to email you or something else
This x100.
I'm on the PTA at my kid's school and they were mostly using FB for communication and engagement until I opened my fat mouth about it.
So now they email too.
You Hatter? Cmon we can’t see it.
Hatter on the PTA....the transcripts of the meetings would be comedy gold
I'm almost always the only man there too, other than the school principal. They pretty much expect me to tell at least one completely inappropriate joke per meeting.
I'm popular with the Gen X moms, and the teachers like me too (all teachers at every level are alcoholics), but the few young ones really don't like me. No sense of humor in that generation.
I would honestly recommend going to a meeting, at least occasionally, to all parents. I talked them out of spending like 10k on a piece of playground equipment last fall because I thought it was overpriced and the kids wouldn't like it. Worked out well since we had that money to donate to a local charity providing services to the poor kids when the pandemic hit.
No idea why I wrote all that. 5 o'clock came early today
hatter, all kidding aside, i could see you being a real asset to a PTA. i imagine you having a much clearer and more practical vision of going from point A to point B than other board members.
We can get a couple movies out of both of you gents.
XM can have the crime drama. And Hatter the PTA based comedy kind of a Walter Matthau Bad News Bears and Billy Bob Thornton Bad Santa mix.
I can see Hatter holding court at the PTA and yes there has to be some comedy there.
Social media is a cesspool and attempt to go back to cave man times by communicating with pictures (emojis) and one syllable words. I’m 51 and don’t have any social media and will never understand people like the Kardashians incessant need of showing their cooch to feel value. Fucking hate Twitter etc and the humble brag bullshit I see on Facebook. “So honored to get this award for - fill in the blank along with picture of self.
Schools cannot require you to use Facebook. Delete it and tell them to email you. All my school relationships (kids’ HS, college, and mine) use email and web pages.
I’m in California and I rarely come across an institution that still tries to force everything through FB. Most have moved on. Companies are no longer requiring FB credentials to log in.
“Delete Facebook” should be a much wider trend. It’s terrible for just about every reason. The unintended consequences to society include decreasing authenticity in peoples lives and relationships, a way too efficient platform for spreading propaganda, and this move toward polarization over collaboration because of it’s algorithms. No kids around here use it. Of course they do use Instagram owned by Facebook.
Facebook is the worst and others are not much better. I have no interest in social media except for work, dating, and MgoBlog. I like my relationships in person. When I divorced, social media was a necessary evil for dating that I had to learn. But fortunately its only for meeting and not for actual dating.
Something else. Make them type it and mail it to you.
Being off social media I think has been good for me
Hear, hear!
+1
but now my kids school is almost requiring us to have at least Facebook as most events etc are announce and scheduled that way.
Man that stinks.
That's just a cheap/lazy way of not maintaining <school district>.org anymore.
Can you go to a board meeting and present the same case there as you have here?
How are people dealing with social media in a meaningful way?
I think fighting it is an uphill battle. Your #2 is what kills it for me.
Personally, how I manage is I don't have any of that shit on my phone (I have to access it through my laptop) and I really only log on to FB once or twice a month. I deny permissions for notifications from FB from the browser, don't have plugins/Messenger installed, etc. I find I deal with it better when I'm not beholden to it nor is it at my fingertips 24/7.
Work wants us all to have a Twitter account now... to push the edge of the envelope in building our personal "brands" and advancing industry/thought leadership. I kept my mouth shut at the last call on the topic but I'm going to resist that as long as I can (starting to put out feelers to leave the Firm anyway). I'm not going to become a Konsulting Kardashian.
Thanks.
Interesting your company is pushing you to use Twitter for personal brands for your business. Sounds like LinkedIn would be better for that, but maybe its industry specific.
Sounds like LinkedIn would be better for that
Agreed.
But it's an all-out media blitz I think. YouTube is next for demo-ing services. Soon my signature block won't be name, title, phone, email, but this:
All bad. You are only getting everyone's "best life" on social media, and some of it isn't even real. buying clothes and merchandise to photograph them only for instagram and then immediately returning those items to promote an untrue lavish lifestyle is an example. There are many more.
That said, I'm totally addicted. Except for Facebook. Facebook sucks.
I miss the *.edu Facebook days.
I remember those days - back when Facebook was just college students/alums and Amazon was mainly just for buying textbooks.
Good days.
Oh well... back to tending the lawn.
Me too. I remember my cousin in 2005 showing me Facebook (she was a year older than me) when I was a senior in high school. It sounded so awesome at that time.
In the fall of 06, I started college and there wasn’t much on Facebook (or Youtube). Within I think 2 months of me being able to sign up with my college email address they opened it to everyone. Womp.
It’s shocking how quick it went from college kids posting things you wouldn’t want your grandma to see to your grandma sharing fringe conspiracies as facts.
I should add that I still use it, but how I view it is night and day from how I did in college. Luckily, I’m blessed with family and friends I truly care about that are not constantly trying to give off a persona of a high society member, so from that standpoint I enjoy keeping up with their trips and happenings and vice versa. People that post more than one thing a week I personally label as ‘stupid shit’ (mostly world happenings these days) gets either removed from news feed or my friends list. I would have never dreamed of doing that when it was just college kids posting party photos back in 2006.
Same. I was so excited to get the umich email address so that I could finally create a facebook. It actually meant something, and, at least somewhat, had to be earned by being in college. Now, as you say -- it's just trash.
Screw that school, that's BS. I use Twitter to follow sports teams and some media members. Don't do FaceSnap, Instacrap or any of the other "look at me" social media forums. I made a realization a couple years ago that it's just another thing people get addicted to, and they don't really enjoy them either.
What these shitstain platforms need is a dislike counter next to the like counter. They will still be completely useless garbage but at least fools won't post stupid shit and only be able to see a bunch of hearts or thumbs up. They can also see all of the dislikes and the thumbs down.
There is the obvious way to avoid it. Just don't go there. Of course that may lead to a degree of social isolation as your group of friends may chose to communicate that way. My fundamental view of most social media is very negative. One of my kids is, shall we say quirky. Every little faux pas he committed in school was instantly blasted across the community. Being a kid who was developmentally slow, he had no clue how to deal with it, and it made his high school years, already a tough thing for the uncool people, a living hell. There were times I had to take his phone away so that he could not see what was going on.
For adults, I think that you just need to have a thick hide, look at what you want, and force yourself to ignore the rest. I have an easy out, as my employer has directed us not to have a presence on most social media. As a result I limit myself to blogs like this one, a linkedin account for professional contact and e-mail. I don't seem to care much about the latest foodie (God, I hate that word) find
Social media is an absolute cancer of society.
When western civilization falls, there will be a little bird and a lower case f carved on its headstone.
Anyone see the Netflix movie "The Birdcage" with Sandra Bullock? My theory is it's all a metaphor for Facebook and social media. There's this malevolent thing that, if viewed, makes you want to kill yourself and possibly others. But even if you're among the people that refuse to look at it, you're going to suffer the consequences as the world falls apart around you.
Little birds and a lowercase f on the headstone for sure. I avoid all the platforms entirely.
By the way, new parents? No baby is cuter than any other baby. They all look like space aliens for the first 6 months of life. There, I said it.
damn that's crazy now that you say it that way...yeah I can clearly see the connection. I've used youtube videos to fix any number of appliances, car stuff etc...I have zero personal social media, no interest what so ever. Our son's baseball program uses facebook to share schedules and information which as some pointed out is simply lazy. Our school district is doing everything they can to utilize platforms as information sharing but as this lockdown demonstrated, a large group do not have wifi and connectivity platforms available. You miss a lot of people when you rely on social media as your contact.
You just have to check Ace’s twitter feed to see this. People need to spend more time in the company of others, not just spewing their views on Twitter all day.
My non-scientific polling has determined that at least 90% of social media is worthless tripe. Those numbers are reliable 60% of the time.
Avoid it, all of it. Facebook = pseudo bloggers and humblebrags. Twitter = Probably 85% bots and fake accounts. Other platforms = Look at me, give me attention. Even LinkedIn is going downhill - lots of self promotion, and I have skills endorsed by people I have never even met!
Even LinkedIn is going downhill
The thing which cracks me up about LI is people posting the same political shit or engaging in pissing contests there that they do on other platforms... all for a potential employer or client to see.
Talk about not crapping where one eats. Seesh!
I remember after the last election, a lot of the hub-bub boiled over into LinkedIn. It was bad, not as bad as Facebook etc, but still bad. So much so, the president (or another high level executive) of LinkedIn said something to the effect of "knock if off, seriously! This is business and career development site, not a political blog!"
I deleted my LI when it told me two old girlfriends had viewed my profile. And they were both still hot.
Something like 60% of divorce petitions have the word Facebook in them now. Infidelity has become way too easy with social media and everyone having their own phone.
I don't need the temptation.
To look at my LinkedIn profile, you'd get the sense that I have a remarkably broad set of skills. Reality is something altogether different.
LinkedIn's Facebook-imitating social component is its most depressing feature IMO. High-volume posters are usually the most pathetic strivers.
A lot of people give themselves their own titles like “Thought Leader” and “Vice President of Life”
I post NOTHING on LinkedIn, but use it as an efficient Resume drop platform. That said, it would be nice if recruiters would check some of the basic information on there and stop telling me I would be perfect for contracting an HR systems implementation when its clear I have a finance certification.
LinkedIn is great. I've gotten job offers that came out of unsolicited recruiter messages. They would never have known I existed in years past. Just had one the other day in fact that I would've pursued had a few other things not been going on for me that made it a no go for now.
Getting sick of the "thought leader" types and constant corporate virtue signalling, but it's great for job hunting.
An Academy classmate of mine started a motivational speaking business and his LinkedIn ads are EXACTLY as douchebaggy as you would expect. I finally had to remove him as a connection as I couldn't take it anymore.
I actually thought LinkedIn was pretty useless for job searches as everything that came through it was awful until I got a certification that actually boosted my skills profile and that's pretty much how I got my current job, so I've come around on it.
I'm confused. If not those 4 things, what were you expecting social media to be used for?
Sex. Just like the rest of the internet.
I’ve noticed that the two of you respond to one another’s comments quite frequently. Are you twins? Life-long BFFs? The same person? Having a bromance?
Inquiring minds want to know!
You've seen him shirtless on horseback, right? Who can resist that?
I was an early adopter of both Facebook and Twitter, and I regret it. I was working in politics and it was helpful to be on Twitter, but now I'm addicted to it. I'd guess that about a quarter of the things I get texted are Twitter links.
Social media is one of the worst things to ever happen in society:
It magnifies our biases by showing us lots of what we already agree with, and not showing us things that don't fit into our worldview. This separates and divides society in ways that are increasingly apparent, with people on each side literally incapable of honestly and objectively explaining what the other side wants, and increasingly seeing the other side not just as wrong, but evil. This has hollowed out the middle, and magnified the extremes, making it less likely to get things done, and increasing the animosity within society.
There are lots of other negative affects but I'll stop there.
Don't stop/keep going... I enjoyed your analysis in the first paragraph.
It magnifies our biases by showing us lots of what we already agree with, and not showing us things that don't fit into our worldview.
I made this exact same argument to a former friend. She insisted I look at link to an article from some shady news site. I refused to, and it pissed her off so much we stopped talking. Her argument was"do you wanna get your news from the main stream media all the time? "
Man, you hit the nail on the head here
with people on each side literally incapable of honestly and objectively explaining what the other side wants, and increasingly seeing the other side not just as wrong, but evil
I have my own political opinions - who doesn't? but what drives me nuts is that a lot of the people who says stuff like "How stupid do you have to be to want _____ ?!?!?" couldn't clearly articulate the often valid or understandable reasons people have for supporting that. They'd rather just build a strawman to beat. Stuff is often far less outrageous than people like to make it and if more people made an effort to understand the reasons why people are for or against ____, this country would be better
Well put. I'd encourage you to continue, as you're conveying your thoughts in an objective way, and maybe it'll make someone else reconsider their own social media consumption.
I refuse to engage in any of them. At all. I've never had a facebook, twitter, instagram, any of it. It's pure cancer for civil society, and a good well lived life.
Social Media is one of the worst this to have happened to humanity.
Social media gives each user a public voice, which would be fine except most of us are fucking stupid.
And now we have claptain stupid king of twitter in charge and the stupidity is really ramping up.
I'm trying to be funny but really I'm sad for all of is
One of the worst things about social media, and the internet in general, is that it brought crazy people out of the shadows and into the mainstream.
Literally. A Qanon kook just won a GA primary in a safe R district.
I mean, imagine her future committee assignments.
Exactly. Now everybody feels like they have a voice. And it turns out the dumbest voices are also the loudest. I've had aspirations to write but these days it actually feels like you could never break through all the noise. In almost every case I'm finding that the best thing I can say is nothing. The world is awash in a sea of bullshit--literally a hurricane of hogwash crashing down on every continent. I refuse to contribute to it.
"dumbest voices are also the loudest" -- agreed
Sounds a lot like politicians too!
Maybe social media = politicians which explains why I can't stand either of them...