>You are now the weirdo with something to hide when you are not on Instagram or Tiktok.
You might call me a "weirdo", but this has absolutely not been my experience whatsoever. Friends, family and coworkers don't really give a shit that I don't participate in social media, and I haven't been treated any differently for it.
Edit: And hell, generally, what's life without a bit of weird? The homogeneity of everyone doing the same thing together all the time sounds boring as hell. Here's to the weirdos!
Sure, it's how I learn about most of the music and art-related events I go to. There's not really an equivalent platform to get that kind of info. It would have to be a mishmash of email newsletters and checking blogs, and even then some people only promote on Instagram because of it's market dominance.
I'm talking about people who use it on a personal basis. Yes my mum sends Instagram posts to market her embroidery company. I don't care about marketing posts.
Parent of 5 and 3 year-olds here - absolutely. We don't own a tablet and the most my kids really know how to do is turn the TV to a show or two they like (relax, everyone, I'll be teaching them how to use tech when their lives actually warrant the need). They're wonders at restaurants, can sit there for an hour plus without any screens and they're great - hell, I went to a pretty nice spot for my birthday recently that took 2.5 hours and they crushed it, we all had an absolute blast.
Our phones stay in my wife's home office during the day, since we want to model not staring at them.
They come to my work sometimes, and I've had a few people express how they're impressed when they watch them entertain themselves, and my response is always, "They have to learn how to be bored".
Parent of a 5 year old here, and it sounds like we run a similar household. I am very proud of my daughter for being able to go an hour or 2 anywhere with little external stimulation. She engages in the adult conversation, and often makes interesting observations which we enjoy chatting about. She never asks for a screen when we are out anywhere.
I am often surprised when we are out at restuarants and cafes, and other kids that age are staring into tablets with their headphones on. How are these kids going to develop adult social skills when they are oblivious to them going on around them?
Also car journeys. We enjoy things like playing I-spy, and singing along to songs together. I would hate it so much if my kid was glued to a tablet watching stuff.
Boredom is very very important for a childs development. I feel that the reduction in kids boredom time is a big reason we are experiencing epidemics of mental health revolving around concepts such as FOMO and personal image.
Wonderful! At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, that 2.5-hour meal I referenced was bookended by a 2-hour drive each way. Just a bit of music in the car, but plenty of great conversation with our family and my parents - observing the world around them, asking questions, singing along, being silly together. It was a tremendously cup-filling afternoon/evening with nary a screen in sight.
I love your point about social interactions, too - we'll tiptoe around certain subjects occasionally, but for the most part I love when they (especially my oldest, but only because my youngest is still coming out of the toddler phase) listen in and ask questions and try to understand what we're chatting about. It always reminds me of being a kid and thinking it was super cool to be able to hang with the grown-ups and learn about whatever they're chatting about.
>It's my brain's shortcut. It's as if my mind say, "Why spend the effort to do something when we can just imagine how it feels and enjoy the reward now?"
But I'd wager that, deep down, you know that the feeling you get thinking about it is far different from the actual feelings (both physical and mental) you'd get if you'd actually done it, no? I know that's been the case in the past for myself with regards to some thoughts - I know what I'm doing and I know that nothing will improve until I do it, and then I'm thrilled in ways beyond just what the thought provided when I actually execute.
This also kinda misses the forest for the trees. Not acting on a desire you think of is separate from the idea that people don't give their brains a break.
> But I'd wager that, deep down, you know that the feeling you get thinking about it is far different from the actual feelings (both physical and mental) you'd get if you'd actually done it, no?
I suppose there is probably some ratio for any given task that is amount of effort:reward. So, for some tasks, I would gladly take a quarter of the reward to avoid spending ten times the effort to acquire it.
> Not acting on a desire you think of is separate from the idea that people don't give their brains a break.
I agree and disagree. While there are obvious differences, I do believe not giving one's brain a break is partly causative in depleting one's desire/ability to act.
We all have different experiences, but I do not think daydreaming is really giving my mind a break. I find my mind to be quite active while daydreaming. But everyone is different, I suppose.
>... I do believe not giving one's brain a break is partly causative in depleting one's desire/ability to act.
The response I am flippantly tempted to argue is that it's good for people to not be acting/doing all the time and that downtime is essential, but, as we've both acknowledged, there's nuance there, and it all boils down to what the desire is and what the consequence(s) is/are should we not act.
>I find my mind to be quite active while daydreaming. But everyone is different, I suppose.
Totally! I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I love backpacking in silence and without using my phone. These are 3-4 day trips deep in the wilderness, completely disconnected from the rest of the world and entirely in my own headspace. I love those moments, but I know plenty of people in meatspace who've expressed to me that they don't know how I can do that because of the way their own trains of thought run/work.
There was a study mentioned in one of Dr. K(YouTube)’s videos which cited that daydreaming or unstructured time is used for subconscious processing of thoughts and emotions and not giving your mind time for that causes negative consequences like like of sleep.
Of course, when I looked up citations on this I found some links on maladaptive daydreaming as well ._.”
A smartphone and a book are, by and large, different modes of escape with different impacts on the escapee. Scrolling through social media is a far cry from focusing on a single subject for an extended period of time, which is what reading a book does.
Both are forms of escape. That can be escaping common boredom to pass the time, or it can be escaping bad feelings or a bad life situation. Also, I'm not convinced that a compelling fiction book that's struck a chord is actually a meaningfully different dopamine drip than scrolling Instagram.
Totally! But then you've got to make sure all notifications are turned off from every app that might hit you up - not just silenced, but so that they don't even appear over top of the book. And then, of course, there's the temptation to swipe over to a different app that's right there.
To each their own, IMO. As the other commenter says, some folk might find that distracting.
When I go hiking/backpacking, I don't listen to music at all, as I enjoy the peacefulness of the forest and the break that my mind gets from the noise of life. I also typically default to paper maps after having done a lot of research via guidebooks, old and new, about where I'm heading. I'll reach for my phone if I really need it, but usually I don't, and I don't roll with a GPS track I downloaded from someone's past trip. I'm there to enjoy the environment around me, and that means hearing it, too.
Same for driving. Maybe I'll use Waze if it's somewhere I've never really been before, but typically I'll just look it up beforehand and find my way there on my own.
When it comes to those navigation choices, wrt both driving and hiking, it gives me a better understanding of the area, and a stronger sense of route options, and therefore a stronger sense of myself being able to find my own way, than if I were to rely on a screen (or Google Maps/Waze audio telling me where/when to turn and me following blindly).
I see that the right edge of the photos are cutoff on mobile, but the bulk of the image still appears. The paragraphs might be indented a bit more than usual, but otherwise they're clean and fit entirely on the screen.
Not sure how a barely-chopped photo edge makes the actual article "difficult to read".
>... and also won the popular vote. Kind of hard to argue he wasn’t America’s choice.
I guess the smartass ("teeeeechnically") way to argue against that is that for the popular vote Harris/Walz won 48.34%, Trump/Vance won 48.81%, and "other" candidates got 1.85%, for a total of 50.19% to Trump/Vance's 48.81%.
And that's not even counting the people who didn't vote. Most of whom have definitely had enough of Trump at this point.
Sometimes I think the political types and the elites don't realize how big of a minority they represent because they live in echo chambers that always tell them what they want to hear.
Maybe the Democrats should have presented a cohesive and attractive proposition to them? It's not like they didn't just have four years to build and enact one and then campaign on it instead of chasing the donor class for the nth time!
> Sometimes I think the political types and the elites don't realize how big of a minority they represent because they live in echo chambers that always tell them what they want to hear.
Coming to that conclusion yet not realizing that it applies perfectly to your own negative opinion of President Trump is pretty funny.
I get reminded, with my votes for independent parties, of how big a minority I represent in this nation literally every election. The difference between you and I is that I know I'm in the minority. Conservative and liberal voters feel they are in the majority. You're actually shocked that so many people are vehemently opposed to your policies. You genuinely believe the entire world believes in the policies you believe in because, surprise, surprise, everyone in your world does believe in those policies.
In other words, your "echo chamber" has fooled you.
That is what's dangerous. Getting taken in by your own propaganda. In the military back in the day they called it Incestuous Amplification.
Whatever. Not worth trying to explain. Just try to do yourself a favor and remember that the purpose of your propaganda is to fool the enemy, not yourself.
I’m not shocked that about half the country doesn’t agree. I just find it funny that that half of the country does not realize that the other half of the country is still half of a country.
Let's do the math, the population of the US is roughly 340M, Trump got 77M votes in 2024. That is 22.65% of Americans. So nowhere near half, not even a full quarter. Approx 174M are eligible to vote, so not even close to being half because more than half of the population doesn't, won't or can't vote.
If you're going to ascribe intentions to the non-voting public, then sure you can come up with whatever stats you'd like. I don't see how any of that is meaningful. You're just taking your own personal biases and echo chamber, and assuming that the entire non-voting public shares your views.
The only hard facts we have are the actual votes that were cast. And of those he came out on top of in both the electoral college and the popular vote. Any other interpretation is an attempt to weasel out of those undeniable truths.
That's great that it's obvious to you! To some of us, not so much. I'd love to hear more about what it is, specifically, that your eyes are seeing, so that I may possibly shift my perspective.
Thanks for the feedback, I suppose I can see how it reads that way, but I assure you it wasn't intended as such. I simply want to politely ask them to expand on their perspective.
Hmm, thanks, but I don't think I can read your post any other way. Sorry, it's hard to interpret the tone as unintended, however, maybe other adjectives could be argued instead of the two I chose.
Regarding my other comment - I'm not sure what you mean. I wasn't trying to politely ask that commenter to expand on what they said. I was criticizing their attitude and also their uncharitable use of the "show me the data" ultimatum.
What I did in my first post was try to respect the fact that that may be their view of things and validate their perspective, then kindly explain that I don't see it, and would be open to hearing more about what they see. I could perhaps see how the "Thanks! :)" unintentionally adds a layer of sarcasm, but it's kind of a bummer if that's the case.
Regarding your other comment, I know, and that's exactly my point. You had a concern about the way that the other post framed the user's opinion. My comment attempted to do exactly what you're asking for - approach the user with a positive attitude and ask for more data without vilifying them (eg, "[making] people sound like assholes").
Please, I'm begging you not to do this. HN is the only platform on the internet I still engage with because it's one of the few places where people generally act like people (whether the emotions are positive or negative), as opposed to the broader internet, where the smirking tone of provocation is always the first priority.
I've already said I've just been trying to be polite in my conversations. There's no "smirking tone of provocation" intended, and the smilies are intended to be taken at face value - genuine smiles, not sarcastic or superior smirks.
I've told you a few times now that I'm attempting to be polite as I converse in good faith. I don't know how else to make that point again, nor why you continue to insist I'm being provocative. I wished you a nice day because I could feel that we were already at that impasse.
>I don't like it when Trump does it too, but I don't understand the people acting like this is somehow a new and unprecedented thing.
Sans near-total embargoes on goods from a country, have we ever imposed sweeping tariffs of 145% on all goods coming from one of our most-imported trade partners?
No, no we have not. Certain tariffs were very targeted for specific reasons, you are correct. But those were not blanket-applied haphazardly at such high levels. Hence, "unprecedented".
Those are broader economic embargoes, not tariffs. A lot more is involved in that situation and it's much more nuanced than what's happening with tariffs today. Hence my comment, "sans near-total embargoes on a country". Tariffs are taxes on goods allowed to enter the country - embargoes are a total elimination of trade (meaning we can't receive and we can't ship to) with a country.
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