<story><title>The benefits of staying off social media</title><url>https://durmonski.com/life-advice/benefits-of-staying-off-social-media/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ipdashc</author><text>&amp;gt; Where people consider talking to someone a chore.&lt;p&gt;This bit in particular really hit me. I&amp;#x27;ve noticed a rising trend around the Internet (or maybe I was just blind to it before), mostly on Reddit, of people who really do seem to consider any sort of real-life social interaction a chore and an attack.&lt;p&gt;I forget the exact context, I think the conversation that stood out to me was about someone in a gas station or something, trying to make friendly conversation with another shopper next to them, along the lines of &amp;quot;oh that&amp;#x27;s a cool hat&amp;quot;. And the consensus of the thread was &amp;quot;yeah that&amp;#x27;s awful, why would you do that, why are you subjecting them to the labor of talking to you&amp;quot; or such.&lt;p&gt;Guys... we&amp;#x27;re humans. It isn&amp;#x27;t a crime to make small talk. It&amp;#x27;s not a chore to open your mouth. Most of us consider (or used to consider; and I&amp;#x27;m not even old) that enjoyable. What happened?</text></item><item><author>pkdpic</author><text>&amp;gt; A futuristic dystopia. A place where the real world sucks. Where people consider talking to someone a chore. Connection, closeness, ambition are replaced by detachment and dogmatic slumber. Society is satisfied with shallow thoughts and the pursuit of artificially created stimuli in an imaginary world.&lt;p&gt;Beautifully written top-notch orwellian poetry. Seriously inspiring.&lt;p&gt;Also as someone who has only ever used social media as a low-level content creator (we used to be called deadbeat artists) I feel like this starts an important conversation about the new problems that develop when you stop consuming and start doing.&lt;p&gt;In my experience over the last  decade there are fewer and fewer ways to find a community and any success as a creator of any kind without getting corralled into social media and furthermore getting corralled into being a daily active user &amp;#x2F; consumer as to not get shadow banned by any given app.&lt;p&gt;Doing rather than consuming feels much healthier than doom scrolling, but theres a larger dialogue that has to happen about the problems with creating in the 21st century imho.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rhino369</author><text>Reddit has a culture that normalizes the symptoms of social anxiety. They call it introversion, but the way its described is 100% social anxiety.&lt;p&gt;I am sympathetic, I have it too. Hell, ever male in my dad&amp;#x27;s family line seems to have it.&lt;p&gt;But its a problem that needs to be treated and not a character trait that needs to be respected.  The WORST thing you can do for social anxiety (or any anxiety) is to avoid trigger it. You&amp;#x27;ll become a depressed shut in.</text></comment>
<story><title>The benefits of staying off social media</title><url>https://durmonski.com/life-advice/benefits-of-staying-off-social-media/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ipdashc</author><text>&amp;gt; Where people consider talking to someone a chore.&lt;p&gt;This bit in particular really hit me. I&amp;#x27;ve noticed a rising trend around the Internet (or maybe I was just blind to it before), mostly on Reddit, of people who really do seem to consider any sort of real-life social interaction a chore and an attack.&lt;p&gt;I forget the exact context, I think the conversation that stood out to me was about someone in a gas station or something, trying to make friendly conversation with another shopper next to them, along the lines of &amp;quot;oh that&amp;#x27;s a cool hat&amp;quot;. And the consensus of the thread was &amp;quot;yeah that&amp;#x27;s awful, why would you do that, why are you subjecting them to the labor of talking to you&amp;quot; or such.&lt;p&gt;Guys... we&amp;#x27;re humans. It isn&amp;#x27;t a crime to make small talk. It&amp;#x27;s not a chore to open your mouth. Most of us consider (or used to consider; and I&amp;#x27;m not even old) that enjoyable. What happened?</text></item><item><author>pkdpic</author><text>&amp;gt; A futuristic dystopia. A place where the real world sucks. Where people consider talking to someone a chore. Connection, closeness, ambition are replaced by detachment and dogmatic slumber. Society is satisfied with shallow thoughts and the pursuit of artificially created stimuli in an imaginary world.&lt;p&gt;Beautifully written top-notch orwellian poetry. Seriously inspiring.&lt;p&gt;Also as someone who has only ever used social media as a low-level content creator (we used to be called deadbeat artists) I feel like this starts an important conversation about the new problems that develop when you stop consuming and start doing.&lt;p&gt;In my experience over the last  decade there are fewer and fewer ways to find a community and any success as a creator of any kind without getting corralled into social media and furthermore getting corralled into being a daily active user &amp;#x2F; consumer as to not get shadow banned by any given app.&lt;p&gt;Doing rather than consuming feels much healthier than doom scrolling, but theres a larger dialogue that has to happen about the problems with creating in the 21st century imho.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munchbunny</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s an over-correction around the introversion&amp;#x2F;extroversion divide.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s true that sometimes I just don&amp;#x27;t want to be bothered while I&amp;#x27;m running errands, but I wouldn&amp;#x27;t consider someone making small talk, cracking a joke in the elevator, etc. to be some sort of social transgression. As an introvert, chatting or small talk isn&amp;#x27;t really a chore, and I waste enough of my own time on my own time, so what&amp;#x27;s a few words with a stranger?&lt;p&gt;That said, it should be considered perfectly acceptable to signal that you don&amp;#x27;t want to stay engaged in a conversation if it&amp;#x27;s someone trying to explain their theory on building a perpetual motion machine. That actually happened. I did not want to stay in that conversation. But even extroverts don&amp;#x27;t like dealing with crazy.&lt;p&gt;It only becomes a chore when the talking itself is &lt;i&gt;the work&lt;/i&gt;, such as dealing with Comcast charging you for a modem you totally did return, or dealing with the hospital when they incorrectly billed your health insurance and now they&amp;#x27;re trying to make you pay for the difference.</text></comment>