from the it's-not-lurking-it's-gathering-intel dept.
Excessive Facebook browsing at Christmas, and seeing "perfect" family photos posted by others, is more likely to make you miserable, reports the BBC on a paper recently published by a graduate at the University of Copenhagen. The Facebook Experiment: Quitting Facebook Leads to Higher Levels of Well-Being.
Researchers warn of envy and a "deterioration of mood" from spending too long looking at other people's social media stories, induced by "unrealistic social comparisons".
Actively engaging in conversation and connecting with people on social media seems to be a much more positive experience, suggests the study, published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking.
This seems to be much less gloomy than "passive" users who spend too long "lurking" on social networking websites without getting involved.
The study also suggests benefits from stopping using social media altogether for a week.
You may not be surprised to learn that similar studies have been published in the past. (No reports yet from the Maximegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious.)
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:50AM
But I will tell you that just today I received a PO from my new client - I had previously been out of work for six years.
I start Tuesday.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:54AM
First post is Crowfard, crowing about how you should envy his success.
Go back under your bridge!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:07AM
The good news is, now that he has an employer, he won't have to sleep under a bridge. He can sleep in his office like all of Google and Apple do.
That's how you know you've made it to the big leagues.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:22AM
The suicide nets are also hammocks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:09PM
If you've been following his blog on this site, you would know he already does not sleep under a bridge.
Michael, congratulations.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday December 24 2016, @11:45PM
I have to admit that Soylent was right, in that accepting the subsidized housing enabled me to get back to work.
Soon I'll be paying my own rent.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:13AM
Isn't it a little late for seasonal temp work?(grin)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:27AM
“Buried how long?”
“Almost eighteen years.”
“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“Long ago.”
The words were still in his hearing as just spoken—distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life—when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night were gone.
He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.
“Eighteen years!” said the passenger, looking at the sun. “Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!”
- A Tale of Two Cities
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:59AM
Congratulations! Told you it would get better.
Now I just need to get something similar. A job... 8 months so far.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday December 26 2016, @07:42PM
Congratulations.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 24 2016, @02:59AM
I've been saying this forever, because I learned all those lessons back in the MySpace days and Tom was even a lot more likeable than Zuckerburg.
It reminds me of Thrasher magazine's poseur shot of the month, where skaters would take photos of themselves doing rad-looking tricks (that they wouldn't land and used off-camera assistance to perform) except that on social media, every shot is a poseur shot. You don't see all the fights and arguments that "happy couple" are having, or how fat they are thanks to creative angles, or bragging about how so-totally-deep-and-existentialist they are just because they read Metamorphosis or The Stranger. Oh, and then there's the data collection, social engineering, political media manipulation, and all that other bad shit going on behind the scenes. No thanks -- especially now, where simply having an opinion about anything can get you demonized when traced back to your identity.
It's all a load of fake-ass bullshit. Back in my pre-ban Slashdot days I'd show one of my good friends my troll posts, and explain the art of trolling, which he did not "get" at the time. The funny thing is, after refusing for so long, he finally got on Facebook and discovered how awesome trolling is, and thanks me for it.
Of course, it helps to have my kind of mentality with regard to friends, family, and acquaintances: If you're too lazy to call, text, e-mail, IM, or write me snail-mail; then you are not worth worrying about. I have a small but fierce circle of friends I've known for many years and am fine with that, but that kind of situation doesn't work for all personality types.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:08AM
or bragging about how so-totally-deep-and-existentialist they are just because they read Metamorphosis or The Stranger.
Eth knows about Kafka and Camus? Color me amazed. Merry XxXX Feliz Navidad!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:18AM
Merry Christmas jackass. Hope that yule log doesn't get stuck up your ass like last year.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:34AM
I was struck, many years ago, attending a Catholic Mass, and hearing the Opus Dei priest intone "and Peace on Earth, to those who agree with us." Actually had to go look up the original Greek, which runs, "καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη, ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία." That's ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία, or people of good opinion (εὐ- "good", or "well", as in eulogy, and δοκία, or δόξα, "opinion" from δοκεῖν, to think.") So I guess that those who agree with us would be the ones with good opinions, right-thinking folks, as Americans might say. So Merry Solstice to you, AC, and may the coming year improve your online manners and reasoning abilities in general.
(Score: 1) by barbara hudson on Saturday December 24 2016, @05:27PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:45AM
Back in my pre-ban Slashdot days
I've been thrown out of better sites than this!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Dunbal on Saturday December 24 2016, @03:33AM
Miserable people do a lot of lurking on facebook.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 24 2016, @04:11AM
Or a lot of lurking everywhere, for that matter.
I think the demarcation is when one becomes more concerned with what others are doing, rather than what they themselves are doing.
(Score: 2) by novak on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:34AM
This. Facebook et al. are a form of bragging where people showcase "The best version of themselves." No one I know has a life as good as many people's facebook lives. People who lurk may be lurking because:
1) As this article suggests, it's just a thing people do, but doing it makes them depressed.
Or, 2), the people you see on facebook appear "above them," because they compare other people's posts of the best parts of their life to their own real life, and they feel that everyone else has a better life than them. They lurk because they they cannot relate or talk to someone who's life is that great, whether or not it is real.
novak
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 24 2016, @05:11AM
Watching happy TV shows, full of programming about happy people living wonderful lives where everything always works out fine. Then get in your expensive car and go stuff a cheeseburger down your throat before heading to the stores to buy needless shit for all the other happy people in your life, all on credit of course!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Saturday December 24 2016, @05:36AM
There's an animatic (?) for a piece of the movie which had an interesting take on social media:
(from the Wikipedia page)
An earlier draft of the screenplay had Ralph and Vanellope spending time going around the game world to collect the pieces for her kart for Sugar Rush, and at times included Felix traveling with the pair. During these scenes, Ralph would have lied to Felix regarding his budding relationship with Calhoun, leading eventually to Ralph becoming depressed and abandoning his quest to get his medal back. At this point, a fourth game world, Extreme Easy Living 2, would have been introduced and was considered a "hedonistic place" between the social nature of The Sims and the open-world objective-less aspects of Grand Theft Auto, according to Moore.[46] Ralph would go there too, wallowing in his depression, and would find happiness by gaining "Like It" buttons for doing acceptable actions in the party-like nature of the place. Moore stated that while it was difficult to consider dropping this new game world, they found that its introduction in the second half of the film would be too difficult a concept for the viewer to grasp.[46] They further had trouble working out how a social game would be part of an arcade, and though they considered having the game be running on Litwak's laptop, they ultimately realized that justifying the concept would be too convoluted. Line art sketches and voice-over readings of the scene were included on the home media release of the film.[46]
I would have liked to see the concept in the movie, regardless of whether or not they could wedge it in to the plotline. Lord knows entire movies survive on poorly-developed plots.