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The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look attractive to other people.
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I wouldn't agree with that fully, because I (and I assume many others) often share stuff because I think it's cool and others might like to check it out. Think of the number of time you have discovered neat stuff because someone shared it.
So if you are sharing compulsively and simply in order to make yourself seem awesome, that's messed up - but it is also the cost of content discovery on an ever expanding internet.
It's possible you're just thinking too much about it. A lot of people look back on the things they've shared as a way of maintaining a personal photo album. My facebook definitely has a more complete photo history than any one device I own, and it's almost effortless to throw the photos I take up there.
That, and I don't mind seeing the things my friends are doing - it gives me ideas for things I want to do in the future. I used to disdain the "humblebrag" nature of sharing random photos, but I've been getting into a much more "fuck it" attitude recently. It's going okay.
I think that self-inquiry here is the key, finding one's intentions.
I've sometimes found days ruined by the constant need to update everybody on things – on close examination, I can feel the compulsive need to be bigger and better, which is just more ego – and when looking back at those photos, I know I didn't take them as an expression of the moment, I took them as an ego–enhancer. Which didn't work.
On the other hand, I don't think he's saying "never take photos, never share things". If you examine your intentions and find you're not simply using sharing and photos as a bragging method, then power to you.
This, this, a million times this. I recall a professor very fond the phrase "you may wish to examine your motives".
I have found that fantastic advice and hear it most of the time before I click "post", "reply", "submit", etc.
Even here, now. I'm about to post this comment. Do I want karma? Do I need an outlet for the thought? Why am I posting this? Have I achieved everything I wanted by just writing it and actually could just close the tab without hitting reply?
Yeah, it's a path inwards, which is powerful but I suppose you gotta be careful about – in case "you may wish to examine your motives" is just more ego, mind-games..
The closest I've come is acknowledging there may be a sweet spot somewhere between introspection, expression, and just following good activity habits without thinking or talking too hard about them.
My hunch is that when you've got something solidly in place that "works" (well balanced exercise, diet, career, relationships, family, finances, security, play, hobbies, routine, sleep, etc.) then excessive self-inquiry and validation-seeking don't seem so important any more.
OP here. I definitely agree with you about social media being a good way of maintaining a record of what you've done. I often used to scroll down and down my FB wall for hours looking back at all the pictures and memories from my time at university.
I probably should have played this up more in the post, but my motivation for writing this came from having been on holiday and feeling a huge relief after I decided to stop constantly trying to document everything I was doing. I took just a handful of pictures, wrote about my day each evening on OhLife (great service if you haven't used it) and besides that just enjoyed the moment. When I compared this to what I see when my friends are on holiday ("At the top of the Empire State!!!1 #w00t #thuglyfe") I felt compelled to share my thoughts. To be clear, it's not a holier-than-thou attitude, I just think that people miss out on a lot when they concern themselves more with posting about their experiences than they do with enjoying them.
I tend to agree with him, that we share and document the parts of our lives that matter to us, to help create our identity. It's the same way people drive a car that fits or fill their closets with their style of clothing. It's an outward expression of who we believe we are, and how we view the world.
Look at how teenagers use tumblr. They curate content to exactly match themselves.
I agree with your viewpoint totally - and others may disagree as they have a vested interest in encouraging consumers to share - but it is an trend that is becoming increasingly prevalent. I think your main point is that we are sliding towards the sharing-for-sharing's-sake end of the sharing spectrum rather quickly and perhaps without realising it, and that its something to be conscious of.
>The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look attractive to other people. Your experience of something, even if similar to the experience of many others, is unique and cannot be reproduced within the constraints of social media. So internalise that experience instead. Think about it. Go home and think about it some more. Write about it in more than 140 characters; on paper even. Paint a picture of it. Talk about it face to face with your friends. Talk about how it made you feel.
I think this is precisely backwards. Social media sharing enhances my experience rather than detracting from it, precisely because it is so artless: I'm not thinking about how to describe where I am or what it looks like, I just check in or send a photo. If I were to follow the advice in the second part of this paragraph, I'd be doing exactly what the first half warns me against: focussing my efforts on how things look to other people.
>> "Social media sharing enhances my experience rather than detracting from it, precisely because it is so artless: I'm not thinking about how to describe where I am or what it looks like, I just check in or send a photo."
How does checking in somewhere or posting a photo of something to your followers enhance your experience of something?
You've explained why you like posting/updating/etc., but you haven't explained how it enhances your experience of whatever you're doing at that moment (i.e. the subject of the posts/updates).
By way of example, how does taking a picture of your meal and sending it out on social media enhance the meal for you?
In my opinion you miss a lot around you when you are constantly staring at the screen of your device.
Two days ago I was sitting at a birthday party. The guy next to me constantly took pictures sending them with Watsapp. I never spoke a word to him because he was busy with his phone all the time.
I'm still not sure what to think about that but I don't think I like the change.
Not be demeaning, but there is an alternative way out of that - become a power user.
I frequently continue programming/typing, slip in an audio note to self or search the web via Google Now, while holding a normal conversation. And people with whom I interact got used to this to the level of requiring me to have the data from Wikipedia ready for the continuation of the discourse. :)
This is not a comment on the externalisation, but on how gadgetry, used properly, can add to experience.
"witholding" means the opposite of what you think it does, it means "preventing" or "holding back" in this context :)
Also I suspect a lot of people, certainly myself, would find this behaviour quite unsociable, and hard to bear during every conversation. The reason I think, is because it is so easy for someone doing this to slip into focussing on social media, or some news article, privately. It's also hard to tell whether you were temporarily ignoring me or just refreshing your memory on something we are talking about.
Edited, thank you. It was just a lapsus. Awkwardly placed one, though. :)
Come to think of it, this kind of behaviour may even act as a solid social filter. After all, if you cannot comprehend that I'm actually being an active part of conversation, notwithstanding my relationship with gadgets around, I'm not sure I want to continue conversing with you in particular.
Someone might call me on basic etiquette, but those are rules that are to be redefined at some point.
> "...if you cannot comprehend that I'm actually being an active part of conversation..."
All the normal methods of figuring out that someone is actively engaged are broken when you introduce devices. Eye contact, physical gestures, mini-facial expressions etc don't work anymore. How is one to tell that you're involved? Random interruptions?
It's perfectly ok for someone to 'drop out' of the flow momentarily to check their little screen but they shouldn't pretend that they're still involved in the actual conversation.
> I frequently continue programming/typing, slip in an audio note to self or search the web via Google Now, while holding a normal conversation. And people with whom I interact got used to this to the level of requiring me to have the data from Wikipedia ready for the continuation of the discourse. :)
If you ever do that while talking to me, I'm off. If you don't want to talk, don't, but if I'm genuinely less interesting than Google Now (of all things!) then why don't you just walk away?
2. Most people understand that as long as the flow of conversation is maintained, it doesn't really matter what else you're doing. People have conversations while doing other things all the time.
3. Doing something else while conversing with someone doesn't actually mean you're less interesting than that something else. It means that temporarily, there exists reason to do that thing.
4. You have a real relationship with the person with whom you are conversing and both of you understand that taking 10 seconds to look something up on wikipedia will not damage that relationship.
Could you really think of none of those things? If not, why not just signal your luddism directly by saying "If you use google now in my presence, I will hellban you from my life?"
It's also insulting to not give a conversation your full attention, for some of us. If I'm trying to talk with you about something (as opposed to talking to you), I'm going to be insulted if you're checking your phone and otherwise broadcasting through body language and your inattention that "what you're saying to me right now is unimportant, and I would rather be doing other things."
Whether you are capable of paying full attention to our conversation while doing other things is immaterial; it's about perception. If I feel like you're not interested in the conversation, I'm just going to shut up and move on.
>> "It's also insulting to not give a conversation your full attention, for some of us."
There are certain mental conditions (including variants of ADHD) wherein it's actually easier for someone to focus if they're doing two things than if they're doing one thing.
It's insulting to those of us with those conditions to be told to stop because you misunderstand us.
It's fine if people are insulted by that behavior. It's fine if people are insulted by people being insulted by that behavior.
There are enough people with varying behavioral preferences or needs that people insulted by that behavior to a significant degree should simply not associate with those people. Opportunity lost? Maybe. Maybe not. They probably aren't going to be the best fit together for whatever they're doing if they clash with that type of amplitude though.
That said, there's a point here that I don't think is made quite often enough, or not explicitly enough:
People do not have the right to not be insulted. If you're insulted by something some people do, I'd guess your course of actions should be:
+ ask them about why they do it
+ express that you find it insulting and why
and then if the context of their actions doesn't remove the insult to you, stop associating with them.
People are sometimes purposefully insulting -- those people are dicks, and you'll accomplish nothing by engaging them.
Some people are accidentally insulting and will gladly try to be aware of your sensibilities while you're around. Some people will have behavior that is part of their identity that is insulting to you for reasons that are pretty alien to them.
Particularly in that last case, people on all sides need to grow the fuck up and realize that being insulted and/or being interpreted as insulting is not nearly as big of a deal as some people make it out to be. Be insulted, be offended, it's fine.
Stop being indignant about it.
Speaking for myself, I can't imagine being insulted by something that when clarified did not have insult as its intent without having some sort of skewed notion of my value as a living thing in relation to other living things.
People hold conversations while doing other tasks all the time. It's perfectly normal to have conversations while driving, doing dishes, eating, reading the newspaper, watching tv, etc. It's not impossible to be interested in a conversation and doing something else.
2. The more attention you're giving to other things, the less conversational flow is maintained, period. It doesn't matter how good at multi-tasking you are, anything less than undivided attention is sub-optimal.
3. If there is an actual, explainable reason, the person will understand. If the reason is "I felt like checking email/facebook," you are demonstrating that they are not capturing your attention at that time.
4. Sometimes people aim for a higher level of engagement than "not actively damaging our relationship."
All that said, I'm guilty just like anyone else. I fully agree that taking a few seconds to look up some information can enhance the conversation. Even that breaks the flow though, as the other person is left to stare around or start looking at their phone (assuming a two-person situation), but it's worth it. But, there's a fine line between that action and doing other things that have no relevance to the other person (which is what the GP was talking about - leaving voice memos to self, really?).
Imagine a question comes up in conversation like ... "How close did Washington come to being proclaimed the king of the USA?"
Honestly I hate when people end a conversation like this by just looking up the answer on wikipedia. The point of these conversations is quite often NOT actually about getting the right answer - the point is to enjoy the conversation - explore the 'space' around some topic, each participant in the conversation sharing their own perspective & knowledge. The cool thing about conversations like this is all the stuff that comes up which would otherwise be short-circuited by the closed door an "official" answer imposes.
Your social skills are severely lacking. If you were 13 it might just get you the "it is rude to do that" talk. Otherwise you will find the problem of people interrupting your onanistic self absorption will sort itself out over time.
Why frightening? People want to record memories of things that are important to them. Seeing the pope is important to a lot of people.
Would you say the same about all the people at a Pop concert? People derive emotional value from their pictures and videos. Little computers-in-your-pocket just happen to make it easier.
Aside: We don't really know how many of those people in the pope-pic are sharing vs just recording for posterity -- the OP is primarily talking about the former
I am likely preaching to the choir here, but the following is true. If you don't like this 'externalization' discussed by the author, try this:
Keep your phone off of your body more often.
Going to get a haircut, or go to the mall for an hour? Leave the phone in the car. It is really freeing; you do not realize the subtle impact of that phone/pager/digital watch constantly on the verge of maybe someone messaging you.
Try it out once or twice, especially if it sounds like it'd be tough.
I've started doing this and I can't agree more. It's extremely freeing when you realize that you don't need to be at the beck and call of your phone and email all the time. It also makes those times when your phone runs out of juice much easier to handle.
I enjoy seeing what my friends and family are up to, including the minutiae that might not otherwise come up in conversation. In participating, I also have an easy history of the things I've done to look back over. My wife loves TimeHop reminding her, via social updates, what she was doing on the same day a year ago. "Remember this?" Cue much reminiscing.
Further to that, all social sharing serves as developing a personal brand and there are social and commercial advantages to that whether all doing it realise or not.
"Paint a picture of it."
I almost laughed at this bit. Why not allow even more time for contemplative thought by first creating inks from scratch, using ingredients relevant to the original experience and naming each combination of colours to evoke just the right memories?
Personally, I agree. I know there are differing opinions but I don't care most of the time what my friends & family are up to in real-time. They'll tell me when I see them. I like to write about things I have done if I have some opinion of it, or if I'm proud of an achievement, but that's about it. People don't necessarily need to know what I'm doing right now if it's nothing particularly special or new.
Conversely, I don't need to necessarily need to know what they are doing all the time. But if they feel the need to share, fine. I just hope that if they read this post, by you, they might critically think about their current behaviour.
My parents' generation would share holiday snaps or even host slide show evenings for neighbours after traveling somewhere. I think that photo sharing on Facebook etc. is just the modern version of that and as back then, we have people who find this obnoxious, interpreting it as a form of bragging.
I believe it may be a little bit bragging, but is mostly validation-seeking. Many people just seem to be wired in a way that craves a social response to their behaviour. Call it neediness, insecurity, whatever...I think the kindest thing is to simply identify it as a personality trait.
Back in the slide show days I remember being impressed by the stance my parents took which was to sit back and enjoy the holiday snaps as much as they could, because the person showing them was getting something out of that.
Today, I will act interested in a dream a co-worker wants to tell me, not because I am particularly gripped by how they "were flying, but also not, and everyone's face was Graham from accounts", but because it seems to make them happy to have someone listen. If simply clicking a "like" button or posting a thoughtful comment can give someone warm fuzzies (and we know it does) then I'll do it.
Spot on. I may have expressed myself unclearly - I am indeed referencing that trope of boring slide evenings, and likening them to the photos which flood our social newsfeeds, showing e.g. Asian Fusion cuisine, rock climbing, and pouting in nightclubs.
The point I'm making is that the boredom joke about the slide evenings was social etiquette and care for other people's feelings preventing intelligent, well-mannered people from being anything but polite. The joke was indeed always on the slide-shower, and it was a bitter-sweet empathic one. I see a modern parallel.
The big advantage of Facebook or Twitter over slide evenings is that it’s much easier to skip a FB update you don’t care about (or even skip all updates from someone) than it was to duck out of a slide evening.
Even better, you may have friends who are not overly selective about what they share, but still share something worthwhile every now and then. With social media, it’s fairly painless to pick our the worthwhile pieces. In a slide evening, I’d have been bored to death.
I can't really refute any of that, it's a good takedown of the analogy. I'm trying to draw parallels which help me understand what's happening and behave appropriately but yes, there are very relevant differences.
I suppose I would say two things, one serious and one silly:
The serious is that I actually do find it harder and harder "to pick out the worthwhile pieces" in social media. I'm adding more people, they're all posting more, and the feeds are getting messier and messier. I don't think slide evenings started as snoreathons, and there must have been a novelty period before it all got tedious. If there was a turning point then I feel we're not far from the equivalent one with our social media photo-flooding.
The silly is that at the slide evening I would be plied with wine and...well, in those days I suppose Twiglets? Right this second, I would gladly sit through an hour or two of Machu Pichu (OK, let's be realistic: Cornwall) in exchange for a comfortable chair and the quaffing of a few glasses ;)
The problem with the messy feeds is quite real for me too. I find that in Facebook, things tend to balance out reasonably well: Most friends don’t write a flood of updates, or particularly long updates, and the feed balancing algorithm seems to present me with a reasonable mix of updates.
I’m far less active in Twitter, where I seem to easily get overwhelmed by a flood of small updates, or G+, which seems to attract highly prolific writers.
Yeah, kill the growth model for most "social" companies. The amount of noise is really counter-productive. I know one can just turn it off, but I don't want to live in society where most don't turn it off and focus on presenting life to others instead on life itself.
I still remember how social media revolutionized the tech scene in San Diego, where everyone is spread out and can't mingle that often. Instead of monthly meetups where people kept asking "what have you been doing in the last 4 weeks?" it was "tell more about X you were saying on Twitter." Dialogue became more deep and dynamic.
We can't close Pandora's box. Might as well figure out how to make it work for you.
My thoughts exactly. Let's be honest, most people share stuff on FB/Twitter to show off, they project an idealised picture of their life - photos from parties, trips, concerts and so on with one clear message: "Look at my awesome life!". Who cares? Why is it so important to know everything about everyone, all the time? Why share every bit of your life with hundreds of people you barely know?
Some would call it "narcissism", which (with an appropriately nuanced meaning) I think is more accurate than "bragging".
I strongly agree with the article. Sharing your experiences with social networking isn't necessarily about needing to get validation from others on your experience in order for the experience to feel complete for you... but for some people, it is. And I have to wonder, the more prevalent social networking becomes, are more and more people going to use it as their image-of-self crutch? And I have to wonder, what does such a society look like after a few decades? It's a bit like Warhol's "15 minutes of fame", except minutes are the wrong unit of measure. Everybody's a 15 milligram celebrity...
Regarding what this looks like in a few decades, I talked elsewhere in the thread about slideshow evenings and it was correctly pointed out these are exclusively thought of as a joke. I believe that's where we're going: we'll mock the narcissistic behaviour out of the culture. This is a good start: http://youtu.be/Nn-dD-QKYN4. Of course, a new thing will come along and it all repeats.
I also feel its the modern day version of 'keeping up with the jones's'. I have my startup, which I've been working on for the past few years. After being inundated with images of new babies, houses, cars etc, its hard to resist trying to show my life in a better light.
I've had a facebook account since 2006. I never post anymore. The only reason I haven't completely deleted it, is because it's a decent way to stay in touch with old acquaintances. I don't tweet. I don't check in anywhere. I don't post to instagram. It's just not an appealing to me. Other than close friends/family, people don't really care what you are doing.
Facebook and other social outlets are a way for people to humbly or not-so-humbly brag about what they are doing, and for those people consuming the content to be envious or critical of it.
I enjoy the fact that I can step away from the computer at any moment and not feel the urge to repeatedly check Twitter, Facebook etc.. and just enjoy life. I don't think I'm missing out on anything by not socially sharing my life on the internet.
This is a big part of why I stopped using Twitter. Of course, every tool has its uses and misuses, and Twitter can be an excellent way of discovering new content from favorite producers, but using it myself turned into a popularity contest.
PG writes about popularity contests in Hackers and Painters, and how geeks prefer doing and learning over winning popularity standing. I didn't read H&P until after I had quit Twitter (and largely quit Facebook. Facebook is nothing more now than "email from my mother"). But that resonates well with me. I found myself tracking trending hash tags and trying to come up with witty, pithy tweets that I could also hashtag in kind. I had specific strategies that I would test and track the retweets and replies. It was kind of sick, looking back at it now.
But looking back at my internet life, it wasn't always like that. If you consider the BBS and web forum to be proto-social networks, this type of behavior (in certain communities) was neither broached nor tolerated. A much greater emphasis on discourse existed. In certain online communities, posting "+1" or "first" (or its more recent analogs "this" or "feels") was a fast track to banning. But those networks had something that Facebook and its ilk lack: administrative moderation, either by a staff of people or by community members with elevated privileges.
They were also geared towards the long form of prose, rather than the pithy-saying style. Twitter still has it's 140 character limit; it is considered the culture of Twitter. Facebook for many people functionally had the same limit as they interfaced with it through MMS. I don't know if they still do now, but at one time Facebook had a character limit on status updates and replies; even if those limits were removed now, the vast majority of Facebook's users are trained towards them now, and we see a new article every week talking about Facebook being unable to attract "new, teenage" users. Similarly, Tumblr's easiest levels of contribution are the reblog and photoshares.
When the discourse is so severely limited, then there can't be a discourse. People will revert to what is easiest: posting things that are not meant to engender discourse. People brag, always have, it's natural. But the signal to noise ratio is much worse now because services like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook make the noise so much easier to create than the signal.
EDIT: sorry, typos, still on my first cup this morning.
Most "normal" conversations could be cast in this narcissistic light, if you wanted to. People tell each other about the interesting things that happen to them, and not about the mundane, sad, or private things. An awful lot of conversation is about establishing common ground and consists of "Have you seen that film?" "Yeah, I saw it. I liked it, the actor, he was in another film, did you see that?". Back and forth exchanges of, fairly dull information. Of course people get into deeper conversations as they get to know each other, and these are often sparked off by the dull stuff. This happens on Facebook too of course, though often it's privately, and so less visible.
I think the negative reaction from a lot of people is mainly the shock of the new. Like it or not your children will use online networks and sharing as part of their normal social landscape. You can either bemoan them all as unnatural monsters, or realise that these things are inherent to social interaction, and not a problem caused by techcnology.
Just for the record (pun totally intended): I fucking hate it when at a party/rave/concert everybody and their damned mother is standing around recording everything. Especially on the dancefloor. Especially especially if they then are all like "Dude, could you stop moving around, I'm trying to record this!1!!".
I prefer my life now than it was before when internet wearing diapers. Before, I had to eat all the drama from everyone I had to meet in any circunstancie, many times, I had to be a listener to really idiots dilemmas or silly issues i really didn't give a shit just because often you can not choose when and whom to talk, well, actually, yes, but that also carries a price: be repudiated because you had decided not to tolerate such interactions.
The offline world can give many joys but also do not forget that it can bring many dilemmas too. And in my experience has shown me that dilemmas abound more rather than the joys.
I interact with people more now than before and this does not keep me from choosing what conversations I get into the offline world. But I preffer this much because people is on their stuff and not bothering each other without reasons.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 50.0 ms ] threadSo if you are sharing compulsively and simply in order to make yourself seem awesome, that's messed up - but it is also the cost of content discovery on an ever expanding internet.
That, and I don't mind seeing the things my friends are doing - it gives me ideas for things I want to do in the future. I used to disdain the "humblebrag" nature of sharing random photos, but I've been getting into a much more "fuck it" attitude recently. It's going okay.
I've sometimes found days ruined by the constant need to update everybody on things – on close examination, I can feel the compulsive need to be bigger and better, which is just more ego – and when looking back at those photos, I know I didn't take them as an expression of the moment, I took them as an ego–enhancer. Which didn't work.
On the other hand, I don't think he's saying "never take photos, never share things". If you examine your intentions and find you're not simply using sharing and photos as a bragging method, then power to you.
I have found that fantastic advice and hear it most of the time before I click "post", "reply", "submit", etc.
Even here, now. I'm about to post this comment. Do I want karma? Do I need an outlet for the thought? Why am I posting this? Have I achieved everything I wanted by just writing it and actually could just close the tab without hitting reply?
It is not a pleasant feeling.
The closest I've come is acknowledging there may be a sweet spot somewhere between introspection, expression, and just following good activity habits without thinking or talking too hard about them.
My hunch is that when you've got something solidly in place that "works" (well balanced exercise, diet, career, relationships, family, finances, security, play, hobbies, routine, sleep, etc.) then excessive self-inquiry and validation-seeking don't seem so important any more.
I probably should have played this up more in the post, but my motivation for writing this came from having been on holiday and feeling a huge relief after I decided to stop constantly trying to document everything I was doing. I took just a handful of pictures, wrote about my day each evening on OhLife (great service if you haven't used it) and besides that just enjoyed the moment. When I compared this to what I see when my friends are on holiday ("At the top of the Empire State!!!1 #w00t #thuglyfe") I felt compelled to share my thoughts. To be clear, it's not a holier-than-thou attitude, I just think that people miss out on a lot when they concern themselves more with posting about their experiences than they do with enjoying them.
Maybe they don't. Maybe unlike you and I (and others), most or at least many people are perfectly able to fully enjoy the experience while sharing it.
Not everyone does that.
More seriously, balance is everything. Take photos, then put away your phone/camera, and enjoy the view.
I tend to agree with him, that we share and document the parts of our lives that matter to us, to help create our identity. It's the same way people drive a car that fits or fill their closets with their style of clothing. It's an outward expression of who we believe we are, and how we view the world.
Look at how teenagers use tumblr. They curate content to exactly match themselves.
I think this is precisely backwards. Social media sharing enhances my experience rather than detracting from it, precisely because it is so artless: I'm not thinking about how to describe where I am or what it looks like, I just check in or send a photo. If I were to follow the advice in the second part of this paragraph, I'd be doing exactly what the first half warns me against: focussing my efforts on how things look to other people.
How does checking in somewhere or posting a photo of something to your followers enhance your experience of something?
By way of example, how does taking a picture of your meal and sending it out on social media enhance the meal for you?
In my opinion you miss a lot around you when you are constantly staring at the screen of your device.
Two days ago I was sitting at a birthday party. The guy next to me constantly took pictures sending them with Watsapp. I never spoke a word to him because he was busy with his phone all the time.
I'm still not sure what to think about that but I don't think I like the change.
I frequently continue programming/typing, slip in an audio note to self or search the web via Google Now, while holding a normal conversation. And people with whom I interact got used to this to the level of requiring me to have the data from Wikipedia ready for the continuation of the discourse. :)
This is not a comment on the externalisation, but on how gadgetry, used properly, can add to experience.
Also I suspect a lot of people, certainly myself, would find this behaviour quite unsociable, and hard to bear during every conversation. The reason I think, is because it is so easy for someone doing this to slip into focussing on social media, or some news article, privately. It's also hard to tell whether you were temporarily ignoring me or just refreshing your memory on something we are talking about.
Come to think of it, this kind of behaviour may even act as a solid social filter. After all, if you cannot comprehend that I'm actually being an active part of conversation, notwithstanding my relationship with gadgets around, I'm not sure I want to continue conversing with you in particular.
Someone might call me on basic etiquette, but those are rules that are to be redefined at some point.
All the normal methods of figuring out that someone is actively engaged are broken when you introduce devices. Eye contact, physical gestures, mini-facial expressions etc don't work anymore. How is one to tell that you're involved? Random interruptions?
It's perfectly ok for someone to 'drop out' of the flow momentarily to check their little screen but they shouldn't pretend that they're still involved in the actual conversation.
Why do you think Google likes meta content? Because that defines context. And content without context is often meaningless.
Edit: When you drop what you are doing to have a conversation with someone you make them feel important. Why not make people feel good?
If you ever do that while talking to me, I'm off. If you don't want to talk, don't, but if I'm genuinely less interesting than Google Now (of all things!) then why don't you just walk away?
1. It would be insulting to do that.
2. Most people understand that as long as the flow of conversation is maintained, it doesn't really matter what else you're doing. People have conversations while doing other things all the time.
3. Doing something else while conversing with someone doesn't actually mean you're less interesting than that something else. It means that temporarily, there exists reason to do that thing.
4. You have a real relationship with the person with whom you are conversing and both of you understand that taking 10 seconds to look something up on wikipedia will not damage that relationship.
Could you really think of none of those things? If not, why not just signal your luddism directly by saying "If you use google now in my presence, I will hellban you from my life?"
It's also insulting to not give a conversation your full attention, for some of us. If I'm trying to talk with you about something (as opposed to talking to you), I'm going to be insulted if you're checking your phone and otherwise broadcasting through body language and your inattention that "what you're saying to me right now is unimportant, and I would rather be doing other things."
Whether you are capable of paying full attention to our conversation while doing other things is immaterial; it's about perception. If I feel like you're not interested in the conversation, I'm just going to shut up and move on.
There are certain mental conditions (including variants of ADHD) wherein it's actually easier for someone to focus if they're doing two things than if they're doing one thing.
It's insulting to those of us with those conditions to be told to stop because you misunderstand us.
There are enough people with varying behavioral preferences or needs that people insulted by that behavior to a significant degree should simply not associate with those people. Opportunity lost? Maybe. Maybe not. They probably aren't going to be the best fit together for whatever they're doing if they clash with that type of amplitude though.
That said, there's a point here that I don't think is made quite often enough, or not explicitly enough:
People do not have the right to not be insulted. If you're insulted by something some people do, I'd guess your course of actions should be:
+ ask them about why they do it
+ express that you find it insulting and why
and then if the context of their actions doesn't remove the insult to you, stop associating with them.
People are sometimes purposefully insulting -- those people are dicks, and you'll accomplish nothing by engaging them.
Some people are accidentally insulting and will gladly try to be aware of your sensibilities while you're around. Some people will have behavior that is part of their identity that is insulting to you for reasons that are pretty alien to them.
Particularly in that last case, people on all sides need to grow the fuck up and realize that being insulted and/or being interpreted as insulting is not nearly as big of a deal as some people make it out to be. Be insulted, be offended, it's fine.
Stop being indignant about it.
Speaking for myself, I can't imagine being insulted by something that when clarified did not have insult as its intent without having some sort of skewed notion of my value as a living thing in relation to other living things.
3. If there is an actual, explainable reason, the person will understand. If the reason is "I felt like checking email/facebook," you are demonstrating that they are not capturing your attention at that time.
4. Sometimes people aim for a higher level of engagement than "not actively damaging our relationship."
All that said, I'm guilty just like anyone else. I fully agree that taking a few seconds to look up some information can enhance the conversation. Even that breaks the flow though, as the other person is left to stare around or start looking at their phone (assuming a two-person situation), but it's worth it. But, there's a fine line between that action and doing other things that have no relevance to the other person (which is what the GP was talking about - leaving voice memos to self, really?).
Honestly I hate when people end a conversation like this by just looking up the answer on wikipedia. The point of these conversations is quite often NOT actually about getting the right answer - the point is to enjoy the conversation - explore the 'space' around some topic, each participant in the conversation sharing their own perspective & knowledge. The cool thing about conversations like this is all the stuff that comes up which would otherwise be short-circuited by the closed door an "official" answer imposes.
Would you say the same about all the people at a Pop concert? People derive emotional value from their pictures and videos. Little computers-in-your-pocket just happen to make it easier.
Aside: We don't really know how many of those people in the pope-pic are sharing vs just recording for posterity -- the OP is primarily talking about the former
EDIT: Turns out the pics aren't really comparable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5492146
Keep your phone off of your body more often.
Going to get a haircut, or go to the mall for an hour? Leave the phone in the car. It is really freeing; you do not realize the subtle impact of that phone/pager/digital watch constantly on the verge of maybe someone messaging you.
Try it out once or twice, especially if it sounds like it'd be tough.
I enjoy seeing what my friends and family are up to, including the minutiae that might not otherwise come up in conversation. In participating, I also have an easy history of the things I've done to look back over. My wife loves TimeHop reminding her, via social updates, what she was doing on the same day a year ago. "Remember this?" Cue much reminiscing.
Further to that, all social sharing serves as developing a personal brand and there are social and commercial advantages to that whether all doing it realise or not.
"Paint a picture of it."
I almost laughed at this bit. Why not allow even more time for contemplative thought by first creating inks from scratch, using ingredients relevant to the original experience and naming each combination of colours to evoke just the right memories?
Conversely, I don't need to necessarily need to know what they are doing all the time. But if they feel the need to share, fine. I just hope that if they read this post, by you, they might critically think about their current behaviour.
I believe it may be a little bit bragging, but is mostly validation-seeking. Many people just seem to be wired in a way that craves a social response to their behaviour. Call it neediness, insecurity, whatever...I think the kindest thing is to simply identify it as a personality trait.
Back in the slide show days I remember being impressed by the stance my parents took which was to sit back and enjoy the holiday snaps as much as they could, because the person showing them was getting something out of that.
Today, I will act interested in a dream a co-worker wants to tell me, not because I am particularly gripped by how they "were flying, but also not, and everyone's face was Graham from accounts", but because it seems to make them happy to have someone listen. If simply clicking a "like" button or posting a thoughtful comment can give someone warm fuzzies (and we know it does) then I'll do it.
I've never heard anything positive about them until your comment, up until now they've always been the subject of boredom jokes.
The point I'm making is that the boredom joke about the slide evenings was social etiquette and care for other people's feelings preventing intelligent, well-mannered people from being anything but polite. The joke was indeed always on the slide-shower, and it was a bitter-sweet empathic one. I see a modern parallel.
Even better, you may have friends who are not overly selective about what they share, but still share something worthwhile every now and then. With social media, it’s fairly painless to pick our the worthwhile pieces. In a slide evening, I’d have been bored to death.
I suppose I would say two things, one serious and one silly:
The serious is that I actually do find it harder and harder "to pick out the worthwhile pieces" in social media. I'm adding more people, they're all posting more, and the feeds are getting messier and messier. I don't think slide evenings started as snoreathons, and there must have been a novelty period before it all got tedious. If there was a turning point then I feel we're not far from the equivalent one with our social media photo-flooding.
The silly is that at the slide evening I would be plied with wine and...well, in those days I suppose Twiglets? Right this second, I would gladly sit through an hour or two of Machu Pichu (OK, let's be realistic: Cornwall) in exchange for a comfortable chair and the quaffing of a few glasses ;)
I’m far less active in Twitter, where I seem to easily get overwhelmed by a flood of small updates, or G+, which seems to attract highly prolific writers.
We can't close Pandora's box. Might as well figure out how to make it work for you.
Some would call it "narcissism", which (with an appropriately nuanced meaning) I think is more accurate than "bragging".
I strongly agree with the article. Sharing your experiences with social networking isn't necessarily about needing to get validation from others on your experience in order for the experience to feel complete for you... but for some people, it is. And I have to wonder, the more prevalent social networking becomes, are more and more people going to use it as their image-of-self crutch? And I have to wonder, what does such a society look like after a few decades? It's a bit like Warhol's "15 minutes of fame", except minutes are the wrong unit of measure. Everybody's a 15 milligram celebrity...
Facebook and other social outlets are a way for people to humbly or not-so-humbly brag about what they are doing, and for those people consuming the content to be envious or critical of it.
I enjoy the fact that I can step away from the computer at any moment and not feel the urge to repeatedly check Twitter, Facebook etc.. and just enjoy life. I don't think I'm missing out on anything by not socially sharing my life on the internet.
http://chandana.blogspot.com/2011/04/noble-silence.html
s/speak/(share|post|tweet)
PG writes about popularity contests in Hackers and Painters, and how geeks prefer doing and learning over winning popularity standing. I didn't read H&P until after I had quit Twitter (and largely quit Facebook. Facebook is nothing more now than "email from my mother"). But that resonates well with me. I found myself tracking trending hash tags and trying to come up with witty, pithy tweets that I could also hashtag in kind. I had specific strategies that I would test and track the retweets and replies. It was kind of sick, looking back at it now.
But looking back at my internet life, it wasn't always like that. If you consider the BBS and web forum to be proto-social networks, this type of behavior (in certain communities) was neither broached nor tolerated. A much greater emphasis on discourse existed. In certain online communities, posting "+1" or "first" (or its more recent analogs "this" or "feels") was a fast track to banning. But those networks had something that Facebook and its ilk lack: administrative moderation, either by a staff of people or by community members with elevated privileges.
They were also geared towards the long form of prose, rather than the pithy-saying style. Twitter still has it's 140 character limit; it is considered the culture of Twitter. Facebook for many people functionally had the same limit as they interfaced with it through MMS. I don't know if they still do now, but at one time Facebook had a character limit on status updates and replies; even if those limits were removed now, the vast majority of Facebook's users are trained towards them now, and we see a new article every week talking about Facebook being unable to attract "new, teenage" users. Similarly, Tumblr's easiest levels of contribution are the reblog and photoshares.
When the discourse is so severely limited, then there can't be a discourse. People will revert to what is easiest: posting things that are not meant to engender discourse. People brag, always have, it's natural. But the signal to noise ratio is much worse now because services like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook make the noise so much easier to create than the signal.
EDIT: sorry, typos, still on my first cup this morning.
I think the negative reaction from a lot of people is mainly the shock of the new. Like it or not your children will use online networks and sharing as part of their normal social landscape. You can either bemoan them all as unnatural monsters, or realise that these things are inherent to social interaction, and not a problem caused by techcnology.
The offline world can give many joys but also do not forget that it can bring many dilemmas too. And in my experience has shown me that dilemmas abound more rather than the joys.
I interact with people more now than before and this does not keep me from choosing what conversations I get into the offline world. But I preffer this much because people is on their stuff and not bothering each other without reasons.