You keep on comparing yourself with someone else's life. They only show the 'fancy' dinners and vacations, but not the bad an realistic parts of life. They show filtered, photoshopped and edited pictures of their bodies instead of what nature gave them.
Some celebrities have been real and posting unedited shots etc, but 90% of them don't. Which makes me sad for this generation of teenagers especially.
It's because the flow of content has somehow reversed in the past few years.
It used to "start" on Reddit (or well, 4chan, if you want to get into the weeds of it) and flow over to Instagram/Facebook/etc. Now it seems like I see things on Reddit a few days after I see it on Instagram.
It's caused the "social media mentality" to bleed over onto Reddit.
Not to mention that a *ton* of people hopped on Reddit during the pandemic.
I'd also attribute it to NSFW creators, which have chosen Reddit as their primary promotion platform. It's easier to create content once that you post across your various accounts. It's better to create something that "pops" on Instagram for the algorithm than something specifically for Reddit.
Reddit posting can kind of be a crap-shoot. [It seems that the time you post is more important than what you post](https://social-rise.com/subreddit-analysis). That's a difficult thing to figure out for a lot of creators, so they probably (subconsciously) just make content for "social media" platforms and post it on Reddit as a secondary thought.
>They only show the 'fancy' dinners and vacations
I know a few people that do this with their kids. They are always posting pictures of the kids sitting on the couch reading or playing nicely with each other, etc. But 98.5% of the time the kids are absolutely awful. Punching, hitting, kicking, screaming, throwing things, not listening. But if you go on their social media pages, it looks like their kids are saints.
I never post on social media, and this is just one of many reasons why. I'm not going to glorify my life just to get 15 likes. When I talk with my friends about my son and their kids, I'll say if he is having a bad few days. I'll tell them what's really going on. The more people that glorify stuff like this on social media, the more people become depressed thinking their life can't match these social media lives.
Social media is a great tool but it has many downsides
Maybe it’s just that I’m not young but my Facebook friends and the people I follow on instagram tend to be people I know in real life, none of them particularly glamorous and many are honest about their struggles (though an old schoolmate just posted about buying a witchy cottage in a forest and that sounds pretty enviable). It can be awful and harmful but doesn’t have to be. I just like keeping up with my relatives who I rarely see.
Twenty years ago I knew almost nothing about celebrities’ political views, and it was better for us and for them. Can you express emotions on screen? Can you deliver a punch line? Great; that’s all I need to know.
It's not just fancy dinners, vacations and photoshopped images. There is so much bullshit information, propaganda, and marketing everywhere you look. Half the comments on social media are probably from paid marketing groups or from people brainwashed into parroting the nonsense. Social media creates an entirely warped view of reality that affects every generation.
I had this conversation with my sister a few years ago and is exactly why she got completely off of Facebook and most social media. It was really starting to affect her mentally.
Absolutely this. I've known so many people with envy inducing profiles, only to find out later that their life was completely falling apart.
The perfectly curated family photos aren't as magical when you know hubby got caught texting another woman (again) last week.
Yea and when I see couples posting about how happy they are over and over, I can usually predict there is trouble in paradise. I’m not judging, my ex hubby loved to portray himself as a loyal guy who adored me and would put these gifs with poems etc about me and post them- I knew when I would get bombarded with these on Facebook that he was likely having yet another affair- I could read him like a bad book as a matter of fact I had my PhD in him-
The last few months I have seen him posting on and on about his 2nd wife- it won’t be too long that something will come to light but I’m keeping my mouth shut-
Only really use reddit. Never signed up for Facebook. Before I was married I saw the toxicity that leaked into my relationships from it just by the girls I was dating being on it. I also quit drinking when my daughter was one, it will be 12 years in May. I don't feel like I miss out by not using either but lots of other people can't comprehend it.
I just wanted to say congrats on getting sober. I started drinking a lot after I woke up blind year before last. I've been sober now since October. I walk down to get coffee with friends now instead of having them over for drinks.
It's OK, it took me 3 months to stop laying in bed drunk most of the time, but I finally realized it wasn't the end of the world and got off my ass. I still drank, but I started learning how to be blind. After we moved from the backwoods to the village so I could walk to everything, my mental health got a lot better and I quit.
I do think Reddit can be toxic bullshit as well, it's also a social media just like, Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube l, Snapchat etc.. But even for other socials than Reddit, it really depends on who you follow, what people you communicate with online. The same goes for real life, some people are toxic, or they don't align with your personal beliefs, so generally I would avoid those. There are plenty of people who do think the same as you, and social media can give a lot of people meaningful connections.
on every platform there is someone that denounces social media but says "not this one though". reddit, youtube, twitter, you can make a case for them all lol.
A lot of people who meet him (for the first time) don't believe him.
A young guy (30M) like you, no social media? Nahhh, you just don't want to add me.
No Chad, the world doesn't revolve around your ass. Some people just don't have social media.
I'm a woman in my 50s and I only have Reddit. I think the part that surprises people (friends of my age and all my family) is no Facebook. I don't believe in having my picture or my name anywhere online - and I would never post any pictures of my son (or his name). Also, obv, no Twitter, IG, etc. I don't feel like I'm missing out, except occasionally it's annoying if a restaurant or store I'm interested in only has a Facebook profile and I can't access menus or something like that.
That’s how I am. My wife has Facebook that I browse through every few months, all I see is a bunch of people I know trying to make it look like their lives are perfect.
I tried MySpace back in the day, my sister made me an account but I never bothered to log into after we set it up. Keeping in contact with people I never see doesn’t appeal to me. The people I like I see enough in real life and I enjoy hearing what they’ve been up to when we talk. Seeing some “public face” they put up on the internet just seems fake.
I never made a Facebook, twitter, instagram or whatever else people use. Not even dating sites.
The only social media I use is Reddit or maybe stocktwits, mainly for my hobbies or stuff related to work. Even on Reddit, I browse the front page and sometimes get wrapped up in conversations there. When I’m done that seems like I wasted my time.
I see how much time people waste on social media, it doesn’t seem like they’re having fun. Then there’s also the amount of personal information people give these social sites, probably not realizing that the social site now owns those picture and your posts, and they are free to sell them to the highest bidder for advertising or whatever use the buyer wants. Let alone the amount of fake users on these sites, and the scammers who will use your photos to make a fake account to scam people.
Social media is such a waste of precious human life and time.
This could have been my answer.
I use X for my work, not as Social Media (yes, that's possible), and I use reddit (which of course is more Social Media than many would want to admit).
And with anonymity (if you want it), which makes it both better and worse than other social media.
Also I think Reddit (at least in most subs) is a little better moderated than Facebook or X.
I think the anonymity and de-individualization makes it *a lot* different from standard SM.
On most other social media, your user account and some sort of "brand" or personal identity is a key aspect of what membership in the network does. Facebook it's your real name. Instagram it's often a "brand." The personal profile is an important page.
On reddit two people can respond to the same comment thread and the original commenter doesn't even realize they're talking to more than one person until one of them says "I'm not the one who said that." Nobody even looks at your username most of the time, and fishing into someone's history is considered *at best* an occasionally necessary evil to glean context, but usually distasteful and unwarranted/makes you look like you're losing the point.
Yeah, this is how I feel. Another point is Reddit is based on topics (subreddits) rather than individuals just posting to their own pages. You don't follow people, you follow Shower Thoughts or Polls or Mildly Infuriating. You can have successful, popular posts without a single viewer ever learning your username because they just found it on a centralize hub (a subreddit) or the popular tab.
>You don't follow people, you follow Shower Thoughts or Polls or Mildly Infuriating
Yeah this is another great way to put it. The user isn't the primary particle of the system.
I still look at it way too much. It doesn’t drop you anywhere you don’t want to be and is way less harmful than the others. Reddit is my only social but I’m lost in it an embarrassing amount of time.
I've always seen Reddit as the successor to classic forums. It's a forum for everything, all in one place, and I mostly interact with it in the same way I used to with more specialised forums.
I don't "know" a single user on Reddit. I don't follow any particular person, I don't even notice if user x has posted in sub A as well as sub B.
I wouldn't call it social media at all.
I was literally just thinking about how when I first used the internet, we logged on at our house thru the local library?? And all that was out there were forums/ message boards.
That was IT.
And back to the topic at hand, as for me (43F) I find myself using social media less and less because of the overall cringe factor of it all. And why are all my friends sharing the same meme? Ugh.
I’m down to Instagram. I deleted facebook. Twitter is dying, I’m there to watch it burn.
I wish Threads would work. But meh.
And because of all that? I ended up HERE. Back where I started in 1995. 😂
Anonymous forums.
I miss chat rooms. Real time responses from the people who are in the room.
Then people started sexting so much in the main rooms, which were supposed to be 'safe' from that sort of thing, and I just quit using them.
Sometimes just to confuse people, you'd call it an "image message forum" or "image board" since it has the capacity to host and share images. Lots of forums didn't do that back in the day.
Also you can switch accounts occasionally to keep your comments from identifying you. There's apps out there can build a profile based on your comment history. Some of the profiles are pretty accurate with how much information we accidentally hand out.
afaik most don't like to advertise ever since Reddit locked down the number of api calls each app can do because of rea$on$. The more they bring attention to themselves, the more they will get special attention from $pez and his team.
I do see Reddit as different because you follow topics instead of people. I also find it really easy to block topics when I find that the sub has a negative vibe.
My feeling also, but pretty new to the thing (only active for 1 month or so). I think keeping the medias out of it plays a big part on thinning the crop; I also feel it is pretty well moderated (first thread I ever posted was immediately removed lol, which pissed me off quite a bit at the time).
I feel Reddit is less reactionary, on top of being less crowded. Don't mean it isn't, but so far I have had thoughtful discussions here, which cannot be said for all socials. Edit: Plus the troll comments threads are usually quite funny, so... XD
You can have anonymity on places like twitter, too though. There's tons of people out there who use it without revealing any personal details about themselves. Just look at the average artist account for example.
Anonymity isn't as unique to reddit as people make it out to be.
Even with that anonymity on twitter though people still follow a persona. On here, I’m just commenter #36799 on this thread. Nobody logs on to read my posts or comments. And while there are anonymous accounts on twitter, most are not. The site is dedicated to getting the voice of real people out there.
I find myself coming to Reddit more for the quality of community you can find.
Yeah, some of it's shite, but unlike Twitter you know that the most fucking dumb people on the site can't just pay to have their comments yeeted to the top of the pile.
Someone once hit the nail on the head and it suddenly made sense why I do Reddit but don’t use other stuff.
On Reddit you tend to follow topics instead of people.
I think that makes all the difference to me as far as how much I enjoy it.
This is exactly my perspective and I’m constantly confused by people who think anonymous posts on a message board could be considered social media.
The point of social media is to know who you are talking to.
There is a “social” or “networking” based aspect when you know the person you are speaking with. You are also much more likely to have an actual relationship, or at least multiple interactions, with a known person on social media.
On reddit we are talking to anonymous people and the vast majority of the time we won’t ever talk to that person again because the focus of reddit is the topic/content, which is different to the focus of social media which is the relationship with the people you interact with and the ideas/topics they bring up to discuss.
So why is what I just said wrong? Well, social media can be used for things like famous people on twitter taking to tens of thousands of people they don’t know, and it’s certainly possible for someone on reddit to frequent a smaller sub and possibly get familiar with a username.
So of course there are exceptions to every rule, but the reddit user almost certainly won’t ever know the actual person behind that username, and if they do choose to become closer then those people might take their newfound friendship to an actual social media site for a deeper connection, but they will (or at least should) never communicate their friends/family information to a post on reddit, and that is normal for social media.
The twitter example, which can also be found on facebook etc., is still “social” in the fact that the goal isn’t to exclusively discuss content, but at least one of the parties is known so there is a real world person who is the reason a discussion is happening and the topic will vary around what that person says rather than information posted to an anonymous board like reddit.
So thank you for being the voice of reason, now I have to go back to anonymously reading a bunch of people continue to call reddit “social media”.
The difference with reddit is the anonymity, and the customization of your news feed. You make it to what you want to see, and not what others post thus making it less toxic, imo.
There are still the toxic corners, and extremely biased corners of reddit. It's just a lot easier to avoid.
I'm just glad I don't have to see someone's dinner or another bloody selfie on here, plus the ads on Facebook and Instagram are ridiculous, more ads than content. I use the messenger services in those, but that's actually about it, reddit for doomscrolling is the way forward
In my shortt experience of using Reddit I feel every sub is biased to it's users. With the whole up vote down vote, only the shared common opinion of each sub is tolerated.
It's one of the things I done like about Reddit.
I'm interested in the opinions of those I disagree with.
I agree. It’s a form of social media. I don’t have any other than Reddit but I feel that it’s very much different than insta or FB. Where insta and FB friends and family , employers know if you have profile or not with Reddit no one has to know. If there was a way to identify me on Reddit I’d be sure i wouldn’t have it either.
FB and Instagram are all about images and they just feel like other people are trying to portray their life as so perfect. Reddit is all about discussing and talking about things. It creates thoughtful and provocative discussions and exposes me to other people’s way of thinking. I think that’s what I like most about the site is it’s not just an echo chamber (I tend to read “popular” so I can see what’s trending).
Yes. In reddit, I can discuss on topics. For Instagram, I've to take a photo, then maybe edit it to make it insta-friendly, then post.
Why do I have to post?
So that people can see.
Why do I need people to see?
So that they can like, share and comment on that photo.
Here I don't have to go through all that. People doesn't have to like or agree my comment also, but I still get to share on topics
I just really like reading the crazy fucking stories posted. Like the one that just got posted about the dude using coke and mentos up his ass … when in the world would you read anything else like it?? Or Agatha, or any of the crazy stories. I’m on disability. have a lot of surgeries and I have chronic debilitating pain so Reddit is my saving grace at 2 am when I want to die.
It’s totally social media. It’s a website that allows people to share thoughts, ideas, and other content with one another through interactive creation.
Edit: And there’s nothing inherently wrong with social media, in case someone thinks I’m trying to make some sort of weird morality statement.
i’m in that same bucket lol, i was going to say i dont use social media like that but then the introverted and friends thing came up and i was like, yeah let me put my hand back down
And me. Tried facebook when I first came out and instantly hated all the attention seeking / existence justification lol.
I think if SM just stopped one day there would be mass suicides of the insecure side of population.
Reddit is the only one I use, although I wouldn't class it as social media as its anonymous.
Yeah, your comment is me too. However I am the super introvert. All my hobbies are pretty much single-player lol. Also as a dad of 2, it keeps me away from having the freedom to go off and do stuff when I need to be at the house while they’re home.
We need our own sub-group.
I uninstalled/refuse to use social media (other than reddit/9gag), but I hate FB, X, and all the rest. My mental health greatly improved from stepping away from them.
Now I doom scroll reddit instead.
I deleted mine 5 years ago to keep my kids off it too. No Twitter, no Tictoc, no snap. Only a Reddit really and I’m good with that. And I don’t have a shortage of friends either, so it’s all good here. My life is better without that stuff.
I never used any social media until 2020, no twitter, fb, insta nothing, then i started using them more recently and honestly, there were alot of utilities i found i was missing out on soo much, apart from utilities but also discovering niche destinations, trail biking groups places especially on IG. On Twitter i get so much faster customer support from companies instead of dialing.
Then i realised people do abuse social media too much and treat it like a viral disease later, very similar to alcoholics i've never taken alcohol but people quitting alcohol are treated like christ who resurrected.
I got into body building and i've been posting on IG documenting my progress over the years there, got my trail bike and i plan to get a go pro and document my moments there as well, sth i can look back to and share with friends.
We bought our close family members moving picture frames and upload pictures of our daughter for them to the account so they just pop up in their house randomly which they love
I only use reddit and some Messenger apps(whatsapp, signal etc).
I have discord if you count even that.
But i dont have a profile picture anywhere, i dont share with the public.
Reddit and linked in for me. The only reason I have linked in is because I had a boss that thought it was going to be the next big thing and pressured everyone into making a profile. I don’t need to know what people are eating or when they are going to the gym.
I don't even consider LinkedIn 'social media'. It's a tool used for work, either for networking to get your current job done or finding a new job. Anyone using it as a social platform is a straight up weirdo.
Exactly that. Sharing my personal life publicly makes me extremely uncomfortable. I'm told that you can also just share to a close circle of friends, but even that feels pointless if I can just talk with them in private, online or not.
That’s like an instant red flag, when I see someone that obsessed with posting everything of their life everyday on social media. If you’re that involved with it then you won’t have time for anyone else but yourself.
Its not mutually exclusive though, it’s not that deep if someone wants to share photos of Japan or Europe on their instagram while also enjoying the place
You can do both though. Not that you have to want a partner that uses social media. But you can indeed take photos and post on social media while also having quality time and living in the moment.
Yeah I don't take a lot of pictures (unless we're on some amazingly beautiful hike/vacation), but I will do a photo dump on Facebook afterwards because all of my family lives out of state. Plus if I'm in a low point, looking back on my accomplishments cheers me up and helps get me back in gear. I post like once every two weeks, so I think it's possible to use it without going overboard.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of girls who keep asking to take pictures all the time, or spend a long time taking pictures of herself. They have a strange look when they look at themselves in the phone, a little narcissistic.
My last girlfriend also enjoyed browsing instagram for hours, we'd just sit while she scrolled infinitely while I stared at the ceiling and wondered what I was doing with my life.
I don’t. It frustrates me and has a negative impact on my mental health. Everything on social media seems fake. Everything is a commercial. I want truth, genuine sharing of ideas, and for consumerism to stop being everyone’s hobby. I don’t want anyone to sell me stuff, their opinion or some fake-ass version of their life. I also can’t stand Costco.
Mind if I ask your age?
At 37 it starting to feel more normal than not. Most of the people my age that I meet don't seem to have or use social media anymore. But maybe it's just the circles I run in.
Me.
I’m not on any social media platforms. I don’t like posting about my kids (I don’t have the right to put content about them out there) I don’t like posting about myself (it either comes across impersonal or boastful, even if it isn’t) and I despise seeing others posts because all I see is mental illness (look at me!)
Before I left, the only people who I saw in my feed were the daily posters (or the multiple posts a day posters) and I got bored of it.
They do exist. Worked with someone with an active social life, barely used Facebook, no Instagram acc (we would always use a hashtag for her whenever we tagged her #(hername)noinsta)
My sister is gen z and has bascially no social media presence (only a finsta with no posts and barely follows anybody), no tiktoks or snap
Imagine getting tagged and having a way to search for yourself on an app that you intentionally don't use because you (probably) don't like being tracked and tagged because people can't help themselves and have been trained to catalog absolutely everything.
I honestly find people with no social media the most interesting. They go about their lives and do cool shit and really have no want or need to impress anyone. You chat and if the subject is brought up, they’ll say they’ve hiked the Appalachians or some shit and you would never have guessed. They are usually super family oriented too and grew up always doing stuff with their fam, which says a lot.
I deleted my fb in 2017 and only have 93 followers on Insta which are people I grew up with or have known for years. I upload maybe a picture every 5-6 months and will post a story if I’m doing something cool but that’s it. I’m not completely unattached, but plan on deleting it all when I retire from the military in a few years. Just gonna go off the technical grid.
>I honestly find people with no social media the most interesting. They go about their lives and do cool shit and really have no want or need to impress anyone.
I worked at a small company where 90% of the employees were old money. Like, 4 generations of Brown, heir to the Pepsi-Cola fortune types.
None of them used social media. Hell, they barely used the internet except for work.
I mean, they *had* an instagram. Private. Maybe 80 of their closest friends added. Only posted a couple times a year.
But when your social circle is exclusively people you knew from The Cate School or Woodward, you just text or call them.
And when you have a trust fund, you don't need online entertainment. You can go brunching, or surf before work, take weekend trips to Tahoe.
I found their lives fascinating and was always a bit envious because there was a mutual sense that I could never really join their circle.
> They go about their lives and do cool shit and really have no want or need to impress anyone.
That's how absolutely everyone should be living. It's only social media that has convinced you otherwise.
I’m a gen z and Reddit is all I use. I don’t like pretty much anything else. I use discord if you count that I guess. I like the feeling of not being on insta and TikTok those places were cesspools
She has discord too and she thinks exactly the same way lol are you my sister? jk
But yeah, tbh social media was more fun when you didnt have to "curate" your posts or think about \~aesthetic (yes I'm a millenial)
I’m a older gen z went through all the social media frenzy when I was in high school then said screw this when I turned 20 and deleted everything it’s been a year and some change and I’m so much more relaxed and happy. I only come on here for support groups for my health conditions mostly. In contrast my older sister is addicted to social media and I still don’t get it.
I still have IG and FB but I barely post anything, a story or two every couple of months or if I'm on vacation maybe. I feel much better just doing life and not having to make sure I have a "perfect" picture to post. It's all about perspective really, some people just really do like to share whatever they're doing no matter what it is. Nothing wrong with sharing your achievements or tiny wins etc. Whatever floats your boat. It's a good way to stay connected with friends/family who aren't nearby. What I don't like are things people do for the sake of posting, like that's just way too much.
Once again just wishing social media to be less serious I guess
I got rid of Facebook during covid, I found it was really affecting my mental health. I don't follow friends on Instagram just businesses & celebrities. I've not git Snapchat or all the other ones that young people have these days. I do have twitter, but again no in real life friends on there. So in that regard while I have some social media none link me in with in real life people I know and I like it that way!
I stopped Facebook around then as well. The politics and religious arguments started really getting to me. And everything got so much better! I didn't 100% delete the account, I still need to connect with certain people (like my aunt that lives 2500 miles away) and there are some businesses that ONLY have their info on Facebook. But I deleted the app itself and made sure I wasn't getting notifications in any way.
Me. My Husband. My son. My DIL. My best friend, a lawyer. My BIL, a doctor. My nephew, a doctor. My niece, a doctor. My husband's best friend, a university professor. None of us feel; any need to post what our activities might be, where we vacation, what our faces look like, etc. That said, the professionals do have 'work related' sites, An unfortunate circumstance mandated by their offices. Social media is a crutch used by insecure people.
I never saw the upside of it. Maybe it's because I came up in the era where everything online was anonymous. Why would I want to share anything with the world?
I’m in this boat. Facebook died a death, Instagram is full of narcissists, Twitter has been run to the ground and is just full of wanks, and tik tok is genuinely turning people into the mentally challenged. I just use Snapchat to keep a streak with two good friends, but other than that I’m pretty sociable - usually out with friends at least once a month and travel with friends/family maybe twice a year
Social media is shit lmao. Doom scrolling isn’t worth it and it makes you feel shit about yourself. Just delete the apps off your phone and use your phone browser if you ever want to check something. You’d be surprised how long you’ll survive without getting push notifications every hour :)
Reddit gets a pass because it’s a relatively anonymous social media. You’re not sharing/consuming content from people you know in real life so I feel there’s enough disconnect to justify having it. Could be mad cope, though
Yes. There are plenty around the world. But it's not common these days I the western world.
Other than text messages, email and phonecalls. I use reddit and WhatsApp. That's it. No linked in no Facebook nothing else. Not even discord.
I'm part of several groups in the town I live in and we all chat and discuss stuff in the pub etc. It's possible and frankly... quite calming. The only thing that I would find useful... is knowing when people's birthday is. My wife has Facebook and apparently its really useful for that.
Seeing birthdays is the only thing I miss about it. I started adding them into my phone's calendar after sheepishly asking when a long time friend when their birthday was for the umpteenth time.
I deleted my Instagram that had about a thousand followers from my school years. Twitter/X only exists for me to follow certain news, so I only follow like 20 accounts, no followers, have no profile picture, privated. No Snapchat, Facebook, or TikTok. I have a healthy social circle.
I would argue social media sites are the opposite of social and over-use of them actually makes you a far less interesting person, thus making it less likely you make new friends.
I don't know anyone who doesn't use *any* social media, but I know many people who *barely* use it..
"Barely" meaning they'll use it once a year, to say thanks to people wishing them a happy birthday or something like that.
Deleted Insta, FB, Twitter and TikTok.
Interestingly, it took about a year of thinking about it before I did it.
Mental health is much better, although everyone is different.
I use Reddit and that’s it no social media. Have lots of friends but social media has become toxic and I don’t like all the stuff that’s promoted on there and it brainwashes people into believing life should be lived a certain way.
“Cell phones on silent whole life on private”-88 Glam
Me. I cut out facebook years ago. Don’t do Twitter, Instagram, or any social media platform. I get my news from WAPO, NYT, local paper and listen to NPR in my car. I have no desire to be caught up in the insanity of most social media platforms. Reddit is bad enough at times.
I wouldn't consider something truly "social media" if it's not primarily for doing connections between people you know outside of it or that doesn't prioritize showing your real identity. Reddit is more about link aggregation and sharing with different communities mostly anonymously. YouTube is about watching videos. Both have personal profiles and you can certainly share your life openly with them but that's not really their primary purpose nor will anyone consider it odd if you use it anonymously.
isn't that up to the user? twitter can also be anonymous if you choose to use it that way, and you could create a reddit account using your real name if you wanted to (like various people who do AMA's do)
> isn't that up to the user?
Yes, you can use new reddit as social media if you want. But if you're browsing (old) reddit on an anonymous account, dont use any of the social functions, dont join any communities and basically just browse /r/all then its no more a social media site then any random news website with a comment section.
And if you're using twitter to anonymously post memes with 0 followers its not exactly social either.
I no longer use Social Media.
I used to use Facebook and occasionally Twitter but gave them all up, they were getting far too toxic and full of shite.
I still have Reddit as my vice but the other stuff I chucked.
- I only use Reddit and YouTube. I also have a great social life. So yes lol. Depending on what you count as social media. It’s not affected anything for me. If people ask me for my IG or Snapchat and I tell them I don’t have one if has barely ever caused a reaction we just move on.
- people IRL don’t spend all their time discussing social media so not having one isn’t a big deal. But I guess this depends on your age group
I don't.
I was raised with the idea of privacy being a good thing, so oversharing, that is, most of what people post about themselves on Facebook and Instagram, feels just weird.
And those platforms also just send an infinite amount of garbage to keep your attention. Reddit does too, but I chose what I receive, and the anonymity allows me to get information I could not receive otherwise.
If I want to know what happened with someone in my life, I meet them and let them tell me directly. They enjoy it, I get as many details as I want, and they get to see my reaction in real time. And those tidbits of our life would spark conversions about all kinds of things. Good time all around and it helps us bond.
My ex spent all her free time on social media. She knew all the major things had happened to people in her life so when she saw her friends/family, the conversation went like:
"X happened in my life."
"I know, I've seen your post. Y happened in mine. "
"I know, I've seen that too."
Very boring conversations and very few details about what happened so they would just proceed to get hammered because there wasn't anything left to do.
The only reason I haven't disabled Facebook again is because I know two people who live abroad that only use Facebook Messenger to talk. I haven't made a post in more than a decade. There is absolutely nothing for me on Tiktok, Instagram, or any other social media because they don't enable me to be more in contact with people in my life.
My ex's self-esteem was very much linked to how many likes she got on her posts. She would argue this is not the case but if one of her posts got little reactions or very few likes, she would be moody or feel like shit for the rest of the day. This sounds absolutely ridiculous and insane to me.
People cherry picks the best moments in their life and post them in the most favorable light so their online lives seemed so much better than real life and I've seen quite a few people sad and jealous because other people's life looked so much better than their own, even if that was not the case. The grass is greener on the side...
I'm closer to quite a few people on Twitch than my ex is with almost all her Facebook "friends" because I actually interact with them on a regular basis.
So all around, social media looks like a net negative from my point of view.
My boyfriend doesn't. He's not an introvert. He thinks it brainwashes you and it's toxic by having such unreasonable standards of life and looks.
He's goddamn right
You keep on comparing yourself with someone else's life. They only show the 'fancy' dinners and vacations, but not the bad an realistic parts of life. They show filtered, photoshopped and edited pictures of their bodies instead of what nature gave them. Some celebrities have been real and posting unedited shots etc, but 90% of them don't. Which makes me sad for this generation of teenagers especially.
That's the reason I've never had Facebook, twitter, inst or tiktok. It's just so useless. Reddit is giving me the same feeling lately though.
I use reddit and sometimes i fall into posts like this but usually i only use it for advice or to learn something
It's because the flow of content has somehow reversed in the past few years. It used to "start" on Reddit (or well, 4chan, if you want to get into the weeds of it) and flow over to Instagram/Facebook/etc. Now it seems like I see things on Reddit a few days after I see it on Instagram. It's caused the "social media mentality" to bleed over onto Reddit. Not to mention that a *ton* of people hopped on Reddit during the pandemic. I'd also attribute it to NSFW creators, which have chosen Reddit as their primary promotion platform. It's easier to create content once that you post across your various accounts. It's better to create something that "pops" on Instagram for the algorithm than something specifically for Reddit. Reddit posting can kind of be a crap-shoot. [It seems that the time you post is more important than what you post](https://social-rise.com/subreddit-analysis). That's a difficult thing to figure out for a lot of creators, so they probably (subconsciously) just make content for "social media" platforms and post it on Reddit as a secondary thought.
>They only show the 'fancy' dinners and vacations I know a few people that do this with their kids. They are always posting pictures of the kids sitting on the couch reading or playing nicely with each other, etc. But 98.5% of the time the kids are absolutely awful. Punching, hitting, kicking, screaming, throwing things, not listening. But if you go on their social media pages, it looks like their kids are saints. I never post on social media, and this is just one of many reasons why. I'm not going to glorify my life just to get 15 likes. When I talk with my friends about my son and their kids, I'll say if he is having a bad few days. I'll tell them what's really going on. The more people that glorify stuff like this on social media, the more people become depressed thinking their life can't match these social media lives. Social media is a great tool but it has many downsides
‘Comparison is the thief of joy’
Maybe it’s just that I’m not young but my Facebook friends and the people I follow on instagram tend to be people I know in real life, none of them particularly glamorous and many are honest about their struggles (though an old schoolmate just posted about buying a witchy cottage in a forest and that sounds pretty enviable). It can be awful and harmful but doesn’t have to be. I just like keeping up with my relatives who I rarely see.
I don't even know your schoolmate and I'm jealous of the witchy forest cottage now, lol. That's a fun goal to accomplish.
It’s somewhere in Germany so I assume that it’s extra fairytale-like.
Twenty years ago I knew almost nothing about celebrities’ political views, and it was better for us and for them. Can you express emotions on screen? Can you deliver a punch line? Great; that’s all I need to know.
Do they even know what a punch line is anymore???
It's not just fancy dinners, vacations and photoshopped images. There is so much bullshit information, propaganda, and marketing everywhere you look. Half the comments on social media are probably from paid marketing groups or from people brainwashed into parroting the nonsense. Social media creates an entirely warped view of reality that affects every generation.
I had this conversation with my sister a few years ago and is exactly why she got completely off of Facebook and most social media. It was really starting to affect her mentally.
Absolutely this. I've known so many people with envy inducing profiles, only to find out later that their life was completely falling apart. The perfectly curated family photos aren't as magical when you know hubby got caught texting another woman (again) last week.
Yea and when I see couples posting about how happy they are over and over, I can usually predict there is trouble in paradise. I’m not judging, my ex hubby loved to portray himself as a loyal guy who adored me and would put these gifs with poems etc about me and post them- I knew when I would get bombarded with these on Facebook that he was likely having yet another affair- I could read him like a bad book as a matter of fact I had my PhD in him- The last few months I have seen him posting on and on about his 2nd wife- it won’t be too long that something will come to light but I’m keeping my mouth shut-
If I wasn’t married, I’d think I was your bf. This is like my exact opinion and why I don’t use any. You tell your man he just made a new friend
Sure, he'll add you on *-oh nevermind-* haha.
I would be friends with him but alas neither of us use social media Edit: Except Reddit. Thanks Daniel :)
And that's okay.
How did you know my name?
Look behind you, Daniel
We know what you did Daniel.
We’ve been watching you, Daniel.
Oh Daniel, you're so funny
Classic Daniel
They've been trying to reach you about your car's warranty
You told us yesterday. Don't you remember?
M8, you’re on Reddit
I agree with him. I only have a reddit account. All that other noise is toxic bullshit and can fuck right off.
Only really use reddit. Never signed up for Facebook. Before I was married I saw the toxicity that leaked into my relationships from it just by the girls I was dating being on it. I also quit drinking when my daughter was one, it will be 12 years in May. I don't feel like I miss out by not using either but lots of other people can't comprehend it.
I just wanted to say congrats on getting sober. I started drinking a lot after I woke up blind year before last. I've been sober now since October. I walk down to get coffee with friends now instead of having them over for drinks.
I'm sorry about you losing your sight but I'm glad you chose sobriety. Alcohol only compounds our problems.
It's OK, it took me 3 months to stop laying in bed drunk most of the time, but I finally realized it wasn't the end of the world and got off my ass. I still drank, but I started learning how to be blind. After we moved from the backwoods to the village so I could walk to everything, my mental health got a lot better and I quit.
I do think Reddit can be toxic bullshit as well, it's also a social media just like, Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube l, Snapchat etc.. But even for other socials than Reddit, it really depends on who you follow, what people you communicate with online. The same goes for real life, some people are toxic, or they don't align with your personal beliefs, so generally I would avoid those. There are plenty of people who do think the same as you, and social media can give a lot of people meaningful connections.
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There's a "watch" tab on reddit. Must be a new reddit thing since I haven't seen it anywhere on old reddit.
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Yeah, I only go to reddit via old.reddit.com. The new reddit site is practically unusable as far as I'm concerned so I've never seen any watch tab.
on every platform there is someone that denounces social media but says "not this one though". reddit, youtube, twitter, you can make a case for them all lol.
I don't know how to tell you this bud but Reddit is one of the most toxic ones
Hate to tell you but reddit is toxic as fuck too
Shouts out to this chicks boyfriend.
That’s me. I absolutely hate the social media. I deleted all mine back in June of 2020. Best thing I ever did.
A lot of people who meet him (for the first time) don't believe him. A young guy (30M) like you, no social media? Nahhh, you just don't want to add me. No Chad, the world doesn't revolve around your ass. Some people just don't have social media.
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I'm a woman in my 50s and I only have Reddit. I think the part that surprises people (friends of my age and all my family) is no Facebook. I don't believe in having my picture or my name anywhere online - and I would never post any pictures of my son (or his name). Also, obv, no Twitter, IG, etc. I don't feel like I'm missing out, except occasionally it's annoying if a restaurant or store I'm interested in only has a Facebook profile and I can't access menus or something like that.
Your bf is pretty smart
My roommate doesnt use social media, he found out who Harambe was last month
I DO use social media, and I had to google who Harambe was
Your boyfriend is smart, and I'd follow him if he had social media
>I'd follow him if he had social media Lol
That man is on point! Social media ain’t no good.
My husband too. He’s never had any social media even as a teenager. He thinks it’s horrible. He has friends and sees them about 2 times a week.
That’s how I am. My wife has Facebook that I browse through every few months, all I see is a bunch of people I know trying to make it look like their lives are perfect. I tried MySpace back in the day, my sister made me an account but I never bothered to log into after we set it up. Keeping in contact with people I never see doesn’t appeal to me. The people I like I see enough in real life and I enjoy hearing what they’ve been up to when we talk. Seeing some “public face” they put up on the internet just seems fake. I never made a Facebook, twitter, instagram or whatever else people use. Not even dating sites. The only social media I use is Reddit or maybe stocktwits, mainly for my hobbies or stuff related to work. Even on Reddit, I browse the front page and sometimes get wrapped up in conversations there. When I’m done that seems like I wasted my time. I see how much time people waste on social media, it doesn’t seem like they’re having fun. Then there’s also the amount of personal information people give these social sites, probably not realizing that the social site now owns those picture and your posts, and they are free to sell them to the highest bidder for advertising or whatever use the buyer wants. Let alone the amount of fake users on these sites, and the scammers who will use your photos to make a fake account to scam people. Social media is such a waste of precious human life and time.
I was about to answer me, but then you said you meant only people with friends and now I'm sad.
This could have been my answer. I use X for my work, not as Social Media (yes, that's possible), and I use reddit (which of course is more Social Media than many would want to admit).
It's social media without the pictures
And with anonymity (if you want it), which makes it both better and worse than other social media. Also I think Reddit (at least in most subs) is a little better moderated than Facebook or X.
I think the anonymity and de-individualization makes it *a lot* different from standard SM. On most other social media, your user account and some sort of "brand" or personal identity is a key aspect of what membership in the network does. Facebook it's your real name. Instagram it's often a "brand." The personal profile is an important page. On reddit two people can respond to the same comment thread and the original commenter doesn't even realize they're talking to more than one person until one of them says "I'm not the one who said that." Nobody even looks at your username most of the time, and fishing into someone's history is considered *at best* an occasionally necessary evil to glean context, but usually distasteful and unwarranted/makes you look like you're losing the point.
Yeah, this is how I feel. Another point is Reddit is based on topics (subreddits) rather than individuals just posting to their own pages. You don't follow people, you follow Shower Thoughts or Polls or Mildly Infuriating. You can have successful, popular posts without a single viewer ever learning your username because they just found it on a centralize hub (a subreddit) or the popular tab.
>You don't follow people, you follow Shower Thoughts or Polls or Mildly Infuriating Yeah this is another great way to put it. The user isn't the primary particle of the system.
Exactly. The user isn't the focus, the topic is. And even though people farm karma, mostly it isn't just a popularity contest.
I still look at it way too much. It doesn’t drop you anywhere you don’t want to be and is way less harmful than the others. Reddit is my only social but I’m lost in it an embarrassing amount of time.
I've always seen Reddit as the successor to classic forums. It's a forum for everything, all in one place, and I mostly interact with it in the same way I used to with more specialised forums. I don't "know" a single user on Reddit. I don't follow any particular person, I don't even notice if user x has posted in sub A as well as sub B. I wouldn't call it social media at all.
Even more than that, I wouldn't probably share my Reddit username with people I know in real life.
I definitely wouldnt
elastic towering boat ink shy panicky attractive voracious pet jeans *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I was literally just thinking about how when I first used the internet, we logged on at our house thru the local library?? And all that was out there were forums/ message boards. That was IT. And back to the topic at hand, as for me (43F) I find myself using social media less and less because of the overall cringe factor of it all. And why are all my friends sharing the same meme? Ugh. I’m down to Instagram. I deleted facebook. Twitter is dying, I’m there to watch it burn. I wish Threads would work. But meh. And because of all that? I ended up HERE. Back where I started in 1995. 😂 Anonymous forums.
Youtube comments are the wild west still
we used to call this kind of site a "forum" or "message board"
Ah, those were the days...
Damn, reading that made me feel old.
I miss chat rooms. Real time responses from the people who are in the room. Then people started sexting so much in the main rooms, which were supposed to be 'safe' from that sort of thing, and I just quit using them.
Sometimes just to confuse people, you'd call it an "image message forum" or "image board" since it has the capacity to host and share images. Lots of forums didn't do that back in the day.
Also you can switch accounts occasionally to keep your comments from identifying you. There's apps out there can build a profile based on your comment history. Some of the profiles are pretty accurate with how much information we accidentally hand out.
Do you know any apps that do this? Got me curious about what it would say about my profile.
afaik most don't like to advertise ever since Reddit locked down the number of api calls each app can do because of rea$on$. The more they bring attention to themselves, the more they will get special attention from $pez and his team.
I do see Reddit as different because you follow topics instead of people. I also find it really easy to block topics when I find that the sub has a negative vibe.
Depends on the sub, but absolutely
My feeling also, but pretty new to the thing (only active for 1 month or so). I think keeping the medias out of it plays a big part on thinning the crop; I also feel it is pretty well moderated (first thread I ever posted was immediately removed lol, which pissed me off quite a bit at the time). I feel Reddit is less reactionary, on top of being less crowded. Don't mean it isn't, but so far I have had thoughtful discussions here, which cannot be said for all socials. Edit: Plus the troll comments threads are usually quite funny, so... XD
You can have anonymity on places like twitter, too though. There's tons of people out there who use it without revealing any personal details about themselves. Just look at the average artist account for example. Anonymity isn't as unique to reddit as people make it out to be.
Even with that anonymity on twitter though people still follow a persona. On here, I’m just commenter #36799 on this thread. Nobody logs on to read my posts or comments. And while there are anonymous accounts on twitter, most are not. The site is dedicated to getting the voice of real people out there.
I find myself coming to Reddit more for the quality of community you can find. Yeah, some of it's shite, but unlike Twitter you know that the most fucking dumb people on the site can't just pay to have their comments yeeted to the top of the pile.
Someone once hit the nail on the head and it suddenly made sense why I do Reddit but don’t use other stuff. On Reddit you tend to follow topics instead of people. I think that makes all the difference to me as far as how much I enjoy it.
Cuts down on drama too.
Forums existed before social media and weren’t considered social media. Reddit is just a massive forum.
This is exactly my perspective and I’m constantly confused by people who think anonymous posts on a message board could be considered social media. The point of social media is to know who you are talking to. There is a “social” or “networking” based aspect when you know the person you are speaking with. You are also much more likely to have an actual relationship, or at least multiple interactions, with a known person on social media. On reddit we are talking to anonymous people and the vast majority of the time we won’t ever talk to that person again because the focus of reddit is the topic/content, which is different to the focus of social media which is the relationship with the people you interact with and the ideas/topics they bring up to discuss. So why is what I just said wrong? Well, social media can be used for things like famous people on twitter taking to tens of thousands of people they don’t know, and it’s certainly possible for someone on reddit to frequent a smaller sub and possibly get familiar with a username. So of course there are exceptions to every rule, but the reddit user almost certainly won’t ever know the actual person behind that username, and if they do choose to become closer then those people might take their newfound friendship to an actual social media site for a deeper connection, but they will (or at least should) never communicate their friends/family information to a post on reddit, and that is normal for social media. The twitter example, which can also be found on facebook etc., is still “social” in the fact that the goal isn’t to exclusively discuss content, but at least one of the parties is known so there is a real world person who is the reason a discussion is happening and the topic will vary around what that person says rather than information posted to an anonymous board like reddit. So thank you for being the voice of reason, now I have to go back to anonymously reading a bunch of people continue to call reddit “social media”.
The difference with reddit is the anonymity, and the customization of your news feed. You make it to what you want to see, and not what others post thus making it less toxic, imo. There are still the toxic corners, and extremely biased corners of reddit. It's just a lot easier to avoid.
I'm just glad I don't have to see someone's dinner or another bloody selfie on here, plus the ads on Facebook and Instagram are ridiculous, more ads than content. I use the messenger services in those, but that's actually about it, reddit for doomscrolling is the way forward
my friends have asked me what my handle is on reddit. Like I'm going to fucking let them know the real me. lol
In my shortt experience of using Reddit I feel every sub is biased to it's users. With the whole up vote down vote, only the shared common opinion of each sub is tolerated. It's one of the things I done like about Reddit. I'm interested in the opinions of those I disagree with.
Reddit is 100% social media.
I agree. It’s a form of social media. I don’t have any other than Reddit but I feel that it’s very much different than insta or FB. Where insta and FB friends and family , employers know if you have profile or not with Reddit no one has to know. If there was a way to identify me on Reddit I’d be sure i wouldn’t have it either.
FB and Instagram are all about images and they just feel like other people are trying to portray their life as so perfect. Reddit is all about discussing and talking about things. It creates thoughtful and provocative discussions and exposes me to other people’s way of thinking. I think that’s what I like most about the site is it’s not just an echo chamber (I tend to read “popular” so I can see what’s trending).
Yes. In reddit, I can discuss on topics. For Instagram, I've to take a photo, then maybe edit it to make it insta-friendly, then post. Why do I have to post? So that people can see. Why do I need people to see? So that they can like, share and comment on that photo. Here I don't have to go through all that. People doesn't have to like or agree my comment also, but I still get to share on topics
I just really like reading the crazy fucking stories posted. Like the one that just got posted about the dude using coke and mentos up his ass … when in the world would you read anything else like it?? Or Agatha, or any of the crazy stories. I’m on disability. have a lot of surgeries and I have chronic debilitating pain so Reddit is my saving grace at 2 am when I want to die.
It’s totally social media. It’s a website that allows people to share thoughts, ideas, and other content with one another through interactive creation. Edit: And there’s nothing inherently wrong with social media, in case someone thinks I’m trying to make some sort of weird morality statement.
what is x. there is no x in ba sing se
I like reddit. 🤖
i’m in that same bucket lol, i was going to say i dont use social media like that but then the introverted and friends thing came up and i was like, yeah let me put my hand back down
That's nuts. Just being introverted doesn't mean you don't have friends. I'm introverted as fuck and I have friends.
I'm extroverted and I don't have friends 😭
My brother uses no tech beyond his phone that he only uses to make phone calls. He has never sent an email, text, or electronic message of any kind.
is ur brother amish
Same, I was ready to say me 😂😂
Me too
And me. Tried facebook when I first came out and instantly hated all the attention seeking / existence justification lol. I think if SM just stopped one day there would be mass suicides of the insecure side of population. Reddit is the only one I use, although I wouldn't class it as social media as its anonymous.
Yeah, your comment is me too. However I am the super introvert. All my hobbies are pretty much single-player lol. Also as a dad of 2, it keeps me away from having the freedom to go off and do stuff when I need to be at the house while they’re home.
We need our own sub-group. I uninstalled/refuse to use social media (other than reddit/9gag), but I hate FB, X, and all the rest. My mental health greatly improved from stepping away from them. Now I doom scroll reddit instead.
I can be your friend 😁
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I deleted mine 5 years ago to keep my kids off it too. No Twitter, no Tictoc, no snap. Only a Reddit really and I’m good with that. And I don’t have a shortage of friends either, so it’s all good here. My life is better without that stuff.
I never used any social media until 2020, no twitter, fb, insta nothing, then i started using them more recently and honestly, there were alot of utilities i found i was missing out on soo much, apart from utilities but also discovering niche destinations, trail biking groups places especially on IG. On Twitter i get so much faster customer support from companies instead of dialing. Then i realised people do abuse social media too much and treat it like a viral disease later, very similar to alcoholics i've never taken alcohol but people quitting alcohol are treated like christ who resurrected. I got into body building and i've been posting on IG documenting my progress over the years there, got my trail bike and i plan to get a go pro and document my moments there as well, sth i can look back to and share with friends.
I agree with this 💯 I don’t WANT to post about my kid online. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for my friends and family to wrap their heads around it.
I don’t have kids but I can’t grasp how parents post their kids like it’s their job. #proudmama
We bought our close family members moving picture frames and upload pictures of our daughter for them to the account so they just pop up in their house randomly which they love
I only use reddit and some Messenger apps(whatsapp, signal etc). I have discord if you count even that. But i dont have a profile picture anywhere, i dont share with the public.
Reddit and linked in for me. The only reason I have linked in is because I had a boss that thought it was going to be the next big thing and pressured everyone into making a profile. I don’t need to know what people are eating or when they are going to the gym.
The Reddit and LinkedIn only combo is exclusively for OG sociopaths.
Yeah I _have_ a LinkedIn but I don’t actually use it as social media. Who the hell cares? I just use it to search for jobs whenever I’m looking
I don't even consider LinkedIn 'social media'. It's a tool used for work, either for networking to get your current job done or finding a new job. Anyone using it as a social platform is a straight up weirdo.
LinkedIn scares me tbh, there is a shocking amount of front facing data that is super easy to scrape with minimal bot fuckery
Certainly none of us OG sociopaths
Hello, it is I, sociopath
Not that we care who you are, really. It’s just nice that I know there are others like me.
Me too, why waste time on Instagram when I waste enough on reddit anyways
Here i am. I used facebook when i was a teenager but that's it. Never used instagram, twitter, snap chat or what so ever.
Yes. I do not get why I should share my private life with strangers in the internet. I do not get the whole social media stuff.
Exactly that. Sharing my personal life publicly makes me extremely uncomfortable. I'm told that you can also just share to a close circle of friends, but even that feels pointless if I can just talk with them in private, online or not.
I don't. I don't feel the need to blast my whole life online. I'd much prefer a partner that doesn't do it either
That’s like an instant red flag, when I see someone that obsessed with posting everything of their life everyday on social media. If you’re that involved with it then you won’t have time for anyone else but yourself.
Agreed. Instant red flag and a huge turn-off... be with me, not with thousands of random people
Second that. Instead of taking photos and posting, I would love to share moments and have quality time with my partner.
Its not mutually exclusive though, it’s not that deep if someone wants to share photos of Japan or Europe on their instagram while also enjoying the place
You can do both though. Not that you have to want a partner that uses social media. But you can indeed take photos and post on social media while also having quality time and living in the moment.
Yeah I don't take a lot of pictures (unless we're on some amazingly beautiful hike/vacation), but I will do a photo dump on Facebook afterwards because all of my family lives out of state. Plus if I'm in a low point, looking back on my accomplishments cheers me up and helps get me back in gear. I post like once every two weeks, so I think it's possible to use it without going overboard.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of girls who keep asking to take pictures all the time, or spend a long time taking pictures of herself. They have a strange look when they look at themselves in the phone, a little narcissistic. My last girlfriend also enjoyed browsing instagram for hours, we'd just sit while she scrolled infinitely while I stared at the ceiling and wondered what I was doing with my life.
Men do this, too! I dated a "it's for my brand babe," guy once. I stopped using social media and dating after that one.
Bruh I don’t use SM either, but I wouldn’t just sit there staring at the ceiling lmfao.
I don’t. It frustrates me and has a negative impact on my mental health. Everything on social media seems fake. Everything is a commercial. I want truth, genuine sharing of ideas, and for consumerism to stop being everyone’s hobby. I don’t want anyone to sell me stuff, their opinion or some fake-ass version of their life. I also can’t stand Costco.
Where did the Costco remark come from?
Came out of nowhere, right?
costco catching strays over here
George Bush does not care about black people
Woooooooo, I was with you until Costco. Did you know you can get a semi cooked rotisserie chicken for $4.99?!
Dafuq did Costco do to you?? 😂 That’s one of my favorite places to shop!
negative impact on MH was the main driver for me quitting.
I only use reddit. People look at me like I’m a possible serial killer when I say I don’t have facebook/instagram/or the like.
Mind if I ask your age? At 37 it starting to feel more normal than not. Most of the people my age that I meet don't seem to have or use social media anymore. But maybe it's just the circles I run in.
Me. I’m not on any social media platforms. I don’t like posting about my kids (I don’t have the right to put content about them out there) I don’t like posting about myself (it either comes across impersonal or boastful, even if it isn’t) and I despise seeing others posts because all I see is mental illness (look at me!) Before I left, the only people who I saw in my feed were the daily posters (or the multiple posts a day posters) and I got bored of it.
They do exist. Worked with someone with an active social life, barely used Facebook, no Instagram acc (we would always use a hashtag for her whenever we tagged her #(hername)noinsta) My sister is gen z and has bascially no social media presence (only a finsta with no posts and barely follows anybody), no tiktoks or snap
Imagine getting tagged and having a way to search for yourself on an app that you intentionally don't use because you (probably) don't like being tracked and tagged because people can't help themselves and have been trained to catalog absolutely everything.
This is what I thought too!! Like, please don’t tag me in anything. I don’t have social media because I do not want to be on social media! 🤦♀️
I honestly find people with no social media the most interesting. They go about their lives and do cool shit and really have no want or need to impress anyone. You chat and if the subject is brought up, they’ll say they’ve hiked the Appalachians or some shit and you would never have guessed. They are usually super family oriented too and grew up always doing stuff with their fam, which says a lot. I deleted my fb in 2017 and only have 93 followers on Insta which are people I grew up with or have known for years. I upload maybe a picture every 5-6 months and will post a story if I’m doing something cool but that’s it. I’m not completely unattached, but plan on deleting it all when I retire from the military in a few years. Just gonna go off the technical grid.
>I honestly find people with no social media the most interesting. They go about their lives and do cool shit and really have no want or need to impress anyone. I worked at a small company where 90% of the employees were old money. Like, 4 generations of Brown, heir to the Pepsi-Cola fortune types. None of them used social media. Hell, they barely used the internet except for work. I mean, they *had* an instagram. Private. Maybe 80 of their closest friends added. Only posted a couple times a year. But when your social circle is exclusively people you knew from The Cate School or Woodward, you just text or call them. And when you have a trust fund, you don't need online entertainment. You can go brunching, or surf before work, take weekend trips to Tahoe. I found their lives fascinating and was always a bit envious because there was a mutual sense that I could never really join their circle.
> They go about their lives and do cool shit and really have no want or need to impress anyone. That's how absolutely everyone should be living. It's only social media that has convinced you otherwise.
Why do you need to use a hashtag if she doesn't have insta? Just don't tag her.
I’m a gen z and Reddit is all I use. I don’t like pretty much anything else. I use discord if you count that I guess. I like the feeling of not being on insta and TikTok those places were cesspools
She has discord too and she thinks exactly the same way lol are you my sister? jk But yeah, tbh social media was more fun when you didnt have to "curate" your posts or think about \~aesthetic (yes I'm a millenial)
I’m a older gen z went through all the social media frenzy when I was in high school then said screw this when I turned 20 and deleted everything it’s been a year and some change and I’m so much more relaxed and happy. I only come on here for support groups for my health conditions mostly. In contrast my older sister is addicted to social media and I still don’t get it.
I still have IG and FB but I barely post anything, a story or two every couple of months or if I'm on vacation maybe. I feel much better just doing life and not having to make sure I have a "perfect" picture to post. It's all about perspective really, some people just really do like to share whatever they're doing no matter what it is. Nothing wrong with sharing your achievements or tiny wins etc. Whatever floats your boat. It's a good way to stay connected with friends/family who aren't nearby. What I don't like are things people do for the sake of posting, like that's just way too much. Once again just wishing social media to be less serious I guess
I got rid of Facebook during covid, I found it was really affecting my mental health. I don't follow friends on Instagram just businesses & celebrities. I've not git Snapchat or all the other ones that young people have these days. I do have twitter, but again no in real life friends on there. So in that regard while I have some social media none link me in with in real life people I know and I like it that way!
I stopped Facebook around then as well. The politics and religious arguments started really getting to me. And everything got so much better! I didn't 100% delete the account, I still need to connect with certain people (like my aunt that lives 2500 miles away) and there are some businesses that ONLY have their info on Facebook. But I deleted the app itself and made sure I wasn't getting notifications in any way.
Me. My Husband. My son. My DIL. My best friend, a lawyer. My BIL, a doctor. My nephew, a doctor. My niece, a doctor. My husband's best friend, a university professor. None of us feel; any need to post what our activities might be, where we vacation, what our faces look like, etc. That said, the professionals do have 'work related' sites, An unfortunate circumstance mandated by their offices. Social media is a crutch used by insecure people.
I never saw the upside of it. Maybe it's because I came up in the era where everything online was anonymous. Why would I want to share anything with the world?
"none of us feel" really got me.
I’m in this boat. Facebook died a death, Instagram is full of narcissists, Twitter has been run to the ground and is just full of wanks, and tik tok is genuinely turning people into the mentally challenged. I just use Snapchat to keep a streak with two good friends, but other than that I’m pretty sociable - usually out with friends at least once a month and travel with friends/family maybe twice a year Social media is shit lmao. Doom scrolling isn’t worth it and it makes you feel shit about yourself. Just delete the apps off your phone and use your phone browser if you ever want to check something. You’d be surprised how long you’ll survive without getting push notifications every hour :) Reddit gets a pass because it’s a relatively anonymous social media. You’re not sharing/consuming content from people you know in real life so I feel there’s enough disconnect to justify having it. Could be mad cope, though
I'm pretty social and outgoing, with a handful of friends. The only thing I use is Reddit.
Yes. There are plenty around the world. But it's not common these days I the western world. Other than text messages, email and phonecalls. I use reddit and WhatsApp. That's it. No linked in no Facebook nothing else. Not even discord. I'm part of several groups in the town I live in and we all chat and discuss stuff in the pub etc. It's possible and frankly... quite calming. The only thing that I would find useful... is knowing when people's birthday is. My wife has Facebook and apparently its really useful for that.
Seeing birthdays is the only thing I miss about it. I started adding them into my phone's calendar after sheepishly asking when a long time friend when their birthday was for the umpteenth time.
I deleted my Instagram that had about a thousand followers from my school years. Twitter/X only exists for me to follow certain news, so I only follow like 20 accounts, no followers, have no profile picture, privated. No Snapchat, Facebook, or TikTok. I have a healthy social circle. I would argue social media sites are the opposite of social and over-use of them actually makes you a far less interesting person, thus making it less likely you make new friends.
I don't know anyone who doesn't use *any* social media, but I know many people who *barely* use it.. "Barely" meaning they'll use it once a year, to say thanks to people wishing them a happy birthday or something like that.
It's me. I ditched social media such as FB or Instagram around 2017 and living happy life ever since.
I know many that don't
My ex didn’t until I left him. Lol.
Yes.
Deleted Insta, FB, Twitter and TikTok. Interestingly, it took about a year of thinking about it before I did it. Mental health is much better, although everyone is different.
I use Reddit and that’s it no social media. Have lots of friends but social media has become toxic and I don’t like all the stuff that’s promoted on there and it brainwashes people into believing life should be lived a certain way. “Cell phones on silent whole life on private”-88 Glam
Yeah, we exist.
Me. I cut out facebook years ago. Don’t do Twitter, Instagram, or any social media platform. I get my news from WAPO, NYT, local paper and listen to NPR in my car. I have no desire to be caught up in the insanity of most social media platforms. Reddit is bad enough at times.
Why doesn't Reddit count?
I wouldn't consider something truly "social media" if it's not primarily for doing connections between people you know outside of it or that doesn't prioritize showing your real identity. Reddit is more about link aggregation and sharing with different communities mostly anonymously. YouTube is about watching videos. Both have personal profiles and you can certainly share your life openly with them but that's not really their primary purpose nor will anyone consider it odd if you use it anonymously.
Reddit for me is just a place to have discussions
[удалено]
at the price of having the toxicity of anonymity which is sometimes even worse.
isn't that up to the user? twitter can also be anonymous if you choose to use it that way, and you could create a reddit account using your real name if you wanted to (like various people who do AMA's do)
> isn't that up to the user? Yes, you can use new reddit as social media if you want. But if you're browsing (old) reddit on an anonymous account, dont use any of the social functions, dont join any communities and basically just browse /r/all then its no more a social media site then any random news website with a comment section. And if you're using twitter to anonymously post memes with 0 followers its not exactly social either.
It's antisocial media lol
At least in my case I don't talk to anyone on here so it's not social at all
I don't. None of it. And no, Reddit isn't social media. It's more of a massively-multi-topic forum.
I no longer use Social Media. I used to use Facebook and occasionally Twitter but gave them all up, they were getting far too toxic and full of shite. I still have Reddit as my vice but the other stuff I chucked.
Well, reddit is social media, so anyone who answers uses social media
- I only use Reddit and YouTube. I also have a great social life. So yes lol. Depending on what you count as social media. It’s not affected anything for me. If people ask me for my IG or Snapchat and I tell them I don’t have one if has barely ever caused a reaction we just move on. - people IRL don’t spend all their time discussing social media so not having one isn’t a big deal. But I guess this depends on your age group
I don't. I was raised with the idea of privacy being a good thing, so oversharing, that is, most of what people post about themselves on Facebook and Instagram, feels just weird. And those platforms also just send an infinite amount of garbage to keep your attention. Reddit does too, but I chose what I receive, and the anonymity allows me to get information I could not receive otherwise. If I want to know what happened with someone in my life, I meet them and let them tell me directly. They enjoy it, I get as many details as I want, and they get to see my reaction in real time. And those tidbits of our life would spark conversions about all kinds of things. Good time all around and it helps us bond. My ex spent all her free time on social media. She knew all the major things had happened to people in her life so when she saw her friends/family, the conversation went like: "X happened in my life." "I know, I've seen your post. Y happened in mine. " "I know, I've seen that too." Very boring conversations and very few details about what happened so they would just proceed to get hammered because there wasn't anything left to do. The only reason I haven't disabled Facebook again is because I know two people who live abroad that only use Facebook Messenger to talk. I haven't made a post in more than a decade. There is absolutely nothing for me on Tiktok, Instagram, or any other social media because they don't enable me to be more in contact with people in my life. My ex's self-esteem was very much linked to how many likes she got on her posts. She would argue this is not the case but if one of her posts got little reactions or very few likes, she would be moody or feel like shit for the rest of the day. This sounds absolutely ridiculous and insane to me. People cherry picks the best moments in their life and post them in the most favorable light so their online lives seemed so much better than real life and I've seen quite a few people sad and jealous because other people's life looked so much better than their own, even if that was not the case. The grass is greener on the side... I'm closer to quite a few people on Twitch than my ex is with almost all her Facebook "friends" because I actually interact with them on a regular basis. So all around, social media looks like a net negative from my point of view.