you have to if you want to stay in touch with people. everyone i know and every volunteer/community group I know is constantly on social media. a lot of people won’t even text or phone anymore, they expect to talk exclusively over DMs on the various apps.
if you want to not interact with people, then yeah, don’t use it. but you’ll be socially isolated.
and as a community organizing type, I have to use it on a daily basis, or my community falls apart. all the interaction happens on FB or IG in my age group.
and when people ask you for your IG and you say you don’t use it, they think you’re an anti-social asshole.
I look at it from a bit of a different perspective. If my friends cant be bothered to answer me when I call or reply to a Signal/SMS message, then I don’t think they value me as a friend and thus I shouldn’t really waste my efforts on them. I did lose some friends because I don’t use social media, but to be honest, I’d rather have the few who appreciate me enough to reply to me with “traditional” methods, than try to get a hold of people who are obsessed with facebook.
If someone thinks I’m a anti-social arsehole because I don’t have IG/facebook, thats their loss and my win. I couldn’t care less about such weirdos.
Not about friends, those folks I have their numbers. I’ve been off all meta and twitter since 2020. The only reason I still log on is dm’s from family and most importantly marketplace which has soundly trounced and replaced Craigslist.
You might be exaggerating a bit, but you’re right. I have quite a number of friends from, say, college or other interests that I want to keep up with. But maybe they live far away, or are now busy with a different stage in their lives, so we don’t or can’t hang out casually like we used to to catch up. I avoided IG for more than a decade out of a desire to not get addicted to it and somethingsomethingfuckcorporate or whatever. But the practical outcome of this is that I’ve lost contact with a lot of good friends that I would like to keep up with. Not through any malintent on either of our parts, but simply because I am choosing not to be on the platform where they share about their lives.
And along with your point, a great number of community events are run on these social media sites. There is a facebook group dedicated to playing pickup ultimate frisbee in my city, and I want to do that. So if I want to stay up to date on things going on in the group, like new games being scheduled or regular games being rainchecked, I need to be on facebook.
I often organize canyoneering trips for my friend group, and these trips often may have up to 40 people interested in going. And often there are one or two people who can’t join the facebook or whatsapp chats because for whatever reason they don’t have accounts on those platforms. It is so annoying to have to text them every new detail and update because they aren’t on the platform everyone else is on. I’ll do it, but it’s annoying.
you have to if you want to stay in touch with people. everyone i know and every volunteer/community group I know is constantly on social media. a lot of people won’t even text or phone anymore, they expect to talk exclusively over DMs on the various apps.
if you want to not interact with people, then yeah, don’t use it. but you’ll be socially isolated.
and as a community organizing type, I have to use it on a daily basis, or my community falls apart. all the interaction happens on FB or IG in my age group.
and when people ask you for your IG and you say you don’t use it, they think you’re an anti-social asshole.
I look at it from a bit of a different perspective. If my friends cant be bothered to answer me when I call or reply to a Signal/SMS message, then I don’t think they value me as a friend and thus I shouldn’t really waste my efforts on them. I did lose some friends because I don’t use social media, but to be honest, I’d rather have the few who appreciate me enough to reply to me with “traditional” methods, than try to get a hold of people who are obsessed with facebook.
If someone thinks I’m a anti-social arsehole because I don’t have IG/facebook, thats their loss and my win. I couldn’t care less about such weirdos.
Not about friends, those folks I have their numbers. I’ve been off all meta and twitter since 2020. The only reason I still log on is dm’s from family and most importantly marketplace which has soundly trounced and replaced Craigslist.
those weirdos are the majority of the population.
Thats fine. I don’t need to deal with the majority of the population. I’m good with the handful of friends I have.
cool. i don’t have that luxury. i have to deal with the majority of the population.
That sucks, I’m sorry to hear that.
You might be exaggerating a bit, but you’re right. I have quite a number of friends from, say, college or other interests that I want to keep up with. But maybe they live far away, or are now busy with a different stage in their lives, so we don’t or can’t hang out casually like we used to to catch up. I avoided IG for more than a decade out of a desire to not get addicted to it and somethingsomethingfuckcorporate or whatever. But the practical outcome of this is that I’ve lost contact with a lot of good friends that I would like to keep up with. Not through any malintent on either of our parts, but simply because I am choosing not to be on the platform where they share about their lives.
And along with your point, a great number of community events are run on these social media sites. There is a facebook group dedicated to playing pickup ultimate frisbee in my city, and I want to do that. So if I want to stay up to date on things going on in the group, like new games being scheduled or regular games being rainchecked, I need to be on facebook.
I often organize canyoneering trips for my friend group, and these trips often may have up to 40 people interested in going. And often there are one or two people who can’t join the facebook or whatsapp chats because for whatever reason they don’t have accounts on those platforms. It is so annoying to have to text them every new detail and update because they aren’t on the platform everyone else is on. I’ll do it, but it’s annoying.