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Phone cameras are actually pretty cool imo. Social media was def a mistake tho.

I disagree. Advertising with a tracking component was the worst invention of our lifetimes. Or, if you are really old, possibly advertising in general. It provides 90% of the incentive for companies to want all your information in the first place.

But for a time, a few shareholders got super rich! So totally great tradeoff, 100% worth it.

Almost nobody would undo the internet, but plenty of kids would undo social media (ONLY if it meant deleting it for all their peers, self removal doesn’t count).

Per Hard Fork podcast a couple months back

It was inevitable tho , and don't get this twisted, I'm anti social media. The second internet became public and accessible to literally everyone social media was bound to happen. We are naturally social creatures and want to interact with others. The issue is people are farmed like fucking livestock now. Companies know what they are doing by fostering and facilitating this current form of behavior manipulation.

Don't worry. It's just a normal part of life to grow, apart. I feel that in any time or era, if a friendship would crumble over petty BS, it wasn't made of strong bonds. Still though, it can be saddening and disappointing. I'm sorry.

That amazes me too. My original point wasn't to shit on kids. A lot of them don't know any better and their parents failed them by letting them go skipping into the digital crack houses that are smart phones. Myself included.

But I find it fascinating how much "social" media seems to have increased the level of... uh... Dumbass behavior and the need to record and share every damned thing you do. In fairness, it's not just kids that do this.

Most of the time, when my kid is having a dumbass moment, her mom and I already have a pretty good idea that something is up. We are ALWAYS able to confirm it with pictures or videos because these kids seem incapable of doing stupid shit without recording it for posterity.

It always goes something like this:

Me: "Were you drinking at [random friends] house?"

Her: "No. I wouldn't do that."

Me: "Oh. Really?" Plays video of my child falling down drunk

Me: "That's so weird. [Random friend] has another friend that looks exactly like you."

Her: "Whoops."

Me: "Yeah. Whoops."

Don't get me wrong. Teenager me made plenty of stupid decisions and the few camera phones floating around during my high school years weren't good for much. But there was no way in hell I would have let someone take pictures of me doing something that I knew I would have gotten in trouble for. Because sure as shit that photographic evidence would somehow have made it's way to my parents.

I either wanna “follow” topics and following people I don’t know feels odd.

Or at the very least just everything a particular person has to say about a particular topic, not about everything in their life (e.g. some author I like on the topic covered by their books, some programmer on their project,...).

You, my friend, dodged a bullet with that one.

I muted most of my phone and computer notifications. I won't respond immediately to messages. If you really need me at this moment, call me. You have my number.

Funny thing is that Teams only lets me block all notifications and not just the message notifications. So as a result, I regularly miss a teams call because I ain't dealing with that message notification bullshit.