is social media escapism? was at the beach today with the senpai

>>52879933
it's not escapism. it's a way to present yourself to the people you know.

how you came to the conclusion that it was escapism based on that anecdote is really mysterious. if anything, 4chan is the place for escapism.

Hanging out on Facebook all day isn't much better than hanging out on 4chan all day.

>>52879933
How is it escapism when it is a prison?

>>52880052
you should only post quasi-philosophical garbage with philosoraptor.

Of course it's escapism. Nearly everything in life is escapism because most people's lives including mine are "objectively" shit.

>>52879933
He was probably taking photos for his tinder profile.

>>52879933
>was at the beach today with the senpai and noticed a dude arrive. take a selfie with his beer making a silly face like he was having a great time then immediately leave.
This makes me really uncomfortable, how can people be like this. It's wrong of me to assume they're unhappy but jesus there's no way that person is content with their life.

>>52880184
I think you're being pretty presumptuous. How do you (or how does the OP) know that the guy wasn't just doing a road trip or something, saw a nice view of the beach, and decided to stop to take a selfie along the way?

The OP has sold this narrative that the guy woke up and decided that he would plan his day around driving to the beach to take a disingenuous selfie, but there are nearly infinite circumstances which would make this a totally incidental thing that makes this one observation completely uninformative about his happiness or quality of life.

Don't be presumptuous based on slivers of observations on people. It's embarrassingly stupid of the OP as it is, and it speaks poorly that you bought his narrative without any question.

>>52880218
>and it speaks poorly that you bought his narrative without any question.

>It's wrong of me to assume they're unhappy but

I presume you're some kind of asshole.

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>>52879933

that's depressing as fuck

>>52880233
If you make a habit out of presuming things like this based on the evidence in this thread, you're either an idiot or you've developed a habit of acting like an idiot. Break that habit.

>>52880218
This
Why do you assume that he was posing for likes?

>>52880233
>there's no way that person is content with their life
based on what? Like you said, it's wrong of you to assume they're anything. You have no idea what was going on except that a guy stopped, took a selfie, and left.

>>52880253
You're making the assumption that I do things like this habitually. You should break that habit.

>>52880063
No really. It is a prison. The worst kind of prison. One that forces you to put your best face all the time with no downtime. Used to be that you only need to put on your best face at work or at sociak events. At home, you can be yourself. Now, you have to do it all the time. Pretend to have a happy, perfect and exciting life. God forbid you not click that like on your co-workers update. It's work. It's tiring. It's a prison.

>>52879933
No, you saw a man creating an alibi. Fucking genius if you ask me

>>52880034
It's better to hang out on 4chin all day if you ask me. I'm fairly new to the site, but you can learn tons here and gather plenty of info. I mostly hang out on /g/ and /k/. Oh and also.. tits.

>>52880034
"hanging out" on facebook or 4chan all day is really just staying at home in front of the computer all day.

4chan and facebook aren't real places, but communication channels. Just as you don't "hang out" on the phone with your friend, you talk to them on it.

>>52880270
I presented a logical implication: If you make a habit of presuming things with insufficient evidence, then either A) you're an idiot, or B) you've developed the habit of acting like an idiot.

If this is uncharacteristic behavior, then the proposition doesn't apply to you. But you've made another stupid conclusion, which isn't adding much credibility.

>>52879933
Its the Facebook effect, in reality they arent that happy or wonderful at all but normies have to pretend that we dont know

>>52880267
Why are you trying so hard to argue, are people not allowed to comment on the said narrative irregardless of truth? Why assume OP is telling the truth, what basis would you or I have for believing this event even happened to begin with.

I think I was being completely fair with my admittedly nature (I can't think of a better way to phrase that). I don't think you have the right to argue against me when I say I'm wrong to begin with. We're here for discussion but also leisure, do you think I'm being out of line?

>>52879933
I actually avoid them when I'm depressed, too much of a reality check for me.

>>52880296
I hold no credibility here regardless, no matter what you'll never be able to assure everyone in the chain is the same person, it's inherent of anonymous places like this one. You need to judge posts based on their own merit alone not the credibility or character you paint of the people you presume are behind said posts.

That's besides the point though. I don't wish to engage in the rest of what you said since it doesn't seem to hold any value to me.

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>>52880260
I know right? Why does everyone think i'm just posting for attention when I post images like this?

Im only posting it because I like the font.

>>52880337
>too much of a reality check for me.
It seems almost ironic given that most people are so phony on these kinds of sites. Makes me wonder if they have it worse off than myself even though they put on a good public face.

>>52880339
Each thread has a general discussion that assumes that you're maintaining your identity implicitly from one post to another. 4chan wasn't designed to be a haven for anonymity, but a place where people could post without signing up for an account. There's a subtle but important difference. If you insist that every post you make - even within a thread - is coming from a distinctly different identity, then you're just a shitposter. Threads on 4chan work because the rest of us have conversations and are nominally accountable within the contexts of the few minutes these threads are active.

>>52880317
>irregardless

I have no right to judge how people escape from this wretched existence. I play video games.

What I hate is when social media spills into reality. When friends, family members, whoever, interrupts a moment to take a picture for Facebook, I think it's awkward as fuck. It's how I imagine people would feel if I started talking to them about a video game they don't play. I don't play Facebook, so I don't want to be dragged into your particular fantasy. Keep that shit to yourself.

Now I kind of wish it were socially acceptable to publicly embarrass someone for wanting to pause and take a photo.

>>52880399
I'm not disagreeing with you or anything like that, I'm just stating you shouldn't trust that everyone in a reply chain is the same person just because they're in a chain. I've had plenty of people pick up my discussion after I have stopped, I've had people reply to the same person I have and fork a conversation, I've had detractors impersonate me for some reason. Nothing prevents it, the best you can do is take every post on its own and not even try to assume everyone in the chain is the same person.

What do you think?

>>52880407
Holy shit it's later than I thought, maybe I am out of line.

Remember the time when a loser could fake it til he made it.

well you can't really do that these days.

if you have a Facebook which is never updated or have few friends and your dp isn't of you doing something decent while out then it is confirmed by your peers that you have no life.

don't have a Facebook at all (especially if you are under 35 years old) and that pretty much confirms you are loser who doesn't go out much.

at least back in the day you could build up slowly and maybe start getting close to your co-workers then eventually start a social life. but now if they see yous a loser with no active social life then it sends off red flags not to get to close to you

>>52880438
You're right, but in general it's more productive to assume that people are consistent. it's frustrating when someone post facto says "woah dude i'm not responsible for 40% of the conversation you just had", but if you assume the other way you can't make any progress discussing anything with anyone on 4chan (unless everyone agrees to trip).

>>52880419
>I think it's awkward as fuck. It's how I imagine people would feel if I started talking to them about a video game they don't play. I don't play Facebook, so I don't want to be dragged into your particular fantasy.
I like this analogy.

>>52880463
That is true, I do the same myself internally but never publicly here, that is to say, I make the assumption people are the same but give them a strong benefit of the doubt and never point out hypocrisy or contradictions in a chain (only in a post itself), I will usually quote it and append some kind of "if this was you and you believe this, then ..." kind of thing.

I am pretty hypocritical, telling you not to do it while doing it myself. I'm sorry Anon, it's late and I'm awake due to physical pain but that's no excuse.

>>52880456
> but now if they see yous a loser with no active social life then it sends off red flags not to get to close to you
The good thing about being an introvert is that I only want to hang around people who are willing to look past such things anyway. The bad thing is that being an introvert isn't all that great if you wanna reproduce some day.

>>52880456

>go through depression when I was 20
>stopped going out or having a social life and stopped seeing old friends who were cunts for the most part.
>27 now, pretty much fucked up my social life which has been 0 since then.
>be fronting to coworkers that I'm a normal fag and reuse stories from when i was younger, about what I did on the weekend or retell stories I read on 4chan as though it was something that happened to me or a friend
>if I started up a Facebook now it would literally be barren. won't be uploading anything weekly or even monthly as I don't go out or have friends.
>people of my past will add me and ask where the fuck I have been. have nothing to show for it all these years.
>friends list of 40 will consist of 90% family/relatives
>if co-workers add me they will see what my life is really like outside of work and feel different about me or even worse, pity me.

hot fuck man I know that feel.

like this shit happens to every new group of people I meet who could potentially start social life with. things go great when we first meet and I think everything is all good and that they like me. but when they figure I have no friends outside of them I start to feel that the feel weird about me now and the friendship starts to fizzle out. not even clingy or anything with them.

>>52880561
I feel it too, this exact situation.

>>52880282

VR will change this.

>>52881122
Everyone seems to think that VR will change everything. There's no research or evidence that supports this. All the effort behind VR is to make a better gaming interface. I don't even see research giving merit to the claim that VR will become a part of our everyday lives, and I study human-computer interaction.

>>52879933
It is an ism, the ism you are actually looking for is narcissism.

>>52881220
pretty much sums it up

>>52880272
hmmm

>>52880561

how about adding some non-uggos of /g/? my friend list on kikebook is at around 60, and I don't mind.

It's a tool, learn to use it so that it benefits you or don't use it at all.

>>52880456
>don't have a Facebook at all (especially if you are under 35 years old) and that pretty much confirms you are loser who doesn't go out much.

Here is where you fucked up, you gave a shit what others think of you. You can easily impress the kind of losers who enjoy social media by mirroring them and holding your liquor, no Facebook required.

>>52879956
Because he's escaping to a world where he's hanging out on the beach all day enjoying himself

Instead of the reality that he's day drinking and deperessed

>>52881510
I'm not even sure that i believe the OP saw a beer bottle (and not a coke bottle or something). you, he, and half this thread are jumping to insane conclusions based on what couldn't have been 5 minutes of observation of this guy.

I have friends. It's you guys. I wish I could hang out with people like you sometimes. I haven't met one person who I could be myself and them like me.

>>52881581
you're pathetic. you need fucking psychiatric help

Social media is basically a pissing contest to see who can stroke their ego the hardest for people who feel the need to validate their lives by putting forth everything they do in the best light for others to judge them on and gain their approval.
Its 20% keeping up with friends and family and 80% look at how cool/rich/funny/important I am like and follow plz thx

>>52881699
I'd say it is 100% of the later, the former is easier to do and more private via a phone call or coffee.

>>52881768
hey, don't be an idiot.

Facebook has features like photo albums, messaging, etc... that make it preferable over a bricolage of other services. And this is to say nothing of the fact that nobody wants status updates pushed directly to them, but they do want to be able to go somewhere to see what's going on in the lives of their friends and family. That's what the timeline does.

But as to the "ego-stroking" claim, it's well-established that people respond to feedback from their community, and more directly that people like (both generally and in the "facebook like" sense) good news and upbeat content.

Nobody's going to give you positive feedback for posting about something bad, or making small talk with strangers about your insecurities. You talk about what's good in your life, and similarly you post about what's good in your life.

It just looks like Facebook is 80-90% ego-stroking because 80-90% of your timeline is other people responding to that social pressure to post things that aren't depressing. Because nobody likes talking about depressing shit.

It's not ego stroking or chest thumping or whatever cynical teenager bullshit you guys have in mind. People are just posting the stuff that they find gets likes, and people like hearing good news.

>>52881884
Sharing your life with random strangers on the internet isn't anything but ego stroking, and using a social media platform to communicate to those closest to you is less sincere and shows a lesser effort of caring then calling them or visiting them in person. Also if I want to look at photos I will bust out my photo album and show it to my family or friends instead of sharing images of my family and friends with the world.

Lets also not forget having social media accounts opens you up to all sorts of bullshit when it comes to employment, security and privacy.

>>52881939
>Sharing your life with random strangers on the internet
most people don't use facebook this way. i don't know how to reconcile your misuse of facebook with the ways people generally use facebook, except by the weak olive branch that "friendship" has a lower bar for entry now than it did before Friendster/MySpace/Facebook.

Most people share their statuses with people that they nominally consider "friends". That might include people they went to high school with, but that loose definition of "friendship" is a totally different issue than bitching about the system that is Facebook. If you're upset that people share things with too many people, the obvious solution for you is to be more judicious about whom you add, and to tighten your privacy settings. That's a simple problem with an obvious solution.

Complaining about privacy is a more useful thing to engage with, but that's so far from the OP's original complaint and even the social critique that started this particular conversation that it's basically a red herring. It's worth pursuing in another context, but in the scope of the last 5-6 posts here it's basically bait.

>>52882011
Most facebook users have hundreds of even thousands of "friends"

They absolutely use facebook in that way, you can't maintain relationships with that many people

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I have 800 friends on Facebook and routinely get 40-60 likes on my photos

>>52882011
Most people who use the site add any random person who sends them a friend request though, and many people leave their profile wide open. So yes, many people are sharing intimate information meant for their family or friends with literally the world.

Most normal people don't have beyond ten solid friends, yet time and time again many users on the site have over 100, people add others willy nilly because they want to share about themselves for attention. Also about me not using Facebook properly, that would be impossible to measure as I have never had any social media account. I guess that means I am using it properly.

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>was at the beach today with the senpai

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>>52882121
>"friends"
>"likes"

>>52882081
You're projecting your own definition of "friendship" and judging that people are misusing Facebook by your criteria. That's not how people think about friends these days, and I thought I was pretty clear on that entire point.

The ultimatum wherein I can't keep up with someone I went to high school with (and hung out with) when I move away for college unless I'm willing to call them regularly seems especially naive to me. People have always maintained loose connections with far more than the ~150 that Dunbar's number suggests is our limit for close relationships. If I want to hear that a friend I knew well in high school is getting married, I shouldn't be obligated to maintain an active line of communication with him through my college years. I'd like to live my own damn life and let technology keep us tapped in to each other's lives.

This is the whole argument for technology - we can use it to defer, consolidate, and optimize what would otherwise be an obnoxious amount of social upkeep just to stay up to date with people.

>>52882132
1) Friendship network analysis research suggests that people form clustered networks, suggesting there's nowhere near as much arbitrary adding as you cynically claim.
2) You're not obligated to use Facebook that way at all. You can maintain a rich, high signal-to-noise timeline if you want.

The criticism that I'm reading is increasingly going from these specious individual claims to these nebulous, indefensible claims that don't really apply to anyone but inexplicably apply to everyone. It's always "most people" but never actually anyone we can point to or discuss.

>>52882166
Traditionally you wouldn't be able to keep up with that friend from high school, and realistically you shouldn't

Facebook enables you to do that, the technology does the job of keeping that contact, but why? What does it do for you to know that a guy you barely know got married?

>>52882166
People come and go from your life, holding onto people you no longer have any connection to isn't healthy. If you are not willing to remain in contact with someone then they no longer have any bearing on your life, and thus shouldn't remain your friend.

You will meet thousands of people in your life, some you may even become friends but holding onto people long gone from your life is just holding onto the past man.

>>52879933
>mfw normalfags have to manually go to the beach instead of just photoshopping (ganoo+gimping) themselves into a beach photo

>>52882205
>Traditionally you wouldn't be able to keep up with that friend from high school, and realistically you shouldn't
Traditionally you wouldn't leave your hometown. You absolutely would keep up with them because your traditional life wouldn't have much else going on.

And realistically why the fuck shouldn't I be able to hear about milestones in the lives of people I'm not actively involved in anymore? If we didn't have a falling out or anything dramatic like that, why is it so offensive that we want to occasionally hear what's going on in one another's lives?

As for why I want to know that an old friend got married, I don't know what to say. I'm beginning to feel like I'm talking to someone with a socialization disorder. Like I said at the beginning, it's nice to hear good news, and I have a higher affinity to this person than I have to randomly chosen people in the world. We share memories together.

>>52881122
>massive EMP will change this
There, I fixed it for you.

>>52880218
good post
well written

>>52882230
>If you are not willing to remain in contact with someone then they no longer have any bearing on your life, and thus shouldn't remain your friend.
Am I talking in circles or are you a psychopath? I'm maintaining contact with people by sharing updates about my life just as they share theirs, but not having one-on-one conversations with people. Is that the distinction you're trying to make?

You seem to be making out using Facebook as some kind of highly active pass time. I'm talking about scrolling through the newsfeed and seeing highlighted events in people's lives. If I don't see people in my timeline, or if they don't see me, that's fine. That doesn't mean I wish to sever any access we have to hear about major milestones in each others' lives.

You make it sound like if someone doesn't call you every week then you just assume they're either dead or you two are no longer friends, but that either way you no longer care because they're not in your life anymore. That's now how anyone wants the world to work, and happily technology makes it easier to resist that kind of thinking.

>>52882195
My criticism boils down to; Facebook as a communication tool allows you to communicate with more people, but the communication is far less personal and as a result can be so emotionally detached it borders on being asocial.

>>52882339
Someone posting timeline updates is not maintaining contact, it is sending out noise and hoping someone listens. There is a big difference between not hearing from someone in a while and drifting apart from someone, if someone is no longer part of your life but contacts you out of the blue or vice versa and you mutually agree you wish to rekindle your friendship that is perfectly normal.

You can maintain happy memories of the past and some saudade is healthy, but stockpiling contacts of every connection you made in your life when they no longer are a part of it isn't normal. People drift in and out of your life constantly.

>>52882528
You're talking about dichotomous relationships with people - either they're active friendships where you two communicate regularly, or they're essentially nobody to you. This may be a good bright line for how friendships are assessed, but it's not a reasonable way to think about your relationships with people.

You might successfully argue to me that all of the relationships on Facebook are not aptly described as "friendships", but the alternative - that some of your relationships on Facebook include acquaintances, co-workers, etc... - just leaves us with the conclusion that Facebook has chosen a misleading name to encompass all of the connections you make on that platform. And I'm not convinced that this is worth pointing out in any context other than an academic (maybe even pedantic) one. And I'm a grad student, so my calling something pedantic and academic is saying something.

>>52882242
kek,

>>52882528
/a/ is a bigger communication tool than facebook - I've masturbated in real-time with another 60 anons a while ago, and we all logged in to a teamspeak or a ventrilo - don't remember which one.

It was a beautiful sight (or rather auditory experience). You could hear 60 anons' moans as they jacked it to Boku.

The part where everyone came was...or rather - is - unforgettable.


Can you do this over facebook? Hell no, nigger.

>>52880218
You don't do what OP described without its being a part of pretending to be something you're not to other people. Fakery is a sign of a deep-seated sense of inadequacy.

>>52882879
i've been hanging around on 4chan for nearly 8 years now and i have to say this particularly grossed me out for some reason. i think it was because of the sense of intimacy you seemed to have.

like it's all fine until you also attach emotional closeness to it.

>>52880272
Phone is on at time such and such conveniently for one pic. Phone is off for three hours on both sides of that moment. Muh alibi. Not even suspicious.

>>52882941
January 2005 fag here, you won't be grossed out at the /a/ posters once your soul dies at the ten year mark.

>>52882242
Kek'd

>>52883015
Try posting with more words next time. We don't speak caveman.

>>52882777
>>52883060
epic contributions, bros. 1 upboat for each of you.

>>52883063
How embarrassing for you. Apparently, you are not even self-aware to the point of realizing you're stupid. I bet you think you're smart, which just makes it all the more embarrassing.

>>52879933
Maybe.

Does escapism require the subject to acquire happiness in the process?

>>52883015
>Turn phone off at beach so I can enjoy myself and if water some how gets into it I'm fine