Dealing with people who do use social media?

[grubbyfox]

Yeah, in a way I can regret having a Facebook account, wishing it never existed, but at the same time, atleast it's let me keep up with information and all that. I cant even say "If I knew how it would turn out, I would never join" because I would have probably ended up having to join anyway to keep up with things. I just wish I could turn off things in it even more. I've shut it down as far as I can, so no one can post on my wall, etc. Still people can tag me and what not and I hate that. (and it's boomer family members so they dont understand when I say I dont want to be tagged, etc. They just do not get it.)

As of now, I will keep my profile here, but I wish more of my friends would move to a different group chat platform.

It's the same with a lot of Social Media, I may have an inactive account just to be able to snoop around. But I'm not really actively using them anymore. I think, sadly, that is the "easiest" way around this issue, and will continue to be this way. At least I have learned. Any social media that wants me to present with full name and/or push my family members on me, no no no way. Does anyone remember back when Facebook used to be kinda fun? With the games, widgets etc. I had SuperPoke and this thing where you could collect stuff from Poking? (Maybe that was SuperPoke?) I also had this thing called MyRoom or something, that was a "room" on your wall, where you could collect weird items and stuff. Then there was the graffiti on your wall, where people could draw stuff.

Not to mention all the Zynga games. Oh man, MafiaWars and Pet Society, haha.

Now I have half my family breathing down my neck on my Facebook, so I haven't used it in like 8+ years.

[virtue]

I'm really surprised someone hasn't actively recommended using privacy frontends! They're honestly the last thing standing between me and total isolation from the contemporary internet. I strongly recommended using privacy frontends like nitter to follow people who are likely to post about things you would be interested in like this and then subscribing to the RSS feed for their account. Its a dirty method of getting it done, but it absolutely works! There IS a privacy frontend for instagram called proxigram, but its broken most of the time because Meta loves being a huge pain in the ass. Another user mentioned Imginn which certainly does exist, but is substantially less exhaustive. I'd recommend trying out the browser extension "libredirect" which has built in all the privacy frontends you could ever need and automatically redirects you to them when your browser attempts to connect to the original website. Here's everything there's a frontend for (and the settings and whatnot, lol)!

As for the specific event you wanted to attend...

I'm sure limiting their reach by advertising only on Instagram wasn't a practice in exclusion. If you do go, and if the opportunity arises to mention such things, you can always bring up how lucky you were to find out about the event since you don't have Instagram, and that could potentially lead to discussions about the Indie Web, your values, and your online practices.

I also strongly agree with this. You should go next time and talk to the staff about putting their info up on a website or more available profile! I think there's a lot of borderline misanthropic vibes going on in this thread with how people seem to be viewing social media users, but seriously, they're just normal people. You gotta remember we're the abnormal ones no matter how right we (feel we) are. I hate to be that guy, but when I see a place that has no non-walled-garden means of keeping up with them, I simply follow hanlon's razor. At that point, its on me to personally find a way to get in contact with them and sincerely request/discuss the idea of them making a website or an profile on a non-walled-garden platform for the benefit of their customers.

Also, less important, everyone thought I was a freak for not having accounts there. I don't know if anyone have experienced this, but caring about privacy and being less online isn't normal to most people.

I sincerely believe you should stand your ground on this matter, though. Defending privacy and healthy habits may not be normal, but its whats right, and you should harshly push back against those who criticize you for it. They're allowed to think what they want, but if somebody wants to criticize me for my lifestyle, I will take that as an invitation to educate them about it. (I would be lying if I said that wasn't mostly inspired by spite)

This is how I feel about RSS feeds, but everybody and their cat wants my name and email address.

God, yes. It is deeply frustrating to me that people keep, just, not having RSS feeds even on blogs and news sites were it would obviously be objectively useful. Email newsletters are frustrating to me since theyre identifiable (if you don't know what youre doing) and also just way less efficient. RSS is absolutely the way to go for pushing these kinds of things!

[honeybread]

In short, it's about balance for me. I can't escape it, but I can tame it like a wild horse. I won't die from having a Twitter account that I don't post on.

i handle my social media in a similar way! instagram is really the only one i use, to follow local bands. it's not ideal (especially for me, a facebook/meta hater before it was cool) but i understand why small artists go there. it's the most bang for their buck.

i do have twitter/facebook/etc. accounts too, but none are used. in a sense, i think having these "dead" accounts makes me even more nondescript/anonymous. instead of standing out by having nothing, i've got some basic pages that give off an impression of me being an average member of society. hiding in plain sight, as it were 

finally: i believe people do generally care about privacy but it feels impossible to attain in our current capitalist hellscape. i personally don't blame them;  people want to take the path of least resistance, for better or for worse.

[3lsie]

I also have social media that I don't use or even give out to anyone. Somehow, I haven't come across anything that requires social media in the 6ish years I've been doing this, but I'm sure I must have missed out on a lot of events without even realising it. The zine fair situation sounds frustrating.

It's a bit different but lately I'm feeling frustrated by the trains where I live - I recently got a feature phone so I could go places without a smartphone... only, I can't go anywhere that requires a train because there aren't ticket machines, only digital tickets that you need to show on your phone or print out, and I don't have a printer. I don't know how people are managing if they genuinely can't use the app or a printer.

It just feels like such a shame that all these social media and even utility apps like the train ones have become almost mandatory.

[wangobangy]

only digital tickets that you need to show on your phone or print out

I hate this so much. It makes it so inaccessible to people who don't have phones or don't know how to use them very well. You also have to make sure that your phone is charged and hope that it will work and not glitch out somehow.
This also sucks for concerts too. I miss getting an actual ticket, now I have to take a screenshot of my concert ticket and print it off to have any kind of memorabilia.

[3lsie]

I hate this so much. It makes it so inaccessible to people who don't have phones or don't know how to use them very well.

It's really bad isn't it? I think one of the things I don't like about it, and about things that use social media, is the assumption that everyone has an account/app/smartphone (as much as it probably is a fair assumption).

[grubbyfox]

I hate this so much. It makes it so inaccessible to people who don't have phones or don't know how to use them very well. You also have to make sure that your phone is charged and hope that it will work and not glitch out somehow.
This also sucks for concerts too. I miss getting an actual ticket, now I have to take a screenshot of my concert ticket and print it off to have any kind of memorabilia.

gahhh yess exactly!! and you have to fiddle around with the phone at the ticket booth/whatever, opening this and that, omg i hate it. i appreciate it as a bonus for those that want it, but i hate that it's forced more or less now. i just want a lil ticket stub to hang on to ;___;

Also, i used to save cinema tickets for years. back in the 00s they still had this pretty neat logo for the cinema here, and while they do have tickets now, it's like just a white stub with some text on, nothing more. It's better than nothing, but not by much, hah.

[wygolvillage]

I've only had to deal with phone-only tickets once (I believe it was for the time I went to see The Cure), otherwise most venues let me print my ticket.

Honestly reminds me of restaurants that only have a menu accessible via QR code. I can't stand it!

[Scootarooni]

I still have an instagram but I still feel the frustration. Especially since, as a few have already mentioned, a lot of social media doesnt allow you to look at posts without an account! It's a really stupid gimmick to get you to sign up :^/

And although it's not social media and I also use it pretty frequently, I feel the same about discord some days. I can only be in the know about certain community events / be generally involved with the community via discord. It's a neat little messenger but it can be frustrating at times when info is *only* available through it.

[PurpleHello98]

Nonetheless, I see more people growing weary and leaving it behind day by day, especially as the conditions on platforms worsens, and more people openly and actively advocating against it (like Jaron Lanier). 

I think the current sacrifices are worth it for many. From experience, I've missed out on many events I'd liked to have participated in simply because I had either left the common platform that would have connected us, or I had just never learned of the platform. It's just something we have to acknowledge, that there is a real chance that we'll miss out on certain events and opportunities if we close certain doors. But surely the benefits of closing those doors outweigh what they had to offer us.

This frustrates me, as someone who likes to be kept up to date on things I enjoy. I used to have Twitter on my phone just to get post notifications from accounts. I want to know what's going on with my favourite bands, updates on games from the developers. If only newsletters were still popular, then I wouldn't be in the dark on these things. 

I definitely agree. For me, one of the main difficulties is that my favourite musical groups are all k-pop, and I feel like k-pop especially is really bad about very seldom having proper home pages and just having social media instead. The only proper site for my favourite group, Verivery, for example, is a small-ish site, which is only in Japanese and has no newsletter/RSS feed/whatever to get updates beyond checking back however often and hoping my browser's translation add-on works. And the site doesn't cover a lot of news pertaining to the group anyways, so I either have to scroll through my Twitter feed on my old account or hope the Discord chatroom I'm in starts buzzing about it.

I know the frustration. Here in town you can barely go on a bus without having to download an app and whatnot.

[...]

Last winter, I passed a woman waiting for a bus, and the schedule at the bus stop was missing or something (I dont remember). She didnt have any battery on her phone and asked me if I could check the bus schedule for her online.    I had to go to this wonky website and download and open a PDF... download a pdf... to check schedules. (Lest I install an app I guess? It didnt say.) Just, why.. I was standing there late at night in winter time trying to download a darn PDF, lol.

I'm absolutely sick of all this. My parents and I went to St. Louis a couple of years ago for a concert and to freaking park the car in a city-owned parking lot, we had to download an app, because that was the only reliable option. Technically, there was a machine where you could pay for parking with card and/or cash (I forget), but it was barely functioning and wouldn't work at all for us or for any others we saw. We had to stand out in the December cold for absolutely ages to download this bloody app, and if we hadn't had a smartphone we would've been screwed.

But I think overall, (mostly—I'm still working on Reddit, and I pop onto Twitter and Instagram from time to time) quitting social media (and hopefully switching to a flip phone soon) has greatly improved my mental health and my general happiness with the Net. Personal sites (and other sites) are just so much better!!

With social media, it is what it is. There's no way to fight it as far as I know. For years I stayed off social media as much as I could, but eventually gave in because I missed my friends. Sure I can DM them on Discord, but being able to passively keep up with friends cities away is important to me. And finding restaurant menus, grand openings for new places, etc. is also worth keeping it around. Also, less important, everyone thought I was a freak for not having accounts there. I don't know if anyone have experienced this, but caring about privacy and being less online isn't normal to most people. My parents think I'm on some Rusty Shackleford shit when I talk about data miners.

In short, it's about balance for me. I can't escape it, but I can tame it like a wild horse. I won't die from having a Twitter account that I don't post on.

I have these as well, in case I ever need to search for updates or anything. I do need to get better, however, at only using them when I must, and not getting tempted to just "pop on for a few minutes" from time to time, which I think is the now-pervasive Social Media FOMO (!) creeping back up on me. I just wish my favourite groups would get proper Web-sites or newsletters, y'all... 

But overall, I think the choice we've made has, in general, been a good one. We may be frustrated right now with what we can't do, but we saw something we didn't like and we broke free! (Mostly, but my point stands.) And we can only hope and pray that people will see us and join us, also breaking free of these corporate purgatories called "social" media!

[DiffydaDude]

But overall, I think the choice we've made has, in general, been a good one. We may be frustrated right now with what we can't do, but we saw something we didn't like and we broke free! (Mostly, but my point stands.) And we can only hope and pray that people will see us and join us, also breaking free of these corporate purgatories called "social" media!

Bro the way i feel about all this, if i aint had no self control i wouldve been like that scene in Black Ops II where that latino guy i forgot the name of goes on a fucking rampage. I wish more people would actually start doing something but when i spread the word about these alternatives and stuff they always say some crap like "oh it's not as convenient, oh but its too cumbersome" and it pisses me off, like are you really going to fuck the fuck around and see how bad the shit you use gets?

[Lyonid]

I feel like I'm pretty lucky with my friends being rather critical of social media or have never clicked with it in the first place. I LOVE talking about this whole subculture and all my friends know. I couldn't really make them join, but I think it's fine. They are doing their best, and leaving a system that is so ingrained in daily life is super tough. We do have all the tools to thrive, and the only thing we can do as individuals is share them.

I am glad I left places like Twitter or Instagram, though I still open them when someone shares something with me. People have been super understanding of it, and there is the common consensus that social media truly sucks for everyone despite being vital for many. My personal motto on this is that I will spend all my energy to create the virtual space that I damn-well deserve. If I feel bad somewhere, I will leave at the very first instant. I won't make anyone move away from their habits as they are the ones responsible for that, but I sure as hell can inspire and share my personal views on things. During research I learned that pointing out the bad will never work out as well as showing the good. It's the euphoria and curiosity that will drive people away from (harmful) places of comfort - we can only work on ways to make the transition more accessible and welcoming.

I know this may sound overly positive since social media itself has turned into a system that is harmful, addictive and not sustainable in its current form. The worst part is that we all know, yet barely anyone is able to make the first step. It's really damn hard and it's insane to me that I managed to kinda make that jump. Show people the cool stuff beyond their current habits! I always consider nostalgia to be a great entry point for many. Others may enjoy looking at some of those insane websites or graphics or games! My personal goal is to turn into a person that you can ask for something cool, and I will always deliver some fascinating resource from the web.

[worldleaderpretend]

I find it annoying when things I want to see are only accessible through social media, but it is a sad truth. my compromise is disposable accounts- I have an email address I solely use for one-time/limited-use social media accounts and just go on wherever i need to, look directly at whatever i'm looking for, and leave. just bc a shitty algorithm is there doesn't necessarily mean you need to interact with it. alternatively, you can also go into inspect and delete the blocker on some websited that force you to use an account. I'm not sure about with insta or twitter where it just takes you to a login page, but with tumblr i've found that since it only gives you the popup once you try to look at more posts, you can delete that and just keep scrolling.

[grubbyfox]

The other day I remembered one other thing I absolutely hate about SoMe with a flaming passion - the fact that it tries to push "people you may know" (facebook, insta, snapchat, twitter etc.) Especially snapchat and to some extent instagram.

Yeah I know some of the reason is because it reads my contact list (or it doesn't have to even read my contact list, it may read someone elses...) - but I get so fuming angry when fore example snapchat is like "hey here's a person to add" and then it's the most toxic, awful ex-"friend" you ever had, that you're glad is no longer in your life, etc.... just there, one mis-click away. And you know they are looking at your friend suggestion too. I hate it so much I feel like vomiting.

I cant imagine how triggering those things can be for someone who's had worse experiences than me. I just know that even a toxic pick-me I got rid of years ago, still makes me want to puke when I see their name in the Snapchats suggested friends list.

[wygolvillage]

"Sync your contacts" is terrifying to me. There's a reason I don't give out my online profiles to my family, and that's because it's MY private space.

Maybe a bit too heavy for this forum but my parents used to stalk my browser history and follow my tumblr account when I was a teenager, so I always value when I can keep my online life seperate from irls.

The algorithm trying to push you closer to people you might want to escape is terrifying, it's also scary to imagine the other end. You try to keep your profile a secret but then the algorithm suggests your account to a dangerous person or authority in your life anyway. Gives me the shivers.