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Socializing  Opinions about Chase's Article about Connectivity and Privacy

Zanardi

Space Monkey
space monkey
Joined
Mar 11, 2018
Messages
97
I read today Chase's article about social media and it hit me in so many ways that I thought a simple comment won't suffice. So, I decided to post my (more than) 2 cents here, with my opinions about social media and his article, hoping that I will bring some extra value to his article.

I always thought social media is useless, mostly because it doesn't bring anything new to the way we communicate one with another on the internet. What we mostly send are text and pictures and there are a lot of ways that can do that, the e-mail being the oldest. The only real gain for us is real time conversations, but we also have text messaging for this so, if you ask me, text messaging and WhatsApp are more than enough.

I work as a lecturer at the Ploiesti university, Romania and most of my students are on Facebook so I had myself created an account long time ago for me to be able to discuss with them. On one hand, this saved us enormous amounts of time because if he were to ask me something, he'd ask, I'd reply and that would be it. In the old days, he would have to search me at my office, and if he were to find me, we would discuss. Or he could shoot me an e-mail, set a date and a time to meet and him asking me whatever he wanted to. Social media saved us days or maybe weeks of waiting and postponing for a few minutes of Q&A. And no, I am very reluctant to give my phone number to my students so they can call me, because it is enough for one angry student to publish it somewhere else and I don't want to deal with unnecessary trouble afterwards.

But this is the only main benefit, at least for me. There are more smaller ones, which I will discuss later. Long term, me and most of the students part ways and the few ex-students I keep touch and sometimes go out for a drink and some chat are mostly hooked by my personality, not by my Facebook wall. The main way in which we find things about each other is still social circle and repeated exposure in the classes and outside them. I only chat with them to set up meetings and/or accepting them, if the invitation comes from their part.

The smaller benefits for me are groups and events. I am in a calisthenics, a cycling, a programming and a Garmin fans group. This is the only place where I really see useful information. Events are useful because in my city, the places around are taking privacy to a new level and not announcing anything at the front door about what will they organize in the future.

Most of my 773 Facebook friends are unfollowed, because they post nothing of any interest for me. At 36, I had reached a point in my life where I have everything I wanted and nobody can give me what I haven't got yet. I am not impressed by a picture of somebody's trip to the Romanian mountains, because I had visited the entire country, including the mountains in the picture. It's akin my foreign 1st year students who enthusiastically tell me that they visited some Romanian city I had been 5+ times to in my life. I congratulate them, I ask them about the trip and their opinion, but I am not impressed or anything like that. So, what's the use of following them? Others share memes. Some of them are funny, most are not. I can find memes for myself, thank you very much.

I admit that I do the same mistake, but with different postings. The idea was that I am so happy with something and I want to share it with them. Excepting pictures of me, all my postings went like thieves in the night. Nobody asked me anything more about it. The error in my thinking was the same: if I am excited, then they must be excited as well. As much as I admire Winston Churchill, and visited Churchill's war room in London, half of the younger generations of students never even heard of him. So, at best this is a neutral information, at worst it may cause envy. Last October I biked 70 kms. A few people cared but most don't, despite the fact that I am sure they can't replicate that easy what I did, if they wanted to.

I don't know how satisfying social media is for women, despite the fact that "Facebook is 54% female ". First, Facebook gives them attention but my opinion is that attention is a means to an end, as it is for us, males. For them, attention gives them the possibility to choose and to be picky. I think, however, that if a woman sees that she only gets attention, but not men, attention won't be so appealing and exciting anymore. A female ex-student of mine, which I keep in touch daily, told me many years ago that she created her Facebook account (she was 19 back then) hoping that hoards of guys will flood her and she will pick the top of the top of the cream of the elite of the 0.0000000000001% of the men. Yes, the hoards came but the quality left to be desired. Most of the men are bland, timid and the few chaps that survived her tests never had the guts to ask her out. She told me that she would have accepted, but nobody invited her. At 24 she's still single. Picky and single, forgetting or not wanting to remember about the guys she rejected too easily in my opinion.

I see girls with 2-3 thousands of Facebook friends. If she were to really give each of them a chance and even if she were to reject 90% of them, she would still have a few hundred potential candidates and dates and so many sex partners that would make Asa Akira blush. Yet, nothing happens and all she gets is a rising number. As far as I saw, the percentage of people she really has an interaction with is lower than 20%.

I don't know how sleuthing will help their cause, because I think they are aware that there is more to a person than what he posts on Facebook and if they judge a guy only by a few posts, I think he wasn't attractive for them to begin with. But yes, they sleuth and this is why I shall delete all my Facebook posts after I'll submit this text and have lunch.

I don't see how Facebook can realistically be a place for men to pick up women. I mean, I add a girl in my friends list. She may or may not accept. Let's say she accepts. She won't say a damn thing so I have to open. But I don't know anything about her, yet I am seeing a cursor, I must type something and make something happen out of thin air. It's something close to wizardry in my opinion. I have much better chances daygaming and using Roosh's pet shop opener. At least she stops and I have a starting point.

I am glad that the influencer s**t starts to fade, because everybody saw that cleavages won't pay bills and most of the niches that give the impression of making money give only this: the impression. I created a programming course on Udemy, in 2017. 50$ a piece. However, Udemy puts every course on sale a few times a year So far, I have 128 students, each of them buying it on sale, at 10-20$ a piece. From about 6-7k I should have earned, I made $534. I am not complaining, I never bothered to promote it anyway, but it is an example of how much, or little, one can make on the internet. Geez, I'd rather be Megyn Kelly, in this respect.

I always thought that privacy is for fearful people, as a means of hiding. I had a mentality of: this is me, I have nothing to hide and if you hurt me with the information you know about me, I shall come back and make you regret it. But for 9-10 months I started to see privacy in a new light. Privacy helps me be left alone, to work on what I am working and to faster and more efficient reach my goals. I like to think it's not fear, but improved planning.

I think the future will belong, again, to niches and to books/sites/whatever which will be harder to find. I had discovered GC by pure accident, from a Google search, but the information here is golden and impartial. More and more artists go to services like Spotify, to directly display the music to their audience. I have a Garmin smartwatch and a Garmin cycling computer. Only 2 people heard of Garmin, even if it produces professional sports gear for cyclists (among other things). Generally, a smartwatch battery lasts a few days. Mine? 2 weeks. And so on. If I want to search something super-advanced on computer programming (what I teach), I will really, really have to search and dig deep.

So, Chase, you wrote a very good article which showed me another useless thing that must be discarded.

Off to lunch now.
 
Last edited:

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,551
Love how people hate on social media.

:)

You know how i read your post and Chase article and disregard your premises just as you guys disregard why people go there in the first place.

Great. If there is no social media, im happy with school shootings. Im sure everyone is, very excited.

I don't even want to begin on how the real world which society so praise about, failed me.

We can't let go of people.
Because mental states.

If we see someone in a different state, it kinda bother us. Because the linear is gone. And ther person is in another state.

The real world fail me. Without the internet, i have no job, ever. I would have killed myself.

People are full of shit. They going to come after you anyway. And i WAS A FUCKING DECENT MAN. A man who believe in religion and try to do decent when girls i like, have my friends like to.

The internet help me.

There is risk.

But those society fuckers put people there in the first place.

I think its high time we understand why ppl are there. Its a society problem.
 
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