Your relationship with social media

[Umbran]

I have no interest in the minutia of people's lives as seen on Twitter or Instagram.

No argument there.

IME, text messaging takes more time than analogous conversations.

If what you need is a conversation, then yes, certainly. Overall, the written word is just about the lowest bandwidth communication form we have available to us. Face-to-face or voice-to-voice is certainly better for fullness of communication.

There are occasions when it is a better option

Specifically, when there is a very short message or exchange, and it is okay (or actually preferrable) for it to be asynchronous. The overhead of a "conversation" of repeated back-and-forth voice messages is greater than that of text messages. If your life doesn't lead to these, then yeah, text messages aren't something you need much.

but for the most part, I find it inefficient and annoying as fuuu......nk.

Well, funk has its place - Motown. Not so good in cheese or feet

I also have ethical and legal concerns about the way ISPs handle email, but that's a necessary evil, and my concerns will be addressed when certain cases are played out in court...

I acknowledge that this leads into politics, but I admit to being curious about which cases you mean.

 

[amerigoV]

For me its:

• I have been on BBS and email (back in the day it kinda was social media - people spamming out their jokes and such) since before the internet was cool
• Never was on MySpace
• Had a Twitter account. Decided that 99% of it is noise (vs info) and deleted the accounts.
• I have a FB account. I never hit LIKE but will respond occasionally. One of these days I am going to have a RIF (reduction in friends) and truly pair it down.
• I like Google+ Communities as a more modern bulletin board system. I think that is where G+ has some relevance vs. Twitter/FB. I did not like the old "people in circles" system.
• Never touched Instragram, Vine, and anything else similar that I am sure is out there
• I am on Linked In. Its value to me is when people change jobs it keeps me in touch with them.

Overall, I am pretty "meh" with social media. To me Twitter is worst - its as if "a million voices cried all at once...and said nothing meaningful".

 

[Janx]

I find that I can't stand those hyper-vigilant people, to me it's like why do you even brother having a computer that's connected to the net,if you're that worried?
..snip..
Now I picture Janx sitting on a chair yelling at people younger than him "dang nabbit kids get off my lawn with your crazy hair and music" lol

I realize you're joking on the last part, but I think you are mis-interpretting what hyper-vigilant vs. reasonable precautions mean.

Schools are just now starting to teach kids about online safety (not a long lecture) that pretty much covers what I posted here. It ain't hyper-vigilant, it's basic info security. One of my many hats at work is Privacy Officer. I am keenly aware of all the security crap we have to adopt and how retarded our users are in their understanding of the legal and security risks. They complain about strong password enforcement, site blocking, PDF and Zip attachment blocking, yet without them, every week we faced a new virus walking in that Symantec failed to detect in their email or that they'd install off some web page.

Me warning you that "hey, watch where you go and what you post" is mild and actually pretty good advice. It may come off as strongly worded, but that's because I care, and as I work in IT I am quite a bit more immersed in security concerns than normal people.

The hyper-vigilant are the ones who don't do online banking because they don't trust the security because they know somebody who worked in a bank's IT who said so it was poor.

 

[Bullgrit]

That does make me wonder what everyone's age here, is (or at least the people who've posted answers).

I'll be 48 next month. I've been an active denizen of the online world since the dial-up BBS days, so I'm not an old fuddy-duddy regarding online activity.

I used to be uninterested in texting, but over the past few years, I've come to really like it. 99% of my texting is within my family, but it is a great way to not only send and receive quick/short information, it lets us all feel a little more connection when we are apart. For instance, my wife and I text often throughout the day when I'm at work.

Phone calls actually annoy me, now -- they immediately interrupt what I'm doing.

Bullgrit

 

[Morrus]

Phone calls actually annoy me, now -- they immediately interrupt what I'm doing.

I'm with you there. Texts are non-intrusive. Phone calls demand your attention - sometimes quite a lot of it!

 

[Janx]

For me its:

• I have been on BBS and email (back in the day it kinda was social media - people spamming out their jokes and such) since before the internet was cool
• Never was on MySpace
• Had a Twitter account. Decided that 99% of it is noise (vs info) and deleted the accounts.
• I have a FB account. I never hit LIKE but will respond occasionally. One of these days I am going to have a RIF (reduction in friends) and truly pair it down.
• I like Google+ Communities as a more modern bulletin board system. I think that is where G+ has some relevance vs. Twitter/FB. I did not like the old "people in circles" system.
• Never touched Instragram, Vine, and anything else similar that I am sure is out there
• I am on Linked In. Its value to me is when people change jobs it keeps me in touch with them.

Overall, I am pretty "meh" with social media. To me Twitter is worst - its as if "a million voices cried all at once...and said nothing meaningful".

I imagine Twitter is cool for folks to connect with celebrities. My wife gets Weird Al's tweets. I just don't see the appeal for "normal" folks to be gathering followers and tweeting out.

LinkedIn seemed like a good idea. I got on when I was leaving my mega-corp job and got connected with everybody I knew there and such. It didn't get me a new job (Dice did). It mostly gets spammed with head hunters, that I don't need to hear from until I need a job (my industry is relatively easy for top talent to find a new job). The discussion forums are spammed with headhunty crap as well. Everybody's selling, rather than communicating. I seldom log in because of signal to noise issues. LI is where I use my real name, and I want my name associated with good posts, so when I get googled, a prospective employer.

 

[Janx]

I'm with you there. Texts are non-intrusive. Phone calls demand your attention - sometimes quite a lot of it!

phone calls suck too.


For me, all this hate of phones, texts, emails, etc are likely tied to my work conditions. I work from home. I spend at least 25% of my day on the phone talking to clients or staff. Another 25% going to online meetings. And somebody is always trying to get ahold of me, while I am in the middle of talking to somebody else who interrupted me while I was trying to actually get code done.

For me, I have to present a "always ready to help" front, especially to key clients (I literally hang up on my CEO to answer my client). Ignoring calls from a developer means I have a developer who is stuck and wasting time and money (by the time they're calling me, they've already spend too much time struggling with a problem).

In an ideal world, I would have hours during the day where I don't get reached, I don't see emails, so I can focus on my own work. Things just don't work that way.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I stopped using social media when I started noticing advertisements on Facebook skewed towards my internet search patterns. Now I hardly log into Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I also use Mozilla and privacy add-ons as well as DuckDuckGo for searches. Call me old fashioned, but I think having faceless companies track my activity is a bit creepy and stalkerish.

 

[amerigoV]

I stopped using social media when I started noticing advertisements on Facebook skewed towards my internet search patterns. Now I hardly log into Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I also use Mozilla and privacy add-ons as well as DuckDuckGo for searches. Call me old fashioned, but I think having faceless companies track my activity is a bit creepy and stalkerish.

It is getting rather scary. I have an older HDTV (Sony with some weird rear projection circa 2006 tech) that lamp just went out. I did a bit of research on replacing it (yea! a $300 lamp 8 years ago now goes for $25 and was easy to swap). At some point just getting oriented I was on Ebay, which I might have an account that I have not logged into in years. Then on FB I noticed something on the right that said "are you still considering buying that TV on EBAY" with a pic of my TV model.

Given some of the stuff I google for gaming purposes, I think I will have to change some thing up

 

[Janx]

It is getting rather scary. I have an older HDTV (Sony with some weird rear projection circa 2006 tech) that lamp just went out. I did a bit of research on replacing it (yea! a $300 lamp 8 years ago now goes for $25 and was easy to swap). At some point just getting oriented I was on Ebay, which I might have an account that I have not logged into in years. Then on FB I noticed something on the right that said "are you still considering buying that TV on EBAY" with a pic of my TV model.

Given some of the stuff I google for gaming purposes, I think I will have to change some thing up

Yeah, I did the $200 lamp is now $40 fix for my old Sony LCD rear projection as well..

Oddly enough, I find the customized advertising less concerning. Perhaps as a tech guy, to me it's "well, what did you expect" and "duh, it's inherently obvious to associate identity and search patterns to customized preferences for ads." To me, that's what us programmers do. We interconnect and use data to get stuff done. If my job is to show you ads and provide a search engine, I'm gonna use the data to show you more relevant ads. Technically, that's better than me showing you ads for feminine hygiene products that you don't want to see or ever click on.

I hate ads in general. But that's because I don't like shopping. I don't like buying things. I guess the count has gone up, but for the last 10 years, I could count the number of online purchases I've made on my fingers. One of my co-workers used to tease me about that. It's not from paranoia, my credit card had been plugged into my wife's amazon account for ever. It's just I prefer to be less consumerist. My bank account also wishes me to be less consumerist.