I deleted Instagram

[LordFall]

6 minutes ago, PsychedelicEagle said:

@LordFall Instagram is a time drain. Consumers pay an enourmous amount of time and energy for shallow content.

Since you dodged every single question, you’ve basically made my point: you don't possess the discipline or agency to interface with high-leverage tools without becoming their victim.

If your attention is that easily hijacked, total abstinence is definitely your only move.

Edited 6 hours ago by LordFall

[PsychedelicEagle]

3 minutes ago, LordFall said:

Since you answered none of my questions I will assume that you have the self-awareness required to know that you have a weak psyche and are not able to use the platform optimally and thus not using it is indeed the right choice for you.

It is hard to break oneself's out of the victim mindset and to avoid platforms that can take advantage of that is I guess the right move for some humans. 

@LordFall This is the last message I will send towards you. 

Stop directing your arguments toward me.

The conversation is about instagram. Not myself or my psyche.

--

@Natasha Tori Maru, I'd like to flag this message from @LordFall above. Childish and confrontation behavior that's completely unnecessary.

[LordFall]

Remember that we're on a self-development forum. Not a safe space to be validated about your biases without confrontation forum.

Calling a moderator when challenged on one's views is on brand for a stage green victim-mindset individual. 

Notice that when my points were challenged I made them stronger and didn't back down from the challenge. Stage green loves to make their personal flaws a moral virtue. That is indeed the sign of a weak, ego-driven psyche.

You take an honest conversation (albeit a slightly aggressive one) as an insult to your character as opposed to an exercise in deconstruction of both the platform and your relationship to it.

You don't have to reply to me but take it as an opportunity for introspection, growth and adoption of an antifragile mindset that will both help you in life but also to have a healthier relationship to social media if you decide to go back to it.

Having impact requires becoming stronger through adversity, not folding to it. 

Edited 6 hours ago by LordFall

[Juan]

Good for you, more power to you. I can’t do that because I get a lot of clients via instagram. If I want to detox, I just delete the app, not the account or caught myself busy with the real world. 

[Lyubov]

28 minutes ago, Juan said:

Good for you, more power to you. I can’t do that because I get a lot of clients via instagram. If I want to detox, I just delete the app, not the account or caught myself busy with the real world. 

I think there will ultimately be a sorta divide where a digital underclass emerges who wholey consume it, a quasi-class who are sorta tied to it consuming while also creating and earning a living, and people who left it entirely and outsourced the consuming and logistics to someone or something else (AI?). Kind like how organic vegetables used to just be food that you pulled out of the ground, but now they're seen as a luxury. You have the money and knowledge to opt out of cheap processed food. Attention I believe will go the same way.

Watching reels is sorta the default right now, the cheap thing everyone consumes without thinking. It takes no energy to consume it, the opposite end would be reading a challenging book. So the next status marker on the app will ironically be not needing to scroll at all. Watching less will become how people express that they've made it in self improvement, the way a clean diet did.

The people who made it will keep posting and stop watching. They'll outsource the scrolling to another person or an AI to watch for trends and pick their audio. They will never sit through another reel themselves. Producing without consuming becomes how you show you've made it vs now which is more about the content you're making showing a lifestyle and follower count. This will build on that where people will reach this finish line in various forms and basically laugh on a podcast saying they haven't used IG in a year, the same way they were yapping on podcasts they cut out seed oils, or whatever came before that.

If you actually value your mind and your time, why feed it reels? The feed is essentially a giant commercial that never ends, we used to mute commercials when they came on the tv when I was growing up. what I see: accounts leading teenage boys towards porn, people dying on camera, strangers lying (everyone knows everyone is lying), doom scroll headlines, plastic surgery, 50% bots, for most people it keeps steering them back to whatever is most divisive because the outrage is what keeps you there.

So my prediction is this, the endgame for the people who win on this platform will be a sort of nonchalant exit, quietly leaving. Exiting the feed entirely while still farming the attention of everyone who can't leave. They upload but don't consume. That's where I think it's headed. I give it 2-5 years. 

Edited 6 hours ago by Lyubov

[Natasha Tori Maru]

2 hours ago, PsychedelicEagle said:

@LordFall This is the last message I will send towards you. 

Stop directing your arguments toward me.

The conversation is about instagram. Not myself or my psyche.

--

@Natasha Tori Maru, I'd like to flag this message from @LordFall above. Childish and confrontation behavior that's completely unnecessary.

I raised the effect of "psychologically inferring" in dialogue earlier in this thread, actually:

I am surprised an example played out directly in the same thread. Mechanistically trying to explain, infer or "psychoanalyse" a person's state in argument is a failure to relate to the person and just turns them against us. Which is exactly what happened here.

When someone is related to, via questions around their meaning, experience and views they feel understood. And end up much more receptive to alternative views and theories.

A possibility the assumption underneath (when there is some sort of negative inferred state) is that "this person doesn't agree with me, therefore there must be something defective in their state". 

I used to do this all the time in dialogue and it really soured my relationships.

 

[LordFall]

I'm not Jesus Christ. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. 

If the user is satisfied with their relationship to the internet I cannot say more power to them which is usually the goal. They'll end up with less power and agency actually but to each their own life. That's the beauty of existence. 

Edited 3 hours ago by LordFall

[Natasha Tori Maru]

1 hour ago, LordFall said:

They'll end up with less power and agency actually but to each their own life. 

This is not a certainty.

There are myriad other avenues in life that result in power and agency.

And those myriad other avenues bring about the possibility of not having the associated negative consequences that social media can smuggled in.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

6 hours ago, Lyubov said:

I don’t believe fear and social comparison should be used to shape your life and they definitely can never ever get you to reach your full potential as I understand full potential. Truth is what gets you to your full potential. Full potential is living authentically, in flow, freedom, oneness balanced with your responsibilities as a human being. I do not believe comparisons and fear (self punishment) will get you here. They may materially get you far but I do not consider that full potential.

I call this "dirty fuel".

It can suffice for a while - but it is never as good on the system/engine as positive motivation.

In some ways I think it can be a necessary part of growth to use dirty fuel prior to finding authentic clean sources from within.

[Waves]

I deactivated my account 5 months ago and tbh have not felt like checking in once. Just on a collective level I feel like there is so much noise and I prefer spending time going inside, tending to my surroundings and letting my essence come forth, letting my path unfold instead of watching random people doing artificial things and screaming how you should live your life (and of course sell you something).

I might go back on it once I have business to do or something that I'd like to share, but will definitely put a lot of guardrails on it. 

[Joshe]

I never created an account for IG or tiktok. I have a FB account but I never get on it anymore. In the past year, I signed up for twitter and basically turned into @Jirh and started jacking off to it more than anything else, 😂. So, I don't get on that anymore, as it's obviously a subpar jackoff solution. So, basically, no social media for me. This forum is it. And I'm not sure how long that'll last. 

I don't see how you can just scroll to see what others are doing as a form of entertainment. After the first 500 hours, it's all the same. Total waste of time. So at that point, one must ask "what am I getting from it?". And then try to be principled enough to act in alignment with them. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Joshe

[integration journey]

Probably the only reason I keep using Instagram or facebook is because I’m an immigrant and it feels nice to see the news of how my native country looks. 
I learned a lot about my native country  through social media specifically because we had war there. 

[Natasha Tori Maru]

18 minutes ago, Joshe said:

I don't see how you can just scroll to see what others are doing as a form of entertainment. After the first 500 hours, it's all the same. Total waste of time. So at that point, one must ask "what am I getting from it?". And then try to be principled enough to act in alignment with them. 

And it is usually only one half of the story. It isn't genuine as half the persons life (the shit parts) are completely omitted. It's a curated avatar. A simulacrum. I cannot connect. 

[Yimpa]

9 minutes ago, integration journey said:

Probably the only reason I keep using Instagram or facebook is because I’m an immigrant and it feels nice to see the news of how my native country looks. 
I learned a lot about my native country  through social media specifically because we had war there. 

beautiful survivor  

[integration journey]

7 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

beautiful survivor  

Oh and I had some luck with Facebook dating initially but it’s been dry lately 

Edited 29 minutes ago by integration journey