Netflix's "The Social Dilemma"

[walrus]

I hope to watch it tonight. One of the reasons I asked to get banned for a few months, and admittedly this is only one, the iPhone I have let’s you track the amount of time you spend looking at your phone. I timed it for a months and was amazed by the hours I spent on my phone. Then I made a decision to try to cut that time. I did ok but still felt it was too much time. I forced blocked myself from a couple of sites and my phone time went down by 70%. My will power sucks sometimes I need assistance to cut down on things. Then I got into this hiking thing. It started as I needed to develop “groups” for work, groups in the community are very difficult during covid so I hunted out parks with walking trails which lead to hiking trails which lead to me doing it everyday work or not. I like to get as remote as possible and close my eyes, hear nature, couldn’t use my phone if I wanted to. This tech just worms it’s way into your life. It certainly can warp your mind and you don’t even realize it. I think you can learn more sitting cross legged 7,000 ft above sea level disconnected, in silence, looking at the scenic views that you can consuming much of the bullshit on the internet.

Now of course meetings and appointments, which used to be actual meetings and appointments with people are done on an app. I was on one that had so many boxes of people they were all about the size of a thumbnail. I was thinking this is crazy I’m one of those thumbnails, I couldn’t tell which one.

Now I admit I’m a hypocrite of course. I bought stock in Facebook. I won’t be moving the market with my handful of shares but a couple years back I was reading about the multi billion people they connect and figured whether I like it or not it’s a real thing, they are innovative despite all the controversy they know how to make money. Ok I’ll stfu now see if I can find time to watch this documentary tonight

[TitoFan]

From the sounds of it you'll get a lot out of this documentary. I've never had that addiction to my phone and social media, but then again I'm a bit older than you and didn't grow up with the amount of communication technology that exists today. I've always believed that just about anything addictive is bad for you (I said "just about" )… and that includes phones and social media. You just have to look around at restaurants (well... before COVID), shopping centers, hell... anywhere where people congregate... and you'll find just about everybody looking down at their phone. On a bus, at a park, shit... even in places where you're just supposed to be having fun (ie: the beach). You STILL see people hooked on their phones. Waiting rooms... you name it. It's weird. People see memes or gifs making fun of that and they'll snicker... not realizing it's THEM they're making fun of.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

I'll never forget seeing the pyramids in Egypt... I'm not going to lie I did have my phone in my back pocket ready for photos and videos.... But as we stepped off the bus that drops you off across from the pyramids, I couldn't help but notice the people ahead of us were literally looking at the pyramids THROUGH THE SCREENS OF THEIR CELL PHONES WHILE FILMING.

What a one-dimensional and truncated view of some of mankind's most breathtaking constructions! Imagine not looking with the eyes that God gave you! You step out of the bus and instead of looking up with your eyes at these massive amazing structures, instead you turn on your phone's video camera and all the while as you approach the pyramids you are looking at them through the screen.....

then in the future when you watch the video of it it will look exactly as it did the first time....

So you actually never really saw the pyramids with your own eyes after having gone all the way to Egypt....

Fucking sad

[TitoFan]

Reminded me of a standup skit by someone... I think it was Louis CK... where he talks about parents at a school talent show or something... and all the parents are holding up tablets to their faces while videoing their kids. It was pretty damn funny at the time, 'cause it's reality. People get so caught up with getting something on video or pictures that they forget to look up at the real thing.

[walrus]

Well tits I think your underestimating my age. I don’t know if I’d call it an addiction. It’s just when I added up the time I spent on my phone I thought it was too much. It’s not like it was ruining my life but perhaps it was making me somewhat unpleasant. No social media, other than a couple forums, news, stocks and history. I’m not much of a gamer so that wasn’t much of a thing. Researching stocks I have to do but can’t obsess over it. I was talking to a friend of mine who did very well on a VIX fund when the market was tanking. I asked him if he could explain what he did. Not his money of course just his method, I’m familiar with the VIX I just never traded around it. So he was kind to show me what he did, guy is very smart and 100% a financial guy but I’m looking at it and I’m realizing to be successful you need to be in front of your computer the entire time you are in the fund. I can’t do that, six months ago maybe, today no. It doesn’t always ring true but quite often the more trades you make the worse you do. But anyway like I said that guy is a pro who is just nice enough to explain things to me I’m a bottom feeder compared to those guys. He actually gave me a tip one day. Gave me the ticker symbol told me to buy futures he had crunched numbers and found the options were extremely cheap but I looked at it, it was a penny stock, I don’t touch them too volatile and I have not educated myself on them. Anyway he was right it moved up 600%. He probably made more than my house is worth that one day. But I’m not one of them. I appreciate how normal the dude is, just like a real wealthy guy but you wouldn’t know it, probably because he is self made, grew up poor but figured something out.

So anyway yeah if I looked at it I could probably find aspects of addiction. I was reading all the news, believe it or not I read all the Trump hating stuff as I like to see if I can get the whole picture if I read all sides but things are just too twisted up all over. One night, at the old job I did a 3rd shift from someone. It was 12 hours. Since it was the overnight I spent 5 hours on my phone reading nothing other than eastern religions. So I think it was like information overload and you gotta be careful with sources online when you are trying to learn things. Plus I’d be here everyday arguing about the same stupid shit. On Veterans Day someone called me a crazy vet with ptsd and I noticed it kinda got to me in a way I shouldn’t have let it. In today’s day and age vets expect to get insulted, but that particular day was Veterans Day and I usually put time aside to think about a number of people I know who aren’t around day. Some don’t have graves here, and it set me off a bit. You could say it to me 300 times in a row right now and it would have no impact. That day it did and I know it wasn’t the person who said it, that’s just what he does, it was me and the way I let it get to me.

I just needed to evolve In thought a bit and you can’t do that when you are doing the same shit. It’s all good though I have no ill will towards anyone. Life can be tough. I also don’t want to make a blanket condemnation. I know the hours a day I was on tech was a small footprint compared to others. If that’s how people chose to live so be it. I could just see myself becoming too closed minded despite seeking information. I asked my wife to take over the stocks for a few months and make the few trades we do. I created a bit of a monster as she made a couple moves to me that involved too much risk but they worked out. I gotta watch her as I did a quick look and kind find where she put the money from a trade I timed almost perfectly which is very hard to do and you only know that after the fact. Shit sorry I’m babbling about tangental shit I guess I’m tired.

[TitoFan]

I mean, if you have something specific you do over the phone, like in your case invest in stocks and so forth... no of course that's not an addiction. Don't know whether you actually ended up watching the documentary, but addiction is those who without anything specific or concrete they need to get done, spend their idle time thumbing through the phone. Also, there may be a time when a person (I've done it) will be stuck like in a waiting room or something with absolutely nothing to do but wait, and what the hell... might as well scroll through the phone. Some days it could add up to a few hours. In summary I think there are obviously worthwhile pursuits to do on your phone, like in your case investing. I have a brother who doesn't use his PC, so everything he would normally do on a computer he does on his phone. Me... I find that too uncomfortable for my taste. I like the comfort of a big screen and a human sized keyboard. Some things you can miniaturize only so much.

[walrus]

Ok watched it. But first yes I only use a PC at work rarely use the one we have at home it’s always my phone it just gave me a full picture of how much time I devote to the little screen.

Anyway I watched the documentary. They added some filler which I thought was unnecessary it distracted from the documentary aspects a bit. Overall I thought it was good and yeah each of those creators who now critique are probably billionaires or close to it with stock options etc but remember the creators of the atom bomb later condemned. The dude who designed facebooks like button struck me. He was so pleased at first, he was thinking his little like thingy would spread joy. He wasn’t thinking of people who don’t get likes or not enough likes. I have never created anything that impacted the world and I hate to say it but the chances of me doing so are looking pretty slim so I can’t fully relate to that but I get his point.

I’m at a little bit of a loss because I’m so unfamiliar with the active use of Facebook and Twitter. I think I had Facebook for a few months. Never tweeted in my life. Only read tweets on the news. But the google thing. It feeds you the news you look at. So if you have a certain political leaning and you seek articles that are for one point of view, well that’s all google is going to start feeding you. Where do you start questioning yourself when you agree with everything you read. We tend to blame certain people or parties for the divisiveness going on around us. Is it really that? Or is it this media and social media?

Interesting the time these hundred billions to trillions of market cap companies spend on the imperfect science of psychology as they develop their features and algorithms. It’s been proven that Facebook itself influenced the 2016 election. Or at least tried to. Yet we focus on Russia. Well that’s if we believe former Facebook employees.

There really is a lot to think about. If you follow stocks many are looking for the big “AI” company that will come out. Like people are waiting for it. And here Facebook and google are using it and saying it will fix the problem it created. IMO google is the bigger offender. You sign up for Facebook and use their services. They got demonized for perfecting something all these companies are doing. I’m not saying it’s good. They quickly mentioned the conspiracy theories but I think the bigger picture was that main stream news is becoming a conspiracy theory.

Touching on the psychology for a second, yes we need the opinions of others about us sometimes. Other people can point things out or as we are growing up we learn what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior (to a degree) from others. But we weren’t meant for the opinions of thousands of others as we develop. That’s what these kids today growing up are facing. They join social media at 12, thats seems to be the average age. That can be quite taxing especially if you are hypersensitive or have low self esteem to begin with which many kids do as they try to find their place.

You want to be optimistic but we see this shit can tear a country apart let alone a person and it’s built so we don’t notice the change in us yet it’s built to create change in us. I need to consider selling my Facebook stock. I don’t have a lot but I got in several years ago and I didn’t get google stock because I don’t like what the company does I’m getting that way with Facebook now. In the end I think it’s a good documentary to watch. Whether you use it or not these social media companies are a large part of life for 100’s of millions, well billions of people. Countries don’t need to screw with us, we do it to ourselves.