What is a relatively harmless popular social media convention that you refuse to engage in?

Hey everybody! Long post, but I was curious about the thoughts of others as we all careen haphazardly into this social media hellscape that we can't get out of. I had a slow end to my work day, so I did what I do from time to time: went to Facebook. Now, I personally hate Facebook, but I do keep it around because alas, it is basically the only easy way for me to communicate with some of my family and friends (I live in Korea, they all live in the US). It had been a bit of time since my last check in, and I was greeted by several messages from one portion of my family that I, let's say, am not on bad terms, but am not on good terms wither either. They're varying degrees of angry that I did not reach out and wish other family members a happy birthday via Facebook. Now, a couple of things about me: 1) I have never given a shit about birthdays. I don't care about mine, and I don't personally care about others (I care about the people, but the day isn't a high priority for me). I'm not a cranky dick, I happily celebrate them with others and do my best to get thoughtful presents for people that I'm close with that really enjoy celebrating their birthday. In other words, birthdays aren't for me, but I don't foist my feelings about them on others, and just because they aren't a priority for me, doesn't mean I disregard that they are important to others. Anyway, 2) I find wishing someone a happy birthday to be so utterly annoying, contrived and vapid, that I actually genuinely dislike it when people do it for me. So it is DEFINITELY not on any kind of priority list for me to do for others. In fact, I just refuse to do it. I refuse to do it for ANYONE. If you are close to me, I will see you or talk to you and tell you happy birthday. Otherwise...no, I'm not taking time to send a thoughtless message to you over FB, especially considering 99% of the time we are "friends" that haven't spoken since who-knows-when.

So, anyone else agree with me on this? Are there any other social media activities that you could easily do (like, I realize it is not hard to just follow the notification and say "happy birthday" every day -- although I turned that notification off haha) but just refuse to do? Personally, another example of my own would be the whole "like for a like" o "follow for a follow" stuff. Now, I have basically no interest in increasing my already infinitesimal existence on social media, so this opinion REALLY doesn't matter, but the idea of someone following me so I will then follow them back just seems SO stupid and pointless to me. Same with likes. Glad you liked my tweet or whatever, but if all you said was "I agree" I'm not inclined also "like" that you agreed with me.

Anyway, curious to hear what others have to say, or just watch this post completely die. Either way, writing the whole thing has me strongly considering just throwing my computer and phone into the ocean and moving into a hut in the woods on the small island that I live on and just becoming a fisherman and let the world pass me by.

I don't know if GB and a couple other gaming sites count as "Social Media" but I refuse to engage in anything social media(Facebook, twitter, Snap, Insta Etc) whatsoever. I know it's impossible at this point not to have a product ID associated with an IP, a piece of tracking tech(phone) or a visible internet finger print that is associated with me but I do what I can to keep as much about myself private. I avoid signing up for almost anything since everything is now a vector for bad actors(or incompetent businesses) to steal or misuse my information. But then again, everything I hear about most Social Media misdeeds helps remind me that I'm probably better off.

Oh, you are. Twitter has some good jokes but it doesn't make up for the terribleness.

I loved Twitter back in 2007-2012 when it was not a dumpster fire of awful humans. I used twitter to throw random and weird jokes and see what sticks and doesn't, but eventually people would just take it so damn serious that it started an argument. I deleted my facebook about a year ago. I generally despise social media these days and find myself not even bothering with it anymore. I honestly been so much happier having removed most social media from my life.

None. I'm getting pretty close to thinking "harmless social media" might be an oxymoron.

Delete your Twitter accounts, people!

@therealturk: There is some good on Twitter, as long as you can curate to what you get. Facebook is worse, IMO. I feel like I'm stuck on it. And it is just aggressively bad even BEFORE you read comments to ANYTHING which always end up being the worst thing you could possibly read, no matter what the context.

Not sure if Twitch counts as social media, but all the emoticons and Twitch lingo used in those chats both annoy and frustrate me.

I’m off all social media aside from Linkedin...I barely use Linkedin, I just sort of should have it for professional reasons.

Well, I do have an Instagram account, but I’ve never posted and haven’t sought out anyone I know. I use it to follow bands and get touring information.

I used to use Twitter for this reason, but Twitter is a cesspool of negativity and rancid tribalism. They’ve engineered that platform to twist users toward engagement, so I was happy to leave.

Facebook always felt like a platform for personal drama, people getting upset over not getting likes, etc. So I’m off of that, too. I had it briefly when my kids were little. It was a good way to share their experiences with their grandparents without having to send them photos and videos.

Social media is a fucking mess. It can be used for good purposes, but it’s mostly just another source of drama and distraction that I don’t need.

@mrgreenman: For me it was social media and anything that caused my phone to bother me.

If I get more obnoxious alerts than those that are truly helpful and wanted, I’ll either turn alerts of, unsubscribe, or delete the app.

I’m always instantly happier the less my phone bugs me.

Phones are a window to hell.

@big_denim: Twitch is probably my personal "boomer" moment because I just don't get it anymore. I like it in concept, but most of what I see and read just strikes me as exhausting and vapid. And the emojis are that x10000.

@big_denim: Agreed. Small to medium sized chat rooms can be fun, but when thousands of people are there it becomes unbearable. People post such odd stuff that it's hard to see them as functioning human beings. It's something that can only happen anonymously - imagine an audience that size shouting that crap to a performer in real life.

I guess... most of it? I'm an incredibly fake millennial.

But I don't tell funny twitter jokes and I'm not some manner of internet personality and therefore I can never shake the (correct) assumption that no one is gonna care about my dumb idle moment to moment musings so I'm not gonna devote time to putting it out there.

Anyway the initial thing about birthdays I'm also all about but not really on social media that's just kind of how I am about it in general and I'm sure it drives people up the wall.

I avoid the birthday wishes on FB, too. I've gotten enough wishes that just said "happy birthday" with zero enthusiasm from people I don't talk to anymore. Never been good at faking enthusiasm so I don't really do those posts, unless it's closer people that would be down if I didn't (family, for instance). But even that's just to avoid potential drama.

Man, I wish I could get out of the social media curse as easily as some of you have. I know it is partially on me, but damn...I feel like I always have reasons to be mired in it.

I mostly use Facebook and Instagram to follow bands or other artistic mediums that I'm into. Nowadays most bands don't have an actual website, it's just a landing page that contains links to all of their various social media and streaming platforms. I remember in the early/mid-2000's when several bands I was into actually hosted their own forums and such... a different time I guess.

I've recently been thinking about removing a large percentage of "friends" on Facebook that were people I knew in high school or college but haven't talked to in over a decade now. I don't like that I know that they're married and have three kids and changed careers twice. I don't have a real connection to those people anymore and I don't feel like it's my business.

I was never big on taking pictures, so I've never used Instagram. A big trend on Twitter right now is everyone posting their "decade in review" things from Spotify. I have neither a Spotify nor a Pandora account. Call me weird, when I want to listen to music in the background of something I'm doing, I'll just use YouTube.

I still use Messenger because it's convenient. My actual Facebook account itself has been deactivated since January 19, 2017.

I started using Venmo recently because it's convenient. I keep all of my transactions private. The way that service defaults to sharing your transactions with anyone in your contacts list who also uses it is fucking weird.

Somewhat off topic: I want an Oculus Quest 2, but I've been looking for ways to subvert 1) the required Facebook login and 2) the $80 Oculus Link Cable.

Somewhat more on topic: I haven't uploaded a selfie since MySpace, and even during that era, looking at myself on a screen has always been unsettling.

Deleted Twitter; my snap and insta accounts are dormant and I only have a barebones FB account to manage my small business page for marketing.

If you are not willing to stay engaged with people in your life via phone text or email, then maybe they aren't that important to you in the first place.

Social media isn't worth all the headaches. Just my two cents.

Last thing, I always get a chuckle when people in media say "everyone says or feels so so.". No, everyone on your carefully curated Twitter time line says or thinks so and so which is like .000000000000001 percent of people. LMAO.

I never really liked fb, at one point I was agitated by how facebook infiltrated nearly every aspect of my life. In high school, everyone formed groups (school work, student orgs, parties, literally endless) via. facebook. In college, everyone socialized (dorm groups, parties, etc.) via. facebook. At work, we clocked in and out via. whatsapp every single day.

On twitter, iirc 99% of engagement goes to celebrities. How many cumulative hours has humanity spent looking into a one-way mirror?

Facebook is probably ok for older people because they already established deep connections with their fb friends, and fb supplements that connection. For younger people, most just end up comparing their lives to everyone else's. x got a new car and a new house, is married and makes 6 figures? Marvelous! /s

Tangent aside, yeah, don't really use social media anymore, except for the occasional IG post. I use IG because I only spend 60 seconds max on it each day.

With Facebook I have always contend it all about how you use it. FB is not really for people who want big lists of "barely acquaintances" or for mildly famous people. I have about 150 people that I WANT to interact with, and to whom I can send anything. If I write something s for one of those 150 people. I don't have to 'consider who will see what I put up' at all. My entire FB friend group is close family - never the people in my family I dislike; Close friends - never people I barely spoke too in High school; Online freinds I play with - nevers someone I met once on a Gears of War multiplayer match in 2008.

Do I like Facebook? No, not really, but it serves MY purpose. The peopel I have conatct with on it, never give me a momnets worry - my friend group is currated. Tha old adage of "everything in moderation" works for more than food, sex, and booze.

And, the same goes for Intergram, Good Reads, and Twitter. The differece being I follow far less people on the others, or I post very little on them. The only problem app I have currently is TikTok...because I can easily waste an hour on there...ad hour I should not use for Cat-Girls, B-List comedians, and randoms videos of Karens freaking-out in public.

In-terms of actually harmless little social media foible: "Wordle" seems like it's going to have one of those "oops, massive data leak" backlashes any day now.

For bigger thoughts: As the great Max Caster himself said: social media was a mistake.

I still use Facebook messenger, because I'm officially old, because it's centralized all my ACTUAL friends and I just moved to another state. I'm not the kind of person who wants to organize an entire Discord around just social planning.

Twitter will probably go down in history as the most destructive invention of humanity that has no upside, or at least such a small upside that the gargantuan downside isn't worth it (and before you come at me with the atomic bomb or biological weapons: look at how many people died from misinformation in the last year alone).

I don't believe I've ever had a thread necro'ed here, and definitely didn't think this would be the one.

For me, I'm happy to say that I'm off of Facebook completely, after basically completely falling out with the family that previously were driving me nuts. COVID misinformation and nonsense basically ended relationships entirely.

I'll still poke around on Twitter for the seam reasons as before, although I basically check out the second I find myself reading replies.

Now I think my biggest social media irritation that is otherwise pretty harmless most of the time: pedants and grammar correctors.

I don't use any 'public' social media app except Youtube. The cons are bigger than any of the positives.

“Congratulate person for their 3 year work anniversary”

yeah, no

The only thing I am on is Linkedin. I have never had a FB account. I was on twitter for a brief moment to get service outage updates for the Playstation network.

@sethmode : At least the necro'ing is still relevant to today and not completely random? Also, it's the b-day thing as noted in the original post.

I'm with @monkeyking1969 on my FB usage. Kept my Friends to actual family & friends and not everyone and anyone of the slightest tenuous connection as a friend. Regularly use FB for keeping in contact with friend group. I was checking FB on average once a day. And then sometime last November, stopped the habit of that daily check and haven't looked since. Because that's how much I care about FB. Useful tool, but still a primarily a waste of my time. I also ponder how much it depends on the person and their needs/dependency of such services. Or maybe I just have a dislike for algorithmically decided content feeds due to formative years spent on forums with chronological posts divided by relevant section and individual topics.

Something fun you can do with FB: Turn off your b-day from being displayed or whatever. I did that a couple years back and don't get the auto-reflex from all the auto-reflexing Happy B-Day peeps when that day rolls around. Also quickly points out the people who actually remember it's your birthday and want to tell you Happy B-Day.

@sethmode: Yeah I agree with you, sometimes, I roll in there, it doesn't make up for the terribleness.

Memes. I really can't stand them despite being in my 20's. I never went to 9gag, Reddit, Twitter or any of those meme sharing sites. I find them unfunny and awkward most of the time. I much prefer a good'ol joke. I will say that I don't find them quite as insufferable now as when "troll drawing" had its heyday.

Well, definitely feel old now because I didn't even know what 9gag was until this post.

@sethmode: I wonder if it would make you feel older or younger to know my father was a regular user of the site. It was pretty big in the early 2010's but I think it has had a large drop in popularity since then.

Now it just makes me feel both old and stupid, so thanks a lot.

Being on Twitter. Quit in 2015 and haven't looked back.

It's funny hearing media types being like well "everyone thinks" and instantly recognizing they are in a Twitter echo chamber.

Social media use is associated with a variety of issues, including emotional and mental issues, such as anxiety, depression, stress, loneliness, and low self-esteem, physical issues, such as reduced sleep quality, and general issues, such as exposure to misinformation and political polarization.

Social media has already evolved into another virtual world with little or no connection to real life as for me. Some people manage to mix it, but I prefer to keep virtual and real-life separately.

In virtual life, you might have thousands of Facebook friends or Instagram followers from famoid.com, but it by any means doesn’t mean you know all those people in real life. You haven’t even seen any of them in reality, and you haven’t talked for years to some of them. That’s why I never mix real and virtual life because these are very different and mixing them up is delusional.

I just hate memes that have been beaten to death and then some that frequently appear everywhere, and sadly, sometimes also in Giant Bomb content. Such as saying "nice" every time the number 69 shows up somewhere or calling difficult people Karens (or worse "male Karen").

Using the name of the platform as a noun to mean an account on that platform. "What's your Instagram?" There's only one Instagram and I don't own it.

"Do you have a Discord?" is confusing, because I don't know if they mean an account or a server. I would say "My Discord" to refer to the instance of the program running on my computer, though; "My Discord crashed."

"I posted a TikTok on my TikTok" sounds silly to me. I always say "TikTok video" to refer to the videos.

@merxworx01: Right there with you. Not signing up for anything.

Twitter was a real wake-up to me that any thought you think is funny and might make a room laugh is being said by 10,000 other people.

Apart from Whatsapp och YT I don't use any of the big social media apps. Don't feel like I'm missing much of interest. I use Twitch sometimes but never engage, so I supposed my answer is 'lurking'.