Stop externalising your life

The funny thing is, most people I know completely agree with this viewpoint.<p>"Yep, it's tearing the fabric of society apart alright. It's creating a generation of self-interested media whores."<p>But wait, aren't you one of them? Didn't you <i>just</i> post a picture of those tacos you made last night?<p>"Yeah man, they were <i>freaking awesome tacos.</i>"<p>Yes, it's a little narcissistic. Yeah, it's disruptive to your actual in-the-moment experiences. You can go overboard. You can also strike a balance, and it just becomes a thing you do sometimes, it's not going to kill you, it's not going to actually change the fabric of society. It's going to make some people annoying. Sort of like punk rock or emo or neon colors or television. Whatever. We'll adapt.<p>And it might have positive effects too. I made those tacos last night (heh, yeah, it was me, and I totally posted them to Facebook) because I saw my friend cook some mexican last week (posted to facebook) and it looked good. That friend of mine posts pictures of food she makes all the time, and it inspires me to cook more. We discuss the food, I ask for recipes. This isn't just narcissism—it's interaction. To ignore that positive effect just because you notice a subtle and possibly true behavioral shift is short-sighted.<p>My humble opinion is that most people are self-aware enough to know the externalization of their lives is detrimental on the large scale. They know enough to put down their phones or iPads for the important moments, or even the routine ones. We're all collectively learning how to make our lives work with this level of interconnected communication—it's a new thing.<p>I completely agree with the sentiment of this article, but I think most people do. I think people are constantly going to be looking for better solutions to this problem. I don't know if Facebook will find that solution, but I've said it before and I'll say it again: the social network that integrates with life and human behavior the best will be the one that overtakes Facebook (if you're going to try, please bring on a social psychologist in your first 10 employees).<p>The internet will not always be like this. It's immature, it doesn't fit quite right yet. But it will get better. And if it doesn't, it'll just continue to be slightly annoying. Not the end of the world.

Waiting for the pope: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/sNTmp4s.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/sNTmp4s.jpg</a><p>In my opinion you miss a lot around you when you are constantly staring at the screen of your device.<p>Two days ago I was sitting at a birthday party. The guy next to me constantly took pictures sending them with Watsapp. I never spoke a word to him because he was busy with his phone all the time.<p>I'm still not sure what to think about that but I don't think I like the change.

My parents' generation would share holiday snaps or even host slide show evenings for neighbours after traveling somewhere. I think that photo sharing on Facebook etc. is just the modern version of that and as back then, we have people who find this obnoxious, interpreting it as a form of bragging.<p>I believe it may be a little bit bragging, but is mostly validation-seeking. Many people just seem to be wired in a way that craves a social response to their behaviour. Call it neediness, insecurity, whatever...I think the kindest thing is to simply identify it as a personality trait.<p>Back in the slide show days I remember being impressed by the stance my parents took which was to sit back and enjoy the holiday snaps as much as they could, because the person showing them was getting something out of that.<p>Today, I will act interested in a dream a co-worker wants to tell me, not because I am particularly gripped by how they "were flying, but also not, and everyone's face was Graham from accounts", but because it seems to make them happy to have someone listen. If simply clicking a "like" button or posting a thoughtful comment can give someone warm fuzzies (and we know it does) then I'll do it.

I started with Usenet and email back in the late 80s. When the Internet boom hit ten years later and everyone's mom had an email account, I spent years agonizing over people who were unable to quote a forwarded reply properly or who couldn't grasp the fact that Bill Gates wasn't going to be paying anyone for the amount of email sent around.<p>But you know what? Most of those people have learned a decent bit of netiquette. They even know the word "netiquette". They got over the newness of email and the web.<p>I'm seeing people getting over the extreme narcissism as well. They've tweeted going to the bathroom enough so where it's no longer a thrill. They've posted enough pictures of their meals to facebook or wherever.<p>I think that most of this behavior is just a phase that will pass.

"you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look attractive to other people."<p>Humans are social animals. Everything we do is focused on making ourselves look attractive to other people. People who don't do this are typically not liked by others. The fact that most people do the behaviors the author describes and yet are liked by others seems to indicate that they've succeeded at making themselves look attractive.<p>Of course, there are plenty of strategies to make yourself look attractive. Some people might dress in mainstream fashion, hoping to pull it off well enough that they can distinguish themselves from all the other people doing it. Others get tattoos and piercings and make themselves unappealing to all but a niche subgroup, within which they have less competition.<p>I find it hilariously ironic that the author is engaging in the very same behavior (right down to posting the hacker news discussion link in the footer!) as the people they attack. Only humans can do this.

Most "normal" conversations could be cast in this narcissistic light, if you wanted to. People tell each other about the interesting things that happen to them, and not about the mundane, sad, or private things. An awful lot of conversation is about establishing common ground and consists of "Have you seen that film?" "Yeah, I saw it. I liked it, the actor, he was in another film, did you see that?". Back and forth exchanges of, fairly dull information. Of course people get into deeper conversations as they get to know each other, and these are often sparked off by the dull stuff. This happens on Facebook too of course, though often it's privately, and so less visible.<p>I think the negative reaction from a lot of people is mainly the shock of the new. Like it or not your children will use online networks and sharing as part of their normal social landscape. You can either bemoan them all as unnatural monsters, or realise that these things are inherent to social interaction, and not a problem caused by techcnology.

It's possible you're just thinking too much about it. A lot of people look back on the things they've shared as a way of maintaining a personal photo album. My facebook definitely has a more complete photo history than any one device I own, and it's almost effortless to throw the photos I take up there.<p>That, and I don't mind seeing the things my friends are doing - it gives me ideas for things I want to do in the future. I used to disdain the "humblebrag" nature of sharing random photos, but I've been getting into a much more "fuck it" attitude recently. It's going okay.

&#62; <i>It’s not sharing, it’s bragging.</i><p>Some would call it "narcissism", which (with an appropriately nuanced meaning) I think is more accurate than "bragging".<p>I strongly agree with the article. Sharing your experiences with social networking isn't necessarily about needing to get validation from others on your experience in order for the experience to feel complete for you... but for some people, it is. And I have to wonder, the more prevalent social networking becomes, are more and more people going to use it as their image-of-self crutch? And I have to wonder, what does such a society look like after a few decades? It's a bit like Warhol's "15 minutes of fame", except minutes are the wrong unit of measure. Everybody's a 15 milligram celebrity...

Apologies for the downtime, here's a cached version: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&#38;safe=off&#38;biw=1600&#38;bih=797&#38;sclient=psy-ab&#38;q=cache%3Ajshakespeare.com%2Fstop-externalising-your-life%2F&#38;oq=cache%3Ajshakespeare.com%2Fstop-externalising-your-life" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&#38;safe=...</a>

I've had a facebook account since 2006. I never post anymore. The only reason I haven't completely deleted it, is because it's a decent way to stay in touch with old acquaintances. I don't tweet. I don't check in anywhere. I don't post to instagram. It's just not an appealing to me. Other than close friends/family, people don't really care what you are doing.<p>Facebook and other social outlets are a way for people to humbly or not-so-humbly brag about what they are doing, and for those people consuming the content to be envious or critical of it.<p>I enjoy the fact that I can step away from the computer at any moment and not feel the urge to repeatedly check Twitter, Facebook etc.. and just enjoy life. I don't think I'm missing out on anything by not socially sharing my life on the internet.

Each to their own.<p>I enjoy seeing what my friends and family are up to, including the minutiae that might not otherwise come up in conversation. In participating, I also have an easy history of the things I've done to look back over. My wife loves TimeHop reminding her, via social updates, what she was doing on the same day a year ago. "Remember this?" Cue much reminiscing.<p>Further to that, all social sharing serves as developing a personal brand and there are social and commercial advantages to that whether all doing it realise or not.<p>"Paint a picture of it."<p>I almost laughed at this bit. Why not allow even more time for contemplative thought by first creating inks from scratch, using ingredients relevant to the original experience and naming each combination of colours to evoke just the right memories?

Many people have heard the phrase "conspicuous consumption", but it's only half of Veblen's analysis. It counterpart, "conspicuous leisure", is arguably at least as important. Typical social proof that you're doing well is not just buying a BMW, but also showing that you <i>didn't</i> have to work hard for it. This is communicated most effectively by advertising the time you can afford to spend on non-economic activities: tourism, cooking, amateur photography etc. There are, of course, many other good reasons to engage in these pastimes. But their importance as a means of social display should not be underestimated.

This is a big part of why I stopped using Twitter. Of course, every tool has its uses and misuses, and Twitter can be an excellent way of discovering new content from favorite producers, but using it myself turned into a popularity contest.<p>PG writes about popularity contests in Hackers and Painters, and how geeks prefer doing and learning over winning popularity standing. I didn't read H&#38;P until after I had quit Twitter (and largely quit Facebook. Facebook is nothing more now than "email from my mother"). But that resonates well with me. I found myself tracking trending hash tags and trying to come up with witty, pithy tweets that I could also hashtag in kind. I had specific strategies that I would test and track the retweets and replies. It was kind of sick, looking back at it now.<p>But looking back at my internet life, it wasn't always like that. If you consider the BBS and web forum to be proto-social networks, this type of behavior (in certain communities) was neither broached nor tolerated. A much greater emphasis on discourse existed. In certain online communities, posting "+1" or "first" (or its more recent analogs "this" or "feels") was a fast track to banning. But those networks had something that Facebook and its ilk lack: administrative moderation, either by a staff of people or by community members with elevated privileges.<p>They were also geared towards the long form of prose, rather than the pithy-saying style. Twitter still has it's 140 character limit; it is considered the culture of Twitter. Facebook for many people functionally had the same limit as they interfaced with it through MMS. I don't know if they still do now, but at one time Facebook had a character limit on status updates and replies; even if those limits were removed now, the vast majority of Facebook's users are trained towards them now, and we see a new article every week talking about Facebook being unable to attract "new, teenage" users. Similarly, Tumblr's easiest levels of contribution are the reblog and photoshares.<p>When the discourse is so severely limited, then there can't be a discourse. People will revert to what is easiest: posting things that are not meant to engender discourse. People brag, always have, it's natural. But the signal to noise ratio is much worse now because services like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook make the noise so much easier to create than the signal.<p>EDIT: sorry, typos, still on my first cup this morning.

&#62;But I think our reasons for sharing experiences on social media are more cynical than that. It’s not sharing, it’s bragging.<p>No. Stop. You do not speak for every user of social media, or most of them, or even a significant fraction of them.<p>&#62;We end up with a diminished perception of reality because we’re more concerned about choosing a good Instagram filter for our meal than we are about how it tastes.<p>Does anyone aside from a minority of people who can be described with various adjectives, but I'll settle on "attention whore", actually work this way? I don't. Nobody I know does. Do you?<p>Balance in all things. This is just another blasted "social media is teh evulz" post dressed in flowery language.<p>For what it's worth, this is why I think Glass and its descendants will be the next big thing. You remove the friction from sharing, you remove 98% of the author's complaints (and the complaints of those "social media blaarrrgh" types). When sharing becomes as simple as just looking at something and saying a magic word, or nodding your head, or touching your temple, you don't have to throw brain cycles at operating some kind of device, it just happens naturally.

I enjoy externalizing :-)<p>My wife and I travel a lot and I like to write a daily diary that I send to family (and friends who "opt-in"). I often include a few pictures. There is often some down time travelling, and journaling experiences makes a long wait for transportation, etc. enjoyable. I enjoy reading my own travel logs years later.<p>I live in the mountains (Sedona in Central Arizona) and when I go on really long hikes (I am leaving on a 6 hour hike in 45 minutes :-) I always send a picture to my Dad and some remote friends who occasionally travel to Sedona to hike with me.

Personally, I agree. I know there are differing opinions but I don't care most of the time what my friends &#38; family are up to in real-time. They'll tell me when I see them. I like to write about things I have done if I have some opinion of it, or if I'm proud of an achievement, but that's about it. People don't necessarily need to know what I'm doing <i>right now</i> if it's nothing particularly special or new.<p>Conversely, I don't need to necessarily need to know what they are doing all the time. But if they feel the need to share, fine. I just hope that if they read this post, by you, they might critically think about their current behaviour.

&#62;What were people actually saying by Tweeting about their visit?<p>They are telling others about their life experiences. It's called communication, we do it in real life all the time, why can't we do it online? If somebody told you what they did on the weekend, do you respond "you are fulfilling your obligation to have to share"?

Sounds like the author has had some sort of compulsion/addiction to posting pictures on the internet.<p>Not everyone does that.

All the more reason to hurry up with those ocular implants! Never miss the stream while you record it. ;)<p>But seriously, the genie is out of the bottle. There's no going back to the pre-sharing days as we've come to notice our memories are fleeting... as are our lives. In essence we're the culmination of our expriences and these days, we're (I think) subconsciously leaving evidence of our existence, just in case everything else of our proof of impact on the world is lost.<p>I'm not happy that we've completely substituted interraction with persons in favor of the interface, but I don't think leaving behind the sharing culture altogether is the solution. We'll (over)share, as long as the technology exists. I think the only solution is to make it as unobtrusive as possible so as to not miss input of the real world with our own organic senses.<p>In a strange way, I can see this as the true appeal of Steve Mann's EyeTap or Google Glass. Absorb your surroundings with your synapses <i>and</i> NAND. What your synapses will miss, the NAND will store for decades or more. All the while augmenting your sensory reach.

My thoughts exactly. Let's be honest, most people share stuff on FB/Twitter to show off, they project an idealised picture of their life - photos from parties, trips, concerts and so on with one clear message: "Look at my awesome life!". Who cares? Why is it so important to know everything about everyone, all the time? Why share every bit of your life with hundreds of people you barely know?

I agree with your viewpoint totally - and others may disagree as they have a vested interest in encouraging consumers to share - but it is an trend that is becoming increasingly prevalent. I think your main point is that we are sliding towards the sharing-for-sharing's-sake end of the sharing spectrum rather quickly and perhaps without realising it, and that its something to be conscious of.

A large part of sharing because people <i>want</i> to live vicariously through other people. And sharers know this, and so they help out. That is exactly what it was like for my Europe trip last year - it was a big enough deal to me personally that I wanted to record it as one of the highlights of my life, and I had friends and family that I knew were excited about the trip. So I shared with lots of detail, and they loved it.<p>I think the sentiment in the article is more one of the side effects when the system gets out of whack magnitude-wise in one direction or another. Perhaps you're (not the poster; anyone) sharing habitually with no intent behind it, or perhaps you're resentful of your friends, or perhaps you haven't challenged yourself recently to go out and do something new or formative.<p>But when used to share an actual highlight, with people that care about you and are apt to be happy about your highlights, it's a transaction that benefits both sides.

The Internet is only 20 years young. In Internet years that is ancient but technology and the way people use it always goes through progressions.<p>Early on, the Internet was largely about research and news. Then, people realized they could shop online: E-Commerce, dotcom bubble. Step 3, everyone could have their own little domain, Blogs and personal websites. Then, the Internet became the place to be entertained, video, music, games. Now, we can be social and share everything with our network of "friends".<p>Obviously this is just one guy's synopsis and it's probably out of order in some ways. There has also been lots of overlap during the progression.<p>It's not that strange that we are where we are. When I was a bit younger many people I knew had personal websites. Then they migrated to blogs. Now they're on facebook and twitter. They'll move on to something else.<p>The social aspects of the Internet will morph into something else. The fundamentals will stay but the methods and purposes will change.

Just for the record (pun totally intended): I fucking hate it when at a party/rave/concert everybody and their damned mother is standing around recording everything. Especially on the dancefloor. Especially especially if they then are all like "Dude, could you stop moving around, I'm trying to record this!1!!".

reminds me of the buddhist quote:<p>"If while we are washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as they were a nuisance, then we are not 'washing the dishes to wash to wash the dishes.' What's more we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes....If we can't washes the dishes, chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either."<p>i remember going to a gdc after party where they had a burlesque show for entertainment. 75% of the crowd had their phones out recording the event while watching the dancers through their phones. so sad.<p>there is little more fulfilling than enjoying the present moment. its fun looking into the past and sharing but it comes nowhere near living in the now. weather that is during the act of eating or washing the dishes...

This reminds me of the College Humor parody of "Photograph" by Nickleback called "Look At This Instagram" (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn-dD-QKYN4" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn-dD-QKYN4</a>).<p>I've seen many comments in this thread from people who believe this is a passing trend, however, I have a hard time believing that. I think that this is going to continue because the oversharing and posting everything is a way for those with low self esteem to make themselves feel better. It's a way for those who feel like they have no control to have some control over what their perceived life is like.

I find myself being as guilty as any on this front - constantly thinking that my 'friends' (all ~200 or whatever of them in that list) actually care and need to know that I am eating/drinking/viewing/visiting/riding/doing/etc whatever it is that I am doing...<p>While I am ashamed to admit, I can recall more than one such instance where I am among friends having a drink, and I decide to check in - then I realize that I have to tag people, then I have to search for location because it didn't correctly pull up, then I have to re-do it all because I accidentally backed all of the way out of the initial post... Then I have to do it all over again to G+.. "Oh, what was that, friend? I wasn't listening completely as I was carrying out the super important ritual of sharing with the world that we are sharing this tasty beverage in this dark downtown pub instead of paying attention to our ongoing conversation about the next great thing in social media and connectivity..."<p>Is it the end of the world? No. Is it hurting my relationships - so far, I see no indication of that... Is it perhaps a bit annoying to have to repeat yourself a couple of times because you couldn't be heard over the glow of cellphone screens as they were being used to check in on FB? Yeah, just a little bit - but we'll live...<p>But really... Don't worry... Glass is here, kicking our assimilation into the next higher plane of online existence.. With some future revision, we will be controlling it all via eye movement and facial gesture - and so you will then be relieved, instead of annoyed, to learn that your friend wasn't having a seizure or a severe facial spasm, but instead were just tagging you in a post on Facebook and G+ simultaneously...<p>The reality is - we wouldn't do it if it weren't fun or providing us something that we (the majority of the collective) were looking for... It scratches an itch - albeit a narcissistic one at times... While I agree with points here and found the post to be an entertaining read, it's not (yet - or likely ever) that big of a deal... It now seems pretty apparent, with the success of MySpace, Facebook, G+ and other such social sites, that we all like it - the person posting about their drink at the pub and the person liking the check-in from their couch... That's the beauty, I guess - it's pretty much an opt-in activity - you either have an account and participate or you don't...

Externalizing isn't just pictures. It's words, as well. They are often more powerful than pictures, when in the right hands. I find it a bit amusing that the OP externalized his trip in an article about how people shouldn't externalize--describing not just where he was (<i>Singapore!</i>), but how long he was there (<i>a whole month!</i>), the food (<i>exotic!</i>), sights (<i>there were so many!</i>), and his reasoning, as well (<i>to impress!</i>).<p>While I agree with some of the intent and observations he made, it carries a strong tone of <i>I just realized I was doing this thing, don't really like the reasons I think I had for doing it, and am going to make excessively broad generalizations about everyone else who does what I perceive to be similar</i>.<p>The article would have been better to leave out that last bit. You see, there are potentially as many reasons for people [over]sharing as there are people sharing. Since when does taking a picture of/with/in a piece of art require 'bringing a unique interpretation of the artwork to the table'? Who is the author to determine if the pic-taker is sharing a 'hidden gem with their followers'? If I'd visited the Barbican and snapped a pic of the Rain Room to share, it'd be because I thought it was an awesome experience that, while perhaps not hidden to locals, would most certainly be unknown amongst the people I'd share the photos or video with. I enjoy experiencing art, as do many of the people I know. They'd enjoy experiencing the art through a photograph or video.<p>I have very fond memories of watching hours of videos whenever my grandparents returned from a trip somewhere in the world. I specifically recall being amazed by VHS footage of the pyramids when they returned from Egypt. I was about 10 years old. Those grainy videos changed my life. My way of thinking was forever altered. The world was no longer what I saw around me in the city and desert surrounding Los Angeles. It was huge, incredible, majestic, awe-inspiring--and, more importantly, it was there for ME to experience, investigate, enjoy, and re-share it with others. I began diving into studying the histories, cultures, and languages of parts of the world that captured my interest. I rejected the idea that was so prevalent in my family that America was this awesome Promised Land, better than everyone else in the world, because the US didn't have the incredible things I saw in those home videos and my weekly trips to the library on Saturdays--the Pyramids, Great Wall of China, Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Taj Mahal, castles, 600-old libraries, multi-thousand-year-old cities ... you get the picture.<p>I'm so glad my grandparents externalized parts of their life. I'm also really happy when friends do it, because it reminds me of just how much is still out there to experience.<p>Do I care about last night's tacos? Nah. But I can digest those on the way to seeing the pictures of your trip to Budapest.

Great post. Reminds me of Neil Postman's Technopoly - written just before the advent of the internet. The main premise there was that we live in an age of unprecedented amounts of information, yet our ability to parse that information and filter out the unimportant is diminishing, if anything.<p>Much as I love the man, I'm glad for Mr. Postman's sake that he has passed away and been spared seeing his most dismal prognostications realized in all their mindless glory.

&#62;The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look attractive to other people. Your experience of something, even if similar to the experience of many others, is unique and cannot be reproduced within the constraints of social media. So internalise that experience instead. Think about it. Go home and think about it some more. Write about it in more than 140 characters; on paper even. Paint a picture of it. Talk about it face to face with your friends. Talk about how it made you feel.<p>I think this is precisely backwards. Social media sharing enhances my experience rather than detracting from it, precisely because it is so artless: I'm not thinking about how to describe where I am or what it looks like, I just check in or send a photo. If I were to follow the advice in the second part of this paragraph, I'd be doing exactly what the first half warns me against: focussing my efforts on how things look to other people.

"It’s not real life, of course, because people overwhelmingly post about the good things whereas all the crappy, dull or deep stuff doesn’t get mentioned."<p>I think social media is what you make of it and who you stack your social media accounts with. If you stack them with people who only post how awesome they are, this is what you will get out of it.<p>My Twitter feed is a rollercoaster. I have people who share their awesome moments and their horrible moments and their thoughts and hopes and dreams and their humour. If you "follow" just anyone just because you want to be popular and have a lot of followers, you ARE going to get a lot of junk and no real content. Rather than "stopping our externalizing" I think that we, as the viewers of our social media feeds, need to take responsibility for the kind of people we choose to have in our feed.<p>Honestly, trying to tell people what to or not to post is like censorship. Stop burning the books and instead make a choice not to read them. Fill your life with content that makes you happy.

Sharing is caring (to a certain degree), if your sharing is not just pure bragging, the I can see only positives on it. E.g. somebody sharing on how good the food is in a new restaurant is genuinely happy about the experience and wants his friends to check out this restaurant too, as they might like it as well. This is good motivation and basic human nature . Vs somebody that goes in a very expensive restaurant (that everybody knows about) and shares just to brag about it/ show their social status (this might just elicit envy from their friends, another basic human emotion). Delivery style and context are very important in this case.<p>On the other hand I have friends/ acquaintences that don't share at all and just keep it to themselves. To me this is selfish and just as bad as over sharing. A good friend will share both good and bad news. People that share over selectively, or dont share at all are on the selfish side.

My social commentary - there is immense <i>peer pressure</i> to do this - especially in the younger communities. A long time ago - we got the 'Jones family update' holiday letter once a year - a push update - now we can get fragments of it in real time...<p>“You could have this really amazing night, but if you didn’t get a picture, it’s like it didn’t happen,” said Ms. Parr, 22, a senior at Gettysburg, whose friends often order designer outfits from the Rent the Runway Web site because incessant documenting makes wearing anything more than twice taboo. “It’s crazy how much pictures consume our lives. Everyone knows how to pose and how to hold your arm and which way is most flattering, and everyone wants the picture taken with their phone.”<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/fashion/for-college-students-social-media-tops-the-bar-scene.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/fashion/for-college-studen...</a>

I like the effect this has on me. I look at Facebook at the weekend and see some friends were up hours before me to run up a mountain, others have gone into London for the day to see an exhibition then head to a restaurant. I stayed up late the night before watching (and of course, sharing) YouTube videos so missed the best part of the day, but now I see that I'm failing to live life. As a result I up my game and rather than have breakfast and lounge about I head out looking for interesting things to do to justify myself. . . then on Monday when I get a coffee and someone asks "What did you do this weekend" I'm saved of the infamous answer "Just chilled really", which is post Facebook world speak for "Nothing". Now to wait for the up votes and ensuing rush of self-esteem. . . Anyone? ;)<p>TL;DR Subconsciously believing everyone's better than you forces you to up your game and thus get more out of life.

I find that for a lot of people documentation has replaced experience. I watched a performance a week or two ago, and a guy in front of me took photos and videos for 20 minutes straight then abruptly got distracted and walked away. It struck me as precisely the symptom of working to externalize your life so much that you forget to actually experience it.<p>Thinking in terms of narcissism, distraction, oversharing, externalization, etc, I've realized how scary and absurd the Google Glass marketing is. It's been marketed as something that will let us come back to reality and genuine interpersonal relationships, when it's only going to indulge our tendency towards sharing and distraction even more. I think that in order to market Google Glass effectively they had to make the absurd claim that even easier access to the internet will cure our anxious attachment to it.

I prefer my life now than it was before when internet wearing diapers. Before, I had to eat all the drama from everyone I had to meet in any circunstancie, many times, I had to be a listener to really idiots dilemmas or silly issues i really didn't give a shit just because often you can not choose when and whom to talk, well, actually, yes, but that also carries a price: be repudiated because you had decided not to tolerate such interactions.<p>The offline world can give many joys but also do not forget that it can bring many dilemmas too. And in my experience has shown me that dilemmas abound more rather than the joys.<p>I interact with people more now than before and this does not keep me from choosing what conversations I get into the offline world. But I preffer this much because people is on their stuff and not bothering each other without reasons.

I also feel its the modern day version of 'keeping up with the jones's'. I have my startup, which I've been working on for the past few years. After being inundated with images of new babies, houses, cars etc, its hard to resist trying to show my life in a better light.

Yeah, kill the growth model for most "social" companies. The amount of noise is really counter-productive. I know one can just turn it off, but I don't want to live in society where most don't turn it off and focus on presenting life to others instead on life itself.

"It’s not sharing, it’s bragging..."<p>Turns out social media is freaking way tricky. If you share bad things, well, people don't want to hear it. If you share happy news, well, people think your life is perfect. So its damned if you do, damned if you don't.<p>My concern is that instead of young adults being the imperfect people that they are -- forming cliques, being sexist or ageist, and so on -- we're teaching kids how to "fake" having the right attitudes. So yeah, you can be as misogynistic as you want, just don't let it show up on social media.<p>So the real harm social media does is to ourselves: it teaches us fake friendships,fake conversations, and fake storytelling. This will have lifelong negative consequences for many.

When I attempt to curate the capturing of an experience, it is normally for myself later in life to be able to look back on the event. I may share my experiences on occasion, but my efforts in capturing these things are rarely for the sake of others.

&#62;&#62;&#62; The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look attractive to other people. &#62;&#62;&#62; I wouldn't agree with that fully, because I (and I assume many others) often share stuff because I think it's cool and others might like to check it out. Think of the number of time you have discovered neat stuff because someone shared it.<p>So if you are sharing compulsively and simply in order to make yourself seem awesome, that's messed up - but it is also the cost of content discovery on an ever expanding internet.

Look at it from the other perspective: I really like to check Facebook or Twitter and see what my friends and family are doing, what they're enjoying, what they are thinking. By sharing these things, they are also making me happier.

I like Facebook. Not the company, but the service they created. I get to be myself with my friends, but just remotely. I can name about 20 people who were just acquaintances in "real life" but became good buddies via Facebook. A lot of them are people with whom I have heated online arguments over politics, religion, and economics. But we respect each other for it.<p>There are definitely people who don't fit into my Facebook paradigm. Those people have their posts demoted. After a small amount of effort configuring my feed, I now get content I mostly actually enjoy from people I mostly actually want to hear from. It's quite nice!

Ricky Van Veen (College Humor, Vimeo) has an interesting talk about this whole online sharing thing. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&#38;v=-xU92gDntQo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&#38;v=-...</a><p>I tend to agree with him, that we share and document the parts of our lives that matter to us, to help create our identity. It's the same way people drive a car that fits or fill their closets with their style of clothing. It's an outward expression of who we believe we are, and how we view the world.<p>Look at how teenagers use tumblr. They curate content to exactly match themselves.

I think the point the author makes goes beyond the shallowness of 'he's posting on social media, what hypocrisy, look at his externalization!' I think the take away is that by our society's knee jerk reaction to share a picture or write a short micro-blerb describing an event as it happens, that we actually degrade the moment for ourselves. We cease to be immersed in our own world completely but end up stepping in halfway into the virtual as we prep that filter, or select careful word choice and tag very particular people to reap the benefits of our narcissism.<p>I think it is important to make the distinction that the act of externalization or sharing of an experience as some have mentioned should not be completely written off. There is a positive way to externalize our experiences, and it requires more effort and thought. As a general rule of thumb I would argue that experiencing something, reflecting on the experience afterword, and presenting it in a meaningful way meant for longevity is the method most preferred. Sometimes we can't wait until after the moment. Sometimes we need to take a picture now, but the filter and the posting can happen later. The insta-thought that you had that you'll forget may need to be jotted down, on the phone, or in a notepad, but it should not require a complete entrance into social media and draw you away from the moment like it currently does.<p>The best experiences I had in Facebook was not waiting for every single picture to come out and following someone's life as it happened, it was waiting for when that big album from someone's trip was finally uploaded. There, in one stint you could immerse yourself vicariously in the experience that someone had. When a breakup would happen, instead of reading the vacillating short thoughts and daily experiences of someone going from gleeful to miserable, it was always better IMO to read a reflection that someone had after several months of thought and introspection.<p>There is a proper way to use social media and share, and as we are, aren't using it to it's full potential. Remember when your papers in school had a minimum word limit? The point was that you had to put in effort when you wrote something. Instead, we get a max of 140 characters and the incentive to share NOW without any real foresight into what we post. That should change, I hope it changes.

I always have this conversation with my girlfriend: - My point, being her experiencing everything through a small lcd screen, no matter how much pixels or which fancy word like retina is using. - Her point, she will be able to keep memories as you can forget something, but the picture would be still.<p>On one side, I do agree I would like to have pictures and videos from my childhood and my experiences as a teenager. Going further, I would really enjoy to have them from my grandparents. On the other side, we have 2Teras worth of disorganized pictures.

I appreciate where the author is coming from but is this really an issue? I mean, how big a problem is this really?<p>I would imagine most of us have more important things to do than spend our minutes uploading pictures to social media sites. I guess if you are the attention grabbing kind, it works but within my sphere of colleagues and friends I just don't know anyone that does this. And, yes, I am talking about technical people that understand what Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are.<p>Maybe I'm a minority but I suspect that probably not.

Like it was so much different when you were staring at the holiday you weren't actually experiencing through the viewfinder of a polaroid camera, back in the day.<p>Don't blame twitter for this.

I totally agree with the premise, but (there's always a but) attitude and happiness can be manufactured artificially. So, if sharing on twitter/facebook help me to see where ever I am in the here and now in a more positive light. then the fact that I'm sharing is forcing me to look at it positively which then is in turn making the experience more happy and memorable. Hypothetically speaking. There's some assumptions there.

I still remember how social media revolutionized the tech scene in San Diego, where everyone is spread out and can't mingle that often. Instead of monthly meetups where people kept asking "what have you been doing in the last 4 weeks?" it was "tell more about X you were saying on Twitter." Dialogue became more deep and dynamic.<p>We can't close Pandora's box. Might as well figure out how to make it work for you.

The author makes a leap here:<p>&#62;We end up with a diminished perception of reality because we’re more concerned about choosing a good Instagram filter for our meal than we are about how it tastes.<p>I'd like to see some data on the effects of documentation on an experience. You could track things like perceived immersion in and overall rating of an experience with and without an effort to document it.

<i>The key thing to remember is that you are not enriching your experiences by sharing them online; you’re detracting from them because all your efforts are focussed on making them look attractive to other people.</i><p>But that is the point for many people. Most people aren't doing things to personally enrich themselves, they are doing it for others.

My first thought when reading this is 'hyperbole', as in the writer is giving this subject much more weight than it deserves.<p>My second thought is to recommend unplugging from the most prolific of tweeters, writers, and facebookers. This way you're not hit with the firehose and anything worthwhile will be distilled up to you by someone who is.

This really spoke to me. Perfectly articulated why I am not on Facebook.<p><i>"This is the curse of our age. We walk around with the tools to capture extensive data about our surroundings"</i><p>Less and less people are actually enjoying and engaging good moments in life and instead trying to construct a frame around said moment that will look good on FB/Twitter.

It's narcissistic to imagine that you matter at all. This "age of the internet" is about bootstrapping the entity that is larger than ourselves. It needs enormous amounts of data to even have a chance at understanding the world. Please keep blogging about what you just ate. Take lots of pictures. Log everything.

Interestingly, My most responded-to tweet ever was when I had what what was one of the worst days of my life and I tweeted that sentiment: raw, emotional, unfiltered.<p>This to me is instructive. People respond to your vulnerability and humility. Nobody has an easy life. It's potent to own up to that.

This is an outrageously superficial analysis of sharing... It's natural to want to share experiences. This is what we do socially every time someone at work asks "how are you?" or when a friend comes over for a beer. Calling it "robotic" is a huge generalization.

Noble Silence: "Before you speak ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?"<p><a href="http://chandana.blogspot.com/2011/04/noble-silence.html" rel="nofollow">http://chandana.blogspot.com/2011/04/noble-silence.html</a><p>s/speak/(share|post|tweet)

The life stream is really just the small talk of the social network. It's not particularly interesting but it enables the next step. Communities of practice and group action do rely on people syncing up their interests first.

We have a rule. No electronic devices at the dinner table. Ever.<p>If we're out with friends and our kid is 'bored' then we usually let her play on her tablet. It's the upgrade from crayons and paper when she was young.

We post photos of the places we have been to and comment about things we have done for the same reason our ancestors painted their life in the cave's walls:<p>If we don't leave our mark, it's as if we didn't existed.

It's called humblebragging. Without the millions of people looking to find unique experiences to "humble brag" about Facebook would be very boring and wouldn't be as successful.

Mind-reading tweets sender is the future. And mind-reading instagram with google glasses.<p>More seriously, balance is everything. Take photos, then put away your phone/camera, and enjoy the view.

I tried to read the article and I can't, he blames it on the database...<p>The irony

Could be that everyone just wants to feel special and induce envy in their peers. The desire to be great drives a lot of human interactions.

When I share what I'm doing, sharing with my friends is secondary to sharing with myself in the future when I look it up again.

Watch this: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwR5l8wfXlU" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwR5l8wfXlU</a>

Reminds me of <a href="http://5by5.tv/superhero/8" rel="nofollow">http://5by5.tv/superhero/8</a> (audio, 4 minutes)

I cant reach it . Does anyone have a mirror link ?

Just wait, Google Glass is coming soon :)

Stop complaining about opt-in social media.

This post is just plain beautiful.

wow, cool blog. Let me share with some friends.

My point requires a back story, but I think its worth it:<p>A few years ago several teenagers loitered everyday outside my apartment window. Sometimes they skateboarded, other times jumped off a wooden ramp with their bikes, but always did they curse and swear.<p>Especially one kid, who was the ringleader. Every second word was the f-shot. An angry kid.<p>So one summer evening, as I was trying to get work done but hearing this caustic stream of vulgarity outside my window, I decided to straighten these punks out. I went on my balcony and yelled at them to chill it with the bad language.<p>They looked at me as if I was an alien, then continued swearing as soon as I left. Louder this time. They swore even more from then on, especially the ringleader kid. He was angry for a kid.<p>I was getting angry too. Even with my windows closed I could hear the cursing. I was tempted to threaten them, to really let them "have it", but in a rare moment of sanity realized that <i>I can't force them to do anything. I can only change myself and how I respond to them.</i><p>So I changed myself, and instead of getting angry, I decided to help them. I started a dog walking business and hired the ringleader to walk the dogs. That way he'd be busy and earn some spending money.<p>I gave him business cards with his name on it and bus tickets whenever he needed to get somewhere.<p>Turns out it was his first job ever. I later found out he had behavior problems and had been expelled from High School.<p>I befriended him and showed him how to go door-to-door to get clients. He didn't have a dad around so I was probably the closest thing to it.<p>He stopped swearing after that, and so did his friends. I didn't even ask them to.<p>Unfortunately his unemployed mother was evicted about a year later, and he with her. I haven't seen or heard from him since.<p><i>Be the change you want to see in the world.</i> -Gandhi

This has for a long time been my only explanation for twitter. All the hash-tag and "centralized communication is awesome" came later. Twitter started out when blogs were popular and people were doing this "externalizing" on their freshly-setup blogs regardless of how little they had to say. The problem was you still needed a computer to access your blogger-or-whatever account since there were hardly any smartphones and even worse, you actually needed to write a little bit even when you just wanted to show off because most successful blogs back then were not one-liners with a pretty picture because all the "cool" kids were writing long entries so you had to too.<p>Enter twitter. They were the first ones to offer text-message (SMS) to website publishing for free and internationally. This was huge, even for me who giggles at "web 2.0" to this day. This is why it's 140 chars only and this was the main reason it ever got people's attention in the first place, now "everyone" could easily publish all that vital information about their pet's last bowl movement at any given time of the day from everywhere. And even more importantly, they could do all that showing-off in a much more efficient and easy way since it was only 140 characters so they did not have to bother with coming up with some "lorem ipsum" like entry to accompany their showing off. It was being able to show-off without feeling guilty about not writing a long blog entry. Reaping all that sweet peer-approval with hardly any of the work you needed before. twitter quite literally enabled this conspicuous showing-off and made it en vogue. Since all the "cool" kids were showing how great their lives are, so you had to too, right?<p>And now for something completely (or slightly) different. One of my real-life friends does that showing-off on fb in an even cheaper way that I haven't seen anyone else doing so far and I just find it even more ridiculous and it has become a pet peeve of mine. Without failure the last 30 to 50 posts he made were pictures of some sort of object of more or less conspicuous consumption and as text he would just write the one or two words describing what is on the picture - and then, to somehow add depth and give it more "meaning" without anything actually being there except showing off and to make it look "smarter", he would add a smiley. That's it. So imagine posts like:<p>"whiskey :-)"<p>"enchiladas :-)"<p>"sunset :-)"<p>"&#60;insert expensive watch&#62; :-)"<p>"someotherexpensivecrap :-)"<p>One of these days, the internet curmudgeon in me is going to call him out on it and properly ridicule him for it!

I think you could summarize the entire story with "Stop trying to capture the moment in your smartphone, and start LIVING IN the moment."