I remember one vacation which was the first after many years: I was lying at the beach enjoying the view. I was so happy that I could afford some vacation after years of suffering and watching millions of vaction pictures from my friends on Facebook.
Avid for revenge, I took a picture of the stunning beach view and wrote in big letters 'MY LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOURS'. At that moment I realized what Facebook is about (without posting anything).
I took a 3 week road trip recently, and I couldn't find the motivation to post anything about it on social media. I realized on the first day that worrying about social media was taking me out of the moment, and I don't think I opened Facebook until two weeks in to the trip.
I took lots of photos and a bit of video, and I'm really glad I have photos to remember my trip with, especially the photos I have with other people. I haven't found a reason to share them on social media though.
That being said, I did go to a wedding, and I was happy that people shared the photos of that on social media, since the number of people there was way too large to actually make sure everyone in the photos received a copy.
This is why my facebook is entirely memes. I'd much rather look at lame captions poorly matched with cute cat and dog pictures, than see yet another 'My life is better' post.
I look at pictures of my friends doing cool things as inspiration to keep doing cool things. Not in a competitive sense, but seeing my friends having a great time inspires me to keep traveling and keep doing interesting things.
This is also exactly my view about Facebook usage. I think it's a good, healthy use case of it, especially for people with means to (which you and I appear to be).
I think the general negative view is because people without the means (for example, money, to travel, for variety of reasons), simply become more miserable as they watch friends travel on FB.
It's probably a more complicated sociological topic. Many would like to paint it just black or white though.
It's the fact that it's an unreasonable and unhealthy comparison.
It's like watching someone's highlight reel and thinking their the best player ever. Of course not, no one's ever as good as their highlight reel.
We all have time and means for a vacation or two but when everyone only posts their vacations on a platform like FB, it makes it seem as though everyone's life is wonderful. We never see the day to day drudgery.
As much as everyone shits on Snap, it's been the perfect platform for a more 'realistic' view into the lives of friends and acquittances. You feel a lot more connected with folks when everyone's posting shit like morning coffee, memes, stupid selfies, small wins and the day to day.
> 'MY LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOURS'. At that moment I realized what Facebook is about
I don't do the facebook thing myself, but close friends do, and they use it as a social organiser, not an arena for braggadocio. Want to get rid of a table? Facebook. Shitty day and want to invite friends to the pub? Facebook. Cat memes? Facebook.
I'm not fond of facebook, but let's face it; you can't blame the hammer if you make a shitty chair with it.
S/He's getting down voted because (I assume, it wasn't me) he changed the topic/point of the conversation, not because what he wrote wasn't true. Often a comment on something social/subjective/squishy devolves into a objective discussion about the irrelevant details..... like this comment does.
It's highly relevant. Facebook now knows he wrote "MY LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOURS" and deleted it. Tells a lot about a person, doesn't it? What if someone wrote something else and then deleted it and somehow that caused trouble because facebook saved it? Just food for thought.
> In their article, Das and Kramer claim to only send back information to Facebook that indicates whether you self-censored, not what you typed. The Facebook rep I spoke with agreed that the company isn’t collecting the text of self-censored posts.
The study and an FB representative both refute that the content of "self-censored" posts is collected.
Avid for revenge, I took a picture of the stunning beach view and wrote in big letters 'MY LIFE IS BETTER THAN YOURS'. At that moment I realized what Facebook is about (without posting anything).