Do y'all use social media? If you don't how has it impacted your life?
You know, I'm a graduate student at a university
Due to the fact that I use basically no social media and deleted my Facebook a couple years ago, things get pretty isolating sometimes.
Now that there's the corona virus even campus is shut down and all the usual ways in which I would have human contact are basically gone. I don't work on campus, I don't meet students in person etc. I won't even be attending classes.
I feel like for most of my developing years I was plugged in to Facebook and things like that. Getting rid of it benefited me a lot. And thus far I've been okay.
But after everything is shut down at the university it has become glaringly clear that I don't have a lot of friends. It's weird. It's like if you're not on Facebook, people sort of just don't interact with you unless it's in person.
When I was living in my hometown I didn't mind these things as much. I could always go into the mountains and hike for days in isolation and it didn't bother me.
When I'm cooped up in my house trying to actually still do work is when it gets to me. What have y'all's experience been?
I'm a member of a local church and we have worship and various fellowship gatherings 2-3 times a week. This week we aren't having services or gatherings due to the virus, so we're going to be doing some online meetings.
Fortunately, most social media are inaccessible from China. Most Chinese people even don't know what is Facebook.
Except that most people in China seem to be on WeChat
This is the overwhelming power of "social inertia" (RMS's article). I really hope that anyone outside China refuses to "use" WeChat just to communicate (with) us. There are still some workarounds, such as e-mail and IRC.
Unfortunately, China is politically, militarily, and economically strong, and it has a lot of population.
Do you use WeChat? I heard that many places in China don't even take cash anymore. If you don't mind me asking how do you even function without being able to pay for food/shops/etc..?
I suppose one could always set up an eJabberd server on a Digital Ocean instance and invite people to join...
Hm actually I have a mastadon account.
the problem is I wouldn't have anyone other than my family to ask to join anyway because I have no friends. hahaha
Same here in Italy,all peoples are addicted to social and there is no verbal communication specially in this moment with corona virus.It’s really sad....and the worst situation is with young guys,always on smartphones and no communicate with each other without it.And the school facilities are not adequate for modern computer education...sad so sad...
I never used social web sites incl. Facebook. People that are worth talking to know to write by e-mail, XMPP, Riot or IRC.
> if you're not on Facebook, people sort of just don't interact with you unless it's in person.
That is good. That means you have to hear/read less inane things. People who write something worth reading rarely do it on social media. They write an article or a book.