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littleoc
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Thank you for your replies! Everything helps :)
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Does facebook trigger you? (if not, i could use your insight!)
- Post starter littleoc
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OneMidSummerNight
New Here
I generally really dread logging onto facebook anymore. Having cPTSD, it tends to bring down my mood whenever I look at my newsfeed. My life doesn't match up to that of a lot of my friends. All being on facebook does anymore for me is make me feel left out, like I missed the memo on 'hey--it's time to get married & have kids!' Over the years, I've made it though the wave of engagement announcements, and then pregnancy announcements. There's still pregnancy announcements from time to time, but I just feel like complete hell and left out of everything because my life does not match up to theirs. I feel like I don't fit in with these people anymore really. It's not like anyone has said anything to my face like, 'What's wrong with you? Why aren't you married? Why aren't you having kids?" but I can't help but feel judged for it behind my back. People frequently placate you to your face and try to be all nice and understanding, while keeping their judgmental thoughts to themselves. I try to tell myself things to feel better, like 'Ok you can't really compare your life to theirs. Their lives are nothing like yours and they haven't been through the things you have. They still have parents and can call them up and talk to them whenever they want. They didn't watch both of their parents die from cancer by the time they were 26.' But that never makes me feel better lol. I am so sick and tired of the barrage of people's baby/kids pictures constantly being posted. It sounds terrible but I really couldn't care less about the fact that they've had kids. It's not that I wouldn't like to have a family of my own and kids, but since I also recently ended a 4-year mentally & emotionally abusive relationship and am a few years into my 30s, I don't know if that will ever be a reality for me.
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- #15
littleoc
VIP Member
I wasn't going to reply, but I think I should for this one thought.
I totally get this. I remind myself that I am happy for the successes of others -- I really am -- but it's nice to know that the other reaction I have, if comparing, isn't the literal worst thing that makes me secretly unlovable. It's nice to hear so many people saying this, in a weird way.
I wish I had advice to fix it... maybe one day.
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Sideways
VIP Member
The people on my FB page? Are all genuine friends, that I want to stay in touch with. We communicate fairly honesty through FB. That took deleting my page, then recreating it with a very limited number of friends, and a very limited number of organisations that I follow.
I don’t pick up my phone and idly scroll through my FB page. I get absolutely nothing positive from that type of use of it, and I have healthier ways of zoning out when I need to (which is all idle scrolling does for me).
I pick it up when I’m sitting down with a coffee, and make a point of making meaningful comments on my friends posts. That usually (a) sparks some sort of conversation with them (yay!) and (b) keeps it real - because No, despite their posts, they are not out there living pure joyous lives full of cute puppies and wonderful days at the beach. And if I interact with them? That comes out pretty fast.
Some of the friends I have on FB are like me - it’s easier to keep in touch online, because personal meet ups take a lot of emotional energy to pull off and simply don’t happen otherwise.
I think the reason FB has become a positive for me, rather than a negative, is because I know why I’m using it (keeping contact with those people), and I’ve become pretty anal about setting boundaries for myself on the way I use it. I’ve seen it become destructive for people around me. And I don’t want that to happen for me, because the small number of ‘friends’ that I have are people that I genuinely want regular contact with.
So, for me, I don’t really assess the success of my FB time by the number of friends or likes that I have. I assess it more based on: was that interaction helpful or meaningful for me today? FB does have its place, and the trick I think is to figure out of it has any positives for you, and if it does, what are they, and how do I make sure my experience is always centred on those?
I don’t pick up my phone and idly scroll through my FB page. I get absolutely nothing positive from that type of use of it, and I have healthier ways of zoning out when I need to (which is all idle scrolling does for me).
I pick it up when I’m sitting down with a coffee, and make a point of making meaningful comments on my friends posts. That usually (a) sparks some sort of conversation with them (yay!) and (b) keeps it real - because No, despite their posts, they are not out there living pure joyous lives full of cute puppies and wonderful days at the beach. And if I interact with them? That comes out pretty fast.
Some of the friends I have on FB are like me - it’s easier to keep in touch online, because personal meet ups take a lot of emotional energy to pull off and simply don’t happen otherwise.
I think the reason FB has become a positive for me, rather than a negative, is because I know why I’m using it (keeping contact with those people), and I’ve become pretty anal about setting boundaries for myself on the way I use it. I’ve seen it become destructive for people around me. And I don’t want that to happen for me, because the small number of ‘friends’ that I have are people that I genuinely want regular contact with.
So, for me, I don’t really assess the success of my FB time by the number of friends or likes that I have. I assess it more based on: was that interaction helpful or meaningful for me today? FB does have its place, and the trick I think is to figure out of it has any positives for you, and if it does, what are they, and how do I make sure my experience is always centred on those?
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- #17
littleoc
VIP Member
I love this. Thank you :)
blackemerald1
VIP Member
I joined FB years ago and deleted my account just about the same time. Too much information!! I got absolutely nothing but a headache from it. If a friend or relative wants me to have a photo they can email me it, text it to me or mail it to me. When we talk, we actually have some news to tell each other. It's a bit old world - I know - but I don't like the loose term of 'friends'. I really miss the real meaning behind that word.
I think FB (experiments) is creepy. And apart from this, by their own admission FB's founder (MZ) now reckons that 'there may be a place for regulation' What....now that a whole lot of ppl have had their data sold or given to yet another third party? Him (MZ) being a billionaire 100 million times over.... really cares? Give me a break!! Like he didn't know...already.
Also, btw I go out now and again. When I do. I have to watch out for ppl crossing the road with their eye's & heads plugged into electronic's.... Nothing like being hit with a half tonne object to jolt one out of a FB trance. (No - I do stop and I don't run them over). But sometime's they do not even know they were narrowly missed huh??
People go out to restaurants sitting around with each other 'communicating' on their devices..instead of of face to face style. Hey? Did I miss something?
Just things I notice. So no don't think it helps everyone to be on FB.
I think FB (experiments) is creepy. And apart from this, by their own admission FB's founder (MZ) now reckons that 'there may be a place for regulation' What....now that a whole lot of ppl have had their data sold or given to yet another third party? Him (MZ) being a billionaire 100 million times over.... really cares? Give me a break!! Like he didn't know...already.
Also, btw I go out now and again. When I do. I have to watch out for ppl crossing the road with their eye's & heads plugged into electronic's.... Nothing like being hit with a half tonne object to jolt one out of a FB trance. (No - I do stop and I don't run them over). But sometime's they do not even know they were narrowly missed huh??
People go out to restaurants sitting around with each other 'communicating' on their devices..instead of of face to face style. Hey? Did I miss something?
Just things I notice. So no don't think it helps everyone to be on FB.
Sweetleaf
Diamond Member
I mainly just get triggered by the subject matter of people's posts sometimes.
Another thing that I've been getting "triggered" by is this (I put triggered in quotation marks because I dunno if this is really a PTSD thing, I think it's more a me-having-a-f*cked-up-body-and-shit-life thing): people having happy, good, normal lives. People having kids, getting pregnant, having positive and good relationships and events in their life, being productive, etc.
After I freed myself from my abuser, I came back to facebook for a little bit. I reconnected with some people. But then I quit using it, because it was too painful to stay.
I didn't deactivate my account or anything, I just basically never check it or post, and I occasionally use facebook messenger to talk to certain people.
Another thing that I've been getting "triggered" by is this (I put triggered in quotation marks because I dunno if this is really a PTSD thing, I think it's more a me-having-a-f*cked-up-body-and-shit-life thing): people having happy, good, normal lives. People having kids, getting pregnant, having positive and good relationships and events in their life, being productive, etc.
After I freed myself from my abuser, I came back to facebook for a little bit. I reconnected with some people. But then I quit using it, because it was too painful to stay.
I didn't deactivate my account or anything, I just basically never check it or post, and I occasionally use facebook messenger to talk to certain people.
Swift
Diamond Member
Yeah. I totally get the benchmark stuff, like I'm not where I should be/want to be in terms of life. It makes me feel guilty and inadequate.
Now for a brief nerd rant by request (seriously, don't read this if you're not interested):
Computer code, like maths, is amoral. Something is either a 0 or a 1; that is just the way it is.
Computer programs, on the other hand, are designed to do a particular thing. The more successful they are at doing this thing, the 'better' their developers (and their users) think they are. Self-replicating code, algorithms, self-optimisation in code, is the program filtering itself according to what we tell it to do - essentially, a riff and repeat. It's a bit like those kid's games where you start with a rhythm that you have to remember, and everybody has to tap the sequence and add their own.
Social media platforms are designed to be engaging, and addictive.
As a social media programmer, your bosses literally could not care less about your code or your finesse or your targeting. All they care about is results, and results to them come in the form of numbers. This is what you point to at work as a performance indicator.
Pageviews are a pretty neutral measure. What employers care about is your 'engagement' - likes, reposts, comments.
Facebook works not in spite of the fact it's addictive, but because of it.
Interestingly, it's been proven that people will give over a lot more data to a computer program than to an actual person. And we teach the programs to mine more data, to mine better data, to predict what someone will and won't be interested in. If FB is turned on and it has location data, it will know where you went for coffee and what time you did it, even if you don't post about it. Even if you don't put in your address, it can map where you're likely to be, because it knows where your friends are and where you go to do things, as well as demographic information.
The code to draw inferences is quite smart: you went to a coffee shop at 3pm. It doesn't know you bought a coffee, or if you went there for a good backdrop for a photo of your pet rock, but it uses common sense and demographic information to guess that you were probably buying coffee. (Unless you are very active in the pet rock community. It may figure that you bought one for your pet rock, if no one's bothered to tell it that rocks don't drink coffee. It doesn't "know" that they don't, until someone tells it so. It would probably be able to infer that the rock is a 'pet' and 'pets' don't drink coffee, but I digress).
Because computer code doesn't have a consciousness, it can't determine that it's creepy and wrong of it to be logging your every move.
When it shows you an ad for a cheaper coffee special offer near your work at quarter to three the next day, and you click it, it reinforces the program's behaviour (it thinks: yes I is good program, I do this again!)
Now, as a programmer, the more clicks you get, the better your programs are working. You show your boss, and your boss goes, "yes, you are good programmer! Make it do that more!"
And there you go, a replicating system based on how effectively you get people to engage, based on buttons that they click.
We actively have to teach our programs not to be sexist and racist. They 'learn' that women like a certain thing, or that the word 'secretary' is more associated with women and the word 'doctor' with men, and do things like lock a woman with the title Doctor out of the female change rooms at her gym (yes, this happened).
In summary, code is amoral, programs are biased, programmers need to point to click statistics to show their bosses that they're doing well, and Facebook is a replicating system without a moral conscience, so it cannot be good or evil, it can only be effective or ineffective.
And rocks don't drink coffee.
(End nerd rant).
Now for a brief nerd rant by request (seriously, don't read this if you're not interested):
Computer code, like maths, is amoral. Something is either a 0 or a 1; that is just the way it is.
Computer programs, on the other hand, are designed to do a particular thing. The more successful they are at doing this thing, the 'better' their developers (and their users) think they are. Self-replicating code, algorithms, self-optimisation in code, is the program filtering itself according to what we tell it to do - essentially, a riff and repeat. It's a bit like those kid's games where you start with a rhythm that you have to remember, and everybody has to tap the sequence and add their own.
Social media platforms are designed to be engaging, and addictive.
As a social media programmer, your bosses literally could not care less about your code or your finesse or your targeting. All they care about is results, and results to them come in the form of numbers. This is what you point to at work as a performance indicator.
Pageviews are a pretty neutral measure. What employers care about is your 'engagement' - likes, reposts, comments.
Facebook works not in spite of the fact it's addictive, but because of it.
Interestingly, it's been proven that people will give over a lot more data to a computer program than to an actual person. And we teach the programs to mine more data, to mine better data, to predict what someone will and won't be interested in. If FB is turned on and it has location data, it will know where you went for coffee and what time you did it, even if you don't post about it. Even if you don't put in your address, it can map where you're likely to be, because it knows where your friends are and where you go to do things, as well as demographic information.
The code to draw inferences is quite smart: you went to a coffee shop at 3pm. It doesn't know you bought a coffee, or if you went there for a good backdrop for a photo of your pet rock, but it uses common sense and demographic information to guess that you were probably buying coffee. (Unless you are very active in the pet rock community. It may figure that you bought one for your pet rock, if no one's bothered to tell it that rocks don't drink coffee. It doesn't "know" that they don't, until someone tells it so. It would probably be able to infer that the rock is a 'pet' and 'pets' don't drink coffee, but I digress).
Because computer code doesn't have a consciousness, it can't determine that it's creepy and wrong of it to be logging your every move.
When it shows you an ad for a cheaper coffee special offer near your work at quarter to three the next day, and you click it, it reinforces the program's behaviour (it thinks: yes I is good program, I do this again!)
Now, as a programmer, the more clicks you get, the better your programs are working. You show your boss, and your boss goes, "yes, you are good programmer! Make it do that more!"
And there you go, a replicating system based on how effectively you get people to engage, based on buttons that they click.
We actively have to teach our programs not to be sexist and racist. They 'learn' that women like a certain thing, or that the word 'secretary' is more associated with women and the word 'doctor' with men, and do things like lock a woman with the title Doctor out of the female change rooms at her gym (yes, this happened).
In summary, code is amoral, programs are biased, programmers need to point to click statistics to show their bosses that they're doing well, and Facebook is a replicating system without a moral conscience, so it cannot be good or evil, it can only be effective or ineffective.
And rocks don't drink coffee.
(End nerd rant).
- Post starter
- #22
littleoc
VIP Member
Some rocks MIGHT drink coffee! :P
That's really interesting, thank you. That explains a lot about Facebook... and it's immoral studies. Program psychology... neat :P
Swift
Diamond Member
Some rocks might indeed. But as far as I know, no rocks have a statistical sample of their own Facebook accounts to tell them that they drink coffee :)
And yeah, like, the programs are auto-suggesting which studies they should be doing. 'Hey programmer, I've learnt that when people say these words they might be depressed! Let's test that variable with a big study to test our hypothesis that depressing content makes them more depressed! Oh look, it does! Aren't I clever!!!"
..... no. Bad program. No biscuit.
And yeah, like, the programs are auto-suggesting which studies they should be doing. 'Hey programmer, I've learnt that when people say these words they might be depressed! Let's test that variable with a big study to test our hypothesis that depressing content makes them more depressed! Oh look, it does! Aren't I clever!!!"
..... no. Bad program. No biscuit.
shatter eyes
Diamond Member
I had a fake FB account so I can get more baskets to sell my harvest at my farmer roadside stall. I never chatted with other farmers but we did help each other renew plants so they grow another cycle.
We would help each other out without money exchange. It was nice to give apples and pumpkins when needed. Visiting each others farm and helping out by sharing. Playing HayDay brought me joy until I realised I was feeding my chickens and shaving the sheeps more than i fed and shaved myself.
There was never sabotage. Nobody tipped my cows because the game does not allow that.
I refuse to have a FB personal account. I dont want to be found or having others nosing around like they know me.
I am also thankful i dont have FB because on some days when i pee without problems i am happy..and would probably post a pissing dick pic by impulse while others post food pics.
FB doesnt trigger me but when i hear about who done what this and that married vacation dog groomed new job promotion.... i think to myself how would they live if they had a TBI and PTSD. Would they still post? Would they cover up? Or would they delete the account because they are no longer the same person after trauma?
We would help each other out without money exchange. It was nice to give apples and pumpkins when needed. Visiting each others farm and helping out by sharing. Playing HayDay brought me joy until I realised I was feeding my chickens and shaving the sheeps more than i fed and shaved myself.
There was never sabotage. Nobody tipped my cows because the game does not allow that.
I refuse to have a FB personal account. I dont want to be found or having others nosing around like they know me.
I am also thankful i dont have FB because on some days when i pee without problems i am happy..and would probably post a pissing dick pic by impulse while others post food pics.
FB doesnt trigger me but when i hear about who done what this and that married vacation dog groomed new job promotion.... i think to myself how would they live if they had a TBI and PTSD. Would they still post? Would they cover up? Or would they delete the account because they are no longer the same person after trauma?
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