From the perspective of "friend circle is visible for three days", let's talk about how we should face social networks

Why should you set your Moments to be visible only for the last three days? Has everyone started closing their Moments and focusing on their inner selves? This article explores and thinks about this phenomenon. Let’s take a look~

1

Recently, I have discovered one after another that this classic saying is displayed under the personal homepages of many friends.

“ — Friends only show the Moments of the last three days — ”

In his personal profile column, WeChat also displays a small screenshot of his "personal photo album", as if telling you that your friends have not blocked you. But when I clicked on it, I found that I could only see the last three days, which made me feel like I was being cheated.

Has everyone started closing their Moments and focusing on their inner selves?

2

I don't think so.

WeChat launched this feature based on the operational data of real users. For example, there is such a type of person in my circle of friends. Every time they post something, it disappears after a while. They either delete it or hide it so that it is visible only to themselves.

Posting and deleting a message is actually quite tiring. Your fingers may not be tired from operating it, but your heart will definitely be very tired.

The “Visible in Moments for Three Days” function simply meets their needs. They don’t have to delete it every time, and they can also tell others openly that they have not blocked them.

This feature is essentially a self-destructing message . If Snapchat 's self-destructing short videos are a curiosity, then what category does WeChat's self-destructing Moments belong to?

3

Why should you set your Moments to be visible only for the last three days?

This kind of question is actually very sensitive. It is not easy to ask this kind of question, but if you ask it, you will probably get mostly positive or neutral answers, such as:

"Protect your privacy. You see there are so many strangers on WeChat now. There's no need to let everyone see it."

"I will let bygones be bygones and live in the present. The past is the past, why dwell on it?"

"My realm is high, so I don't need other people's attention."

…

But in fact, I think the real answer must be hidden behind something that is unwilling to be spoken, a negative emotion, such as:

"Every day I look at that investor and that entrepreneur who is so awesome, and I feel like what I publish is so awesome. What will they think when they see my Moments? It's so sad, I don't even want to look at it myself."

“I feel like the things I posted before are too worthless, please don’t read them.”

“The content I post is meaningless, so those awesome people will definitely not pay attention to me.”

…

4

Yes, on social networks , not many people will read your messages simply seeking attention. However, it will be easier to get attention if you show a certain superiority and an attitude that you don't care about others.

In essence, everyone hopes that the social network for UGC can become the social media for their own PGC .

In fact, not everyone has the ability to create PGC. Those who have the ability to create PGC are celebrities on platforms such as Weibo, Momo, Kuaishou , etc., and they receive enough attention, so they do not need the attention of their circle of acquaintances.

But for most people, the channels for getting attention are limited to acquaintances, so various needs arise.

5

In terms of WeChat’s circle of friends, these needs include:

• Invisible to strangers: All people who have not added friends can only see up to ten Moments, or none at all.
• Block access to their Moments: I particularly hate certain people who keep gaining attention, love to show off and share, and their content is meaningless, but I am embarrassed to delete it, so I want to block their Moments.
• Prevent others from viewing your Moments: Prevent certain strangers who cannot be deleted but do not need to enter your social circle from viewing your Moments.
• Send separately to designated visible persons: group your girlfriends, college classmates, and colleagues, and be careful each time you send it to decide who can see it and who cannot. (Grouping alone is tiring enough)
• Send to designated people who are invisible: Although you have opened your Moments to others, there are some contents that you don’t want them to see. Therefore, you can carefully exclude designated people one by one each time you post to Moments.
• Burn after reading: In the past, people did it manually, deleting or setting messages to private after sending them, so that others would not see them. Now we have the option of making the content in Moments visible for half a year or three days, which directly meets this demand.

You see, our circle of friends is really complicated enough. A product manager who cannot fully understand the darkness of human nature will definitely not be able to make good products.

WeChat cannot be blamed for making social networking so complicated. Facebook also has similarly complex functions. Human nature is the same in this world. There are differences in culture, but there is no difference at the underlying level of human nature.

Therefore, one question we need to reflect on is, does such a good product really mean good to you?

6

In the classic popular psychology book "The Elephant and the Rider", the author divides the human brain system into control systems and automatic systems. Most of our behaviors come from automatic systems, such as riding a bicycle, driving, typing, etc., while control systems are generally used for things that require complex decision-making.

Therefore, our daily lives rely on unconscious automatic systems without us noticing, and the control system only appears occasionally. If we find ourselves procrastinating and doing nothing, and want to activate the control system to fight against the automatic system, we are doomed to fail, because the control system has its attention limit every day, while the automatic system never gets tired, like a perpetual motion machine.

The author compares the control system to an elephant rider and the automation system to an elephant. It is the elephant, not the rider, that truly determines our behavior.

Therefore, products such as social networks and information feeds are designed for the elephant in your heart, not for the rider.

But at the same time, the author points out that it is not impossible to control an elephant, and it requires patience and skill.

Let me tell you a classic Chinese story, Cao Chong weighs an elephant. At that time, Cao Chong wanted to bring the elephant to the boat to be weighed. The elephant refused to move at first, but Cao Chong finally put a bunch of bananas in front of the elephant, and the elephant finally moved obediently.

Yes, all we need is to make our own bananas and guide the elephants to do the right thing.

7

To understand the relationship between "elephants and their riders", you need to read a lot of psychology books and have various practical experiences. This is not something that this article can solve. If you are interested, you can read the book yourself.

What I can talk about here is WeChat, and my own experience of not being anxious about WeChat and coexisting peacefully with elephants. You can also try it.

1. Keep your Moments closed, and then open it again to post content. Open it when you need to post content on Moments. After posting, you can take a look at your Moments and then close it again.

This may seem troublesome on the surface, as you need to go to the settings to turn it on and off every time, but compared to opening your Moments frequently and checking it again when you see someone likes your post, it can actually save you a lot of time. It does not completely shut down your Moments, but it can significantly reduce the number of times you check your post.

2. Mark your friends as stars and follow them actively. Mark the friends you really care about with stars, and turn passive swiping of Moments into active attention. This way, you will establish a more point-to-point attention with your friends, and your relationship with your friends will become closer.

3. Unfollow all public accounts and then follow them again. Missing any public account will not cause you to lose hundreds of millions. Most of the content on marketing accounts with 100,000 readers is just to coax your elephant into buying, which is meaningless.

I had cleared my public accounts once before, and started to follow various public accounts at random the next day, and tried to click on them. Half a year later, I could clear them again and repeat it.

4. Block all passive notifications except instant messaging, turn off message notifications from various apps, and reduce the time spent opening content such as Toutiao . I am not against fragmented reading, what I am against is passive reading. The initiative in passive reading lies with the elephant, not the rider, and we need to win back the attention. This is the same logic as closing the Moments and marking friends as stars.

Elephants need to be guided. If you, as the rider, do not guide it, it will only be guided by other temptations.

5. Rebuild active reading behavior, read the public accounts you have followed again, listen to the audios downloaded from Himalaya , or subscribe to various paid knowledge and cultural content , as well as read some Kindle e-books, systematic knowledge, novels, good or bad, no matter what, these contents must be choices you have made after active decision.

What I have done above is to avoid being passive and emphasize the process of establishing initiative, which is the process of guiding the elephant.

8

Back to the original topic, why is the design of social networks so complicated?

I think there are many reasons, but the biggest reason is that all designs are designed to please the elephants, to compete for the position of the rider, and whatever the elephants clamor for, they design for them.

But the problem is that this passive competition for attention is ultimately irresponsible and commercial. We cannot gain some kind of deeper experience and growth from it, but are more attracted by superficial surfaces. Therefore, what we often gain from social networks and social media is boredom and loss.

The one who can truly accompany the elephant in its growth is the elephant rider. He must take on the role of a guide, and establish as much initiative as possible and take responsibility for all information and temptations.

I hope the above can help you.

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