I think the way people are responding isn't helping this question. This could have been good if responders had elaborated on what was promised vs what was delivered, but instead they just list the technology and write, essentially, "this was overhyped".
I agree. It's exactly that question (promise vs. delivery and costs) which should be thoroughly explored before utilizing any technology that is advocated. That's the only way to not fall for a hollow hype.
The world got along fine until facebook came out all of less than 10 years ago.
Since then lots of people have joined it and lots of people have left again, but arguably lots more have joined than have left.
Just like there is no obligation to join there is no obligation to leave and those that leave should not be made to feel guilty because "literally everyone else in your social circle is on Facebook, you're actually forcing them to go out of their way to interact with you, something that fits the definition to a T. Facebook is the preferred method of communication for most people, and if you're ignoring this and forcing people to conform, they'll resent it. "
If your social circle is defined by facebook then pity to you, there are many more established means of communicating with other people including but not limited to:
- personal contact in real life (visiting)
- the telephone
- letter writing
- email
- sign language
- the telegraph system
- telex
- flickr
- youtube
- fax
- smoke signals
- carrier pigeons
- various instant messaging systems
- sms
- twitter
And on and on, and quite a few of those didn't exist 30 years ago either.
Not using facebook does not force anybody 'out of their way' in order to communicate with you, the volume will drop a bit but those that want to communicate with you will always find a way at no great inconvenience to them, after all if the 'price' of facebook is low enough for you it is too high for me because I'm not an avid user of facebook.
That cuts both ways and the onus is not on the non-users to provide ease of access to the users of a certain medium.
Typically protocol negotiations will settle when a common medium has been found, and facebook is only one of many possibles.
Fortunately there is some freedom of choice left in this life and whether or not you choose to use a certain communications medium is one of the things we're still free to choose.
Just because something is a hype does not make it mandatory.
Let's not get caught in a false dichotomy. Not having a Facebook does not necessarily make you anti-social. But if we take "anti-social" to be a measure of one's social availability, not having Facebook decreases that measure. Communicating only by smoke signal or carrier pigeon would make you extremely unavailable whereas communicating by email and telephone would make you very available. In some demographics, users check their Facebook 3+ times per day, so depending on your social circle, being on Facebook makes you highly available.
For the record, I do not use Facebook, but I accept that it makes me less available. Friends who make Facebook events to organize events can invite nearly everyone they want to invite to their event on Facebook, but have to go out of their way to invite me via different means. This makes me anti-social to some (pretty small) degree.
The same admonishion should apply to sudont's assertions upthread. We shouldn't take it as a given that friends will resent you for having to compose an email or use IM.
Diminished capacity is certainly possible. It has happened to me. I've had a few occasions where illness, drugs or both impaired me severely enough to scare me. (Scarier still was two occasions where I retained my faculties but had personality changes into someone unrecognizable as me, and I was aware of it but couldn't start being me any more than I can stop being me usually.)
My mother had a stroke and for weeks afterward was under the impression that I was a nurse who she disliked.
Our minds are very complex systems of chemical reactions. They work most of the time. There is weird, marvelous, scary stuff up there, and we barely understand any of it.
I'm a doctor. I'm not aware of any classic pathology that involves cerebral vasculature and vitamin B. There are some cerebral vasculitides that might initially be diagnosed as vitamin B deficiency, and vice versa.
Quora user Lazlo B Tamas would be a good person to ask, though coincidentally he has already gave his answer to the question itself and didn't address this answer.
What specific symptoms would you suppose would be associated to having both?
For years I've suffered from headaches and I feel the cause is almost always a lack of oxygen (I suppose) to my brain. I've realized I definitely suffer from shallow breathing and over the past few years I've learned to breathe deeper. It has definitely helped a lot, though I always wonder if there's something else.
Blood and vitamin B are two things your brain needs to function (blood for nutrients, and vitamin B for both nutrients and neurotransmitter production - acetylcholine, dopamine, gaba, serotonin, histamine), so I suppose such an effect is possible, although a lot of it could also be credited to the fear of dying.
