That sounds awesome!
If you're going to spend time on the Internet, you could make it a better place by telling us more about what sounds like an awesome trip so we have something to read that's not the stupid news.
Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
101–110 of 222 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#102I think it’s related to a human bias towards novel stimuli. Evolutionarily, it’s unsafe to disregard new and unfamiliar signals. That sound could be nothing, or it could be predator outside the cave.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't consider HN to be social media?
I consider internet boards like HN a pre-cursor to all dark-pattern-laden "social" "media" today. So yes in a sense, we're all communicating and this is social media. Now, we wait while someone comes to dispute my personal interpretation of the words, but yeah my $0.02 have been deposited.
Don't you believe it has largely the same negatives as other social media like Twitter or Facebook? (At least in terms of the present topic that "news is addictive".) Why drop one but not the other?
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#104My understanding is it’s the little thrill your brain gets from the possibility of finding something super interesting. That’s the addicting piece. The gambling piece of it. I read (or more likely heard on a podcast) about an experiment with mice and a food dispensing button. In one case, the button reliably dispensed food every time it was pressed. In the other case, sometimes the button wouldn’t work. The mice with…
It's the same mechanism that social and other addicting apps use, specifically a variable reward system.
The unknown of what's behind that notification drives our brains crazy and makes us need to check.
More from Nir Eyal here: https://www.nirandfar.com/want-to-hook-your-users-drive-them...
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#105Reminds me of this thread from last year.
"Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain"
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#106It's a pure dice-rolling addiction.
Let me share a personal story:
For the last 3.5 years, every night before bed, I would browse https://www.gitlogs.com, a site that had it's own algorithm for ranking top-trending Github repos for the day (it is much better than Github Trends, don't ask how).
It was my nightly ritual, and my favorite part of the day. Sometimes I would find 3-5 REALLY fucking awesome projects, or one that was so useful it changed my life as a developer, in one night.
I never missed a night.
For the last month or two it's been flaky (the API has been hosted as a free Glitch project this whole time LOL) and finally, the backend died. So it's gone forever. RIP friend, I have a void in my soul now.
But while it was alive, it was a daily dice roll that was incredibly exhilarating. And that's the addiction, and why I sink so much time into HN too.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#107I recommend book "Stop reading the news" by Rolf Dobelli. To put it short, daily news are bad for you. Especially and including your understanding of the world. (Yes, I am still addicted, but trying to work myself out.)
+1 for Rolf Dobelli’s book. Read it last year and while I can’t say it changed my life, it definitely improved it.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#108Seems like a good time to revisit this blog post by the late-Aaron Schwartz about removing news from your information diet: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#109Seems an appropriate time to post my favourite piece on news addiction by Charles Simic in the NYRB. "I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expect…
I figured this out a few years ago and completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. I have nothing but positive things to say about that decision, and surprisingly I seem to be better-informed and feel like I have a worldview that more accurately reflects reality than most of the people who follow news daily.
Daily news watchers now seem like such ineffective people to me, and I’m reminded of the know-nothings from my teenage years rambling about conspiracy theories. The entire time they’re talking about whatever is happening in the news, I’m just thinking: “Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?”
I have family members that can’t pay their rent on time or remember to feed their kids breakfast, but they’ve got the geopolitical dynamics of the US and Russia all figured out. They solved it.
Others talk endlessly about their opinions about all subjects deemed important by the news. They speak with passion as if the opinions and convictions are their own, yet every single stance they take conveniently mirrors whatever was favored in whatever media they consumed.
None of them ever express an original thought. Every single one of them just chooses a selection of things they heard and repeats it.
I’ve been doing this long enough that I think I can see how this is going to turn out for me long-term. Name anything that happened 5 years ago. If it’s significant, I remember it. If it isn’t, I never heard about it at all, and nobody else remembers it either.
I’m by farrrrrrrr the happiest person I know, to the point that I literally feel guilty about it sometimes. I just have so much time for my career that I’ve zipped past everybody, so much time for family.
It might be the single best decision I’ve ever made in my life. I’m really thankful that I figured it out this young.
Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I consider internet boards like HN a pre-cursor to all dark-pattern-laden "social" "media" today. So yes in a sense, we're all communicating and this is social media. Now, we wait while someone comes to dispute my personal interpretation of the words, but yeah my $0.02 have been deposited.
Don't you believe it has largely the same negatives as other social media like Twitter or Facebook? (At least in terms of the present topic that "news is addictive".) Why drop one but not the other?
Fair point, why not drop all and become an internet hermit relying solely on RSS feeds? But then again, aren't these feeds addictive? Don't they leave you asking for more? At what point in the discussion of internet content can we truly(as a userbase) call it non-addictive then? I'm the furthest thing from an expert on the matter so for me, a website that opens once a week at 17:00 EST for a duration of 2 hours might even do the job. Can't say it hasn't crossed my mind. This is a very tricky and subjective issue. What do you think?