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My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

alexanderell.is

101–110 of 459 posts

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#101
The reason why I don't have TikTok installed. Facebook is manageable, TikTok is a 2 hour rabbit hole of "oh crap, it's 2am and I've got work in the morning".

FB has recently added Instagram reels to the app. Not quite TikTok but it's getting to a point where I work out how to disable them or I uninstall FB for the first time in a decade.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#102
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read books I'm not joking, it's the best antidote to the thought-theft of "social media". Pick a subject in which you're interested, find a representively excellent text, and read. And then re-read, because unless you're a genius you won't absorb everything first time. Also it's wonderful to just curl up with a book and a cup of tea and let time pass you by as you ... learn the considered thought of others! This is c…

I would love to do this, but years of mindlessly browsing social media has seriously shortened my attention span. I used to read books all the time. I remember staying up late as a kid just to read the new Harry Potter book. Nowadays I pick up a book, read a few pages, then immediately lose interest and go do something else. Anybody know how to get back into reading?

I can empathise with you. Warning : some armchair psychology ahead : I think it's the age old "less dopamine kick" syndrome. Your brain is used to getting a steady stream of dopamine when you watch/react/post on social media. A book simply doesn't give it (yet). From personal experience, I experience "Aha!" moments when I read once in about 15 days. What I'd recommend is to re-read some of your old favourites and pick up adjacent ones (example : re-read Harry Potter - Prisoner of Azkaban (my favorite ;) and pick up some Greek mythology . ) Finding unexpected connections is one source of joy I experience. Good luck!

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#103

I'm still young so maybe my mind hasn't matured enough to where I can combat this well. So I went heavy-handed - I have a button on my desk that when I press it, my server's DNS server (through which all my devices and router resolve) begins rejecting requests to reddit, instagram, twitter, hackernews, news.google.com, etc. For the next two hours, there is nothing I can do outside of SSH'ing through my mobile device…

This is awesome. I use the "self control" app for Mac OS X, which is pretty effective, but obviously doesn't stop me using my phone.

Would be interested to learn more about this approach.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#104
post #101

The reason why I don't have TikTok installed. Facebook is manageable, TikTok is a 2 hour rabbit hole of "oh crap, it's 2am and I've got work in the morning". FB has recently added Instagram reels to the app. Not quite TikTok but it's getting to a point where I work out how to disable them or I uninstall FB for the first time in a decade.

Like Twitter, the concept of TikTok doesn't make any sense to me so I've never tried it. But YouTube suggestions I do not find very compelling. I'll sometimes scroll for a few minutes but it's mostly stuff I've either already watched or exactly like stuff I've already watched. It doesn't do very well at surfacing stuff that might catch a related interest but isn't really the same thing.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#105
post #71
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does ‘back button works’ mean in the context of infinite scroll?

Clicking the back button after navigating away from the infinite scroll madness should return to the same spot in the infinite scroll list.

That's kind of tricky. I assume the list is allgorithmically generated. So simply having the back button go back to the list, and down to item 50, might give you a list that looks completely different.

Even HN might have this problem a bit. If you visit the homepage you click an article, spend some time reading it, then click back, the homepage might have changed, and even post you were reading might not even be on the homepage anymore. HN is much less bad than infinite scroll sites, because HN's homepage is the same for everyone, and doesn't change nearly as often.

One way to to solve this might be to store a session ID as a query parameter that gets automatically added when you visit the homepage, and store the complete state of each session either serverside or locally in the browser. Then when you navigate back to that session ID, you get the same page. There are a number of downsides to this though. The session ID in the URL is ugly, there's a lot of storage needed for all these session, sessions likely need to be pruned at some point (so the back button will stop working at some point), and it's very difficult to figure out what to do when multiple tabs open the same session ID.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#106

It’s honestly so bad. No matter how hard I try, I find myself re-downloading TikTok or Reddit (Apollo) every month and then wasting away all my free time for a week or two before re-deleting them out of disgust. I truly don’t know what the solution is. I would just get rid of my smartphone if life wasn’t quite inconvenient without it.

Life isn't that inconvenient without a smartphone, it's only been something people have had for a couple of generations at the most.

You just have to plan things in advance a bit more. It's liberating in a way. You plan dinner with someone on Thursday at 6:00 and it's set. You don't have to think about it, tweet about it, post it on Facebook, or anything else. Just show up.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#107

It’s honestly so bad. No matter how hard I try, I find myself re-downloading TikTok or Reddit (Apollo) every month and then wasting away all my free time for a week or two before re-deleting them out of disgust. I truly don’t know what the solution is. I would just get rid of my smartphone if life wasn’t quite inconvenient without it.

If you must use Reddit, set up an account that's unsubscribed from all subreddits. Then only add small, niche subreddits and never any of the default or popular subreddits. At worst, you'll get a homepage that updates with new content maybe once or twice a day, drastically reducing the chance of scrolling your free time away. It's preferable to just not use it at all if you can, though.

I initially started using the multireddit feature, to section off specific but related interests. It can also be used to build a focused feed.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#108
post #7
post #4

I don't use any product with infinite scroll. If it's not paginated or single-paged, it's a clear sign they regard their users' time as worthless. Why would you interact with a company that believes that?

An exception: I find Duck Duck Go's infinite scroll quite pleasant, and find paginated results quite cumbersome. Elsewhere it's just annoying. Especially when a misclick makes you lose the position. Dilbert's website is a good example of this. For Reddit or Twitter I don't know, I read them using libreddit and nitter when I occasionally land on them from a link or a search result. TikTok and Facebook I have never tri…

Who looks past the first half-dozen search results. I almost never do.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#109
post #26

On the other hand, why does every shopping, manufacturer, parts supplier, etc. Have to paginate everything? That only makes sense if you are trying to increase page views with ads. It is frustrating to have to click next, re load all the background clutter, sometimes every ten items.

I much prefer pagination, because I can get back to where I was. There are technical ways to make infinite scroll deep-linkable but I almost never see it in practice.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#110

I'm still young so maybe my mind hasn't matured enough to where I can combat this well. So I went heavy-handed - I have a button on my desk that when I press it, my server's DNS server (through which all my devices and router resolve) begins rejecting requests to reddit, instagram, twitter, hackernews, news.google.com, etc. For the next two hours, there is nothing I can do outside of SSH'ing through my mobile device…

I'd buy it
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