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My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

alexanderell.is

381–390 of 459 posts

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#381

Lately I've become convinced that video games and social media are in the same class as drugs and alcohol. They're a pretty fun way to kill time, but some people are predisposed to doing too much, and too much is dangerous. Also similar to drugs/alcohol: it seems to affect some people more than others. I know people who can check FB/TikTok for a couple minutes and then they're done, and I also know people who continu…

I’d agree with you. It is in a similar vector.

The problem with that is that, different to drugs, social media is not regulated (in terms of UX and manipulation of behavior/emotions).

Social media is allowed to make their platform as addictive as they possibly can. You’re not allowed to create and sell a drug that is perfected for addiction.

Social media and video games are sort of a Wild West in terms of regulation, and I think we’ll have to see some in the next years to combat this.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#382

Thankfully my monkey brain is stronger than my lizard brain when it comes to things like infinite scroll, modals and other horrible UI features that nobody in their right mind should add to any website. Even just a couple of minutes of twitter usage makes me rage quit the whole website. Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? I'm…

quora used to ask for login only when you followed a link while already on quora (so opening from google search wouldn't prompt a login). you could just copypaste url and look at the thread. but not anymore, they closed this off since recently. fuck them, community-driven websites shouldn't become fenced off like that because some lizard brain correlated compulsory login with registration count.

+1 on reddit "modal" bs, i don't paint, but simply like to click shit from time to time. it's horrible.

+1 on rage quitting bullshit sites out of disgust.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#383

I’m curious what the generational divide is for this. I’m 57, love tech and enjoy the positive side of the internet in limited doses. But I find most social media boring. There is incredible and AMAZING art, accidental moments, serious discussion and fascinating analysis of the world to be found online. But without grounding myself in genuine experience in the stinky, cruel real world of human interaction, nature, an…

I think the distinction is that you're 24-year-old daughter has a lot of friends online, and you don't

And they are constantly sending each other content like funny TikTok videos.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#384
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought I was the only one with this habit hah! Nope. I think I would gladly institute capital punishment for people who institute pop-ups on highlighted text. "Oooh, you highlighted a passage of text, would you like to tweet it (with a link to source and user tracked)?" No. I was reading that. ** off. Outlook.com is particularly as depending on my random clicks I can end up with "new email + quote" or "new Note…

I also thought I was the only one. To be fair, my text-painting is half readability enhancement and half fidgeting. I am kind of annoying in pair programming sessions.

I find it really hard to read large sections of text on a screen without the highlighted text play that somehow anchors my view (this is a largely subconscious process I think).

But yeah, my wife will go batshit when trying to read the same thing over my shoulder. "Just stop, I can't read when you do that"

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#385

Thankfully my monkey brain is stronger than my lizard brain when it comes to things like infinite scroll, modals and other horrible UI features that nobody in their right mind should add to any website. Even just a couple of minutes of twitter usage makes me rage quit the whole website. Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? I'm…

quora used to ask for login only when you followed a link while already on quora (so opening from google search wouldn't prompt a login). you could just copypaste url and look at the thread. but not anymore, they closed this off since recently. fuck them, community-driven websites shouldn't become fenced off like that because some lizard brain correlated compulsory login with registration count. +1 on reddit "modal"…

The old Reddit design was just so much better. As a long time front end dev I know this can be an annoying take. But product teams push out so much redesigning that's just unnecessary and this happened with Reddit. The official app has less functionality and is less intuitive and the new website is a garbage fire of pushing you "related content". I guess I'm glad that kept old.reddit.com at least.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also one of those people who randomly clicks and "paints" the text on every website I use. On Reddit this means that I manage to close the thread by accident all the time because someone thought it would be a good idea to open the threads in a modal that closes when you click outside of it. I thought I was the only one with this habit hah! IMHO this "close modal when clicking outside of it" is a UX pattern you…

> I thought I was the only one with this habit hah! Nope. I think I would gladly institute capital punishment for people who institute pop-ups on highlighted text. "Oooh, you highlighted a passage of text, would you like to tweet it (with a link to source and user tracked)?" No. I was reading that. ** off. Outlook.com is particularly as depending on my random clicks I can end up with "new email + quote" or "new Note…

GitLab's diff or Code Review has an extremely annoying feature for people who fidget with text, especially when dragging text.

In addition to highlighting and "painting" the text, I often click and drag the highlighted text around. If some text is dragged onto the code view in Firefox, the dropped text seems to be treated like URLs, and opened either in new tabs or in the current tab.

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/uploads/666d09080e20ea8...

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#387
post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? So you think the standard should be to keep a video playing even if one's scrolled past it? Are you insane?

There's a bit more subtlety and tradeoff here. For example, I doubt most people watching a video on YouTube would like the video to stop playing when they scroll down. If they wanted to pause it, they'd pause it. They also probably don't want the video to transition to the next, whilst they're reading threads. If you're in an infinite loop stream however, you do probably want it to pause or stop, without intervention…

That's fair, as always context matters. But I feel it was implied the context of our discussion was infinite scroll pages like twitter (he specifically mentioned that), tiktok, instagram etc.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#388
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also one of those people who randomly clicks and "paints" the text on every website I use. On Reddit this means that I manage to close the thread by accident all the time because someone thought it would be a good idea to open the threads in a modal that closes when you click outside of it. I thought I was the only one with this habit hah! IMHO this "close modal when clicking outside of it" is a UX pattern you…

I share your affinity to the older reddit ui but why bother using an addon for redirecting when you can opt out of the redesign in settings instead.

Because a) they randomly toggle your setting back, and don’t respect it at all on mobile, and b) features are slowly breaking on the old UI as well: gallery links not working, the “report” button taking seconds to load and then having a modal that breaks interoperability and hijacks Esc.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#389
I noticed I was doing this with Facebook. Decided never to install it on a phone. I did install Instagram on a phone. Noticed I was doing this. Uninstalled Instagram. I installed Reddit on a phone. Noticed I was doing this. Uninstalled Reddit.

My biggest problem then is that I can't uninstall the stupid Google news feed, so that still gets me pretty often. They've made the scroll longer, but at least it is currently finite.

Only slightly related is the way I use my phone for other things. I notice that I'll compulsively unlock my phone and check certain apps that might have something for me (Slack message in a channel that doesn't notify, Chess move to make). And the problem with that is I know I don't need to, and that nothing has likely changed since I last checked. And it's still darn difficult to avoid.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I also noticed a lot and find it equally infuriating. I can only guess why things are like this: you and most users on HN have at least a rudimentary understanding, often an expert understanding, of how a browser works under the hood. You know what a server is, what HTML is, what a browser history is, how cookies work, etc. But some manager wants to tap into the huge market of technically illiterate…

> something like the Twitter interface. Good. The fact that they alienate power users means the platform will not be preferred by power users, and most of the content on it will have dubious value. I am thankful to HN's existence for this reason. It is among the last outlets where I can get quality content.

> I am thankful to HN's existence for this reason. It is among the last outlets where I can get quality content.

Hopefully this doesn't make me some kind of elitist or something, but I specifically never link to Hacker News or mention it on my social media accounts because I don't want HN to become "watered down" like so many previously high-value content sites/forums have been over the decades. I'll just share the linked article if I want to share something I found here.

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