I think it's akin to addiction. Internet secretes the pleasure chemicals in brain. And it's fun.
Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
171–180 of 685 posts
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#172I'm not sure about wasting. Most of my surfing consists of unearthing gems, and I have to wade through a lot of noise and muck to find those gems, but the gems are there. If I could automate it, I would, but it wouldn't be the same. A piece of code that crawls the net looking for something I would really enjoy is a hard problem, and I would have to code in my own biases to the program to make it work properly, and th…
> code in my own biases to the program to make it work properly
Isn't this, in theory, what the "algorithms" are trying to do for you? They see what you interact with and try to optimize for "similar" content to surface these gems for you automatically, since it will keep you in their platform longer.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#173I wonder if this is because we're lonely..? Just wondering out loud here. E.g. Twitter - feels like many of the "thought leaders" I follow, their "friends" are also on Twitter. And they tweet/respond so much I often wonder if they're really ever "building a business". And are they ever interacting with their real-world friends or family? Or if their lives just consist of a constant refresh of their feed. Even at dinn…
> I wonder if this is because people are lonely..? Just wondering out loud here. Discord has propped up my social life for years now. And I mean outside of the internet as well! I also engage in independent, more traditional social engagement and it usually ends in nothing more than a hangover. Not unexpectedly, the internet makes it easier to bring people with similar interests/believes/personalities together. There…
I have found that people who grew up on the internet tend to have a "third place" that's online, which it sounds like for you is discord. That kind of makes that your priority over a real-life third place like a pub or something, since it's where all the people you are super familiar with are it's easier just to stick around that.
For me all my online third places disappeared (specific IRC chats and forums), and I never really found another. I'm on discord but they're very shallow places for me now. I spend most of my time online just on YouTube, and the rest of my time at work, with my partner or family, and doing hobbies. It's a very reasonable offline-life but I do find myself missing a third-place. Maybe I need to join a gaming clan or something.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#174Just speaking for myself, I've noticed that my habit is to eat what is in front of me, and clean my plate. I mean this both literally and figuratively. If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then I eat one after dinner. If I don't have it in the house, then I just don't eat dessert. If I have a social media feed full of content, then I'll scroll through all of it until there's nothing else that's ne…
> If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then I eat one after dinner.
I think for most with social media the equivalent would be to eat the entire bag.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
is it ADD or is it just a common pattern of human nature? Is eating sugar when it is offered a disease, or an environment that is toxic to instincts that usee to suit us well?
I'm reminded of Scott Alexanders musing re: whether someone "has ADD" if they have trouble focusing on things that are simply boring as fuck, like looking at spreadsheets (or code...) all day every day, week, after week, after week. But then if all their peers are in fact outperforming them, because they're already all self-medicating for ADD symptoms, or have a prescription for ADD meds, so they can focus on somethi…
Given enough time abnormal becomes normal and everyone who couldn't fit in is selected out. Several thousand years ago agricultural societies were abnormal, but they allowed high population densities and were better at war so they dominated (except on the steppe).
When Henry Ford popularized the assembly line he had extremely high employee turnover. People didn't like working that way.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#176It sounds like their habits are influenced by your environment. Just tie the habit to a new productive habit. Make it work for you. Example 1: start learning a new natural language, and also switch all your social media feeds to only provide content in that language. You'll either lose interest in learning the language and start withdrawing from social media, or your unbreakable habit will sustain your new language l…
This sounds like a methodology I’d like to try. I’ve not heard of it before. Do you have any suggested Haitian musicians or artists?
Thank you for sharing.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#177I had to reach a point where I admitted to myself that, as much as I may wish I were a person who could handle having a smartphone in my pocket, I'm not. If I have one there, it will suck up time I don't want to give it. I tried putting all kinds of guides in place until I just...got a flip phone that, yeah, can run Android apps, but absolutely sucks to use. It doesn't have a touch screen, so I have to navigate with…
I agree completely, the only reliable way to quit using a smartphone is to stop carrying one.
I don't know why we apply such different thinking to digital addictions than physical ones.
You would never tell someone who was trying to quit smoking "just carry a pack of cigarettes and a lighter everywhere but don't use them".
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder if this is because people are lonely..? Just wondering out loud here. Discord has propped up my social life for years now. And I mean outside of the internet as well! I also engage in independent, more traditional social engagement and it usually ends in nothing more than a hangover. Not unexpectedly, the internet makes it easier to bring people with similar interests/believes/personalities together. There…
Discord is most likely the most phallocentric large scale platform ever made. It is an abysmally terrible place to go to meet people, and particularly to go argue. Ever seen what the most popular politics server on discord looks like? 4chan is tame by comparison...
The issue isn't discord, discord is in essence just IRC again. IRC wasn't exactly a bastion of intelligent conversation in all corners, but one of the biggest issues I think the internet currently faces is that everyone is here now. Every brain with a thought no matter how vapid or vile is now joining the conversation.
But just like with IRC, it's all about the specific community you've joined, not the platform. You can definitely find good communities on discord.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#179Just speaking for myself, I've noticed that my habit is to eat what is in front of me, and clean my plate. I mean this both literally and figuratively. If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then I eat one after dinner. If I don't have it in the house, then I just don't eat dessert. If I have a social media feed full of content, then I'll scroll through all of it until there's nothing else that's ne…
> If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then I eat one after dinner. I think for most with social media the equivalent would be to eat the entire bag.
Yes, he eats one. Bag :)