Why do you waste so much time on the internet? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#231

Post by darioush » Fri, May 06, 2022, 5:59 PM UTC

Usually this happens when I am bored or blocked at work or I am in a meeting where there is nothing for me to say or do 90% of the time.

Slack creates a culture that is built around response time but often topics on slack are low urgency and of little long term value. Heavy use of slack requires people to be around synchronously and inevitably people will be blocked on others. This is inefficient.

Daily stand-ups are a similar routine that provides not much value in terms of unblocking people.

I greatly look forward to tech companies who prefer written documentation (eg, Notion) over Slack.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#232

Post by IntFee588 » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

DerekBickerton wrote: post #11

I'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…

The quality to noise ratio on mostly social media platforms has become obscenely low over the past three years or so. I do think social media can be a force for good but it seems like the algorithms are best at perpetuating the lowest effort, spamiest content.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#233

Post by mensetmanusman » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

We are sensory creatures. The brain used to have to move the body along to see new things, but now it has realized that it is far more efficient (calorie-wise) to sit and bring sensations to the eyes (mind’s eye as well).

If you weren’t reading/viewing with your eyes/ears, what are you missing?

Taste, but you can eat while viewing.

Touch, this is missing, but the negative survival/health feedback loop is slow, so we ignore the loss of touch i nour lives.

Smell, this is missing, but we can smell our food.

Basically it is inevitable that the future of humanity will spend more and more time stationary while enjoying the internet.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#234

Post by 29athrowaway » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

RSS was better. You could mark feed items as read and save time. Feeds that do not implement mark as read are an waste of time.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#235

Post by uuyi » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

dawidw wrote: post #224

uuyi wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is terrible advice. Any fads are. Ketogenic diets are not good for you in any way. Bad behaviour starts with acknowledgement and the best way to do that is to track what you eat and learn to adapt slowly and develop self discipline. Use a tracker app and set a reasonable daily break even nutritional target and start thinking about what you eat. Slowly substitute better choices in. Eventually you will develop sel…

What is so bad about keto diet?

Not going to list them here but I suggest you go and do some research of the side effects and risks from actual medical research not HN users.

For me it ended in a few days in hospital.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#236

Post by frankus » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:08 PM UTC

sarsway wrote: post #124

Because we humans have a lot of idle time. We feel like we're wasting it, and we feel we should instead spend time archiving goals, to better ourselves, to do something more meaningful. But that is not how life works. You are just unnecessarily burden yourself with guilt. Thinking you should be doing something else. There are so many things to learn about, so many things to experience, right? We fear on missing out o…

I think most people would like if they could be productive 24/7 (or more realistically, consistently productive during their waking hours), but I think there is some amount of "waking rest" that humans need, or at least that modern human existence makes it hard to avoid.

This same post could have been written 30 years ago, but it would be about mindlessly switching channels on the TV, watching vapid sitcoms interrupted by a handful of commercials you've seen dozens of times.

Maybe before that people would read the local fish-wrap newspaper or same stupid book they've read dozens of times.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#237

Post by seydor » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:13 PM UTC

aantix wrote: post #42

I 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…

Many youtubers use youtube to reach out to friends or make friends. For younger generations using the media as antidote to loneliness is more common. Unfortunately all the media rot after a sweet period

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#238

Post by jumpkick » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

ehnto wrote: post #153

acwan93 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read that the decline of religion also plays a role here. Aside from the religious aspect, the sense of community and regularity you get meeting the same people on a regular basis is lost. It's kind of the mix of a loss of "third place" (institutions, coffee shops, etc.) and the increase of social media bubbles that pushes us to be more polarized, I think.

The only place I've gotten the regularity feeling of a third place was a really specific gym I used to both work and train at. Everyone knew who I was even if I didn't train with them, because I also worked there, so when I trained there it was my third place as well and I was always having great conversations. I haven't had anything like it since, and I've been relatively proactive too. I have hobbies, go to meets,…

On of the best "third place" locations I've had was a gym as well. This was about 15 years ago, before iPhones and Airpods, etc. existed, or were as prevalent, so it was easy and common for gym regulars to strike up conversations and get to know each other.

I don't go to the gym anymore, but a few years ago when I resumed for a bit, everyone was on their phone, or dead-eyed while listening to music or a podcast, etc, and not interested in talking to anyone.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#239

Post by Forgeties79 » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

Apreche wrote: post #17

Just 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…

>I just massively unsubscribing, unfollowing, and filtering all the feeds.

Nothing has been more effective for me than this, as well unfriending/following people or accounts that actively make me angry. Had to unfollow like 10 people tops and the quality of my feeds got noticeably better.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#240

Post by ge96 » Fri, May 06, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

Can't afford to move out to some place with land yet.

Otherwise I'd spend a lot of my time tinkering with stuff outside.

I always have something playing whether it's music or tv (form of YT or some Netflix-type place mostly YT though). Also my friends are not in the same state as I am so I don't really have a life.