Live data from Hacker News

Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

zan.bearblog.dev

291–300 of 685 posts

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

#291
Everything on the internet is made to be as addictable as possible. Anyways i don't "love" social media, but I just want to have free time to spare, but between my job and my wife only Friday nights are the only time i can really enjoy and i mostly don't enjoy it as much because I'm exhausted from the week and I just want to sleep. I use social media in between my daily life as a guilty pleasure to feel free to waste some time in some mindless shit without having to plan anything.

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

#292
Sometimes I have intelligent conversations about stuff that matters to me. I really like that.

Admittedly, it can be like sifting a public beach for pennies.

And 99.999% of the time I end up talking to people who can't see a paving brick if it's wedged under their eyelid.

But I suspect that a really eloquent style can penetrate even the thickest. Well, I suspect it less lately.

And I just like talking to people.

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

#293
post #104
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…

https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/ Presents the Twitter accounts you're following so you can decide whether they "spark joy"... pairs well with https://opml.glitch.me/ Which looks at the accounts you're following, looks at the links in their bios, sees if there's an RSS feed indicated at that link, and puts the whole thing together into an OPML feed (the standard XML-of-RSS-feeds format used for RSS reader import/e…

I just spend the past 20 minutes in the unfollow tool. Thanks for helping me waste so much time on the internet!

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

#294
post #98
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…

"Out of sight, out of mind" works great for me too. It's staying occupied so that your thoughts don't meander back to that thing, that makes the trick.

A lot of addictions are borne and sustained out of boredom. When you find something else to fill time, they can be removed relatively easily.

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

#295
post #224
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?

The key thing you do in a keto diet, entering a state of ketogenesis, can cause massive complications for diabetic people due to ketoacidosis.

Unfortunately a lot of people who would be interested in dieting and trying out a keto diet are diabetic. It's not always dangerous, but it's generally not a good diet for diabetic people because of this.

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

#296

My completely unprofessional opinion is that almost everyone that uses the internet throughout the day has developed some form of undiagnosed ADD/ADHD. The modern internet has broken our slowly evolved brains. We are not built to cope with these types of attention destroying activities and media. At least 20 years ago you had to sit down at a specific place and use a chunky computer. Smartphones have made it 1000x wo…

Not exactly. It's definitely not ADHD if there's no prolonged and debilitating impact. Being distracted an hour there and a couple there is not like ADHD.

ADHD would be like more like falling in a pit where one basically cannot do anything meaningful for days and days despite willing to do so (if the motivation is lost, in turn, we are talking about depression-like states).

I doubt that many of normal smartphone users get into such pits despite they appear distracted and might have an urge to get into one's smartphone.

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

#297
post #64

it's cheap - i could go for a walk - go to the gym - call my mother - clean the house - na - clicking the same 3 buttons in a different order on youtube - hoping for something new and amazing-- is "cheaper" - it's easy - & very occasionally - I win something amazing- think this has always been true tho - mum used to buy the sunday times then read the same pages multiple times throughout the week - not sure she though…

> clicking the same 3 buttons in a different order on youtube - hoping for something new and amazing-- is "cheaper" - it's easy - & very occasionally - I win something amazing- You just made me realize that these algorithmic feeds are quite literally a skinner box because you're exactly right.. once in a blue moon there is a recommendation, a video, or a tweet, that really is amazing and can change your perspective o…

and if that is indeed true - do we control the algorithm - or does the algorithm control us? :=)

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

#298

I wouldn't say I'm addicted to them, but when I find myself bored, I open a meme site (which shall remain unnamed) and just look at mildly popular memes. Doesn't matter what they're about. I just like the occasional laugh I get out of them. I also like social topics being turned into dark, twisted humor which is sometimes captured perfectly in memes. But when I was going through a rough patch of my life (depression,…

> Why did I waste so much time on the Internet? If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here. It gave me that much needed laughter every once in a while that kept me from going over the edge and I would just keep scrolling, looking for one more laugh that will make my day a bit more bearable.

Battling long term physical illness here that is an absolute fucking slog. Can very much relate to this sentiment.

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

#300

My completely unprofessional opinion is that almost everyone that uses the internet throughout the day has developed some form of undiagnosed ADD/ADHD. The modern internet has broken our slowly evolved brains. We are not built to cope with these types of attention destroying activities and media. At least 20 years ago you had to sit down at a specific place and use a chunky computer. Smartphones have made it 1000x wo…

I found Newport's book to be so surface level for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the problem that it wasn't worth my time.

What really helped me was these two books:

(1) The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu (2) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshanna Zuboff

and the nextdns.io installed on all my devices. I literally blocked Reddit, et al to break the cycle of "I just woke up so I'mm scroll until I'm fully awake" and then oops -- an hour went by.

The thing that ended up motivating me to change was reinforcing for myself the fact that I'm in this mess because very smart people have designed systems to exploit me. Fuck that. I'm in control of my attention.

Post reply on HN