Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

I love hearing things like this. It's not like it tells me something I didn't already know, but just saying it in a new way that gives me hope I may eventually find a strategy that works better.

In my case it's carrying too much weight around. Even though I know objectively how much better it feels to be lighter, how much better I feel all around. I want to be thinner, and I want that even at the exact moment I'm eating something while I'm not actually hungry. I tell myself "You ought not to be doing this." as I actually put it in my mouth.

So I end up asking myself repeatedly WTF, why am I sabotaging myself even in spite of conscious recognition that this is exactly what I am doing.

Because as you say, I know I want to be lighter. I didn't say anything about wanting to eat less. You're a genius, thanks for giving me a new way to think about this. Even if it doesn't work.

Off to the fridge... (I kid, I kid... or do I)

People have been saying the same thing for over a century. Take the following passage from Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, written in the 1920s:

> I belong to a generation that inherited disbelief in the Christian faith and created in itself a disbelief in all other faiths. Our fathers still had the believing impulse, which they transferred from Christianity to other forms of illusion. Some were champions of social equality, others were wholly enamoured of beauty, still others had faith in science and its achievements, and there were some who became even more Christian, resorting to various Easts and Wests in search of new religious forms to entertain their otherwise hollow consciousness of merely living.

> We lost all of this. We were born with none of these consolations. Each civilization follows the particular path of a religion that represents it; turning to other religions, it loses the one it had, and ultimately loses them all.

> We lost the one, and all the others with it.

> And so we were left, each man to himself, in the desolation of feeling ourselves live. A ship may seem to be an object whose purpose is to sail, but no, its purpose is to reach a port. We found ourselves sailing without any idea of what port we were supposed to reach. Thus we reproduced a painful version of the argonauts’ adventurous precept:* living doesn’t matter, only sailing does.

> Without illusions, we live by dreaming, which is the illusion of those who can’t have illusions. Living off our inner selves has diminished us, for the complete man is the one who doesn’t know himself. Without faith, we have no hope, and without hope we have no real life. Having no idea of the future, we likewise have no idea of today, because today, for the man of action, is nothing but a prologue to the future. The energy to fight was stillborn in us, for we were born without the fighting spirit.

811 points 428 comments so far and staying at the top at HN for a full day, that alone explains "why do you waste so much time on the internet?" :)

I spent about two hours online daily for job-unrelated stuff, on average: 30 minutes youtube, 30 minutes twitter, 30 minutes HN, and 30 minutes email/general news etc. Half of the time is wasted.

As software developer we're trying to optimize our code for the CPU all the time, but we're wasting our own CPU, the brain, which is ironic.

If it’s meaningless what does it matter?

Think about it.

I’m going out salamander hunting tonight. The target is the Pacific Giant Salamander. I’ve been a pro photographer and producer for nearly 30 years. If I’m successful, if I get interesting footage- you folks might see it. My Tik Toc record is 60 million. FB is 120 million. Instagram is 11 milllion. I have no idea if these stats are correct (I have trust issues with these services). Yet I don’t engage with SM personally but make decent $$ from it. It all seems so shallow and fake. Yet here I am being paid for content.

I’m looking forward to the adventure. Meeting people in person. Driving for hours, crawling around remote streams till 2AM. Getting wet in the rain. Feeling uncomfortable- either too warm, too cold, or too wet. Sleeping the sleep of the exhausted whenever I get to my bed.

I’ve withdrawn from the internet more and more. I’m not clean. I’m not a purest. The internet is an incredible window to the world. I use it frequently. But it is more polluted by blatant $$ and manipulation (which I profit from).

But my 24 year old daughter is consumed by the online world. So many sedentary hours scrolling. Fearful of genuine human interaction. Fearful of the discomforts of the real world. I’m paying more and more for mental health care for her. I invite her to these adventures. She just went to Mexico with me. She had panic attacks followed by profound depression. It breaks my heart. She barely left the Airbnb.

What are we doing? What am I doing? I used to think I was contributing to a better world.