Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
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Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#522https://hmpg.net/
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Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#523I am addicted to twitter and reddit. Especially reddit. It often takes the place of reading, hobbies, quiet moments, improving my home, talking with my spouse, and playing with my baby. When reddit records a click or an upvote, it thinks it has been a Good Product, and created Engagement. Reddit then takes those feedback loops and tunes the algorithm and feedback loops to create further engagement. But in reality, th…
> I think these products are mostly poison for my soul.
You spend time on reddit because you want to. It seems unproductive to tell yourself that you don't.
You have a cognitive disonance, logical contradiction that you just need to bring to the surface and follow through. When you are about to reddit ask yourself whether you want to or not. Not some idealized version of yourself in your head. Just what do you want right now.
Then debug, introspect. Eliminate wishful thinking and accept reality - more time on reddit less time for other things. Do I want that?
Answer yes is perfectly fine. You do what you want anyway, but in my case simply bringing these contradictions to my conscious mind (and sometimes looking for a moment where it is exactly - like, I know that it's A or B I can't be spending time on both things at the same time, If I want to learn X it requires time) is enough to eliminate them.
I still spend time on reddit (not that much), but I don't think I'm doing anything I don't want to do or that it would be better to do anything else.
We are always doing what we want to. Telling ourselves that we don't is needless suffering.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#524I am addicted to twitter and reddit. Especially reddit. It often takes the place of reading, hobbies, quiet moments, improving my home, talking with my spouse, and playing with my baby. When reddit records a click or an upvote, it thinks it has been a Good Product, and created Engagement. Reddit then takes those feedback loops and tunes the algorithm and feedback loops to create further engagement. But in reality, th…
> I think these products are mostly poison for my soul. You spend time on reddit because you want to. It seems unproductive to tell yourself that you don't. You have a cognitive disonance, logical contradiction that you just need to bring to the surface and follow through. When you are about to reddit ask yourself whether you want to or not. Not some idealized version of yourself in your head. Just what do you want r…
> You spend time on reddit because you want to. It seems unproductive to tell yourself that you don't.
This seems like a mischaracterization of how addiction works.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd probably be more into church if it was just a social club and didn't come with that expectation that you'd be worshiping an invisible sky daddy, adopting questionable morality/philosophies, and attending what's basically a Republican political rally every Sunday. My wife goes to hers and it's nice, socially for her, that it comes prepackaged with a ready-made group of friends, but as soon as the Bibles and Trump…
Heck I would join a church for the community if the faith part and Trumpettes weren't involved. Unfortunately all of the churches around here have more red hats than not.
If your part of a community that meets your social needs your world view changes and you become conservative. The exception is the groups that aren't directly opposed to conservatism but they typically lack the true community adhesion.
This isn't a democrat or republican thing though, you can totally join a Democratic church, with a strong community, but they are largely minority churches.
They are also still generally conservative.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#526I 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…
That’s kind of interesting. About 5 years ago I used to stream on Twitch. I did pretty decent at times up to 500 concurrent viewers.
I came to a similar conclusion when asking myself “why do they even watch me?” The same answer came to me “Loneliness”.
Streaming close to 24/7 helps, because it means you are always available when needed. Having a schedule, means people can be there with you in the times when they are alone. Creating a name for your followers, the tribe, being open with people. These things play into it also.
That’s why people connect around specific games I think, to have something in common.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#527I am addicted to twitter and reddit. Especially reddit. It often takes the place of reading, hobbies, quiet moments, improving my home, talking with my spouse, and playing with my baby. When reddit records a click or an upvote, it thinks it has been a Good Product, and created Engagement. Reddit then takes those feedback loops and tunes the algorithm and feedback loops to create further engagement. But in reality, th…
Everyone else replying to you is trying to convince you with arguments that reddit isn't a good use of your time. As you already know, this won't work. You're already convinced. The only thing that works is a site blocker. It actually works. Convince yourself that the block is permanent. Delete the app. This of course won't completely stop you, because you could always unblock yourself. But it'll stop you from mindle…
If you can't control your reddit consumption already I'd expect that the site blocker will end up disabled before long. I'd try to involve a therapist if the goal is getting to the bottom of this beyond even reddit or websites in general.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#528Because 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…
Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t provide me with any comfort. I’m only going to live once. When I’m old and bound to a chair (hopefully due to frailty and not because a psychiatrist strapped me to it), I want to feel like I achieved something more than a passive human existence. All these hours spent consuming forgettable garbage on Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and in video games… these are hours not spent learning re…
You should spend as much time as possible on your phone / the internet. When you die you won't have access to it.
There are plenty of people who consider the alternative activities you listed just as meaningless.
But if you ACTUALLY want to do those things and you don't because of internet addiction. Then you need to break it.
Positive and / or negative reinforcement.
By some snack or drug or something you really like and set a goal of no scrolling for whatever is a reasonable time limit. If you achieve it have the treat. Gradually up the time limit and increase the reward.
Negative reinforcement would be harder. It has to be something you actually don't like and drive no sense of purpose from. A lot of people will do something like pushups, but then they just see it as the cost.
Possibly since your fear is wasting time, when you catch yourself doing it. Then purposefully waste time without scrolling. Like time out.
Your positive reinforcement can't be related to the addiction though.
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#529Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
In the real world we have a natural protection from these idiotic or demeaning posts: shame. It is a very important component and mechanism in social connections that is completely missing online (unless your handle is tied to your real identity like VIP Twitter).
How could it translate online where anonymity is like a shell protecting you from shame?
Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
#530I am addicted to twitter and reddit. Especially reddit. It often takes the place of reading, hobbies, quiet moments, improving my home, talking with my spouse, and playing with my baby. When reddit records a click or an upvote, it thinks it has been a Good Product, and created Engagement. Reddit then takes those feedback loops and tunes the algorithm and feedback loops to create further engagement. But in reality, th…
my problem with reddit (and here i guess?) is idk what else to do with like 5-30minutes of down time. I dont really have my life optimized for constant activity and idk what else to fill that with now.
Be bored. I’m not good at this yet, but I’m practicing just sitting there in those idle periods. It’s what we evolved to do, and what our phones are breaking us about