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How to stop being “terminally online”

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Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#171

Post by vlunkr »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #123
vlunkr wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trying to learn more about life, philosophy, how to be a better human, productivity porn etc IMO The internet is not usually a good way to learn this stuff. These are big life concepts that require deep focus and patience. The internet rewards the opposite of that. The Big Concepts require both study and application. If you’re mostly spending time in the study phase, it’s not working.

You might be right, where is good though? I'm starting to just give up on it to be honest and consider more just trying to avoid this kind of information and figure out what works for me myself, my ultimate thought is to replace information consumption of this kinda thing with just more deep reflection and a bigger trial and error process. I mean who are the people producing this content that I think will help me any…

It’s hard to name good sources when we’re talking in generalities. But whatever topic your interested in, there are likely many experts on the subject that have published books or other long form content. That’s a great starting point, then I think you need to figure out what works for you through experience and trial and error

Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#173

Post by 2b3a51 »

dewclin wrote: post #55
Aromasin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling with this currently. My partner spends 3+ hours a day scrolling Instagram (I know, I checked it in her Apple phone metrics). When we watch movies, it's me watching it and her scrolling. When we're in the car listening to music, it's just me listening to music and her scrolling. I'm starting to struggle initiating conversations because she's simply not paying attention. Whenever we're out, half her time…

I'm sorry to read this, I also have a similar same situation with my father. He's in his late 70's and a year ago bought himself an iPhone. He now spends ~4 hours a day reading a tabloid newspaper app, which has endless content. His attention span has fallen noticeably and he can't keep up with conversations that happen in the same room while he's "scrolling". When I visit he's on his phone, and we go out for a walk…

Well, I'm 10 years younger than dewclin Senior and I recently switched to a Nokia dumb phone for the summer and I have been keeping a record of screen time and what I was actually doing on the laptop. Using a paper page a day diary.

I'm not in the tabloid market segment, and perhaps I had the insight to self-diagnose? Did dewclin Senior do much before the iPhone arrived?

Perspective: I remember that Uncle Dave spent most of his (long) retirement watching sport on the telly back in the 1970s/80s. Any chance of sparking an outside interest?

Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#174

Post by collegeburner »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #94
bootlooped wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I remember reading a Reddit post once about a girl whose boyfriend would say things in real life like "can we get some f's in the chat boys". Things that were clearly very niche and would either be completely unintelligible to the audience or at best sound out of place. I think it's a matter of reading the room.

“F’s in the chat” doesn’t strike me as a particularly obscure meme.

i'd still consider it cringe bc it's an outdated meme that suggests somebody is probably a reddit user.

Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#175

Post by sneak »

glitchc wrote: post #67
XorNot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I read so much more You're reading all the time on the internet, it's literally the foundational enabling skill of it. I find it very weird when people say the benefit of being offline is they "read more".

Online reading is all sizzle and no steak. It’s akin to making a meal out of condiments: Each individual element is tasty but the overall meal leaves you dissatisfied.

Don’t tell Project Gutenberg, or Wikimedia, or Codecademy.

(Your assessment is an unfair and inaccurate overgeneralization. One can use the internet to read books, blogs, articles, courses, etc, but of course you know this.)

Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#176

Post by wpietri »

tomc1985 wrote: post #147
athorax wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are getting banned regularly from online communities you might want to reconsider why that is happening

Yeah, online communities reflexively "other" anyone who does not agree with their increasingly robust (aka fascist) political dogma, given that that sort of thing seems to be inescapably creeping into everything How many times have I walked by a table in a cafe to overhear someone complaining that it's impossible to be taken seriously unless you adopt extremeist left or right schools of thought? How many times have I…

> glorious new dawn of political groupthink

[citation needed]

I don't see any reason to think that "groupthink", aka societal or subcultural values and beliefs, is at a notably higher level than much of history. In the west, look at the long dominance of the Catholic Church. Even after the rise of the Protestants, it was often more a set of competing orthodoxies, such that large groups were eager to cross oceans to get away from oppression. And when those people got to the US, quite a lot of them were eager to become the oppressors. Looks at the predominance of blue laws across the US. Look at who got tarred and feathered. Who got lynched. Who dealt with segregation and Jim Crow. Look at the Red Scare, the socially narrow dominance of mass media, or how eager and how violent the forces of conformity were in the 1950s.

I think today people are generally freer that at any point. But two big things have changed. One, the rise of the internet means the one-way, conformist channels of mass media have given way to everybody talking to everybody. And two, cultural power is no longer concentrated in a narrow slice of society, such that people previously unheard are now having some things to say.

I get why some people see that as "political groupthink". When you're in a dominant group, you're not used to getting challenged. But personally, I find it bracing, causing me to rethink a lot of things I took as givens because that's what the people around me believed. The death of old paradigms is always uncomfortable, but personally I'd much rather live in this era of ferment than in one where everybody believes the same comfortable old certainties.

Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#177

Post by leetcrew »

whatshisface wrote: post #168
iveqy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During the piratebay trial, one of the founders got a question about if he had met someone IRL. He replied with that they don't use that expression but AFK (away from keyboard) instead. Becuase IRL (in real life) suggests that internet is not real life, but it is. What we do online effects our every day life even when we are offline. I thought that was very sane thinking

When you are running the Pirate Bay the internet is real life, and it also is when you have a business, but when you are on an MMORPG or Twitter it is real life to a much lesser degree. How can we distinguish between them? Well, the majority of relationships made on MMORPGs or Twitter go nowhere outside the platform, and the things that people discuss on them also tend to not involve anything that will still be there…

plenty of "real life" places also fail this test though. most work/school relationships don't "go anywhere" outside of that bubble. what fraction of people you hung out with in school or ate lunch with at previous jobs do you still actually talk to? how much of the code you wrote still runs in production?

Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#178

Post by wpietri »

papito wrote: post #70
silisili wrote: post #2

One thing I've noticed about 'terminal online' is that people vastly underestimate how much it affects them. Myself included. It seems if I ever call out a loved one, whether my brother or wife or friend, for being on their phone too much, they immediately get defensive and argue they were just doing some one task. Even if this was initiated after them being zoned out for an hour or longer. And I've done the same whe…

Having done a fair share of substance abuse, I can tell you that screen and social media addiction is exactly like any other addiction. The brain mechanics behind it are the same. "Just another hit and then I am done". The Power of Habit (the book) helped me identify my bad habits the moment they triggered. Also, what's fascinating is that addictions seem to bundle together. If I get off the sauce, start working out,…

I totally feel you on the bundling.

One way I think about it: Marvin Minsky long ago wrote a book called Society of Mind, looking at human cognition as a series of semi-independent non-conscious agents. If I feel bad long enough, there's a collection of feel-better-in-the-short-term agents that work well together: mindless snacking, doomscrolling, playing video games, binge watching, overeating etc. Basically anything that helps me avoid being present in feeling bad. Even if in the long term they make me feel worse.

But there's a competing set of agents, the ones that mean regular exercise and eating healthily and good sleep and low stress levels. That set not only works well when I'm feeling good, but they're what helps keep me feeling good in the long term.

Either set can achieve a stable equilibrium, but the two sets aren't really compatible.

Not sure if that makes any sense, but that's one way I think about it.

Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#179

Post by tomc1985 »

wpietri wrote: post #176
tomc1985 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, online communities reflexively "other" anyone who does not agree with their increasingly robust (aka fascist) political dogma, given that that sort of thing seems to be inescapably creeping into everything How many times have I walked by a table in a cafe to overhear someone complaining that it's impossible to be taken seriously unless you adopt extremeist left or right schools of thought? How many times have I…

> glorious new dawn of political groupthink [citation needed] I don't see any reason to think that "groupthink", aka societal or subcultural values and beliefs, is at a notably higher level than much of history. In the west, look at the long dominance of the Catholic Church. Even after the rise of the Protestants, it was often more a set of competing orthodoxies, such that large groups were eager to cross oceans to g…

The past as you see it here doesn't exist, by my own perception. There were a lot more extremeist groups in the shadows, but that contained them and isolated those that sought to join them. With so much of this extremeism out in the open, people are now seeing social reinforcement where before they would have seen chastisement, and I think this is a bad thing. We were much better as a country as the great melting pot, than we are now as the salad bowl.

I think its wonderful that so many oppressed groups are given opportunities at the podium, but the problem is that many of these oppressed groups are oppressed for good reason (like white supremacists), and there needs to be some sort of filter that keeps them sidelined. Unfortunately I don't see how to achieve that without some sort of orthodoxy, and right now the people that are trying to write that are fucking crazy.

Re: How to stop being “terminally online”

#180

Post by WalterSear »

iasay wrote: post #69
dewclin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to read this, I also have a similar same situation with my father. He's in his late 70's and a year ago bought himself an iPhone. He now spends ~4 hours a day reading a tabloid newspaper app, which has endless content. His attention span has fallen noticeably and he can't keep up with conversations that happen in the same room while he's "scrolling". When I visit he's on his phone, and we go out for a walk…

Ah sounds like my father. He’s currently going through Musk is Jesus’ second coming and covid is a hoax phase.

My father thinks Putin is just waiting for the right time to strike and set everything right in the world.

We don't talk much, not because we fight but because he's always too busy with his phone when I visit him :(

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