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Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass

touchgrass.now

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Re: Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass

#241

Post by camtarn »

drivers99 wrote: post #236
JadeNB wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many of us picked up this habit from COVID? It definitely got me to appreciate my local flora way better, and the fact that I get weird looks for bending down to take pictures of tiny little insect and plant life is, well, let me be honest, I kind of enjoy being the neighborhood eccentric.

During COVID I'd take a lot of walks, and in a similar way, it helped to have some kind of basically useless goal/destination in mind. For me it was checking out how construction in a nearby park was going, including what was happening in a temporary holding pond. I would send "pond updates" to my family in other states, which they found amusing. I got really interesting in all the different birds I was seeing and ho…

Aw, that's a really lovely goal! A growing pond sounds like an excellent walking target - during lockdown I headed to my local reservoir quite a few times and just wandered around the path by its edge.

I also enjoy watching construction - I feel like in a different country and different life, I would have been an 'Umarell' (an elderly Italian man who stands watching construction sites)

Re: Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass

#242

Post by slyn »

Aurornis wrote: post #149
CincinnatiMan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the irony here. Going outside into “real life” to find pictures to post on a site that keeps people inside.

From what I’ve seen, Instagram is better at motivating young people to go outside and do things than video games were in the 90s or even today. With Instagram they see their friends doing things and it’s a reminder that going outside and/or spending time with friends is fun. There’s a lot of pearl clutching about people getting jealous about other people’s vacation pictures, but on the whole the active Instagram user…

May have been true when Instagram was a photos app with a chronological timeline of only the accounts you follow + a few ads. If you wanted to seek content outside of your personally curated feed it was in a different tab or you would need to search for it.

Now it’s a meme-shorts first platform that constantly suggests content outside of your follows and non-chronologically. You can’t opt out of “suggested content” pictures or videos in your feed for more than 30 days at a time and there is no option to permanently opt out. It’s not possible to opt out of shorts (reels) suggestions in your feed. It’s not possible to opt out of meta “threads” suggestions in your feed. I just opened the app and 5 of the first 11 items in my feed were sponsored ads, and 1 of the 11 was suggested “threads”.

Re: Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass

#247

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

bloopernova wrote: post #74

I added reddit.com to uBlock Origin's filters list. I can still visit it, but there's now a screen asking me if I'm sure I want to go there. It's stopped me a few times, and it's breaking that muscle memory of "pick up phone & check reddit/etc"

I'm not familiar with how those filter lists work. What do I have to enter to get a screen like this?

Re: Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass

#250

Post by awad »

slyn wrote: post #242
Aurornis wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I’ve seen, Instagram is better at motivating young people to go outside and do things than video games were in the 90s or even today. With Instagram they see their friends doing things and it’s a reminder that going outside and/or spending time with friends is fun. There’s a lot of pearl clutching about people getting jealous about other people’s vacation pictures, but on the whole the active Instagram user…

May have been true when Instagram was a photos app with a chronological timeline of only the accounts you follow + a few ads. If you wanted to seek content outside of your personally curated feed it was in a different tab or you would need to search for it. Now it’s a meme-shorts first platform that constantly suggests content outside of your follows and non-chronologically. You can’t opt out of “suggested content” p…

Plenty of those memes and reels ARE focused on 'IRL' activities, though. Obviously the full experience depends on your feed, but a lot of content is created and shared around restaurants/activities/vacation etc and many millennials and Gen Z find inspiration there, whether from influencers or peers.
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