Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Doomscrolling ourselves to death

edwest.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 330 posts

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#111

Post by dlisboa »

floren wrote: post #100
CrimsonRain wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: books Most books are useless and boring. Some books have good concept but drags things needlessly. I still read a good amount everyday but not a 300 page book where the core content is 2 page. However, a great book is still interesting and being "completely engrossed" is still possible. It is the book content quality (compared to other things in society) that dropped.

It's always surprising how many HN readers seem to read only non-fiction, sometimes only self-help style books about business and startups. Some are even proud of that.

I’m equally surprised how many people read extremely low quality pop fiction nowadays. Especially those romantic/erotic books. Those were the kind of book you’d be laughed at for reading back in the day.

Reading non-fiction about some current topic isn’t that bad in comparison.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#112

Post by Crabber »

RobotToaster wrote: post #16
smokel wrote: post #2

Hm, comparing developments spanning from the 12th century up to now with stuff that is happening in the last decade. Just give social media about 5 or 6 centuries to develop, and then check back to see if the arguments of this article are sound. Edit: sorry for being so dismissive, but I just can't stand rhetoric that says something about "us" and "we". There were seriously stupid people back when we supposedly had l…

> Hm, comparing developments spanning from the 12th century up to now with stuff that is happening in the last decade. Just give social media about 5 or 6 centuries to develop, and then check back to see if the arguments of this article are sound. For most of time, until the industrial revolution, technology didn't really advance that quickly. The world you were born into would be technologically near identical to th…

>Future shock

Looked up this phrase and found the book of the same name, not sure if you were making a reference to the book but from the short synopsis I saw it seems like a very prophetic book for being written 50 years ago and I can see how many of his predictions are coming true, I will order a copy for sure now.

Your post and this book describe a phenomenon that I have always felt but never seen described before, thanks

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#113

Post by techpression »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #104
Aurornis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have in essence deleted the vast majority of my social media accounts years ago, but stayed a passive and rather anonymous consumer on Reddit, X and YouTube Most of the people I’ve known who struggled with doomscrolling had established a similar set of social media sites at their worst point. I think we’ve seen so many articles about how social media is bad that reference mainstream sites like Facebook and Instag…

X is honestly among the worst of the worst. People give purposefully bad takes just for the engagement and it's overall super toxic Reddit is awful too, completely accurate things can get downvoted to oblivion because of the hive mind YouTube is still overall decent but mostly brainrot I habitually watch/listen to in the background to such a high degree it's hard to even imagine completely cutting it out of my life

LinkedIn is up there too, the reality distortion and appearance of everyone being a self made trillionaire can make the strongest of minds feel like they’re utter failures. It’s of course not true and 90% seem to be pure bullshit, but who has time to investigate ever thought leader post they get shoved in their face

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#114

Post by drcongo »

> YouTube, which for any adult briefly glancing at the screen seems to feature an array of thumbnailed gawping imbeciles

I've basically given up on humanity. YouTube is a cesspit of stupidity - a race to the bottom and right through the other side of how utterly devoid of dignity human beings can be. I feel a physical rage at the mere sight of all the thumbnails of people pulling the stupidest face they can to try to get the stupidest people on the planet to click on their stupid video.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#115

Post by pj_mukh »

Aurornis wrote: post #105
pj_mukh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most insidious realities of the introduction of AI is that we've taken our eye off of tech's original sin - the algorithmic feed forensically designed to hijack the brain. I don't see how it's any different than opium and why the regulations should be any different. Even the problem of "AI slop" is mostly that it invades the algorithms, weaponizing them even more. I'm not a huge fan of heavy-handed regulat…

> I don't see how it's any different than opium During the marijuana prohibition days the resounding chorus in the discourse was that marijuana was not physically addictive like other drugs, and therefore we must treat it differently. There were problems with that argument if you got into the details, but it did establish the idea that not all drugs are equally harmful and therefore treating them all equally was not…

I'm comparing to Opium not for exact chemical effect equivalence but for the level of Government urgency required. There's been a fair bit of work down now to identify clear physiological withdrawal symptoms too[1]. The main damage though is on cognitive strengths (far more pronounced than Marijuana).

[1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10339588/

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#116

Post by chistev »

Escapado wrote: post #69

On a personal level I have become more anxious and it has become more difficult to deal with my tendency to procrastinate the more screen time I have and the more I am exposed to social media. I have in essence deleted the vast majority of my social media accounts years ago, but stayed a passive and rather anonymous consumer on Reddit, X and YouTube. A few weeks ago I blocked them too. I would say in totality I read…

One problem for me about leaving social media is that it limits my chances of getting updates about jobs, and if I start a business, social media is a good way of promoting the business.

I wish I was in a financial position where I didn't have to bother about this.

I've been limiting my use of social media (aside Reddit and HN) for almost two weeks now and I've been reading books and doing other things with my time rather than consuming content that isn't beneficial to me.

Check out the Wikipedia article - The Shallows

"""

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. The book claims research shows "online reading" yields lower comprehension than reading a printed page. The Shallows was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

"""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows_(book)

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#117

Post by pjc50 »

somenameforme wrote: post #107
Escapado wrote: post #69

On a personal level I have become more anxious and it has become more difficult to deal with my tendency to procrastinate the more screen time I have and the more I am exposed to social media. I have in essence deleted the vast majority of my social media accounts years ago, but stayed a passive and rather anonymous consumer on Reddit, X and YouTube. A few weeks ago I blocked them too. I would say in totality I read…

There was a time, not that long ago, when cocaine was 100% normalized. It was a regular ingredient used in everything from basic OTC remedies to, most famously Coca Cola which was Cocaine + Kola nut. And Coca Cola itself was based on Vin Mariani, a wine mixed with cocaine that was drunk or endorsed by everybody from Popes to Thomas Edison and Ulysses S Grant. It was also regularly offered for free to laborers by empl…

You can actually see this phenomenon happening now with alcohol consumption, which is in a long decline .. replaced by social media addiction.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#118

Post by gruez »

watwut wrote: post #59
aerhardt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons why we read less long-form, according to a bunch of cognitive science studies and to my own anecdotal experience, is because our attention is shot. A viral article in The Atlantic [1] shows evidence and testimony that kids at elite universities simply can't read anymore. I've seen the claim repeated in many other places and looking around me I believe it. Those kids are not replacing Dostoevsky or…

Viral article from atlantic proves exactly nothing. And claim that students cant read is, frankly, idiotic.

How about data from the OCED?

https://infographics.economist.com/2026/20260627_IRC330/2026...

>Many of [students] do very well—but a striking share perform abysmally (see chart 1). Across rich countries some 8% of students in tertiary education notch up a score in literacy no better than one might expect from a ten-year-old child. The share is about the same for numeracy. Worse, the share at or below this bar has risen since the tests were last run, a little over a decade ago. The share of very poor performers in literacy has more than doubled.

https://www.economist.com/international/2026/06/25/students-...

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#119

Post by customguy »

Aurornis wrote: post #105
pj_mukh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most insidious realities of the introduction of AI is that we've taken our eye off of tech's original sin - the algorithmic feed forensically designed to hijack the brain. I don't see how it's any different than opium and why the regulations should be any different. Even the problem of "AI slop" is mostly that it invades the algorithms, weaponizing them even more. I'm not a huge fan of heavy-handed regulat…

> I don't see how it's any different than opium During the marijuana prohibition days the resounding chorus in the discourse was that marijuana was not physically addictive like other drugs, and therefore we must treat it differently. There were problems with that argument if you got into the details, but it did establish the idea that not all drugs are equally harmful and therefore treating them all equally was not…

A long time ago on the forum I hang out with, I said something like "this is amazing, this is like heroin!" about whatever (not even a substance, probably something silly like a song or a video game). A guy who I knew as nothing but laid back and gracious scolded me in a way I remember to this day... not the exact words, but part of it was that he knew a couple who just handed off their new born baby for adoption to get their next shot. And I could tell there was a lot unsaid, too. Sorry for the tangent, but I guess, fuck heroin etc., and all the power to anyone struggling with it, things like it, or has loved ones or friends that do.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#120

Post by hawaiianbrah »

floren wrote: post #100
CrimsonRain wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: books Most books are useless and boring. Some books have good concept but drags things needlessly. I still read a good amount everyday but not a 300 page book where the core content is 2 page. However, a great book is still interesting and being "completely engrossed" is still possible. It is the book content quality (compared to other things in society) that dropped.

It's always surprising how many HN readers seem to read only non-fiction, sometimes only self-help style books about business and startups. Some are even proud of that.

This became me, somewhere along the last 5-10 years. Not the being proud of it part, just the realization that my breadth of book reading has taken a nosedive. Unfortunately I haven’t read a single book of any kind in the last few years. Having kids didn’t help, but I am planning to change that finally.
Post reply on HN