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Doomscrolling ourselves to death

edwest.co.uk

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Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#181

Post by KoftaBob »

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

> downvoted to oblivion because of the hive mind

Not just the hivemind, Reddit has been thoroughly astroturfed for a long time now. The vast majority of large subreddits have at least 1-2 mods who stifle/amplify discourse in the service of companies, think tanks, and certain Levantine pariah nations.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#182

Post by TexanFeller »

I just started reading Infinite Jest and unsurprisingly it seems shockingly relevant to the doomscrolling problem. I’m aware of its flaws, but I’ve heard it recommended a number of times related to our modern problem of amusing ourselves to death. So far it’s surprisingly enjoyable, eerily relatable, and not nearly as difficult to follow as I was warned.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#183

Post by tomjen3 »

warmwaffles wrote: post #133
Sharlin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction doesn’t age in the same way.

My biggest problem with fiction books is that it is hard to build suspense when I can clearly see I have another 100 pages to go or if I know that it's a series. After I realized that in my late teens fiction was very difficult to keep at consistently.

I think modern series tend to be better at that. Lots of author kill people you wouldn't expect them to kill early on so that you know that this is a universe where even if the protagonists must survive for plot reasons, there is still plenty of suspension about who else survives.

I will also say that to me there is a massive difference between how much effort it takes to read one type of fiction versus another. I was reading Master and Margarita and I stopped because they simply kept introducing new characters and doing jumps for no reason. I'm sure I will get a bunch of well-read people telling me it's because I'm a poor reader or whatever, but I think that's bad writing.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#184

Post by TexanFeller »

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 of my problems with blocking things like YouTube is that there’s so much outstanding long form content that’s not always available elsewhere. I love watching semi popularized physics lectures like from Sean Carroll but I can’t help but click on the mindless content next to it after, or even during, my wholesome viewing.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#185

Post by mrweasel »

warmwaffles wrote: post #133
Sharlin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiction doesn’t age in the same way.

My biggest problem with fiction books is that it is hard to build suspense when I can clearly see I have another 100 pages to go or if I know that it's a series. After I realized that in my late teens fiction was very difficult to keep at consistently.

Interesting, I have the "reverse" problem. Mostly I read older books, random books and I've noticed a pattern in less known and maybe less skilled authors. Sometimes, especially in the books from the 1970s, the story just sort of stops. You're running out of pages, no resolution in sight and then the book stops. I mean there is a ending, but it feels short, half measured and not in tune with the rest of the book in some sense.

Maybe this was just the writing style at the time. 200 pages of storytelling, world building, details and plot development and then 20 pages to resolve and finish up. Frequently it doesn't even feel rushed, it is just less clear cut ending than newer books.

Most recent example I came across is Kramer vs Kramer. It's a short book overall, but the main plot is no more than 10% of the book and the resolution is two or three pages and then it just stops.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#186

Post by originalvichy »

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…

It’s quite infuriating that all those sites you mention have gone with the race to the bottom to just hook in users with garbage content.

Just last week, Youtube took even more steps in hiding your subscriptions homepage on iOS, and on desktop the shorts (content made for phones in portrait mode) is front and centre.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#187

Post by Marsymars »

Aurornis wrote: post #99
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…

> 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…

> When it comes to the doom part of doom scrolling, Reddit especially can be even worse than traditional social media.

It can be, but it can also (still) be sanitized.

I typically visit old.reddit.com once every day or two on a desktop browser without ads to check the subreddit for the city I live in. No doomscrolling is really possible.

There's no way to consume meta/tiktok content in a comparable way.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#188

Post by Marsymars »

chistev wrote: post #116
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 r…

> if I start a business, social media is a good way of promoting the business.

I've had the thought that if I were to start a business, social media manager (or a comparable outsourced gig) would be one of my first hires.

Like I'd far rather deal with tax minutia and skip on hiring an accountant in favour of being able to outsource social media use.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#189

Post by znnajdla »

This is an article about declining literacy in the West. But this is notably a Western decline problem. In some other parts of the world, literacy is improving.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Ukraine in 2020 was that even the political jokes that you see on television have real highbrow wit and humor, which assume a high degree of literacy to understand. Even talking to some kids who were 14 years old, I was surprised at how they had memorized poetry in multiple languages and could write beautifully in cursive. You don't find that anymore in the West.

Sure, kids over here doomscroll themselves on TikTok as well, but they are not illiterate.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#190

Post by intended »

rpdillon wrote: post #174
intended wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that sentiment many times already. It's a statement that is broad enough to capture any benefit and disavow any costs, for some later day when one can choose the nature of their measurement. How would you estimate actual gains and losses to education for LLMs? What would good look like?

The actual gains will be very similar to the gains that I thought would come from projects like Khan Academy (which was also quite hotly contested among teachers when it first came out). I don't agree with your rhetorical statement about the nature of my argument. I'm not trying to disavow any costs. I'm saying that AI represents a unique opportunity in the history of humanity to encapsulate knowledge and carry it th…

I agree my tone could have been better.
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