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Doomscrolling ourselves to death

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Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#201

Post by podgietaru »

Reposting something I put in another doom scrolling thread

quite a while now. And have had periods where I've done it almost religiously. It is addictive. And the effects linger a lot longer than the period of scrolling. There is a thing I generally believe about neural pathways. That the road we most travel is the one we'll keep going back too. And doom scrolling makes me walk down those paths. To the point that it impairs and guides my thinking even after I stop.

And I have stopped. I have had periods where I have blocked Reddit, HN, LinkedIn. I will find myself walking those paths regardless. And then, after a time, I start seeking out the doom again because it's comforting in it's discomfort.

It's probably the worst moment in recent history for this. The constant barrage of information whether it comes from AI, climate disasters, politics or any of the other myriad things that are occurring right now. It feels impossible to break from that cycle. I'm trying.

I want to be present and live in the moment. But it's hard to feel powerless. And Doomscrolling, while it absolutely doesn't bring power, brings a comforting illusion of it. I am aware of it, so I am at least a little in control.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#202

Post by SirHumphrey »

Barrin92 wrote: post #197
TexanFeller wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the semi popularized physics lectures are also mindless content. It's infotainment, it might be worse than junk because it disguises itself as learning. People will consume thousands of hours of that stuff and not be able to solve one physics problem. Endless exercise and fitness science videos and still be out of shape. Watch language learning content and never speak another language. Endless programming tutorials w…

3blue1brown helped me quite a bit when I needed to learn calculus ahead of school curriculum, the same could be said for circuit design and a few other things.

In general most that an edutainment can give you is awareness that something exists and a bit of motivation to get you going and there is some value in that. Whether on the whole it’s a positive thing is a bit harder to say.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#203

Post by talon8635 »

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…

Reddit might be the worst doom scrolling service out there

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#204

Post by talon8635 »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #177
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…

I'm a frequent Reddit user. Recently they have been bringing some of the more poisonous elements of social media over to their platform. Pushing a "for you" feed, and prioritizing a "Best" sorting algorithm over "new" or "hot".

Recently, as in a decade ago

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#205

Post by woopah »

I suspect the author is reacting less to the decline of literature and cultural elitism specifically and more to the general decline of those critical thinking skills that you gain by engaging in difficult works. I actually don't think anyone needs to read all of "the classics" and there's no point gatekeeping "intelligence" behind Shakespeare. If you feel like you had your brain expanded through, I don't know, Marvel movies, then the more power to you, but the key is that you are able to actually reflect on the work instead of just saying "well that was fun."

What is happening, however, is that people are getting increasingly acclimated to consuming easily-digestible content because our lives are ruled by a couple of companies who make money off of your attention and the human brain struggles to sustain focus through friction, even though the way we actually learn and question our lives is through that difficulty. Unfortunately, social media isn't the only culprit because almost all media that gets sold suffers from forced participation in the attention economy, although social media is probably one of the worst culprits just because the form factor makes it so easy to consume brain-rotting content.

I guess all that to say, I think the problem is fundamentally structural and thus essentially bound to happen because of the way our society and economy is organized, so I'm not sure what there is to do about this. Maybe we can all collectively decide to power through the lack of dopamine and actively choose content that is more difficult but also more edifying to force the algorithms to optimize for something more substantive.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#206

Post by Balgair »

podgietaru wrote: post #201

Reposting something I put in another doom scrolling thread quite a while now. And have had periods where I've done it almost religiously. It is addictive. And the effects linger a lot longer than the period of scrolling. There is a thing I generally believe about neural pathways. That the road we most travel is the one we'll keep going back too. And doom scrolling makes me walk down those paths. To the point that it…

> it's comforting in it's discomfort

What a strange phrase! But so true.

The only thing I would have to say is that you must keep doing the little and noble things that will bring no renown. It's small, but we all add up at the end of every week.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#207

Post by tomjen3 »

tripleee wrote: post #195
tomjen3 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a book? I mean, I spent some time over the last couple of days reading parts of the PostgreSQL manual — if you printed it it would be a gigantic book but it's online and linked. Does that make it not a book? Half a book? Still a book? A blog post can be a few hundred words or a hundred thousand. It can even be a series of blog posts. Is that now a book?

I do think the publishing medium is relevant and not just word count. Books tend to be better researched, edited, triple checked and well planned out to convey the full information they want to. This isn't always the case but there's an inherent push in this direction when you're publishing a book under your name that you want it to be good. On the other end of the spectrum we have social media posts which are anythi…

That is correct and important, but does any part of that not apply to the only manual?

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#208

Post by talon8635 »

doginasuit wrote: post #55

I don't read less, but I do read fewer books. It is hard to find a book that is the best source for what I want know about, and that changes too frequently now to outlive the time it takes to read a book. This is what you'd expect in a world where the sheer volume of things that are important to know about has grown beyond a sustainable capacity. What has taken their place, for better or for worse, are various inform…

What is it you want to know?

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#210

Post by ikr678 »

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…

How much caffiene do you consume? I had just been prescribed a script for an ssri for generalised anxiety, was scared of the side effects, decided to try cutting out coffee instead.

Anxiety gone.

I was only having 2-3 filter cups a day, probably less mg than a single large energy drink but that was enough.

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