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Doomscrolling ourselves to death

edwest.co.uk

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Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#261

Post by biophysboy »

genghisjahn wrote: post #233
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…

My opinion, anything driven by an algorithm is inherently bad. It’s hard giving up those sites, not because that’s where the people are but because we are all addicted to them. If you switch to mastodon or pixelfed, you’ll find good stuff there, but you won’t engage with it as much because it’s not algo driven, which to me is a win.

yes, the fundamental BS assumption of algorithmic social media is that human desire and curiosity is legible, and can be calculated in a straightforward way.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#262

Post by mitxela »

teiferer wrote: post #150

Scrolling through the comments here, let's be honest about having actually read the entire article. Have you? Be honest. At first I had not, only the first 3-4 paragraphs. And it just read like another one of those articles where somebody is sad about their own and their kids' habits. I then found that most comments here are about that too. But I realized that not actually reading a lengthy article like this one is p…

> And that's frightening.

AI tell. I don't think you wrote this comment with AI, but you might want to tweak this writing style in the future.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#263

Post by ikr678 »

Felger wrote: post #221
ikr678 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How much time did it take since you completely cut off caffeine for the anxiety to settle down ?

Took a few weeks off, couldnt deal with the headaches, went back to one cup every 2-3 days of measured espresso.

No more getting anxious and worked up about small things and picking fights with my partner.

When you are trying to have none, it's suddenly everywhere and in your face without realising it.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#264

Post by 6510 »

genghisjahn wrote: post #233
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…

My opinion, anything driven by an algorithm is inherently bad. It’s hard giving up those sites, not because that’s where the people are but because we are all addicted to them. If you switch to mastodon or pixelfed, you’ll find good stuff there, but you won’t engage with it as much because it’s not algo driven, which to me is a win.

ATM the killer product would be a "bring your own algo" message board/socio thing/infinite scroll endorphin generator/etc

I run a simple badword filter on my rss aggregator and it already outperforms anything big tech can come up with by a very large margin.

Back when advertisements weren't 40 minute long I one time fell asleep while watching youtube on auto play. It was already very horny for Donald Trump as the US election was coming up but after watching a few of those the algo became convinced I wanted to watch nothing else. When I woke up ~8 hours later it had filled the entire front page and all side bar video suggestions with the face of that unbearable retard. I'm convinced this is how youtube changes all of us into ufologists.

After this came a period where I more-carefully picked the videos I watched. Before I would watch anything that spiked my curiosity. This changed into "Do I want this in my feed for the next 3 weeks?". I just looked for an example and my feed has a bitcoin video. I've been waiting for those to go away for 15 years. I don't question someone is interested in those.

My own word filter is like, go ahead, say it once, say the word, say bitcoin one time, try me. Oddly, if an article consistently calls it BC without explaining what it refers to it might actually be worth reading.

I suggest someone creates something like an app store or extension platform where the user can pick or buy their own algorithms each with their own exotic brand of configuration screen.

You could entirely create one that costs thousands per month to run and is actually worth it. Have it take in my browser history, my investment portfolio, the books I own, the conversations my phone listened in on, check my agenda how much time I have for doomscrolling and my activity for how much time I actually sink into it. Dump a bunch of llm tokens into the task. Run some complicated prompts.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#265

Post by 6510 »

mitxela wrote: post #255
SkyeCA wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a site which I would only recommend to someone I truly hated. It's poison on every level imaginable, more so than basically any other social media I've ever used. People will say Twitter is worse, but the Twitter algo with actually listen to you (in my experience) when you tell it what you do/don't want to see. My feed was nearly 100% furry artwork because I refused to interact with anything else.

And it doesn't feel like poison. I haven't used Reddit in several years so I don't know how it is now, but I used to feel yucky if I visited Facebook or Instagram, but not Reddit.

I tried to use it a year ago just to see what it was really like.

It ended rather quickly with me staring at my own comment looking for ways to twist what I wrote into something ban worthy. Then it happened again! LOL!

1985 Johannes Paulus II visited the Netherlands and some comedians made a song about it that was on TV. The song text is roughly that he enjoys his job and that he has to visit NL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4QL5EnHgvc

This is apparently an extremely offending video according to some anon reddit inquisitor.

I took his advice, I wont let it happen again.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#266

Post by Havoc »

sunrunner wrote: post #142
drcongo wrote: post #114

> 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…

Unfortunately YouTube captures the full set of extremes and everything in between, so I don't think it's fair to label the entire thing a cesspit of stupidity. For every MrBeast there's a 3Blue1Brown. For every recycled clip from a well-known TV series uploaded purely to drive ad revenue for a bot-controlled channel there's a fine art restoration video showing a very niche process with a real, skilled human behind it…

> For every MrBeast there's a 3Blue1Brown.

The average seems to be shifting rapidly towards slop though

Even with a curated subscription feed it’s getting pretty rough

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#267

Post by AlienRobot »

puppymaster wrote: post #62
marliechiller wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have examples of what weird stuff they would say? Im having a hard time imagining what you mean exactly.

if i hear 'aura farming' or 'xxx-maxing' one more time I might punch someone.

"Pog"

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#268

Post by selcuka »

mitxela wrote: post #262
teiferer wrote: post #150

Scrolling through the comments here, let's be honest about having actually read the entire article. Have you? Be honest. At first I had not, only the first 3-4 paragraphs. And it just read like another one of those articles where somebody is sad about their own and their kids' habits. I then found that most comments here are about that too. But I realized that not actually reading a lengthy article like this one is p…

> And that's frightening. AI tell. I don't think you wrote this comment with AI, but you might want to tweak this writing style in the future.

> you might want to tweak this writing style in the future.

Not the OP, but I refuse to tweak my writing style because of that.

I don't think anyone here would think that I'm AI (because English is my second language), but people have assumed that I post using AI when I write in my native language. I honestly couldn't care less. AI is mimicking me, so there is no escape in the long term.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#269

Post by [deleted] »

biophysboy wrote: post #218
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 genuinely think Reddit is basically cable news for millenials.

[deleted]

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#270

Post by CrimsonRain »

krapp wrote: post #249
CrimsonRain wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good non fictions books are rare. Why bother with that crap when there are manga and anime?

Good manga and anime are even more rare.

great ones like berserk, 5cmps, cowboy bebop, your name are rare. Good ones are plenty. In fact, considering, how shitty western writers have become, even the trash manga/manwha are infinitely better.
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