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YouTube addiction, one month sober

sophiajt.com

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Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#11

Post by data_ders »

I’m so addicted to the internet that when I block social media, I find I get quite the similar fix from work Slack. Like browsing channels I have no business being a part of and constantly checking for validation of my comments via emoji reactions.

Does anyone know of ways to be a successful work-from-home knowledge worker while also locking down Slack to not be another slot machine??

Does anyone else feel conflicted about the internet as both a means to a comfortable/lucretive career but also the ultimate drug?

I’ve thought of only allowing Slack for 10 min each hour to make it more like an IV drop of info, but what happens when I actually need to DM in real time?

meta P.S. I’m refreshing this and reading the replies — what a rush! So much more rewarding than what I should be doing. :)

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#13

Post by bcraven »

srvaroa wrote: post #8

I haven't needed to be so drastic, but removed the YT app from my phone. There is a fair amount of good content that I find very worth consuming from YT (mainly educational videos) and would not like to miss. But, the mobile app makes a very strong effort to push you to shorts, which is the real danger. Shorts are proficiently engineered to just suck my brain into a doom scrolling comma. I tried removing shorts from…

Android users can use ReVanced to patch out many aspects of the official app, including shorts.

A patchlist is here: https://revanced.app/patches

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#14

Post by lm28469 »

Youtube killed my addiction themselves, they removed any kind of recommendation to my account since I opted out of all tracking, now when I go to youtube.com I get an empty page, unless I know exactly what I want to watch I don't even bother

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#15

Post by steve_adams_86 »

djha-skin wrote: post #5

I used to watch between 45 minutes and two hours a day of YouTube when bored at work. At my last place of employment, this skyrocketed though; I was very bored that that job. In January of 2022 I decided to take a YouTube "fast", kicking YouTube for a while. I couldn't bring myself to commit to more. It was waaaaaay hard to stop. I got on Nebula as a sort of Nicorette for a while, a month or two. I can recommend Nebu…

One of the strange things about YouTube is you can get sucked into it and forget what good content actually looks like. It becomes a matter of what’s relatively good on YouTube, not overall.

You’re right that there’s good content on there, but I’m not convinced someone would be missing out on 99.9% of it. Or more.

I’ve used it far too much in the past as well. Today I feel like it was purely a vice and a distraction. My impression of various things being “good” was based on its ability to keep me watching without feeling immediate shame or being made too aware of how I was distracting myself from more important things. Had I never seen most of it, not much would be different. Things would likely be better for me.

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#16

Post by wahnfrieden »

data_ders wrote: post #11

I’m so addicted to the internet that when I block social media, I find I get quite the similar fix from work Slack. Like browsing channels I have no business being a part of and constantly checking for validation of my comments via emoji reactions. Does anyone know of ways to be a successful work-from-home knowledge worker while also locking down Slack to not be another slot machine?? Does anyone else feel conflicted…

Only check it on a schedule, keep it closed, and turn off all notifications

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#17

Post by sph »

Good to see someone talking about it.. I used to spend my free time watching Youtube, these days it's only during dinner before I put on a TV show (and just before bed where very long LPs put me to sleep in minutes). What helped I only notice in retrospective: I got diagnosed and medicated for ADHD.

Now I actually have the focus and drive to do the things I should be doing, rather than lazying my day off on YouTube with a hidden yet growing shadow of worthlessness and self-hate. In fact, now that I have improved focus, I don't have the patience to sit and watch Let's Plays any more. I either zone out, doze off or think about stuff I should be doing, and I just turn it off.

YMMV.

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#18

Post by sbergot »

srvaroa wrote: post #8

I haven't needed to be so drastic, but removed the YT app from my phone. There is a fair amount of good content that I find very worth consuming from YT (mainly educational videos) and would not like to miss. But, the mobile app makes a very strong effort to push you to shorts, which is the real danger. Shorts are proficiently engineered to just suck my brain into a doom scrolling comma. I tried removing shorts from…

This is something that I see mentioned by a lot of people but I really cannot relate. If a video is shorter than 10 minutes I usually don't bother clicking. There is something that I find unappealing about short videos. That said I am 100% victim of reddit doom scrolling. But just seeing a short video makes me close the app or scroll faster.

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#20

Post by wahnfrieden »

nritchie wrote: post #4

YouTube, like the entire Internet, is such a mixed bag. There is some really first rate content but most of it is total junk. Like Little Richard says "It ain't what you do, it's the way how you do it."

It’s not just a bag of many contents. It’s an ad board full of dark patterns to steal your focus and attention.
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