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My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

allthatjazz.me

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Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#141

Post by Reeddabio »

renegade-otter wrote: post #11

The struggle is real. I wrote about this a while back: https://renegadeotter.com/2023/08/24/getting-your-focus-back... What you are doing is "self-limiting" which is not very effective. The devil on your shoulder will always fight this - "don't tell me what to do!" The wanting to not doom-scroll should be intrinsic. I know that right now, for obvious reasons, it's easier said than done.

I like your solutions.

I do think having your phone in another room helps tremendously. I fight every morning to not take my phone into the bathroom for my morning ritual and waste 15-20 minutes of dooms scrolling.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#142

Post by yagyu »

brushfoot wrote: post #123

Apps to fight apps has never worked for me. When I'm bored/tired enough, it becomes a game to disable my own restrictions. What works for me is removing the antecedent completely by charging my phone in another room at night. Now the battle is easier: Decide once a day to put it there, and track how many days you succeed. For me that's a lot easier than having it in my pocket, where the Internet is always a couple la…

Second this.

I ended up building a nice charging station right near the entrance. It has storage for keys, wallet, and other things to grab when heading out. It has an abundance of wired and wireless chargers for all devices.

Then I got a dumb (but nice) alarm clock for the bedroom.

Then I noticed that a common reason to pick up the phone is to check the calendar. I ended up hanging a monitor on the wall, displaying the family month/agenda calendars. It’s read only, but it prevents a lot of device checking.

Cannot recommend enough restructuring physical reality to not have device on your person at home. It also helps the kids to put theirs away and learn good habits.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#143

Post by bradyd »

a1o wrote: post #105
normie3000 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does preppy mean for alphas?

> adjective used to describe someone who dresses in fashion associated with college preparatory (“prep”) school that gives the impression of old money I thought it was about stocking life supplies in the basement though.

That's prepper not preppy

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#144

Post by anshumankmr »

dash2 wrote: post #69

I had reasonable success deleting Safari from my iPhone. I still need to hit weblinks sometimes, but iOS does a reasonable job at providing a basic web browser for those (no URL bar so I can't then waste time on it). Of apps, I am currently using ScreenZen, which links into ScreenTime to provide a warning message and delay before I browse a customisable list of websites/apps. (HN is on it...) It seems to work better…

> I had reasonable success deleting Safari from my iPhone

How?

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#145

Post by thatguymike »

I'm increasingly annoyed that we can't have nice things without exposing ourselves to attentional strip-mining.

I really want to be able to see my close friends' Instagram posts and read interesting tweets from ~50 people I've chosen to follow in my field. There are no technical blockers to letting me do these; they aren't even much technical work. It would be a material life improvements for me (and I believe for everyone). But I'm not allowed to use the subsets of consumer tech which would enrich my life without exposing myself to the Reels button, the For You feed, and an avalanche of black magic attention hacking. I am bad at moderating my use and I have a low tolerance for doomscrolling, so I don't let myself use these products. As a result I'm cut off from the genuinely life improving subsets of social media which could be so easily made available.

We just accept that _of course_ you have to be willing to get your frontal lobe mined if you want to see what your friends have been doing. _Of course_ you have to be willing to scroll an infinite feed of AI-generated slop if you want to read opinions from people you respect.

I'm perfectly happy to see ads, I'm happy to pay money, I'm happy to come to any fair economic arrangement; but I value my attention highly and I can't pay the attentional price demanded of me, so I don't get to use these products.

People on this site might say "just don't use Reels / For You Feed" and maybe they're right. But for me and the vast majority of people that's not an option, it's my individual willpower pitted against an army of designers, PMs and data scientists every hour of the day.

I am happier without social media than I was with it; but I would be much happier still with the genuinely enriching subset of social media which is there for the offering. As social media becomes a bigger and bigger part of modern life it feels more like essential infrastructure which we _should_ be able to access in ways which work for us. The Fediverse is a great step though I haven't gone as far as to built a custom frontend which works for me (I think it's a big untapped market).

Youtube is the clear winner here. They let you turn personalization off - at which point the Recommended tab disappears, Youtube Shorts don't work, and I can still see new videos from people I subscribe to and follow links to videos when I need to watch them. It's a fantastic compromise and I live in fear of some PM (maybe reading this thread) inevitably realizing they could squeeze a few more minutes of sweet attention juice out of me by taking it away.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#146

Post by rebalh »

jy14898 wrote: post #30

Does everyone really mean doom scrolling when they talk about these issues? For me personally, it's definitely about dopamine and not about negative emotions, yet everyone uses the phrase doom scrolling - am I the odd one out? For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.

I think doom scrolling is used to convey that you keep scrolling with no purpose or intention. It's that you want that dopamine or visual stimulation to keep going.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#147

Post by chikenf00t »

dspillett wrote: post #126
chikenf00t wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what the "Amazon branded wiretap for alarms" is? I did some searches with those terms but can't really understand what you're referring to.

I refer to the Echo Dots that can control my lights and a few other things (so I don't have to move the cats when I need to switch something, but have left the phone that otherwise has control out of reach), and occasionally read audiobooks, as my “Amazon branded wiretaps”. To use them for alarms I just have to say “Computer, set an alarm for 8 in the morning” repeatedly until the damned things understand (I swear th…

I had a feeling I was missing out on a joke or something haha. I thought you might be referring to a silent alarm type device. I'm really interested in finding an alternative that doesn't involve me scrolling through twitter until my brain fog clears up. I don't know if I could cave into buying a Amazon device like that though...

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#148

Post by cubefox »

vitaflo wrote: post #125
cubefox wrote: post #110

Under "later modifications" he mentions an app for web site access limits and a "new browser", but doesn't say which. I guess this is not meant to help others?

You don't need to do all of this, just install a pihole on your network and block all social media sites. Then literally every device on your network will block them all. No need to faff around with other apps, etc. If you want go to even further, use a hosts file to send all these sites to localhost and set up an ad blocker to block the html tag on all these sites as well. Now you've blocked the sites 3 different wa…

Problem with the home network is that I can just switch to LTE on my phone... I guess the ad blocker one should work for Firefox, but Chrome doesn't allow extensions on mobile. Perhaps I should deactivate it.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#149

Post by tensor »

jy14898 wrote: post #30

Does everyone really mean doom scrolling when they talk about these issues? For me personally, it's definitely about dopamine and not about negative emotions, yet everyone uses the phrase doom scrolling - am I the odd one out? For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.

I personally use it to mean "there is bad news in the world and I'm obsessively watching it hoping for some glimmer of good news." If I use too much social media I just say literally that, too much social media.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#150

Post by TheCapeGreek »

I've tried various forms of this.

As long as there's a logged in session somewhere, I have to have various tricks and extensions on my browser to manage things.

Most have been only varying degrees of successful, often ending up in me just disabling the feature whenever I want to get my fix.

The most successful iteration I've found so far is keeping these apps uninstalled from my phone, and using https://one-sec.app/ to forcibly install a barrier between me and the site.

It's not too much different, and the wait time can be customised. You can still just learn to wait through it, but importantly it also has an "intervention" feature that will block you off after a chosen time period and re-prompt you if you want to stay on.

It's been quite flaky on Instagram on desktop, but it's been very useful for Youtube on mobile (which I keep to play videos in the background sometimes).

Otherwise, Unhook for Youtube on desktop also helps blocking things like the home page and shorts.

I haven't found any extension for LinkedIn that works for blocking the feed (or at least suggested posts), and Facebook ones are sporadic in which work for me or not.

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