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Doomscrolling ourselves to death

edwest.co.uk

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Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#211

Post by raffraffraff »

talon8635 wrote: post #203
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

Especially now that old.reddit.com requires a login. That's me done with Reddit!

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#212

Post by djeastm »

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…

>it's a very lengthy way to say few things

The author would likely suggest that we used to read for the variety of expression in the language in addition to becoming informed.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#213

Post by woopah »

TexanFeller wrote: post #182

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.

That's great to hear! It's awesome when people decide to tackle longer books. I think the matter of our (declining) attention spans and what it does to our spirit is something DFW thought a lot about, for example in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8juL7cdGj40. It seems remarkably prescient for our age, but perhaps it also suggests that being present and engaged is actually a perennial problem.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#214

Post by eastbound »

ikr678 wrote: post #210
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.

Coffee is also a temporary antidepressant, so I personally couldn't cut that.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#215

Post by tripleee »

tomjen3 wrote: post #207
tripleee wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It does apply there. Probably because a manual is such an important part of the product it's attached to there's a high bar most people want to meet.

I don't think it applies to a series of blog posts even if they reach book length, though.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#216

Post by feelamee »

I think its deeper than "reading books" vs "doomscrolling social media's". Books can be fast food too. And, probably, in our time more and more books will become fast food.

There are a lot of good staff in format of short essay or in blog posts and even in videos. So, its a bit incorrect to say that reading is better than watching. Or that people was more intelligent due to reading.

Question here is not how, but what to consume.

But I think even consuming high quality/professional content, with deep research and etc etc, can be addictive and lead to problems described in this post.

I don't really know how to classify this problem, but maybe - "producing ideas by yourself" vs "consuming someone other ideas"?

With reading we consume ideas. But because reading is boring (rating by speed of receiving information), we also have lot of time to think, to produce new ideas.

And what with watching videos? especially short - you have almost no time to think about 15sec video content, because it already gone up and you need to forget it and see next...

So, reading and watching, doomscrolling is all about one, but on different stage.

And all this about competing two's: create it by yourself or listen it from someone other.

P.S. this is even make sense.. look: the more you do something, the more you skilled in this. And vice versa. So, when you stop thinking by yourself and start listening, your intelligence go down just because intelligence is about thinking, about analyzing and about your own sight, not someone other.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#217

Post by tejtm »

Marsymars wrote: post #187
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…

> 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.

old.reddit is no longer available (to no account me) as of a week ago.

a few withdrawal pangs, but the mainstream version is a nope.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#218

Post by biophysboy »

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…

I genuinely think Reddit is basically cable news for millenials.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#219

Post by talon8635 »

coffeefirst wrote: post #11

I can tell, usually within a few minutes of meeting them, who’s really into social media. There’s a little bit of frenetic emotional dysregulation, and then they say the weirdest stuff to me. I don’t think you could have made a similar argument about heavy trash tv watchers. They may have had less to talk about, you may have found them less interesting, but it didn’t literally alter their personalities. We have a big…

My 30 year old sister in law throws disregulated tantrums somewhat similar to a 3 year old. She failed out of college before completing the first semester, went to a bougie AA retreat in Hawaii for many months, made her entire identity AA, until online outrage became mainstream. She might literally have never read a single book cover to cover in her life, and yet has the strongest polarizing opinion you could imagine on every complex topic. She’s basically a sentient Reddit thread.

It’s sad, but also unbearable to be in her presence. The way she screams at her parents is so embarrassing. I feel bad for her parents, but they also coddled her to death and continue to to this day.

Re: Doomscrolling ourselves to death

#220

Post by [deleted] »

feelamee wrote: post #216

I think its deeper than "reading books" vs "doomscrolling social media's". Books can be fast food too. And, probably, in our time more and more books will become fast food. There are a lot of good staff in format of short essay or in blog posts and even in videos. So, its a bit incorrect to say that reading is better than watching. Or that people was more intelligent due to reading. Question here is not how , but wha…

[deleted]
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