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Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

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Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#371

Post by CRConrad »

wincy wrote: post #36
senortumnus wrote: post #22

HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in al…

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

> ...spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky.

Additional anecdata: 57, maybe 8-10 books a year nowadays (if that?). Which was a (low-end) monthly ration up through my twenties, into my thirties.

:-(

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#372

Post by kingcharles »

Laforet wrote: post #160
Zircom wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a Kindle and that was nice, but I'm terrible at remembering to bring it with me when I leave the house, and the (admittedly small) effort of having to connect it to my computer to load epubs onto it is enough friction to stop me from doing it in the first place a lot of the time. I usually obtain them from less than legal sources and buy a hardcopy if I like it. For awhile I was buying ebooks straight from t…

I broke my Kindle by dropping it a few years back and the number of books I've read really took a nosedive from then. Maybe it's time to buy another one.

I once left mine under the bed, but the cats pushed it out during the night and I stood on it. The screen is very fragile. Back then I could find no way at all to repair it.

I did just buy the latest model on Amazon for $30 during Black Friday. I find reading on the Kindle is way better than on the phone because it removes all the distractions.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#373

Post by CRConrad »

iamacyborg wrote: post #304
jimmygrapes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that seems to have helped some of my friends who have experienced the same issue of not wanting to read anymore is to find one particular book or style they liked before and go deep into that author's backlog or similar styles. And to add to that, don't be afraid of reading pulpy fiction; you're not trying to impress anybody with what you're reading, you're doing it for yourself. Enjoy it. Read young adult…

> And to add to that, don't be afraid of reading pulpy fiction; Amen. I have an unreasonably large collection of 40k books, they’re ace.

> I have an unreasonably large collection of 40k books, they’re ace.

Literally? That is, wasn't Ace the name of a "pulp" publishing house? Would be cool to have a collection of 40K of those... But I imagine even they never put out quite that many titles.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#374

Post by CRConrad »

watwut wrote: post #251
najqh wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, doesn't work for me. I know the games I like; they are all old and I know I love them. I don't follow the news on new games at all. I simply can't concentrate on the games I like for more than 15 minutes. I get distracted, I alt-tab out all the time, and eventually I close them. It's the same with movies or books. It takes a superhuman effort for me to sit still and watch a movie. If anybody has any recommendati…

Maybe the real question, why do you want to do thise things? Because games and movies don't matter that much, really. Nor do books, really. You dont need to force it. Try something else. Try different hobbies to spend time with. And also, old games are not as good as nostalgia has us remember. Maybe you are alt tabbing, because the books you ate picking, movies you watch were good for past you. And now your interests…

> Because games and movies don't matter that much, really. Nor do books, really.

Games and movies, sure. But books?!? Oh yes they do!

Yeah, I know, weird. Dunno why I think that way. But I do.

For the same reasons as TFA, I guess.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#375

Post by CRConrad »

marcusverus wrote: post #306
wincy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

> I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone. For a long time I thought that my constant internet use was a symptom of my disinterest in other things, but more recently I've come to realize that it is, in fact, the sole cause of said disinterest. The quick dopamine hits you get on the internet have subconsciously convinced your brain that the internet is what matters, and that everything else (i.e. your life) is s…

I regret that I have only one upvote to give you (@dang: Where's the "Pin this at top of page, stat!" button?)

He wrote, on his phone, in bed, pursuing his HN addiction.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#376

Post by CRConrad »

knaik94 wrote: post #60
dougmwne wrote: post #17

An aside, I find it a bit interesting that at some point we stopped talking about internet and game addiction. It used to be a hot topic, but I guess now that we are all completely addicted after decade of intense behavioral experimentation, none of us are interested in reading about it anymore.

I think we stopped talking about it because most people realized that it's not a proper application of the word addiction. Adapting to the changing times doesn't make people ignorant. I dislike how when certain groundbreaking changes in the way people consume content is introduced, people who don't understand it call it an addiction. It's insulting to people who suffer clinical addiction. A perceived bad habit isn't…

> I think we stopped talking about it because most people realized that it's not a proper application of the word addiction. Adapting to the changing times doesn't make people ignorant.

Isn't that a bit like saying if everyone takes drugs, nobody is a drug addict? "Adapting to the changing times where everybody is on heroin doesn't make people junkies" -- but yes, that's exactly what it makes them.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#377

Post by Paul_S »

DarylZero wrote: post #363
Paul_S wrote: post #146

While the article veers a bit all over the place at its core it's about a topic I have given a lot of thought to - relationship between information form and content and our expectations. I still read books but I'm very against fetishising them. I don't understand the emotional connection with paper, typewriters and the general attitude that medium destroys the content. What I think happens a lot is the old correlatio…

> Unfortunately, due to factors outside of those dictated by form, it so happens that books are better, even though they are limited by their form. I think you've got this backwards: it's the "form" that dictates youtube videos must always target the lowest common denominator, target absolute beginners, use clickbait approaches to topic selection, and spread content thin to increase number of videos. (The "form" not…

I didn't think of the form as "YouTube video", but you make a good argument. I divided it into the form "video" and expectations of the audience "youtube". Now I see it was arbitrary. Instead I should've thought of the distinction between technical limits of the form and non technical.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#378

Post by iamacyborg »

CRConrad wrote: post #373
iamacyborg wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And to add to that, don't be afraid of reading pulpy fiction; Amen. I have an unreasonably large collection of 40k books, they’re ace.

> I have an unreasonably large collection of 40k books, they’re ace. Literally? That is, wasn't Ace the name of a "pulp" publishing house? Would be cool to have a collection of 40K of those... But I imagine even they never put out quite that many titles.

Games Workshop have their own publishing arm called Black Library, so ace reading but not published by Ace.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#379

Post by mayormcmatt »

wincy wrote: post #36
senortumnus wrote: post #22

HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in al…

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

It's like someone else has inhabited my brain and written precisely what I'm feeling now...

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#380

Post by ASalazarMX »

aw9f70gae wrote: post #242
toper-centage wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you place games in the "bad" side of things, this hich need to be reduced. I group gaming with reading because the kind of games I play require a level of focus and engagement, and my brain rather spend hours scroll HN and Reddit. It really is an uphill battle.

What kind of games? I’d like to stop playing addictive games and start playing games that are better for my mind.

Too late to comment, but I wanted to add puzzle games like Portal or The Talos Principle. The world building is stimulant, and the mechanics can be really hard on your first play. Their downside is the rapidly diminishing replay value, unless you collect achievements, which defeats the purpose of a casual game.

When I replay one of those, I do it for the story, because the puzzles are child's play when you know the solutions.

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