My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll • Hacker News Board

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#391

Post by demindiro » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 1:46 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #358

janmarsal wrote: post #306

Thankfully my monkey brain is stronger than my lizard brain when it comes to things like infinite scroll, modals and other horrible UI features that nobody in their right mind should add to any website. Even just a couple of minutes of twitter usage makes me rage quit the whole website. Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? I'm…

Re twitter and reddit and YouTube: old.reddit.com and nitter.eu and newpipe/invidious respectively. All these projects show we're patently far from the only ones who get driven up the fucking wall by absolutely brain-dead design being pushed over the user's wishes.

With LibRedirect[1] you automatically get redirected from twitter et al. to these instances.

[1]: https://github.com/libredirect/LibRedirect

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#392

Post by carlosr2 » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

trey-jones wrote: post #389

I noticed I was doing this with Facebook. Decided never to install it on a phone. I did install Instagram on a phone. Noticed I was doing this. Uninstalled Instagram. I installed Reddit on a phone. Noticed I was doing this. Uninstalled Reddit. My biggest problem then is that I can't uninstall the stupid Google news feed, so that still gets me pretty often. They've made the scroll longer, but at least it is currently…

Make google news useless by disabling personalization in android settings.

It worked for me, its not interesting anymore.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#393

Post by fleddr » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

A less popular opinion: when you're in the danger zone regarding mindless scrolling, say several hours per day, another way to look at it is that you simply have too much time on your hands.

When you add friction to using these apps as some type of self-control, the problem is that the time surplus is still there. Which leaves infinite excuses to get back into the habit.

You need to replace that time with something better. Preferably fun social obligations, because those you won't easily opt-out of. Agree with a friend to go walk to the park every Wednesday. Do volunteer work. Group sports. Cook an extra nice meal for your partner on a particular day. Stuff like that. Fill up your surplus of time with things that are fun and have meaning.

I know, for some the above is too steep. For the ultra lazy, there's still options. Pick a movie/documentary that you expect to enjoy. Now put your smartphone in another room and fully engage with the movie. Use your own laziness as a tool as you can't bother to get it.

Further, uninstall Facebook, Twitter, the like from your phone. Only check them on desktop.

Finally, minimize chat on your phone. I limit chat to practical matters only. Needing to pick up something from the store, input on a party that is being organized, things like that.

Anything else...I don't engage. I'm not going to have a long winded social conversation on chat just for the sake of it. To signal this, just respond a day later, and only with "yes", "no" or "OK".

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#394

Post by shakna » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

Nimitz14 wrote: post #387

shakna wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a bit more subtlety and tradeoff here. For example, I doubt most people watching a video on YouTube would like the video to stop playing when they scroll down. If they wanted to pause it, they'd pause it. They also probably don't want the video to transition to the next, whilst they're reading threads. If you're in an infinite loop stream however, you do probably want it to pause or stop, without intervention…

That's fair, as always context matters. But I feel it was implied the context of our discussion was infinite scroll pages like twitter (he specifically mentioned that), tiktok, instagram etc.

That's true - which is why I spent the majority of the comment speaking about a situation in an infinite scroll where you do not want the video to automatically pause.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#395

Post by amelius » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:02 PM UTC

janmarsal wrote: post #306

Thankfully my monkey brain is stronger than my lizard brain when it comes to things like infinite scroll, modals and other horrible UI features that nobody in their right mind should add to any website. Even just a couple of minutes of twitter usage makes me rage quit the whole website. Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? I'm…

It seems your monkey brain is not very happy.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#396

Post by traviscj » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

shakes_mcjunkie wrote: post #385

maydup-nem wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quora used to ask for login only when you followed a link while already on quora (so opening from google search wouldn't prompt a login). you could just copypaste url and look at the thread. but not anymore, they closed this off since recently. fuck them, community-driven websites shouldn't become fenced off like that because some lizard brain correlated compulsory login with registration count. +1 on reddit "modal"…

The old Reddit design was just so much better. As a long time front end dev I know this can be an annoying take. But product teams push out so much redesigning that's just unnecessary and this happened with Reddit. The official app has less functionality and is less intuitive and the new website is a garbage fire of pushing you "related content". I guess I'm glad that kept old.reddit.com at least.

The original seems to have been designed with different goals in mind. I have no doubt that the new ux better optimized their new goals, I just don’t agree that the new goals were as useful to me personally.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#397

Post by exciteabletom » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

maydup-nem wrote: post #382

janmarsal wrote: post #306

Thankfully my monkey brain is stronger than my lizard brain when it comes to things like infinite scroll, modals and other horrible UI features that nobody in their right mind should add to any website. Even just a couple of minutes of twitter usage makes me rage quit the whole website. Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? I'm…

quora used to ask for login only when you followed a link while already on quora (so opening from google search wouldn't prompt a login). you could just copypaste url and look at the thread. but not anymore, they closed this off since recently. fuck them, community-driven websites shouldn't become fenced off like that because some lizard brain correlated compulsory login with registration count. +1 on reddit "modal"…

You can still work around the Quora BS by appending `?share=1` to the URL

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#398

Post by mnort9 » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

I've been using Screen Time this year so far and it's been working pretty well. For me Twitter, FB, and Reddit were the go to dopamine hits.

I have separate 5 min daily limits for Twitter and Facebook. And a 15 min daily limit for Reddit. Reddit is much easier to curate topics that I'm actually interested in, so I give myself a little more time there since the comments add to the conversation more commonly than the other platforms.

This helps make it feel like I'm "checking-in" and leaving it behind, rather than letting it consume my time. It also makes me think twice about logging in as a habit since my limit will be up without recollecting at all what I just scrolled through. I find myself more often thinking, "Am I going to pay attention to what I'm looking at now?". If not, I'll save the session for later when I have the attention to give.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#399

Post by Alex3917 » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

janmarsal wrote: post #306

Thankfully my monkey brain is stronger than my lizard brain when it comes to things like infinite scroll, modals and other horrible UI features that nobody in their right mind should add to any website. Even just a couple of minutes of twitter usage makes me rage quit the whole website. Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? I'm…

> On Reddit this means that I manage to close the thread by accident all the time because someone thought it would be a good idea to open the threads in a modal that closes when you click outside of it.

The whole point of modals is to enable the user to close them by clicking outside of them. So this way if you want to show new users something like an onboarding tutorial, they can just click outside of the modal if they are like "WTF is this??", rather than needing to look for the close button. The fact that many people abuse them doesn't negate the fact that they are, if used correctly, actually a better experience for the user.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#400

Post by gigaflop » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #295

gernb wrote: post #289

I feel like I could say the same about infinite news which I'd define as a site I can check several times a day and see new "top stories". This would include Reddit and HN. I find it super addicting to check too many times and then get sucked into spending too much time reading comments and sometimes articles. Rarely am I actually better off for it . Contrast to 20-30yrs ago where at best you got a newspaper once a d…

Browse HN on "Past": https://news.ycombinator.com/front 1. It's yesterday's news. You've probably got some contextualisation for the story as you've likely already caught wind of it from some other channel. Much of the compulsion of HN comes from the too-brief and decontextualised subject lines. They are, ultimately, a Dark Pattern. 2. The Machine Stops^W^WScroll Ends. Typically there are ~60--100 or so items. That's…

As soon as I registered my account, the comment sections seemed to hold less importance/meaningful content. Perhaps because I started paying more attention to them?

It's a small thing, but I'm working on making myself read less of them now. The further past the left 1/3rd of my 21:9 monitor a comment starts, the less value I'm going to get from reading it, generally.

If I find my screen filled with comments at that depth, and can't quickly scroll past them, ctrl-W is usually the best remedy.