51–60 of 234 posts
I just wish YT thumbnails were selected from a random point in the video.
Or you can write a userscript / custom CSS to hide thumbnails altogether.
Or you can browse YouTube through RSS feeds (which afaik still work).
I started sliding down that slope with No Man's Sky but have since corrected (fortunately NMS isn't as well put together as WoW or it might have been worse).
The key for me is running away from something you feel you have no control over feels like a better solution than dealing with the pain. Escaping into a world that has expected behaviors that you can understand is, for me, less painful than a world with people advancing bad agendas for self serving reasons.
The pain is real, the fight doesn't stop, every day you shoot for "well I didn't give in to my fears today, on to tomorrow."
I guess this is an adhd "superpower" of mine. I leave youtube on 24/7 and pay almost no attention to it. A big reason why I can ignore it though, when it's on 24/7.. mine plays the exact same documentaries, almost always WW2 or US Revolutionary War stuff over and over and over again. I watch a LOT of history documentaries but I have absolutely no interest in either of these time periods and have probably never search…
I hate this characterization of ADHD. I have it as well (diagnosed and medicated), and more distraction is the last thing I need. I cannot for the life of me imagining doing anything useful with youtube running in the background. I think it simply depends if you were growing up with TV in the background. I haven't, so it's not soothing, it's maddening to have noise, loud chatter and unwanted sounds going on when I'm…
I sit in quiet a lot so I'm not distracted like you mentioned. It made working in an open office awful for me because I HAD to have headphones on with noise playing so I wouldn't hear other people and get distracted by THAT, and I DON'T want to sit there forced to have music on.
But if I'm not doing anything complex, hopping around social media or just relaxing yeah I've probably got 20 different things going on at once. Music, youtube, 350 tabs spread across 3 monitors. Can't sleep without audiobooks/tv on, etc.
I absolutely hate the ultra silence it gives me anxiety.
The feelings and withdrawal I went through were exactly the same.
Ever since I’ve been convinced that social media are not passive or even active sources of content. They’re much better viewed as addictions like smoking or drinking.
And just like smoking or drinking some people may be able to use social media responsibly, but many others are gonna be badly addicted and even the ones who do it responsibly will largely be worse off for it.
It’s bit weird, but I feel like this conversation about screen time and digital addiction dropped out of the public consciousness during Covid, never to return. Apple released their screen time features in 2018, so this issue was just starting to hit critical mass right as Covid hit and dumped us all deep down the digital rabbit hole. Now I notice even more social proof to keep going deeper into the digital life. Pub…
The same thing has happened in the past (an old Wodehouse school-story has a kid being yelled at for reading "trash" (David Copperfield) during class instead of the Latin he was supposed to be working on.
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…
What do you do for two hours before bed with no screen time? Read physical material? I'm not sure what I would do to wind down before bed besides reading or watching something. I do find that I need a similar amount of down time before bed after more engaging activities like going out or playing video games online. I usually try to read longer form articles or watch tv. I'm not sure what else I'd do around the house…
In the early days of YouTube I would say I was addicted, or spent a lot of time on there. At one point I realized how much of a waste of time it was and now only look up car repair videos.
I hope everyone can get out of the YT rut.
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 w…
This is a huge factor. I find myself slipping into a pattern of non-stop YouTube or social media scrolling when I haven't been taking my meds. I've had several friends who also have ADHD tell me similar stories.
I wish ADHD was more well understood by the public. I blame two decades of jokes about the disability just being hyper kids through the '90s and '00s. Many people don't even realize that ADHD often persists into adulthood, where it is arguably more disruptive to the patient's lifestyle.
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 w…
> YMMV. Very glad you found something that helped, but this is a good place to warn people that everyone is different. In some people, stimulant treatment can actually kindle problematic behaviors like the one you escaped. For some, they enhance focus but that results in more focusing on the hobbies, distractions, and side projects. I bring this up because while ADHD medication is great for some, there's a growing pr…
Certainly. On dexamfetamine, focus has a distinctive sticky quality to it. I need to be very careful where I direct it. Opening HN mid-morning means a productive session of commenting and getting into Internet arguments.
It's a negative side effect that can be overcome with a good routine and schedule. I take my meds, sit at my desk and open Emacs at 9am every day, 7 days a week. Distractions are blocked, so the path of least-resistance is just doing work. But then again, good routine and schedule are relatively easy to set up once medicated.