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I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

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Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#61

Post by geerlingguy »

spacemadness wrote: post #38
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy thing I find is how even with apps off, how quickly you will subconsciously type in “Reddit” or something into google. I haven’t used social media in years, but I remember when I quit it how I would sometimes be on my laptop doing something and almost out of habit hit “Ctrl + T” for a new tab and type the first few letters of Reddit or instagram.

HN is still social media. Not as heavy as others on the one hand but It’s also not free from all issues other forms of social media have. I just engaged with you and you might feel compelled to engage back. You might see yourself get downvoted for odd reasons and spend time wondering why or being emotionally effected by it. Rinse, repeat, etc.

The nice thing is the votes/points are much less prominent on this site, to the point I rarely even notice them. It also helps that whatever feature progression system there is... it's not highly advertised, nor are there fancy badges like "ten year club" that attach even more status to pointless internet points.

Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#62

Post by glonq »

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #12
pb7 wrote: post #4

If you're struggling with social media addiction, I would recommend deleting the native apps off your phone. The better, smoother UX and faster response time reduces any and all friction. I find that when I have to use the mobile sites, I can't stand them so I naturally want to leave. Reddit's mobile site is a dumpster fire so it's perfect for wanting to keep your sessions short. Instagram's is similar. Sadly, Twitte…

Crazy thing I find is how even with apps off, how quickly you will subconsciously type in “Reddit” or something into google. I haven’t used social media in years, but I remember when I quit it how I would sometimes be on my laptop doing something and almost out of habit hit “Ctrl + T” for a new tab and type the first few letters of Reddit or instagram.

> Crazy thing I find is how even with apps off, how quickly you will subconsciously type in “Reddit” or something into google.

Oh I'm relieved to hear that I'm not the only one.

Is there a browser plugin that only lets you visit a site once every N hours? I'd prefer this to electroshock punishment.

Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#63

Post by irrational »

skilled wrote: post #19

Meh, Reddit is a boring platform outside of your personal interests. I myself follow only one subreddit and check maybe other 4-5 for news/updates, but none of these are in the top 1000, maybe not even top 10,000 subreddits. I find Reddit culture to be bland and uninspiring. Even technical/niche subreddits get absolutely run over by "noobs" and people who have too many questions but too little patience to do research…

Where do you go instead? The ones I follow are r/baking, r/cooking, r/woodworking, r/gardening, and r/boardgames. I haven’t found another single site that has communities for all of my interests.

Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#64

Post by warner25 »

skilled wrote: post #19

Meh, Reddit is a boring platform outside of your personal interests. I myself follow only one subreddit and check maybe other 4-5 for news/updates, but none of these are in the top 1000, maybe not even top 10,000 subreddits. I find Reddit culture to be bland and uninspiring. Even technical/niche subreddits get absolutely run over by "noobs" and people who have too many questions but too little patience to do research…

> Reddit is a boring platform outside of your personal interests

To me, the fact that there's an active subreddit specifically for every personal interest is exactly what makes it so addictive. It's a very concentrated dose of the drug. Like I'm in the US Army, and there's r/army where basically every thread hits very close to home, so I have a strong opinion or a story or insight to share. Then I'm also into personal finance, and there's even r/MilitaryFinance because a lot of personal finance issues are unique to our situation.

Before Reddit, there were some old-school forums for these niches, but they were short-lived and not nearly as active. On bigger, more active old-school forums about something like personal finance, most of the threads just don't pertain to me so it's easier to use them in moderation. Like a thread about military stuff will end up here on Hacker News once every couple of weeks, and I'll get excited to make a comment, but that's it.

Anyway, I decided that I needed to logout from Reddit, delete my browsing history so that old.reddit.com didn't autofill in my address bar anymore (I wasn't even using the mobile app), and delete my Reddit password from my password manager.

Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#65

Post by thefz »

bmarquez wrote: post #6

> To quit Reddit, I wanted the Pavlok to deliver a painful shock every time I visited Reddit That's a bit...extreme. Fortunately Reddit is doing a great job diminishing its own usability. When Reddit enables their paid API and locks out 3rd party clients in the process, there will be greater friction to browse. When they eventually kill old.reddit.com that'll be the nail in the coffin.

Reddit's suicide happened way before the redesign. It's the silo communities, the rampant excessive moderation, the brigading, the drama, the immaturity all over.

Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#66

Post by taylodl »

Reddit is better than FB and most other forums WRT readings posts that interest me about my hobbies: music & guitar playing, photography, and motorcycling.

There are hobby-specific online communities, but frankly, those don't appear as healthy and having as much interest.

Obviously YMMV.

Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#67

Post by Nican »

glonq wrote: post #62
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy thing I find is how even with apps off, how quickly you will subconsciously type in “Reddit” or something into google. I haven’t used social media in years, but I remember when I quit it how I would sometimes be on my laptop doing something and almost out of habit hit “Ctrl + T” for a new tab and type the first few letters of Reddit or instagram.

> Crazy thing I find is how even with apps off, how quickly you will subconsciously type in “Reddit” or something into google. Oh I'm relieved to hear that I'm not the only one. Is there a browser plugin that only lets you visit a site once every N hours? I'd prefer this to electroshock punishment.

I am another person that still have problems opening up a tab, and trying to access social media, even though I know it is blocked on my computer.

My solution involves a Pi-hole. You can set a cron job to enable or disable rules.

Other solution I hear people doing is using OpenDNS.

Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#69

Post by TrueGeek »

taylodl wrote: post #66

Reddit is better than FB and most other forums WRT readings posts that interest me about my hobbies: music & guitar playing, photography, and motorcycling. There are hobby-specific online communities, but frankly, those don't appear as healthy and having as much interest. Obviously YMMV.

I find this true as well so I just subscribe to those specific subreddits via RSS and Newsblur. I also create a new Reddit account once a month so that I don't fall into a habit of letting my account share too much personal data or letting myself fall into the trap of caring about upvotes. It's worked very well for me. I read the posts that interest me and I don't just "scroll Reddit" out of boredom.

Re: I Quit Reddit in 1 Day

#70

Post by jug »

InvisibleUp wrote: post #40
bmarquez wrote: post #6

> To quit Reddit, I wanted the Pavlok to deliver a painful shock every time I visited Reddit That's a bit...extreme. Fortunately Reddit is doing a great job diminishing its own usability. When Reddit enables their paid API and locks out 3rd party clients in the process, there will be greater friction to browse. When they eventually kill old.reddit.com that'll be the nail in the coffin.

They already killed the lightweight mobile version at i.reddit.com last month or so. I wouldn't be surprised if old.reddit.com is on the chopping block within the next few years.

I think the new design at https://sh.reddit.com/ (for desktop PC) is aimed at this. It's supposed to be better performant than the current design and dealing with criticized decisions like the heavy layered design, but I think another way to view it is that it's supposed to finally kill old.reddit.com once released, probably in a year or so.
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