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Comment by EnFinlay | Hacker News Reader

Fun, I deleted my 9 year old account last night. It's wasn't out of some high-minded thing about how they're turning more into Facebook or privacy or anything. That site just hits my dopamine so effectively I had to quit and block it in my /etc/hosts.

I am spending more time on HN though...

View on HN

Same. I haven’t deleted my account but I haven’t browsed the site in over a month. I’m far more productive now.

I had started off by trying to unsubscribe from the subreddits that were mainly image based. This didn’t really make much difference as my sub list was already too saturated, and I would scroll further to find the quick attention satiation. Eventually I realized it wasn’t worth the trouble.

HN is different though, there’s far less clickbait and no thumbnails. I regularly read articles that I feel teach me about important or very interesting topics. It’s pretty rare that I would read an article in full from Reddit. HN comments are often filled with valuable insights that I think will benefit me in the future, and jokes are fairly uncommon. I’ve been more and more frustrated with the low effort Reddit jokes over time.

Sure, the concept is the same between the two sites, but I think my frame of mind is very different when I browse either site. I don’t see myself needing to cut HN out as I did Reddit because it doesn’t have the same effect. HN is meat and veggies and Reddit is candy. Or a dopamine drip.

Likewise, been off for over a month (yay New Years) and my productivity has been significantly increased.

And I agree about HN, it's similar in system, but the content is very different. I'll look at the front page and maybe read 2 articles and their comments in full, and actually feel like I've learned something or it wasn't a complete waste of my time.

Gotta cut those dopamine drips. So many companies make their money figuring out how to hook you.

My solution is unsubscribing from subreddits that are too clickbaity and do not "educate" me. I sometimes realize "Reddit is too fun today", "oh yeah, I am logged out".

Is there something wrong with it being fun?

It's a pretty bad time sink for some of us. I have it blocked on my work machines so I don't get sucked down the click and scroll rabbit hole when I should be working.

>I am spending more time on HN though...

Same boat. Twitter as well.

Snipped reddit, went to twitter. Snipped twitter, came to here. Seems I just can't get enough of "talking with people on the internet."

GF says I should try to find a book club. She's probably right.

Twitter is the absolute worst of all of them, though. Of all of the platforms, it creates the greatest incentives for antisocial behavior, prioritizing shouting, content-less attention-whoring-for-clicks over everything else.

If you want to be an "influencer" on twitter (which most folks seem to want to be), you just shout the most outrageous things you can to try to cast a wider net.

You get what you look for.

In my experience twitter has been an educational journey.

> Seems I just can't get enough of "talking with people on the internet."

Are we sure this is a bad thing? Socializing with other people is a key component of well-being... could it be good for us even if it's online? What if it's even more fulfilling than IRL socialization? Why do we naturally recoil from the suggestion that conversing with people online could be a good way to spend a significant portion of our time?

Agreed, I've mostly quit Facebook, which was never that enthralling to me, but Reddit / Twitter / Podcasts / Hackernews are all much more interesting. None of them are adding significant value to my life other than that dopamine hit, but I still haven't left them.

It's better to just not be on the computer consuming online content instead of switching websites.

I don't go on reddit and am here only occasionally (would be 100% gone if I could delete my account). Instead of replacing reddit/HN time with X.com, I just do other stuff entirely.

Is there something you'd rather be doing with your HN time?

I am on HN more, but it hasn't replaced Reddit. HN doesn't move fast enough for hours of dopamine hits like Reddit is. HN is for when I'm at work and I need to give my brain a rest from a tough problem. My time at home no longer has any social media when it used to have WAY too much Reddit.

You could have gotten some good pocket change for selling that old of an account.

Could have probably sold it for $50-$100. (Yes, this makes reddit worse)

It's better this way.

I hope you didn't delete all your useful comments over the years. That would be a shame.

I pruned my comments about a year prior, so anything useful should still be there.

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