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Comment by collinvandyck76 | Hacker News Reader

I recently quit all social media. There was a bit of withdrawal but I can confirm that my attention span has started coming back.

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Apologies for asking the obvious, but then why are you here? :-P

Haha good question. I wouldn't consider HN social media, as it's more nuanced discussion around topics, although the lines are somewhat blurry. I think of social media more like Twitter and Facebook.

Do you visit Reddit?

I switched from visiting Reddit from the web/phone client to a Gopher proxy with Lynx (in order to view the submitted sites in the posts):

gopher://gopherddit.com

Also, my NNTP list:

alt.ascii-art

alt.folklore.computers

alt.os.linux.slackware

alt.sys.pdp10

comp.infosystems.gopher

comp.lang.forth

comp.lang.perl

comp.lang.perl.announce

comp.lang.perl.faq

comp.lang.perl.misc

comp.lang.perl.moderated

comp.lang.perl.modules

comp.lang.perl.tk

comp.lang.postscript

comp.misc

comp.unix.programmer

comp.unix.shell

fj.life.in-japan

rec.arts.int-fiction

rec.radio.amateur.dx

rec.radio.amateur.moderated

rec.radio.amateur.space

rec.radio.shortwave

Sometimes I interact over NNTP on https://synchro.net (they have a web/BBS interface too). As the pace is much slower, I can comment once or twice a week and everything is still good.

Finally, Gopher and Gemini sites. A really slow pace, no ads, no likes, no bullshit.

Wow haven’t thought about Gopher in forever. I still prefer to interact with the command line instead of the GUI for most things. I’ll have to give that a try.

Haha you have to help me here. Could you please help me understand what gopher is and NNTP? I do not know whether I should feel dumb, too young or too old for not knowing :)

Too young, those are pre-WWW things. NNTP are public mailing lists (proto discussion forums, though right now the proto is mostly used for fully automated luxury piracy) Gopher was supposed to be alternative to HTTP/HTML.

Sometimes, but it is intentional, and not reflexive.

I know, I was half kidding

It’s easy to quit, but how did you manage to fill empty time that you’ve suddenly gotten?

I'm learning how to play the banjo.

For me, the idea of needing to fill the time is one of the symptoms of the problem. Empty time is perfectly fine.

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