I don't understand the hypnotic effect it has.
She would never, ever, miss a single episode of a “reality” about dating in tv, a show famous in Italy as “trash tv”. It was unwatchable, worse than Jersey shore.
I asked her why such an intelligent and smart person couldn’t miss an episode of something so terrible and lame and she answered me “I know it’s awful, but for an entire hour I’m able to be lobotomized and not have a single thought, I can completely detach from reality and relax”.
My current SO does the same with Instagram. Whenever she needs to detach from her thoughts she zombifies on Instagram. Might be cats or fashion bloggers but she tunes out completely and she does that intentionally knowing that’s the effect it has on her.
Why is it trash also? I'm sure there's a lot of interesting psychology to unpack there. It's just trash if one thinks we need to dedicate ourselves to "higher purposes" and anything else is "lowly" and "denigrating". As if whatever one chooses to do in their free time, that doesn't hurt anybody, and is just a little human drama in a watchable package that maybe we miss during day to day, as so much of a job life is dry, and that makes us connect to our inner humanity is "trash".
That's why it's trash - it's a pseudo-relational avoidance of both the greatest rewards of connection but also - crucially I suspect - of its most painful liabilities (i.e. no one's heart is broken if a pseudo; relationship ends).
And since humans are naturally biased more towards avoiding loss than seeking gain, social media takes over the world and online becomes the default place to hang out.
A world which in aggregate no one wants becomes a reality because of narrow preferences repeated over and over again and at scale.
In addition to not requiring thinking, I remember he also mentioned that it's harder to get "hooked" and end up binge-watching episodes.
The perspective is plausible to me. I do feel more drained or emotionally spent absorbing intense television series, or even accomplished for understanding them, when I could've spent that on real work. That said, I do think low-quality media affects the way I think and write in a negative way (by contrast, when I spend a lot of time absorbed with high-quality writing, it actually does positively affect my speech and writing for the next few days).
I find video games fill that same “mindless” void for me. Prior to the pandemic I’d barely played any in a decade but now I’ll fire up Call of Duty every couple of days to play a few rounds. It’s dumb, I learn nothing from it and I achieve nothing. But it’s nice to switch my brain off.
Disclaimer: I do both, it's alright. I'm more worried about people who have 8 hours of phone screentime on Instagram/TikTok.
It’s not for me but a lot of “dumb” shows can be appreciated with an open mindset.
I know a couple people (plus myself at one point) who absorbed high-quality entertainment while being professionally unfulfilled. Activities included reading literature, watching artistic films, reading a middle-brow magazines like the New Yorker, and reading lots of New York Times articles. These took a lot of energy and gave a sense of achievement that could've been spent in accumulating career capital/developing career-relevant skills.
This wouldn't imply that entertainment is guaranteed to take away focus and energy from career development (plenty of counter-examples with historical figures), but it is possible for some people. So, I don't see low-quality entertainment as worrisome, so long as people have the main efforts of their life worked on, in tandem. Low-quality entertainment would be a problem, however, if it does distract from time spent on real, helpful work, versus as a stress reliever.
Separately, I would also separate low-quality produced entertainment limited by episodes from social media. They're very different, as social media is better optimized for infinite scrolling and outrage, while shows are more episodic (assuming a weaker, less-optimized pull for binge consumption).
It shows that HN is a very particular sample of the population.
In a way it's also a bit of a social substitute; When you live alone, and spend a lot of time alone, it can be nice to just listen to some human voices in the background as if you were not alone.
The app has been making this way of using Instagram more and more difficult. It's not surprising because my way likely doesn't generate any revenue.
(By the way, my main messaging apps are Signal and Telegram, but I also have LINE, for my contacts related to Japan, and iMessage, mostly for family. So many apps...)
I hate that it's owned by Facebook.
I genuinely do not understand why people like so much watching photos. I can spend a few minutes watching photos or drawings of things I enjoy but I tire really quickly. I can't even think of something I like enough to spend one hour watching photos of it.