Hacker News Reader

Comment by abyssin | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of the saying in the psychedelic culture: “Once you’ve got the message, hang up the phone.” In March 2021 I made a similar decision regarding my use of Reddit. I’ve lost years doom-scrolling, but it’s also taught me useful things, especially regarding how to take care of my health. Now I feel like I’m getting more from books and I’ve transitioned to reading more of them. (Some of the reclaimed time also went towards caring for my first child.)

It isn’t too late to hang up the phone.

View on HN

Not sure if he is an originator, but I heard this phrase from Alan Watts recording [0]

I recommend his lectures to all, especially if you don't want to take psychedelics. He mainly speaks about buddhism, altough he was connected to counter culture movements in the 60s and with LSD

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-A3C8FEscw

This is me with a carefully curated set of RSS feeds and podcasts. It's not all monocles and self-described thinkers, but it does trend toward more contemplation and less scrollbait. I found I got more out of people who read the books and thought about them than from reading the books myself.

I wonder if there is a way to share your feed? Is there a platform for well-curated feeds, both on different topics, but even more so on different "mindsets"?

I feel like it would be very interesting, and I would probably even be ready to pay for someone to carefully pick interesting content, as I often feel like scrolling for hours only to find one great article (like this one was for me) is a huge price to pay.

This could even go for books. I try reading as much as possible, but it seems like 98% of books I find randomly recommended to me could easily fit into 10 pages, but instead they get drawn out into infinite repetitions because that's the only way nowdays to sell books. If someone was willing to charge me for a well-curated list of books with well written synopsis and a good indication of "Is it worth reading the whole thing even when you know the overall idea", I'd be a happy customer.

Maybe there are people on Substack doing this?

That sounds like Blinkist. They pitch it as a way to avoid having to read books, but it seems like you could use it to get the gist and decide if you want to read the whole thing.

Sounds like it, yes. However, re. my first question about sharing feeds and building a sort of community around it, I cannot really find anything interesting. But maybe twitter/reddit/HN are fulfilling this gap already, although not neraly to the extent I'm imagining here.

Same boat on turning off reddit years ago. I hope significantly more people do the same.

It's all right these days, if you're into mindless entertainment; they got rid of a lot of the more toxic parts (the_donald and co) and pornography is de-emphasized, likely will be removed altogether in the future. My feeds are now mainly poorly Paint-edited memes, cat photos / videos, and sometimes a bit of drama from the relationships or "am I the asshole" subreddits.

I don't actually do that much for mental stimulation anymore. HN doesn't do it for me anymore since three quarters are about technology or industries I'm far removed from, plus I never liked the SV culture of overhyping and grinding out startups to fish for early retirement. It's that culture that gave us the gig economy and that encourages the sigma male grindset bullshit where if you don't work 16 hours a day maintaining a healthy daily balance of soylent, melatonin, LSD and meditation you're not cool enough.

I'm with you on Silicon Valley being a grift, but be wary about mindless content consumption - even if it's not doomscrolling, you're essentially putting yourself in stasis and numbing yourself with a constant dopamine drip-feed, which can lead to not actually enjoying life. Basically, internet addiction is real.

Same hat, though I've mostly moved on to TikTok for my mindless entertainment.

HN is better because there are other internet olds here and more of the content is interesting, but as somebody with MS, the sigma male grindset thing gets under my skin because there's an undercurrent of 'If you do these things, you can ward off insecurity or poverty' and there are cases where that's just not true. Plus the ability to do those things often relies on external support, which for some reason just isn't mentioned when people talk about how they've worked to get where they are. (Which I'm not discounting; it's just that two people can put in the same effort and get drastically different results.)

It's a mindset for people in their 20s or people who can outsource most life activities.

> two people can put in the same effort and get drastically different results

Definitely; results come from: effort, ability, luck (or timing), choices and starting resources.

5 years later, browsing r/all is much worse in other ways. Porn has been de-emphasized, but every other post feels like an outrage post designed to evoke anger, often without any proof, and it's enough to get people completely riled up.

How is HN any better than reddit?

I'm hopeful that the HN I enjoyed 10 years ago can be brought back when the reddit refugees who destroyed their own site lose interest.

It was brought back, it is http://lobste.rs

Need someone to invite you though

I can invite you.

I’m not sure it is much better, but moderation does have an impact on the tone of the conversation. New content pops up a bit slower, so it’s a bit less exciting. There’s a culture of sourcing information.

Moderation keeps most people 'civil' in a formal sense - avoiding dang action. I still quite honestly find the tone here mean and condescending a very significant part of the time. Every one of my subreddits is refreshingly wholesome by comparison. Of course, one can individually quit any subreddit they find irritating.

However, after begging my therapist for help with my doomscrolling, I deleted the Reddit app. We'll see if I end up resorting to blocking HN somehow.

I’m afraid I’m not going to be helpful here, but here’s how I quit Reddit: I simply did it. I realized I was done. I stopped believing I was getting something from it. In 2014 I quit smoking in a similar fashion. Just realized it was bad, didn’t smoke afterwards.

HN is still a great place to understand the ideology of Silicon Valley and its industry. I’ve never left Europe and this forum seems to give me an edge about what’s happening here.

In many ways it is not. It's an endless source of procrastination and staying here too long without other influences will cause you to develop a most profound case of engineer's disease and blind you to the specific brand of groupthink here. Still, the level of discourse here is high compared to the worst of Reddit, and sometimes on topics I find highly engaging, which keeps me coming back for more (distraction). Just don't fall into the logical fallacy that any of us here are worth more than any other human being because (some of us) have more money, or that we're able to string English words together to form complete sentences.

I admit to meeting up with an old classmate in-person after spending weeks with HN as my main source of social interaction, and then regularly referencing anecdotes on old HN threads in the conversation and advocating for Linux/GNU for an OS; talking down big tech companies in favor of living frugally to contribute to open-source projects; and arguing in favor of working at startups versus big companies if given the chance.

I've since matured to avoid citing HN when referencing anecdotes (instead saying "I read once that..."), being agnostic about where one works (as long as it fits your personal career goals), and trying to also develop my worldview through well-regarded classic books.

The volume is limited and the density is higher. Once you're on top of everything you found interesting you just turn away and do something else.

I view it like a single subreddit with a community of pretty decent folks.

Reddit is a large wasteland, and comment interactions very often turn sour.

I unsubbed from all default subs except “world news” (which I don’t comment in) and basically only hang out on my niche hobby/professional subs now. If you curate it and cut out the really toxic, highly-attractive subs that really pull you in, it’s a way better experience. Took me almost 10 years recognize the issue but I’m glad I did.

Yes! I completely agree. I also notice more and more that I prefer a book more to the same old discussions online or the same old TV series and YouTube videos.

Reddit is one of the only sites I feel it's necessary to block on my home network. The rabbit hole is long, deep and dangerous for child/teen development IMO.

Awesome. If the aim is to protect tweens/teens from strange corners of the internet that could mess with their development, make sure to block discord as well

YouTube, google.com, the list is truly endless.

Stopped going on Facebook and Reddit.

YMMV but I honestly felt much better nearly immediately. My life didn’t change in any macro sense - same job, same relationships etc, but baseline mood improved.

Again YMMV, and I’m loathe to say Facebook or Reddit or Twitter or anything is bad or evil or even addictive. I’m not a crusader. But for me going on Facebook for an hour subjectively made me less happy than not going on Facebook.

Facebook and Instagram are easy to diagnose: people post only their wins and their anger, so you end up feeling miserable and/or angry. It's like going to a party where everyone is richer and more beautiful than you, and they are all talking about politics. Same for twitter.

Reddit is more about simple time-wasting and dopamine hits.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com