My Day Away from Reddit | Hacker News Reader

My Day Away from Reddit

unsupervision.com

67 pointsshevis72 comments

I quit visiting Reddit daily 6-7 years ago. The reason is very simple: I asked myself what value Reddit provides in my life. What will I remember from yesterday's browsing? Or last week. Or last month. Am I really going to miss out on anything? I made the same exercise with several online newspapers. If I can't remember what I read yesterday, whatever I read was probably a waste of time. I stopped reading at least 3 low quality newspapers in roughly the same period.

Reddit isn't worth hours every week. You are not getting that time back. It isn't quality time spent on things that enrich you. You have to care for yourself and be more picky about what you spend your time and attention on.

Quitting stuff is good for you.

This is it. Clean up your life. What you do in your 20s is not the same as 30s or 40s, etc. That might speak to the people you interact with as well. I was "searching" for something on reddit and other places like it. Spending time with friends, getting married, having kids, it changes all of that. Real people interaction pulls you away from the place where so much idle time is spent. There is no time for reddit when you're living your real life. But we all go through the phases. Its just not clear reddit is the place to have healthy discussions.

>> There is no time for reddit when you're living your real life

Except if you're drunk and lonely, and all the bars are closed. Then it's a real problem.

The real nasty thing is, so many people are living in a world now where they act like there's nothing better to do on the train, when there are people all around us we should be paying attention to and interacting with.

I don't drink, but I know what loneliness and depression feels like. And those are the times I ended up in those places just looking for an iota of connection to save me. We're crying out for help and no one will help us.

> so many people are living in a world now where they act like there's nothing better to do on the train

I'm guilty of this too, but when I look up and see 3-4 people staring down at their phones I put mine away. It's a really stark image. We are blind. It doesn't matter than the screen isn't yet mounted on our faces, we are already so oblivious to the power it holds over us. I'm staring at this screen but I should be staring at the beautiful view out of my window. So I might go do that now!

I appreciate this comment - I'm going to walk outside and do the same.

Tonight I did talk to real people (strangers at a bar) and had a good long conversation about the world. We need that. But also just to look away from the screen and see each other, That is most important. Thanks.

Will Reddit help or does it only provide a distraction from misery?

I don‘t remember most of the things I‘ve read on reddit but I definitely remember the games, books, music and shows I discovered through reddit. Or that it helped me to keep up to date when covid appeared. Or how I kept up with the developments in the Ukraine last year. While lots of reddit browsing is time wasting, it also enabled a lot of discovery for me that I didn‘t get elsewhere so far.

I agree 100%. I've learned many useful things that are hard to learn elsewhere, like personal finance and cooking.

Sure, I can look up recipes pretty much anywhere on the internet, but the community for cooking tips has been awesome. (Simple example: "you should add nutmeg to make alfredo sauce taste better")

And you could not have found out about these things any other way than through Reddit?

If you're visiting r/funny and r/memes 99% of the time sure.

But it also has great hobbyist communities. r/functionalprint and r/fixmyprint are amazing for 3d printer enthusiasts, for example.

It's a bit like criticizing the library for stocking copies of MAD magazines.

I agree with everything except the last sentence. Reddit does want to push you towards the use of /r/all (or similar) because that's they get more time in front of your eyeballs. The design of the product is pushing you towards that view of everything, so that you end up doing the endless-scrolling thing.

I'm interested by the direction Lemmy (or a similar system) might take. At the moment it's a Reddit-lite clone, which is completely reasonable because that's what people are looking for. But maybe with a different set of incentives (presumably more user-centric), over time it might morph into something different?

This is true, but it's their job to get a balance between guiding new users towards building routine and getting post-onboard users to the content that is more engaging for their personal preferences. They have to have _something_ on the frontpage and the reality is that the subs that serve the most shallow content are the ones that will drive early repeat engagement.

What they've been missing for an age is an equivalent to Twitter's retweets. Retweets deliver you straight to the door of content providers via the people you already follow. You can start with Brian Cox and NDT as signup recommends, and make your way to your preferred scientific niches pretty quickly.

Reddit has crossposts that barely scratch the surface and often make the source sub almost invisible.

I quit after I finished my PhD and suddenly I had a lot more free time. And actually, if you go back you notice it's actually a lot of recycled content anyways. And the conversation isn't interesting nor is the content driving any kind of positive thought process. Life is much better without Reddit. I would rather go swim laps in the pool or something. Even the argument about the small subreddits being nice isn't true. Because it's people who would rather talk about their hobby then do it. Which is fine. But it's not for me.

Did you apply the same question to your TV viewing? What about movies? Video games? Reddit is entertainment. Do you enjoy reading it? Then it's enriched you about as much as those other activities.

Yes. I quit mindlessly watching TV long before I stopped using Reddit or reading low quality newspapers. Probably around 15 years ago? Streaming services became usable here (in Norway) a few years later and they lead to me (well, me and my wife) spending even less time watching TV. Things became a bit more structured. We usually watch the news at 1900 on the public broadcaster here in Norway (NRK), and then perhaps a movie, a documentary or a couple of episodes of some TV series.

About 3-4 days out of the week we only watch the news broadcast, and then spend time downstairs in our hobby spaces. I build electronics, 3D print stuff, program etc, and my wife does various textile projects. Some days we spend a good 4-5 hours just making stuff. Or we go for bike rides.

In fact, the only reason we still have basic TV service is because my wife likes to watch baking and sewing shows live (as they air for the first time). (Can't remember the name of these shows ... "Great British Bake-off"?). About once or twice per year I try watching movies on regular cable TV (well, IP based "cable") and I find the experience really annoying with all the commercial breaks.

Spending less time just mindlessly scrolling through reddit or low quality "news" sources also means I have more time to read books. I don't think I've read this many books per year since I was in my 20s.

I find the things that I've replaced Reddit (and other things) with far more enriching and fun. I regret not being more selective about what I spend my time on in the past. I've wasted a lot of time on things I didn't enjoy all that much.

I absolutely do waste time on Reddit, but I've learned so much about helpful topics: personal finance, cooking, parenting, etc.

Personally, I need some time each day to relax, which involves passive content consumption. Between watching TV, reading the news, or reading Reddit, I would argue that Reddit is the "least bad" option.

You're right that I'm not getting that time back, but it's not time I would have used productively anyway, and at least I'm learning something.

>I need some time each day to relax, which involves passive content consumption.

"Passive content consumption" is a very recent phenomenon which doesn't allow our brains to relax and process information. It merely maintains the state of over-stimulation.

You need it a lot less than you think! Go and do something else, like stare out of your window, or sharpen your kitchen knives, or fix your todo list.

Agree. Right after reading your comment, I went and run shreddit (https://github.com/andrewbanchich/shreddit) over my now unexisting account. I think is time for me to get good habits again and wake up from the enchant of "social media".

Reminds me of XKCD 862 https://xkcd.com/862/ The alt text actually seemed like a good idea for limiting habitual checking.

I found the same issue myself, so I deleted my Reddit account a few years ago. Nowadays, I don't check any online newspapers and get my world news from the Reuters website.

If you can't remember what you read yesterday on the newspaper the problem might not lie with the newspaper.

Well, isn't it perhaps a bit of a chicken and egg problem? What came first? The bad habit of skimming a lot of low quality nonsense news or the fact that it meant so little to you that you can't really remember what you read later?

When I look at the traffic even from Hacker News you can kind of tell that most people who click on links even here, just spend a few seconds looking at your content and then disengage. Especially if you don't provide people with lots of pictures and "hooks" that allow people to engage more in some way. Give people a wall of text and they'll barely skim what you write.

It’s so hard, life is full of boring moments.

closes thread

It did highlight to me how often I circle back to Reddit almost subconsciously when idling surfing the internet. Will need to do something about that…

I uninstalled Apollo yesterday and I’m kind of embarrassed at how many times since I’ve tried to open it without even thinking about it.

It’s only when the app isn’t there that your brain snaps out of it and you wonder what the hell you’re doing.

I think it’s a testament to just how good Apollo is, and how addictive reddit can be sans the dark patterns.

I haven't uninstalled, but I had to hide my Sync icon in a folder I open rarely, to keep from clicking it out of habit.

Staying away from Reddit hasn't been too hard but it gets new stuff faster than the newspapers or other media sites I regularly go to. This forces me to slow down and read the other sites' articles more thoroughly which is probably good.

I did the same with other social media apps like Instagram a while ago. What I realized is that since then, I am filling up the time spent on those platforms otherwise. Now I am constantly refreshing hacker news or my YouTube subscription feed instead. So while it's still procrastination it's at least a little more productive and without ads.

Absolutely this. I’ve only had a single Home Screen since Apple added the App Library. I’ve always had Apollo in the same position. I swapped it out with my grocery app. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve opened that grocery app without thinking.

I put an app timer in my Digital Wellbeing settings for RiF, with 0 minutes allowed per day. I'm surprised how many times I had to see that "You've exceeded your minutes for today" message just from pure habitual clicking.

I deleted Boost app from my phone, to not mindlessly open it. Coincidentally Boost is an alternative app to access Reddit through their API.

Luckily I don't use reddit from my laptop, due to to horrible experience. So no muscle memory to trick me into visiting.

I added reddit.com to my ad blocker and the amount of times I saw the message that the site is blocked is embarrassing high. Really highlighted to me how opening up reddit is basically muscle memory.

Use e.g. LeechBlock. As soon as going to a site is muscle memory it is impossible to prevent for me.

>Will need to do something about that…

set your browser to delete cookies on exit, and restart it often enough. If anything can be access with a browser, don't install 'apps'

I did that too, I moved the bookmark on my phone, helps a lot.

URL-rewriting browser extension.

I mod a few subs (largest is just over half a million.) While they're relatively easy to mod, I really enjoyed not having to check a queue, not having to deal with a lot of whiners in modmail, and definitely not having to deal with trolls and spammers. Pretty nice.

I blew that time today on browsing through a Lemmy node, but for the next two days I'm going to focus that time elsewhere... maybe I'll make fresh pasta.

So basically not even a temporary hobby?

The IPO was a blatant attempt to pluck out all the golden eggs by killing the goose, what happened yesterday was a very natural and predictable outcome of that event.

The blackout made me aware how much I visited reddit. And a lot less reddit is probably a good thing. Am gonna lurk more than actively participate probably.

Don't lurk! It wastes nearly as much time and mental energy as being an active participant. It took me ages to break my Reddit lurking habit, long after I'd deleted my account.

I quit Reddit, what, two years ago, was it? This past week, I did what I've been putting off; I erased all my posts, while the API is still there.

I've also spent a day away from Reddit, but unfortunately, Lemmy has completely replaced my Reddit addiction. Net effect is that nothing has changed, and I bet I'm not the only one in this boat.

Replacing Reddit with Lemmy is like giving Meth to a cocaine addict.

is there a decent mobile client?

Jerboa [1,2] by official Lemmy developers works pretty well for me.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.jerboa/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jerboa&hl=...

> I’ve spent a day away from tobacco, but unfortunately weed has completely replaced that addiction

> Do you know a good dealer?

haha ok, but I'm not addicted. It just gives me something to read when I'm waiting for things like the bus or dr office etc

A bit hyperbolic in their narration. I think the ones here talking about how addictive it was and how you keep reaching for it bring more to the table.

I deleted my account and removed it from Firefox's quick link. I also uninstalled Instagram and Facebook to not replace it with mindless scrolling.

And here I am, visiting other pages a bit too much.

I guess it'll take some time to disconnect completely from it and replace it with something useful.

I'm not a redditor, not even a lurker, but I'm going to repost my sub here from a few days ago, how I was banned from WSB in a matter of one post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36262192

And follow this up to say that in the days after that, I was subjected to a vast array of hate and abuse, including things like "groomers should die", etc. when I wasn't even beginning to an express a political opinion about what Target sells or who should sell what bathing suit, or anything like that.

I was super happy to see the (stupid, pointless, pathetically idiotic) "strike" go into effect the next day, because my fondest wish would be for that entire ecosystem to fall over and choke on its own vomit.

I have been off Reddit for almost a year, it’s too addictive. The thing that worked for me was the iOS ScreenTime feature with a thrown away PIN.

Wow, so you don’t know the pin… is there even a way to get around that short of resetting? I use screen time without a pin, the pop up is just enough to pull me away from w/e is I’m trying to block. I also block certain sites completely with Ad blockers. They’re sites that are unusable without an adblocker so if I try to disable the Adblock it’s not worth it.

Read, Eval, Diagree, Downvote, Insult Treadmill

I've attempted to quit social media several times, so this article really resonates with me but breaking away completely is difficult. Often, online searches steer me towards threads on Reddit, which makes it hard not to get pulled in. I believe it's train yourself to use these platforms intentionally, rather than just mindlessly scrolling.

blackout reminded me of checking other websites which is nice change of pace. Probably reduce time in reddit in the future

A few years ago I noticed the phenomenon where I would walk outside and couldn't for the life of me remember what I'd been doing for the few hours. It happened a few times and then I realized that this happens when I was on Reddit (or other similar online endless scrolling).

I posted this already on a similar thread. I’m very aware during deliberately not visiting Reddit these last two days, that I’m missing the ‘dopamine hits’ from the controversial posts and outrage bait more than the loss of information and discovery.

I should have spent the day away from reddit but I didn't, and actually this was the best experience I've had using the site in a while!

there's significantly less politics, I discovered some cool new subreddits due to so many of the biggest communities being closed, threads were pleasantly concise, and I just felt like it was a much more mentally healthy scrolling experience.

it's too bad that this is all going to end in a couple days and it'll be back to normal except without rif.

You can always hide all those subreddits that don't appeal to you.

If you are going to 'leave' the platform, do not take just one day. Delete your entire account forever.

Staying on the platform just prolongs the addiction and replacing it with another social network is not the solution.