I took the protest as an opportunity to quit my 12 year Reddit addiction cold turkey and never came back, seems like I'm not the only one. Sometimes I miss /r/houseplants but I'm better off overall.
Yeah it has an addictive dark side. Also most of the user comments went to shit years ago. But overall a net win for me.
Last week I clicked some link leading to reddit, I was surprised I am still logged in.
Serious question, because I’m not sure I understand. Hope it doesn’t come off as antagonistic. I too wonder if the negative things Reddit does to me outweigh the positive, but never considered it was unique to Reddit rather than being true about all anonymous online communities.
Hacker News has much less content and less content diversity. I very rarely go beyond the first page of HN, and only like a quarter of the posts at most are something that I'm interested in enough to actually spend time looking at.
The velocity of HN is also much lower than Reddit. If I check the front page again an hour from now it'll be mostly the same set of posts.
It also helps that comment sections here are smaller and that HN doesn't have pictures or other easily-bingeable content.
HN is also less likely to get me worked up over nothing. Partially because the comment section is more mature, partially because the community doesn't regularly discuss topics that get me worked up.
Edit: Another thing that came to mind: If I do accidentally visit HN too often, seeing nothing new on the front page make me realize I'm checking it too often and helps me realize I need to focus better or seek out something more productive to do.
7 years clean, I'm never going back.
I mainly read Hacker News more than I used to and started reading Ask a Manager[0] regularly.
A big benefit of both is that they aren't "bottomless" like Reddit so I won't waste too much time on them.
AAM fulfills my desire to learn about others' lived experiences, but the relatively narrow topic range means it becomes uninteresting if I read the archives for too long.
One big place I’ve found Reddit helpful in recent years is a niche community about a chronic illness I have. Initially for collecting more information and insights than I can get in a 15 minute doctor appointment, then a sense of community and realizing I’m not alone, and then over time by giving me a chance to pay it forward by sharing information with others. Last few weeks I’ve realized ChatGPT can be helpful for the first one. The second I’ve started to shy away from because I’ve realized I don’t want the condition to be a core part of my identity, and the third there might be better ways to achieve (likely offline).
Think you’ve inspired me to get off of it for a while. Thanks!
But your question isn’t atypical, which is weird when you think about it in comparison to any other addiction. If an alcoholic said they stopped drinking, asking what drug they replaced booze with would be a weird and possibly insensitive question.
That being said your interpretation is much more charitable, although I also don't currently feel like I have a great answer to that variant.
I've definitely made an effort to get out of the house more often, and I've been better at getting my less interesting house projects done.
I have a few hobbies I want to explore further (especially music stuff) but that's on hold while I job search after making the decision to move on from contract work. (Hobbies tend to consist of "learn a new thing" and my brain will always gravitate towards learning a new thing over stressful work like job searching.)
For many, it seems like religion fills an important void in their life. When they imagine me without a religion, they see me having that hole. But I never felt an absence in the first place. I didn't adopt a religion the same way most people don't, say, adopt a giraffe. I never woke up with "the pain of giraffe-less-ness", so never decided to get a giraffe.
It would be great if there was an easier way to share subscriptions.
BPS Space, Simone Giertz, Stuff Made Here, DIY Perks, Aaed Musa, This does not compute, rctestflight, Tom Stanton, lftkryo, upir, Nerdtronic, Design Prototype Test
And then just stuff I like - Adrian's Digital Basement, Cathode Ray Dude, Retro Recipes, Tim Traveller, Dave's Garage
https://www.youtube.com/@BPSspace
https://www.youtube.com/@simonegiertz
https://www.youtube.com/@StuffMadeHere
https://www.youtube.com/@DIYPerks
https://www.youtube.com/@aaedmusa
https://www.youtube.com/@ThisDoesNotCompute
https://www.youtube.com/@rctestflight
https://www.youtube.com/@TomStantonEngineering
https://www.youtube.com/@lftkryo
https://www.youtube.com/@upir_upir
https://www.youtube.com/@Nerdtronic
https://www.youtube.com/@DesignPrototypeTest
https://www.youtube.com/@adriansdigitalbasement
https://www.youtube.com/@CathodeRayDude
https://www.youtube.com/@RetroRecipes
ZackFreedman is another good marker, although he can be a bit goofy.
If you like mechanical things in general, both SouthMainAuto and HVACRVIDEOS are fantastic.
What a blast from the past! Thanks for sharing.
Peetube would be something very different which, to my surprise, doesn’t exist.
Mindfully heading to reddit (relying on various subreddits as a resource for product reviews or technical support) is even more varied: gaming sites instead of r/games, googling for product reviews instead of heading to a niche subreddit, etc. I'll also visit reddit if it's a promising google result, but resist the old habit to add "site:reddit".
Honestly once you break the (to me addictive) loop of opening reddit/lemmy you're not missing out on much. Whenever I get a reddit search result it redirects to my selfhosted libreddit instance (connect through tailscale). Public libreddit instances are basically always broken, but a single user one which is just used for the occasional search result works perfectly fine.