"Minimalist" types often suggest turning your smartphone into B&W mode (usually an accessibility setting), precisely to reduce temptation to watch videos, social media, and such.
This all looks like snobbery to me, based on the association of monochrome paper with novels and writing and intellectual pursuits. In the 18th century we were scared that novels would fry the brains of young women, but times have changed and now it's iPhones that are sinful, and monochrome displays are virtuous, apparently.
I think I might be going off the idea of e-ink, as a result. But my particular interest is nostalgia for the illustrators of the 80s. I would like to see a full-color portrait format 16-inch e-ink display or tablet. Preferably as addicting as possible, because outside of actual pharmacology that word just means "fun".
Folks aren't calling it calmer because they're trying to look erudite, they're calling it calmer because modern applications put a lot of work into capturing your attention, and color is one of the tools they use (quite aggressively) to do so. Disabling color on the device isn't some way to look snobbish, it's a way to reduce the number of ways the device and applications are attempting to grab your attention.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/371d5ced520d40e984d626ae304...
(And on Gnome, I use and recommend the following: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4012/gnome-bedtime/)
I use triple-back for "grayscale" (because I found myself double-tapping the back accidentally all the time.)
I suppose for some people this is an issue and they genuinely want a physical solution in order to stop habitually doing things they don't like, like Odysseus wanting to be tied to the mast to avoid the Sirens.
I can predict how my behavior would change if I tried this: I'd be pissed off because you'd ruined my game of Heroes III (1999). And Brogue would be slightly less pretty. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead would be much the same, and news sites and coding wouldn't change much. So my reaction would just be "this is gloomy", it's not like I need freeing from a hypnotic spell.
If you don't want to use it then don't. I'm not even sure why you're in here arguing against it.
> People often believe that "other people can be persuaded, but not me. I’m the smart one. It’s only those other people over there that can’t control their thought."
https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-...
To recap, somebody mentioned addiction, to colors presumably, as a reason to prefer a monochrome display, and I thought that was ridiculous. So I said so. People didn't react well.
I've read a little part of the article. I don't much like the giant tech and social media companies. However, when I come to phrases like this:
> hijacking of the human mind
> hooking kids to send messages back and forth
I can't bear to continue wading through it. This is just moral panic. A marginal effect of keeping an audience's attention - sometimes - for a little while - is exaggerated by people who (again, like me) dislike the big tech companies, and described like an actual addictive drug. This seems dishonest. But perhaps they actually believe it. No doubt there have been studies that tell them what they want to hear.
But yeah, moral panic, or maybe virtue signalling, or tribalism - something like that is going on here, and realism suffers, and I don't like that, so I said something. I don't know if anybody appreciated me saying something, because maybe it was off-message, but I'm saying it anyway. I'm not claiming to be super-smart, I'm generally a foolish person, and I'm getting a lot of veiled insults here, I suppose because I pissed on your oddly monochrome strawberries.
Somebody mentioned addiction, not "to colors" but to regular content doomscrolling, smartphone overuse, and so on. And the idea was that a monochrome display of videos, social media apps, webpages, TikToks etc makes them less enticing (and thus helps with reducing their use).
This is not only far from ridiculous (then again, some find the idea of a round earth ridiculous too), but something that has both tried with reported success by tons of people, and also the subject of study:
True colors: Grayscale setting reduces screen time in college students
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03623319.2020.1...
Color me calm: Grayscale phone setting reduces anxiety and problematic smartphone use
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-02020-y
Suffering from problematic smartphone use? Why not use grayscale setting as an intervention! – An experimental study
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245195882...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245195882...
Billions spent in making content more addictive - including the use of color to drive emotion and provide dopamine hits.
>But yeah, moral panic, or maybe virtue signalling, or tribalism
Or <insert other random middlebrow dismissal term>
But, like I said, if you don't think it works, fine don't do. But when people explain why it works for them, don't diss them for using something that works.
Don't act like you're some perfect moral compass of everybody's experience. You started this thread with insults. And every comment you've made since includes them. Maybe grow up and accept that people like something _you've never tried before_.
Well, that's exactly what many social media addicts do need.
You say it like it is a bad thing. It is associated with novels and writing and intellectual pursuits, because it's less suitable for video/graphics focused social media, videos, and games.
>but times have changed and now it's iPhones that are sinful, and monochrome displays are virtuous, apparently.
False analogy aside, we already know TVs and then smartphones are addictive in a way older media never were. We already have studies about that, and we already have statistics about the dire consequences on teenagers and adults in many metrics.
So, your argument is a little like saying:
"In the 1940s and 50s we were scared that weed would fry the brains of young kids, but times have changed and now it's meth that is dangerous, and weed is ok, apparently".
Well, meth is hella dangerous, and that's a fact, even if they overblew the danger of weed in the 1940s.
However I made my iPhone black and white as suggested by others and I love it, I believe I'll keep it like this for a few days because it looks so cool. We will see if it leads to less usage.
Kids might cringe because it's "out of fashion", then go themselves watch even worse doomscrolling bait than YouTube shorts, like TikTok or whatever's next.
The main benefit of e-ink isn't what you mentioned in the post, imo, it is that it is great to read with in everything from direct sunlight to darkness, which is less straining for the eyes.
Having something mainly for reading is also a nice thing for us that easily get distracted away from that.