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Comment by mason55 | Hacker News Reader

I just spastically double-click words all over the page while I'm reading. No real rhyme or reason to it, it doesn't help me read or anything. It's mostly just an unconscious tick.

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As well as double-clicking words to highlight sentences/paragraphs, I repeatedly right-click on any webpage / desktop I am on. A while back I took some time to figure out why I do it and realize that it's an easy go-to for checking performance of your computer (ie system latency). The coolest part about this is that these days all menu items, during peak performance, fade in over 50ms or so and when it beings to slow down its immediately noticeable.

I come from a background of a lot of CLI, especially to remote systems over ssh, and the latency from when i type a character to when it shows up is a really good predictor for the system's IO if its being overloaded.

I guess this is also handy when doing remote desktop or in a VM -- but I never do that.

I too do this, and sometimes compulsively drag large portions of highlighted text around as well. Annoyingly, Opera seems to open in new tabs any links in the highlighted area when the dragged text is released. This has led to me up/down voting everything at various sites on more than a few occasions (but ah, they shouldn't have GETs do anything anyway, I say :)).

Sometimes when you highlight and drag some text, it stays at 100% size so you can fit it exactly into where you dragged it from. If you select too much the OS resizes it to something like 80%. I often get lost trying to get as much as I can at 100%.

Drives my boss crazy.

I do this constantly. I believe it's likely due to my ADHD.

YES thank you, I am diagnosed with ADHD and I have this quirky behavior and many more. If you guys are selecting text over and over, it is very likely (but not always the case--I'm no psychiatrist!) that you have ADHD and should consider getting screened/diagnosed if you haven't done so already. It's nice to know as it is a part of your identity (at least for me it is) and you'll learn to live with the symptoms. I actually enjoy having ADHD and selecting text compulsively :) Consider reading "Delivered from Distraction" by Hallowell.

Cheers, keb0b0

I do the same. But I've figured out it's a leftover habit from the olden days when macs used to crash all the time. I kept my mouse moving to know there was still LIFE beneath that screen. Pointer used to freeze when the system did. God, I'm old.

This gets annoying with sites that have actions defined when you click on words, or bring up a popup window when you click, etc. :(

I also hate when clicking in "empty" space takes me to an advertiser's site.

Oh my god, yes! I am a compulsive margin-clicker. I ostensibly do this to make sure that the browser page has focus, but really it's really just a tick. I love TheOnion.com, but they kill me with their ads-in-the-margins.

What I typically do is fire up Chrome developer tools, and DESTROY the offending node. I find this therapeutic. :)

There was a blow-up-the-page book market posted to HNa while back... you might find some pleasure in tthat if someone can dig it up.

You mean this? http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/07/blow-up-the-web-with-font-b... Yeah, I played with that for hours.

I thought it was just me. Really bugs my wife when she's trying to read something over my shoulder.

I do it too. Some sites (nytimes) trigger actions on the select that drive me crazy. In retrospect, that's probably when I noticed that I was doing it.

I do this too sometimes. Sometimes I accidentally click a link and that is when I notice... otherwise it is mostly unconscious.

Me too. All sorts of weird "OCD" things like that.

I bought a "silent" mouse just so I could do this at work, and borrowed the noisy one for home.

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