6 ms·

My desire to read the comments sections on reddit and increasingly on here completely baffle me. If I was sat in a room and the people in there were saying thin

My desire to read the comments sections on reddit and increasingly on here completely baffle me. If I was sat in a room and the people in there were saying things as stupid as I see on reddit I would leave that room and wonder how the hell I ended up in it. What possible reason do I have to be wasting time reading the barely formed thoughts of what must be predominantly teenagers. Yet ... I find myself back there.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sureglymop 4y ago
An idea i had a while ago is a HN client which will only show the comments after one has completely read the article. I don't know how to go about it yet, but could be really cool.
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  While at it, force all articles into something like reader-mode.
zhdc1 4y ago
> Yet ... I find myself back there. Agreed. There have been entire days where I've found myself distracted from completing otherwise pressing deadlines. What I've found is that the activity I do first when I start my 'working day' dictates what I do. So, if I show up at work and open Hacker News or Tweetdeck, there's a not-so-insignificant chance that I'll find myself distracted one way or another for the rest of the day. However, if I stick to a set schedule, there's a good chance that I have a productive day. What worries me is that these distractions build on one another. So, if I start on Hacker News, and stay off of it for the rest of the day, I can still find myself spending a good chunk of time going through unimportant emails or browsing various news feeds.
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  > So, if I show up at work and open Hacker News or Tweetdeck, there's a not-so-insignificant chance that I'll find myself distracted one way or another for the rest of the day. However, if I stick to a set schedule, there's a good chance that I have a productive day Do you think this is mediated by your mental state, instead of directly causal? I noticed this for myself: I was recently diagnosed with a CFS-like issue and a combination of drugs and identifying food triggers has made a huge difference in my level of mental energy. I still monitor and manage it day-to-day, and I noticed that when my inflammation is up, I am a complete sucker for YouTube videos and mindlessly rescrolling through Twitter. It's been really valuable to be able to reframe the problem as downstream of something more manageable.
  - zhdc1 4y ago
    > Do you think this is mediated by your mental state, instead of directly causal? It’s causal. I’ve found that my productivity level is relatively constant when I maintain a routine. The quality of my work may change depending on other factors, but I still make meaningful progress. However, if I break my routine by checking social media early on in the day, there’s a good chance that my productivity will subsequently go down. I haven’t found anything to suggest that I am more or less likely to do this when I am, for instance, not feeling well. One caveat. I don’t have to deal with anything you have to deal with, so I can’t make an apples to apples comparison.
    - wutbrodo 4y ago
      > One caveat. I don’t have to deal with anything you have to deal with, so I can’t make an apples to apples comparison. Sure of course, I'm quite clear on what was going on in my case, but I was wondering how broad the dynamic might be. Thanks for your thoughts!
bin_bash 4y ago
I'm in my mid-30's. I quit reading Reddit because in pretty much all the subreddits I was in I started to feel old. People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience I have now. I don't have this experience on HN really. I suspect I'm closer to the average age here. There is the occasional poor opinion but it usually gets downvoted pretty hard. Even people that I disagree with I learn a lot from. Today in this thread I learned about how classic Christianity thought about doubt for example. Of course a lot of people are anonymous here (including me) so people are much more bold with their opinions than they would be in person. Not discounting your experience, but to me I have a very different experience on HN than I do Reddit.
- eric_cc 4y ago
  No matter what the subreddit is, it’s full of radically far left political comments. They get upvoted and any attempt to provide reason gets downvoted. Not sure how it became this way but perhaps it’s as simple as what you say: > People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience They’re kids. Or perhaps it’s more sinister and coordinated. Either way, the political component of Reddit has made me abandon it. It’s unfortunate because I used to enjoy niche subs in the same way you would any other niche forum.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    I think it's mostly a case of people wishing utopia was achievable in their fantasy-land. But, it doesn't help that companies like Tencent have stakes in the company. If the CCP can get their hands on anything American, it'd be to their advantage to try to use it to contribute to the destabilization of our society.
  - smrtinsert 4y ago
    I'd love to hear what your definition of radical far left is.
    - ajmurmann 4y ago
      Not the parent, but still want to respond. I'd probably be seen as radical and far left myself, especially on social and environmental issues (I identify as neo-liberal though), but I'm pretty scared by how often I read calls to abandon "capitalism". It happens on almost every subreddit and even more scarry, I've heard it from other super smart younger people in person. I think some of this is to blame on corporatism in the US. Attacking capitalism as a whole strikes me as incredibly naive though and risks slaughtering the golden goose without any viable replacement.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I think tolerance for text is much higher than real life, I mean it's just text so you filter out 80% of the rest of what face to face communication is about.
zagrebian 4y ago
> things as stupid as I see on reddit The majority of comments I encounter on Reddit are jokes that are at least mildly amusing, and some of them are hilarious. If I had to describe Reddit comments with one word, I’d say funny, not stupid.
- dijonman2 4y ago
  I’m with GP, I find most reddit comments to be immature/ignorant.
- wnolens 4y ago
  The first year I spent on Reddit I thought so too. But those funny comments are often themselves memes, repeated in reply in similar contexts. Reddit has become one big circle jerk to my eyes. It's why I'm on HN, because I'm addicted but hate the community on Reddit.
  - zagrebian 4y ago
    > But those funny comments are often themselves memes, repeated in reply in similar contexts. Yeah, but they’re still funny. Better that than hate speech.
  - the_gipsy 4y ago
    Don't forget karma bots that simply repeat the top rating comment from the last submission of the same url.
bostonsre 4y ago
It kind of feels like some kind of idle loop where my mind has some spare cycles and it defaults to hacker news and similar stuff, then it goes down the rabbit hole once started. Just making it a little harder to view the sites seems to help me a lot. I add 127.0.0.1 <site> to my /etc/hosts file during work hours. I find myself looking at a broken page a couple times a day without even realizing how I got there, but it allows me to avoid the rabbit hole and just get back to work.
- dhosek 4y ago
  Is there a good MacOS¹/Unix-y way to automate this? (I’m guessing a crontab that swaps two versions of /etc/hosts is my best option but maybe there’s something more elegant?) ⸻ 1. I’m aware of ScreenTime, but it’s too easily overridden.
  - smokey_the_bear 4y ago
    I have a directory with a restricted hosts file and an empty one, and two aliases that just copy one of them to /etc I can turn it off whenever I want with one commandline, but it’s enough to keep me from falling into the rabbit hole accidentally
  - cocacola1 4y ago
    I use HeyFocus: https://heyfocus.com/ https://heyfocus.com/ I bought it when it was a 1 time $20 purchase. You can define what times you want to block (Monday - Friday from 9am-5pm, for example). You can also lock preferences for when the Focus is active so you can’t change it. There’s also options for adding breaks. It’s worked well for me. I know a little about myself and I need something like this to force me from being distracted. Whenever I find a new site, I add it to the list of blocked sites. You can also block apps, or whitelist sites so everything except a few sites is blocked.
wutbrodo 4y ago
This is what bedevils me about Twitter. I'm rigorous about pruning my Following list to keep it intellectually honest, so my main feed is pretty great. I end up reading replies to thought-provoking or provocative tweets because there's often additional context or good-faith rebuttals in there. But holy crap, those nuggets are buried among the ravings of the absolute stupidest people in the world. It feels poisonous to my epistemology, but the good stuff is _so_ valuable. I suppose the solution is to try to pick topics that nobody cares about? This was tough when Covid was an informational lifeline, but maybe I can just change my interests from economics to... Quantum physics or something.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sureglymop 4y ago

An idea i had a while ago is a HN client which will only show the comments after one has completely read the article. I don't know how to go about it yet, but could be really cool.

the_gipsy 4y ago
While at it, force all articles into something like reader-mode.

zhdc1 4y ago

> Yet ... I find myself back there. Agreed. There have been entire days where I've found myself distracted from completing otherwise pressing deadlines. What I've found is that the activity I do first when I start my 'working day' dictates what I do. So, if I show up at work and open Hacker News or Tweetdeck, there's a not-so-insignificant chance that I'll find myself distracted one way or another for the rest of the day. However, if I stick to a set schedule, there's a good chance that I have a productive day. What worries me is that these distractions build on one another. So, if I start on Hacker News, and stay off of it for the rest of the day, I can still find myself spending a good chunk of time going through unimportant emails or browsing various news feeds.

wutbrodo 4y ago
> So, if I show up at work and open Hacker News or Tweetdeck, there's a not-so-insignificant chance that I'll find myself distracted one way or another for the rest of the day. However, if I stick to a set schedule, there's a good chance that I have a productive day Do you think this is mediated by your mental state, instead of directly causal? I noticed this for myself: I was recently diagnosed with a CFS-like issue and a combination of drugs and identifying food triggers has made a huge difference in my level of mental energy. I still monitor and manage it day-to-day, and I noticed that when my inflammation is up, I am a complete sucker for YouTube videos and mindlessly rescrolling through Twitter. It's been really valuable to be able to reframe the problem as downstream of something more manageable.
- zhdc1 4y ago
  > Do you think this is mediated by your mental state, instead of directly causal? It’s causal. I’ve found that my productivity level is relatively constant when I maintain a routine. The quality of my work may change depending on other factors, but I still make meaningful progress. However, if I break my routine by checking social media early on in the day, there’s a good chance that my productivity will subsequently go down. I haven’t found anything to suggest that I am more or less likely to do this when I am, for instance, not feeling well. One caveat. I don’t have to deal with anything you have to deal with, so I can’t make an apples to apples comparison.
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    > One caveat. I don’t have to deal with anything you have to deal with, so I can’t make an apples to apples comparison. Sure of course, I'm quite clear on what was going on in my case, but I was wondering how broad the dynamic might be. Thanks for your thoughts!

bin_bash 4y ago

I'm in my mid-30's. I quit reading Reddit because in pretty much all the subreddits I was in I started to feel old. People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience I have now. I don't have this experience on HN really. I suspect I'm closer to the average age here. There is the occasional poor opinion but it usually gets downvoted pretty hard. Even people that I disagree with I learn a lot from. Today in this thread I learned about how classic Christianity thought about doubt for example. Of course a lot of people are anonymous here (including me) so people are much more bold with their opinions than they would be in person. Not discounting your experience, but to me I have a very different experience on HN than I do Reddit.

eric_cc 4y ago
No matter what the subreddit is, it’s full of radically far left political comments. They get upvoted and any attempt to provide reason gets downvoted. Not sure how it became this way but perhaps it’s as simple as what you say: > People sound like I did 10-15 years ago when I lacked the life experience They’re kids. Or perhaps it’s more sinister and coordinated. Either way, the political component of Reddit has made me abandon it. It’s unfortunate because I used to enjoy niche subs in the same way you would any other niche forum.
- seanw444 4y ago
  I think it's mostly a case of people wishing utopia was achievable in their fantasy-land. But, it doesn't help that companies like Tencent have stakes in the company. If the CCP can get their hands on anything American, it'd be to their advantage to try to use it to contribute to the destabilization of our society.
- smrtinsert 4y ago
  I'd love to hear what your definition of radical far left is.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    Not the parent, but still want to respond. I'd probably be seen as radical and far left myself, especially on social and environmental issues (I identify as neo-liberal though), but I'm pretty scared by how often I read calls to abandon "capitalism". It happens on almost every subreddit and even more scarry, I've heard it from other super smart younger people in person. I think some of this is to blame on corporatism in the US. Attacking capitalism as a whole strikes me as incredibly naive though and risks slaughtering the golden goose without any viable replacement.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I think tolerance for text is much higher than real life, I mean it's just text so you filter out 80% of the rest of what face to face communication is about.

zagrebian 4y ago

> things as stupid as I see on reddit The majority of comments I encounter on Reddit are jokes that are at least mildly amusing, and some of them are hilarious. If I had to describe Reddit comments with one word, I’d say funny, not stupid.

dijonman2 4y ago
I’m with GP, I find most reddit comments to be immature/ignorant.
wnolens 4y ago
The first year I spent on Reddit I thought so too. But those funny comments are often themselves memes, repeated in reply in similar contexts. Reddit has become one big circle jerk to my eyes. It's why I'm on HN, because I'm addicted but hate the community on Reddit.
- zagrebian 4y ago
  > But those funny comments are often themselves memes, repeated in reply in similar contexts. Yeah, but they’re still funny. Better that than hate speech.
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  Don't forget karma bots that simply repeat the top rating comment from the last submission of the same url.

bostonsre 4y ago

It kind of feels like some kind of idle loop where my mind has some spare cycles and it defaults to hacker news and similar stuff, then it goes down the rabbit hole once started. Just making it a little harder to view the sites seems to help me a lot. I add 127.0.0.1 <site> to my /etc/hosts file during work hours. I find myself looking at a broken page a couple times a day without even realizing how I got there, but it allows me to avoid the rabbit hole and just get back to work.

dhosek 4y ago
Is there a good MacOS¹/Unix-y way to automate this? (I’m guessing a crontab that swaps two versions of /etc/hosts is my best option but maybe there’s something more elegant?) ⸻ 1. I’m aware of ScreenTime, but it’s too easily overridden.
- smokey_the_bear 4y ago
  I have a directory with a restricted hosts file and an empty one, and two aliases that just copy one of them to /etc I can turn it off whenever I want with one commandline, but it’s enough to keep me from falling into the rabbit hole accidentally
- cocacola1 4y ago
  I use HeyFocus: https://heyfocus.com/ https://heyfocus.com/ I bought it when it was a 1 time $20 purchase. You can define what times you want to block (Monday - Friday from 9am-5pm, for example). You can also lock preferences for when the Focus is active so you can’t change it. There’s also options for adding breaks. It’s worked well for me. I know a little about myself and I need something like this to force me from being distracted. Whenever I find a new site, I add it to the list of blocked sites. You can also block apps, or whitelist sites so everything except a few sites is blocked.

wutbrodo 4y ago

This is what bedevils me about Twitter. I'm rigorous about pruning my Following list to keep it intellectually honest, so my main feed is pretty great. I end up reading replies to thought-provoking or provocative tweets because there's often additional context or good-faith rebuttals in there. But holy crap, those nuggets are buried among the ravings of the absolute stupidest people in the world. It feels poisonous to my epistemology, but the good stuff is _so_ valuable. I suppose the solution is to try to pick topics that nobody cares about? This was tough when Covid was an informational lifeline, but maybe I can just change my interests from economics to... Quantum physics or something.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]