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Damn man, I was just thinking about how annoying it is that I can't find anything fun to do on my phone. I just check HackerNews and painstakingly slowly type

Damn man, I was just thinking about how annoying it is that I can't find anything fun to do on my phone. I just check HackerNews and painstakingly slowly type comments in on here at 20 WPM. I can get a tiny glance at the world news through news.google, but that site gets worse every time I load it up. I tried paying for Apple News, but it was all low-quality clickbait. What were some of the things you had to wean yourself off? I can occasionally find an OK game to play for a little while, but the quality is really awful on phone games. Very frustrating considering my phone is probably 4x as powerful as a Nintendo Switch. I love to read books, but can't find enough good ones to keep it up. I'm not a big TV guy and especially hate YouTube.

kioleanu 4y ago
Regarding books, most of the books I read recently came from Reddit on /r/suggestmeabook - I am lazy, I just search for “page turner” on the sub, but I also like browsing and seeing people asking for subjects I wouldn’t have thought of.
gretch 4y ago
For games, I recommend small puzzle games. Microsoft freecell/solitaire. Match 3 games. There's some good ones, but you want the ones that really lean into being a mobile game and is not just a poor version of a full game (e.g. diablo immortal)
shigawire 4y ago
You could run emulators on your phone if you want better games.
Jarwain 4y ago
Most of the stories I read these days aren't technically books but web serials. It can be tricky sifting good stuff from meh, but royalroad's reviews are much better than Amazon's, and Topwebfiction is a pretty good ranking board (as long as the serial is still being updated. Although Worm's been finished for almost a decade now, and as of right now it's #10 on the weekly leaderboard)
dumpsterdiver 4y ago
> Damn man, I was just thinking about how annoying it is that I can't find anything fun to do on my phone. I feel your pain. As I've grown older I've found it more difficult to enjoy video games no matter what the medium is, and likewise the news seems to all read the same these days except for the "who" in the story. I used to think that no video game or movie could scare me, and I craved to find that, but then I played Friday Nights at Freddy's on VR and quickly found my limits. I know now that video games can scare me - to the point of involuntarily crying out in a high-pitched girly voice (for reference, I'm a middle-aged grey bearded man). So that wasn't my thing either. The games I enjoy these days (far and few in between - i.e. a weekend every blue moon) are pretty much the kind of games I made fun of fifteen years ago - Farmville type games. I don't want to examine a table and read the description of all of the worse-than-worthless items upon it (looking at you, heavy brass candlestick). I just want to water my plants and come back later. Maybe I'll come back fifteen minutes later while I'm still on my elliptical and get another round of harvesting in, or maybe I wont return for another month. These days I don't play games often, but when I do, I play very slow games. At this point I wouldn't put it past myself to play a game that revolves around paint drying.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Haha, yeah, VR horror is way too much for me too. Wow, it's like I'm actually being ripped apart by zombies! I still have a blast playing games on my consoles/PC FWIW, I just don't like any of the ones I've found on phones lately
MichaelCollins 4y ago
Just count yourself lucky you don't have many phone habits to kick. Don't try acquire more habits, you're already winning.
w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
For mobile games, I would suggest Amanita Design studio. Machinarium, Samorost 3, Creaks, Pilgrims, Botanicula. They are available on PC, gog.com, Steam, Apple Appstore. They are hand crafted point & click games.
barbazoo 4y ago
I'm still in the phase where I pick up my phone and then don't really know what to do with it. Mobile games are mostly garbage I found. Hopefully sometime soon my brain will internalize the fact that the phone doesn't provide a torrent of hormones anymore and let me not pick it up in the first place. One thing I'm trying is to put books in places I would previously do my doomscrolling in, coffee table by the couch for instance. Sometimes I pick up the book instead of the phone, read a page or 5 and then go do something else. Small win, yay me. The thing I have to learn is that the phone is a tool, not a way to spend time because I don't know what else to do, at least not the default way. To anyone working on maximizing user engagement, think about what you're doing to all of us, please.

kioleanu 4y ago

Regarding books, most of the books I read recently came from Reddit on /r/suggestmeabook - I am lazy, I just search for “page turner” on the sub, but I also like browsing and seeing people asking for subjects I wouldn’t have thought of.

gretch 4y ago

For games, I recommend small puzzle games. Microsoft freecell/solitaire. Match 3 games. There's some good ones, but you want the ones that really lean into being a mobile game and is not just a poor version of a full game (e.g. diablo immortal)

shigawire 4y ago

You could run emulators on your phone if you want better games.

Jarwain 4y ago

Most of the stories I read these days aren't technically books but web serials. It can be tricky sifting good stuff from meh, but royalroad's reviews are much better than Amazon's, and Topwebfiction is a pretty good ranking board (as long as the serial is still being updated. Although Worm's been finished for almost a decade now, and as of right now it's #10 on the weekly leaderboard)

dumpsterdiver 4y ago

> Damn man, I was just thinking about how annoying it is that I can't find anything fun to do on my phone. I feel your pain. As I've grown older I've found it more difficult to enjoy video games no matter what the medium is, and likewise the news seems to all read the same these days except for the "who" in the story. I used to think that no video game or movie could scare me, and I craved to find that, but then I played Friday Nights at Freddy's on VR and quickly found my limits. I know now that video games can scare me - to the point of involuntarily crying out in a high-pitched girly voice (for reference, I'm a middle-aged grey bearded man). So that wasn't my thing either. The games I enjoy these days (far and few in between - i.e. a weekend every blue moon) are pretty much the kind of games I made fun of fifteen years ago - Farmville type games. I don't want to examine a table and read the description of all of the worse-than-worthless items upon it (looking at you, heavy brass candlestick). I just want to water my plants and come back later. Maybe I'll come back fifteen minutes later while I'm still on my elliptical and get another round of harvesting in, or maybe I wont return for another month. These days I don't play games often, but when I do, I play very slow games. At this point I wouldn't put it past myself to play a game that revolves around paint drying.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
Haha, yeah, VR horror is way too much for me too. Wow, it's like I'm actually being ripped apart by zombies! I still have a blast playing games on my consoles/PC FWIW, I just don't like any of the ones I've found on phones lately

MichaelCollins 4y ago

Just count yourself lucky you don't have many phone habits to kick. Don't try acquire more habits, you're already winning.

w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago

For mobile games, I would suggest Amanita Design studio. Machinarium, Samorost 3, Creaks, Pilgrims, Botanicula. They are available on PC, gog.com, Steam, Apple Appstore. They are hand crafted point & click games.

barbazoo 4y ago

I'm still in the phase where I pick up my phone and then don't really know what to do with it. Mobile games are mostly garbage I found. Hopefully sometime soon my brain will internalize the fact that the phone doesn't provide a torrent of hormones anymore and let me not pick it up in the first place. One thing I'm trying is to put books in places I would previously do my doomscrolling in, coffee table by the couch for instance. Sometimes I pick up the book instead of the phone, read a page or 5 and then go do something else. Small win, yay me. The thing I have to learn is that the phone is a tool, not a way to spend time because I don't know what else to do, at least not the default way. To anyone working on maximizing user engagement, think about what you're doing to all of us, please.