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Parasites. Period. This thing fills my head with a bunch of images from distant warped realities, summoned up out of thin air, it clogs my brain with a flood of

Parasites. Period. This thing fills my head with a bunch of images from distant warped realities, summoned up out of thin air, it clogs my brain with a flood of other voices, it keeps me moving constantly from one mental landscape to the next. It is precisely the fever dream experience of a parasitic host as the fiend sucks the life from it.

api 1y ago
Uninstall social media. At this point I’m pretty convinced that social media is a net negative for humanity with little redeeming quality. There was a time when it did connect people, like you could meet people or find old friends, but that was long ago deprioritized or even stripped away. Now it’s just a pure chum feed that serves up either brain rot trash or political fear and rage bait. TV was always full of crap but it also gave rise to great shows, to art and lasting culture. It was a medium of mixed value. Social media doesn’t even have that going for it unless some day people celebrate the great Pepe memes. Everything it creates is disposable low effort trash. Nothing worth keeping. You could delete it all and everyone would forget a week later.
- voidhorse 1y ago
  Hacker news is the only form of social media I use!
  - api 1y ago
    This is closer to a small forum. I guess I use some slacks and discords and a few lists but that’s about it.
    - bavell 1y ago
      Just HN for me as well. Used to visit slashdot before it turned to crap. Got off FB over a decade ago, no other SM accounts.
      - grugagag 1y ago
        Just be aware that people spend more time on HN than they really want to, HN even has a no procrastination setting where you block the access after some time spent here. So, aside dark patterns which HN does not have, it seems that the amount and frequency of information that cause some kind of dopamine disregulation.
  - bowsamic 1y ago
    HN is not any better. This site is full of attention grabbing mechanisms and clickbait
- pajamasam 1y ago
  > TV was always full of crap but it also gave rise to great shows, to art and lasting culture. True. It also bonded people together. I have fond memories of watching certain shows and sport matches with my family.
bavell 1y ago
Is it the phone or is it the internet you're lamenting? Sounds like the latter. I think TFA misattributes this as well.
- voidhorse 1y ago
  The internet is the venom delivered by the parasite as it feeds on my attention.
  - simianparrot 1y ago
    But it's not an autonomous entity. It's entirely passive if you turn it off, or uninstall all the apps that bother you. Stop feeding it your attention. Or are you claiming it's taken over your agency as well? If so -- and I mean this as respectfully as possible -- I'd hope you decide to talk with a healthcare professional about this problem.
    - endoblast 1y ago
      I used to think the same when people spoke of social media being addictive, but not any more. Drugs aren't autonomous either, however they clearly do remove some people's autonomy. I can well imagine now that a person could be addicted, particularly if he's grown up with it and has used it in the past to avoid facing his problems. “Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” ― Augustine of Hippo (Not saying anybody around here is wicked just remembering a striking quote)
      - voidhorse 1y ago
        To add to your point, there's science behind it. What makes a drug addictive is the fact that, after you start using it, certain behavioral patterns move from conscious brain centers to habit driven centers. That's what makes addiction so hard to break, couple that with further biological dependence formation. I would not be at all surprised if the same phenomenon can happen with internet addiction, if maybe in a more benign form as far as bodily consequences go. So no, drugs are not "autonomous" but to act like it's an easy matter to simply refuse to do them once you've started is an attitude that's shockingly ignorant of much of the modern understanding of addiction.
aeve890 1y ago
>Parasites. Period. This thing fills my head with a bunch of images from distant warped realities, summoned up out of thin air, it clogs my brain with a flood of other voices, It does all that by it self? Of course not. This thing is not autonomous. Every app that _fill your head_ was your choice to install, signup and OPEN every time. It's like saying drugs are parasites. Of course they aren't. Your choices made you addicted to the thing. What happened to agency? Everyone is now a slave of social media apps?
- trainerxr50 1y ago
  My phone doesn't do this because I don't install social media apps because I don't have the social media accounts to be bothered with. I never feel a compulsion to check google maps for instance. This parasite is easily exterminated.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y ago
  Tell that to all the bloatware pre installed on my phone. And my windows computer.
  - VonTum 1y ago
    As for bloatware-free phones: Fairphone. I've been using one for more than 4 years now, replaced the screen after dropping it, and I bought an extra battery to keep my gps alive on long ski trips.
topspin 1y ago
Pacifiers. For a while I watched dash cam video from police car chases. I'm over it now, but one interesting thing frequently happens: officers yank the drivers out, get them on the ground and cuff them. In most cases, the drivers are yelling about their phone. "My phone!" "My phone!" Cars is wrecked, they've got knees pressing them into the dirt, frequently injured, facing all manner of charges, and the one thing they care about it some phone. After sitting in the patrol car for a quite while, some officer opens the door to speak with them. Immediately: "Can I get my phone??" Sometimes they'll still have a phone after being cuffed and detained. They will nearly dislocate joints to thumb their phones continuously while cuffed. They will not stop until someone takes it. I don't know...
- npteljes 1y ago
  Might be that they are trying to contact somebody? Phones are also communication devices.
pxmpxm 1y ago
You know that is you, not the phone, that is desperately looking for a distraction and a different reality. I don't understand why it's ever so trendy to do this performative i-have-minimal-agency-in-my-existence bit when it comes to smartphones; swap that last word with "TV" and the same people professing it would smirk - presumably because that's an old timey, rather than a très trendy, thing to be part of.

api 1y ago

Uninstall social media. At this point I’m pretty convinced that social media is a net negative for humanity with little redeeming quality. There was a time when it did connect people, like you could meet people or find old friends, but that was long ago deprioritized or even stripped away. Now it’s just a pure chum feed that serves up either brain rot trash or political fear and rage bait. TV was always full of crap but it also gave rise to great shows, to art and lasting culture. It was a medium of mixed value. Social media doesn’t even have that going for it unless some day people celebrate the great Pepe memes. Everything it creates is disposable low effort trash. Nothing worth keeping. You could delete it all and everyone would forget a week later.

voidhorse 1y ago
Hacker news is the only form of social media I use!
- api 1y ago
  This is closer to a small forum. I guess I use some slacks and discords and a few lists but that’s about it.
  - bavell 1y ago
    Just HN for me as well. Used to visit slashdot before it turned to crap. Got off FB over a decade ago, no other SM accounts.
    - grugagag 1y ago
      Just be aware that people spend more time on HN than they really want to, HN even has a no procrastination setting where you block the access after some time spent here. So, aside dark patterns which HN does not have, it seems that the amount and frequency of information that cause some kind of dopamine disregulation.
- bowsamic 1y ago
  HN is not any better. This site is full of attention grabbing mechanisms and clickbait
pajamasam 1y ago
> TV was always full of crap but it also gave rise to great shows, to art and lasting culture. True. It also bonded people together. I have fond memories of watching certain shows and sport matches with my family.

bavell 1y ago

Is it the phone or is it the internet you're lamenting? Sounds like the latter. I think TFA misattributes this as well.

voidhorse 1y ago
The internet is the venom delivered by the parasite as it feeds on my attention.
- simianparrot 1y ago
  But it's not an autonomous entity. It's entirely passive if you turn it off, or uninstall all the apps that bother you. Stop feeding it your attention. Or are you claiming it's taken over your agency as well? If so -- and I mean this as respectfully as possible -- I'd hope you decide to talk with a healthcare professional about this problem.
  - endoblast 1y ago
    I used to think the same when people spoke of social media being addictive, but not any more. Drugs aren't autonomous either, however they clearly do remove some people's autonomy. I can well imagine now that a person could be addicted, particularly if he's grown up with it and has used it in the past to avoid facing his problems. “Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” ― Augustine of Hippo (Not saying anybody around here is wicked just remembering a striking quote)
    - voidhorse 1y ago
      To add to your point, there's science behind it. What makes a drug addictive is the fact that, after you start using it, certain behavioral patterns move from conscious brain centers to habit driven centers. That's what makes addiction so hard to break, couple that with further biological dependence formation. I would not be at all surprised if the same phenomenon can happen with internet addiction, if maybe in a more benign form as far as bodily consequences go. So no, drugs are not "autonomous" but to act like it's an easy matter to simply refuse to do them once you've started is an attitude that's shockingly ignorant of much of the modern understanding of addiction.

aeve890 1y ago

>Parasites. Period. This thing fills my head with a bunch of images from distant warped realities, summoned up out of thin air, it clogs my brain with a flood of other voices, It does all that by it self? Of course not. This thing is not autonomous. Every app that _fill your head_ was your choice to install, signup and OPEN every time. It's like saying drugs are parasites. Of course they aren't. Your choices made you addicted to the thing. What happened to agency? Everyone is now a slave of social media apps?

trainerxr50 1y ago
My phone doesn't do this because I don't install social media apps because I don't have the social media accounts to be bothered with. I never feel a compulsion to check google maps for instance. This parasite is easily exterminated.
hsbauauvhabzb 1y ago
Tell that to all the bloatware pre installed on my phone. And my windows computer.
- VonTum 1y ago
  As for bloatware-free phones: Fairphone. I've been using one for more than 4 years now, replaced the screen after dropping it, and I bought an extra battery to keep my gps alive on long ski trips.

topspin 1y ago

Pacifiers. For a while I watched dash cam video from police car chases. I'm over it now, but one interesting thing frequently happens: officers yank the drivers out, get them on the ground and cuff them. In most cases, the drivers are yelling about their phone. "My phone!" "My phone!" Cars is wrecked, they've got knees pressing them into the dirt, frequently injured, facing all manner of charges, and the one thing they care about it some phone. After sitting in the patrol car for a quite while, some officer opens the door to speak with them. Immediately: "Can I get my phone??" Sometimes they'll still have a phone after being cuffed and detained. They will nearly dislocate joints to thumb their phones continuously while cuffed. They will not stop until someone takes it. I don't know...

npteljes 1y ago
Might be that they are trying to contact somebody? Phones are also communication devices.

pxmpxm 1y ago

You know that is you, not the phone, that is desperately looking for a distraction and a different reality. I don't understand why it's ever so trendy to do this performative i-have-minimal-agency-in-my-existence bit when it comes to smartphones; swap that last word with "TV" and the same people professing it would smirk - presumably because that's an old timey, rather than a très trendy, thing to be part of.