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I'm really glad that for whatever reason my brain has completely rejected short-form content. It seems to be a serious problem for a lot of people. I don't unde

I'm really glad that for whatever reason my brain has completely rejected short-form content. It seems to be a serious problem for a lot of people. I don't understand it the same way I don't understand heroin addictions. My mind is just screaming "STOP DOING IT" and cannot get passed that concept very far.

layer8 1y ago
You don’t enjoy the short-form comments on this forum?
righthand 1y ago
The trick of short form video isn’t the content itself but the channel flipping, hunting hook action. Changing the channel is fun when you actually land on something-good in the sea of garbage. And sometimes that something-good is a an endless handkerchief. One that you can keep pulling out good somethings with. Now you feel extra special like you’ve found something novel as you’ve completed the hunt and are satiated. And you keep that endless handkerchief you found. Soon you will have found many novel endless handkerchiefs. You mount them on your profile page like boar heads on a hunters wall. This pride is tied to happiness and you know how to hunt for more. I highly recommend the book Hooked by Nir Eyal[0]. It is the book that effortlessly detailed how to build short form video networks (as well as other addicting software over the last 10+ years). The people who built this stuff read it and the people who want to stop the addictions should read it. [0] https://search.worldcat.org/title/881418283 https://search.worldcat.org/title/881418283
boogieknite 1y ago
for me its because i browse hn and the overwhelming cynicism "tastes" much worse than the entertainment provided
neutronicus 1y ago
You're on HN, though. In some sense, reeling in people like you has been a solved problem for decades, since forums were invented. I apologize for what is doubtless egregious projection on my part. I am like you in the sense that I seem "immune" to TikTok/Reels, especially relative to my wife, who can definitely get sucked into it for 30-60 minutes. However, I'm easily-snared by things like "the last year of drama in the NixOS community". I can easily spend an hour I don't have reading forum threads in which people are accusing moderators of abusing their position in a forum about a piece of technology I don't use. So in some sense the tech industry didn't need to "innovate" in order to suck me in. I was getting sucked into reading about web forum drama 20 years ago.
- ImaCake 1y ago
  HN is too boring though. Often I come here and there is nothing clickbait enough to get me to read it and I go elsewhere. It's great.
  - aloer 1y ago
    OTOH HN is all about the comments. And without reading you don’t know which ones are good. I often spend way more time on those. Each one 3-5 lines. Hundreds of comments in a near endless list. I don’t think HN is that different compared to other social media
    - whatevertrevor 1y ago
      There's also the very real trap of traditional forum comments being ranked higher in your brain's algorithm for "relevance" since you can explain it as reading alternative perspectives. There's real FOMO in reading news without having comments for me sometimes, because what if there's a perspective that I'm completely missing here? Of course, long term I know time spent this way is mostly wasted for the value I get out of it.
    - Aerbil313 1y ago
      HN is yet another infinite scroll feed. It’s no different than traditional social media, except in intensity. It’s less intense, because of its text-based format as opposed to video, the clickbait-resistant culture, and the fact that while it’s very large, it’s not infinite. You can consume the top page under half an hour and there are only so many stories posted here a day. Depending on where you are in the AuDHD spectrum, you can be as addicted to HN as a teenager with 7hrs daily Instagram usage. pg acknowledges this.
  - the_af 1y ago
    If HN was boring, it wouldn't have a "noprocrast" setting. This forum is addicting to a lot of people. There are also clickbait titles (though less than elsewhere), heated debates, even flamewars in the comments.
  - 1y ago
cm2012 1y ago
You just prefer text as your dopamine injection medium rather than video.
- alganet 1y ago
  If the world was addicted to reading, it would be actually great. It offers rewards beyond instant gratification.
  - the_af 1y ago
    I'm not convinced bite-sized back and forth like Twitter and HN comments count as "reading", not in the sense you meant it anyway.
    - tayo42 1y ago
      It's better then the one way para social relationships or w/e they're called
      - whatevertrevor 1y ago
        Eh people can develop those with pseudonymous accounts too. There's a reason why people bemoan the death of early twitter "communities" and whatnot. There are plenty reddit celebrity accounts as well. People do project their general behaviour patterns on social media regardless of the form, though some forms are more malleable to that than others.
        alganet 1y ago
        It's 2025, no one is mourning Twitter.
        whatevertrevor 1y ago
        That neither addresses the core of what I'm saying nor is factually accurate, as I know many people mourning the loss of heyday Twitter.
pigeons 1y ago
I find it incredibly more distracting when someone nearby or in the household is watching tiktok or similar within earshot than if they are watching a longer-form video or television program. Seemingly because I can "tune-out" the long form program but every time the video switches with tiktok, my brain "activates" and gets distracted to check if it needs to pay attention or not.
- ddtaylor 1y ago
  And that's why the kids are massively addicted to it. Their brains have been hacked.
jay_kyburz 1y ago
I find the shorts on youtube super addictive, but the algo is too repetitive. I once watched a drumming video to then end, not I get heaps of drumming. It's cool, but I'm just not that into drumming. I've been trying to correct the algo but giving a down thumb to videos I don't want to watch but its not learning.

layer8 1y ago

You don’t enjoy the short-form comments on this forum?

righthand 1y ago

The trick of short form video isn’t the content itself but the channel flipping, hunting hook action. Changing the channel is fun when you actually land on something-good in the sea of garbage. And sometimes that something-good is a an endless handkerchief. One that you can keep pulling out good somethings with. Now you feel extra special like you’ve found something novel as you’ve completed the hunt and are satiated. And you keep that endless handkerchief you found. Soon you will have found many novel endless handkerchiefs. You mount them on your profile page like boar heads on a hunters wall. This pride is tied to happiness and you know how to hunt for more. I highly recommend the book Hooked by Nir Eyal[0]. It is the book that effortlessly detailed how to build short form video networks (as well as other addicting software over the last 10+ years). The people who built this stuff read it and the people who want to stop the addictions should read it. [0] https://search.worldcat.org/title/881418283 https://search.worldcat.org/title/881418283

boogieknite 1y ago

for me its because i browse hn and the overwhelming cynicism "tastes" much worse than the entertainment provided

neutronicus 1y ago

You're on HN, though. In some sense, reeling in people like you has been a solved problem for decades, since forums were invented. I apologize for what is doubtless egregious projection on my part. I am like you in the sense that I seem "immune" to TikTok/Reels, especially relative to my wife, who can definitely get sucked into it for 30-60 minutes. However, I'm easily-snared by things like "the last year of drama in the NixOS community". I can easily spend an hour I don't have reading forum threads in which people are accusing moderators of abusing their position in a forum about a piece of technology I don't use. So in some sense the tech industry didn't need to "innovate" in order to suck me in. I was getting sucked into reading about web forum drama 20 years ago.

ImaCake 1y ago
HN is too boring though. Often I come here and there is nothing clickbait enough to get me to read it and I go elsewhere. It's great.
- aloer 1y ago
  OTOH HN is all about the comments. And without reading you don’t know which ones are good. I often spend way more time on those. Each one 3-5 lines. Hundreds of comments in a near endless list. I don’t think HN is that different compared to other social media
  - whatevertrevor 1y ago
    There's also the very real trap of traditional forum comments being ranked higher in your brain's algorithm for "relevance" since you can explain it as reading alternative perspectives. There's real FOMO in reading news without having comments for me sometimes, because what if there's a perspective that I'm completely missing here? Of course, long term I know time spent this way is mostly wasted for the value I get out of it.
  - Aerbil313 1y ago
    HN is yet another infinite scroll feed. It’s no different than traditional social media, except in intensity. It’s less intense, because of its text-based format as opposed to video, the clickbait-resistant culture, and the fact that while it’s very large, it’s not infinite. You can consume the top page under half an hour and there are only so many stories posted here a day. Depending on where you are in the AuDHD spectrum, you can be as addicted to HN as a teenager with 7hrs daily Instagram usage. pg acknowledges this.
- the_af 1y ago
  If HN was boring, it wouldn't have a "noprocrast" setting. This forum is addicting to a lot of people. There are also clickbait titles (though less than elsewhere), heated debates, even flamewars in the comments.
- 1y ago

cm2012 1y ago

You just prefer text as your dopamine injection medium rather than video.

alganet 1y ago
If the world was addicted to reading, it would be actually great. It offers rewards beyond instant gratification.
- the_af 1y ago
  I'm not convinced bite-sized back and forth like Twitter and HN comments count as "reading", not in the sense you meant it anyway.
  - tayo42 1y ago
    It's better then the one way para social relationships or w/e they're called
    - whatevertrevor 1y ago
      Eh people can develop those with pseudonymous accounts too. There's a reason why people bemoan the death of early twitter "communities" and whatnot. There are plenty reddit celebrity accounts as well. People do project their general behaviour patterns on social media regardless of the form, though some forms are more malleable to that than others.
      - alganet 1y ago
        It's 2025, no one is mourning Twitter.
        whatevertrevor 1y ago
        That neither addresses the core of what I'm saying nor is factually accurate, as I know many people mourning the loss of heyday Twitter.

pigeons 1y ago

I find it incredibly more distracting when someone nearby or in the household is watching tiktok or similar within earshot than if they are watching a longer-form video or television program. Seemingly because I can "tune-out" the long form program but every time the video switches with tiktok, my brain "activates" and gets distracted to check if it needs to pay attention or not.

ddtaylor 1y ago
And that's why the kids are massively addicted to it. Their brains have been hacked.

jay_kyburz 1y ago

I find the shorts on youtube super addictive, but the algo is too repetitive. I once watched a drumming video to then end, not I get heaps of drumming. It's cool, but I'm just not that into drumming. I've been trying to correct the algo but giving a down thumb to videos I don't want to watch but its not learning.