9 ms·

I don't feel like ordering things online makes me a shut-in at all - just the opposite. I work a lot, and by spending less time on the drudgery of brick-and-mo

I don't feel like ordering things online makes me a shut-in at all - just the opposite. I work a lot, and by spending less time on the drudgery of brick-and-mortar shopping, I have more time to spend on the things that matter to me. Including socializing. Yeah, maybe I leave the house less, but are those trips to the store really "quality time?" Making a run to Wal-Mart or the supermarket to buy toilet paper is time better spent than playing with my dog or reading a book? We're missing out on some potential fun times, sure. I have made friends, bumped into existing friends, and had some good conversations while shopping. But those experiences were and far between. One positive social experience out of one or two hundred trips to the stores, maybe. Retail shopping is usually freaking depressing - the employees and customers are often rude, and you're bombarded from all angles with sights and sounds designed to entice (or scare) you into buying things you don't need. No thank you. Lately my wife and I subscribed to a service that sends you 3 ready-to-prepare meals (for two or four people) per week. These aren't frozen heat-and-eat meals; they ship you fresh ingredients and easy to follow recipes. Are we shut-ins? Because cooking these meals together is generally a lot more fun (and healthier) than dining out for us.

pokoleo 12y ago
> service that sends you 3 ready-to-prepare meals (for two or four people) per week Which service?
- jedmeyers 12y ago
  Blue Apron maybe?
  - JohnBooty 12y ago
    That's the one! $60/week for three meals for two. More expensive than groceries but cheaper than dining out! The meals take about 20-30 minutes to prepare and cook. It's been working for us.
    - nahname 12y ago
      I'm spending over $100 a week per person right now on groceries. Really goes to show how expensive food is in Canada.
      - 3pt14159 12y ago
        Where do you live? In TO I spend about $70/week and I eat pretty healthy. Salmon, avocados, lentils, eggs, salad, yogurt, apples, milk, chicken, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, etc. Edit: I also only buy humane meat, and organic eggs.
        toothbrush 12y ago
        Humane meat, that's the one where they don't kill the animals, right? :p
        3pt14159 12y ago
        I assume you're the one that downvoted me. You're either a vegetarian or meat eater that thinks the whole thing is silly. I don't know which, but there are real differences. For example: http://certifiedhumane.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Std09.Chickens.2J.pdf http://certifiedhumane.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Std09.Chi...
        toothbrush 12y ago
        I'm sorry you got downvoted. It wasn't me, i just posted a facetious (joking, not very well thought-through) comment. I am indeed flexibly vegetarian/freegan, but i'm used to ribbing and being ribbed about it :) (haha geddit ribbing haha) My comment was made in an understanding spirit, and indeed, i am clearly a proponent of ethical meat if someone is not prepared to go without :). So no, i personally don't think it's silly at all (what is silly, however, is downvoting a random person on the Internet with whom you do not agree on the subject :p). Peace and kindness and all that, and have a nice day :) Thanks for the informative link! Maybe i'll send it to some of my more staunchly carnivorous friends.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- fragmede 12y ago
  plated, blue apron, forage, hello fresh, peach dish, green blender... it is a cool idea but there's quite a bit of competition.
huehehue 12y ago
So would you say there's now a greater efficiency to your social interactions knowing that they are, for the most part, more uncommon? There could be something to be gained by learning not to take personal transactions for granted, but I'm curious as to whether there's any proof/metrics for that. Also, playing devil's advocate, but I don't see how the online shopping experience is any better - sure, there isn't human pressure, but there's targeted advertising and dark patterns. It's unlikely to be served an ad AFK that knows your browsing patterns, preferences, etc.
- Kalium 12y ago
  The online shopping experience doesn't require me to find my shoes and generally doesn't have fixed hours. Also, at this point, online shops often offer better security.
  - c22 12y ago
    What do you mean by security in this context?
    - Kalium 12y ago
      Better handling of sensitive payment card information.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  I wouldn't say my social interactions are less or more common now. I never really considered my shopping trips to be social experiences anyway. I grew up in an area where we were close to our neighbors but the nearest retail anything was a few miles away. Mostly chain franchises. After some years inbetween I now live someplace similar again. So I had (and have) friends, family, and neighbors. To me brick and mortar shopping was just a really inefficient drudgery I'm glad to have mostly cut out. Those were not really social experiences for me. There are exceptions. A good local comic or music store is priceless and those can be really social experiences. AS AN ASIDE: I feel like retail shopping has gotten even less social. Since we usually pay with cards now, we make less eye contact with the cashier, since we're watching for the little screen to say "swipe now" or "enter PIN" or whatever.
eigenvector 12y ago
> Retail shopping is usually freaking depressing - the employees and customers are often rude, and you're bombarded from all angles with sights and sounds designed to entice (or scare) you into buying things you don't need. No thank you. That's not about retail, that's about urban life. I live in a town of less than 2,000 people. There's one grocery store, and when you go there you recognize at least half the people inside (if you didn't already recognize their vehicle in the parking lot). In 2015, there is less need than ever for us to all live in the same few places. Remote work can offer you offer the benefits of small-town life without the loss of economic opportunities that used to go along with it.
- _delirium 12y ago
  Even in cities that happens, depending on the city and your lifestyle. I live in a city of 500,000 people (1.5m metro area), but I recognize people all the time, because we don't spread out randomly throughout the city on a given day. For example for groceries, I almost always shop at the three grocery stores on my street, because there's no particular reason for me to carry groceries across the city when I can just walk next door. There, I see mostly other people from the neighborhood and recognize most of the employees. I usually recognize people at coffee shops and bars where I'm a semi-regular, too. Fairly often I'll even run into people I know just out on the street or metro and stop to chat.
- wutbrodo 12y ago
  > In 2015, there is less need than ever for us to all live in the same few places. That's an interesting perspective. I've heard (and believe) the exact opposite. In 2015, there's no need to incur the (well-studied) economic, environmental, and cultural costs of low population density. Not to mention it's kind of bizarre to assume that it's clearly _better_ that having a population of only 2,000 people from which to meet people and make friends. Your environment is what you make of it. I used to live in a smaller town and now that I live in a dense metropolis, I meet people and make new friends CONSTANTLY (not even joking, just this week I've (platonically) gotten 2 people's numbers based on meeting, finding mutual interests, and both of us wanting to hang out).
  - 12y ago
venomsnake 12y ago
With no knead bread, sous vide, a pressure cooker, and a tiny bit of planning you can have from scratch meals with less than 5 minutes hands on time per day.
- rlucas 12y ago
  best troll ever
  - venomsnake 12y ago
    I am not trolling - cooking has never been less skill demanding than now. If you spend time anyway in the kitchen why bother with subscriptions.
    - relate 12y ago
      The annoying thing about sous vide is that you need to be home at least 1-2h before dinner. If you're a lot at home, it's great though.
      - mseebach 12y ago
        The point of the sous vide is that you can pop it over in the morning with no loss of quality. You can do a roast or a whole chicken (generally better quality for less money than smaller cuts) which is usually no-go for weekday cooking unless you work from home or like to eat at 10pm. The leftovers then make lunch and/or dinner on day two which further saves money and time.
    - JohnBooty 12y ago
      > If you spend time anyway in the kitchen why bother with subscriptions. For us part of the answer has been that it's been exposing us to some new ingredients that we wouldn't have tried on our own and/or wouldn't have been able to find locally even if we'd thought to try them.
- smackfu 12y ago
  People tend to vastly underestimate the time needed for amateur cooks to do prep work. A lot of people need 5 minutes just to chop an onion.
agentultra 12y ago
One thing I've noticed is the missing "friendly strangers" in my life -- the people you recognize by being visible in your community at all of the places people regularly frequent (or used to at least). Seeing the same people again and even just recognizing they are there reinforces a sense of place for me. I moved out of the big city to a smaller one and was instantly fascinated by people who would say, "Hi," as I passed by. At first it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. They would even stop and ask how I was doing and make a banal, funny comment about the weather. The culture of the city I just came from was different. People would assume you wanted something if you opened your mouth or looked at anything but the ground a few meters in front of you. For more than a decade I lived in a place where people weren't nice to you unless they were selling something. I even tried Facebook for a while because my friends had all stopped using the phone. That was a disaster. You would think that going to an "event," with all of your "friends," would be great. But people only showed up with their cliques and there was nothing very friendly about it. I stopped using Facebook and deleted my profile. I stopped going to events where nobody would talk to me and ended up seeing precisely the same people I would hang out with anyway so no loss there. I think the "social network," thing is some kind of inside joke I don't understand. I hope to get to know my neighbors better. I shovel the snow the for lady on the corner. She lives alone with her dog. Her husband suffers from dementia and lives in a home. The neighbors one door up are a large family that mostly keeps to themselves. The grandmother is the only one who will acknowledge my existence when I say, "Hi," while I'm out in the garden or when we bump into one another at the corner store. It's weird, I think, to feel like I'm living in a fish bowl and that my community is just a place where we all keep our stuff and sleep. It must be this pervasive culture of convenience and luxury that allows us to be entertained and socialized without having to interact with anyone else. Who knows what your neighbors are like and who needs them? Maybe that is a better quality of life. I just think it's a little strange... and when hard times do come I wonder if we'll all be able to rely on one another to get through it.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  Yeah it's weird. In the city, you can meet all these people, but actual neighbors treat each other like strangers. In the suburbs, neighbors are often (not always!) super friendly. My neighbors and I have watched each others' pets and helped each other in a lot of ways. I think it's just the "buying" versus "renting" thing. In the city most people are renting. There's less incentive to make friends with your neighbors when in the medium-term future one or both of you will probably be somewhere else. Your rented property is truly often just a place to keep your stuff. I think rental neighbors should still try to be friends for a variety of reasons (why wouldn't you want to get along with and help your neighbors?) but this is a minority opinion. On the other hand, when you and your neighbors are all in the midst of 30-year mortgages, people often put more effort into getting along and forging bonds. More of a "we're all in this together, let's try to get along" thing. One of our next-door neighbors is actually kind of unfriendly.
ZeroGravitas 12y ago
Regarding your aside about frozen meals, I'm sure I read a comment on this site from a food scientist who claimed that very high quality frozen meals were technically possible, but no one could overcome the consumer perception that it wasn't worth spending money on frozen food.
- mattlutze 12y ago
  The grocery chain Picard in France trades in this space -- really nice quality food, all frozen. They're a pretty well-regarded brand, I'm told by my French friends. One blogger's perspective: http://annmah.net/2010/01/23/french-frozen/ http://annmah.net/2010/01/23/french-frozen/
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  I think you're right. There's a small place (co-op?) in Seattle that sells frozen meals that are quite healthy and delicious. I wish I could remember the name. I mean, heck, anybody who's ever cooked extra food and frozen it themselves has proved this... right? :) What we like about the non-frozen meals, though, is that preparing the meals together is a lot of fun. Of course you could do this without a meal delivery service too (and we have) but we found that we didn't do it very often. The meal delivery service kind of "forces" (in the nicest possible way) us to do it.
onion2k 12y ago
If you use the extra time to do those quality things like playing with your dog or reading then you're benefiting from the on-demand economy. You've figured out how to make it work for you. That's great. But... Lots of other people don't use that time well. They 'save' lots of time by having things brought to them, and spend that time watching TV or browsing the net despite not really enjoying those things. They're exchanging money for time to do passive activities they don't like and don't make them feel good. That is not a benefit. People apparently forget that saving time is a two-fold activity. There is the act of doing something to save the time, but there is also the act of using the time you saved to do something that doesn't make you feel awful. Unless you can do both things spending money to save time actually makes your situation worse.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  I don't mean this snarkily: I think you have a higher opinion of retail shopping than me. Some people certainly enjoy it. Even I enjoy it sometimes. But: > They're exchanging money for time to do passive activities > they don't like and don't make them feel good. That is not > a benefit. I would describe shopping as "exchanging time and money to do something I don't like and doesn't make me feel good" so... again, it's not an upgrade to me. But let's focus on a part of what you said: > passive activities they don't like and don't make them feel good. This is a real problem. And I don't mean to gloss over it. I have gone through stretches like this. It more or less fits the definition of anhedonia which is one potential criteria for a diagnosis of depression. But here's the key question: what's the causal relationship here? It's very easy for me to believe that a depressed person would want to avoid shopping trips; it's much less clear to me that avoiding shopping trips could possibly cause depression. Sounds like the problem is people being depressed, not people avoiding shopping trips.
- andylei 12y ago
  its sounds like you're suggesting that what people like to spend their time on is independent of how convenient their shopping experiences are
- barbs 12y ago
  > They 'save' lots of time by having things brought to them, and spend that time watching TV or browsing the net despite not really enjoying those things. They're exchanging money for time to do passive activities they don't like and don't make them feel good. I would agree with you here - often I have to push myself to do something more worthwhile with my spare time. Why do we do these "passive activities"? Is it because it requires little effort, despite little reward? Is it a mild form of addiction? It almost seems like procrastination, except it happens during dedicated spare time.

pokoleo 12y ago

> service that sends you 3 ready-to-prepare meals (for two or four people) per week Which service?

jedmeyers 12y ago
Blue Apron maybe?
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  That's the one! $60/week for three meals for two. More expensive than groceries but cheaper than dining out! The meals take about 20-30 minutes to prepare and cook. It's been working for us.
  - nahname 12y ago
    I'm spending over $100 a week per person right now on groceries. Really goes to show how expensive food is in Canada.
    - 3pt14159 12y ago
      Where do you live? In TO I spend about $70/week and I eat pretty healthy. Salmon, avocados, lentils, eggs, salad, yogurt, apples, milk, chicken, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, etc. Edit: I also only buy humane meat, and organic eggs.
      - toothbrush 12y ago
        Humane meat, that's the one where they don't kill the animals, right? :p
        3pt14159 12y ago
        I assume you're the one that downvoted me. You're either a vegetarian or meat eater that thinks the whole thing is silly. I don't know which, but there are real differences. For example: http://certifiedhumane.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Std09.Chickens.2J.pdf http://certifiedhumane.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Std09.Chi...
        toothbrush 12y ago
        I'm sorry you got downvoted. It wasn't me, i just posted a facetious (joking, not very well thought-through) comment. I am indeed flexibly vegetarian/freegan, but i'm used to ribbing and being ribbed about it :) (haha geddit ribbing haha) My comment was made in an understanding spirit, and indeed, i am clearly a proponent of ethical meat if someone is not prepared to go without :). So no, i personally don't think it's silly at all (what is silly, however, is downvoting a random person on the Internet with whom you do not agree on the subject :p). Peace and kindness and all that, and have a nice day :) Thanks for the informative link! Maybe i'll send it to some of my more staunchly carnivorous friends.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
fragmede 12y ago
plated, blue apron, forage, hello fresh, peach dish, green blender... it is a cool idea but there's quite a bit of competition.

huehehue 12y ago

So would you say there's now a greater efficiency to your social interactions knowing that they are, for the most part, more uncommon? There could be something to be gained by learning not to take personal transactions for granted, but I'm curious as to whether there's any proof/metrics for that. Also, playing devil's advocate, but I don't see how the online shopping experience is any better - sure, there isn't human pressure, but there's targeted advertising and dark patterns. It's unlikely to be served an ad AFK that knows your browsing patterns, preferences, etc.

Kalium 12y ago
The online shopping experience doesn't require me to find my shoes and generally doesn't have fixed hours. Also, at this point, online shops often offer better security.
- c22 12y ago
  What do you mean by security in this context?
  - Kalium 12y ago
    Better handling of sensitive payment card information.
JohnBooty 12y ago
I wouldn't say my social interactions are less or more common now. I never really considered my shopping trips to be social experiences anyway. I grew up in an area where we were close to our neighbors but the nearest retail anything was a few miles away. Mostly chain franchises. After some years inbetween I now live someplace similar again. So I had (and have) friends, family, and neighbors. To me brick and mortar shopping was just a really inefficient drudgery I'm glad to have mostly cut out. Those were not really social experiences for me. There are exceptions. A good local comic or music store is priceless and those can be really social experiences. AS AN ASIDE: I feel like retail shopping has gotten even less social. Since we usually pay with cards now, we make less eye contact with the cashier, since we're watching for the little screen to say "swipe now" or "enter PIN" or whatever.

eigenvector 12y ago

> Retail shopping is usually freaking depressing - the employees and customers are often rude, and you're bombarded from all angles with sights and sounds designed to entice (or scare) you into buying things you don't need. No thank you. That's not about retail, that's about urban life. I live in a town of less than 2,000 people. There's one grocery store, and when you go there you recognize at least half the people inside (if you didn't already recognize their vehicle in the parking lot). In 2015, there is less need than ever for us to all live in the same few places. Remote work can offer you offer the benefits of small-town life without the loss of economic opportunities that used to go along with it.

_delirium 12y ago
Even in cities that happens, depending on the city and your lifestyle. I live in a city of 500,000 people (1.5m metro area), but I recognize people all the time, because we don't spread out randomly throughout the city on a given day. For example for groceries, I almost always shop at the three grocery stores on my street, because there's no particular reason for me to carry groceries across the city when I can just walk next door. There, I see mostly other people from the neighborhood and recognize most of the employees. I usually recognize people at coffee shops and bars where I'm a semi-regular, too. Fairly often I'll even run into people I know just out on the street or metro and stop to chat.
wutbrodo 12y ago
> In 2015, there is less need than ever for us to all live in the same few places. That's an interesting perspective. I've heard (and believe) the exact opposite. In 2015, there's no need to incur the (well-studied) economic, environmental, and cultural costs of low population density. Not to mention it's kind of bizarre to assume that it's clearly _better_ that having a population of only 2,000 people from which to meet people and make friends. Your environment is what you make of it. I used to live in a smaller town and now that I live in a dense metropolis, I meet people and make new friends CONSTANTLY (not even joking, just this week I've (platonically) gotten 2 people's numbers based on meeting, finding mutual interests, and both of us wanting to hang out).
- 12y ago

venomsnake 12y ago

With no knead bread, sous vide, a pressure cooker, and a tiny bit of planning you can have from scratch meals with less than 5 minutes hands on time per day.

rlucas 12y ago
best troll ever
- venomsnake 12y ago
  I am not trolling - cooking has never been less skill demanding than now. If you spend time anyway in the kitchen why bother with subscriptions.
  - relate 12y ago
    The annoying thing about sous vide is that you need to be home at least 1-2h before dinner. If you're a lot at home, it's great though.
    - mseebach 12y ago
      The point of the sous vide is that you can pop it over in the morning with no loss of quality. You can do a roast or a whole chicken (generally better quality for less money than smaller cuts) which is usually no-go for weekday cooking unless you work from home or like to eat at 10pm. The leftovers then make lunch and/or dinner on day two which further saves money and time.
  - JohnBooty 12y ago
    > If you spend time anyway in the kitchen why bother with subscriptions. For us part of the answer has been that it's been exposing us to some new ingredients that we wouldn't have tried on our own and/or wouldn't have been able to find locally even if we'd thought to try them.
smackfu 12y ago
People tend to vastly underestimate the time needed for amateur cooks to do prep work. A lot of people need 5 minutes just to chop an onion.

agentultra 12y ago

One thing I've noticed is the missing "friendly strangers" in my life -- the people you recognize by being visible in your community at all of the places people regularly frequent (or used to at least). Seeing the same people again and even just recognizing they are there reinforces a sense of place for me. I moved out of the big city to a smaller one and was instantly fascinated by people who would say, "Hi," as I passed by. At first it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. They would even stop and ask how I was doing and make a banal, funny comment about the weather. The culture of the city I just came from was different. People would assume you wanted something if you opened your mouth or looked at anything but the ground a few meters in front of you. For more than a decade I lived in a place where people weren't nice to you unless they were selling something. I even tried Facebook for a while because my friends had all stopped using the phone. That was a disaster. You would think that going to an "event," with all of your "friends," would be great. But people only showed up with their cliques and there was nothing very friendly about it. I stopped using Facebook and deleted my profile. I stopped going to events where nobody would talk to me and ended up seeing precisely the same people I would hang out with anyway so no loss there. I think the "social network," thing is some kind of inside joke I don't understand. I hope to get to know my neighbors better. I shovel the snow the for lady on the corner. She lives alone with her dog. Her husband suffers from dementia and lives in a home. The neighbors one door up are a large family that mostly keeps to themselves. The grandmother is the only one who will acknowledge my existence when I say, "Hi," while I'm out in the garden or when we bump into one another at the corner store. It's weird, I think, to feel like I'm living in a fish bowl and that my community is just a place where we all keep our stuff and sleep. It must be this pervasive culture of convenience and luxury that allows us to be entertained and socialized without having to interact with anyone else. Who knows what your neighbors are like and who needs them? Maybe that is a better quality of life. I just think it's a little strange... and when hard times do come I wonder if we'll all be able to rely on one another to get through it.

JohnBooty 12y ago
Yeah it's weird. In the city, you can meet all these people, but actual neighbors treat each other like strangers. In the suburbs, neighbors are often (not always!) super friendly. My neighbors and I have watched each others' pets and helped each other in a lot of ways. I think it's just the "buying" versus "renting" thing. In the city most people are renting. There's less incentive to make friends with your neighbors when in the medium-term future one or both of you will probably be somewhere else. Your rented property is truly often just a place to keep your stuff. I think rental neighbors should still try to be friends for a variety of reasons (why wouldn't you want to get along with and help your neighbors?) but this is a minority opinion. On the other hand, when you and your neighbors are all in the midst of 30-year mortgages, people often put more effort into getting along and forging bonds. More of a "we're all in this together, let's try to get along" thing. One of our next-door neighbors is actually kind of unfriendly.

ZeroGravitas 12y ago

Regarding your aside about frozen meals, I'm sure I read a comment on this site from a food scientist who claimed that very high quality frozen meals were technically possible, but no one could overcome the consumer perception that it wasn't worth spending money on frozen food.

mattlutze 12y ago
The grocery chain Picard in France trades in this space -- really nice quality food, all frozen. They're a pretty well-regarded brand, I'm told by my French friends. One blogger's perspective: http://annmah.net/2010/01/23/french-frozen/ http://annmah.net/2010/01/23/french-frozen/
JohnBooty 12y ago
I think you're right. There's a small place (co-op?) in Seattle that sells frozen meals that are quite healthy and delicious. I wish I could remember the name. I mean, heck, anybody who's ever cooked extra food and frozen it themselves has proved this... right? :) What we like about the non-frozen meals, though, is that preparing the meals together is a lot of fun. Of course you could do this without a meal delivery service too (and we have) but we found that we didn't do it very often. The meal delivery service kind of "forces" (in the nicest possible way) us to do it.

onion2k 12y ago

If you use the extra time to do those quality things like playing with your dog or reading then you're benefiting from the on-demand economy. You've figured out how to make it work for you. That's great. But... Lots of other people don't use that time well. They 'save' lots of time by having things brought to them, and spend that time watching TV or browsing the net despite not really enjoying those things. They're exchanging money for time to do passive activities they don't like and don't make them feel good. That is not a benefit. People apparently forget that saving time is a two-fold activity. There is the act of doing something to save the time, but there is also the act of using the time you saved to do something that doesn't make you feel awful. Unless you can do both things spending money to save time actually makes your situation worse.

JohnBooty 12y ago
I don't mean this snarkily: I think you have a higher opinion of retail shopping than me. Some people certainly enjoy it. Even I enjoy it sometimes. But: > They're exchanging money for time to do passive activities > they don't like and don't make them feel good. That is not > a benefit. I would describe shopping as "exchanging time and money to do something I don't like and doesn't make me feel good" so... again, it's not an upgrade to me. But let's focus on a part of what you said: > passive activities they don't like and don't make them feel good. This is a real problem. And I don't mean to gloss over it. I have gone through stretches like this. It more or less fits the definition of anhedonia which is one potential criteria for a diagnosis of depression. But here's the key question: what's the causal relationship here? It's very easy for me to believe that a depressed person would want to avoid shopping trips; it's much less clear to me that avoiding shopping trips could possibly cause depression. Sounds like the problem is people being depressed, not people avoiding shopping trips.
andylei 12y ago
its sounds like you're suggesting that what people like to spend their time on is independent of how convenient their shopping experiences are
barbs 12y ago
> They 'save' lots of time by having things brought to them, and spend that time watching TV or browsing the net despite not really enjoying those things. They're exchanging money for time to do passive activities they don't like and don't make them feel good. I would agree with you here - often I have to push myself to do something more worthwhile with my spare time. Why do we do these "passive activities"? Is it because it requires little effort, despite little reward? Is it a mild form of addiction? It almost seems like procrastination, except it happens during dedicated spare time.