I'm surprised by the negative comments here so far that sound more indignant or "called out" than anything else.
The article's argument is not only thoughtfully made and unusually well-written, in my opinion it's correct. There's nothing sexy about essentially staring at something in your hand for an hour or more every day. Smartphones provide a level of private immersion in silent, "socially-flavored" dopamine consumption that's antithetical to robust, vibrant socialization. Which is decidedly not sexy.
Years ago, one of my friends who was really into fitness offered a free service to help people with meal planning and setting up their diets.
A lot of people would come to him and say they wanted to lose weight, but when he started discussing their diet and shopping lists they would get defensive. They didn’t like the implication that something they did or a choice they made was a factor in their weight gain.
Instead, they wanted to blame everything but themselves. It wasn’t their fault they picked the packaged, ultra-processed thing at the store. It was the food industry’s fault for making it unhealthy. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t buy vegetables at the store, it was their parents’ fault for not teaching them how to cook as a kid. It was common to hear people claim that they were doing calorie restriction but it didn’t work because of microplastics, toxic chemicals in the soil, pesticides, or other environmental factors.
This mentality even swept through the “rationalist” community online recently. A blogger wrote a long series with over a dozen long posts trying to find any other explanation for weight gain. In the very first article he had a graph showing that caloric consumption was up and activity was down over the years where obesity was on the rise, but he concluded that couldn’t be it. It must be chemicals in the water! The blog series was very popular in rationalist communities and IIRC even Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex gave the author a financial grant.
The story with phones is the same: People don’t want to hear that it’s their fault for using phones so much. They want to blame the algorithm or their job for “making” them spend hours on the phone.
Resistance to any concept of self accountability is stronger than ever on the internet. Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.
> It wasn’t their fault they picked the packaged, ultra-processed thing at the store.
It is their fault. But the recent development with anti-hunger molecules and their effect point to something many well wishing people don't want to hear: not everyone is the same regarding satiety.
It is easy to tell people "just eat less" when you are never really hungry yourself. It requires empathy to try and imagine a world where after eating a whole pizza instead of feeling ready to puke it back out your body is asking for MORE.
And not just this one day because you did not get a good breakfast in the morning. But every day. All day. "You just lack willpower". Yeah sure, like you demonstrate having any.
In a totally orthogonal subject, I used to have an untreated prolactinoma giving me 0 libido which may have started around my teenage years: I never understood why many people could not stop themselves from "thinking with their penis". Just "have some willpower, it's easy". Well let's just say 1 month after starting some treatment my view changed a lot. And it's not too hard to extend this kind of experience to other subjects regarding why people make bad decisions.
I wish we had a drug to give some of the "just put the fork down" people to let them experience being really hungry for like a couple month.
I really appreciate your empathy here. Nobody has the same biological factors nor the same hormones, so expecting everyone to have the same drive to consume a vice is just wrong. But at the same time, there is nuance here. Calorie restriction is hard work, sometimes there's not an easy way to do something and knuckling down is the only way to achieve it.
But I don't know where that balance is, between empathy and tough love, but it's definitely a spectrum. Me personally, I'd prefer to fall on the side of too much empathy.
On your orthogonal subject, I had post-SSRI libido side effects (still highly recommend SSRIs, I'd rather have a low libido and alive than the alternative), without symptoms of ED, which is really hard to treat in men. I had good luck finding a doctor willing to write me a script for PT-141, and it was fantastic for me.
> Calorie restriction is hard work, sometimes there's not an easy way to do something and knuckling down is the only way to achieve it.
Caloric restriction as the parent comment describes it is a strawman argument that people use to discredit diet advice.
Real dieting advice isn’t “eat 833 calories of pizza and then stop instead of eating the whole pizza”. Real diet advice involves picking better food choices first.
Pizza is a highly palatable, calorie dense food. If someone is feeling hungry after devouring an entire pizza, they need to stop eating pizza. They need more fiber, more filling foods, and foods that are less calorie dense. Even just picking foods that are slower to eat will make changes because our hunger and fullness signals aren’t instant. It takes some time for your body to process what you eat.
Counting calories does work if it’s done correctly, but modern dieting advice hasn’t been that reductive for decades.
You're not factually wrong, but framing this as a fight between calorie restriction vs healthy eating and siding with healthy eating isn't right either. Both methods work for some people. Both methods have low long term success rates because people struggle to stick with them.
Yes, intentionally restricting calories is hard for most overweight people. But eating healthy is also hard for most overweight people! And there's no guarantee it'll cause weight loss without calorie restriction. You can eat healthy foods and still have a large appetite and eat too much.
It's two different tools that each require different kinds of willpower. Sometimes one tool works better for some people. You can use both at once.
If there was an easy solution that worked well without willpower, we wouldn't have our current obesity rates. Hopefully the new weight loss drugs will help with this in the future.
Another issue is the body goes on lockdown around 5 days in eating below weight maintenance. The trick may be to only diet 4 days a week in a row targeting a weight below current like 10 or 20 lbs lower and eat for current weaight the other 3 days. And it might be able to flip that once at desired weight.
Craving more and more sugar (carbs) constantly is not the same as being hungry. That's why you can never have enough of it even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week. Hunger is a very straightforward physiological signal, not a psychological craving that stems from addiction. Anyone who's ever been addicted to anything would recognize that as food addiction, not "insatiable hunger". Once you start disciplining yourself with regards to diet, that's one of the very first things you automatically learn to discern. This realization usually comes to you very evidently, in a spontaneous manner.
>a psychological craving that stems from addiction.
Additionally, for many who are overweight, I imagine eating is a coping mechanism to stress. Some folks turn to food, others shopping, others substances (drugs/alcohol), others sex, others exercise, etc. We all have "different" ways we deal with stress. Finding a healthier way can drastically improve one's life. UInfortunately for those that turn to food for stress "relief" likely get a double whammy if feeling/knowing/being overweight adds to their stress.
To sustain itself... at the same rate it usually does (body fat, muscle...). My comment was extremely easy to grasp. Instead, you twisted what I wrote, clinging to a stupidly literal interpretation of it, and came up with a ridiculous reply, riddled with straw man fallacies. Good job (making a fool out of yourself while trying to one up a stranger on the Internet).
Think a little further, and you might see that the amount you've recently eaten has very little relevance to how much you need to eat in the near future.
I know you're joking but there is a study from the American Journal of Medicine concluding marijuana use was associated with lower levels of fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, and smaller waist circumference.
While societal structures and corporate practices shape behavior, you're right, individuals still retain agency. But progress lies in fostering environments that support healthy choices while encouraging self-reflection and responsibility. Dismissing either side of the equation undermines effective problem-solving. ie, food deserts are real
There is no proof for this claim, nor can there be. "anti-hunger molecules" Are irrelevant. What is relevant is portion size, an individual is used to eating a portion size of x. There body is used to churning through all the physiological processes needed to digest (or not) y calories. If that individual ate x/4 over the course of a month their body would adapt to y/4 calories.
You make the exact same argument but don't seem realize it. The drug you seek is called dieting. Alternatively you can believe the unscientific fantasy that buddist monks who starve themselves to death just have tons of anti-hunger molecules or were born with a genetic disorder that gave them max satiety points.And you can just ignore bodybuilders who claim to think about food all 24/7 (why would they be buddists if they started out aesthetic anyways? self selection? stop coping we all more or less have the same brain, all life has a massive disposition towards feeling hunger, these desires only grow in size and complexity as life gets more complex)
> It is easy to tell people "just eat less" when you are never really hungry yourself.
This is another strawman argument. Good meal planning and dieting advice starts with your grocery list and the contents of your refrigerator. It’s not “just eat less”, it’s “stop buying those foods you know are terrible and replace them with something else”
> It requires empathy to try and imagine a world where after eating a whole pizza
Again, this is setting up a strawman argument. There are more foods available to us than an entire pizza. You have to make a series of decisions that leads to buying a whole pizza. If you think that pizza is full of engineered, addictive chemicals and you also know that you’re going to be hungry after eating it, why is it what you choose to eat?
This is the problem I was trying to describe: It’s really convenient to blame addictive food chemicals and other external factors for everything, but in the process people are wiping away any sense of choice and accountability for their actions.
For what it’s worth, I am hungry virtually all of the time. It was a running joke with everyone since I was a kid. I learned early on that I need to modulate my diet at the source, otherwise my weight goes up before I know it. Changing my shopping list and planning where to eat before I’m hungry makes all the difference.
Beeing fat is the same like your experience. Beeing fat means you are ill but very few people treat it as an illness. What illness? Your gut stopped working. Because it doesn't absorb any vitamins and minerals you get these crazy cravings. Your brain is making you eat more to compensate. Of course, not more crap, but that it's your choice.
> How did you get diagnosed eventually? What all tests did you go thru first?
When entering the office of an endocrinologist for something unrelated they asked if I was there for some thing (which I guess was "prolactinoma") which was not the case; they still told me to get my prolactin levels checked because I had "the body for that". Their guess was right.
I was really lucky as usually it is diagnosed in men when they start losing peripheral vision or producing milk.
I don't have prolactinoma but I got tested for it. I had low libido as a man with ED problems, I went to a Urologist and he prescribed a whole bunch of tests which includes checking your Prolactin levels as well as SHBG, FSH, LH,Testosterone, E2 etc.
I suppose an Endocrinologist would run the same tests.. in my case I had Secondary Hypogonadism and was put on HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) which resolved my Testostrone issues and libido and improved my sperm count as a nice bonus.
But I digress, the point is that if you suspect any issues, go see a doctor!
In my 20s and early 30s I was extremely fit, and I loved exercising. I was compassionate, but didn't really get why overweight people refused to exercise. I thought, man, they just need to give it a chance.
One day I got pneumonia, and it was a pretty severe case. It damaged my lungs and even my nerves in my neck, making it hard to lift my arms for weeks. I couldn't run 1km let alone 30km (which previously would have been a nice Sunday for me), and I couldn't even comfortably stretch or warm up.
No big deal I thought, I'll bounce back.
The funny thing is, when exercise actually feels awful, it's way harder. I didn't bounce back. On top of that, I developed depression. Not like... I was a little sad that I couldn't exercise. More like I was using exercise to help keep something pretty awful at bay, and with no defences against that and my health declining, it got reeeally bad.
I then went on to gain a LOT of weight. I went from a muscular, lean 180lb at 5'10" to a less lean and more fat 225lb. I tried to manage it, tried to exercise, eat less, all of it.
Something had changed, though. A threshold was crossed. My momentum was suddenly frozen by sickness, and then barely thawed at all over the following months. Everything I was previously escaping was then easily able to overtake me. The urge to eat more? Easy to give in to, now. The urge to sleep longer? Yes please. That voice in my head telling me today's not a great day to exercise? No longer a whisper but a relentless droning until I gave up the idea. Then it's replaced with compounding shame.
It gradually dawned on me that my previous fitness, while great and all, was not afforded to me by my own virtues as opposed to the lack of virtues among my overweight friends. It was far more circumstantial than I realized. Once I got that ball rolling (which I'd accomplished through fixation and ignoring all kinds of other important stuff in my life, for what it's worth) it was relatively easy to keep it going. Once it had stopped, I was just like them. Often even worse.
I no longer expect people to put the fork down, or just get up and go for a run. Is it necessary? Yes, 100%. There's no other solution. Is it easy? Evidently not at all, no.
I've come to realize it's largely about support networks, too. We are often ashamed, self-isoalting, and left to our own devices. We have no one giving us tough love on a regular basis, motivating us, helping us to get that ball rolling, supporting us through our shame. We are often so isolated in that suffering.
So that's my novel about being a smug fit person who got a little fat and realized he was a self-involved jerk. Now I understand the problem a bit better. It's hard. Very easy to criticize, very hard to support and solve.
If you have an overweight loved one, part of their solution might be in you. People are not islands.
This comment is super relatable. Thanks for sharing your story. I had a similar issue with pneumonia changing me from a gymrat grinding out PRs to someone forcing myself under the bar 3 times a week at best. It makes sense obviously in retrospect but your lung capacity is something everyone absolutely takes for granted. Those first few sessions back in the gym trying to deadlift and then running to the bathroom feeling the urge to puke because I was so winded were terrifying. It definitely humbles you and even if you have the empathy beforehand it really underlines how important it is to remember that people are living completely different lives.
As an aside, did you find anything that was effective for bringing you back to that old level of performance? I've been swallowing the bitter pill that is an enforced cardio regime but man it is really, really not fun to brush up against that bad feeling in your lungs. Speaking of empathy, it's starting to make me understand why people get so obsessed with following snake oil health trends - I've been experimenting with pretty much everything under the sun out of desperation for this one.
> As an aside, did you find anything that was effective for bringing you back to that old level of performance?
Not really. I'm 38 now and I haven't made it back to previous levels of fitness, and I suspect I might not in some ways. Recovery was way faster than I expected once I gave it a chance, though. And it is despite not being as disciplined as I should be. It made me realize building fitness while you're young is huge; it lets you build it back a lot easier the second time around. Even so, I eventually kind of hit a wall where getting back has been a lot slower. I rapidly recovered maybe half-way, then it was back on a slower track. My deadlift feels frozen.
I have some thoughts about this, though. I'm starting to think attaining that level was never the point. While I was grinding out PRs, the primary side effect of that journey was a dramatically improved quality of life which I wasn't fully aware of until I lost it... And I could have had that same quality of life (minus the odd injury, too) without pushing nearly so hard or getting so far. Realizing that, I let myself worry less about numbers or how I compare to others and focus more on how something will tangibly benefit me. Lifting more will offer very limited tangible benefits according to my experience (lifting couches easily is nice and all, but rarely useful, and they can only get so easy to carry...)
Really it's about losing the ego for me. There were days I should have been climbing stairs at the park like my elderly neighbour, but I felt sorry for myself, embarrassed at my ability, and did nothing instead. Fit in the exercise and movements you can manage, not the ones you believe you should be able to do. Not pushing your limits in a specific way doesn't equate to never progressing or taking care of yourself. In fact, so much of this is psychological, I'd posit that humility will ultimately lead to improving your fitness simply because your ego won't hold you back so often. It's practically inevitable that we'll experience setbacks; what matters is how we respond to them, not how much we can lift the day after.
The worst thing to do is nothing at all. I must have lost 20lb of muscle and gained ~60lb of fat. Muscle is coming back, but the fat is stubborn.
Where I am recently vs where I left off (1RM):
Deadlift
402.5 --> 360 (was exciting to put 8 plates on again!)
Squat
320 --> 265
Bench
245 --> 210
Run (best distance)
43km --> 12.3km (could improve, but don't really focus on it anymore)
Run (best pace for 10k)
4:17/km --> 5:42/km
Maybe something like 75% of the way back? Worse if you factor in sane baselines rather than assuming starting from 0. When I started trying again, these numbers were abysmal. My running pace was close to 7:00/km and it hurt like hell. My deadlift was under 200 on a 5x5 program, vs ~310 today.
Also... Maybe it was nerve damage, but any overhead exercise is trash and not recovering. I used to clean well over my bodyweight and it was an exercise I really loved. These days I struggle to throw 130lb over my head, and I went from pull ups doing ~20 reps with 45lb strapped to me to struggling to pull off 10 reps with no weight.
"You just lack willpower". Yeah sure, like you demonstrate having any.
My adult, reasonably fit weight was about 175 - 180. I got up to 215 back in 2018. I'm now back down to 185 and getting leaner. You know what I noticed? My hunger pangs were far stronger when I was fatter.
When people ask about losing weight, I say "make friends with hunger". I'm hungry for a significant portion of the day these days. For a few years there, I wasn't hungry because I was always proactively eating, and when hunger did hit, it was intense.
So, this "hungry for a significant portion of the day", in the context of software development. Are you just supposed to throw in the towel on getting anything done, or write blublang with an endless stream of boilerplate, or what? Like I certainly get the experience of doing straightforward physical tasks and putting off eating, but it seems like a non-starter when you actually need to like, concentrate thoughtfully.
If anything, my concentration and energy level are more consistent while hungry.
I wake up hungry, but I'm not in a rush to get to breakfast. I start feeling hunger again within a couple of hours after a meal, but I'm still at least a couple of hours from the next one. I often fall asleep slightly hungry.
Intermittent fasting might be a good idea if this sounds alien. At least you'll only feel misery for part of the day.
I read an article years ago about how the French eat at set times and don't snack between meals, and they don't accommodate snacking behavior in children. That's not to say the French are necessarily some ideal, but certainly Americans are always snacking, on top of everything that's been said about processed foods and ease of access to food. I recall always hearing about "starvation mode" and how you were somehow going to gain weight if you ever dared to let yourself become hungry, and I foolishly believed it.
I’ve made friends with hunger, and it’s a weird head space. You begin to look forward to a good hunger the way you look forward to a good meal. Not any healthier than overeating in my estimation, and it puts you outside a lot of food oriented social interactions. Worth trying, if only to learn that mild hunger won’t kill you, but not a great lifestyle.
My concentration is consistently terrible while hungry, to the point that I might as well just consider the time gone instead of even trying to write code or really even think about much of anything. That's my experience.
So while I don't doubt your experience (and it's great that you've figured this out for yourself), it doesn't really generalize into advice about how anyone can simply change their perspective to avoid gaining weight.
Like I said, hunger pangs were far worse when I was fatter.
That said, there's a spectrum of hunger. Have you ever been hungry enough that you thought about eating your own dog? I haven't, but I've read enough stories of humans surviving terrible conditions to know that it happens.
As for concentration while hungry, that honestly sounds like either a psychological addiction or something physiological like blood sugar levels.
it doesn't really generalize into advice about how anyone can simply change their perspective to avoid gaining weight
> Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.
This is definitely a factor, and people can build "communities of excuses" like r/antiwork.
But .. there's definitely a social factor as well. I think people understand that, say, buying heroin or falling for a Nigerian Prince scam are irrational mistakes. However in those cases we also put blame on the pushers and the fraudsters. People tried "just say no to drugs" and "personal responsibility" and of course these things still happen.
Social media is not as addictive as heroin, but people are starting to have a discussion around X and tiktok and the harms thereof.
I want to upvote this a million times. Even for hard drugs and lifetime alcoholics withdrawal symptoms don't last longer than a month in the vast majority of cases. Probably about a month for decreased portion sizes too.
Some people believe society should be free of one or another human experience be it pain, pleasure, addiction, mind altering, disease, pests etc for the most part it's a childish mentality. All human experience is created by the brain and as a being with a high level of consciousness you are free to ignore them at your own risk. Diseases and pests you can't ignore and their management is extremely difficult comparatively.
When looking at a system, it is appropriate to identify the causes (plural) and the intervention points (plural).
I believe it is at once possible to both blame or seek to change an extrinsic factor and do what one can with their own initiative. I do not think it is appropriate to dismiss extrinsic factors in order to emphasize personal initiative.
Multiple factors contribute, but they don’t lessen the impact of people’s choices.
We can list extrinsic factors that influence things for hours, but nothing changes the fact that using your phone for hours per day is a choice that people make.
The external factors are brought up as a way to distract from that choice or shift blame, but you can’t make progress until you realize that it’s your choice to pick up the phone and use that app for hours every day.
When it’s only me, I personally prefer just solving the problem by adjusting my behavior or adjusting my position within the system. It’s relatively easy, feedback is quick, improvements come readily. Great.
But when it is an entire system (eg, not just me) I like to look at the gravity. In what direction will a ball roll? By default, what occurs here?
Take my home for example. I’m skillful at being calm and joyous, but I have guests come over, so I need to make sure that my home fosters a calm and joyous mindset by default. I need to make the gravity of the space produce joy and calm without intervention. After all, might I one day lack agency or otherwise be vulnerable to preexisting environmental forces?
We each have a duty to be healthy. Personal intervention — check! I agree. But that is not enough, we cannot stop there, and stopping there is irresponsible, unkind to others in the short term, and dangerous in the long term.
I think so many choices are driven by emotions and so many of us are unaware of how we feel and therefore often blinded to the decision-making process.
Yes it's a choice to pick up the phone, and yet if someone is feeling an emotion and wants to escape that emotion, the phone offers a variety of other emotions they can access. I'd say quite addictive, unless people let themselves feel the feeling.
If you want to solve the problem I look too much at my phone then choosing differently is an appropriate solution. If you want to solve the problem people in general look too much at their phone then telling them to "just do better" is an inappropriate solution.
You do not have the ability to stop being you, the person who wants the things that you want. Even if you want to change yourself - and maybe succeed! - that desire for change is still part of being you. If you didn’t want it, you would have been someone else.
>Resistance to any concept of self accountability is stronger than ever on the internet. Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.
I think that while the broad culture has moved in that direction it's still very filter bubble dependent. Spaces centered around men's hobbies with higher than zero barriers to entry are usually pretty hard the other way.
It could be that finding oneself at fault for life choices but being without enough motivating energy to make better choices is an even worse personal outcome than blaming others, and deciding to externalize blame is a defense mechanism against crippling stress/shame that such people have developed consciously or not. It may be far from helpful but it prevents people from feeling trapped if they give themselves something to crusade against.
I think people that are quick to blame external factors would be more visible towards others than people who do choose to blame themselves, but even in the case where the latter feel trapped with learned helplessness and unable to act. There isn't much to say to the latter except "it's hard, but you should do the work." Which I would believe they've heard thousands of times already, so it only makes them feel worse. Such dialogue by its nature doesn't make for "engaging content," so to speak. Whereas a lot of (bullshit or not) arguments arise with the former that serve as a more effective distraction.
Your comment leads me to be a bit confused regarding what you're saying about free will. You seem to want to place blame on the individual but it is philosophically and scientifically unsound. It is absolutely undeniable that people's diets are the result of the culture they live in. Many of our behaviours are the result of the advertising industry, data science and algorithms being applied like an attack on us. These problems I am referring to have been explored by Sapolsky and Yuval Harari.
Do people need to exert a determined sense of self-control to overcome this, reeducate themselves, and take responsibility for their own health? Absolutely. But placing blame on them seems irrational, unnecessary, counterproductive. I wouldn't want to get diet tips from someone that had that antagonistic attitude toward me
> It is absolutely undeniable that people's diets are the result of the culture they live in. Many of our behaviours are the result of the advertising industry, data science and algorithms being applied like an attack on us.
Being influenced doesn’t absolve someone of accountability for their actions. You will be influenced by many things throughout your life, but your decisions as an adult are your responsibility. In the modern era of the internet and unprecedented availability of fresh foods, you don’t have to let your diet be defined by society and ads. Seeing a McDonald’s ad isn’t an “attack” that forces you to choose to eat McDonald’s.
Thinking that we can’t be blamed for our decisions, in my experience, is counterproductive to overcoming bad habits. People who think that Mark Zuckerberg is forcing them to scroll Instagram for 3 hours per day should rationally choose to uninstall the app or set time limits.
Yet I see the opposite happening more often: They believe that because “the algorithm” is addictive, they shouldn’t feel bad about using social media to excess. It’s not my fault, it’s the algorithm! Blaming something external creates the illusion that we shouldn’t be accountable for our choices, which only makes it easier to make more of those bad choices.
Would I like it if everything was easy and nothing was hard?
Absolutely!
Is sitting around waiting for that to happen going to work?
Absolutely not!
There's two questions being conflated; should someone have to carefully watch their diet, or spending, or browsing? It's easy to argue that they shouldn't, and give examples of things that would make it so they don't (remove combo meals above a certain caloric amount, make credit hard to access, etc).
None of that changes that we live in the here and now, and we can inflict minor change on society, but major changes on ourselves.
Taking responsibility isn't the same as accepting blame and guilt. Maybe i didnt cause an oil spill but ill do my best to try to clean it up.
>Thinking that we can’t be blamed for our decisions, in my experience, is counterproductive to overcoming bad habits.
I think the opposite. We are entirely 100% the result of outside influences: our parents, our culture, genetics, society. The only way you can argue otherwise is to appeal to some religious concept of a soul or something. Looking deeply into this, we can learn who we are and why we are the way that we are. Only then can we see how best to move forward and in which direction. Once you see that the some algorithm is an unhealthy influence, you can try to avoid it. The exact same lessons are present in Buddhism with its insights into self and interdependence; it's probably the largest influence that lead me to see things this way.
>They believe that because “the algorithm” is addictive, they shouldn’t feel bad about using social media to excess.
I don't think it is rational or healthy to "feel bad" and harbor guilt because you were manipulated and mistreated. It can lead to depression. We are in an unhealthy society and it is productive to see this truth so we can then try to extricate ourselves from its traps.
Agreed. I think by now we know that telling people to "have more willpower" doesn't work. But some really want to make everything a moral failing, probably as a way to make themselves feel superior.
Incredibly poor understanding of how addiction works and how society functions. If ever your solution to a societal problem is "if everyone just..." you can be safely ignored as it will never happen that everyone "just ...".
The interesting thing is that the death of individual responsibility didn't make people (in aggregate) any happier.
It could have, or you could imagine a world where it could have, but the kids and teens are (apparently) reporting that they're more miserable than ever.
I think the goal was to remove shame, which seems like noble enough a goal. But it hasn't helped. Can we come up with a way to say, as a society, "whatever it is may not be your fault, but you're still the only one who can do anything about it and you might be better off if you view it through that lens"?
I worry a significant portion of the populace does not have anything better to fill their time with, so phones/Internet fill the void. You have to put something better than that in place, but that can be hard when everything is hyper-optimized for dopamine. If we step back, it’s obvious we’ve created TV 2.0. A lot of people prior to the Internet had TV fill this same role.
These people need to decide they want something better for themselves to have a chance of changes sticking.
I've been making a series of changes in last 18 months that fit the "deciding they want something better for themselves." I've lost 40# in 18 months. I stopped drinking alcohol cold on Oct 2nd after being a daily moderate/heavy drinker for ~25 years. I deleted X, FB, IG and LI on my phone 4 days ago (still schedule posts on LI via desktop).
All of these decisions were really hard right up until I did them. In reflection I don't miss the food (yes Ozembic, best decision I've made for myself as an adult). I don't miss booze - which is incredible. I haven't yet missed social media.
To replace SM I keep the kindle app on the home screen of my phone. I read a couple pages of a book then go back to something else. To replace drinking a bottle of wine while watching a movie I go for more walks outside than I used to (10k steps instead of 6k a day kind of thing).
Long way to go, but I'm hopeful. I realized I was doing things that were bad for me (food, drink, phone time) and it was impacting me in increasingly negative ways.
> I worry a significant portion of the populace does not have anything better to fill their time with...
Or... people are exhausted from the daily grind and want some sort of escape. The lives of most people are not improving; they're having to work harder and harder for less and less.
IMHO it's because in the phone world only a handful of people look good naturally. Another handful learns to compensate by using really complex lighting setups (akin to a real photographic studio).
And the rest of us are left behind. We can even look "approachable enough" for some people by showing your way to approach the world, how we talk, how we move. But all of that is way harder to capture on a static photo.
I personally look terrible in front cameras, and I have a hard time creating any kind of profile in a dating app.
One might go so far as to say in the real world (IRL), only a handful of people look good "naturally."
Try looking at everyone around you in public-EVERYONE. The beautiful people in the media sense are an incredibly small minority. I would argue even in places like L.A., sure lots of glam, but take the population as a whole and wow, such a small percentage. I'm speaking as a former pro photog, FWIW. I look at everyone.
Has there been studies about what criteria/effect make some people "photogenic" compared to "in person"? I am not talking about post-prodeffects or maquillage, but the fact that some physical traits seem better after lens distortion than viewed witht the naked eye in person.
My partner and I have been calling them "fun boxes", as in, "Hey, I just started to poop but I forgot to bring my fun box, can you grab it for me?".
I started it maybe a couple of years ago. Was aiming to give myself a verbal reminder of their skinner box nature every time I mentioned them while keeping a fig leaf veneer of comfortability so I didn't have to explain if someone else overheard. Maybe didn't go hard enough with it; about a year ago it came up that my partner had been taking the name at face value and didn't ascribe anything sinister to it.
Well of course it won't get a charitable reading here. Roughly speaking HN built this monster.
On a macro level I agree that phones and connectivity have some pretty huge downsides and bad effects on society but once you drill down more than that there are serious flaws with the article and the author seems to be longing for a past that if it existed at all was never sustainable and wouldn't exist long. It falls into the same category as romanticizing commercial whaling or feeding a family of four with a know-nothing job riveting spring hangers onto Chevrolets.
It is extraordinarily generous to describe an article as thoughtful when it begins with the words "Scrolling on our phones is killing us. This is a statement of fact that needs no citation". To my mind, bald assertion is the opposite of thoughtfulness. If an article is well-written because it creates a plausible justification for a belief held without evidence, then I think I'd prefer a badly written one.
Well, I have an instinctive negative reaction to your comment. Specifically, to this line:
> Smartphones provide a level of private immersion in silent, "socially-flavored" dopamine consumption that's antithetical to robust, vibrant socialization.
Regardless of whether the article is right (it might be) and smartphones in general, some of us find ourselves feeling trapped in this reality of "robust, vibrant socialization", and crave any form of "private immersion". Myself, I'm not glued to phones or the usual social media sites (HN on the other hand), but the very thought that the goal is to give up what little "private immersion" time I have, and embrace "robust, vibrant socialization" instead, just makes me want to finally bite the bullet and install TikTok.
(Yes, this says much more about me than about your comment. But there's some source of this feeling. I don't know what it is, but I suspect I'm not the only one feeling like this - so it perhaps could be a factor in the "smartphone equation".)
How is that the phone's fault? You don't have to stare at it anywhere near that long, and all those apps are completely optional things to install and use.
This just feels like making excuses and not having any self-control or self-discipline.
Its just a bad blog post full of inaccuracies, falsehoods, and trivial takes. Your shallow dismissal of the critiques just underscores the hollowness of the articles content.
A lot of what is stated is out of touch with reality and more fits a narrative of someone's choosing. Like a news article that tells you Nintendo DS are bad because they facilitate communication between strangers and children in PictoChat.
There is a lot of information and accuracies left out of this article to create a viewpoint when mostly the writer is nostalgia baiting.
it's as "sexy" as reading a book for an hour or more every day. oh wait... I didn't know that using a phone or reading a book was meant to be sexy for others when a person uses a phone or reads a book. woopsie
I think a lot of the negative comments here just miss the spirit and point of the article, which for me is that, as the phone is now an omnipresent literal extension of your body, we collectively have chosen to relocate many human experiences from inside of our chests to the very ends of our arms. We don't look up and out anymore, we look down. Our senses and sensibilities are being processed and filtered by an external peripheral rather than by our natural hardware. We are effectively already transhumanists and biohackers, albeit crude ones that lack invasive implants, tuning and modulating our neural pathways in ways that have been heretofore unseen, frequently as simple-minded consumers of the modulation rather than conscious curators of our own metamorphosis.
Author is opining for the way things used to be, is expounding upon the real, significant consequences of this transformation, and just wondering in general what the hell happened and why we let it get to be like this lol
It's also worth noting that the author is a woman, so if you're a dude and feel attacked by the article somehow (or god forbid instinctively dismiss the whole thing because it's not from a male perspective), just take a deep breath and try to recognize that other people have valid, salient thoughts and opinions too. She's just suggesting we all 'touch grass' in a much more substantial way than a bite-sized meme phrase.
Nah they're just trying to police other people's behavior with nostalgia-bait. The fact that you think there is a group of people who are actually mad at reading this and are trying to minimize any criticism as gender bias is...something.
Honestly man I wrote that last part as more of a thought-out-loud rather than a straight-up accusation. I just felt like a lot of comments who (to me, just my opinion) really didn't understand the writing were probably guys, possibly young, definitely in a bubble (we're on Hacker News, like it or not it's a distinct male bubble with a specific world view), and I think it's worth establishing a bit of context so that somebody might find themselves able to interrogate their reactions to it, in the event that they had a reaction at all. Maybe I was reaching, whatever -- but even your comment ascribing intent to the author's post as "trying to police other people's behavior" illustrates that you read it as instruction rather than introspection.
It's just somebody's musings on a topic, nothing more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's fair, reading it did not come off as introspection to me. I could probably have taken it less seriously. Opinion generally ties into attitude so I'm going to assume that persons musings will reflect in how they act.
The article to me feels like it pussyfoots around the real issue and perpetuates the “blame {some new tech} on downfall of society” fallacy.
Yes, personally I agree that doom scrolling is not ideal but this is a symptom of a much larger issue — no time available for a majority of people to invest in real relationships. Real issue here is a significant number of people left behind in this economy and this largely due to shitty economic policy based on neoliberalism
I don't think it's true that a significant number of people have less time available today than in the article's "late 90s and early 2000s" time frame. I'd concede that many people feel like they do (sometimes including me!), and I think it's pretty clearly because of how much time we're spending on our phones.
The time pressures of every day life, which has gotten more complicated, are probably why we gravitate towards instant gratification more often. You don't have the time or energy to go to the library for books on a work day, especially with a commute. Same with any other activity. Working hard to finish your work ahead of time results in more work. Innovation's reward is not more free time, it's more work of a different kind.
Blaming phones is a distraction. If it weren't phones, we'd still be couch potatoes lazily scrolling through channels to find something to watch. The core issue is we only have time/energy these days for our job's work and the lazy resting which seeks instant gratification.
Next time someone's unemployed, try doing nothing but social media for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week on a couch and see you'll eventually get bored.
> You don't have the time or energy to go to the library for books on a work day, especially with a commute. Same with any other activity.
I hear this repeated a lot on the Internet, but in real life I do things during the week and meet up with a lot of other adults with jobs and commutes for them.
This came up a lot when I was mentoring younger engineers. Every time we did a deep dive into their daily routine, they had a lot of unaccounted for time. They’d list their work day and commute, obviously, then add things like getting ready in the morning and eating dinner at night. Then one of two things happened: Either they’d start to exaggerate their daily routine chores (getting ready in the morning, making dinner at night) until they took 6 hours every day, or they’d be confused about how they couldn’t get the numbers to add up.
Upon further gentle pushing, they almost always realize that they’re spending hours and hours watching TV and on their phones every time. Some times they’d pull out a phone with screen time tracking, be stunned by the number of hours, and tell me it must be broken.
There are some job and commute combinations that won’t leave time for anything during the week, but most people don’t have those. They just have poor time management and their revealed priorities differ from their stated priorities. People will tell you that reading books and going to the gym is a priority for them, but then they’ll spend 3 hours watching Netflix every night and scroll social media for 90 minutes every morning.
8 hour work days could probably be 6 or less with the same pay for plenty of jobs (or 5 day weeks could be 4 days). Some of these jobs could be remote. If your job is draining, it's not taking the same energy as a job you like and fulfills you; it's probably taking multiples more energy and willpower away from you.
Let's not even throw childcare into consideration here. Childcare blows your energy and time out of the water all by itself, yet we still ask 8 hours a day from parents.
People miscount calories like you're saying with time, so I'd say that's accurate, but no one is really forcing you to eat the overportioned, oversalted and oversugar'd foods from restaurants these days (USA perspective). Work is definitely forcing you to spend the time you do otherwise you quickly go homeless.
I think the amount of different activities you can do in a day is a personality thing.
I work 9-10 hours a day. Could I physically squeeze in an Another hour and half of chores or socializing than I do now? Sure. Is that going to make my life better and more fulfilling? No.
But for many people I know, the answer would be yes. They want to do PTA or whatever.
For reasons (work is paying for it, sets me up for several positions I'm interested in) I'm knocking out a masters degree. I've had this same discussion with other students who are, like me, juggling a full-time job, house, and family with school. They don't understand how I fit in everything and take more classes than them every semester (still part time, 2 this semester and TA'ing a 3rd).
The time is there, if you're willing to use it. You have 16-18 hours every week day (depending on how much you sleep).
I wake at 6am, work out until 6:30 or 7 (depending on the day) then cleanup and head to work, where I arrive around 8am. I leave around 4:30pm and get home no later than 5:30pm (if there's an accident on the route home). So this is the largest portion of my day and eats up 11.5 hours on a bad day, but 11 normally.
That leaves me with 4.5-6.5 more hours in the evening for everything else. That's actually a lot of time if you're not wasting it. 2-3 hours with my family every night and 1-2 hours doing school work or TA'ing. And since I go to bed at midnight, that leaves me with 1.5-3.5 hours to do whatever else (more time with the family or wife most likely, or housework).
And weekends there's a glut of time. In 18 hours of waking time, I can do a 2 hour ride, 2 hours of yard and house work, and say 4 hours (max) of school work. I still have 10 hours for family, friends, or myself.
Or as if people use to work 12 hours in a coal mine and have all this energy for dancing and piano practice after.
Modern people are just spoiled and largely delusional.
I had a bad work day yesterday but compared to anything else I would have been doing 50 years ago it was absolutely nothing in terms of stress or energy.
In what context? At work? If a more established coworker was "mentoring" me about how much work I was getting done and wanting detailed info about how I spend my time outside of work, I'd lie and act confused about it too.
"Next time someone's unemployed, try doing nothing but social media for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week on a couch and see you'll eventually get bored."
I think this can be true while also further enforcing the point. I was a child in the 80's and would ride my bike all over town just doing stuff. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. Yes, I know that sounds like older guy nostalgia.
But the idea that a full work day is the only reason that adults aren't "bored" seems absurd to me. The world is full of low-cost wonder. We have allowed ourselves to be captured by low agency tasks like watching TV and scrolling through phones.
The classic consumption vs creative use of computation.
I think people underestimate how much consumption there was in the past. For example, TV viewership peaked in 2009[0] before iPhones were widespread. Average viewership in America was almost 9 hours a day.
> I think people underestimate how much consumption there was in the past
Sure, but as a child I was limited to initial one TV station, later two. They started broadcasting at 16 - 17 and stopped around midnight. The subtract dinner time, programming after bed time and the stuff I had no interest in watching, That didn't leave many hours for TV.
I don't think it's the hours that's the point, because is it really better to read a book, a magazine or the newspaper? It really depends on the content you consume and the quality of the content has gone rapidly downhill since the invention of reality TV.
Listen , take my words with a grain of salt because I admittedly waste a LOT of time .
But from what I've heard from great people / self help books in general is that
Getting bored isn't bad. I think you need to get bored sometimes to fetch back to your default.
Are we humans to not get bored or are we not bored / constantly stimulated / this drive towards higher and higher satisfaction that makes us human?
My brother used to joke that we should have some device that just injects the maximum amount of pleasure possible (like drugs) , I was like uhh that makes them unproductive and he was like : what is productivity to individual if he isn't happy?
Though I wonder if happiness and satisfaction are same. Satisfaction feels chemical , happiness feels spiritual.
Blaming phones isn't a distraction. I use a dumb phone and it didn't even had songs till yesterday (had no sd card , read my other comment)
And I had to constantly spend 3 - 4 hours 3 days per week in car travel. Guess what? I like to look at visuals and maybe reading book (though it gets vomit-y , I am going to now listen to AUDIOBOOKs , it's so fun!) , and maybe interacting with other human beings. I love dumb phones. I am seriously thinking of never buying a smartphone
But I don't know , like if I get stuck on a study question or on a programming question. I actually feel like my breaths get short and I get anxious and it feels clumsy (like the world is falling bit by bit)
The best way to describe it would be the box getting shorter and you are trapped in it ("stuck")
So I personally really hate getting stuck but I am okay with getting bored since then I can play with my own (thoughts?)
The most unpleasant "stuck" feelings I get tend to be associated with learning something that's new (could be a musical technique, a new codebase, etc.). At age 42, I now try to treat that feeling as a positive - it means I'm stretching my brain / body in ways I haven't done before.
I think the advice for that situation would be to "sit with it"; through exposure gradually reduce your automatic response to that situation and become calmer about it. Easier said than done of course.
Is that really true? I think life has become infinitely more convenient over the last few decades.
One can now order everything over the internet and not even leave the house. SO many errands that cost tons of time involved leaving the house and getting this or that. This is now all reduced to minutes on the phone or computer and the items will magically appear in front of your door.
Same with information search. Having the internet, google maps, etc. has made everything so much easier than it used to be in the 80s or 90s.
Life IS infinitely more convenient
and
A biproduct of that is missing out on things that are (or used to be) authentic experiences.
Is it a guarantee that going to the grocery store is certain to be a thrilling adventure whereas Instacart is ceratain not to be? Of course not. There is a non-zero chance you meet the love of your life at the Grocery store just as there is a non-zero chance you meet the love of your life dropping off your Instacart order. (We can argue about the relative percentages of each but that's not the point)
The point is not that convenience is bad but rather that the ubiquity of phones (on-demand apps, social media) in daily life removes a wide range of potential emotional outcomes from daily life as a result of the fact that nothing is rare anymore. Nothing.
I never understood this either. I sleep well, work 8 hours, meal prep my meals, work out a few days a week, have outdoor and indoor hobbies, meet up with friends at least weekly, and still have more time than I know what to do with.
This didn't "just happen". I made choices all life long, and continue to make choices to change my circumstances to build and to have the life and lifestyle I want.
New complexity is a factor, but I would also point to a reduced standard of living (possibly related). Times are hard. Individuals are worked harder than past decades by their employers, and the goods and services available to them are reduced in quality. So, for example, to get the same quality of food, you have to spend more time discerning its quality or sourcing it from different or more high quality places. Whereas you might have been able to afford a trustworthy handyman to fix certain things in years past, the cost of this is higher and the average individual is less trustworthy, in terms of somebody you want to let into your home.
The time pressures of every day life, which has gotten more complicated, are probably why we gravitate towards instant gratification more often. You don't have the time or energy to go to the library for books on a work day, especially with a commute.
All of that is 100% self-imposed.
Work and live closer together. Find a job that allows sane hours. Find a hobby so you don't have to spend what little extra time you have doom-scrolling (or watching TV).
I get up a 5:30, go to the gym or pool, and still have time to walk my dog and eat a sensible breakfast before walking to the office and arriving around 8am. I leave at 5:30ish, walk the dog again, and then cycle or run before dinner. That puts me somewhere around 7:30 or 8, so I still have an hour or two to chat with wife and read a book. No doom-scrolling or couch-potato-ing required.
If I'm physically tired, swap "run" for "fiddle with home lab" or "read more books" or "take dog for 3 mile hike".
Quitting Fecesbook and Twatter were two of the best decisions I've made in the past 5 years.
I'm not taking extra effort to change my life when companies want to do RTO when it's unnecessary. Sure, you can be a survivor and adapt to any situation and just go with it, but that stops you from fighting back against these pressures. You'll get taken advantage of if you always live like that.
The time pressures of every day life, which has gotten more complicated, are probably why we gravitate towards instant gratification more often.
You said people don't have time, so they resort to scrolling or whatever. All I'm saying is that time limitations and excess complexities are largely self-imposed. If you (general you) want to continue commuting and working long hours and not having the bandwidth to do anything else, you do you. But admit that that's on you.
This is a tremendous piece. It rings so very true.
I was 18 in 1990. I'm undoutebdly rose-tinting it but it was indeed edgy and weird and loaded and cool and unknown and just basically fucking brilliant.
I look at my teen / 20's kids now and although they're brilliant and doing rad things and out there in the world being great - they're also slightly reserved, spoilt for choice, their generation less able to take hard knocks or deal with unknowns. It's kinda sad I think. Here's hoping we'll find ways to get back to more of what's actually real and important and well, sexy...!
The emphasis on embodiment was particularly interesting I think - at least with 90s tech you generally had to push physical buttons to get a response. There was something kinetic about tech use, it felt more like using LEGOs.
Now user interfaces are an exhausting search exercise- I have to watch the screen to see where the buttons will appear with every interaction. It sucks.
It makes me wonder what a physical-first API would look like. Perhaps that's just what CLIs evolved for: reliable, repeatable key-based interactions.
That's a really interesting point. And I guess related - physical media. Saving up for some vinyl or a cassette, going down the shop and adding it to your [physical] collection had a whole bunch of interactions along the way. Meeting your mates, browsing in the record shop, comparing notes, looking at girls, coming home, making a space on your shelf / floor for the new thing, putting it on...
Nowadays: phone + spotify + search = done. No interaction, no flirting, no saving up, no physical-ness...
Entirely (mostly) unrelated but I remember my mate buying a cassette copy of MBV's Loveless [0] from Camden Market. He took it home, listened, decided it was warped (if you know the record this will make sense...!), took it back, got a replacement, took it home... same warped sound. Eventually realised that was what was what it actually sounded like.. Man, we took the piss... :-)
Expanding on this: It's shocking how quietly we accept that using a smartphone means fighting for and against the presence of an on-screen keyboard. Remember the Motorola Droid with its slide out physical keyboard? That was fantastic.
Back in 2002, I was on the hunt for a copy of Primal Rock Therapy by Blood Circus. I would hit every used record store, book store, CD exchange, and thrift store trying to find a copy (I still had unreliable dial up at home, so getting it off the internet was a pipe dream). I eventually found it in a used bin at a Half-price Books in Cleveland after 4 years of searching.
It was a middling album by a middling band, but the satisfaction I felt I still remember 23 years later. Same with the 4-6 weeks delivery from catalogs of the 90s. We no longer have the anticipation and the wonder we did in an analog/scarcity world when everything is on demand.
So I'm of an age with you, and I broadly agree, but I think we can't entirely discount survivor bias, and the sweeping under the carpet of a lot of stuff that people would rather pretend didn't happen, or were glad when it no longer had to.
Case in point - the link between app dating, #MeToo, and the redefinition of sexual harassment/misconduct to incorporate pretty much any sexualised behaviour in the workplace.
Essentially the existence of apps made it _possible_ to redraw boundaries. Something a lot of women were keen to do, having put up with all manner of crap for years - and having listened to their stories, decent men mostly went along with it. Before apps - which carved out a dedicated space for seeking romantic partners - I don't think that would have been the case.
1990 is 35 years ago now, and if you look 35 years prior to that, you're in buttoned-up, conservative 1955. So maybe we GenX were fortunate (or for some, not so much) to live in more morally liberated times, where this stuff could exist in the public sphere before the Weinsteins, Tates and PUAs came along and ruined it all.
As to stuff being swept under the carpet - the allegations against roughly 80% of 90s rock titans, plus film moguls and so on - most women will tell you that's just the tip of the iceberg, so maybe we were overdue for the pendulum to swing the other way.
Like I say, I agree with you about the spirit of things, but equally, well, maybe our definition of sexy belongs to its time, just as prior generations had a different view on all that.
Nah. It's well-written but I disagree with pretty much all of it. Having a powerful tool to hand has made me more confident, happier, healthier, and yes, sexier. My relationships are better than ever (well, they took a hit when I moved internationally - but that would've been much worse without a phone). I don't want to go back to having to go downtown to look up a fact at the library, or eating at terrible restaurants, or having to endure hours of tedium and pretend to like it because there was no alternative.
Yeah I think a lot of people are just old in this thread and are nodding along because that's how it used to be. They're talking for everyone as if they are the arbiters of what is sexy for everyone when it's clearly taking popular viewpoints from a specific time, place, and type of person. All of their examples of Phones used to be sexy are stupid. These people are just nostalgic.
The fact that they mention NEETs using Pornography and Video Games as supplements for relationship and achievement is a signal. Some people might do that but do you think most of these people would have done other decidedly sexy things had these things not existed? What is your argument? Even if it was true should we then force these men, who don't get attention from women, to do nothing but chase women and fail because it's "romantic", the world does not revolve around you. This woman sounds like those people who denigrate video games and pornography then watch 30 hours of trashy reality television a week and don't see the irony of their own behavior. We get it, your boyfriend won't pay attention to you because your relationship was poor in the first place and now you have an issue with others enjoying themselves.
Also, nothing is stopping you from being spontaneous, nothing is forcing you to look up the menu before you go to a restaurant. That is your active decision that you're crying about as if it's what everyone is forced to do. I have no issue being spontaneous and actively choose to not look stuff up all the time. People like this are the same type of people to try and police others behavior but never discover their own flaws or ignore double standards because it benefits them, and yet decry others are living terribly.
In this survey study of US adults from 2000 to 2018, sexual inactivity increased among men aged 18 to 24 years and 25 to 34 years and women aged 25 to 34 years during the study period, with the increase among men mainly occurring among unmarried individuals. Men with lower income and with part-time or no employment were more likely to be sexually inactive, as were men and women who were students.
People who have fewer entertainment options have more sex. (I've seen it said that e.g. people living on small islands have lots of sex, which is part of how they remain populated even with so many people leaving). That doesn't mean that they're sexier - having lots of sex because you're bored is no more sexy than watching lots of porn. (You can look at swinger groups for the extreme example - they have a lot of sex but are profoundly unsexy to most people).
While these trends exist, they don't directly correlate with the invention of the smart phone or the behaviors the poster is stating are unsexy. It has more to do with social education, reduction of religion, and many other factors not discussed in their post.
These are just two results from a 30 second Google search. There is a ton of information out there that directly correlates both social media and immediate, ubiquitous access to it (i.e. smartphones) with negative social outcomes, including suicide rates.
Honestly "smartphone bad" is such a popular thing to publish and claim, and so directly contradictory to my own experience, that I don't credit it. It's like the D&D satanism panics or something.
> No one feels connected, present, alive, embodied, or sexy when they’re on their phone all day.
I feel like the blame is misplaced. People are on their phones all day because of social media. The phone is just a convenient access point. I suspect without socials, the phone would be considered just a really handy tool [0] rather than the growing consensus that it's some kind of social menace.
[0] that some nerds go too far with, like the computer
> [...] Why walk into a store in Soho and see what’s on offer when you can stay home and scroll the entire inventory from the comfort of your couch? Why go to the library to find books about a topic that interests you when you can look it up on Wikipedia in two minutes and move on with your day?
> Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.
Even without social media, we still would have the instant gratification that the author proposes as a problem.
Correct, but social media takes the problem and turns it up to 11. It's odd how people seem defensive about it. If you use social media, you are being manipulated. Full stop. It's not only if you're uneducated, or not technical, or unaware of it's impact, or whatever. You are being manipulated. Full stop. Not only that, you are being manipulated by some of the best and brightest minds of a generation. To pretend this isn't problem is basically Stockholm syndrome at this point.
Online shopping and Wikipedia were a thing years before smartphones though. In the post-cell but pre-smart era that the author is glamorizing, you could already scroll inventory and look things up on Wikipedia from the comfort of your own home.
The actual problem is that there are still physical stores and libraries. These should have all gone away decades ago to be replaced with something that you can't instantly find online.
Society is still run buy nostalgic boomers who don't know how to use a computer and this is yet another example of the friction it causes.
Despite the existence of phones, apps and websites this decade is, so far, the best for national park visitation. The same is probably true for local parks, Because as of today home VR isn't at that level. That's despite the lockdown dip.
Nobody wants to go the library to look for a book that probably isn't there only to have a chance encounter with their future wife. It's fantastical thinking and designing a society around that expected user behavior is a gross misallocation of resources at best and dangerous at worst.
Social media existed before the iPhone/android. I remember needing to be at home on my computer to check myspace, xanga, and even thefacebook. Not sure how I feel about this article (it's interesting at least) but the existence of phones/apps does coincide with a lot of changes to our relationship with social media and a lot of changes to social media itself.
Perhaps without smartphones in everyone's pocket we would use social media much differently and that industry would have grown differently....
You did have to be more deliberate about it though. Checking socials and posting to socials required physically going to your computer, sitting down, and doing it. It wasn't something you could just to absent-mindedly with the convenience of just putting your hand in your pocket.
And we sat at home and waited for mIRC, ICQ, or MSN Messenger to chirp, of course.
What really changed is that good old Moore's law delivered systems where personalized feeds are not just possible, but they are the norm. And with a bit of tweaking, add infinite scrolling, spice up the recommender system to inject a bit of noise/variance, and ... voila! you are in a nice Skinner box.
My approach is to block the majority of notifications and have no social media apps. Now it is a phone with some handy features like maps, music and a web browser.
You can't separate phones from social media, they have a symbiotic relationship and feed off of each other.
Without smartphones, social media would be much less pervasive and much less toxic, because people would not have an internet connected camera with them at all times. Fewer posts means less engagement, and even more importantly having to bring and then open up a laptop would pose a major barrier to doomscrolling behaviors. Some would do it anyway—there were lots of us who spent a lot of time online before Facebook—but not anything like as many as do now, which means it wouldn't be normalized. And without normalization, social media as it exists today couldn't really exist.
So, yeah, phones without socials would be tools. But phones created social media in the incredibly toxic form it exists in today.
The real social menace is how few "third spaces" are available without some sort of overlarge fee. Instead every location is surrounded by large parking lots so we are further isolated by driving everywhere.
A call from an unknown number. A little black book. Your heart pounding as you checked your answering machine. Calling someone from a payphone. Hearing someone say, “It’s for you.” This was romance."
I use a dumb phone , It had some issues with formatting of sd card , but my non technical cousin actually solved it (I had gone to his house for some other reason)
I am so so much thankful of him. It also humbled me , since just because I am from technical aspect in the linux / computer doesn't mean I know everything in android / other aspect. I just had to format sd card (but technically it can lead to losing data and the problem was that I didn't had 32 gb card , now I am not sure that my phone supports 64 gb card , because I tried to put it and it didn't work but maybe I didn't format it properly)
Still , that small action has lead to my phone from just being dumb to now playing audio , capturing photos and capturing videos. It has become great!
I feel the power of community , a sense of pure joy. And the phone's definitely sexy.
People love my phone , though the audio control is finnicky , it actually played music in class today once lol! , I had to lie to sir that it was my ringtone and someone called me , but crazy .
While I agree with this article, I think the selection solely of vogue model shots and Paris Hilton’s waist from the early aughts is in poor taste. The beauty aesthetic of the time tended rather extremely towards anorexic, and the selection of images in this piece might as well say, “Remember when THIN was IN?”, which I think detracts from its overall message. It’s also a bit of a weird choice, because similar shots from today are often of equally beautiful, equally thin models and are just as sexy: that portion of media at least does not seem to have changed much. In addition, if making a more general point about standards of beauty, perhaps it would have been nice to include a photo of Brad Pitt or something? Is the implicit assumption here that only women can be sexy, or that only heterosexual men will be reading the article?
Like, there are literally people I’d share this article with (e.g. my wife) if not for the really poor selection of photos.
The bit that really sticks for me here is the bit about the element of risk.
Takes a moment to get to that part, but this is my takeaway: feeling risk in meat space interactions stimulates our imagination about uncertain outcomes. Our devices have allowed us to back out of this feeling and into a predictable reality.
I can confirm this: a recent improv comedy class, which I often dread actually going to, is 15 humans with no phones compressed into an actual room. That feeling of people flirting but also having fun is palpable.
Alternatively, remember that personal articles with one author is the perspective from the author, and not necessarily a "world truth". Same goes for comments on HN :) Saves even more time, no need to fumble around replacing words and whatnot.
What do you mean by 'saves time'? When you read a novel, do you replace the character names with "a figment of my, the author's, imagination"?
It's not a fucking diary entry claiming to be reporting on an objective fact of the world, it's someone trying to communicate something about the world.
Really, all you can think when you read a title like this is "well, that's certainly not true for me, I don't have to read this"?
I’ve always felt it’s more important to understand the essence of what is being said, rather than hyperfocus on specific wording (unless it’s particularly important). I’ve never read “you” and thought they were imposing anything on me specifically.
I've wondered why an app dedicated specifically for this purpose hasn't actually taken off. It seems there have been attempts, but they all just fade away.
I know more than a few people who used to check Craigslist everyday to read the stories.
This is spot-on. In addition to the obvious risks (privacy, security), these devices represent a tremendous opportunity cost. Think of how that life-crushed-into-an-iPad commercial resonated in all the unintended ways.
Opportunity cost is a good term for the problem with addictive tech. Any one of the little distractions it offers up seems harmless, but in aggregate they represent a massive time opportunity cost, and indulging a few without succumbing to the aggregate has proven incredibly difficult for many.
Idk, popular people and probably influencer types look cool with a phone. They look like a VIP, people are constantly texting them, it looks like they're constantly socializing, networking, etc. Same with social media, they have like 5 million friends and it looks like a lot's going on in their lives.
That's probably the difference between how cool people use technology vs nerds or dorks. When I use my phone, it's either to look something up, study or learn something new, read the news, or talk to my mom. I would imagine I probably don't look cool using my phone.
Joking aside, I think one thing that I really don't like about smartphones and texting entering our lives is that when you're out for food or coffee people get on their phones, and it feels antisocial, like you can't talk to them now without interrupting them from whatever they're doing on their phone. In the past, I remember, if people had nothing to say, they would just sit there and look off into the distance. It all felt way more social back then, when people got together they interacted more.
I think this blog post covers a lot of ground while not really diving deep into any of the points it tries to make. I just want to highlight a couple of them because they are particularly important to me.
The concept of "you can desire only what you don't have" coupled with "you borrow your desires". Every thought in our head comes from a previous input, a lot of the same kind of inputs will spark a lot of the same thoughts and naturally they will spawn desires. I was on a work trip last year with two of my colleagues. They are into music (I'm not) and naturally a lot of the conversations were around singing and producing. I left that trip feeling an intense desire of trying out mixing/DJing for the first time in my life. I definitely attribute that to talking intensely about music for a few days for the most part.
The other one is: there's value in being wrong and in experiencing negative things. I'm not going out seeking traumatic experiences or anything but I yearn for new experiences for a variety of reasons. Even smaller ones such as a new restaurant to try out sometimes can suck, can be a waste of time/money but as long as the negatives aren't that impactful I think that the small gems you find a long the way paired with the funny stories you get about the bad ones are very much worth the potential negative experiences. I often talk to people that "feel stuck" or on "autopilot" and I do think that always doing the same things over and over has diminishing returns on happiness and joy. Trying out new things I'd say is generally a good idea (common sense applies, as always).
"On a lighter note, aren’t we all so sick of looking stuff up? You know what, maybe I go to a restaurant and it’s bad. Maybe I don’t know what’s good on the menu before I get there. Maybe I throw caution to the wind and put something in the dishwasher without googling if it’s dishwasher safe. Maybe I get a flip phone and get comfortable saying, “I don't know.” While you’re looking down at Google Maps, the love of your life is walking past you on the street. To feel sexy, we need risk and spontaneity. Our phones kill both."
Whenever I read an article like this that calls out things like "[driving us] deeper and deeper into our algorithmic hell holes.", I want to scream, and shake the author by the shoulders. "Snap out of it!" I yell.
We don't have to make a Twitter account. No one held a gun to our heads to get on TikTok. Instagram? Pintrest? We don't need to join those.
I'm not suggesting everyone swear off all social media. I enjoy my various Discords and message boards. I enjoy reading HN. But these patterns of doomscrolling various social apps flummoxes me. "TikTok is so bad." Well then, why did you make an account???
I realize there's some devils in the details here with regards to social pressures and the like. But I don't think they're by any means insurmountable. And if you're at the point that you're going to write tens of pages on this phenomena, then ride that momentum and delete the accounts when you're done. You'll feel better for it.
All that aside, I did greatly enjoy the read for its retrospective on 90s and 2000s phone culture and that wonderful period of tech where we were just starting to get connected - tantalizingly so - but it was so limited and clunky that it preserved a sense of mystery. Or at least, that's how it felt at the time.
>I realize there's some devils in the details here with regards to social pressures and the like.
I have a no-socials policy for my kids until they're practically adults. It's not an easy policy, and the oldest who had to deal with this policy first, was not thrilled about it.
But it did bear fruit. My oldest is at university, and is not entangled in social media drama. Which is not entirely due to my policy--the oldest is also extremely independent--but I can't help but notice it played a part.
It's not easy. Regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, they definitely miss out on some degree of what makes up the public commons for kids today.
Every now and then there's a story about a (usually) millennial who swears off social media and finds value in doing so. Sometimes they go back, sometimes they don't. But millennials marinated in this world for so long, it's really difficult for them to break out. (At least the Zoomers got "touch grass" pretty early on.) I feel for the millennials trying to navigate through all this. For GenX it would be like making it through the 80s without knowing the lyrics to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. You almost have to be an extreme outsider or a very independent person indeed to escape the milieu.
reading someone express the idea that NEETs "are robbing /themselves/ of agency" is surprisingly upsetting.
what is someone to do when they've grown up undersocialized, not in-tune enough to hang with the normals yet too prideful to debase themselves and consort with the common nerd? when they've no real skills, no hobbies, and (stemming from their failure to acquire any thus far) no drive to try and find some?
the phone is to blame, sure, but only for creating a highly-social, fast-paced civilization where everyone else is waiting to leave their fellow people behind the moment they fall out of cultural lockstep.
video games and pornography aren't taking these people's agency, they're providing a buffer. a way for shut-ins to pass the time so they don't up and kill themselves.
Not to say there isn't any overlap. But whereas people who are smart but somewhat lacking in social skills can thrive in nerd-dom, for people in the lowest quartile on both, paid employment is a race to the bottom.
(Side note - HN tends to hypothesise that smartness and social skills are inversely correlated. While there's certainly a trend for people to develop one at the expense of the other, there's not much correlation in innate levels).
Video games and porn play the same role here as weed has for at least the last couple of generations, and alcohol for centuries - they make an otherwise intolerable situation tolerable. If you've genuinely no escape from your circumstances, that's a good thing. If you might otherwise sort your life out and become a positive contributor, but they rob you of motivation to do so, not so much.
I wouldn't like to say which side the numbers come down on overall. When does taking the edge off go too far - harder to measure this when you don't have the direct indicators of health damage or violent/abusive behaviour that alcohol brings. Modern society tends to assume that the right amount of motivation to have is "as much as possible", but that's not always true.
of course -- nerds have friends, there's a nerd table in the lunch room, there's always some space carved out for nerd-type activities, they'll probably eventually find a matching nerd-girlfriend (or boyfriend, i suppose. neetdom is an affliction that hits guys harder.), parents know how to deal with nerd children, etc.
games and weed make the intolerable tolerable, as you say: some folks aren't well-configured for productive society, and if the option is between active torture trying to better themselves and "be normal", all-encompassing boredom, and soma-esque games 'n porn, i'm comfortable giving them the last category without constantly trying to tell them that they're doing it to themselves.
OK, this is "sex in the city" bloggery, but it does contain some very good & important points which HN readers should attend to. Specifically to my mind: the importance of CHANCE and NOT-KNOWING to the value of experience, and happiness. To simplify: Romance necessitates CHANCE. A chance encounter, something improbable, strange, etc is the basis for the myth that sustains the romantic idea. Dating apps are inherently anti-romantic. Relatedly, many experiences are valuable ONLY because they are unpredictable. Adventure necessitates NOT KNOWING what is coming. Smartphones kill the spirit of adventure.
I feel the opposite, for some reason. Rolexes kind of looks disgusting to me, as I'll automatically jump to believing the person is superficial, cares too much about impression, and likes to waste money on such things.
While almost the same goes for Apple Watch wearers, at least I could justify them wearing it because it actually has some functionality people can find useful, compared to a arm-watch like a Rolex which basically just carries duplicate functionality today, and is mostly used as a status symbol.
I think someone being opinionated about their fashion sense is a much more powerful message than at most choosing which colour of plastic (and often we can't even do that!).
edit: and certainly, there are people who think the apple watch's sleekness is the height of aesthetic, but you'll never be able to tell that from glancing at them.
> I think someone being opinionated about their fashion sense is a much more powerful message than at most choosing which colour of plastic (and often we can't even do that!).
Agree, much more powerful message. I'm not sure we agree on if that message is net positive or negative though :)
Where I live only pimps (fake), retirees who got one 30 years ago from their employer upon retiring(real), nightclub promoters (fake), and criminal defense attorneys who will berate an underaged rape victim on the stand until they break down and cry for the sole purpose of being a sociopathic dick while trying to get their pedophile golf buddy off (real) and Rolex flippers (real) own Rolexes (real or fake).
edit: also franchisees whose franchise sells the most shit so the franchiser buys them one as a prize (real)
To me, seeing a Rolex on someone's wrist puts them in the same category of dickhole as a lifted pickup truck with punisher decals on the rear window and truck nutzzzz hanging off the tow hitch.
We have lost the direct connection to nature, to love being an aspect of nature.
Everything is channeled through our phones, leaving our embodiment mostly as empty shells without purpose. This could also be the description of zombies or cyborgs.
I feel sorry for the young generation that is deprived of so many real, physical impressions - or rather, I hope that they will break out of their misery and get back what they - no, everyone - needs.
Tim Robinson has this sketch about the phone that, on the surface, is totally ridiculous—but if you take a step back, it’s actually kind of thought-provoking. His comedy isn’t for everyone, but when he nails something, he really nails it.
On the sexy front, my company has marketing materials from 10 years ago showing people at a construction site interacting with their phones. The idea is that it was sexy and cool to be connected and be using technology to communicate and interact with the project. But today? It just looks like someone is goofing off on social media when they should be working.
> Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.
> All over the world, an entire generation of young men, often referred to as “NEETs,” are robbing themselves of agency, drive, and romantic relationships through their addiction to video games and pornography. Video games allow a young man to experience a sort of pseudo-achievement, while pornography masquerades as love. Some of these men have seen more naked women than any king who has ever lived.
> Many will mock their pain and their addiction, but it’s heartbreaking to think that they’ll never experience true risk, true reward, or true romance.
This post acknowledges that NEETs are living better than ancient Roman emperors, but laments they're missing out on "risk, reward, and romance" that these ancient Romans had. What exactly is so great about risking death on the battlefield or risking food poisoning at a bad restaurant? Why would an average man in his early 20s want to take a risk by approaching women at one's job or in public? Especially when you go on Tinder/Hinge and realize just how worthless you actually are.
The article argues that:
> Thoroughly exhausting ourselves intellectually and physically through productive work brings fulfillment, and with fulfillment comes peace.
But you can, as the article acknowledges, thoroughly exhaust yourself through video games and online vices. Achievement no longer requires risk. And the article is unable to quantify what value that risk brings beyond being inherently exciting. If this was true, why aren't more people taking risks? It should be more fun than sitting at home all day.
"NEET" is an economic term that stands for "not in education, employment, or training", because unemployment doesn't include people that have left the labour force entirely. Self-description as a NEET is a proud admission that one does not contribute to the economy or work force; it's a valuation of the individual over the community.
This article accepts that premise and argues in futility that NEETs don't really want the lifestyle they chose. I disagree, and I'd rather we make it an explicit value of our society to reject individual freedoms that cause broader social harms.
If smartphone addiction is legitimately destroying society by acting as a sinkhole for human potential, we should apply legal restrictions or taxes on screen time. That would be more effective than telling someone who's doomscrolling how they're actually hurting themselves.
> Today, everyone and everything is always available, and there’s nothing less sexy than that. There’s no chase. Our phones don’t allow us time to dwell, and they don’t allow us time to yearn. Why force yourself to daydream about the guy you’re seeing when you can easily look at dozens of photographs of him online? Why walk into a store in Soho and see what’s on offer when you can stay home and scroll the entire inventory from the comfort of your couch? Why go to the library to find books about a topic that interests you when you can look it up on Wikipedia in two minutes and move on with your day?
100 % ... noticed this when trying to find a recent butt pick of Nicola Cavani on instagram, yesterday. I do that a few times a year to collect reference for my AI powered buttbook platform. company will be rebranded to oh-mega later on. girls taking selfies and staring at their phones is unreasonably unsexy.
> That said, cosmetics and aesthetic trends on TikTok are harmless fun and games compared to what’s going on in the darkest corners of the internet. All over the world, an entire generation of young men, often referred to as “NEETs,” are robbing themselves of agency, drive, and romantic relationships through their addiction to video games and pornography.
1. "Darkest corners of the internet" are playing video games and surfing porn?
2. Just the men and all of them, huh?
OP has no idea. Which OTOH solidifies their point about disconnectedness and being in distant bubbles.
She makes some decent points but a lot of this feels like the age-old argument of "$SOMETHING_NEW was fun and exciting when I was young and now it's all turned to shit."
My traumatic childhood killed my ability to feel sexy. My adult realization that very few people are worth my time and it's extremely unlikely for me to find a happy relationship killed my libido.
Appreciate the article, but why do so many articles these days have to start with a history of the world? Do we really need to go through the years and recall the introduction of the iPhone? Do we all not know that already?
I hate this trend so much. It's common in tech talks now. Recapping the entire history only to come to the main point, the title of the talk, towards the final 10 minutes. Come on.
I didn't like my first cellphone, loaned as part of working for Nokia >20ya. They are, however, excellent tools for communication and even looking something up on the web.
Other than that, my fam has stories of entire families at our local park walking, each on their own separate phone. It is not sad or pitiable, for their choices are theirs to make, but the effects on their psyches and eyesight are not positive.
As to being sexy, being able to make someone laugh and actually caring about their wellbeing such that you will actually do something to help them become happier -- those are the qualities that will attract a person to you. Everything else we do in life is mere drivel, and directing our life towards such vainglorious pursuits them will only attract other frivolous, unawake people.
Fill your heart with love for all human beings and the Earth, herself, and others will want to be around you, unless they are dark-hearted fools, but you don't want to be around them, anyway.
The “blame {some new technology} on the downfall of society” racket is getting old.
People aren’t _feeling sexy_ because of the smart phone. People aren’t feeling sexy because they _lack the time_ to invest in these relationships. Technology and automation innovation of the 80s and 90s promised us shorter work weeks, stable pay, more security, better prosperity.
Yet labor/workers have the opposite in this “modern” economy. A majority of people in the US are working multiple jobs just to support themselves and family. Healthcare is out of reach for many people due to the obscene price fixing scandal known as health insurance.
Wages for labor has stagnated since the 80-90s. While corporate profits have reached all time highs and US govt gets bent for the rich by giving them tax cuts. Subsequently, public programs and safety net programs get cut. An increasing number of _middle class workers_ are getting left behind and we have collectively done nothing about it.
I’ll re-iterate. The awful neoliberal economics this country’s policy is the reason why people don’t _feel sexy_ anymore. This is the true downfall of society and a once great country.
> The “blame {some new technology} on the downfall of society” racket is getting old.
Same old, see Socrates circa 400 BC railing against reading and writing:
"and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."
I started just having my cellular Apple Watch on me 6 years ago while leaving my phone at home. When everyone around me thought I was crazy I knew I was on to something.
I’m doubling down on this philosophy and keeping my phone in my drawer and couldn’t be happier.
This isn't even remotely what the article is about, how did you arrive at such a misleading tldr? The article talks about diluting the human experience and problems with instant gratification.
I don't think this theory holds any water. You can be a fossil nerd without ever finding any interesting fossils yourself, there is no instant gratification and no on demand availability. There are countless other counterexamples.
> Remember this the next time you fall asleep to a TikTok playing on an endless loop: one day your heart will stop beating.
Dogshit mental health advice of the week award goes to...
What a disaster of a read. The rape of the language one utterance of 'sexy' at a time. At least it reset my compass on what I consider bizarre after all the LLM stuff.
Really hope this was not written sober, otherwise I'm fresh out of hope again. I guess OP would find that very sexy somehow though.
I'm surprised by the negative comments here so far that sound more indignant or "called out" than anything else.
The article's argument is not only thoughtfully made and unusually well-written, in my opinion it's correct. There's nothing sexy about essentially staring at something in your hand for an hour or more every day. Smartphones provide a level of private immersion in silent, "socially-flavored" dopamine consumption that's antithetical to robust, vibrant socialization. Which is decidedly not sexy.
taps add comment
Years ago, one of my friends who was really into fitness offered a free service to help people with meal planning and setting up their diets.
A lot of people would come to him and say they wanted to lose weight, but when he started discussing their diet and shopping lists they would get defensive. They didn’t like the implication that something they did or a choice they made was a factor in their weight gain.
Instead, they wanted to blame everything but themselves. It wasn’t their fault they picked the packaged, ultra-processed thing at the store. It was the food industry’s fault for making it unhealthy. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t buy vegetables at the store, it was their parents’ fault for not teaching them how to cook as a kid. It was common to hear people claim that they were doing calorie restriction but it didn’t work because of microplastics, toxic chemicals in the soil, pesticides, or other environmental factors.
This mentality even swept through the “rationalist” community online recently. A blogger wrote a long series with over a dozen long posts trying to find any other explanation for weight gain. In the very first article he had a graph showing that caloric consumption was up and activity was down over the years where obesity was on the rise, but he concluded that couldn’t be it. It must be chemicals in the water! The blog series was very popular in rationalist communities and IIRC even Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex gave the author a financial grant.
The story with phones is the same: People don’t want to hear that it’s their fault for using phones so much. They want to blame the algorithm or their job for “making” them spend hours on the phone.
Resistance to any concept of self accountability is stronger than ever on the internet. Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.
> It wasn’t their fault they picked the packaged, ultra-processed thing at the store.
It is their fault. But the recent development with anti-hunger molecules and their effect point to something many well wishing people don't want to hear: not everyone is the same regarding satiety.
It is easy to tell people "just eat less" when you are never really hungry yourself. It requires empathy to try and imagine a world where after eating a whole pizza instead of feeling ready to puke it back out your body is asking for MORE. And not just this one day because you did not get a good breakfast in the morning. But every day. All day. "You just lack willpower". Yeah sure, like you demonstrate having any.
In a totally orthogonal subject, I used to have an untreated prolactinoma giving me 0 libido which may have started around my teenage years: I never understood why many people could not stop themselves from "thinking with their penis". Just "have some willpower, it's easy". Well let's just say 1 month after starting some treatment my view changed a lot. And it's not too hard to extend this kind of experience to other subjects regarding why people make bad decisions.
I wish we had a drug to give some of the "just put the fork down" people to let them experience being really hungry for like a couple month.
I really appreciate your empathy here. Nobody has the same biological factors nor the same hormones, so expecting everyone to have the same drive to consume a vice is just wrong. But at the same time, there is nuance here. Calorie restriction is hard work, sometimes there's not an easy way to do something and knuckling down is the only way to achieve it.
But I don't know where that balance is, between empathy and tough love, but it's definitely a spectrum. Me personally, I'd prefer to fall on the side of too much empathy.
On your orthogonal subject, I had post-SSRI libido side effects (still highly recommend SSRIs, I'd rather have a low libido and alive than the alternative), without symptoms of ED, which is really hard to treat in men. I had good luck finding a doctor willing to write me a script for PT-141, and it was fantastic for me.
> Calorie restriction is hard work, sometimes there's not an easy way to do something and knuckling down is the only way to achieve it.
Caloric restriction as the parent comment describes it is a strawman argument that people use to discredit diet advice.
Real dieting advice isn’t “eat 833 calories of pizza and then stop instead of eating the whole pizza”. Real diet advice involves picking better food choices first.
Pizza is a highly palatable, calorie dense food. If someone is feeling hungry after devouring an entire pizza, they need to stop eating pizza. They need more fiber, more filling foods, and foods that are less calorie dense. Even just picking foods that are slower to eat will make changes because our hunger and fullness signals aren’t instant. It takes some time for your body to process what you eat.
Counting calories does work if it’s done correctly, but modern dieting advice hasn’t been that reductive for decades.
You're not factually wrong, but framing this as a fight between calorie restriction vs healthy eating and siding with healthy eating isn't right either. Both methods work for some people. Both methods have low long term success rates because people struggle to stick with them.
Yes, intentionally restricting calories is hard for most overweight people. But eating healthy is also hard for most overweight people! And there's no guarantee it'll cause weight loss without calorie restriction. You can eat healthy foods and still have a large appetite and eat too much.
It's two different tools that each require different kinds of willpower. Sometimes one tool works better for some people. You can use both at once.
If there was an easy solution that worked well without willpower, we wouldn't have our current obesity rates. Hopefully the new weight loss drugs will help with this in the future.
Another issue is the body goes on lockdown around 5 days in eating below weight maintenance. The trick may be to only diet 4 days a week in a row targeting a weight below current like 10 or 20 lbs lower and eat for current weaight the other 3 days. And it might be able to flip that once at desired weight.
Craving more and more sugar (carbs) constantly is not the same as being hungry. That's why you can never have enough of it even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week. Hunger is a very straightforward physiological signal, not a psychological craving that stems from addiction. Anyone who's ever been addicted to anything would recognize that as food addiction, not "insatiable hunger". Once you start disciplining yourself with regards to diet, that's one of the very first things you automatically learn to discern. This realization usually comes to you very evidently, in a spontaneous manner.
>a psychological craving that stems from addiction.
Additionally, for many who are overweight, I imagine eating is a coping mechanism to stress. Some folks turn to food, others shopping, others substances (drugs/alcohol), others sex, others exercise, etc. We all have "different" ways we deal with stress. Finding a healthier way can drastically improve one's life. UInfortunately for those that turn to food for stress "relief" likely get a double whammy if feeling/knowing/being overweight adds to their stress.
> even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week.
For reference, that amount of food is zero. You're already set for the week.
Animals don't operate like cars where they're constantly on the verge of death.
To sustain itself... at the same rate it usually does (body fat, muscle...). My comment was extremely easy to grasp. Instead, you twisted what I wrote, clinging to a stupidly literal interpretation of it, and came up with a ridiculous reply, riddled with straw man fallacies. Good job (making a fool out of yourself while trying to one up a stranger on the Internet).
Think a little further, and you might see that the amount you've recently eaten has very little relevance to how much you need to eat in the near future.
You didn't get my comment it at first--it's fine, dude. Every other user understood it right away, so no problem.
What do you see as the significance of the qualifier "even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week"?
> I wish we had a drug to give some of the "just put the fork down" people to let them experience being really hungry for like a couple months
Reverse ozempic!
This is a known side effect of anabolic steroids and various other drugs, btw.
I think "reverse ozempic" is called weed
I know you're joking but there is a study from the American Journal of Medicine concluding marijuana use was associated with lower levels of fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, and smaller waist circumference.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23684393/
That’s interesting. I’ve gone hypo on weed quite a few times.
While societal structures and corporate practices shape behavior, you're right, individuals still retain agency. But progress lies in fostering environments that support healthy choices while encouraging self-reflection and responsibility. Dismissing either side of the equation undermines effective problem-solving. ie, food deserts are real
Prednisone can be a real doozy for some people along those lines. Anywhere from mild hunger all the way to rabid, unchecked hunger.
>not everyone is the same regarding satiety
There is no proof for this claim, nor can there be. "anti-hunger molecules" Are irrelevant. What is relevant is portion size, an individual is used to eating a portion size of x. There body is used to churning through all the physiological processes needed to digest (or not) y calories. If that individual ate x/4 over the course of a month their body would adapt to y/4 calories.
You make the exact same argument but don't seem realize it. The drug you seek is called dieting. Alternatively you can believe the unscientific fantasy that buddist monks who starve themselves to death just have tons of anti-hunger molecules or were born with a genetic disorder that gave them max satiety points.And you can just ignore bodybuilders who claim to think about food all 24/7 (why would they be buddists if they started out aesthetic anyways? self selection? stop coping we all more or less have the same brain, all life has a massive disposition towards feeling hunger, these desires only grow in size and complexity as life gets more complex)
We shouldn't need to prove that not everyone is the same regarding X, for any value of X...
> It is easy to tell people "just eat less" when you are never really hungry yourself.
This is another strawman argument. Good meal planning and dieting advice starts with your grocery list and the contents of your refrigerator. It’s not “just eat less”, it’s “stop buying those foods you know are terrible and replace them with something else”
> It requires empathy to try and imagine a world where after eating a whole pizza
Again, this is setting up a strawman argument. There are more foods available to us than an entire pizza. You have to make a series of decisions that leads to buying a whole pizza. If you think that pizza is full of engineered, addictive chemicals and you also know that you’re going to be hungry after eating it, why is it what you choose to eat?
This is the problem I was trying to describe: It’s really convenient to blame addictive food chemicals and other external factors for everything, but in the process people are wiping away any sense of choice and accountability for their actions.
For what it’s worth, I am hungry virtually all of the time. It was a running joke with everyone since I was a kid. I learned early on that I need to modulate my diet at the source, otherwise my weight goes up before I know it. Changing my shopping list and planning where to eat before I’m hungry makes all the difference.
Beeing fat is the same like your experience. Beeing fat means you are ill but very few people treat it as an illness. What illness? Your gut stopped working. Because it doesn't absorb any vitamins and minerals you get these crazy cravings. Your brain is making you eat more to compensate. Of course, not more crap, but that it's your choice.
How did you get diagnosed eventually? What all tests did you go thru first?
> How did you get diagnosed eventually? What all tests did you go thru first?
When entering the office of an endocrinologist for something unrelated they asked if I was there for some thing (which I guess was "prolactinoma") which was not the case; they still told me to get my prolactin levels checked because I had "the body for that". Their guess was right. I was really lucky as usually it is diagnosed in men when they start losing peripheral vision or producing milk.
I don't have prolactinoma but I got tested for it. I had low libido as a man with ED problems, I went to a Urologist and he prescribed a whole bunch of tests which includes checking your Prolactin levels as well as SHBG, FSH, LH,Testosterone, E2 etc.
I suppose an Endocrinologist would run the same tests.. in my case I had Secondary Hypogonadism and was put on HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) which resolved my Testostrone issues and libido and improved my sperm count as a nice bonus.
But I digress, the point is that if you suspect any issues, go see a doctor!
In my 20s and early 30s I was extremely fit, and I loved exercising. I was compassionate, but didn't really get why overweight people refused to exercise. I thought, man, they just need to give it a chance.
One day I got pneumonia, and it was a pretty severe case. It damaged my lungs and even my nerves in my neck, making it hard to lift my arms for weeks. I couldn't run 1km let alone 30km (which previously would have been a nice Sunday for me), and I couldn't even comfortably stretch or warm up.
No big deal I thought, I'll bounce back.
The funny thing is, when exercise actually feels awful, it's way harder. I didn't bounce back. On top of that, I developed depression. Not like... I was a little sad that I couldn't exercise. More like I was using exercise to help keep something pretty awful at bay, and with no defences against that and my health declining, it got reeeally bad.
I then went on to gain a LOT of weight. I went from a muscular, lean 180lb at 5'10" to a less lean and more fat 225lb. I tried to manage it, tried to exercise, eat less, all of it.
Something had changed, though. A threshold was crossed. My momentum was suddenly frozen by sickness, and then barely thawed at all over the following months. Everything I was previously escaping was then easily able to overtake me. The urge to eat more? Easy to give in to, now. The urge to sleep longer? Yes please. That voice in my head telling me today's not a great day to exercise? No longer a whisper but a relentless droning until I gave up the idea. Then it's replaced with compounding shame.
It gradually dawned on me that my previous fitness, while great and all, was not afforded to me by my own virtues as opposed to the lack of virtues among my overweight friends. It was far more circumstantial than I realized. Once I got that ball rolling (which I'd accomplished through fixation and ignoring all kinds of other important stuff in my life, for what it's worth) it was relatively easy to keep it going. Once it had stopped, I was just like them. Often even worse.
I no longer expect people to put the fork down, or just get up and go for a run. Is it necessary? Yes, 100%. There's no other solution. Is it easy? Evidently not at all, no.
I've come to realize it's largely about support networks, too. We are often ashamed, self-isoalting, and left to our own devices. We have no one giving us tough love on a regular basis, motivating us, helping us to get that ball rolling, supporting us through our shame. We are often so isolated in that suffering.
So that's my novel about being a smug fit person who got a little fat and realized he was a self-involved jerk. Now I understand the problem a bit better. It's hard. Very easy to criticize, very hard to support and solve.
If you have an overweight loved one, part of their solution might be in you. People are not islands.
This comment is super relatable. Thanks for sharing your story. I had a similar issue with pneumonia changing me from a gymrat grinding out PRs to someone forcing myself under the bar 3 times a week at best. It makes sense obviously in retrospect but your lung capacity is something everyone absolutely takes for granted. Those first few sessions back in the gym trying to deadlift and then running to the bathroom feeling the urge to puke because I was so winded were terrifying. It definitely humbles you and even if you have the empathy beforehand it really underlines how important it is to remember that people are living completely different lives.
As an aside, did you find anything that was effective for bringing you back to that old level of performance? I've been swallowing the bitter pill that is an enforced cardio regime but man it is really, really not fun to brush up against that bad feeling in your lungs. Speaking of empathy, it's starting to make me understand why people get so obsessed with following snake oil health trends - I've been experimenting with pretty much everything under the sun out of desperation for this one.
> As an aside, did you find anything that was effective for bringing you back to that old level of performance?
Not really. I'm 38 now and I haven't made it back to previous levels of fitness, and I suspect I might not in some ways. Recovery was way faster than I expected once I gave it a chance, though. And it is despite not being as disciplined as I should be. It made me realize building fitness while you're young is huge; it lets you build it back a lot easier the second time around. Even so, I eventually kind of hit a wall where getting back has been a lot slower. I rapidly recovered maybe half-way, then it was back on a slower track. My deadlift feels frozen.
I have some thoughts about this, though. I'm starting to think attaining that level was never the point. While I was grinding out PRs, the primary side effect of that journey was a dramatically improved quality of life which I wasn't fully aware of until I lost it... And I could have had that same quality of life (minus the odd injury, too) without pushing nearly so hard or getting so far. Realizing that, I let myself worry less about numbers or how I compare to others and focus more on how something will tangibly benefit me. Lifting more will offer very limited tangible benefits according to my experience (lifting couches easily is nice and all, but rarely useful, and they can only get so easy to carry...)
Really it's about losing the ego for me. There were days I should have been climbing stairs at the park like my elderly neighbour, but I felt sorry for myself, embarrassed at my ability, and did nothing instead. Fit in the exercise and movements you can manage, not the ones you believe you should be able to do. Not pushing your limits in a specific way doesn't equate to never progressing or taking care of yourself. In fact, so much of this is psychological, I'd posit that humility will ultimately lead to improving your fitness simply because your ego won't hold you back so often. It's practically inevitable that we'll experience setbacks; what matters is how we respond to them, not how much we can lift the day after.
The worst thing to do is nothing at all. I must have lost 20lb of muscle and gained ~60lb of fat. Muscle is coming back, but the fat is stubborn.
Where I am recently vs where I left off (1RM):
Deadlift 402.5 --> 360 (was exciting to put 8 plates on again!)
Squat 320 --> 265
Bench 245 --> 210
Run (best distance) 43km --> 12.3km (could improve, but don't really focus on it anymore)
Run (best pace for 10k) 4:17/km --> 5:42/km
Maybe something like 75% of the way back? Worse if you factor in sane baselines rather than assuming starting from 0. When I started trying again, these numbers were abysmal. My running pace was close to 7:00/km and it hurt like hell. My deadlift was under 200 on a 5x5 program, vs ~310 today.
Also... Maybe it was nerve damage, but any overhead exercise is trash and not recovering. I used to clean well over my bodyweight and it was an exercise I really loved. These days I struggle to throw 130lb over my head, and I went from pull ups doing ~20 reps with 45lb strapped to me to struggling to pull off 10 reps with no weight.
"You just lack willpower". Yeah sure, like you demonstrate having any.
My adult, reasonably fit weight was about 175 - 180. I got up to 215 back in 2018. I'm now back down to 185 and getting leaner. You know what I noticed? My hunger pangs were far stronger when I was fatter.
When people ask about losing weight, I say "make friends with hunger". I'm hungry for a significant portion of the day these days. For a few years there, I wasn't hungry because I was always proactively eating, and when hunger did hit, it was intense.
So, this "hungry for a significant portion of the day", in the context of software development. Are you just supposed to throw in the towel on getting anything done, or write blublang with an endless stream of boilerplate, or what? Like I certainly get the experience of doing straightforward physical tasks and putting off eating, but it seems like a non-starter when you actually need to like, concentrate thoughtfully.
If anything, my concentration and energy level are more consistent while hungry.
I wake up hungry, but I'm not in a rush to get to breakfast. I start feeling hunger again within a couple of hours after a meal, but I'm still at least a couple of hours from the next one. I often fall asleep slightly hungry.
Intermittent fasting might be a good idea if this sounds alien. At least you'll only feel misery for part of the day.
I read an article years ago about how the French eat at set times and don't snack between meals, and they don't accommodate snacking behavior in children. That's not to say the French are necessarily some ideal, but certainly Americans are always snacking, on top of everything that's been said about processed foods and ease of access to food. I recall always hearing about "starvation mode" and how you were somehow going to gain weight if you ever dared to let yourself become hungry, and I foolishly believed it.
I’ve made friends with hunger, and it’s a weird head space. You begin to look forward to a good hunger the way you look forward to a good meal. Not any healthier than overeating in my estimation, and it puts you outside a lot of food oriented social interactions. Worth trying, if only to learn that mild hunger won’t kill you, but not a great lifestyle.
My concentration is consistently terrible while hungry, to the point that I might as well just consider the time gone instead of even trying to write code or really even think about much of anything. That's my experience.
So while I don't doubt your experience (and it's great that you've figured this out for yourself), it doesn't really generalize into advice about how anyone can simply change their perspective to avoid gaining weight.
Like I said, hunger pangs were far worse when I was fatter.
That said, there's a spectrum of hunger. Have you ever been hungry enough that you thought about eating your own dog? I haven't, but I've read enough stories of humans surviving terrible conditions to know that it happens.
As for concentration while hungry, that honestly sounds like either a psychological addiction or something physiological like blood sugar levels.
it doesn't really generalize into advice about how anyone can simply change their perspective to avoid gaining weight
I didn't say anything remotely like that.
> Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.
This is definitely a factor, and people can build "communities of excuses" like r/antiwork.
But .. there's definitely a social factor as well. I think people understand that, say, buying heroin or falling for a Nigerian Prince scam are irrational mistakes. However in those cases we also put blame on the pushers and the fraudsters. People tried "just say no to drugs" and "personal responsibility" and of course these things still happen.
Social media is not as addictive as heroin, but people are starting to have a discussion around X and tiktok and the harms thereof.
>Social media is not as addictive as heroin
citation needed
I want to upvote this a million times. Even for hard drugs and lifetime alcoholics withdrawal symptoms don't last longer than a month in the vast majority of cases. Probably about a month for decreased portion sizes too.
Some people believe society should be free of one or another human experience be it pain, pleasure, addiction, mind altering, disease, pests etc for the most part it's a childish mentality. All human experience is created by the brain and as a being with a high level of consciousness you are free to ignore them at your own risk. Diseases and pests you can't ignore and their management is extremely difficult comparatively.
When looking at a system, it is appropriate to identify the causes (plural) and the intervention points (plural).
I believe it is at once possible to both blame or seek to change an extrinsic factor and do what one can with their own initiative. I do not think it is appropriate to dismiss extrinsic factors in order to emphasize personal initiative.
Multiple factors contribute, but they don’t lessen the impact of people’s choices.
We can list extrinsic factors that influence things for hours, but nothing changes the fact that using your phone for hours per day is a choice that people make.
The external factors are brought up as a way to distract from that choice or shift blame, but you can’t make progress until you realize that it’s your choice to pick up the phone and use that app for hours every day.
When it’s only me, I personally prefer just solving the problem by adjusting my behavior or adjusting my position within the system. It’s relatively easy, feedback is quick, improvements come readily. Great.
But when it is an entire system (eg, not just me) I like to look at the gravity. In what direction will a ball roll? By default, what occurs here?
Take my home for example. I’m skillful at being calm and joyous, but I have guests come over, so I need to make sure that my home fosters a calm and joyous mindset by default. I need to make the gravity of the space produce joy and calm without intervention. After all, might I one day lack agency or otherwise be vulnerable to preexisting environmental forces?
We each have a duty to be healthy. Personal intervention — check! I agree. But that is not enough, we cannot stop there, and stopping there is irresponsible, unkind to others in the short term, and dangerous in the long term.
I think so many choices are driven by emotions and so many of us are unaware of how we feel and therefore often blinded to the decision-making process.
Yes it's a choice to pick up the phone, and yet if someone is feeling an emotion and wants to escape that emotion, the phone offers a variety of other emotions they can access. I'd say quite addictive, unless people let themselves feel the feeling.
If you want to solve the problem I look too much at my phone then choosing differently is an appropriate solution. If you want to solve the problem people in general look too much at their phone then telling them to "just do better" is an inappropriate solution.
If you assume that free will exists. I'm personally not convinced either way.
Imagining that nothing is your fault is a nice way to avoid any uncomfortable feelings of accountability.
Unfortunately, your family, friends, and bosses aren’t going to be convinced when you try to explain that nothing is actually your fault.
You have free will to do what you want to do.
You do not have the ability to stop being you, the person who wants the things that you want. Even if you want to change yourself - and maybe succeed! - that desire for change is still part of being you. If you didn’t want it, you would have been someone else.
If free will doesn't exist then why are we talking about changing the environment? It's not like we can _choose_ to do so, after all.
>Resistance to any concept of self accountability is stronger than ever on the internet. Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.
I think that while the broad culture has moved in that direction it's still very filter bubble dependent. Spaces centered around men's hobbies with higher than zero barriers to entry are usually pretty hard the other way.
It could be that finding oneself at fault for life choices but being without enough motivating energy to make better choices is an even worse personal outcome than blaming others, and deciding to externalize blame is a defense mechanism against crippling stress/shame that such people have developed consciously or not. It may be far from helpful but it prevents people from feeling trapped if they give themselves something to crusade against.
I think people that are quick to blame external factors would be more visible towards others than people who do choose to blame themselves, but even in the case where the latter feel trapped with learned helplessness and unable to act. There isn't much to say to the latter except "it's hard, but you should do the work." Which I would believe they've heard thousands of times already, so it only makes them feel worse. Such dialogue by its nature doesn't make for "engaging content," so to speak. Whereas a lot of (bullshit or not) arguments arise with the former that serve as a more effective distraction.
Your comment leads me to be a bit confused regarding what you're saying about free will. You seem to want to place blame on the individual but it is philosophically and scientifically unsound. It is absolutely undeniable that people's diets are the result of the culture they live in. Many of our behaviours are the result of the advertising industry, data science and algorithms being applied like an attack on us. These problems I am referring to have been explored by Sapolsky and Yuval Harari.
Do people need to exert a determined sense of self-control to overcome this, reeducate themselves, and take responsibility for their own health? Absolutely. But placing blame on them seems irrational, unnecessary, counterproductive. I wouldn't want to get diet tips from someone that had that antagonistic attitude toward me
> It is absolutely undeniable that people's diets are the result of the culture they live in. Many of our behaviours are the result of the advertising industry, data science and algorithms being applied like an attack on us.
Being influenced doesn’t absolve someone of accountability for their actions. You will be influenced by many things throughout your life, but your decisions as an adult are your responsibility. In the modern era of the internet and unprecedented availability of fresh foods, you don’t have to let your diet be defined by society and ads. Seeing a McDonald’s ad isn’t an “attack” that forces you to choose to eat McDonald’s.
Thinking that we can’t be blamed for our decisions, in my experience, is counterproductive to overcoming bad habits. People who think that Mark Zuckerberg is forcing them to scroll Instagram for 3 hours per day should rationally choose to uninstall the app or set time limits.
Yet I see the opposite happening more often: They believe that because “the algorithm” is addictive, they shouldn’t feel bad about using social media to excess. It’s not my fault, it’s the algorithm! Blaming something external creates the illusion that we shouldn’t be accountable for our choices, which only makes it easier to make more of those bad choices.
Would I like it if everything was easy and nothing was hard?
Absolutely!
Is sitting around waiting for that to happen going to work?
Absolutely not!
There's two questions being conflated; should someone have to carefully watch their diet, or spending, or browsing? It's easy to argue that they shouldn't, and give examples of things that would make it so they don't (remove combo meals above a certain caloric amount, make credit hard to access, etc).
None of that changes that we live in the here and now, and we can inflict minor change on society, but major changes on ourselves.
Taking responsibility isn't the same as accepting blame and guilt. Maybe i didnt cause an oil spill but ill do my best to try to clean it up.
>Thinking that we can’t be blamed for our decisions, in my experience, is counterproductive to overcoming bad habits.
I think the opposite. We are entirely 100% the result of outside influences: our parents, our culture, genetics, society. The only way you can argue otherwise is to appeal to some religious concept of a soul or something. Looking deeply into this, we can learn who we are and why we are the way that we are. Only then can we see how best to move forward and in which direction. Once you see that the some algorithm is an unhealthy influence, you can try to avoid it. The exact same lessons are present in Buddhism with its insights into self and interdependence; it's probably the largest influence that lead me to see things this way.
>They believe that because “the algorithm” is addictive, they shouldn’t feel bad about using social media to excess.
I don't think it is rational or healthy to "feel bad" and harbor guilt because you were manipulated and mistreated. It can lead to depression. We are in an unhealthy society and it is productive to see this truth so we can then try to extricate ourselves from its traps.
Agreed. I think by now we know that telling people to "have more willpower" doesn't work. But some really want to make everything a moral failing, probably as a way to make themselves feel superior.
Incredibly poor understanding of how addiction works and how society functions. If ever your solution to a societal problem is "if everyone just..." you can be safely ignored as it will never happen that everyone "just ...".
The interesting thing is that the death of individual responsibility didn't make people (in aggregate) any happier.
It could have, or you could imagine a world where it could have, but the kids and teens are (apparently) reporting that they're more miserable than ever.
I think the goal was to remove shame, which seems like noble enough a goal. But it hasn't helped. Can we come up with a way to say, as a society, "whatever it is may not be your fault, but you're still the only one who can do anything about it and you might be better off if you view it through that lens"?
I worry a significant portion of the populace does not have anything better to fill their time with, so phones/Internet fill the void. You have to put something better than that in place, but that can be hard when everything is hyper-optimized for dopamine. If we step back, it’s obvious we’ve created TV 2.0. A lot of people prior to the Internet had TV fill this same role.
These people need to decide they want something better for themselves to have a chance of changes sticking.
I've been making a series of changes in last 18 months that fit the "deciding they want something better for themselves." I've lost 40# in 18 months. I stopped drinking alcohol cold on Oct 2nd after being a daily moderate/heavy drinker for ~25 years. I deleted X, FB, IG and LI on my phone 4 days ago (still schedule posts on LI via desktop).
All of these decisions were really hard right up until I did them. In reflection I don't miss the food (yes Ozembic, best decision I've made for myself as an adult). I don't miss booze - which is incredible. I haven't yet missed social media.
To replace SM I keep the kindle app on the home screen of my phone. I read a couple pages of a book then go back to something else. To replace drinking a bottle of wine while watching a movie I go for more walks outside than I used to (10k steps instead of 6k a day kind of thing).
Long way to go, but I'm hopeful. I realized I was doing things that were bad for me (food, drink, phone time) and it was impacting me in increasingly negative ways.
Hell yeah. It's amazing how GLP-1's help in other areas of life, not just food cravings.
> I worry a significant portion of the populace does not have anything better to fill their time with...
Or... people are exhausted from the daily grind and want some sort of escape. The lives of most people are not improving; they're having to work harder and harder for less and less.
IMHO it's because in the phone world only a handful of people look good naturally. Another handful learns to compensate by using really complex lighting setups (akin to a real photographic studio).
And the rest of us are left behind. We can even look "approachable enough" for some people by showing your way to approach the world, how we talk, how we move. But all of that is way harder to capture on a static photo.
I personally look terrible in front cameras, and I have a hard time creating any kind of profile in a dating app.
One might go so far as to say in the real world (IRL), only a handful of people look good "naturally."
Try looking at everyone around you in public-EVERYONE. The beautiful people in the media sense are an incredibly small minority. I would argue even in places like L.A., sure lots of glam, but take the population as a whole and wow, such a small percentage. I'm speaking as a former pro photog, FWIW. I look at everyone.
Has there been studies about what criteria/effect make some people "photogenic" compared to "in person"? I am not talking about post-prodeffects or maquillage, but the fact that some physical traits seem better after lens distortion than viewed witht the naked eye in person.
This is very little about looks. Those handful of good-looking people aren't necessarily feeling sexier, happier, or more fulfilled.
They do have an appreciably different dopamine regulation. So they're feeling something.
(Not defending or apologizing for anyone's lifestyle here.)
?
meaning they themselves may feel "happier" when they are on their digital dopamine treadmill
there is some subtext here about saying others are "not happier"
> I'm surprised by the negative comments here so far that sound more indignant or "called out" than anything else.
I'm not.
This forum is dominated by people who write software for, and are addicted to, fondle slabs.
Fondle Slabs gets my vote!!
love "fondle slabs". I've been going with "slave phones"
My partner and I have been calling them "fun boxes", as in, "Hey, I just started to poop but I forgot to bring my fun box, can you grab it for me?".
I started it maybe a couple of years ago. Was aiming to give myself a verbal reminder of their skinner box nature every time I mentioned them while keeping a fig leaf veneer of comfortability so I didn't have to explain if someone else overheard. Maybe didn't go hard enough with it; about a year ago it came up that my partner had been taking the name at face value and didn't ascribe anything sinister to it.
"Babylon rectangles"
"Adult pacifier"
> I'm surprised by the negative comments
This is, shall we say, not the kind of audience that is going to give this article a fair reading.
Well of course it won't get a charitable reading here. Roughly speaking HN built this monster.
On a macro level I agree that phones and connectivity have some pretty huge downsides and bad effects on society but once you drill down more than that there are serious flaws with the article and the author seems to be longing for a past that if it existed at all was never sustainable and wouldn't exist long. It falls into the same category as romanticizing commercial whaling or feeding a family of four with a know-nothing job riveting spring hangers onto Chevrolets.
It is extraordinarily generous to describe an article as thoughtful when it begins with the words "Scrolling on our phones is killing us. This is a statement of fact that needs no citation". To my mind, bald assertion is the opposite of thoughtfulness. If an article is well-written because it creates a plausible justification for a belief held without evidence, then I think I'd prefer a badly written one.
Well, I have an instinctive negative reaction to your comment. Specifically, to this line:
> Smartphones provide a level of private immersion in silent, "socially-flavored" dopamine consumption that's antithetical to robust, vibrant socialization.
Regardless of whether the article is right (it might be) and smartphones in general, some of us find ourselves feeling trapped in this reality of "robust, vibrant socialization", and crave any form of "private immersion". Myself, I'm not glued to phones or the usual social media sites (HN on the other hand), but the very thought that the goal is to give up what little "private immersion" time I have, and embrace "robust, vibrant socialization" instead, just makes me want to finally bite the bullet and install TikTok.
(Yes, this says much more about me than about your comment. But there's some source of this feeling. I don't know what it is, but I suspect I'm not the only one feeling like this - so it perhaps could be a factor in the "smartphone equation".)
How is that the phone's fault? You don't have to stare at it anywhere near that long, and all those apps are completely optional things to install and use.
This just feels like making excuses and not having any self-control or self-discipline.
> There's nothing sexy about essentially staring at something in your hand for an hour or more every day.
Like a book?
Have books of any form ever been categorized as sexy?
>sound more indignant or "called out" than anything else.
Yes - some people are very defensive regarding their phones.
This underscores the point of the article.
Its just a bad blog post full of inaccuracies, falsehoods, and trivial takes. Your shallow dismissal of the critiques just underscores the hollowness of the articles content.
Your comment underscores the point of my comment.
A lot of what is stated is out of touch with reality and more fits a narrative of someone's choosing. Like a news article that tells you Nintendo DS are bad because they facilitate communication between strangers and children in PictoChat.
There is a lot of information and accuracies left out of this article to create a viewpoint when mostly the writer is nostalgia baiting.
it's as "sexy" as reading a book for an hour or more every day. oh wait... I didn't know that using a phone or reading a book was meant to be sexy for others when a person uses a phone or reads a book. woopsie
I think a lot of the negative comments here just miss the spirit and point of the article, which for me is that, as the phone is now an omnipresent literal extension of your body, we collectively have chosen to relocate many human experiences from inside of our chests to the very ends of our arms. We don't look up and out anymore, we look down. Our senses and sensibilities are being processed and filtered by an external peripheral rather than by our natural hardware. We are effectively already transhumanists and biohackers, albeit crude ones that lack invasive implants, tuning and modulating our neural pathways in ways that have been heretofore unseen, frequently as simple-minded consumers of the modulation rather than conscious curators of our own metamorphosis.
Author is opining for the way things used to be, is expounding upon the real, significant consequences of this transformation, and just wondering in general what the hell happened and why we let it get to be like this lol
It's also worth noting that the author is a woman, so if you're a dude and feel attacked by the article somehow (or god forbid instinctively dismiss the whole thing because it's not from a male perspective), just take a deep breath and try to recognize that other people have valid, salient thoughts and opinions too. She's just suggesting we all 'touch grass' in a much more substantial way than a bite-sized meme phrase.
Nah they're just trying to police other people's behavior with nostalgia-bait. The fact that you think there is a group of people who are actually mad at reading this and are trying to minimize any criticism as gender bias is...something.
Honestly man I wrote that last part as more of a thought-out-loud rather than a straight-up accusation. I just felt like a lot of comments who (to me, just my opinion) really didn't understand the writing were probably guys, possibly young, definitely in a bubble (we're on Hacker News, like it or not it's a distinct male bubble with a specific world view), and I think it's worth establishing a bit of context so that somebody might find themselves able to interrogate their reactions to it, in the event that they had a reaction at all. Maybe I was reaching, whatever -- but even your comment ascribing intent to the author's post as "trying to police other people's behavior" illustrates that you read it as instruction rather than introspection.
It's just somebody's musings on a topic, nothing more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's fair, reading it did not come off as introspection to me. I could probably have taken it less seriously. Opinion generally ties into attitude so I'm going to assume that persons musings will reflect in how they act.
The article to me feels like it pussyfoots around the real issue and perpetuates the “blame {some new tech} on downfall of society” fallacy.
Yes, personally I agree that doom scrolling is not ideal but this is a symptom of a much larger issue — no time available for a majority of people to invest in real relationships. Real issue here is a significant number of people left behind in this economy and this largely due to shitty economic policy based on neoliberalism
I don't think it's true that a significant number of people have less time available today than in the article's "late 90s and early 2000s" time frame. I'd concede that many people feel like they do (sometimes including me!), and I think it's pretty clearly because of how much time we're spending on our phones.
The time pressures of every day life, which has gotten more complicated, are probably why we gravitate towards instant gratification more often. You don't have the time or energy to go to the library for books on a work day, especially with a commute. Same with any other activity. Working hard to finish your work ahead of time results in more work. Innovation's reward is not more free time, it's more work of a different kind.
Blaming phones is a distraction. If it weren't phones, we'd still be couch potatoes lazily scrolling through channels to find something to watch. The core issue is we only have time/energy these days for our job's work and the lazy resting which seeks instant gratification.
Next time someone's unemployed, try doing nothing but social media for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week on a couch and see you'll eventually get bored.
> You don't have the time or energy to go to the library for books on a work day, especially with a commute. Same with any other activity.
I hear this repeated a lot on the Internet, but in real life I do things during the week and meet up with a lot of other adults with jobs and commutes for them.
This came up a lot when I was mentoring younger engineers. Every time we did a deep dive into their daily routine, they had a lot of unaccounted for time. They’d list their work day and commute, obviously, then add things like getting ready in the morning and eating dinner at night. Then one of two things happened: Either they’d start to exaggerate their daily routine chores (getting ready in the morning, making dinner at night) until they took 6 hours every day, or they’d be confused about how they couldn’t get the numbers to add up.
Upon further gentle pushing, they almost always realize that they’re spending hours and hours watching TV and on their phones every time. Some times they’d pull out a phone with screen time tracking, be stunned by the number of hours, and tell me it must be broken.
There are some job and commute combinations that won’t leave time for anything during the week, but most people don’t have those. They just have poor time management and their revealed priorities differ from their stated priorities. People will tell you that reading books and going to the gym is a priority for them, but then they’ll spend 3 hours watching Netflix every night and scroll social media for 90 minutes every morning.
8 hour work days could probably be 6 or less with the same pay for plenty of jobs (or 5 day weeks could be 4 days). Some of these jobs could be remote. If your job is draining, it's not taking the same energy as a job you like and fulfills you; it's probably taking multiples more energy and willpower away from you.
Let's not even throw childcare into consideration here. Childcare blows your energy and time out of the water all by itself, yet we still ask 8 hours a day from parents.
People miscount calories like you're saying with time, so I'd say that's accurate, but no one is really forcing you to eat the overportioned, oversalted and oversugar'd foods from restaurants these days (USA perspective). Work is definitely forcing you to spend the time you do otherwise you quickly go homeless.
I think the amount of different activities you can do in a day is a personality thing.
I work 9-10 hours a day. Could I physically squeeze in an Another hour and half of chores or socializing than I do now? Sure. Is that going to make my life better and more fulfilling? No.
But for many people I know, the answer would be yes. They want to do PTA or whatever.
Why do you work so much?
Not the OP, but have been in an identical situation for a while.
Unfortunately the answer I've come to is "I don't know how to stop, and I have nothing else valuable to replace it with."
I have made great strides in the last 12 months on the second part, but the first part is still hard to move past.
For reasons (work is paying for it, sets me up for several positions I'm interested in) I'm knocking out a masters degree. I've had this same discussion with other students who are, like me, juggling a full-time job, house, and family with school. They don't understand how I fit in everything and take more classes than them every semester (still part time, 2 this semester and TA'ing a 3rd).
The time is there, if you're willing to use it. You have 16-18 hours every week day (depending on how much you sleep).
I wake at 6am, work out until 6:30 or 7 (depending on the day) then cleanup and head to work, where I arrive around 8am. I leave around 4:30pm and get home no later than 5:30pm (if there's an accident on the route home). So this is the largest portion of my day and eats up 11.5 hours on a bad day, but 11 normally.
That leaves me with 4.5-6.5 more hours in the evening for everything else. That's actually a lot of time if you're not wasting it. 2-3 hours with my family every night and 1-2 hours doing school work or TA'ing. And since I go to bed at midnight, that leaves me with 1.5-3.5 hours to do whatever else (more time with the family or wife most likely, or housework).
And weekends there's a glut of time. In 18 hours of waking time, I can do a 2 hour ride, 2 hours of yard and house work, and say 4 hours (max) of school work. I still have 10 hours for family, friends, or myself.
Or as if people use to work 12 hours in a coal mine and have all this energy for dancing and piano practice after.
Modern people are just spoiled and largely delusional.
I had a bad work day yesterday but compared to anything else I would have been doing 50 years ago it was absolutely nothing in terms of stress or energy.
A 12 hour work day is probably not at all the historical norm, and only existed broadly after the industrial revolution.
> when I was mentoring younger engineers
In what context? At work? If a more established coworker was "mentoring" me about how much work I was getting done and wanting detailed info about how I spend my time outside of work, I'd lie and act confused about it too.
"Next time someone's unemployed, try doing nothing but social media for 8 hours a day, 7 days a week on a couch and see you'll eventually get bored."
I think this can be true while also further enforcing the point. I was a child in the 80's and would ride my bike all over town just doing stuff. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. Yes, I know that sounds like older guy nostalgia.
But the idea that a full work day is the only reason that adults aren't "bored" seems absurd to me. The world is full of low-cost wonder. We have allowed ourselves to be captured by low agency tasks like watching TV and scrolling through phones.
The classic consumption vs creative use of computation.
I think people underestimate how much consumption there was in the past. For example, TV viewership peaked in 2009[0] before iPhones were widespread. Average viewership in America was almost 9 hours a day.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...
> I think people underestimate how much consumption there was in the past
Sure, but as a child I was limited to initial one TV station, later two. They started broadcasting at 16 - 17 and stopped around midnight. The subtract dinner time, programming after bed time and the stuff I had no interest in watching, That didn't leave many hours for TV.
I don't think it's the hours that's the point, because is it really better to read a book, a magazine or the newspaper? It really depends on the content you consume and the quality of the content has gone rapidly downhill since the invention of reality TV.
Listen , take my words with a grain of salt because I admittedly waste a LOT of time .
But from what I've heard from great people / self help books in general is that
Getting bored isn't bad. I think you need to get bored sometimes to fetch back to your default.
Are we humans to not get bored or are we not bored / constantly stimulated / this drive towards higher and higher satisfaction that makes us human?
My brother used to joke that we should have some device that just injects the maximum amount of pleasure possible (like drugs) , I was like uhh that makes them unproductive and he was like : what is productivity to individual if he isn't happy?
Though I wonder if happiness and satisfaction are same. Satisfaction feels chemical , happiness feels spiritual.
Blaming phones isn't a distraction. I use a dumb phone and it didn't even had songs till yesterday (had no sd card , read my other comment)
And I had to constantly spend 3 - 4 hours 3 days per week in car travel. Guess what? I like to look at visuals and maybe reading book (though it gets vomit-y , I am going to now listen to AUDIOBOOKs , it's so fun!) , and maybe interacting with other human beings. I love dumb phones. I am seriously thinking of never buying a smartphone
I remember reading about the importance of getting bored/stuck in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", from 1974. Long before the phone.
Regarding stuck.
I am not sure if this is just me
But I don't know , like if I get stuck on a study question or on a programming question. I actually feel like my breaths get short and I get anxious and it feels clumsy (like the world is falling bit by bit)
The best way to describe it would be the box getting shorter and you are trapped in it ("stuck")
So I personally really hate getting stuck but I am okay with getting bored since then I can play with my own (thoughts?)
Maybe its just me. If then I am sorry.
The most unpleasant "stuck" feelings I get tend to be associated with learning something that's new (could be a musical technique, a new codebase, etc.). At age 42, I now try to treat that feeling as a positive - it means I'm stretching my brain / body in ways I haven't done before.
I think the advice for that situation would be to "sit with it"; through exposure gradually reduce your automatic response to that situation and become calmer about it. Easier said than done of course.
Is that really true? I think life has become infinitely more convenient over the last few decades.
One can now order everything over the internet and not even leave the house. SO many errands that cost tons of time involved leaving the house and getting this or that. This is now all reduced to minutes on the phone or computer and the items will magically appear in front of your door.
Same with information search. Having the internet, google maps, etc. has made everything so much easier than it used to be in the 80s or 90s.
I think both things can be (and are) true.
Life IS infinitely more convenient and A biproduct of that is missing out on things that are (or used to be) authentic experiences.
Is it a guarantee that going to the grocery store is certain to be a thrilling adventure whereas Instacart is ceratain not to be? Of course not. There is a non-zero chance you meet the love of your life at the Grocery store just as there is a non-zero chance you meet the love of your life dropping off your Instacart order. (We can argue about the relative percentages of each but that's not the point)
The point is not that convenience is bad but rather that the ubiquity of phones (on-demand apps, social media) in daily life removes a wide range of potential emotional outcomes from daily life as a result of the fact that nothing is rare anymore. Nothing.
That part is hard to argue.
I never understood this either. I sleep well, work 8 hours, meal prep my meals, work out a few days a week, have outdoor and indoor hobbies, meet up with friends at least weekly, and still have more time than I know what to do with.
This didn't "just happen". I made choices all life long, and continue to make choices to change my circumstances to build and to have the life and lifestyle I want.
Do you have kids?
No and that was a deliberate choice I made.
New complexity is a factor, but I would also point to a reduced standard of living (possibly related). Times are hard. Individuals are worked harder than past decades by their employers, and the goods and services available to them are reduced in quality. So, for example, to get the same quality of food, you have to spend more time discerning its quality or sourcing it from different or more high quality places. Whereas you might have been able to afford a trustworthy handyman to fix certain things in years past, the cost of this is higher and the average individual is less trustworthy, in terms of somebody you want to let into your home.
The time pressures of every day life, which has gotten more complicated, are probably why we gravitate towards instant gratification more often. You don't have the time or energy to go to the library for books on a work day, especially with a commute.
All of that is 100% self-imposed.
Work and live closer together. Find a job that allows sane hours. Find a hobby so you don't have to spend what little extra time you have doom-scrolling (or watching TV).
I get up a 5:30, go to the gym or pool, and still have time to walk my dog and eat a sensible breakfast before walking to the office and arriving around 8am. I leave at 5:30ish, walk the dog again, and then cycle or run before dinner. That puts me somewhere around 7:30 or 8, so I still have an hour or two to chat with wife and read a book. No doom-scrolling or couch-potato-ing required.
If I'm physically tired, swap "run" for "fiddle with home lab" or "read more books" or "take dog for 3 mile hike".
Quitting Fecesbook and Twatter were two of the best decisions I've made in the past 5 years.
I'm not taking extra effort to change my life when companies want to do RTO when it's unnecessary. Sure, you can be a survivor and adapt to any situation and just go with it, but that stops you from fighting back against these pressures. You'll get taken advantage of if you always live like that.
The time pressures of every day life, which has gotten more complicated, are probably why we gravitate towards instant gratification more often.
You said people don't have time, so they resort to scrolling or whatever. All I'm saying is that time limitations and excess complexities are largely self-imposed. If you (general you) want to continue commuting and working long hours and not having the bandwidth to do anything else, you do you. But admit that that's on you.
This is a tremendous piece. It rings so very true.
I was 18 in 1990. I'm undoutebdly rose-tinting it but it was indeed edgy and weird and loaded and cool and unknown and just basically fucking brilliant.
I look at my teen / 20's kids now and although they're brilliant and doing rad things and out there in the world being great - they're also slightly reserved, spoilt for choice, their generation less able to take hard knocks or deal with unknowns. It's kinda sad I think. Here's hoping we'll find ways to get back to more of what's actually real and important and well, sexy...!
The emphasis on embodiment was particularly interesting I think - at least with 90s tech you generally had to push physical buttons to get a response. There was something kinetic about tech use, it felt more like using LEGOs.
Now user interfaces are an exhausting search exercise- I have to watch the screen to see where the buttons will appear with every interaction. It sucks.
It makes me wonder what a physical-first API would look like. Perhaps that's just what CLIs evolved for: reliable, repeatable key-based interactions.
That's a really interesting point. And I guess related - physical media. Saving up for some vinyl or a cassette, going down the shop and adding it to your [physical] collection had a whole bunch of interactions along the way. Meeting your mates, browsing in the record shop, comparing notes, looking at girls, coming home, making a space on your shelf / floor for the new thing, putting it on...
Nowadays: phone + spotify + search = done. No interaction, no flirting, no saving up, no physical-ness...
Entirely (mostly) unrelated but I remember my mate buying a cassette copy of MBV's Loveless [0] from Camden Market. He took it home, listened, decided it was warped (if you know the record this will make sense...!), took it back, got a replacement, took it home... same warped sound. Eventually realised that was what was what it actually sounded like.. Man, we took the piss... :-)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loveless_(album)
Yes, physical media requires a journey with a real aesthetic quality. I don't think an app can ever create that.
Even console video games still come with controllers, that I think are a big reason people love their consoles. They feel a physical connection.
Steve Jobs famously derided Microsoft for having no taste, but I wonder if he would be horrified to see how tasteless his smart phone has become.
Expanding on this: It's shocking how quietly we accept that using a smartphone means fighting for and against the presence of an on-screen keyboard. Remember the Motorola Droid with its slide out physical keyboard? That was fantastic.
Back in 2002, I was on the hunt for a copy of Primal Rock Therapy by Blood Circus. I would hit every used record store, book store, CD exchange, and thrift store trying to find a copy (I still had unreliable dial up at home, so getting it off the internet was a pipe dream). I eventually found it in a used bin at a Half-price Books in Cleveland after 4 years of searching.
It was a middling album by a middling band, but the satisfaction I felt I still remember 23 years later. Same with the 4-6 weeks delivery from catalogs of the 90s. We no longer have the anticipation and the wonder we did in an analog/scarcity world when everything is on demand.
Sometimes the joys of wanting exceeds the having.
So I'm of an age with you, and I broadly agree, but I think we can't entirely discount survivor bias, and the sweeping under the carpet of a lot of stuff that people would rather pretend didn't happen, or were glad when it no longer had to.
Case in point - the link between app dating, #MeToo, and the redefinition of sexual harassment/misconduct to incorporate pretty much any sexualised behaviour in the workplace.
Essentially the existence of apps made it _possible_ to redraw boundaries. Something a lot of women were keen to do, having put up with all manner of crap for years - and having listened to their stories, decent men mostly went along with it. Before apps - which carved out a dedicated space for seeking romantic partners - I don't think that would have been the case.
1990 is 35 years ago now, and if you look 35 years prior to that, you're in buttoned-up, conservative 1955. So maybe we GenX were fortunate (or for some, not so much) to live in more morally liberated times, where this stuff could exist in the public sphere before the Weinsteins, Tates and PUAs came along and ruined it all.
As to stuff being swept under the carpet - the allegations against roughly 80% of 90s rock titans, plus film moguls and so on - most women will tell you that's just the tip of the iceberg, so maybe we were overdue for the pendulum to swing the other way.
Like I say, I agree with you about the spirit of things, but equally, well, maybe our definition of sexy belongs to its time, just as prior generations had a different view on all that.
> it was indeed edgy and weird and loaded and cool
that's simply what you feel when you are 18, no matter what the actual year
Nah. It's well-written but I disagree with pretty much all of it. Having a powerful tool to hand has made me more confident, happier, healthier, and yes, sexier. My relationships are better than ever (well, they took a hit when I moved internationally - but that would've been much worse without a phone). I don't want to go back to having to go downtown to look up a fact at the library, or eating at terrible restaurants, or having to endure hours of tedium and pretend to like it because there was no alternative.
As an introvert, I can’t imagine how awful it would be if I were still receiving focus-breaking phone calls all day like in the ’90s.
Yeah I think a lot of people are just old in this thread and are nodding along because that's how it used to be. They're talking for everyone as if they are the arbiters of what is sexy for everyone when it's clearly taking popular viewpoints from a specific time, place, and type of person. All of their examples of Phones used to be sexy are stupid. These people are just nostalgic.
The fact that they mention NEETs using Pornography and Video Games as supplements for relationship and achievement is a signal. Some people might do that but do you think most of these people would have done other decidedly sexy things had these things not existed? What is your argument? Even if it was true should we then force these men, who don't get attention from women, to do nothing but chase women and fail because it's "romantic", the world does not revolve around you. This woman sounds like those people who denigrate video games and pornography then watch 30 hours of trashy reality television a week and don't see the irony of their own behavior. We get it, your boyfriend won't pay attention to you because your relationship was poor in the first place and now you have an issue with others enjoying themselves.
Also, nothing is stopping you from being spontaneous, nothing is forcing you to look up the menu before you go to a restaurant. That is your active decision that you're crying about as if it's what everyone is forced to do. I have no issue being spontaneous and actively choose to not look stuff up all the time. People like this are the same type of people to try and police others behavior but never discover their own flaws or ignore double standards because it benefits them, and yet decry others are living terribly.
Some people might do that but do you think most of these people would have done other decidedly sexy things had these things not existed?
Yes. Look at surveys of sexual activity. Not everyone would be more sexually successful, but the average would be different.
Here's an example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7293001/
In this survey study of US adults from 2000 to 2018, sexual inactivity increased among men aged 18 to 24 years and 25 to 34 years and women aged 25 to 34 years during the study period, with the increase among men mainly occurring among unmarried individuals. Men with lower income and with part-time or no employment were more likely to be sexually inactive, as were men and women who were students.
People who have fewer entertainment options have more sex. (I've seen it said that e.g. people living on small islands have lots of sex, which is part of how they remain populated even with so many people leaving). That doesn't mean that they're sexier - having lots of sex because you're bored is no more sexy than watching lots of porn. (You can look at swinger groups for the extreme example - they have a lot of sex but are profoundly unsexy to most people).
While these trends exist, they don't directly correlate with the invention of the smart phone or the behaviors the poster is stating are unsexy. It has more to do with social education, reduction of religion, and many other factors not discussed in their post.
The decrease seems largest from 2010 to 2016, which correlates quite strongly with smartphone ownership rates, doesn't it?
Those were two confident assertions with zero supporting evidence.
Smartphone use is correlated with depression: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10587281/
Social media use is correlated with depression in young adults: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4853817/
These are just two results from a 30 second Google search. There is a ton of information out there that directly correlates both social media and immediate, ubiquitous access to it (i.e. smartphones) with negative social outcomes, including suicide rates.
Honestly "smartphone bad" is such a popular thing to publish and claim, and so directly contradictory to my own experience, that I don't credit it. It's like the D&D satanism panics or something.
> No one feels connected, present, alive, embodied, or sexy when they’re on their phone all day.
I feel like the blame is misplaced. People are on their phones all day because of social media. The phone is just a convenient access point. I suspect without socials, the phone would be considered just a really handy tool [0] rather than the growing consensus that it's some kind of social menace.
[0] that some nerds go too far with, like the computer
I don't think I agree. From TFA:
> [...] Why walk into a store in Soho and see what’s on offer when you can stay home and scroll the entire inventory from the comfort of your couch? Why go to the library to find books about a topic that interests you when you can look it up on Wikipedia in two minutes and move on with your day?
> Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.
Even without social media, we still would have the instant gratification that the author proposes as a problem.
Correct, but social media takes the problem and turns it up to 11. It's odd how people seem defensive about it. If you use social media, you are being manipulated. Full stop. It's not only if you're uneducated, or not technical, or unaware of it's impact, or whatever. You are being manipulated. Full stop. Not only that, you are being manipulated by some of the best and brightest minds of a generation. To pretend this isn't problem is basically Stockholm syndrome at this point.
Online shopping and Wikipedia were a thing years before smartphones though. In the post-cell but pre-smart era that the author is glamorizing, you could already scroll inventory and look things up on Wikipedia from the comfort of your own home.
The actual problem is that there are still physical stores and libraries. These should have all gone away decades ago to be replaced with something that you can't instantly find online.
Society is still run buy nostalgic boomers who don't know how to use a computer and this is yet another example of the friction it causes.
Despite the existence of phones, apps and websites this decade is, so far, the best for national park visitation. The same is probably true for local parks, Because as of today home VR isn't at that level. That's despite the lockdown dip.
Nobody wants to go the library to look for a book that probably isn't there only to have a chance encounter with their future wife. It's fantastical thinking and designing a society around that expected user behavior is a gross misallocation of resources at best and dangerous at worst.
Social media existed before the iPhone/android. I remember needing to be at home on my computer to check myspace, xanga, and even thefacebook. Not sure how I feel about this article (it's interesting at least) but the existence of phones/apps does coincide with a lot of changes to our relationship with social media and a lot of changes to social media itself.
Perhaps without smartphones in everyone's pocket we would use social media much differently and that industry would have grown differently....
You did have to be more deliberate about it though. Checking socials and posting to socials required physically going to your computer, sitting down, and doing it. It wasn't something you could just to absent-mindedly with the convenience of just putting your hand in your pocket.
And we sat at home and waited for mIRC, ICQ, or MSN Messenger to chirp, of course.
What really changed is that good old Moore's law delivered systems where personalized feeds are not just possible, but they are the norm. And with a bit of tweaking, add infinite scrolling, spice up the recommender system to inject a bit of noise/variance, and ... voila! you are in a nice Skinner box.
My approach is to block the majority of notifications and have no social media apps. Now it is a phone with some handy features like maps, music and a web browser.
You can't separate phones from social media, they have a symbiotic relationship and feed off of each other.
Without smartphones, social media would be much less pervasive and much less toxic, because people would not have an internet connected camera with them at all times. Fewer posts means less engagement, and even more importantly having to bring and then open up a laptop would pose a major barrier to doomscrolling behaviors. Some would do it anyway—there were lots of us who spent a lot of time online before Facebook—but not anything like as many as do now, which means it wouldn't be normalized. And without normalization, social media as it exists today couldn't really exist.
So, yeah, phones without socials would be tools. But phones created social media in the incredibly toxic form it exists in today.
The real social menace is how few "third spaces" are available without some sort of overlarge fee. Instead every location is surrounded by large parking lots so we are further isolated by driving everywhere.
"Phones used to be sexy:
A call from an unknown number. A little black book. Your heart pounding as you checked your answering machine. Calling someone from a payphone. Hearing someone say, “It’s for you.” This was romance."
Nothing quite as romantic as a 2 AM phreak after a long day's work apparently.
I use a dumb phone , It had some issues with formatting of sd card , but my non technical cousin actually solved it (I had gone to his house for some other reason)
I am so so much thankful of him. It also humbled me , since just because I am from technical aspect in the linux / computer doesn't mean I know everything in android / other aspect. I just had to format sd card (but technically it can lead to losing data and the problem was that I didn't had 32 gb card , now I am not sure that my phone supports 64 gb card , because I tried to put it and it didn't work but maybe I didn't format it properly)
Still , that small action has lead to my phone from just being dumb to now playing audio , capturing photos and capturing videos. It has become great!
I feel the power of community , a sense of pure joy. And the phone's definitely sexy.
https://www.flipkart.com/kechaoda-k33/p/itmfgptkyrquqg9a
People love my phone , though the audio control is finnicky , it actually played music in class today once lol! , I had to lie to sir that it was my ringtone and someone called me , but crazy .
While I agree with this article, I think the selection solely of vogue model shots and Paris Hilton’s waist from the early aughts is in poor taste. The beauty aesthetic of the time tended rather extremely towards anorexic, and the selection of images in this piece might as well say, “Remember when THIN was IN?”, which I think detracts from its overall message. It’s also a bit of a weird choice, because similar shots from today are often of equally beautiful, equally thin models and are just as sexy: that portion of media at least does not seem to have changed much. In addition, if making a more general point about standards of beauty, perhaps it would have been nice to include a photo of Brad Pitt or something? Is the implicit assumption here that only women can be sexy, or that only heterosexual men will be reading the article?
Like, there are literally people I’d share this article with (e.g. my wife) if not for the really poor selection of photos.
The bit that really sticks for me here is the bit about the element of risk.
Takes a moment to get to that part, but this is my takeaway: feeling risk in meat space interactions stimulates our imagination about uncertain outcomes. Our devices have allowed us to back out of this feeling and into a predictable reality.
I can confirm this: a recent improv comedy class, which I often dread actually going to, is 15 humans with no phones compressed into an actual room. That feeling of people flirting but also having fun is palpable.
Always replace pronouns like "You" and "Your" in headlines with "I" and "my".
Saves a lot of time.
Alternatively, remember that personal articles with one author is the perspective from the author, and not necessarily a "world truth". Same goes for comments on HN :) Saves even more time, no need to fumble around replacing words and whatnot.
It's not a headline, it's the title of an essay.
What do you mean by 'saves time'? When you read a novel, do you replace the character names with "a figment of my, the author's, imagination"?
It's not a fucking diary entry claiming to be reporting on an objective fact of the world, it's someone trying to communicate something about the world.
Really, all you can think when you read a title like this is "well, that's certainly not true for me, I don't have to read this"?
Do people not do this?
I’ve always felt it’s more important to understand the essence of what is being said, rather than hyperfocus on specific wording (unless it’s particularly important). I’ve never read “you” and thought they were imposing anything on me specifically.
People diagnosing issues as related to tech developments when they are actually rooted in lack of autonomy and leisure time, exhibit 4,861
Humanity has more leisure time now than any time in history, possible excepting hunter-gatherer times.
Like looking at "average income" in the US, "humanity leisure time" handwaves extreme inequality.
I'm just waiting for missed connections to make a comeback. Reading some of those was a joy. And you couldn't help wonder, maybe it's me...
I've wondered why an app dedicated specifically for this purpose hasn't actually taken off. It seems there have been attempts, but they all just fade away.
I know more than a few people who used to check Craigslist everyday to read the stories.
They used to have a Missed Connections section of the classified ads in newspapers.
It was fun to read them.
The New Statesman ran a story about fake submissions to Metro's Rush Hour Crush section:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2016/12/why-i-spent-th...
This is spot-on. In addition to the obvious risks (privacy, security), these devices represent a tremendous opportunity cost. Think of how that life-crushed-into-an-iPad commercial resonated in all the unintended ways.
Opportunity cost is a good term for the problem with addictive tech. Any one of the little distractions it offers up seems harmless, but in aggregate they represent a massive time opportunity cost, and indulging a few without succumbing to the aggregate has proven incredibly difficult for many.
Idk, popular people and probably influencer types look cool with a phone. They look like a VIP, people are constantly texting them, it looks like they're constantly socializing, networking, etc. Same with social media, they have like 5 million friends and it looks like a lot's going on in their lives.
That's probably the difference between how cool people use technology vs nerds or dorks. When I use my phone, it's either to look something up, study or learn something new, read the news, or talk to my mom. I would imagine I probably don't look cool using my phone.
Joking aside, I think one thing that I really don't like about smartphones and texting entering our lives is that when you're out for food or coffee people get on their phones, and it feels antisocial, like you can't talk to them now without interrupting them from whatever they're doing on their phone. In the past, I remember, if people had nothing to say, they would just sit there and look off into the distance. It all felt way more social back then, when people got together they interacted more.
I think this blog post covers a lot of ground while not really diving deep into any of the points it tries to make. I just want to highlight a couple of them because they are particularly important to me.
The concept of "you can desire only what you don't have" coupled with "you borrow your desires". Every thought in our head comes from a previous input, a lot of the same kind of inputs will spark a lot of the same thoughts and naturally they will spawn desires. I was on a work trip last year with two of my colleagues. They are into music (I'm not) and naturally a lot of the conversations were around singing and producing. I left that trip feeling an intense desire of trying out mixing/DJing for the first time in my life. I definitely attribute that to talking intensely about music for a few days for the most part.
The other one is: there's value in being wrong and in experiencing negative things. I'm not going out seeking traumatic experiences or anything but I yearn for new experiences for a variety of reasons. Even smaller ones such as a new restaurant to try out sometimes can suck, can be a waste of time/money but as long as the negatives aren't that impactful I think that the small gems you find a long the way paired with the funny stories you get about the bad ones are very much worth the potential negative experiences. I often talk to people that "feel stuck" or on "autopilot" and I do think that always doing the same things over and over has diminishing returns on happiness and joy. Trying out new things I'd say is generally a good idea (common sense applies, as always).
This post is incredible and true and it makes me sad that most everyone I know to share it with will not appreciate it.
Agreed - it is worth a close read.
"On a lighter note, aren’t we all so sick of looking stuff up? You know what, maybe I go to a restaurant and it’s bad. Maybe I don’t know what’s good on the menu before I get there. Maybe I throw caution to the wind and put something in the dishwasher without googling if it’s dishwasher safe. Maybe I get a flip phone and get comfortable saying, “I don't know.” While you’re looking down at Google Maps, the love of your life is walking past you on the street. To feel sexy, we need risk and spontaneity. Our phones kill both."
I’m old enough to remember not having an iPhone and not feeling sexy.
Whenever I read an article like this that calls out things like "[driving us] deeper and deeper into our algorithmic hell holes.", I want to scream, and shake the author by the shoulders. "Snap out of it!" I yell.
We don't have to make a Twitter account. No one held a gun to our heads to get on TikTok. Instagram? Pintrest? We don't need to join those.
I'm not suggesting everyone swear off all social media. I enjoy my various Discords and message boards. I enjoy reading HN. But these patterns of doomscrolling various social apps flummoxes me. "TikTok is so bad." Well then, why did you make an account???
I realize there's some devils in the details here with regards to social pressures and the like. But I don't think they're by any means insurmountable. And if you're at the point that you're going to write tens of pages on this phenomena, then ride that momentum and delete the accounts when you're done. You'll feel better for it.
All that aside, I did greatly enjoy the read for its retrospective on 90s and 2000s phone culture and that wonderful period of tech where we were just starting to get connected - tantalizingly so - but it was so limited and clunky that it preserved a sense of mystery. Or at least, that's how it felt at the time.
>I realize there's some devils in the details here with regards to social pressures and the like.
I have a no-socials policy for my kids until they're practically adults. It's not an easy policy, and the oldest who had to deal with this policy first, was not thrilled about it.
But it did bear fruit. My oldest is at university, and is not entangled in social media drama. Which is not entirely due to my policy--the oldest is also extremely independent--but I can't help but notice it played a part.
It's not easy. Regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, they definitely miss out on some degree of what makes up the public commons for kids today.
Every now and then there's a story about a (usually) millennial who swears off social media and finds value in doing so. Sometimes they go back, sometimes they don't. But millennials marinated in this world for so long, it's really difficult for them to break out. (At least the Zoomers got "touch grass" pretty early on.) I feel for the millennials trying to navigate through all this. For GenX it would be like making it through the 80s without knowing the lyrics to Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. You almost have to be an extreme outsider or a very independent person indeed to escape the milieu.
reading someone express the idea that NEETs "are robbing /themselves/ of agency" is surprisingly upsetting.
what is someone to do when they've grown up undersocialized, not in-tune enough to hang with the normals yet too prideful to debase themselves and consort with the common nerd? when they've no real skills, no hobbies, and (stemming from their failure to acquire any thus far) no drive to try and find some?
the phone is to blame, sure, but only for creating a highly-social, fast-paced civilization where everyone else is waiting to leave their fellow people behind the moment they fall out of cultural lockstep.
video games and pornography aren't taking these people's agency, they're providing a buffer. a way for shut-ins to pass the time so they don't up and kill themselves.
NEETs != nerds.
Not to say there isn't any overlap. But whereas people who are smart but somewhat lacking in social skills can thrive in nerd-dom, for people in the lowest quartile on both, paid employment is a race to the bottom.
(Side note - HN tends to hypothesise that smartness and social skills are inversely correlated. While there's certainly a trend for people to develop one at the expense of the other, there's not much correlation in innate levels).
Video games and porn play the same role here as weed has for at least the last couple of generations, and alcohol for centuries - they make an otherwise intolerable situation tolerable. If you've genuinely no escape from your circumstances, that's a good thing. If you might otherwise sort your life out and become a positive contributor, but they rob you of motivation to do so, not so much.
I wouldn't like to say which side the numbers come down on overall. When does taking the edge off go too far - harder to measure this when you don't have the direct indicators of health damage or violent/abusive behaviour that alcohol brings. Modern society tends to assume that the right amount of motivation to have is "as much as possible", but that's not always true.
>NEETs != nerds.
of course -- nerds have friends, there's a nerd table in the lunch room, there's always some space carved out for nerd-type activities, they'll probably eventually find a matching nerd-girlfriend (or boyfriend, i suppose. neetdom is an affliction that hits guys harder.), parents know how to deal with nerd children, etc.
games and weed make the intolerable tolerable, as you say: some folks aren't well-configured for productive society, and if the option is between active torture trying to better themselves and "be normal", all-encompassing boredom, and soma-esque games 'n porn, i'm comfortable giving them the last category without constantly trying to tell them that they're doing it to themselves.
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OK, this is "sex in the city" bloggery, but it does contain some very good & important points which HN readers should attend to. Specifically to my mind: the importance of CHANCE and NOT-KNOWING to the value of experience, and happiness. To simplify: Romance necessitates CHANCE. A chance encounter, something improbable, strange, etc is the basis for the myth that sustains the romantic idea. Dating apps are inherently anti-romantic. Relatedly, many experiences are valuable ONLY because they are unpredictable. Adventure necessitates NOT KNOWING what is coming. Smartphones kill the spirit of adventure.
What's '"sex in the city" bloggery'? It just seems like a well-written persuasive essay to me.
I don't know about phones, but an Apple Watch looks like a very un-sexy car:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Multipla
Nothing compared to a Rolex, for instance.
I feel the opposite, for some reason. Rolexes kind of looks disgusting to me, as I'll automatically jump to believing the person is superficial, cares too much about impression, and likes to waste money on such things.
While almost the same goes for Apple Watch wearers, at least I could justify them wearing it because it actually has some functionality people can find useful, compared to a arm-watch like a Rolex which basically just carries duplicate functionality today, and is mostly used as a status symbol.
Best is when someone wears nothing :)
I think someone being opinionated about their fashion sense is a much more powerful message than at most choosing which colour of plastic (and often we can't even do that!).
edit: and certainly, there are people who think the apple watch's sleekness is the height of aesthetic, but you'll never be able to tell that from glancing at them.
> I think someone being opinionated about their fashion sense is a much more powerful message than at most choosing which colour of plastic (and often we can't even do that!).
Agree, much more powerful message. I'm not sure we agree on if that message is net positive or negative though :)
Being confident enough to let people think you aren't fashionable is a statement on its own :P
(Reminder that the original discussion was not about the message being positive/negative, but about being sexy/un-sexy.)
Rolex don't seem sexy for me either. It looks rugged and utilitarian.
Edit: utilitarian seems a bit ironic consider that you can just use your phone clock nowaday.
Laughs in Casio F91W
Where I live only pimps (fake), retirees who got one 30 years ago from their employer upon retiring(real), nightclub promoters (fake), and criminal defense attorneys who will berate an underaged rape victim on the stand until they break down and cry for the sole purpose of being a sociopathic dick while trying to get their pedophile golf buddy off (real) and Rolex flippers (real) own Rolexes (real or fake).
edit: also franchisees whose franchise sells the most shit so the franchiser buys them one as a prize (real)
To me, seeing a Rolex on someone's wrist puts them in the same category of dickhole as a lifted pickup truck with punisher decals on the rear window and truck nutzzzz hanging off the tow hitch.
I own a real Rolex. I inherited it from my Grandfather. What does that say about me?
The fact that you want to know what I think it says about you says a lot about you.
Bingo!
Such watches are nothing but jewelry for men with what comic Robbie Hoffman calls "zero personality disorder".
We have lost the direct connection to nature, to love being an aspect of nature. Everything is channeled through our phones, leaving our embodiment mostly as empty shells without purpose. This could also be the description of zombies or cyborgs.
I feel sorry for the young generation that is deprived of so many real, physical impressions - or rather, I hope that they will break out of their misery and get back what they - no, everyone - needs.
Tim Robinson has this sketch about the phone that, on the surface, is totally ridiculous—but if you take a step back, it’s actually kind of thought-provoking. His comedy isn’t for everyone, but when he nails something, he really nails it.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4qi7MsXyP8E
“Peace.” Windows XP default wallpaper, 2001.
I remember the green hills being the default wallpaper. Aren’t the clouds from the setup/PE background? (Very much like the article also)
On the sexy front, my company has marketing materials from 10 years ago showing people at a construction site interacting with their phones. The idea is that it was sexy and cool to be connected and be using technology to communicate and interact with the project. But today? It just looks like someone is goofing off on social media when they should be working.
The pictured inserted in the article are attractive for the nostalgia and don’t support the phone argument.
> Instantaneous access to everything obviously comes at a cost. The cost being that we all behave like demented Roman emperors, at once bored and deranged, summoning whatever we want at any time.
> All over the world, an entire generation of young men, often referred to as “NEETs,” are robbing themselves of agency, drive, and romantic relationships through their addiction to video games and pornography. Video games allow a young man to experience a sort of pseudo-achievement, while pornography masquerades as love. Some of these men have seen more naked women than any king who has ever lived.
> Many will mock their pain and their addiction, but it’s heartbreaking to think that they’ll never experience true risk, true reward, or true romance.
This post acknowledges that NEETs are living better than ancient Roman emperors, but laments they're missing out on "risk, reward, and romance" that these ancient Romans had. What exactly is so great about risking death on the battlefield or risking food poisoning at a bad restaurant? Why would an average man in his early 20s want to take a risk by approaching women at one's job or in public? Especially when you go on Tinder/Hinge and realize just how worthless you actually are.
The article argues that:
> Thoroughly exhausting ourselves intellectually and physically through productive work brings fulfillment, and with fulfillment comes peace.
But you can, as the article acknowledges, thoroughly exhaust yourself through video games and online vices. Achievement no longer requires risk. And the article is unable to quantify what value that risk brings beyond being inherently exciting. If this was true, why aren't more people taking risks? It should be more fun than sitting at home all day.
"NEET" is an economic term that stands for "not in education, employment, or training", because unemployment doesn't include people that have left the labour force entirely. Self-description as a NEET is a proud admission that one does not contribute to the economy or work force; it's a valuation of the individual over the community.
This article accepts that premise and argues in futility that NEETs don't really want the lifestyle they chose. I disagree, and I'd rather we make it an explicit value of our society to reject individual freedoms that cause broader social harms.
If smartphone addiction is legitimately destroying society by acting as a sinkhole for human potential, we should apply legal restrictions or taxes on screen time. That would be more effective than telling someone who's doomscrolling how they're actually hurting themselves.
Joke on you I never felt sexy
> Today, everyone and everything is always available, and there’s nothing less sexy than that. There’s no chase. Our phones don’t allow us time to dwell, and they don’t allow us time to yearn. Why force yourself to daydream about the guy you’re seeing when you can easily look at dozens of photographs of him online? Why walk into a store in Soho and see what’s on offer when you can stay home and scroll the entire inventory from the comfort of your couch? Why go to the library to find books about a topic that interests you when you can look it up on Wikipedia in two minutes and move on with your day?
No, you don't feel sexy, because you aren't sexy.
Me, looking in mirror: "...It's the phone, right? It's the phone."
100 % ... noticed this when trying to find a recent butt pick of Nicola Cavani on instagram, yesterday. I do that a few times a year to collect reference for my AI powered buttbook platform. company will be rebranded to oh-mega later on. girls taking selfies and staring at their phones is unreasonably unsexy.
Thanks for sharing, this resonates. But man,
> That said, cosmetics and aesthetic trends on TikTok are harmless fun and games compared to what’s going on in the darkest corners of the internet. All over the world, an entire generation of young men, often referred to as “NEETs,” are robbing themselves of agency, drive, and romantic relationships through their addiction to video games and pornography.
1. "Darkest corners of the internet" are playing video games and surfing porn?
2. Just the men and all of them, huh?
OP has no idea. Which OTOH solidifies their point about disconnectedness and being in distant bubbles.
> “Peace.” Windows XP default wallpaper, 2001
This is rewriting history.
She makes some decent points but a lot of this feels like the age-old argument of "$SOMETHING_NEW was fun and exciting when I was young and now it's all turned to shit."
My traumatic childhood killed my ability to feel sexy. My adult realization that very few people are worth my time and it's extremely unlikely for me to find a happy relationship killed my libido.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Appreciate the article, but why do so many articles these days have to start with a history of the world? Do we really need to go through the years and recall the introduction of the iPhone? Do we all not know that already?
I hate this trend so much. It's common in tech talks now. Recapping the entire history only to come to the main point, the title of the talk, towards the final 10 minutes. Come on.
Speak for yourself.
> Your Phone is why you don't feel sexy
Talking about phones, having pictures with humans.
But i agree. 20 years ago phones had a design. Now they are all coloured monolyths.
> Talking about phones, having pictures with humans.
Having pictures where you’re not pretending to have been caught in some candid moment
something seriously out of whack with this
I didn't like my first cellphone, loaned as part of working for Nokia >20ya. They are, however, excellent tools for communication and even looking something up on the web.
Other than that, my fam has stories of entire families at our local park walking, each on their own separate phone. It is not sad or pitiable, for their choices are theirs to make, but the effects on their psyches and eyesight are not positive.
As to being sexy, being able to make someone laugh and actually caring about their wellbeing such that you will actually do something to help them become happier -- those are the qualities that will attract a person to you. Everything else we do in life is mere drivel, and directing our life towards such vainglorious pursuits them will only attract other frivolous, unawake people.
Fill your heart with love for all human beings and the Earth, herself, and others will want to be around you, unless they are dark-hearted fools, but you don't want to be around them, anyway.
The “blame {some new technology} on the downfall of society” racket is getting old.
People aren’t _feeling sexy_ because of the smart phone. People aren’t feeling sexy because they _lack the time_ to invest in these relationships. Technology and automation innovation of the 80s and 90s promised us shorter work weeks, stable pay, more security, better prosperity.
Yet labor/workers have the opposite in this “modern” economy. A majority of people in the US are working multiple jobs just to support themselves and family. Healthcare is out of reach for many people due to the obscene price fixing scandal known as health insurance.
Wages for labor has stagnated since the 80-90s. While corporate profits have reached all time highs and US govt gets bent for the rich by giving them tax cuts. Subsequently, public programs and safety net programs get cut. An increasing number of _middle class workers_ are getting left behind and we have collectively done nothing about it.
I’ll re-iterate. The awful neoliberal economics this country’s policy is the reason why people don’t _feel sexy_ anymore. This is the true downfall of society and a once great country.
> The “blame {some new technology} on the downfall of society” racket is getting old.
Same old, see Socrates circa 400 BC railing against reading and writing:
"and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they really possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."
I started just having my cellular Apple Watch on me 6 years ago while leaving my phone at home. When everyone around me thought I was crazy I knew I was on to something.
I’m doubling down on this philosophy and keeping my phone in my drawer and couldn’t be happier.
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In an era when everyone’s a slave to the computer in their pocket, the real luxury is not having a computer in your pocket!
This isn't even remotely what the article is about, how did you arrive at such a misleading tldr? The article talks about diluting the human experience and problems with instant gratification.
People just paint their existing prejudices over the article, often without even reading it.
Instant gratification is a key part of what turns someone into a nerd. You need a repeated exposure to something on demand to become a nerd for it.
I don't think this theory holds any water. You can be a fossil nerd without ever finding any interesting fossils yourself, there is no instant gratification and no on demand availability. There are countless other counterexamples.
You can still obsessively look up content for fossils and think or read about them all the time.
Historically this wasn't the case and we had nerds all the same.
Johnny McGovern would disagree https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hQDN9gMaW-8
are people not into nerdy women now?
This isn't what the article states.
> Using computers tends to make you a nerd.
A phone is a computer in the same way your fridge or washing machine is a computer.
Can you play games on your washing machine? Maybe I need to upgrade.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/13/21514030/microsoft-xclou...
Yeah! I almost typed 'fridge' but thought better of it.
> Can you play games on your washing machine?
No, but it can spy on you, just like your Windows computer. /s
+ Boomer are hotter then millenials: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.49555
> Remember this the next time you fall asleep to a TikTok playing on an endless loop: one day your heart will stop beating.
Dogshit mental health advice of the week award goes to...
What a disaster of a read. The rape of the language one utterance of 'sexy' at a time. At least it reset my compass on what I consider bizarre after all the LLM stuff.
Really hope this was not written sober, otherwise I'm fresh out of hope again. I guess OP would find that very sexy somehow though.