Making the Internet Boring
cemrehancavdar.comFor me, adaptive friction has been very helpful - allow access to distracting apps/sites, but make them progressively harder to use.
For phones, ScreenZen is great at this. Makes you pause before visiting an app or site, and you can configure the pause to grow each time you use it. You can also set a timeout on the app. Very flexible settings.
For desktop, I recently built a free browser extension called MooBlock - it's similar to ScreenZen in that it adds a forced pause before you reach a distracting site. But once you reach the site, a herd of cows start walking all over your screen to make the website less appealing.
It's available in both the Chrome and Firefox extension stores. Hoping to make an Android version later this year too.
Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mooblock/eanbagjehd...
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mooblock/?utm...
Clicked the links just to see preview screenshots, that is hilarious with all the cows XD
Putting in blockers and the like helps, but what I've found worked best was to consider this quote by Anthony DeMello:
"When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you’re giving it power."
When I learned to stop feeling bad/guilty/thinking this was a problem to solve and just let my mind drift, I found that my mind naturally learned when it was disciplined work time vs. browse the internet time. Personally, I noticed that when I didn't have any artificial restriction, I was less inclined to waste time on those things.
In practice: "oh, my mind doesn't want to do that other thing right now but it does want to go look at this thing; let it." The more I've loosened my grip, the less distractions have affected my productivity.
It’s like those diet commercials from the 90s:
“I simply eat more and the weight just falls off!” Showing pictures of chocolate cake and burgers.
You’re gonna eat more: Milkshakes, pasta, French fries!
You’re gonna lose more weight.
And you’re gonna feel great.
After only 19 payments for $24.99!
Call now
as fun as that sounds, my experience has been the polar opposite. if I let my mind drift, it's going to get cheap dopamine kicks from stupid YouTube videos all day.
You have an army of behavioral psychologists at Alphabet and Meta working against you; it's only fair to fight back.
Yeah, the problem with "not fighting it" is that you'll naturally do what feels the best in the moment, and having fun will always feel the best in the moment over doing something boring.
The fall only comes later when all your having fun leads to a lot of not having fun (work piles up, relationships sever, projects fail etc.) I find living in a certain amount of fear of fun is healthy. If I feel like I've been having fun for too long, I've probably been neglecting something important that is going to really ruin my fun later.
I say all this, as I scroll through HackerNews looking for hits of dopamine instead of continuing trying to fix the CI issues that have been paralyzing my work for almost a day now. That's not good to be a fun conversation in my 1-1 if I ignore it for much longer...
The mantra I've heard is "resist and replace." It's not enough to fight a bad habit, you have to (learn to) replace it with something constructive (i.e. fill the void).
Alice Cooper did this. He replaced his addiction with drugs for an addiction for golf.
I find the polar opposite works better for me. Fight, with all your might!
You have to practice taking a step back, assesing the current situation and determining what's best for you. Ideally do this every time you feel like mindlessly doomscrolling. You'll get better at it.
Here are some things I try:
Turn off Notifications.
Turn off location services except when navigating or calling the taxi.
Uninstall as many apps as possible, use browser.
Use adblocking anti tracking browser (I use Duck, alt suggestions welcome).
Report unknown / unwanted senders as spam.
That said, I am a NEWS ADDICT. There are four world leaders whose downfall I eagerly await, and frequently check the news for this ;-) .. you might be able to guess three but not the fourth.
Why are people not guessing
Putin
Trump
Xi
Modi
Replace Modi with Netanyahu and maybe Xi with Kim. These two are dictators but don't really care about things outside of their region (other than Chinese exploitation in Africa). They want to stay in power not take over the whole world.
Israel is abusing Holocaust guilt in Europe to get away with genocide and massive cyber ops against their own allies and open bribery in US elections. And North Korea is so insane that the power transition will be fun to watch. All the generals and family members are waiting on him to die, and when he does there might be a military coup or even a civil war.
The impact (both potential and current) of Xi on the rest of the world is much bigger than that of Kim and I don't think its fair to say that the Chinese are content to stay inside their walls. Kim is more of a puppet dictator of the Chinese and Russians than anything.
Putin
Trump
Fico
Erdogan
> Uninstall as many apps as possible, use browser.
or don't! instead use
Peel (Geckoview)
https://github.com/mazzz1y/peel
WebSpace
https://github.com/theoden8/webspace_app
Native Alpha
Some more good advice:
Turn off your YouTube watch history. This disables video suggestions when you open the website or the app.
On my smartphone I'm not using Google Play Services so when I open the app, all I get is the search box.
I told a friend this and told him this flips the script on the Algo. Now instead of YT telling you what to watch, YOU are in control of what YOU want to watch.
We have to start breaking this cycle somehow. This is a great way to do it.
In general, we need to take back ownership of our computers and be the decision makers about what runs on them, and what we are doing with them. An OS vendor or app developer should not have a say in what gets run on your computer. An OS vendor or app developer should not even be "suggesting" or "notifying" you into their software. You should be the root process.
> Turn off your YouTube watch history
Just to add to that, it's a two step process: disable saving new history, and then clear all history
I estimate my watch time dropped by half per day the first time I did that. Then I started curating my subscriptions better, and watching from that.
Or only use the subscriptions page, and never visit the home page.
Getting only the stuff you've curated is way better than the algorithm.
I'm one of those that instinctively types the letter "y", presses the down arrow, then enter, and goes straight to the subscriptions page.
Unfortunately, I now have to scroll through the "most relevant" section, then through shorts, and only then do I reach the videos in the chronological order. What I also hate is how when a channel I usually engage with uploads a video I have no interest in, then it's stuck on top of my subscription page in that "most relevant" section for like a week.
You can use Firefox plugin "Unhook remove youtube recommended and shorts" I think I also have some ublock filters that blocks those things. So, I only have videos.
you can reduce shorts for a period of 3 weeks or so,
I go even further and don't use the YouTube website much at all. When someone shares a YouTube link it goes straight to mpv which streams the video (and just the video) with the help of yt-dlp. No auto-playing the next video. No suggested videos. No comments. No dark patterns. No distractions.
Or don't login. It will still learn about you so you don't always receive the blank main page. My browser is set to clear that data, yet with a single video being played the algo is already suggesting more content.
Useful: <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/>
its suggestions are the best way to get me to leave. not that i find myself there often, or stay long anyway. hn on the other hand...
I did similar for my work PC but for the browser: turn off all the conveniences. No history in the bar so there's no way way to lazily navigate to a website, I have to manually type in the URL. Saved passwords and cookies? Nope! closing the browser wipes history.
This is so weird to me, I curate my watch history, and the vast majority of suggestions I get are relevant to me. Am I the only one who does this? (I especially make sure to open any unknown or political videos in a private browser as well). And if any garbage appears in my recs, I just tell it "don't recommend this" and it seems to work?
Some of us don't want suggestions that are relevant to us. Targeted suggestions are more likely to draw you into the machine.
YouTube's only goal is to make more money. Most YouTubers' only goal is to get more views. Sure it can be useful but that's a perfect excuse to live on forever. People were fine before YouTube, and you can learn anything from words an images.
I recommend taking a page out of the FSF's book and just straight up not using it, because it doesn't respect its users.
>, and you can learn anything from words an images.
A lot of info on Youtube is not available in alternative forms such as books or blogs with just words and images.
E.g. A random person uploads a video on how he repaired my particular washing machine by isolating the relay that broke. It's not in blog form because the guy is not an HTML expert or WordPress user. Instead, he simply used his smartphone to record a 10 minute video of what he did and uploaded it to Youtube.
Was I "fine" before Youtube?!? In the past with that type of situation, I would have spent $1000 on a new washing machine instead of spending $2 for a new relay part and soldering it myself. There was no equivalent resource available to show me how to DIY repair it. Trying to avoid $1000 by calling an appliance repairman wouldn't help because these days, they charge a $150 trip & diagnostic fee just to show up ... and then in the end, they say the electronics board that's fried is discontinued so they can't get the part which means the only the only remedy is to buy a new washing machine. So I would end up paying a guy $150 to tell me to pay another $1000 for a new washing machine... for a total of $1150. Youtube helps in avoiding all that. As a knowledge base for DIY learning how to repair random stuff around the house, there is no alternative to Youtube.
How did that person who uploaded the YouTube video figure it out? They didn't have a video to watch. So why couldn't you?
I'd say it's more of specific hypothetical, and I don't understand how one couldn't read about a fuse on a forum or in a manual and diagnose with a DMM. Sure, YouTube is convenient because we are all out of time, all the time.
It's also a further reflection of how helpless we have become with regards to so much of what we rely on.
>How did that person who uploaded the YouTube video figure it out? They didn't have a video to watch.
He spent a month trying different repairs (replacing pump, etc) that didn't work and then finally stumbled onto the electrical relay as the root cause. This is the deep link to the video I used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gm_2qISYvk&t=2m41s
>So why couldn't you?
Maybe I eventually could have fixed it if I spent weeks on it and replicated all his failures but I didn't have to because ... he uploaded a video to help me. His video was the breakthrough I needed because it identified the particular relay. I actually had to watch more Youtube videos to learn how to actually replace the relay because the board is encased on epoxy resin and I had no idea how to deal with it. Various Youtube videos showed ideas of using an exacto knife and Dremel rotary tool to cut through the plastic case on the other side.
>, and I don't understand how one couldn't read about a fuse on a forum or in a manual and diagnose with a DMM.
One could hypothetically read the text of fixing a single relay of that particular washer model on a forum ... if... that guy in the vid hypothetically wrote a post on a forum... but he didn't. Sometimes, the mode of sharing is Youtube instead of a forum post. I can't control what other people do.
I did eventually find the official Samsung service manual PDF file and had to download it from some sketchy warez website because end-consumers are not supposed to have it ... but it only talks about board-level repairs ($250) instead of isolated repairs of replacing a single faulty relay.
Without hypotheticals or exaggeration, Youtube has literally saved me thousands of dollars. Showing how to fix cars, plumbing, ice makers, sewing machines, coffee machine, sprinkler systems, etc.
I'm with you on this, the knowledge sharing on YT is massive and in general not replicated in written form anywhere else. Anything that needs fixing involves a YT search for me these days, since that has the highest chance of turning up something useful and relevant. Only downside is that it's time consuming to find the right spot in the video and pause/rewind to understand how to do the thing properly. But having someone actually demonstrate how to do it, rather than just describing it with words, is so helpful and makes replicating it a lot easier.
> They didn't have a video to watch. So why couldn't you?
You can of course say the same thing about reading books, instruction manuals, asking somebody for advice, and so on.
Why should there exist any instruction manuals, when you could figure out everything in them for yourself. You aren't a stupid idiot, are you? Then why would you need a manual? And why would you ever ask other people for advice? That's only for stupid idiots who can't figure out things for themselves - not for hackers.
>So I would end up paying a guy $150 to tell me to pay another $1000 for a new washing machine...
I agree that there's a huge difference between $2 and $1150, but you're absolutely positive that only this Youtuber knew how to do it and that no repair man would've been able to?
Well, I'm reasonably certain there are dozens of YouTubers who figured it out. I wouldn't be surprised if I could figure it out myself, although it's unclear. But yes, repairmen, they would not be replacing a single relay. They would replace the whole board if it's available. Otherwise, the whole thing is scrapped.
Repairing a relay is something that's easy for someone to do by themselves. However, it is not worth it for repairmen. By the time they get the relay, which means a second trip for another $150, plus spend the time to unsolder it and re-solder it, so a bit more of their time, so now we're up to $400. Worse, they replaced the relay and sometimes it turns out the relay failed because something else is broke and another thing is just going to break the new relay right away and now they have to spend another $150 on a repair trip to figure out what was wrong that caused the relay to burn out, replace that part and replace the relay. We are very close to the cost of a new washing machine right now and that is assuming whatever is wrong is easy to repair and not the result of something else that is also broken. Thus, the right answer for a repairman is you make the simple, cheap, quick fixes you can or you just sell them a new one before you end up wasting more of their money than it
Modern factories are very efficient at making things, however, that only works when the assembly line is there. A repairman working alone doesn't have all the advantage of a factory. I was recently talking to one of our factory engineers at work and they said this part, whatever it was, took two 'man hours' to build in our factory. But a repairman just taking it apart to replace one cheap seal and putting it back together would be at 10 man hours. This is why more and more things are going to modules that can be replaced. If a repair person can come out and look and say, this module is broken, grab a new one, shove it in, and it works, they can be in and out quickly and it's cost-effective. If they have to tear down to the relay level and diagnose things if you're at why it really broke, that quickly becomes more labor and thus more cost than it's worth.
Your devices in the 1960s did work and they were worth repairing because they were a lot simpler. Those devices also didn't have nearly as much automation in the assembly line and so there were many more man hours to build in the first place. They were also, although this is less true depending on what we're talking about, but very often had unreelable parts that because they were broke often, they specifically designed those for your parable. You fixed a 1960s TV by replacing all the tubes, something that was not very hard to do because they put more expensive sockets under each tube to make it easy
Often the information is available in non-video form but just not surfaced by Google search.
Blocking recommendations is the one thing I'd add to this list. You can easily do so with uBlock Origin, and it's made the biggest difference for me.
Water still finds cracks, but it's about reducing the likelihood and increasing the time between binges (so that they mentally register as necessarily intentional and abnormal)
I wish the uBO element picker would make it easier to block elements by their content now that pretty much every websites uses optimized CSS with random class names that will change with each update.
> /* UNCOMMENT BELOW to force a boring system font (might break some web icons) *
Firefox already includes a better version of this: Settings → Fonts → Advanced settings → untick Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above.
It makes the web much better. Firefox even includes a list of icon font names that will be permitted (pref browser.display.use_document_fonts.icon_font_allowlist) to minimise icon font breakage, though I chose to block font loading altogether and there’s not often much trouble from it (and most of it is Google’s, and Material Icons’ ligation technique is in practice so dumb, achieving results quite the opposite of the original reason for the technique in an entirely predictable way).
> I need colors for code
Quite honestly, try doing without it for a while and see how it goes. Make a new theme that’s limited to just black on white, with regular/bold/italic font styles (me, I did keywords bold and comments and macro stuff italic and that was all), and use it for a week. Then consider if you want colours, and how to add them. Me, I went to strings red and comments green and numbers blue and not much else, though it’s grown a little over time. Others add greys, and perhaps background shading.
I also need a solution for my addiction. I was thinking of blocking all addictive apps in my main (phone) account and set up a kids account for myself where all the drugs are installed. Then I need to ask myself for screen time. I hope this is annoying enough to not switch accounts constantly. If that doesn't work, I need to give another person the control over the screen time.
I deleted almost every app on my phone. I use reddit a bit and hn, but that's all the social stuff i do. Hell i use a pixel and disabled YouTube. It's a bit of a challenge at fist, but much much better after you adjust
ask a relative that you visit from time to time what's their favourite book on their shelf and why. This way, you at least make sure that they would not toss the book in a whim. ask them to write the parental control PIN on one or two pieces of paper and then type it on the phone screen to lock it. ask them to store the piece/s of paper in their favourite book/s.
bow to never bother them about the piece/s of paper unlesls you are stranded in the middle of the ocean and need to use the phone. When you visit them, you might unlock the phone and repeat the process
How many of those things do you really need? As in how bad would it be if you fully deleted those accounts completely?
Using newpipe instead of YouTube helps a lot. It makes YouTube pretty boring. Plus you can just download the few useful videos that you use for reference over and over and only browse through those
"I accepted that doomscrolling is an addiction, not a lack of discipline; the goal isn't willpower, it's friction." - the most important insight in here.
I used to start the same place the author did with total blocks but kept overriding for real purposes then getting sidetracked. Identified the real problem as feeds which choose what to watch for me instead of me choosing. So I use custom apps and extensions to remove all the feeds but keep the search and messaging functionality (Feurstagram). Sometimes I catch myself opening the page out of habit but then realising I have literally nothing I actively want to watch/search for ...
This is absolutely what I need. I was so shocked when I checked my screen time and saw how many hours I've wasted on those "stupid" apps. But I am also hesitated to try that because of FOMO. What if my friends talk about some trendy/funny on the Internet but I can't catch up/follow?
Do things away from your screen in the real world and form friendships around that.
An addict with addict friends needs to find non addicted friends to escape the addiction.
lol good point!
I’ve taken a lot of these same steps with mixed success, but nice to see somebody else’s thoughts and results.
For the iPhone users, I got similar results to Olauncher using the iOS Shortcuts app, and then linked it to the action button for easy access. I have a blog post in the works with the detail.
I made a browser for this: https://leash.ax/ – it cut my own screentime to two hours per day. Boring, in a good way!
On Android I use the web browser "Tiny Browser". Chrome is disabled. The app is so comically basic, doesn't support tabs, so it works for the common task of needing to google something, but it makes it painful to do much more.
Related, I just did an experiment to see if I could do away with color for syntax highlighting and I was pleasantly surprised that it was not a total failure! For grayscale-on-the-computer this may help if you enable that for focused work sessions.
https://hank.bond/posts/highlighting-my-code-based-on-how-mu...
If you've got an iPhone/Mac I recommend Apple's free Apple Configurator tool to lock down your phone to only the set of apps you whitelist and/or route all traffic through a VPN/Proxy that whitelists only certain IPs. You can only change the whitelist when you're physically back at your Mac so prevents me impulsively relaxing the restrictions in any moments of boredom.
I configured uBlock to hide comments and suggested videos from YouTube. Couldn't recommend it enough. I don't miss either of them and now (usually) only go to YouTube to do something useful.
Edit: Forgot to mention I also blocked Shorts. In fact, I forgot they even existed. I guess the medium is the message. Short and forgettable.
I uninstalled some of my additive apps and enabled gray scale after reading this... Hope it helps
- from a phone addict
I've been doing grayscale for about a year now. Sadly, I've discovered most of my wasted time is spent reading, which works fine in grayscale.
None of this has ever worked for me. I still struggle.
What does help is understanding that the problem is often me. Not that the internet isn't a hellscape of addicting design, or that I've not been flex to screens of some sort or another since childhood, but that my level of engagement with it scales with my general wellbeing.
In the recovery world, they talk about HALT: hungry, angry, lonely, tired. I'm worst on my devices when I'm one of those. Oh, or hungover.
Content blockers and greyscale and whatnot are all fine, but I've had most success looking away from technology to help.
I still suck at this, I bet a lot of us do, but knowing myself has been most helpful. Being able to understand why I'm doing it helps me break the circuit and engage more with other things.
It's an ongoing battle though, I hate it.
I use triple click accessibility on my phone to enable grayscale since I need colors sometime.
Internet is so much noisier these days. Even hackernews has become much noisier in the past year or so. These days i only visit hackernews every couple of days or so towards the end of the day, and use youtube occasionally after work and on weekends. I have shifted to more analogue media like paper books and vinyl.
Self Plug : If someone is interested, I built a plugin for youtube called Flowtube - Distraction free youtube on chromestore http://tiny.cc/w4s9101. It blocks all comments, recommendations, sidebar and homepage.
You might want to try coding in monochrome as well occasionally. Syntax highlighting can be useful, but it has hidden mental costs.
Doing that would make it harder to use Claude and Codex
The internet is a rich tapestry of human knowledge and experience. When I scroll Instagram, I often discover incredible new artists who present in human form. Once you start tapping like on things, the journey of discovery is almost biblical.
The secret is learning to use your tools to bring joyful moments of surrender into your otherwise mundane existence.
Satire?
Edit: looking at your other comments, the answer is yes