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I can't help but wonder how my life would be different if mindlessly staring at screens wasn't an option (lemm.ee)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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YouTube is my vice. I spend hours and hours and hours there watching videos every single day. I've recently however starting to resent the fact that apparently I seem to prefer watching other people do stuff rather than do that myself. Watching interesting videos feels like a leisure but doing interesting stuff has somehow in my mind turned into work.

Just few days ago I watched a Casey Neistat studio tour and I caught myself thinking how nice it would be to have a neatly organized space like that for making stuff. Well I have a space like that! I'm just never there because instead I'm in the house watching YouTube. I hate that. When I was younger I took apart solar lanterns to build a solar battery charger, I made a camera gimball stabilizer out of threaded rod, angle irons and plumbing pipe, I build a functioning submarine out of legos. Now I can't even remember when I last time build something just for fun.

While watching youtube is "fun" aswell however it's not memorable. I still remember my lego submarine from 20 years ago but I don't remember a single video I watched yesterday. I'm worried that if I keep doing this I'm basically just throwing my life away. There's always going to be another video to watch. I will never finish that project.

I guess I'm just venting. I'm sure there are people that can relate however. How do you guys deal with this?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Thanks, I needed that post. I'm in a similar boat. I get addicted to this stuff (YT, lemmy, reddit etc.) easily, and I've found that a moderate use is just not possible for me in the long run. It can't really coexist in my life with leisure activities that require me to sustain my attention for longer, like reading, practicing an instrument, or even just sitting down and listening to a good album intently.

What helps me a bit is putting all kinds of hindrances in place:

storing my phone in a drawer and only taking it out when I want to do something specific
not having my router always running, but only turning it on when I want to use the wifi for something specific
browser extensions to block certain sites
using screen time limits in the Android settings
rooting my phone and blocking addictive sites in my hosts file (unfortunately I only found out afterwards that subdomains (*) like m.youtube.com aren't blocked by blocking the main sites like youtube.com and now I can't add them to the blacklist without much effort)
(similar solutions for my laptop)

But none of that has worked as much as I'd like. It's a constant struggle and I'm still looking for a better solution.

Doing interesting stuff has somehow in my mind turned into work.

That's the worst part. Scroll too much and that state becomes your new baseline. Now anything that is less captivating and effortless than that feels difficult.

(*) I'm not sure if subdomain is the correct term here. If anyone knows, please correct me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Subdomain is absolutely the correct term!

Also, there are much easier ways of DNS blocking on Android that don't require rooting, but instead act as an always on VPN. I use TrackerControl, though that's meant to block trackers and I'm not sure if you can manually add domains.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I didn't know that was an option. But these easier ways of blocking can be reversed within seconds, right? I need something that is difficult to undo.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

That's true, yes. These apps will usually have a persistent notification with a disable action, so probably not great for your use case.