Internet Addiction

internet addiction isn't only about sounding off. not everyone wants to use it to broadcast their opinions publicly. in fact i suspect most do not and it's just a loud dumb minority who give it the impression of a vox populi. that stat where like .01% of twitter users are responsible for 99.99% of the tweets. i was deeply addicted before ever reading forums, before social media. msn messenger, chat rooms, just reading stuff. the smartphone stuff just let's you do that everywhere anytime

i like to read

i miss the good internet so much

i miss the earth so much, i miss my wife

downloaded stayfocused plug-in for chrome and had the most productive monday morning at work in months

that looks like something I need

yea i could use that too

i need a meta stayfocusd plug-in that forces me to downlaod stayfocusd and use it

how are you gonna download the plug-in for the plug-in though huh

stay what now?

i need a meta stayfocusd plug-in that forces me to downlaod stayfocusd and use it

― Karl Malone, Monday, March 7, 2016 11:41 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTMFM. Just like I need a planner to remind me to use and check a planner.

I need a brain that functions properly, is what I'm saying here.

i need someone to tell me to work, to make sure that my work-enhancing plug-ins are downloaded and operational, and also to do my work for me

I need someone who will do my work and perform all of my daily non-work routines for me and also continually tell me that my inability to do all of the things they're doing for me doesn't make me a bad person.

So that I can spend all day on the internet.

i wonder if the womb has wi-fi

I like stayfocused but the problems is I also have explorer on my work computer

LOL @ how hard i rocked it at work today, i truly just thought i was an inherently unproductive person before today. also how many times i mindlessly typed ilxor.com, twitter.com or facebook.com into my browser only to be shut out

us elections feed my internet addiction like nothing else and the high suspense of the GOP primaries + leftist infighting (a guilty pleasure of mine) caused by sanders running in the dem primary have just been destroying my work ethic

willpower to install/turn it on is negligible. you can also customize it to give you a maximum of say, 15 or 30 daily minutes across all banned sites. also part of the problem for me is not just the act of procrastinating, but procrastinating from procrastinating? like, i frequently open some relatively longformish article, skim the first paragraph, feel bored and agitated, then go back to twitter/ilx. i used my fifteen minutes on social media to open a nice wax poetics piece on Ron Hardy and some election stuff that i then actually read pretty thoroughly

you need willpower to stay off other browsers but that's easier than you'd think. the shame of stupidity of sneaking past a trap you set yourself worked well for day one at least

elections are a great example of the anxiety thing I talked about upthread -- it feels like it's this PROBLEM that you need to SOLVE. But you can't!

the anxiety about open-ended stuff without goals or resolutions I mean.

anyone tried just not using the internet for anything outside of work for an extended period of time, if so how did it work out

worked out pretty great but eventually i got bored. :(

increasingly i am feeling like i wasn't built for this. there is an open-endedness to browsing the internet that makes it feel different than reading books or whatever and way more addictive.

yeah you should definitely take a break if you can. just try to keep yourself intellectually stimulated- that's always the challenge for me.

i think a good goal would be to learn how to live with boredom. it shouldn't feel so intolerable to sit with myself without stimulation... idk.

i tried looking up testimonials from people who have tried living without the internet but i can't find all that much. makes sense, i guess.. people who unplugged wouldn't by definition be on the internet... but i was still surprised. i would think more people would be interested in the idea of unplugging.

embracing boredom is key. you are a smart guy, imagine the interesting thoughts you'll have once you get past that initial boredom.

the weird irony of constant connectivity is that while it promises to maximize productivity (which is bad enough) never in history has there been something so good at entrapping you into wasting time.

i like to sit outside or in nice spaces without a book or any other "deliberate" entertainment and tune into my own head there, it might be a good starter step because being outside creates its own stimulation?

Been feeling deeply unwell about my Internet usage lately, and in retrospect, going back several years. I need to make a lifestyle change.

the sense of needing constant stimulation goes away after a couple days. it's not really a big issue. the long-term issue for me is that quitting the internet doesn't tend to actually make my life better. when i compulsively use the internet it's to avoid stuff i don't want to deal with, and not using the internet has still left me with stuff i don't want to deal with.

boredom is not really that bad either. i read that dfw book and he gets boredom completely wrong in it. what he describes as boredom is actually acute anxiety. boredom is just... boredom. i mean, honestly being on the internet is a pretty boring thing to do.

going for walks is nice. i recommend going for walks.

people in general are pretty good at figuring out ways to avoid boredom so yeah you might surprise yourself once the easy outlet of the Internet is gone.

and yeah walks are pretty great.

have "unplugged" completely a couple times within the last five years (very easy to do if you, say, lose electricity and neglect to turn it back on, or if your internet-browser-machine dies and you just don't replace it for awhile) and it was fine, these days I browse sometimes on an old smartphone at home, but I honestly don't know where to go on the internet anymore, what else is there to do besides lurk around ilx?

cosign on walks though, hikes too if you can get out to one, walking at night is brilliant if you can find a safe place to do it (or bring a friend!)

treeship do you play any instruments? I managed to get pretty good at ukulele by candlelight over the course of a few months, and they're just so small you can take em anywhere, take em on a walk even

Think in most ways regarding the internet, kids today have the advantage that the "internet" isn't an alien entity, not something hi-tech sci-if dreamlike Jetsons thing that became reality out of nowhere during our lifetime. It's not something that exists next to "real life", it's simply part of life. Today's 5 year olds have many aberrations or daunty aspects of the Internet to worry about, no doubt, but they probably won't be addicted to "the Internet" like I used to be. I fought my parents over phone bills from dialing in to bbs's, but for today's generation the Internet is just there, part of life.

Youth today grows up with the Internet as an intrinsic part of life, rather than some novelty thing that shapes your life in massive ways. I think being addicted to "the Internet" will soon become something of the past. Getting lost in certain corners of the digital, sure, that will still happen. But I also see the advantage of kids growing up in an Internet world, accustomed to its quiditties and agonies, knowing way better where to go or what to ignore. There's a casualness to how kids us the Internet that I am envious of quite honestly.

oh i feel almost the opposite of that. i have had high speed internet access all the time since i was 14 or so and i think it's warped me in ways i can't even recognize. i'm pretty sure it's made me more antisocial and allowed me to develop bad habits, especially related to "escapism" or not dealing with problems.

i've described this anxiety to my parents and they can't relate at all. they use smartphones and facebook and whatever but it's not enough a part of their lives to have become seductive or dysfunctional. they're just tools that they use, not environments they get lost in.

I think our generation is caught in the middle. Your parents - like mine - use the Internet like a tool set. For people born today "the Internet" probably won't be an "environment" to get lost in because it's so engrained in life.

We're screwed, basically.

whenever i find myself with no internet access i wonder how i'm going to pass the time, then i have a great time reading and listening to records and otherwise doing low-key worthwhile and productive things, and feel that i should certainly do this more often, and then as soon as i have internet access again it's back to endless twitter and fb and ilx

"Think in most ways regarding the internet, kids today have the advantage that the "internet" isn't an alien entity"

think the internet is probably better off as an alien entity tbh

whenever i find myself with no internet access i wonder how i'm going to pass the time, then i have a great time reading and listening to records and otherwise doing low-key worthwhile and productive things, and feel that i should certainly do this more often, and then as soon as i have internet access again it's back to endless twitter and fb and ilx

rueful otm

Btw my stayfocused experiment lasted a good week then i started slipping into incognito to avoid it -_-

I think it's going to be very interesting to see what the children of today will do with the internet. They'll be the first generation that didn't have the opportunity to be straight up blindsided by this unbelievable technology; as has been said upthread, it was always there. My two year old cannot quite read or type yet but she has no problem browsing youtube on a touchscreen, finding content I didn't even know about (look at the view counter for videos containing "play doh surprise eggs"!)

i'm of same generation as treeship and (i think) bateau and i wouldn't describe myself as having been 'blindsided' by the internet and it never felt like 'something hi-tech sci-if dreamlike Jetsons thing that became reality out of nowhere during our lifetime'. started watching flash cartoons, going on chatrooms and aim around fourth grade but i was aware of its existence even before then. i think kids today are just as fucked as us. my cousin age 13 is addicted to the internet, first via minecraft (including watching videos of other people playing minecraft) but now she even like goes to buzzfeed dot com and reads lists

the internet getting shittier and noisier has probably been the best thing for breaking my internet habit. once i disconnect i don't feel much compulsion to constantly check in on it any more. turning twitter etc off just feels like sweet relief now.

when i compulsively use the internet it's to avoid stuff i don't want to deal with, and not using the internet has still left me with stuff i don't want to deal with.

haha otm. the ridiculous endless rounds of clicking i engage in when i procrastinate don't have anything to do with the internet per se, they're to do with procrastination and if the internet isn't there i just find even more pointless ways of procrastinating.

i took a lot of time out from the internet. now i engage with it at work, then switchg off when i leave the office, but sometimes this is harder than i hoped. its also why i hate streaming services. i cant watch online TV without thinking about looking at something else.

the main prob ive found with the net is the same one as before, theres so much to read, once you see it all, you feel like youre missing out/losing out/getting out of touch by not reading it. but now i just print out pieces i want to read and read them later. i cant read anything properly at work, shuttling between actual work and websites.

https://twitter.com/noz/status/725194524750958592

i hope future generations will think of the internet and social media the way we do smoking today

i think a better reference point would be television. i think most people would think it was a problem if they spent many hours a day channel surfing but it's considered more acceptable to do that on the web.

I don't do much internet browsing these days. Most of the internetting I do is fairly utilitarian aside from ILX-ing and some news trawling (almost all of which I do during work hours). Extracting myself from social media and the WWW equivalent of channel flipping was nothing but helpful. Still use the damn thing too much, though.

have there been any songs about net addiction?

waiting for michael franti to record an update of 'television... the drug of the nation'.

I was thinking back the other day to a time when I used to write like a machine every day and wondering what happened to make me break that habit and, oh yeah, of course it was before I owned a laptop and a smartphone and a tablet.