Yes, I agree.
…
…continues scrolling Chapo.Chat
ngl when lenin said capitalists will sell you the rope i did not imagine it being in the form of dumbing ourselves down via social media so that we cannot even compete with the likes of china but ill take it :xinternet:
i’d be surprised if China was better about this tbh.
Chinese people (in my experience) are glued to their phones much more than Westerners, it’s not even close. They have their own social media that they spend every second of their lives on and they love mobile games, which tend to be designed to be played in shorter sessions.
My Chinese language partner in particular will reply to texts in literal seconds every time, no matter how many hours or days we haven’t talked.
You reply in seconds because you are on your phone all the time
I reply in seconds because of crippling loneliness
We are not the same
if you power through this stage eventually you will reach the “too anxiety crippled to respond at all for months, at which point it feels weird to reply at all” stage
:comfy-cool:
Matt and Felix were perfectly right that the only way the US could ever manage to defeat China would be by making culture slop so shitty that it poisons their brains too
At the moment it’s as though we are all having itching powder poured over us all day, and the people pouring the powder are saying: “You might want to learn to meditate. Then you wouldn’t scratch so much.”
Nice line.
Up until I was 11 or 12 I was a voracious reader. I’d tear through book after book, at least a couple a week, basically vandalizing the robust library my middle school English teacher kept with how often I took something home and forgot to return it. My parents would catch me staying up past my bedtime to read and take my hidden books away. I’d take my books to the dinner table, even to restaurants.
Then I got an iPod touch, and it’s been downhill ever since. I’ve read a couple of books a year for school, but very little of my own volition. It gets to me sometimes when I realize how much I could’ve broadened my mind in these past years if phones and the internet weren’t so addicting.
I recently took a lot of the normal apps off my phone (youtube, social media) and it’s genuinely helped so much. Almost all technology now is designed to keep you using it so the companies can make more money. Now I barely spend time on my phone and the time I do spend is significantly more productive and valuable. I would recommend it. I think it’s a good look into what a socialist internet would look like - simple, useful, and not addictive.
My model has been trying to identify the biggest time wasters and then block those first. Personally it used to be youtube and such, but I’ve since kicked that. You can install websites as an “app” which I’ve found helps cut down on usage time.
For desktop I’ve found using virtual desktops to help. It’s nor perfect but it lets you segment your different sets of tabs/programs.
Just to add one other thing, eliminating websites that have infinite scrolling helped me a ton, would recommend.
I wish I was this intellectually curious, especially when I was younger and my brain was more spongy.
Brains never stop being sponges. Think about the most off-the-wall things boomers start believing in after a year of addiction to Facebook
