[TeMPOraL]

Isn't the strength of addiction inversely correlated with how healthy it is?

Or put another way, how the fuck does one begin to like intense outdoor activity at all, much less to the point of it replacing a social media problem (including HN)?

There's only one somewhat reliable "trick" I know that makes people do these kinds of switches: falling in love, or at least getting a crush on, someone who's already doing the healthier thing. Obviously, this method is only available for a small segment of the population and mostly for a few years.

[best_one_there]

It's tautological if you phrase it that way.

Hiking is just fun. Like, actually fun. If you set up the mental barrier that exercise is bad and sucks and feels bad, then sure, now it's bad.

If you're super unfit it might suck, much like sitting down and bashing out some cool scripts in Python would suck if you had no programming knowledge, but that's fixable for most.

[Der_Einzige]

See everyone tells me gaming is unhealthy but I loved doing it so much that I simply became a computer professional so that people can't stop me from gaming. It's a time honored tradition to game during downtime in many IT departments.

Seems a highly addictive and on paper "unhealthy addiction" was in this case quite gainful for me.