| I've gotta share something -- so, I think I have a bit of an addiction with YouTube and I'd been thinking about how to shake it off. I didn't get round to it for whatever reason (blocks in modem settings maybe), but one day a month or so ago, if I went to YouTube, I saw this screen: https://i.imgur.com/OIL0jSE.png Not extremely sure why this happens (I reckon it has to do with my use of adguard), but anyway I noticed I would just... move on, there were not icons to entice me that I could immediately click. And then sure enough, I found myself less hungry for it in the coming weeks. This all happened by accident but boy o' boy, it works. I'm wasting less time on YouTube. I similarly stopped going to reddit (the comments don't load on mobile, things become unclickable... I imagine this is a change recently made live to force users to login to increase engagement... ironic that it works out backwards to what their intent was). Reflecting more on this on a weary weekend morning, about how many are unable to shake off these addictions, I am increasingly convinced of the poisonous effects of these distractions and cannot help but think that dire action is needed to curb these addictions with gov't mandated regulations. I think price increase of tobacco products (with tax costs embedded in the price) were a great deterrent (better than the warning signs on the tobacco), so I suspect deterrents need be incredibly strong. Finding that balance and perspective, of weighing personal freedoms and recognizing the realities of addictions is going to be very hard, but I hope for the good of us we go somewhere with this and recognize the dangers for what they are. |
Massively helpful, but also concerning how months later I still automatically try to go to the homepage every once in a while and run into my adblocker.