[jacobthesnakob]

The technology-as-entertainment approach is poison. Reddit is the worst of it; even the tech addicts that see themselves as intellectuals mostly can’t be bothered to read. The (intentional) lack of reading comprehension in order to misconstrue comments and pick arguments would make an observer believe that most Redditors are functionally illiterate. I read a good criticism once that reading a single quality book on any topic, puts one far ahead of the knowledge base of the subreddit dedicated to that topic.

Even HN isn’t great anymore. I frequently change my password to gibberish and abandon my account to the ether, to spend several month stretches completely disconnected from the “social” internet.

[hackyhacky]

> Reddit is the worst of it

Really? I find Twitter, YouTube, Instagram to be vastly more toxic. Reddit is fine as long as you stay out of political subs.

> I frequently change my password to gibberish and abandon my account

Couldn't you just ... not log in?

[jacobthesnakob]

I found in the subreddits related to my career and hobbies the discussions were pretty circular, there's a low level of basic knowledge but as soon as you rise above that and start dealing with nuance, the average user can't handle it. It was different 10-15 years ago, but the modern /r/[inserthobby] Redditor seems to have exclusively educated themselves via Reddit content.

X and Instagram are login-walled, I don't have accounts there and can't see any content. I don't really read comments on YouTube, I check like the top 3 to see if anybody has pointed out something major the video got wrong or glossed over. As soon as I see the teenager-level comments with some silly meme or typing out an event that happened in the video word-for-word I close the tab.

>Couldn't you just ... not log in?

Sure, I guess, but I like the ethereality of my approach.